aqwsed12345

Joined

• started 12 topics
• posted 966 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by aqwsed12345

• 
  28

  Then there was light.

  by Earnest in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the universe came into being 13.8 billion years ago in the big bang.

  after an initial flash, it went through a period known as the cosmic dark ages.

  according to a new study, probing cosmic dawn, 250 to 350 million years after the big bang the first stars emerged bringing light to the cosmos.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  The Big Bang theory, which posits that the universe originated from a singular, immensely dense point approximately 13.8 billion years ago, is one of the most widely accepted scientific explanations for the origin of the cosmos. This theory not only provides a framework for understanding the physical evolution of the universe but also raises profound questions about the nature of existence and the possibility of a creator. From a Catholic perspective, the Big Bang is not seen as contradictory to the faith but rather as a scientific description of how God’s creative act unfolded. The Catholic Church has long maintained that faith and reason are complementary, and this is particularly evident in its approach to the creation narrative found in the Book of Genesis.

  Catholic hermeneutics, the method by which the Church interprets sacred scripture, emphasizes the importance of understanding the Bible within its historical, literary, and theological contexts. This approach is crucial when examining the Hexaemeron, the account of the six days of creation in Genesis 1. Rather than interpreting these "days" as literal 24-hour periods, Catholic tradition, guided by the Church Fathers and theologians like St. Augustine, recognizes that the creation narrative is a theological and poetic expression of God’s creative power. The Hexaemeron is not intended to be a scientific textbook but a divinely inspired account that conveys profound truths about God as the Creator, the goodness of creation, and humanity’s unique place within it.

  Among the various interpretations of the Hexaemeron, the Vision Theory (sententia probabilis) is considered the most probable within Catholic thought. This theory suggests that the six days of creation described in Genesis are not a chronological sequence of events but rather a series of visions or revelations given by God to the sacred author (traditionally believed to be Moses). These visions symbolically represent the order and structure of creation, emphasizing the divine logic and purpose behind the universe. The Vision Theory aligns with the Catholic understanding that the Bible communicates truth through various literary genres, and in this case, the genre is not historical narrative but theological symbolism. This interpretation allows for a harmonious integration of the biblical account with scientific discoveries, such as the Big Bang, by acknowledging that the "days" of creation are not meant to be taken literally but as a framework for understanding God’s creative act.

  The Catholic Church has consistently affirmed that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith, as both are pathways to truth. In the context of the Big Bang theory, the Church sees this scientific model as compatible with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), which is a fundamental tenet of Catholic theology. The Big Bang describes the physical process by which the universe expanded from an initial singularity, but it does not address the ultimate cause of that singularity. For Catholics, this ultimate cause is God, who, through His divine word, brought the universe into existence. The Vision Theory further supports this integration by allowing the Genesis account to be understood in a way that complements, rather than contradicts, scientific findings. This approach reflects the Catholic commitment to a faith that seeks understanding and a reason that is open to the transcendent.

  In conclusion, the Catholic interpretation of the Hexaemeron through the Vision Theory offers a compelling and harmonious understanding of creation that respects both divine revelation and scientific discovery. By recognizing the symbolic and theological nature of the Genesis account, the Church affirms that the Big Bang theory can be seen as a scientific description of how God’s creative act unfolded over billions of years. This perspective not only upholds the truth of scripture but also embraces the insights of modern science, demonstrating that faith and reason, when properly understood, are not in opposition but in dialogue. The Vision Theory, as the most probable interpretation, allows Catholics to appreciate the majesty of creation through both the lens of faith and the discoveries of science, ultimately pointing to the Creator who brought all things into being.
• 
  66

  Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  (matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

  (jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

  (acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @slimboyfat

  Your objection—that “Jesus nowhere claims a dual nature, nor do Bible writers ever mention it, and the theory was developed merely to explain away inconvenient texts”—is a textbook example of what is known as the "fallacy of exact words" (or "exact definition fallacy"). This is the same logical misstep that Muslim apologists routinely employ when they challenge Christians to produce the exact words "I am God" or "Worship me" from the lips of Jesus in the Bible, and then claim that anything short of those precise syllables is irrelevant. Such demands are philosophically naïve and fundamentally misunderstand how meaningful claims are communicated—both in ordinary language and in divine revelation.

  In no serious academic field—certainly not in history, linguistics, or jurisprudence—are claims rejected because the precise later terminology is not used. Consider: The U.S. Constitution does not use the phrase "separation of church and state," yet the principle is unmistakably articulated in its provisions. Likewise, if I say, "That's my wife and those are my children," I have made it clear that I am married, even if I never utter the literal phrase "I am married." In the same way, if the New Testament presents Jesus as both fully God and fully man, the duality of His natures is attested whether or not the later Greek or Latin technical terms—like hypostasis, physis, or "dual nature"—appear explicitly in the earliest documents.

  Let us look at the relevant evidence. The New Testament unequivocally affirms Jesus' true humanity (e.g., John 1:14; Philippians 2:7-8; Hebrews 2:14-18) and at the same time His full divinity (e.g., John 1:1; 20:28; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8). The crucial point is this: if the same subject is described both as fully man and as truly God, then the doctrine of the two natures is the necessary inference—regardless of the vocabulary in use at the time.

  Your challenge could be parodied as follows: "Show me where Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah’ in those exact words." Yet, when Peter confesses "You are the Messiah" (Matthew 16:16), Jesus does not correct him but commends him. The same applies to the deity of Christ: when Thomas exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28), Jesus receives this worship without rebuke—something no Jew would ever do unless it were true. Elsewhere, Jesus claims the divine prerogative of receiving worship (Matthew 14:33; 28:9,17; Luke 24:52), the right to forgive sins (Mark 2:5-12), the authority to judge the world (John 5:22-23), and the power to give eternal life (John 10:28)—actions and rights which, in Jewish monotheistic context, belong to God alone.

  As for the language of later councils, it is historically and philosophically misguided to object that Chalcedon (AD 451) "developed" the doctrine ex nihilo. Rather, Chalcedon defined and protected the apostolic faith, using the philosophical tools and vocabulary available at the time, in response to heresies that threatened to distort it. This is what any tradition or legal system does when facing new questions: it defines terms, clarifies meanings, and guards against misinterpretation. The doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation was not invented in the fourth or fifth century, but was already latent in the Scriptural witness and the worship of the earliest Christians, as even pagan observers like Pliny the Younger noted ("They sing hymns to Christ as to a god"—Ep. X.96).

  It is also vital to note that Jesus, throughout the Gospels, frequently speaks and acts in ways that require his followers to reflect, to draw conclusions from his words and deeds, rather than to accept spoon-fed, soundbite claims. When asked if he is the Messiah or the Son of God (cf. Mark 14:61-62), he affirms with language that invokes Daniel 7—the prophecy of the "Son of Man" who receives worship from all nations forever. The reaction of the high priest, who tears his garments in horror, confirms that Jesus' claim was understood as blasphemous—unless he truly was divine.

  To demand "exact words" is, in itself, a logical fallacy. As Abdulwahab F. Alahmari's recent scholarly article ("Exact Definition Fallacy: A New Logical Fallacy," Radiology Research and Diagnostic Imaging, 2024) observes, debates are often stymied by the insistence that a definition or doctrine is invalid unless it is expressed in a precisely prescribed formula. Such a standard would undermine all historical reasoning, as definitions, terms, and formulations inevitably develop over time while faithfully expressing earlier realities.

  Finally, the early Christian writings (Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, and others) consistently affirm both the humanity and the deity of Christ, long before Chalcedon. The technical vocabulary evolved, but the faith was already there. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis: it is not the words, but the realities to which they point, that matter. Christianity proclaims Jesus as true God and true man because this is the clear teaching of Scripture and the consistent faith of the Church—not because of a fifth-century philosophical formula.

