by evergreen 77 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
does that make God the anti-Christ?
This is exactly the Gnostic point (the "Father" of Jesus is not the one who was so far worshipped as "God").
The Trinity doctrine is the result of a further negotiation... attempting to run with the Gnostic hare and hunt with the Monotheistic hounds?
If Paul's Christ is the anti-God, does that make God the anti-Christ?
Actually.....this is a great point! Laurel and Hardy. Hardy is mean Jehovah who's always grumpy and physical ....and Jesus is poor ol' Laurel the pacifists whos over-sensitive.
Pauls Christ made you wonder how he reconciled Christ with the only god he knew before Christ.
Gumby
The Demiurge vs syncretism, huh?
That's another fine mess you've got us into!
The sentence "Jesus is God" is what makes this whole thing an issue. It`s a wrong way to put it. The trinity-doctrine is the most correct over-all interpretation of the Bible, because it is the only way to solve certain problems, without there would be all to many inconsistensies. These inconsistensies can be solved in one of two way: Either by twisting passages out of context to make them mean something they certainly don`t (like the JWs do) - or by embracing the trinity-doctrine, which can solve these problems. How do you reconcile John 1.1 with Isaiah 44.24 ? It can`t be done, without the Trinity-doctrine. That particular problem is just one example, there are countless more. Try learning about the Trinity-doctrine before you bash it (and I`m not even a born-again, there are no stakes in this for me, I`m just seeing that trinity-bashing way to often, by ex-JWs).
People, hear yourself. You are comparing your imagination god with Jesus and saying, as Jesus does not act like MY imagined God then he is not God. So say me, how would God Allmighty would act if he would come to earth in human flesh? What would he say? What would he do? Would he showed love, example of obidence, would he wash your foots, would he DIE for you if he would be God? How does YOUR God acts? My God acts just like Jesus did...
Hellrider, you are right. Most of JW and others try to argue against trinity without even understanding what it says. And most funny is that JWs uses antimodalist arguments against trinity without understanding trinity! That is straw-man method!
Hellrider,
These inconsistensies can be solved in one of two way: Either by twisting passages out of context to make them mean something they certainly don`t (like the JWs do) - or by embracing the trinity-doctrine, which can solve these problems.
That's a bit of a false dilemma imo. Any synthesis, including the Trinitarian one, involves "twisting passages out of context" or at least reading into them concepts which are entirely foreign to a natural, or candid, reading -- e.g. here Jesus speaks as a man, there Jesus speaks as God, etc. I understand the believer's need for such a synthesis (and I agree that the Trinity is certainly not the worst possible one), but as far as exegesis is concerned one should abstain from it in order to get what each text is really saying.
Shazard,
You are comparing your imagination god with Jesus and saying, as Jesus does not act like MY imagined God then he is not God. So say me, how would God Allmighty would act if he would come to earth in human flesh? What would he say? What would he do? Would he showed love, example of obidence, would he wash your foots, would he DIE for you if he would be God? How does YOUR God acts? My God acts just like Jesus did...
Beautiful. Now try it backwards. Would this God of yours write the Torah as it is? Flood the entire earth? Kill all the firstborn of the Egyptians? Order the genocide of Canaanites?
Then think again about my suggestion that identifying Jesus to "God" radically modifies the Jewish monotheistic notion of "God".
I strongly feel that certain scriptures are being used totally out of context when backing up the trinity doctrine.
Have you looked at some of those same verses in a translation besides the NWT?
When I started to dig into this issue, I started to realize just how much the interpretations of these verses were based on the translation. For example in Col 1:16, 17 the NWT puts the [other] in there to include Christ with all other created things. No other translation reads this way. There are many other examples. Reasoning From the Scriptures with JW goes through many of these.
But really, if you don't know Greek, it makes it difficult to know who is giving a more reasonable explanation of the translation.
So then you must then examine the credentials of the folks who did the various translations. The problem is the WT won't disclose who translated the NWT. Ray Franz identified the translators in Crisis of Conscience. To a large extent it was the work of Fred Franz. Fred Franz has absolutely NO credentials as a Greek scholar.
So what [other] translations are more reliable? credible?
CYP
as a total unbeliever I now read Jewish mythology known as the bible and still see no trinity in it.
from start to finish I find two seperate characters which no one in the book seems to confuse.
one of them is identified as YHWH Elohim the other has a gradual build up and is described more and more as each chapter unfolds but is always kept seperate from YHWH and no one makes any statements which seem otherwise....
he is first called THE SON OF THE WOMAN who will crush the serpents head.
then SHILOH, the one who has the right.
Then in no particular order.... one like a son of man. [daniel] the seed of David [psalms and elsewhere] the one who would be known as the prince of peace the mighty one of God [Isa Jewish publication society El-Gibor] etc etc etc.
the NEW TESTAMENT equates Jesus will all these designations and does not seem to go beyond in my view and the view of many others who do not see Jesus ever calling himself God
nor do we find it impossible to resolve references that trinitiarians cannot seem to accept without seeing such things.
arguing whos view of jewish mythology is correct is really rather silly www.jesusneverexisted.com
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Bible translations that have replaced the tetragrammaton with 'Lord' and 'God' so that when people read 'Lord' in the Hebrew Scriptures and Lord in the Greek Scriptures they believe they are talking about the same person.
Ok yaddayadda, I'm with you in that I don't believe Jesus was GOD. However, the Tetragrammaton is not in the Christian Greek Scriptures. In fact everywhere you read the name Jehovah in the New World Translation it is a substitution for the word lord in the original Greek manuscripts. If you have access to the WTS Kingdom Interlinear translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures find the name Jehovah in English and note the Greek word it was translated from. Next find the English word Lord and note the Greek word it was translated from. BINGO the same Greek word. So the point is that the WTS changed the original wording of the NT, which is just as wrong as their assertion that Christendom removed it from the Hebrew Scriptures.
