How much JW doctrine is in harmony with the Bible?

by OnTheWayOut 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • zack
    zack

    I'll take a shot at your question from the point of view of someone who got the truth about the truth. I will tell you what I beleive:

    Wrong:

    Two classes of Christians

    Two destinies for believers

    Intercession of Priests(for JW's it is the intercession of the FDS)

    Paradise Earth was God's Eternal purpose---- I do not think you can put God in a box from the two Chapters in Genesis. JW's do, however.

    FDS Doctrine

    The entire "God's sole channel" doctrine

    Any prophetic statement in the Bible which they apply to themselves

    Spiritual Paradise

    Invisible Kingdom in 1914

    Armageddon

    Millenial Reign complete with resurrection, rest of the dead, final test, etc....

    Any restriction on dress and grooming in writing or not

    Centralized ecclesiastical authority

  • done4good
    done4good

    Still, no serious takers on "They have much right." ?

    It's really tough to have that discussion, without biases and personal beliefs as to how their doctrine came about. From what I can tell, what I stated earlier, still stands. Jw doctrine didn't exactly come out of thin air, but rather it was, (originally), an honest attempt of reconciling things that were not explicity taught in scripture. That is, what became the endless circle of changes that could never be taken from reading the scriptures themselves at face value. That is why jw doctrine is so different, from mainsteam Christianity. Yes, they do miss the simple things, such as "love your neighbor". They are too busy always trying to construct, (or re-construct), their theology.

    Zico,

    To my earlier point, much of our current bible today, (the "accepted" bible), is not based on the earliest of manuscripts. If anything, what was mostly kept in the bible, had more to do with the number of copies that had similarities, as opposed to how old they were. Much of it was "theologized", in the same manner that the wts creates a theology. Certain beliefs were already held to, and scripture was added or changed to make certain arguments hold. A true believer will argue with this surely, but one can peice together the evidence, to get a picture of what probably happened here.

    Russell, (among others), attempted to undo this somewhow. That's impossible, if one is going to hold to the theory that the bible is an inspired book.

    j

  • 5go
    5go
    Russell, (among others), attempted to undo this somewhow. That's impossible, if one is going to hold to the theory that the bible is an inspired book.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    With such a diverse book as the Bible (representing a wide swath of early Judaism and Christianity), there are no black-and-white generalizations that can be made for many matters. I believe that the Society's positions are not representative of those of the texts they cite, and they do not take into account the broader religious context that isolated verses in the NT presuppose.

    1) only the Father is truly God

    This is probably true for some texts, inasmuch as they refer to such a relationship between "Father" and "Son". But others that ascribe a higher christology to Jesus could fairly be treated as binitarian in their devotion to Jesus (which refer to Jesus in terms that in the OT would be reserved for God), and it certainly true that Jesus is called theos in some texts, including those use the term in a qualitative way (i.e. theos describes the nature of the Word in John 1:1 the same way that "love" describes the nature of "God" in 1 John 4:8.....everything that love is, God is / everything that God is, the Word is). The generalization that the Bible teaches that "only the Father is truly God" is therefore not accurate, tho it is true for some texts.

    2) no immortal soul

    Again, this is not so clearcut. Some texts assume no personal eschatology at all (beyond a ghostly existence in Sheol, as it is throughout much of the OT), as that was the conservative belief held by Sadducees (see Luke 20:27, Acts 23:8). Ecclesiastes 9 is frequently cited by the Society as evidence against there being an afterlife (which is NOT the same as whether there is an immortal soul), but it is equally evidence against there being a future resurrection ("Never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun," v. 6...the very next verse after the one that says that "the dead know nothing"). The Pharisees believed in a future resurrection, but did not believe in an immortal soul; rather, the "soul" was the complete living person that perishes at death but which will be restored in the resurrection. This view is also representative of some of the texts in the NT. But the Essenes also believed in the immortality of the soul (as can be seen in Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1 Enoch, and other writings), and believed that the dead in spirit form reside either in a heavenly paradise or in "the chambers of the dead" in the intermediate state between death and resurrection. Other Jews, such as Philo of Alexandria and the author of Wisdom, were also directly influenced by the Hellenistic anthropology of the immortality of the soul, and these books were a direct influence on the NT. Thus, there are passages in the NT that reflect this anthropology: 2 Corinthians 5:1-9 (which refers to the body as temporary tent and death as a form of nakedness in which the person is "away from the body"), 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 (which allows for one going to heaven "out of the body"), Philippians 1:21-24 (which construes death as "departing to be with Christ" and life as "remaining in the body"), 2 Peter 1:13-15 (in which death involves a similar departure from "this tent of the body"), and Revelation 6:9-11 (which even uses the word psukhas "souls" to refer to the dead martyrs in their intermediate state between death and resurrection, who must wait in heaven until their number is complete). There are other passages like Luke 16:19-31 which depict the conscious existence of the dead in the period between death and resurrection. A single generalization of "what the Bible says" is therefore inadequate.