  In summary: your objection is simply the "fallacy of exact words"—a demand that is neither logically necessary nor historically responsible. Instead, the two-natures doctrine flows necessarily from what the New Testament asserts: Jesus is truly man and truly God. The Church’s later definitions serve only to preserve, not invent, this apostolic truth.
• 
  66

  Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  (matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

  (jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

  (acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @MeanMrMustard

  Your demand for clear definitions of "nature," "essence," and the terms "fully God" and "fully human" is not only reasonable but essential if the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines are to be more than empty rhetoric. It is precisely the task of the theology to bring rigor and conceptual clarity to what is too often reduced to slogan or equivocation. Rather than avoiding these concepts or obfuscating in the face of difficulty, let us articulate them precisely, as befits the seriousness of the debate.

  First, “nature” (Greek: physis, Latin: natura) denotes what something is—the set of essential properties and capacities that make a being what it is and not something else. “Essence” (Greek: ousia, Latin: essentia or substantia) is closely related, often interchangeable, but with a subtle distinction: essence is that by which a thing is what it is; it is “that which makes a thing to be what it is.” In concrete terms, the "nature" of a human is to be a rational animal; the "essence" is the underlying reality that actualizes this nature. In the case of God, nature and essence refer to the one, undivided, eternal act of existence—pure actuality (actus purus)—which is to be itself: Ipsum Esse Subsistens, Subsistent Being Itself, as Aquinas says.

  When orthodox theology affirms that Christ is "fully God" and "fully human," it means this: in the single person (hypostasis) of the Son (the Word, the second Person of the Trinity), subsist two complete and unmixed natures—one divine, one human. “Fully God” means that the Son possesses the entire divine essence, lacking nothing proper to Godhead: omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, and so forth. “Fully human” means that, by the Incarnation, the Son assumed a complete human nature, with a rational soul and body, intellect and will, subject to all the conditions and limitations proper to humanity, sin excepted. This is the dogma of the hypostatic union: two natures, one person, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation," as the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) solemnly defined.

  To press the point further: nature answers the question “what,” person (Greek: hypostasis, Latin: persona) answers “who.” In God, there is one "what" (divine essence), three "whos" (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). In Christ, the "who" is the eternal Word; the "what" is both divine and human natures. Thus, when the Church teaches that the Son is "fully God and fully human," it affirms that everything proper to Godhead and everything proper to humanity are united in the single subject, the Word. There is no diminution, mixture, or absorption; both natures remain intact.

  As to your wry observation that "every scripture you quoted, the other side reads in their favor," this is, in part, the drama of all theological disputation, especially on mysteries that transcend but do not contradict reason. However, the Trinitarian claim is not that Scripture is a cipher, nor that every position is equally plausible, but that the total witness of divine revelation—read in its fullness, with the guidance of Tradition and the Church’s magisterium—coheres only in the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Church does not rest its doctrine on isolated proof-texts, but on the total synthesis of biblical, historical, and philosophical data, integrated into a metaphysically coherent system.

  The repeated call for concise definitions is met, then, not by evasion but by intellectual discipline. Essence: that by which a thing is what it is. Nature: the collection of essential properties or capacities. Fully God: possessing every attribute proper to divinity, with nothing lacking. Fully human: possessing every attribute proper to true humanity, with nothing lacking, sin excepted. The coherence of the orthodoxy is not found in the flattening of mystery into analytic clarity, but in preserving the integrity of revelation, reason, and language. The task is not to “go around and around” but to stand in that luminous center where reason, revelation, and worship meet.
• 
  66

  Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  (matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

  (jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

  (acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  The charge that the New Testament statements about the “day and the hour” destroy Trinitarian doctrine rests on a cluster of exegetical and metaphysical misunderstandings whose pedigree stretches from the second-century Monarchians through the fourth-century Arians down to present-day anti-Trinitarians. A Thomistic response must proceed on three levels: the text of Scripture read in its canonical totality, the patristic consensus that shaped the dogmatic definitions, and the metaphysics of the Incarnation and of divine knowledge. Only within that triple horizon can Mark 13:32, Acts 1:7 and analogous passages be weighed without anachronism.

  First, the literary context. In Mark’s eschatological discourse Jesus enumerates created orders—“heaven and earth,” “angels in heaven,” “the Son”—in order to establish an absolute epistemic gap between creaturely time and the transcendent counsel by which the Father determines the parousia. Nothing in the syntax compels the inference that the Son as such is ignorant; rather, Jesus is speaking in the prophetic persona of the Servant who, in Isaiah’s idiom, “does nothing of himself” and whose teaching deliberately withholds what the disciples “cannot bear” (Jn 16:12). This pedagogical reserve re-emerges after Easter in Acts 1:7, where the risen Lord repeats almost verbatim the prohibition against apocalyptic timetables. It is therefore hermeneutically arbitrary to wrench Mark 13:32 from that two-stage discourse and read it as a metaphysical disavowal of omniscience. The function of the saying is ascetical: to silence eschatological curiosity and impose vigilance. As Augustine remarks (Trin. I 12), Christ “makes others ignorant by saying he does not know,” just as God tests Abraham not to learn but to reveal what was already known to God.

  Patristic exegesis is unanimous on this pedagogical key. Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine distinguish between what the Word possesses per se as consubstantial life and what he economically communicates ad extra. When the Arians brandished Mark 13:32, Athanasius replied that the verse refers to the Son’s οἰκονομία, not to his θεότης: “as God he knows, as Teacher he withholds” (Or. III 46). Gregory of Nazianzus insists that it is “the flesh-bearing form” that is said not to know, lest the faithful “adore a naked Deity without the veil” (Or. 29 17). Pope Gregory I will later enshrine the same reading: Christ knows in his humanity, but only because his humanity subsists in the person of the Word, and he may elect not to render that knowledge communicable (scientia incommunicabilis). The Church therefore branded as Agnoetae those who ascribed genuine ignorance to Christ’s humanity, precisely because such ignorance would contradict the communicatio idiomatum guaranteed by the hypostatic union.

  Aquinas systematises the patristic data with unrivalled clarity (ST III, q. 9–12). Christ’s one human intellect exercises three modes of cognition. The beatific vision, granted from the first instant of conception, is a direct intuition of the divine essence in which all truths are implicitly contained. Infused knowledge (scientia infusa) endows the humanity with habitual propositional truths proportioned to his mission. Acquired knowledge grows historically through experience. If a datum pertains to the salvation he came to reveal, it falls within the scope of infused knowledge and can be expressed at will; if it lies outside that scope, it remains incommunicable, even though virtually present in the beatific vision. Thus Aquinas can affirm that Christ “knows the day and hour in two ways and does not know it in a third,” without incoherence: he knows simpliciter in the beatific vision; he knows secondarily by infused habit, should he choose to apply that habit to the object; he “does not know” relative to the office of revelation, because revealing it would frustrate the moral purpose of the discourse (ST III, q. 15, a. 10 ad 2).

  Hence Christ possessed three kinds of knowledge as man: the beatific vision (intuitive vision of God), infused knowledge (a supernatural illumination exceeding that of any creature), and acquired knowledge (gained experientially through his human faculties). The “ignorance” ascribed to Christ in Mark 13:32, as Augustine, Gregory the Great, and many others taught, refers not to any imperfection or deficiency in the Word as such, but to the economy of revelation and the limitations proper to Christ’s assumed human nature—limitations freely embraced for the sake of our redemption (Philippians 2:6-8). Indeed, even in his humanity, the Church teaches that Christ's soul, being hypostatically united to the divine Person, possessed all knowledge necessary for the accomplishment of his salvific mission, including the day of judgment, though not all knowledge was “communicable” or disclosed in his prophetic office. Thus, as Aquinas observes, Christ may be said “not to know” in the sense of not making known, or not knowing in the manner appropriate to his office as the revealer of the Father at that particular moment.

  It is a category error, then, to suppose that a limitation in communicable, human, or prophetic knowledge constitutes an ontological limitation upon the divine nature itself. This is precisely the error of the Agnoetae heresy, roundly condemned by the Fathers. As Gregory the Great wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria: “He knows the day and the hour in his humanity, but not from his humanity; what he knows as man, he knows through the power of his divinity.” This is no mere evasion, but a careful articulation of the metaphysical reality that, although the human nature of Christ is not omniscient per se, it is never separated from the Logos, who is omniscient per se.

