God, one person, or three?

by slimboyfat 78 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  KalebOutWest

  Rattigan350:

  People say they look to Jesus as being God because of John 1:1.

  This is not true. Jehovah's Witnesses are taught this, namely that Trinitarians and other Christians are like them, attempting to base their beliefs on the Bible, but this is not the way Christianity developed.

  Like Judaism before it, Christianity was not a religion that came from texts. It's own believers of its religion wrote texts, and later church authorities in the 4th century ended up canonizing them in response to the threat created by Marcion of Sinope.

  I am Jewish, and I know very much that the early Christians came to believe Jesus was God before there were any Scriptural texts. In fact, the great dogmas that describe the Trinity claim that the Christians came to this understanding on the basis of it being a divine "mystery," even claiming the Trinity the "central mystery" of Christianity.

  A "mystery" is a truth that cannot be learn academically because it is ineffable since it deals with aspects of the divine. It takes an intervention of the divine to teach it as well. Once taught, it can only be accepted as is.

  For instance, the apostle Paul wrote of the mystery of God leading the Jews and Roman's together to arrest Jesus to put him to death in order to provide a sacrifice for all the sins of history. The idea seems totally illogical, wrote Paul, but as he wrote:

  We speak God's wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood.--1 Corinthians 2:7-8.

  In another instance, the "mystery" of Jesus' identity was made known to Peter, not because Peter read it in Scripture or because any type of human wisdom lead him to this conclusion, with Jesus telling him:

  "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven."--Matthew 16:17.

  Granted, Jehovah's Witnesses don't have anything like this in their experience. Being from Second Great Awakening beginnings, their movement is based on a restorationist theology that believes that the Bible came first before the people who had a religion who wrote it, which oddly creates a paradox. Historically it is the other way around, with religion coming first with its practices, rituals, and dogmas and then its texts. There are no scholars in most of the New Religious Movements that sprung forth from the Second Great Awakening that caused this problem.

  With that loss is the absence of the knowledge of religious mysteries, which in Judeo-Christian circles are great truths that cannot be fully explained or understood. Judaism has always had them as well (i.e., God has no beginning). The Trinity is such a truth in Christianity.

  It is not "based" on John 1:1, rather it is the other way around. John 1:1 is based on this mystery. The mystery is often called "central" since it refers to "Jesus" and his identity which is a central point of the gospel message.

  Before the New Testament was composed, there was the faith of believers. Then there was the Liturgy. The gospel was added to this. Eventually the gospel came to be written down and added into the Liturgy itself. Letters of the Apostles came to be written and were circulated and added as well.

  The Church Fathers, in response to the Marcion controversy, would eventually create the New Testament Canon, but by this point in time it would be the 4th century and there would already be a Trinty dogma.

  Often the JW view of "Bible came first, then came Christians, then Christianity" stays stuck with people long after they leave the Organization. The way it happened was the other way around: Christians, then Christianity, and finally Bible.

  If it were not for the heresy of Marcion of Sinope of the 2nd century, Christianity might not have ever had a New Testament Canon or at least not had one as soon as they did (let alone the Jews). Marcion's heresy forced the idea onto the scene for both the Church and Judaism ad neither group has a closed canon from which they were basing their beliefs. This idea of the Watchtower is but a fairy tale.
• 

  Rivergang

  An argument which has been raging for over 1500 years, and unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
• 

  andr

  The discussion is a bit like the flat earth

  born from a rampant ignorance of the first Christians

  For my modest opinion there are ample evidence that there is a trinity only that the ignorant have found 4 or 5 types

  The Trinity there is as Father Son and Holy Spirit are mentioned in several biblical verses

  But the ignorance of the first Christians must be remembered their natural passion for flat-earther having always been contrary to worldly culture have always slipped into the worst situations

  And this is a historical fact, just think that Sant Agostino himself when the Christians were institutionalized I try to put a piece to make this crazy ignorance ending up that spread by making Christians appear like poor morons. In this historical context, our beloved Trinity mixes, and since their incredible open -minded limited mental limited member of them, have slipped into all these theories, leaving aside the infinite wisdom and simplicity of our God and Christ

  However, they did not have the means to discern what the real organization of the Lord was, they limited themselves to creating ideological aberrations,

  In fact, God and Christ clearly explained for a man of medium modern culture how his organization develops

  which consists of three actors God Christ and clearly the Holy Spirit

  And in fact there is an authority as a person for each

  And this denotes a legal person for each one

  In the modern world companies like Apple (simple example) are organized in the same way

  there is a CEO as Steve Jobs was who is responsible and a legal person

  Then the deputy as Tim Cook who has the same powers and is a legal person

  Then we have the company itself Apple that can attack you has its goals and also brings you to court or defends or runs to solve a problem and is a legal person before the law

