The Righteousness of Our God and Savior

Some time ago, I joyfully stumbled across II Peter 1:1, which says, 

"... to those who have received like precious faith by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ." 

My joy was somewhat dampened, when I discovered that the Watchtower publications had a complex argument as to why they translated the same words, "Of our God and [the] Savior, Jesus Christ," thus muddying the reference of God to Jesus.  However, my joy was un-dampened when I re-read the Greek, only to discover that their argument held little water.  

In Greek, the phrase reads: "του θεου και σωτηρου Ιησου Χριστου."  

The Greek article is appended to the entire phrase, "God and Savior" (του θεου και σωτηρου).  If the two were fully separate, I reasoned, it would be doubled: [article] God and [article] Savior (του θεου και του σωτηρου).  However, being only in my first semester of Greek, I decided not to open that can of worms online.  

I decided to pose the question to my professor this evening.  I asked him to translate II Peter 1:1.  After getting quite bogged down in the word "like," he mumbled over the phrase, "of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ."  

"of our God and Savior?" I said.  "Is there any way that that could read 'of our God and the Savior"?  

He did a double-take, staring at it for a moment, before announcing simply, "No."  

"Why not?"  

"Because it would be violating a Granville-Sharp rule, when a Greek article precedes two nouns separated by και."  

The article, he explained, as I knew, is used the same way with both proper and improper nouns.  [Article] bread, [article] God, [article] Jesus, and [article] Paul, translate as "the bread" OR "bread", "God," "Jesus," and "Paul," respectively.  In other words, it only translates "the" when it's convenient to say so in English.  We simply don't use articles with proper nouns; Greek does.  

  

The Granville-Sharp rule is best explained by this website's exegesis of II Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13: 

Basically, Granville Sharp's rule states that when you have two nouns, which are not proper names (such as Cephas, or Paul, or Timothy), which are describing a person, and the two nouns are connected by the word "and," and the first noun has the article ("the") while the second does not, *both nouns are referring to the same person*. In our texts, this is demonstrated by the words "God" and "Savior" at Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1. "God" has the article, it is followed by the word for "and," and the word "Savior" does not have the article. Hence, both nouns are being applied to the same person, Jesus Christ. This rule is exceptionless. One must argue solely on theological grounds against these passages. There is truly no real grammatical objection that can be raised. Not that many have not attempted to do so, and are still trying. However, the evidence is overwhelming in favor of the above interpretation. 

In other words, mathematically speaking, the Greek translated literally would look like this: 

"...the righteousness of*({[our God]+[Savior]}*Jesus Christ).  

Q.E.D.  Both nouns are referring to the same person.  Even if you incorrectly insert "the" before "Savior," both nouns still refer to Jesus Christ.  "Our God and Savior" is the correct reading; Jesus Christ is both our God and Savior.