  This Thomistic framework also dissolves the alleged silence concerning the Holy Spirit. When Jesus distinguishes himself and the angels from “the Father,” he is using “Father” in the economic sense of principium operationum, the fountain from whom both the Word and the Spirit are eternally spirated and by whom the missions of Son and Spirit are historically sent. To say that “only the Father” knows is to say that the knowledge of the parousia is incommunicable from the intra-divine principle to the creaturely order until the economy renders it manifest. It is no more a denial of the Spirit’s omniscience than Jesus’ statement “my doctrine is not mine” (Jn 7:16) is a denial that the doctrine belongs to the Word. Appropriation language assigns operations to one person to highlight relational origin, not to imply ontological deficiency in the other persons.

  Hence the supposed silence regarding the Holy Spirit's knowledge in Mark 13:32 is an argument from silence—a fallacy easily avoided by reading the totality of scriptural testimony. The New Testament consistently attributes omniscience to the Spirit (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10-11: “the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God... no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God”), and thus no reasonable reading would take Mark 13:32 as a literal exclusion of the Spirit’s omniscience, any more than it would deny the Father’s omnipotence when a passage fails to mention it explicitly. The dominical saying singles out the Father as the arche (principle, source) of the Trinity—consistent with Trinitarian doctrine—not as the sole possessor of divine knowledge in a unipersonal sense.

  The reading of Revelation 14 advanced by anti-Trinitarians ignores Johannine symbolism. The “one like a Son of Man” is the Danielic figure to whom universal judgment is given (Dn 7:13–14); his receiving angelic exhortation functions typologically, echoing Daniel’s visions where angels mediate heavenly decrees to prophetic seers. Within apocalyptic convention such an exchange does not prove ignorance; it dramatizes the liturgical cooperation of heavenly orders with the enthroned Lamb. Indeed, earlier in the same book the risen Christ proclaims, “I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rv 1:18), a self-designation that presupposes exhaustive sovereignty over eschatological moments. Revelation 1:1, far from contradicting this, displays the taxis of the economic Trinity: the Father as arche without origin, the Son as mediator of revelation, and the Spirit as the prophetic breath speaking to the churches (Rv 2:7). At no point does the text suggest a hierarchical deficit of knowledge within the Godhead.

  Hence the assertion that the “Son of Man” in Revelation is presented as an angelic figure is not sustained by critical scholarship or the development of New Testament Christology. The “one like a son of man” motif (Daniel 7:13; Revelation 1:13; 14:14) is consistently interpreted in the New Testament as a messianic, divine-human title, uniquely fulfilled in Christ, not as a mere angel among angels. The reception of the message “from another angel” in Revelation 14:15 does not render Christ angelic any more than the reception of the Spirit at the baptism or the voice from heaven at the Transfiguration undermines his divinity. Rather, these are symbolic of Christ’s mediatorial office and the proper roles within the economy of salvation, not ontological statements about his nature.

  The complaint that the dual-nature doctrine is a post-biblical contrivance betrays historical amnesia. Every document of the New Testament attributes to Christ prerogatives that Israelite monotheism reserves to YHWH—creation (Jn 1:3), judgment (Jn 5:22), worship (Mt 28:17), theophanic glory (Phil 2:10–11)—and simultaneously affirms his genuine humanity subject to growth (Lk 2:52) and passion. Chalcedon’s “without confusion or division” merely provides the metaphysical grammar to hold together what the canonical witnesses already conjoin. Nor is mystery a resort to irrationality. Mystery, in the scholastic sense, is a truth that exceeds but does not violate reason; it can be negatively circumscribed and positively harmonized with all data once revelation supplies its principle. To dismiss mystery is to mistake transcendence for contradiction. This union is not a mere juxtaposition but a true and intimate union at the level of personhood (hypostasis). The distinction between nature (what one is) and person (who one is) is not artificial, but metaphysically necessary for coherently articulating the Incarnation without lapsing into either Nestorianism (dividing Christ into two persons) or Eutychianism (mixing the natures into a tertium quid).

  Hence the claim that the doctrine of Christ’s dual nature is an artificial, post-biblical construct is contradicted by the testimony of both the New Testament and the earliest Christian writings. John 1:1-14, Colossians 2:9, Philippians 2:5-11, and Hebrews 1:1-4, among others, unmistakably teach the full deity and true humanity of Christ. The Church’s dogmatic definitions (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon) are not “inventions” but authoritative syntheses of the apostolic deposit, responding to heresies that denied either Christ’s divinity or his humanity. The fact that the technical vocabulary (e.g., “hypostasis,” “ousia”) emerged in the patristic period does not undermine the doctrine’s scriptural foundation; it merely reflects the Church’s task of defining, not inventing, the content of divine revelation.

  The assertion that the Son’s reception of revelation from the Father (Revelation 1:1) indicates ontological inferiority confuses the immanent Trinity (the eternal relations within the Godhead) with the economic Trinity (God’s action in salvation history). According to the classical doctrine, all that the Son has, he has from the Father (John 16:15: "All that the Father has is mine"); this eternal procession is not an act of subordination but the very mode of the Son’s equality with the Father (cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, I.12). In the economy, the Son is sent, reveals, mediates, and intercedes, but these actions manifest, not compromise, his essential equality with the Father. To borrow Aquinas’s formula, “the principle is not greater than that which proceeds, except according to the manner of origin, not according to nature.”

  Nor does the claim that Jesus “nowhere claims a dual nature” withstand scrutiny. The entirety of Christ’s self-revelation presupposes a consciousness and authority both utterly unique and divine (“Before Abraham was, I AM”—John 8:58; “He who has seen me has seen the Father”—John 14:9), alongside an evident participation in human limitations (“I thirst”—John 19:28; “My soul is sorrowful unto death”—Mark 14:34). The resultant theological tension is not a later imposition, but the very datum to which the Church’s Christology is a faithful response.

  As for the charge that mystery is invoked to avoid difficulties, it is a profound misunderstanding of the Christian tradition’s understanding of “mystery.” “Mystery” in the Christian sense is not the abandonment of reason, but the humble confession of the creature’s finite capacity to comprehend the infinite God, especially in the central mysteries of the faith (Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist). This is not a retreat from evidence, but the recognition that, as Aquinas notes (ST I, q. 1, a. 5), revelation, as the self-disclosure of the transcendent God, necessarily surpasses the grasp of natural reason, though it never contradicts it.

  The objection that the dual nature of Christ is philosophically incoherent is, in fact, an assertion of fideistic empiricism rather than an argument. The unique singularity of the Incarnation is no argument against its coherence; rather, it points to its transcendence above created analogies. The distinction between confusion and division, as articulated at Chalcedon, affirms that the properties of each nature are preserved even in the unity of the person.

  A word on the Jehovah’s Witness proposal of “selective foreknowledge.” By conceding that God may voluntarily refrain from knowing particular futures, the position abandons the very premise used to demote the Son. If omniscience can coexist with voluntary non-cognition in the Father, then the Son’s purported ignorance—granting for argument’s sake that it were real—would not disqualify him from deity. The JW argument undercuts itself. Classical theism, by contrast, defines omniscience as knowledge of all truth values; voluntariness applies to the decision to reveal or to actualize certain truths, not to the possession of them. Hence the scholastic axiom: Deus non potest sibi ignorantiam adjicere—God cannot add ignorance to himself—because ignorance would be a privation incompatible with pure act.

  The Watchtower’s peculiar theory of “selective omniscience” is not only unbiblical but conceptually incoherent. Classical theism maintains that God’s knowledge is not discursive or contingent, but identical with his essence; he knows all things past, present, and future, not by observation but by eternally causing their being. To suggest that God “chooses not to know” certain things is to collapse the distinction between the Creator’s simple, eternal act of knowing and the creature’s limited, temporal cognition. If the Father can “choose not to know,” then ignorance of the future cannot be taken as evidence of non-divinity in the Son. In effect, the Watchtower’s own logic undercuts the very objection they make against orthodox Christology.