    3) no hellfire

    The same could be said here. Much of the OT was written before such a concept came into existence, and parts of the NT do not necessarily presume the apocalyptic tradition. The parts of the NT that do incorporate apocalyptic scenarios, on the other hand, construe of a final punishment in a fiery eschatological Gehenna after the resurrection. The clearest instance of this is Jude 6-7, which refers to those "suffering the punishment of eternal fire"; this passage, as well as v. 14-15, directly quote and allude to 1 Enoch (see here for a complete discussion), which has a very well-developed concept of Gehenna and punishment in eternal fire (see 1 Enoch 27:2-3, 100:4-9, 103:7-8; compare also 2 Enoch 10:1-4 on the connection between the sin of Sodom and eternal fire). This demonstrates that the wider body of literature is relevant for the usage of terms in the NT itself. The specific phrase "eternal fire" (puros aiĆ³niou) in Jude 6-7 was common in the period as a reference to the punitive fires following Judgment Day, and can be found in 4 Maccabees 12:12, Testament of Zebulon 10:3, 3 Baruch 4:16, etc. The apocalyptic material in Matthew also explicitly refer to the "eternal punishment" following Judgement Day and the fire of eschatological Gehenna (Matthew 5:29, 10:28, 23:33, 25:46). Other similar statements in Jewish literature of the time include 4 Ezra 7:32-38, 2 Baruch 59:10, 85:13, Apocalypse of Abraham 15:6-7, 31:2-6, etc. Revelation 20:10-15 has a version of the familiar apocalyptic scenario involving "torment day and night forever and ever" after final judgment. While individual texts could be interpreted in a way that denies a literal apocalyptic interpretation, the wider context which was formative for the NT references themselves shows that such a notion of hellfire is not absent in the Bible. But its presence also does not mean that the Bible as a whole presumes its existence.

    4) restoration of God's original purpose for earth

    The Watchtower teaching that God orginally intended for man to cultivate the rest of the earth to be like the garden of Eden is not found anywhere in the Bible. Nor is the description of paradisical New Jerusalem (which comes down to the earth) in Revelation 21-22 a description of an earth that has been entirely converted into a paradise.

    5) Eternal life for the faithful

    Again, "eternal life" is a concept found in some parts of the Bible, and not in others. Some passages that the Society quotes in favor of eternal life in a "paradise earth" (i.e. Isaiah 65:17-25) actually say the opposite. The many references to eternal life in John and in Paul do not presume an "earthly hope" of everlasting life.

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut

    Thanks, Leolaia. That's the kind of posting I wanted. Good job, folks.

  • Open mind
    Open mind
    4) restoration of God's original purpose for earth

    Of course any good dub who's spouted the official KM presentations for more than 3 months will immediately cite Ps 37:29. "The righteous themselves will posses the earth. And they will reside FOREVER upon it." (Good dub sense stress and mind control added ) Most dubs have a wealth of Bible knowledge, or if not, at least 3 or 4 verses hardwired into their Borg programming. And Ps 37:29 is certainly on the short list. Anyway, I think I was about 12 yrs old when it dawned on me that this verse could mean I'm going to live forever on earth (if I do everything just right & get declared "righteous", fat chance, ). Or.............................hmmmmm.............."CLICK" ............it's talking about the righteous in a collective sense and to the extent that the "righteous" and the "meek" keep their heads down and don't make too many mortal enemies, well they're going to always be around as a group, but certainly, individual humans are gonna have the "same eventuality" as dogs & lions.

    Thank you for taking the time to read the deep insights of a 12-yr-old JW theologian.

    Open Mind (returning now to latest issue of MAD magazine for further flashes of insight)

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    You're absolutely right, Open mind. The psalm compares the wicked and the righteous collectively, such that the "righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever" (v. 29) when the "offspring (zr`) of the wicked is cut off" (v. 28), i.e. the wicked will have no more descendents, but the righteous will always have descendents in the land. Notice that the NWT renders the Hebrew 'rts as "earth" in this psalm (which facilitates an interpretation of the psalm as referring to a "paradise earth"), whereas elsewhere they tend to render it as "land" in similar contexts, particularly those which refer to people inheriting it (see Deuteronomy 3:28, 19:14, Joshua 1:6, Isaiah 57:13, Ezekiel 47:13-14). In fact, these passages are directly relevant to the psalm because the latter alludes to the conquest of the Promised Land as the inheritance of Israel, which involved Israelites taking the land away from the wicked (i.e. the pagan Canaanites), a connection that rendering 'rts as "earth" obscures. Hence, v. 14-15 mentions the wars of the wicked against the righteous (i.e. drawing their swords, bending their bows to kill the righteous, but who themselves are defeated), just as the Canaanites fought battles against Joshua. The point of the psalm is the same one as in Deuteronomy 16:20: "Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land that Yahweh your God is giving you". Verse 31 refers to the righteous man who inherits the land as having "the Law of God in his heart," and this reflects Deuteronomy 6:3-6 which commands Israel to "keep and observe what will make you prosper and give you great increase, as Yahweh the God of your fathers has promised you, giving you a land where milk and honey flow ... Let these words I urge you today be written on your heart". Notice that there is no paradise earth in this psalm; "times of calamity" (`t r`h) and "famines" (r`bwn) would still come, but the righteous shall not ever suffer because Yahweh takes care of them (v. 19).