  In the same way they use the Holy Spirit so it can give the impression of being someone or something having the same authority and power of two natural persons but it is far from being it, but in front of the law and actors who confront each other and makes decision with the Authority and freedom and strength of Mr. Jobs

  120 people can work and be sent by Apple who will help them when they are in difficulty

  Like this

  120 have the Holy Spirit and are helped by this

  The greatest difficulty to view the system is that the first company that appeared that it was like this: the Eastern Indies Company 1617

  And in 1600 the problem of the Trinity had already given birth to his aberraphrations

  Sorry for any errors English chews a little chew

  cordialment andrea
• 

  nicolaou

  God, one person or three?

  False dichotomy.
• 

  peacefulpete

  Great comment Kaleb. Christianity was originally an 'experience', a perception of something new. This is why revelatory charismata featured at an early stage. Once an orthodoxy became dominant, there was no longer place for 'personal' revelation. Tradition and text became cudgels for conformity and control. Paul seems to have arisen at a middle stage. At least as his works read today, he appears torn between tolerating "prophets" and demanding a standardization under his self appointed leadership.

  Claims to be a "restoration" of original Christianity have had to determine first, what stage, in their opinion,constitutes, original. The personality of organizers play a huge role in this. Christian mysticism is/was an embrace of a stage prior to the faith 'based' on books. The Trinity is a product of the former with constraints of the latter.
• 

  KalebOutWest

  Thank you, Pete.

  I think what makes the Trinity and certain "traditional" doctrines so confusing for Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and other members (and ex-members) of NRMs from the Second Great Awakening is the type of indoctrination process and the isolationism that most of these groups pass off as "elitism." (Neither of which is good anyway.) What results is a form of individual incapacity to comprehend a major facet of the human experience, that is "spirituality."

  In the Watchtower religion, indoctrination is carried out by means of never allowing members to be alone with a Bible without the presence of a guiding Watchtower publication. From the moment an individual is introduced to the religion, the member never reads Scripture without Watchtower guidance. They even yearn to read only a Watchtower "version" or a so-called "translation" of the Bible made up by the Watchtower religion.

  What is really happening (and as described by outsiders who visit), Witnesses offer a "chain-reference" type of "reasoning" or logic-system/type of scholastic experience for their followers. Whether it's the introductory book used for main indoctrination or a Watchtower study or a public or Memorial season talk, Jehovah's Witnesses "make sense" of a topic by "linking" Scripture texts that might seemingly appear to logically settle a subject. Often they are merely using similar phrases or even words in English that seem to say something but don't in the original language that each sound or look the same in topical fashion to "prove" or support a view they might have, often collecting dizzying amount of these. The more texts they have in the list, the more "links" they have to make the "chain" stronger, thus the expression "chain-reference."

  An illustration of this is the 1914/Daniel chapter 4 dream that uses Scripture texts from all over the Bible, from trees in one section, to the word year in another place, until they can "support" their personal belief that Jesus is ruling in heaven invisibly and that two groups make up but one generation and that are humanity is currently living in the Last Days. This is a perfect illustration of the "chain-reference" system that hops and jumps about the Bible, cutting and pasting passing references lit hit-and-run car scratches that one barely would notice while reading at first blush.

  This system, unfortunately, often gets ingrained and stays in the minds of many of us even after we leave the Watchtower. While study is very important, religion in and of itself is not a scholastic exercise. There are scholars and academics called theologians of which the Watchtower has none, but religion is not made up of theologians. It is made up of spiritual people. And both Judaism and Christianity claims as its champions not sages and prophets but saints.

  This is something that a person leaving a system like the Jehovah's Witnesses that is nothing but "read and study" system will find hard to deal with and find learning things like sacraments and miracles and the Trinity a hard thing to swallow. (And in reality we did not study--if you believed you were studying, you were lied to, we merely underlined things which was the equivlent of being fed vomit into our mouths by the Governing Body much like mother birds do for their baby birds. Personal study was not allowed in the world of the Watchtower religion, as all such activity would leave to being disfellowshipped eventually if this occurred--or leaving on ones own because you would have learned your were in a cult through actual academic research). One cannot be spiritual and grow to become holy. That would require getting to literally experience the Divine which would require moving past logic into the spiritual and the ineffable.There is nothing like that in the Watchtower experience.