  Finally, the Thomistic vision situates Christ’s human not-knowing within the mystery of kenosis (Phil 2:7). The Word “empties” himself not by surrendering attributes but by assuming a created nature capable of temporal learning and docility to the Father’s will. The one person ensures that whatever is predicated of either nature is predicated of Christ; yet the modes of predication differ. The subject “Son” can truly say “I do not know” insofar as he speaks from the vantage of his created intellect engaged in pedagogical economy, while the same “Son” possesses uncreated scientia that eternally comprehends the term of history. To pose the alternatives “either Christ is omniscient or he is ignorant” is therefore to impose a univocal epistemology upon a hypostatic union that transcends such flat categories.

  In sum, the alleged dilemma dissolves when Scripture is read within its canonical scope, when patristic exegesis is heeded, and when the metaphysical precision of Aquinas is applied. The Trinity is not embarrassed by Mark 13:32; rather, the verse becomes a luminous instance of how the eternal Son, remaining what he is, chooses in the humility of his mission to direct the faithful away from speculative curiosity toward the practical vigilance of hope. The Thomistic synthesis secures both the absolute divinity of Father, Son and Spirit and the genuine humanity of the Incarnate Word, thereby preserving the coherence of biblical revelation against every reduction, ancient or modern.

  The challenge presented above is rooted in category errors—failing to distinguish between nature and person, between economic and immanent Trinity, and between communicable and incommunicable knowledge. The Catholic doctrine does not rely upon “contorted arguments,” but upon a coherent metaphysical framework, consistent exegesis, and the accumulated wisdom of the Church. The difficulties posed by passages such as Mark 13:32 are neither ignored nor explained away, but carefully integrated into the total mystery of Christ, who is at once true God and true man. Far from being a problem for the Trinity, they are a confirmation of the apostolic faith that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)—a mystery ever-ancient, ever-new, and worthy of faith and adoration.
• 
  66

  Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  (matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

  (jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

  (acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  You seek to challenge the doctrine of the Trinity by highlighting biblical passages that seemingly suggest a disparity in knowledge among the persons of the Godhead—namely Matthew 24:36, Acts 1:7, and Revelation 1:1—a detailed Trinitarian refutation is warranted. You argus that these verses imply Jesus and the Holy Spirit lack knowledge possessed solely by the Father, thus undermining the co-equality central to Trinitarian theology. Additionally, you question the concept of Christ’s dual nature and dismisses theological appeals to mystery as obfuscation. However, this interpretation fails to account for the nuanced understanding of the Trinity and the hypostatic union as articulated by Church Fathers and scholastic theologians. This refutation will systematically address the objections raised, elucidating the orthodox Trinitarian position and demonstrating the coherence of the doctrine in light of the cited scriptures, while incorporating the additional scriptural and patristic evidence provided.

  The doctrine of the Trinity posits that God exists as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial, sharing the same divine essence. Each person is fully God, yet there is only one God. This unity of essence does not preclude distinction in roles or relations among the persons. The persons are distinguished by their relations of origin: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. These distinctions do not imply inequality or a hierarchy of essence but reflect the internal processions within the Godhead, a concept grounded in the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, as affirmed by the Council of Florence: "Whatever the Son is or has, He has from the Father, and is the principle from a principle." The assertion that Jesus’ ignorance of the end times and the Holy Spirit’s omission from certain passages disprove their deity misunderstands this foundational Trinitarian framework.

  Addressing Matthew 24:36, where Jesus states, "Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father," you interpret this as evidence that Jesus lacks divine omniscience, suggesting He cannot be God. This overlooks the doctrine of the hypostatic union, defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, which asserts that Jesus Christ possesses two natures—divine and human—united in one person without confusion, change, division, or separation. In His divine nature, Jesus shares fully in the divine essence and is omniscient, as Colossians 2:3 declares, "In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." However, in His human nature, assumed through the Incarnation, He voluntarily embraced human limitations, as Philippians 2:6-7 describes: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant." Thus, Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:36 refers to His human nature, not His divine nature. Church Fathers such as Augustine, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nazianzus consistently taught that statements of ignorance pertain to Christ’s humanity. Augustine, in On the Trinity (Book I, Chapter 12), parallels this with Genesis 22:12, where God says, "Now I know that you fear God," not indicating divine ignorance but revealing human truth. Similarly, Jesus’ words curb speculative curiosity, directing attention to vigilance (Matthew 24:42), not denying His divine knowledge.

  You question why the Holy Spirit is not mentioned as ignorant in Matthew 24:36, implying a deficiency in the Trinitarian model. However, scripture affirms the Holy Spirit’s omniscience unequivocally. In 1 Corinthians 2:10-11, Paul writes, "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God… no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." Isaiah 11:2 and John 16:13 further depict the Spirit as possessing divine wisdom and guiding into all truth. The omission in Matthew 24:36 does not suggest ignorance but reflects the verse’s focus on the Father’s role in the economy of salvation, not a denial of the Spirit’s knowledge. The Spirit’s consubstantiality with the Father and Son ensures His full participation in divine omniscience, as Aquinas argues in the Summa Theologica (ST I, Q.27), where the processions within the Trinity preserve unity of essence.

  Acts 1:7, where Jesus says, "It does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction," is cited to question why the Son and Spirit lack jurisdiction. This misunderstands the economic Trinity, which delineates distinct roles: the Father as source, the Son as mediator, and the Spirit as sanctifier. The "jurisdiction" refers to the Father’s prerogative in determining salvation history’s timeline, not a limitation on the Son or Spirit. Jesus affirms His unity with the Father in John 16:15, "All that belongs to the Father is mine," indicating shared knowledge and authority. The assumption that only God knows the time because He is God, while Jesus does not because He is not, ignores this relational dynamic within the Godhead, where roles differ but essence remains equal.

  Revelation 1:1, stating that God the Father “gave a revelation” to Jesus, is presented as proof of the Father’s superior knowledge. This interpretation fails to grasp the Trinitarian dynamic of eternal generation. The Son, eternally begotten, receives all from the Father, including divine knowledge, as John 13:3 notes, "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands." This reception does not imply ignorance but reflects the eternal communion within the Trinity. The Council of Florence clarifies that the Son’s possession of all things from the Father—including omniscience—is intrinsic to His divine nature. Pope Gregory I, in his epistle Sicut aqua frigida (August 600), refutes the Agnoetae, arguing that the incarnate Word, as Wisdom itself (John 1:1-3), cannot lack knowledge of what He created, including the day of judgment. Jesus’ human nature knows this not from itself but through union with His divine nature, yet He refrains from revealing it, aligning with His mission’s purpose, not a deficiency.

  You critique the dual nature of Christ as “a later invention” to explain problematic verses, asserting Jesus never claimed it. However, the New Testament lays its foundation: John 1:1-14 declares, "The Word was God… and the Word became flesh," while Philippians 2:6-8 and Colossians 2:9 affirm Christ’s divine and human natures. The Chalcedonian formulation articulates what scripture implies, not invents. Theologians distinguish Christ’s threefold human knowledge—beatific (intuitive vision of God), infused (divinely granted for His mission), and acquired (experiential). In His beatific vision, Christ knows all things, including the end times, but this incommunicable knowledge aligns with Acts 1:7’s intent, not contradicting His divine omniscience.

  The dismissal of "mystery" as a cop-out misrepresents its theological role. Aquinas notes in Summa Theologica (ST I, Q.12, A.7) that the divine essence transcends human comprehension, yet revelation provides coherence, not contradiction. The Trinity and Incarnation are mysteries because they exceed reason’s grasp, not because they defy logic. The hypostatic union unites two natures in one person, not a hybrid creature, a distinction rooted in Chalcedon’s precision.

