Note here that Neon Madman completely ignored Rev Bill's citations and went to a pet one of his own!
I wasn't 'ignoring' Rev Bill's citations, as such, but I chose to respond only to a specific remark of his, namely:
I know a certain guy will go on with scriptures calling Jesus God now. Who cares for logic. Well a god he surely is but not THE GOD
So my intent was specifically to address the issue of Jesus being "a god," and not a general apologetic for the Trinity.
Rev Bill's remarks as well as the comments of others in this thread bespeak a general misunderstanding of the Trinity doctrine, which is amost universal among JW's. The Trinity is not 3 gods, or a god with 3 heads; it is one God composed of three distinct persons. Jesus, while on earth, was both Son of God and Son of Man. He had divested himself of his position and glory with the Father, and had taken "a slave's form." In this context, all of the scriptures Rev Bill cited make perfect sense:
John 8:58 - Jesus was not simply saying that he existed before Abraham, as the NWT would mistranslate; he was identifying himself with the I AM of Exodus 3:14, Jehovah God Himself. Obviously, the Jews understood him that way, as they attempted to stone him for blasphemy. There would be no blasphemy in claiming to have existed before Abraham, but to claim to be God Himself would indeed be blasphemy, were it not true.
Hebrews 8:1 - speaks of Jesus and the Father as separate persons. Rev Bill uses this to 'prove' that the Trinity is untrue, because he misunderstands the doctrine. Jesus and the Father are distinct persons. However, both are God Almighty.
Hebrews 12:2 - same as 8:1
John 17:24 - I notice that Rev Bill reverts to King James wording of this one scripture, though all the others he cites are quoted from more modern translations. A favorite ploy of JW's is to find the Bible translation that most closely fits the doctrine they want to teach, and use that version exclusively for that scripture, ignoring the readings from other translations that may not be as friendly to their beliefs. Here, I'm not sure what Rev Bill's point is, but it seems to me that he is asserting that Jesus was given his glory by the Father before the founding of the world, and the KJV wording could be interpreted that way. By contrast, the NIV says, "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." In other words, the glory that Jesus would receive upon his resurrection was given to him because of the Father's love for him. It was the same glory of which he had divested himself in becoming human. (Philippians 2:5-11)
John 14:28 - Again, a "humanity scripture," dealing with Jesus' nature as a man on earth after divesting himself of his divinity as
I have detailed above.
Mark 13:32 - Same as John 14:28. As a human on earth, Jesus did not know "the day or the hour". Even most JW's would acknowledge that Jesus knows the day and the hour now. So that statement was one that applied to the setting in which it was spoken.
Regarding the remainder of Rev Bill's summation,
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. If we say the trinity is true and Jehovah knows stuff Jesus doesnt know, then that's seriously schizofrenic.
Again, this illustrates Rev Bill's lack of understanding of the Trinity teaching. Trinitarians do not say that Jesus
IS the Father, or that they are the same person. They are distinct persons, along with the Holy Spirit, making up the one God. Nothing schizophrenic about it. It may be a concept that is not understandable by a finite human mind (i.e., a "mystery," or antinomy of scripture), but there are many such "mysteries" in scripture. I cannot conceive of God existing eternally into the past, can you? Where does it say that a finite human mind should be able to fully understand the infinite God?
Tom
"The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure; to live it you had to explode." ---Bob Dylan