  So trying to make sense of the Trinity cannot be done by what is left over after the Watchtower created damage in its people, not immediately at least or with what little experience we had from that cult.

  It is not the fault of the concept of the Trinity. Is it true? That is for us to discover. But we go about it in a wrong manner, like when we say: "Bible first." That is a Watchtower approach. It is not our fault when that happens either. It is an automatic reflex almost. We think, "Well, what else should we do?" Most of us have no other recourse. We have little experience with religion when you think about it.

  Outside, people understand "mystery" as meaning a truth that comes from some spiritual source revealed via grace and responded to with love and personal faith. It doesn't sit well with someone who is used to sitting down and reading Watchtower concepts in a book and looking at up chain-references in the New World Translation and then underlining things with a yellow marker to ensure we "say things in our own words" later in a meeting.

  But we are doing ourselves and those who believe in the Trinity a horrible wrong when we get angry at everyone but Jehovah's Witnesses for not comprehending or believing in the Trinity. We might never come to believe in it, and that is fine. It is incomprehensible not because the Trinity doesn't fit "the box." It doesn't seem to fit because we're too used to having to underline everything and make sure there are hundreds of references that in reality don't matter.

  You can't underline truth with a yellow highlighter.
• 

  KalebOutWest

  Of course you could also be like my staunchly Catholic neighbor who told me the following:

  The Church canonized the New Testament back in the day [in 367 CE by bishop Athanasius of Alexandia and then formally at Hippo in 393]. The Trinity dogma was introduced by the same Church just shortly before [which was in Nicea in 325 CE]. So if we accept the 27 books of the New Testament as inspired and want to look in it as an authority for anything on anything, then we also have to accept the Trinity because the same Church that gave us and closed the canon told us that God is a Trinity. Or do you believe there are still more or less books to the New Testament?*

  She's an older lady, but if you want to argue with her and her reasoning, I'm sure she would welcome it. I don't know if she's on the Internet however or has email.

  *--I inserted the dates and historical information. The quote is a paraphrase, as I heard it several times from her arguing with Mormon missionaries, her favorite targets. (She likes to offer them tea, coffee, and Coca-Cola to drink when they come by.)
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @KalebOutWest

  I really liked your comment, this is really the fundamental problem with JW "hermeneutics", this collection of one-liner "proof verses", and therefore arguing with them doing this silly Biblical "ping-pong" is more tiring than fruitful. A similar thought can be found by John Chrysostom in his Homily on the Gospel of Matthew:

  It were indeed meet for us not at all to need the aid of the written Word, but to exhibit a life so pure that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second-best course.

  For that the former was better, God has made manifest, both by His words and by His doings. Since to Noah, and to Abraham, and to his offspring, and to Job, and to Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their minds pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.

  And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words, He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for “He,” says our Lord, “shall bring all things to your remembrance.” (John 14:26) And that you may learn that this was far better, hear what He says by the Prophet: “I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them,” and, “they shall be all taught of God.” (Jeremiah 31:31–33; Isaiah 54:13; Hebrews 8:8–11; John 6:45.) And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said, that they had received a law “not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” (2 Corinthians 3:3)

  But since in process of time they made shipwreck, some with regard to doctrines, others as to life and manners, there was again need that they should be put in remembrance by the written word.

  Reflect then how great an evil it is for us, who ought to live so purely as not even to need written words, but to yield up our hearts, as books, to the Spirit; now that we have lost that honor, and have come to need these, to fail again in duly employing even this second remedy.
• 

  KalebOutWest

  The genius behind Joseph Smith to going around much of this formula (start with Scripture and base your religion on holy writ) was to invent and introduce new texts to begin with.

  One would always have the paradox of the "Church came first/Trinity came first" before the New Testament to trip up the Restorationist. So Smith merely did what the others were too frightened to do: committed heresy and blasphemy by introducing a "third" Testament that claimed the other two invalid.

  Like the song from the musical goes:

  "I believe...that Jews built boats and sailed to America!"

  And:

  "Don't show anybody the Golden Plates, not even if anyone begs you to...That's what I'm kinda going for."
• 

  Praotes1914

  I hate to be the contrarian again it’s just in my nature, but I don’t believe in the Trinity and I don’t believe in the non-Trinity I simply believe what the Bible says that there’s a father and there that there’s a son. Period. All the other dogma is simply man trying to define the undefinable if the father is really the creator of the universe with his son he’s so powerful and so magnificent that no human can understand them without simple terms as father and son, but the Priestly class wants all these technical definitions so that they can maintain control of their parishioners. My mentor Joe Riley coined the phase the Twinity. I think that pretty much sums up my theology.