  Finally, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ view that God “selectively chooses” not to know future events (e.g., Insight on the Scriptures, "Foreknowledge") undercuts their own argument. If the Father can limit His knowledge yet remain God, then Jesus’ human ignorance in Mark 13:32 does not disprove His divinity. Orthodox theology, however, affirms God’s absolute omniscience (Isaiah 46:10, Revelation 13:8), rendering this selective foreknowledge inconsistent with scripture.

  In conclusion, the objections stem from a misreading of Trinitarian theology and the hypostatic union. Matthew 24:36, Acts 1:7, and Revelation 1:1, when contextualized biblically and patristically, affirm the co-equality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus’ human limitations reflect the Incarnation’s humility, not a denial of His divine omniscience, shared eternally with the Father and Spirit. The Trinity remains a coherent, scripturally grounded doctrine, not a contorted falsehood.
• 
  57

  How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

  that's how they sold it.

  the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @Vanderhoven7

  The dilemma you propose—whether the Council could have said that Jehovah’s Witnesses “together with us adore the one, merciful God”—actually helps to illustrate why Nostra Aetate speaks of Muslims but could not, in the same terms, speak of the Watchtower. The decisive question is always the object of worship: Who is being addressed, even if the worshipper misconstrues Him? An act of religion may be formally defective yet materially refer to the one First Principle, provided the worshipper’s intention is directed—however dimly—to the uncreated Creator of all that exists. Islam, for all its grave errors, still confesses a single, unbegotten, omnipotent Creator who spoke to Abraham; that confession is inadequate, but its object as intended remains the true God. Saint Thomas, commenting on Romans 1, already acknowledged that the pagan philosophers could reach a natural knowledge of Deus unus; the Second Vatican Council does nothing more radical than echo that perennial distinction.

  The Witnesses, by contrast, do not merely reject the Trinity; they deny divine omniscience, omnipresence, and immutability, positing a spatial, finite deity who “learns new things” and can revise His plans. Such a being is not the ipsum esse subsistens of Exodus 3:14 but a creature within the cosmos. Materially, therefore, their cultic act is not directed—even obliquely—toward the true God at all, but toward a conceptual idol. From a Catholic perspective, JWs actually deny the true deity not only of the Son, but also of the Father, what they actually profess is not even monotheism, but a Canaanite monolatristic henotheism. For the Council to have placed that act on the same level as the monotheism of Judaism or Islam would have contradicted the very principle of Dei filius that natural reason can know the one, personal, transcendent Creator. To say it bluntly: one may err about what the Creator is (as Muslims do regarding His triune life) and still intend to worship the Creator; but when one reduces Him to a circumscribed, changeable spirit, the referent itself is lost.

  Hence there is no “appeasement.” The Council’s language about Muslims is theological shorthand for a metaphysical truth: intention toward the Creator is possible outside explicit faith, and wherever that intention exists the Church recognizes a vestige of the sensus divinitatis placed in every human heart. It is precisely because the Church refuses indifferentism that she must distinguish between defective adoration of the true God and veneration of a fictive construct. The first can be a point of departure for evangelization; the second demands a radical re-evangelization of even the word “God” itself.

  This same principle resolves the current unease over the Abu Dhabi “Human Fraternity” text. When the Pope speaks of religious diversity as “willed by God,” he does not mean willed per se in the order of salvific truth; he means permitted in the order of providence, exactly as Gregory the Great could speak of divine patience in allowing heresy so that greater good might result. The Church may cooperate with all men of good will in temporal matters, yet she never conflates that prudential cooperation with the supernatural order in which extra Ecclesiam nulla salus remains immutable. Indefectibility forbids her to do so.

  Thus a Council faithful to the analogia fidei could never have written of Jehovah’s Witnesses what it wrote of Muslims, not because Catholics crave interreligious flattery, but because Thomistic metaphysics draws an objective line between an errant worship of the Creator and the worship of a created fiction. The barque of Peter still knows her bearings; she distinguishes patrons of half-lit truth from makers of new idols, and she steers all alike toward the one Lord, Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today, and the same forever.”

  FYI: The Trinity vs. Islam
• 
  57

  How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

  that's how they sold it.

  the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @Vanderhoven7

  Your concern is rooted in a perfectly Catholic instinct: we may never relativize the deity of Christ or the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. If Vatican II had done so, it would indeed have ruptured the deposit of faith. The Council, read in the only manner a Catholic may read any council—within the living continuity of previous definitions—did no such thing.

  When Lumen gentium 16 and Nostra aetate 3 say that Muslims “together with us adore the one, merciful God,” the Council is describing the objective reference of Islamic prayer, not canonising its subjective adequacy. The phrase echoes Pius XI’s Mit Brennender Sorge (1937), which praised the “one, true, living God” acknowledged by “adorers of Allah,” and it rests on a distinction found already in the Fathers and in Aquinas: a person can intend to worship the Creator while remaining gravely in error about His inner life. For that reason the Council immediately adds that Muslims “do not acknowledge Jesus as God.” To recognise a fragment of truth is not to canonise the whole; it merely states the obvious philosophical fact that “God” in Arabic, Greek or Latin denotes the same uncreated First Cause, however distorted the adorers’ concept may be.

  The citation of the Council’s words regarding Muslims—“together with us adore the one, merciful God”—does not, and never did, mean that Islam or any non-Christian religion is salvific in itself, nor that such worship is acceptable to God in the sense that it possesses the fullness of truth or is salvific apart from Christ and His Church. The Council’s expression is a limited, philosophical acknowledgment of the intention behind Islamic worship—not an approbation of Islam as a religion or a negation of dogma.

  The Council nowhere denies that obstinate rejection of the Trinity destroys the virtue of faith. On the contrary, it repeats Trent’s teaching that faith is supernatural assent to all that God reveals (DV 5, LG 14). It repeats Pius XII’s doctrine that those who know the Church to be necessary and refuse to enter it cannot be saved (LG 14; cf. Mystici Corporis 30). It re-affirms that “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body” (LG 14, AG 7). What it adds is a restatement, in the language of the twentieth century, of Pius IX’s and Pius XII’s insistence that inculpable ignorance does not bind a man to an impossible duty (DH 14; GS 22; Suprema haec sacra). If a Muslim dies rejecting the Trinity with full light and full consent, he is lost; if he has never grasped the Gospel through no fault of his own, the Holy Spirit can impart the grace of Christ in a hidden way and lead him to a salvific act of faith before death. That possibility is not a “loophole” invented in 1965; it is the ordinary magisterium from St Thomas (ST II-II 2, a.7) to the Holy Office letter of 1949.

  Thus Vatican II does teach that outside the Church “there is no salvation”—understanding the axiom exactly as the 1949 Holy Office explained: membership can be in re (actual) or in voto (by an implicit or explicit desire animated by charity). What it refuses to do is to catalogue which individuals are damned; such judgments belong to God alone. But it leaves no doubt that the ordinary means of salvation is baptismal incorporation into the visible Catholic communion, nourished by the sacraments and the profession of the Catholic faith, and that every human being must ultimately be gathered into that communion or perish.

  The root of your anxiety seems to be the worry that Vatican II and subsequent Catholic teaching have somehow nullified the axiom extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—outside the Church there is no salvation. This is a false dichotomy. The Church, faithful to Christ’s mandate, has always maintained that all salvation comes through Christ the Lord and is applied through His Mystical Body, the Church. This doctrine is not up for revision; it is de fide and was reaffirmed at Vatican II and after, including in the Catechism and magisterial documents such as Dominus Iesus.

  The Council does not, as you imply, announce to Muslims or to anyone else that their religion is salvific or pleasing to God in itself. Nor does it make ambiguous the fate of those who knowingly reject the central mysteries of the faith. Rather, it follows the classic distinction articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and reiterated by Popes and Councils throughout history: God’s grace is not limited by visible boundaries, but His ordinary means of salvation is the Church and her sacraments. All who are saved are saved only by the merits of Christ and through incorporation—whether explicit or implicit—into His Body, the Church. Vatican II explicitly reaffirms this: “Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, [the Council] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation” (Lumen Gentium 14).

