over 95% of the instances of the word "God" in the New Testament refers to the Father alone, and the article "the" always precedes the word "God" in these instances.
The latter part of this statement is not correct. The definite article is often omitted in references to "the one True God". Even in this first chapter of John, I count 12 occurrences of
theos (God), in unambiguous references to "the True God". Of these, at least four do not include the article (the) and seven do include it. Thus, in over 1/3 of the occurrences referring unambiguously to the "one True God," the article is absent.
We find, then, that John uses the word
theos twelve times in one chapter, alternating between the use and the non-use of the definite article. Yet, in eleven of the 12 instances, he is unambiguously referring to the "one True God". The one case that may be said to be ambiguous, and under consideration here, is the second occurrence in verse 1. It seems contrived, when finding a word used 12 times in a passage, to gratuitously claim that, in one instance, it does not mean what it means in the other 11. See the examples:
verse 1 - "the Word was with [the] God" (article present)
"God was the Word" (no article)
verse 2 - "[the Word] was in the beginning with [the] God" (article present)
verse 6 -"There was a man sent from God" (no article)
verse 12 - "to them He gave the authority to become sons of God" (no article)
verse 13 - "were born...of God" (no article)
verse 18 - "no one has seen God" (no article)
verse 29 - "Behold, the Lamb of [the] God (article present)
verse 34 - "this is the Son of [the] God" (article present)
verse 36 - "Behold, the Lamb of [the] God (article present)
verse 49 - "you are the Son of [the] God" (article present)
verse 51 - "the angels of [the] God" (article present)
It seems to me that John primarily (though not in verse 12) inserts the article where he is speaking of someone other than God, but in relation to [e.g., "Son of...," "Lamb of...," "angels of..."] God. When speaking simply of God Himself, as the main focus, John appears to omit the article. This is only a suggestion. There may be no hope of finding the rationale for John's variation in the use or non-use of the article—just as there may be no explanation for my alternating, in this post, between the use of Arabic numerals (11, 12, etc.) and spelling out the numbers (eleven, twelve, etc.).
Verses 1 and 2 stand outside the pattern just described (as does v,12), but, we can affirm, without controversy, that, if
"theos" is used, without the article, in John 1:1b to refer to something less than "the one True God," this breaks the otherwise universal pattern of John's use of the term
theos (with or without the article) exclusively with reference to the "one True God." Whoever claims that John has made this singular exception in his usage, it seems to me, bears a considerable burden of proof.