by Wonderment 21 Replies latest watchtower bible
Once a found out the term " the word " was a reference to the old testament physical manifestions of god, Trying to learn the biblical Greek arguments against " a god " seemed pointless.
John 1 18. No one has seen the father, only the son.
Just read the book of John without watchtower blinders and it is quite easy to see who John thought Jesus was.
...in his drive to prove Torrey (who asserted Semitic influence in various Scriptures) wrong, or not completely right, plus having a personal wish to bolster Christ’s deity made him overlook some important matters, like the force of qualitative nouns in many of the Scriptures he considered.
I would agree with this.
Why do you believe θεός is qualitative in 1:1c? Do you believe it's entirely a function of the nominative or do you think the odd placement of the word also plays a part?
That would be great Wonderment. Yes the divine name has been my special interest for nearly two decades now. I’ve read a lot about it, which probably means I should know more than I do. Have you managed to read the book on the divine name by Frank Shaw. It’s the best discussion of the topic there is in my opinion. I made a thread about it a few months ago.
Slim,
No, I have not read Frank Shaw’s book. I don’t have it. It’s very pricey, so I am not sure if I will buy it.
How would you like me to send you the copies of the pages (Countess’) on the divine name?
TD: Why do you believe θεός is qualitative in 1:1c? Do you believe it's entirely a function of the nominative or do you think the odd placement of the word also plays a part?
Absolutely, context is everything.
What was the Johannine Community? What motivated them to write? Who were they writings against? What were their opponents saying?
What did their words mean to them at the time they wrote?
What were their concepts? Did they think that matter came into existence because of the word (logos) coming from God (his "mouth")?
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This is a chapter from material I released maybe a year ago:
http://www.jwstudies.com/JOHANNINE_SOTERIOLOGY_AND_CHRISTOLOGY.pdf
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Did the Johannine Community reason that Logos climbed into Mary's fertilized (or pre-fertilized) egg and existed in there until the human element had fully developed? Did they think that during Jesus' life, that Logos co-existed inside Jesus as a separate entity?
Or did Logos morph into a spirit being named Michael - who lived inside Jesus?
Is the Watchtower's rationale equally as fanciful as the Trinitarian's?
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The biggest question about John's Gospel is: Why should anyone believe what they wrote? How did they know these things, living 100 years after Jesus' birth?
Doug
Doug Mason,
Is the material released on the link your own? I see no date or name for authorship.
There is some good stuff in there. Surely, there are many unanswered questions. It takes faith to believe strongly in whatever we choose to believe.
Thanks!
You wrote: "Is the Watchtower's rationale equally as fanciful as the Trinitarian's?"
The WT Society goes by the KISS principle: Keep it Simple Stupid."
Easier said than done!
Wonderment,
Everything in life requires faith, and particularly when dealing with material from the past.
I prepared that material. It is a chapter from one part of a series of Studies I prepared in recent times dealing with the history of Judaeo-Christian doctrines of Salvation. At the moment I have removed the series from circulation. My intention is to reformat the material, which will take me some time to achieve.
If you email me, I can provide you with material as it exists today.
http://www.jwstudies.com/contact_me.html
Doug
Folks, there was a Jew from Alexandria who taught Christian doctrines before the officially believed time that Christianity got started. He is Philo and he said that the Word is not just the First-born Son of God, but also "the eldest of the Angels, the great Archangel" and the "Second God"! I discovered this in a book called Our Sun God, Or Christianity Before Christ (published in 1895 and thus during the early years of the WT and while Charles Russell was alive). I learned of that book because the author that book wrote a book called The Non-Christian Cross which the WT quoted from on page 12 of the April 2006 Awake!
In the Our Sun God, Or Christianity Before Christ the author (John Denham Parsons) quoted the Greek speaking Jew named Philo who lived in Alexandria. [By the way, it should be noted that many of the oldest manuscripts of the NT and of parts of the NT are of the Alexandrian text type.] Notice the following from Parson's book (I am quoting from the text as transcribed at https://archive.org/stream/oursungodorchri00parsgoog/oursungodorchri00parsgoog_djvu.txt , which has some typos due to the computerized scanning process) and I have added boldface for emphasis.
'... let us now turn to the works of Philo, the famous Jewish philo- sopher who wrote during and after the lifetime of Jesus, but had evidently never heard of the marvels recorded in the Gospels composed by the followers of his exploiter Paul of Tarsus.
In one passage Philo writes — " Why, as though speaking of another God, does he say * I made Man in the image of God,' but not in his own image ? The answer is, that nothing mortal could be made like the supreme All-Father, but only like the Second God, the Word. For the rational impress in the soul of man must be stamped by divine Reason, and cannot have as its archetype God who is above Reason." ^
Here we see the all-significant fact that long before such doctrines were preached to the world as a non-national religion by Paul and his followers, both the deity of the Idea, Reason, or Word of the All-Father, and the occupation by
' Frag, ii. 625.
same of the second place, were set forth by this famous Jewish philosopher.