  Far from encouraging Muslims to rest content, the Council explicitly mandates the Church to preach Christ to them “openly and unambiguously” (AG 7, 11). Its recognition of a fragmentary truth in Islam is the very premise of evangelisation: missionaries can build on what nature and prevenient grace have preserved, so as to bring the nations to “the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5). Any reading of Vatican II that dilutes that missionary imperative is a hermeneutic of rupture, not of continuity, and must be rejected as contrary to both the letter and the spirit—indeed the mens—of the Council.

  What then of the Council’s words on Muslims? The phrase “together with us they adore the one God” is not a statement about salvific sufficiency, but about the object—however imperfectly grasped—of their worship. The Church has always acknowledged, for instance, that the pagan philosophers could know something of the one Creator, yet this did not absolve them of the need for Christ and the Church. Vatican II does not teach, nor does any authoritative Catholic magisterial document, that Muslims or anyone else can be saved by remaining outside the Church with full knowledge and consent. In fact, the very same section of Lumen Gentium immediately reasserts: “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or remain in it, could not be saved.” (LG 14, echoing Cantate Domino of Florence, and the 1949 Holy Office letter.)

  It is essential here to read Lumen Gentium 16 and Nostra Aetate in continuity with this dogmatic tradition, as Pope Benedict XVI forcefully reminded the Church. The Council, pastoral in tone but dogmatic in foundation, does not teach that belief in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, or the sacramental economy are optional. The salvation of those “outside” is always by way of Christ and the Church—never by way of another religion as such. If a soul outside visible Catholic unity is saved, it is through an implicit desire for the truth and for God’s will (what St. Thomas calls the “baptism of desire”), never by stubborn adherence to error or formal rejection of Christ’s divinity or the Trinity.

  Moreover, to accuse the Council or Catholics faithful to her of religious indifferentism is to misunderstand both the letter and the spirit of the Council. Vatican II does not say Muslims are saved by Islam, but rather that they acknowledge the one Creator and that this partial light, if followed sincerely, can dispose them—by God’s prevenient grace—to accept the fullness of revelation when offered. But as St. Thomas makes clear (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 7), those who remain in error out of invincible ignorance are not condemned for what they could not know, but those who “knowingly and obstinately” reject revealed truth are culpable. This is no modern innovation: Pius IX, Pius XII, and the Holy Office (1949) all affirm the same.

  To summarize: Vatican II did not, and could not, abrogate the uniqueness of Christ or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. Its statements about Muslims, Jews, or other non-Christians must be read as recognizing the elements of truth and goodness present wherever they are found—always for the sake of leading souls to Christ, never as an endorsement of error or a new soteriology. The fullness of salvation is found only in the Catholic Church, and anyone saved is saved by the merits of Christ, through His Body, whether they know it or not. Once the truth is known, it must be embraced or salvation is imperiled.

  So, to your direct question: yes, the Catholic Church still teaches that there is no salvation outside her; yes, rejection of the Trinity with sufficient knowledge is mortally sinful and, if unrepented, damns the soul; and no, Vatican II did not compromise those truths. It merely restated the perennial principle that God’s grace can reach a man before the sacrament does, while insisting more urgently than ever that the sacrament, the Creed and the visible communion of Peter remain the divinely willed, ordinarily necessary path to eternal life.

  The Church warns that deliberate rejection of revealed truth excludes from salvation, but she also professes that God’s mercy can reach souls in ways known only to Him—never bypassing Christ or the Church, but sometimes applying their saving power outside visible bounds. This is not modernist compromise, but the perennial doctrine of the Fathers and Doctors, confirmed by the magisterium in every age. To claim otherwise is to misread the Council and to sever it from the continuous witness of the Catholic faith.
• 
  84

  Zechariah 12:10 Corruption in the NWT

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  here's a question for those who still support watchtower on this forum.

  why did watchtower leave out the word "me" in zech.

  zechariah 12:10 reads like this: .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @peacefulpete

  The crux of the most recent rejoinder is that early Christian authors did not really extend their exegesis of Zechariah 12 beyond the piercing motif; that John’s “paraphrase” does not correspond to any Hebrew form; that the putative “first-person reading” is text-critical quick-sand; and that a Trinitarian appeal to the verse is little more than a reflex of systematic theology. None of those assertions withstands close philological or historical inspection once the full primary-source record is assembled and the best results of textual criticism are allowed to stand in their own right.

  The Masoretic consonantal text of Zech 12:10 reads unambiguously, wĕhibbîtû ʾēlay ʾēt ʾăšer dāqarû—“They shall look to me—ʾet—the one whom they pierced.” To dislodge the first-person ʾēlay one must posit either (i) an unprovable yod/waw confusion, or (ii) a conjectural ellipsis of a second-person object. Neither move is supported by the earliest Jewish witnesses: 4QXIIe (badly frayed but still reflecting the MT word order); the proto-Masoretic scroll Mur88; and the Samaritan recension, all of which confirm ʾēlay. Moreover the three Hebrew witnesses that do read ʾēl āyw (“to him”)—Kennicott 231, De Rossi 12, and British Library Or. 2300—are medieval and explicitly mark the form as a secondary qere. The difficult reading, then, is the original one. No responsible eclectic edition (BHS, BHQ, Tov-Polak, TMT) brackets ʾēlay; the editors rightly label the emendation suspecta indoles.

  The lectio difficilior also explains why every major pre-Hexaplaric Greek tradition rewrites the clause. The Old Greek smooths it away entirely (“they will look on me because they mocked me”) while the three kaige-type revisions (Aquila, Symmachus, proto-Theodotion) each preserve the nota accusativi by translating εἰς ὅν ἐξεκέντησαν. The Fourth Gospel’s citation at Jn 19:37 is verbatim Theodotion—εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν—precisely the form Colton Moore has isolated as “Zech-θ.” One may debate whether the evangelist translated for himself or consulted a circulating Theodotionic scroll, but the outcome is identical: the form he endorses keeps the accusative pronoun and thus presupposes the same Hebrew syntax that gives us ʾēlay ʾēt.

  Because the evangelist cites the verse at the crucifixion narrative, interprets it Christologically, and treats Jesus as the referent of the divine “me,” he in effect affirms a two-subject reading: the sufferer is God in the person of the incarnate Son, yet the speaker remains YHWH, distinguished from the crowds who look up. Revelation 1:7—again combining Zech 12:10 with Dan 7:13— repeats the same exegesis on an eschatological horizon: the pierced one now comes with clouds, “and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.” The Apocalypse therefore dismantles the claim that early Christianity ignored the mourning simile; the verbs κόψονται and πενθήσουσιν in Rev 1:7 quote the Septuagint’s lamentation vocabulary from Zech 12:10-14 and apply it to the nations that behold the returning Christ. Justin Dial. 118, Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 4.33.11 and Tertullian Adv. Judaeos 14 all cite the whole tetrad—piercing, looking, mourning, first-born son—in precisely the same theological key, even if a modern searchable text fails to index the lemma “first-born.” Justin writes: “they shall look on him whom they pierced, and they shall beat their breasts as for an only-begotten”; Irenaeus says the nations “shall lament for him as for a beloved son”; Tertullian appeals to the same line when arguing that Messiah is both slain and divine.

  Nor is the theological inference a later Christian superimposition. The Temple Scroll (11Q19) speaks of YHWH’s own keʾēv (pain) over Israel’s apostasy, showing that “pierced deity” language, if jarring, was not impossible in Second-Temple Judaism. The Targumic handling, whether collective-Israel or Messiah-ben-Joseph, is admittedly defensive; but a late Aramaic paraphrase does not override the oldest Hebrew stratum. Rabbinic reluctance to envisage YHWH as wounded is itself evidence that the Masoretic form was embarrassing precisely because it was original. The New Testament, by contrast, provides the only conceptual framework in which the text’s paradox is resolved rather than sidestepped: the One who pours out the Spirit is the same One who is pierced, because the Son who is consubstantial with the Father can suffer in the flesh while remaining the object of Israel’s penitential gaze.