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Another interesting term in Psalm 37 (v. 37f) is 'acharit, which I believe the NWT translates as "future," not bad per se but easily misconstrued by a modern mind as individual future whereas in this context it really means "posterity," cf. the NRSV:
    Mark the blameless, and behold the upright,
    for there is posterity for the peaceable.
    But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed;
    the posterity of the wicked shall be cut off
    (nikratah, cf. v. 28 zera` resha`im nikrat).

    See also 109:13,
    May his posterity be cut off;
    may his name be blotted out in the second generation.

  • PrimateDave
    PrimateDave

    A most excellent post Leolaia!

    I really appreciate the points you make showing that certain beliefs were simply unknown to O.T. writers.

    Therefore, what is considered "truth" to Jehovah's Witnesses had its origins in a gradually evolving theology:

    basically, people over the centuries kept figuring out what they believed based upon what had been passed down

    to them or imported from other religious systems.

    This evolving theology is anathema to Witnesses who hold that what they call the Bible was complete as received.

    Not surprising, really, because they won't even look into the Documentary Hypothesis (aka Higher Criticism).

    Dave

  • yaddayadda
    yaddayadda

    Onthewayout, although I have not be a JW for quite some time, I believe that the JW's have got the five things you listed scripturally spot on. Any fool can see that the trinity and immortal soul doctrines in particular are blatant deviations from scripture. They are more to do with pagan and platonic religious concepts than anything else. Of course there is the odd scripture that appears to support these false dogmas but the great majority of scriptural testimony clearly testifies to their falsehood (contrary to what Leolaia asserts). The correct test for scriptural truth is where the greatest weight of evidence lies; unfortunately some have the mistaken idea that a few ambiguous scriptures here and there must somehow 'unprove' something that is otherwise clear.

    The churches of Christendom are clearly not teaching the truth on these basic things. Sadly, however, the JW's, despite seeing Christendom's false dogmas for the lies they are, have fouled up their own waters through having so many clearly false, unscriptural creeds (1914, 'other sheep', JW's are 'the truth', etc) and fanatical, harmful policies (shunning, blood policy, two-witness rule, no birthdays, etc). Thus JW's are hardly the one 'true' religion on earth, despite teaching many true things.

    The 5th doctrine you listed is believed by all Christian religions and is hardly unique to JW's, so not quite sure why you listed that one. Many Christian religions also teach a time when earth will be restored somehow. The teaching that God torments the wicked in a burning hell forever is just such an insult to one's intelligence that it's hardly worth going into. Surely, presumably as an ex-JW, you are familiar with the clearly scriptural arguments against such a heinous teaching.

    Unfortunately most of the answers you have been provided on this thread have come from persons who have renounced all faith in the bible as God's inspired word. You said that you did not want to discuss the reliability of the bible, but that is exactly what the thread immediately degenerated into. These posters have resorted to an argument that since the bible is a plagiarised mess then we cannot trust anything it says and everything in it is open to interpretation. So your question is redundant. You wont get very far by putting a lot of stock on the views of atheists and other persons on this forum who can only respond to questions on bible doctrine from the point of reference that that the bible is nothing more than a human work, an ensemble of fictitious writings.

    Assuming that you still believe in God and have satisfied yourself that the bible is overall reliable and trustworthy as God's word, then your best bet is to do some research into websites that try to scripturally refute the JW's core doctrines on the trinity, hell, etc. Some of them present quite good arguments, but in my opinion they fail because they rely on a small handful of dubious scriptures to assert the correctness of broader Christendom's dogmas (trinity, etc). They fail to take into account and treat the great majority of scriptural testimony on these subjects, from Genesis to Revelation.

    As for the restoration of Gods original purpose, contrary to what one poster said, it is absolutely obvious that the first few chapters of Genesis give us that purpose loud and clear. Death came upon mankind in the garden of Eden but through Christ and his Kingdom death as the last enemy will be no more. Eternal life on earth lost and eternal life on earth regained is practically the entire theme of the bible. Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God are vehicles/mechanisms for the accomplishment of this orginal purpose, ie, the human family enjoying eternal life on earth in peace. The JW's have all this right. The restoration of all things/reconciliation with God, both in heaven AND on earth, is what it's all about. If you want me to provide you with scriptures to outline that I'm happy to do so (although of course its all just open to interpretation isn't it).

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