In another place Philo writes — " God is the most generic thing, and the Word of God is second.*' ^ Here again, it will be noted, emphasis is laid upon the assertion that the Logos held the second place among the Powers of the Universe. The belief of Christians that though all things necessarily owe their origin to the All-Father, it was the Word " by whom all things were made," is also clearly traceable to Philo, who remarks : — "The Word, by which the world was made, is the Image of the Supreme Deity."
...
Yet another noteworthy saying of Philo is the one which runs as follows —
" As those who are unable to gaze upon the Sun, look upon his reflected radiance as a Sun, so likewise the Image of God, his angel Word, is himself con- sidered to be God." ^
Here the Logos is not only once more stated to be, though an emanation from the All-Father, considered God, but is also, as was the Sun- God Apollo, compared to the Light issuing from that central Fire, of which, according to the Magic Oracles^ "All things are the oflFspring."^ We also meet with the expression —
...
* De Somn., i. 40, 41.
' Porphyry, de Auiro Nympharum.
" The Shepherd of his holy flock." >
The connection in which the term is used is noteworthy.
Still more significant than the foregoing is the following passage —
" That High Priest, the holy Word, the First-born of God."'
The fact that this was how a philosopher of the previous generation wrote and thought, shows where Paul derived his inspiration from.
In another of the works of Philo we come across the sentence —
" His Word, which is his Interpreter." '
This description of the Logos as the Inter- preter or Mediator between God and Man, is also significant.
Elsewhere we come across the sentence —
" In the likeness of Man." *
I De Agnc., i. 308. ' Dt Ligis AUtgor., iii. 73.
' Di Sotanis, i. 653. < Dt Conju. Litig., i. 417.
The expression and idea are now considered Christian, ^ough of pre-Christian origin.
A most important passage next claims our attention —
" His first-begotten Son/' ^
Here Philo once more distinctly calls the Logos or Word the first-begotten Son of the All-Father. This is the very idea afterwards so enlarged upon by Paul, and in yet later times adopted by the author of the Gospel " according to" St. John.
In another of Philo*s works we read —
" To his Word, the chief and most ancient of all in heaven, the great Author of the Universe gave this especial gift, that he should stand as an Intercessor between the Creator and the created.'* ^
The works of Philo were thus the source whence Paul derived the most prominent of the thoughts which distinguished his teaching. How then can Paul be said to have been inspired of
* Dt Agric.f i. 308.
^Quis Rerum Divin. Hares.y i. 501.
God if Philo thought God's thought before him ? The feet that Paul claimed, as bestowed in favour to himself by God, that which he had borrowed without acknowledgment from Man, shows that Paul had a failing common to the majority of enthusiasts, that of acting upon the principle that the end justifies the means.
In yet another sentence of Philo's we have the remark —
" And the Word is, accordingly, the Advocate for all Mortals." '
As Philo had thus laid it down that the con- ception of Plato and other Greek philosophers known as the Idea of God, or Logos of God, or Word, was the Second God, the first-begotten Son of the All-Father, the divinely appointed Intercessor for the created, and the Advocate with the Father, long before Paul or any other Christian made use of the same ideas, the con- clusion is obvious.
...
Philo also tells us that —
" Even if no one is as yet worthy to be called a son of God, one should nevertheless labour earnestly to be adorned like unto his First-born Son the Word, who is the eldest of the Angels, the great Archangel with many names, and is called the Authority, the Name of God, the Word, the Image of Man, and the Guardian of Israel.** ^
Who would think to hear the exhortations of Christian preachers that one should strive to be like unto the Word which was in the beginning with God and which was God, that after all the idea is a pre-Christian one ?'
As shown above, the WT teaching that Jesus, the Word of God" is "a god", the eldest of the Angels and an Archangel, is in full agreement with very early Jewish Christianity - so early a form of Christianity that it predated the letters of the Apostle Paul and of the Gospels and even the rest of the New Testament!
All the WT needs to teach to harmonize their ideas and make them more in agreement with the NT is to teach the following. Jesus (The Word) was an emanation of God (God the Father, Yahweh/Jehovah) and thus truly God (and certain verses about Jehovah can correctly be also applied to Jesus) in a sense [Romans 10;9 - 15], while at the same time "a god" in a sense of being a separate individual (after he emanated out of the Father), and that as a result it is appropriate to worship Jesus as one does the God the Father.
In Russell's time the WT said it proper to worship Jesus and until the year 1954 the Charter of the WT said '... public Christian worship of Almighty God and Christ Jesus ...". As a result the WT could say they have returned somewhat to a former teaching of their, but with a refinement of it which removes contradictions in their doctrines. They also change their name to "Witnesses of Jehovah and Jesus" and refer to verses which speak of being witnesses of Jesus, while also continuing to use the verses in Isaiah about being witnesses of Jehovah. In doing so the reproach upon them will lessen and they would be more successful in getting people to join them. In so doing, they will also have come up with solution to the riddle of the binity, namely resolving the conflict of the riddle 'if there is only one God then how is that that Jesus is a god but not God the Father?'. At the same time they could still say they are not trinitarians.