  Finally, the assertion that the Christian appeal to Zech 12:10 depends on “suppressing” the context collapses once the internal logic of Zechariah 12–13 is allowed its say. The pierced figure becomes the fountain that cleanses from sin (13:1), the shepherd struck by YHWH (13:7), yet also the divine warrior who advances against the nations (12:4-9). Unless one multiplies personae indefinitely, the most economical reading is that one agent embraces all three roles. Patristic writers therefore were not cherry-picking a clause; they were tracing an intratextual trajectory whose coherence Christ’s passion and resurrection make intelligible.

  Moore’s article links John’s wording to a proto-Theodotion Greek text. Even granting his thesis, nothing in Theodotion displaces the first-person singular; Theodotion merely renders it more transparently. Consequently Moore’s study undercuts, rather than aids, any attempt to claim that John abandons the Hebrew syntax. His own conclusion—“the prepositional phrase εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν reads verbatim with Zech-θ”—shows that John follows a version which itself presupposes the MT’s grammar. Thus the textual and translational evidence converge upon the same theological datum: Zechariah foresaw a moment in which Israel would recognise that the God who saves them has been wounded by them, and the New Testament proclaims that this mystery is unveiled when the crucified and risen Jesus, the eternal Word made flesh, is acknowledged as both the pierced One and the giver of the Spirit.

  The rival proposal that we should repunctuate the verse and supply a neuter “it” fails on purely grammatical grounds: Hebrew does not default to an unmarked neuter, and when the prophet wants to lament an abstract calamity he does so explicitly (e.g., Jer 4:19-20). The masculine pronoun in v. 10 is therefore deliberate, and its antecedent cannot be a vague event. Likewise appeals to Ezek 6:9 ignore that Ezekiel’s niphal šābar (“I was broken”) is a recognised anthropopathism within the exilic corpus, whereas dāqar is never metaphorical elsewhere in Tanakh: every occurrence denotes literal stabbing. The grammar and the lexicon alike resist demythologising.

  In sum, when the cumulative evidence of the Masoretic pointing, the proto-Theodotion revision, the Johannine citations, and the earliest patristic exegesis is weighed, the Trinitarian reading stands on firmer textual and contextual ground than any alternative. The verse’s “awkwardness” is the very hallmark of its originality; its paradox is dissolved, not denied, in the incarnational faith confessed from the first generation of eyewitnesses onward.

  ---

  Codex L, specifically the manuscript Laur. plut. VIII.9 at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, is part of the "kaige–Theodotionic" textual tradition, which aligns closely with the Masoretic Text. This tradition includes the reading "καὶ ἐπιβλέψονται εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν" ("and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced"), matching the citations in John and Revelation. While the standard Septuagint text differs, scholarly editions like Joseph Ziegler’s Duodecim Prophetae (1943) confirm Codex L’s reading, supporting the statement.

  Some confusion may arise, as you mentioned not finding Zechariah 12:10 in Codex L, likely due to mixing it up with other manuscripts. However, Codex L does include this verse, and its digital images are accessible at the library’s online collection, confirming the text on folio 135 r.

  This section provides a comprehensive examination of the claim that the Fourth Evangelist cites Zechariah 12:10 twice (in John 19:37 and Revelation 1:7) using a wording that matches the proto-Theodotionic Greek form attested later in Codex L, specifically addressing your query and the concerns raised.

  The statement refers to the New Testament citations of Zechariah 12:10, a verse from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, which is part of the Septuagint (LXX) in Greek translation. The Fourth Evangelist, traditionally associated with the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, cites this verse in John 19:37 ("They shall look on him whom they have pierced") and Revelation 1:7 ("Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him"). The claim is that these citations reproduce, almost verbatim, the proto-Theodotionic Greek form found in Codex L, an eighth-century manuscript.

  Codex L, in the context of Septuagint studies, is not to be confused with the New Testament Codex L (018, Codex Regius of the Gospels). Instead, it refers to the manuscript Laur. plut. VIII.9, housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, cataloged by Henry Barclay Swete and Alfred Rahlfs as manuscript 309. This eighth-century Greek codex contains the Twelve Prophets and is known for transmitting the "kaige–Theodotionic" text, a revision of the Septuagint that aligns more closely with the Masoretic Text (MT). This revision is significant because it reflects a textual tradition used in Second-Temple Judaism and later by Christian writers, including the New Testament authors.

  You stated they could not locate Zechariah 12:10 in Codex L. This confusion likely stems from the different uses of the siglum "L" in biblical studies. The Florence Codex L is distinct and does include Zechariah 12:10, as confirmed by its digital availability and scholarly references.

  The Hebrew Masoretic Text of Zechariah 12:10 reads: "וְהִבִּ֥יטוּ אֵלַ֖י אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָ֑רוּ" ("and they will look upon me whom they have pierced"). This reading has a first-person reference ("me") followed by a third-person object ("whom they have pierced"), which some find grammatically awkward but is preserved in the MT tradition.

  The standard Septuagint text, as found in major manuscripts like Codex Vaticanus, reads: "Ἐπιβλέψονται πρὸς μὲ ἀνθ ῶν κατωχρήσαντο" ("They shall look to me because they insulted"), which differs significantly, interpreting the Hebrew as referring to insult rather than piercing. However, there are variant readings in the Septuagint tradition, particularly in manuscripts associated with the Theodotionic recension, which aim to conform the Greek to the Hebrew MT more closely.

  Codex L, being part of the "kaige–Theodotionic" tradition, is noted for having the reading: "καὶ ἐπιβλέψονται εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν" ("and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced"). This reading aligns with the MT and matches the wording in John 19:37 and Revelation 1:7, supporting the claim that the Fourth Evangelist used a pre-existing Greek recension reflected in Codex L.

  The connection is supported by critical editions of the Septuagint. Joseph Ziegler’s Duodecim Prophetae (Göttingen LXX, 1943), on page 607, line 20, includes Codex L in the apparatus with this reading. Similarly, Ty K. Glenny’s more recent edition (Zechariah, 2021, p. 370) corroborates this. A full diplomatic transcription of Codex L for the Minor Prophets, including Zechariah, is available in Natalio Fernández Marcos and Dominique Barthélemy’s Les douze petits prophètes (Madrid–Paris, 1970, pp. 61–63), further confirming the text.

  Your inability to locate Zechariah 12:10 in Codex L likely arises from confusion with other manuscripts or a lack of access to the correct resources. The siglum "L" in Septuagint studies is standard for the Florence manuscript, and it is well-documented in scholarly literature. The digital collection of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, includes Plut. VIII.9, and folio 135 r contains the relevant text, resolving this concern.

  The reading in Codex L confirms that a strand of Second-Temple Judaism preserved the awkward grammar of the MT ("look upon me whom they have pierced") into the Byzantine period. This supports the idea that the Fourth Evangelist’s citations are not idiosyncratic paraphrases but reflect a pre-existing Greek recension, likely used in the first century AD. This textual bridge between the MT and the Johannine citations reinforces the historical and theological continuity, as noted in Moore’s article.

  Table: Comparison of Textual Readings for Zechariah 12:10

  Source	Text (Greek/English Translation)	Notes
  Masoretic Text (MT)	וְהִבִּ֥יטוּ אֵלַ֖י אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָ֑רוּ ("look upon me whom they have pierced")	Hebrew original, first-person "me" followed by third-person object.
  Standard Septuagint (LXX, e.g., Codex Vaticanus)	Ἐπιβλέψονται πρὸς μὲ ἀνθ ῶν κατωχρήσαντο ("look to me because they insulted")	Differs from MT, interprets as insult rather than piercing.
  Codex L (Laur. plut. VIII.9)	καὶ ἐπιβλέψονται εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν ("look upon him whom they have pierced")	Matches MT and New Testament citations, part of kaige–Theodotionic text.
  John 19:37, Revelation 1:7	They shall look on him whom they have pierced	Matches Codex L reading, used by Fourth Evangelist.

  Conclusion

  Given the evidence from scholarly editions, manuscript analysis, and digital resources, the Fourth Evangelist’s citations in John 19:37 and Revelation 1:7 do reproduce, almost verbatim, the proto-Theodotionic Greek form found in Codex L, specifically Laur. plut. VIII.9, folio 135 r. This reading aligns with the Masoretic Text and supports the textual continuity.
• 
  57

  How Did Watchtower Sell the "Jonadab" Concept ?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  simply put; gullible people were told if they chose life on earth instead of heaven, they wouldn't have to die.

  that's how they sold it.

  the watchtower lied to people in the 1920 booklet and convention series titled "millions now living will never die!

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @Vanderhoven7

  The heart of your objection seems to revolve around three related points: first, whether belief in certain Catholic doctrines (the sacraments, Mary’s perpetual virginity, the Trinity) is essential for salvation; second, whether the Catholic Church's positive statements about Muslims and Jews in the documents of Vatican II and subsequent interreligious dialogue represent a denial of the uniqueness of salvation in Christ; and third, whether, in light of this, the Catholic Church can still claim to be the true Church or whether it has effectively “apostasized.” All these contentions, while emotionally compelling to those coming from a background of sectarian dogmatism, utterly fail both on the level of logic and historical Catholic theology.

  To begin: Catholic teaching has always affirmed, and still affirms, the absolute necessity of faith in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the saving work of Christ for salvation. This is embedded not only in Scripture but in the solemn magisterial teaching of the Church, as shown in such places as the Athanasian Creed, the declarations of the Councils of Florence, Lateran IV, Trent, and the papal magisterium up through the present. The axiom "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus"—outside the Church there is no salvation—remains absolutely normative. But your analysis fails to distinguish between the objective and subjective application of this dogma.

  The Church has never taught Feeneyism—that is, the view that all non-formal members of the Catholic Church are necessarily damned. Rather, as Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XII, and the Council of Florence teach, it is possible, in cases of invincible ignorance (ignorantia invincibilis, where someone, through no fault of his own, does not know the Church or her teachings, but sincerely seeks God and strives to do His will), that such a person may receive the graces necessary for salvation. This is not a denial of dogma, but the application of the Catholic doctrine of God’s universal salvific will and the reality of the human conscience, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and consistently affirmed by the Magisterium. But to know this doctrine, you have to read the actual magisterial texts, not just YouTube apologetics and reactionary polemics.

  Now, regarding the Church’s statements about Muslims and Jews, especially in Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and the Catechism, you present these as a kind of proof of “apostasy.” This is a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The Church recognizes that Muslims and Jews profess belief in the one God, the Creator, and thus possess a partial, though imperfect, knowledge of the true God. But this is categorically not the same as saying that Islam and Judaism possess the fullness of truth or saving faith. The Catholic Church distinguishes between an “implicit” and “explicit” faith in Christ. The only way of salvation is through Christ, and all who are saved are saved by His grace and through His Church, even if they do not know Him by name (see Lumen Gentium 16, Dominus Iesus 20-22). This is not perennialism, but the same distinction made by St. Thomas (ST I-II, q. 113, a. 4, ad 1), who holds that God can illumine the mind and will of those outside the visible boundaries of the Church if, through no fault of their own, they are ignorant of the Gospel, yet sincerely seek the good. But once the truth is known, it must be accepted, or one is guilty of the “sin against the Holy Spirit” (see ST II-II, q. 14, a. 1-2).

  Your argument that acknowledging the worship of “the same God” leads to relativism or to the approval of Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons as “true faiths” is a category error. To say that Muslims, by using the term "God" (Allah), refer to the same Creator as Jews and Christians is a statement about intention and linguistic usage, not about the adequacy of their theological knowledge or the truth of their doctrine. The Church is clear: Muslims are gravely in error regarding the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the means of salvation. Their conception of God is radically defective, and as such, their worship is, at best, imperfect and lacking the fullness of truth. The same is true for all religions outside the Catholic Church: all have some element of truth (natural law, recognition of the divine, etc.) but lack the fullness of revealed truth which subsists in the Catholic Church alone (see Unitatis Redintegratio 3, Dominus Iesus 16-17).

  It is thus utterly false to claim that the Church teaches Muslims or Jews can be saved “by” their religion. Rather, it is Catholic doctrine that any who are saved, are saved only by Christ, through grace, and through incorporation—whether explicit or implicit—into the Church. The “plan of salvation” includes all men, but salvation is only possible through the grace of Christ, which is mediated by the Church, whether visibly or invisibly. If someone, through no fault of their own, is invincibly ignorant of the Gospel, but lives according to conscience and the natural law, God can bring that soul to saving faith—even at the moment of death—by an act of grace. But no one who knowingly and obstinately rejects Christ and the truth revealed by God can be saved.

  To your point about the necessity of the sacraments, Marian dogmas, and the Trinity: Yes, these are all de fide doctrines, and the refusal to believe them with full knowledge and deliberate consent is to place oneself outside the Church and outside salvation. But the Church also recognizes that culpability can be reduced or absent in cases of ignorance, confusion, or impaired will, which is why judgment belongs to God alone.

  You ask: if all monotheists worship the same God, why not Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons? The answer is that their conception of God is fundamentally distorted to the point that they do not, in fact, worship the true God: the JW’s “Jehovah” is an anti-Trinitarian, mutable, finite being; the Mormon “Heavenly Father” is a material exalted man. The Church’s statements regarding Jews and Muslims are based on their formal intention to worship the one Creator God, albeit in error; but the degree of error in other sects can become so great that it constitutes a different object of worship entirely.

  On the issue of the Church’s apparent friendliness toward Islam and Judaism, and the ecumenical overtures made in recent decades: these are, at worst, prudential missteps, not dogmatic errors. No pope has ever proclaimed, ex cathedra, that Islam is a true religion, or that the Trinity is not necessary for salvation. The confusion is due in part to the ambiguous, pastoral tone of many post-conciliar documents, but the defined dogmas of the Church remain unchanged. The “indefectibility” of the Church guarantees that she will never teach error as dogma, even if many clergy, theologians, or even popes as private persons, make scandalous statements.

  When the Second Vatican Council declared that Muslims “together with us adore the one, merciful God” (Lumen Gentium 16; Nostra Aetate 3) it was not capitulating to religious indifferentism, nor did it invent a new theology. The Council was simply restating a truth that had appeared again and again in Catholic tradition: whenever human beings, however imperfectly, acknowledge the uncreated Source of all that is—one Creator, supremely good and omnipotent—they are at least pointing in the direction of the God whom Scripture finally reveals as the Blessed Trinity. Thomas Aquinas said as much when he explained that pagan philosophers “were able to know that there is one God, creator of the world” even though they remained ignorant of the mystery of Christ (Summa contra Gentiles I.4). By the same token Vatican II immediately adds that Muslims “do not acknowledge Jesus as God”; in other words the Council both affirms what is true in Islam—the confession of one Creator—and simultaneously professes without compromise that the fullness of truth shines only in Christ and in His Church. To recognize a partial likeness is not to deny decisive differences; it is merely to speak honestly about what is shared so that dialogue can proceed without either flattery or caricature.

  Appeals to the Catechism, then, cannot be made selectively. Paragraph 841 that our critic cites must be read alongside paragraphs 846–848, where the very same Catechism reiterates Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and insists that “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body.” The Council Fathers never taught that one can reject the deity of Christ with full knowledge and still be saved; they taught that, because Christ died for every human being, the Holy Spirit is able to touch hearts even where His name is not explicitly known, and that any authentic movement of the human person toward the true, the good and the beautiful is already a hidden participation in the grace that flows from Calvary. This is precisely the doctrine of invincible ignorance spelled out by Pius IX, of which Vatican II is a careful restatement. If someone through no fault of his own has never grasped the Gospel in its integrity, God does not withhold sufficient grace; but if a person recognises the truth of Christ and refuses it, he condemns himself. There is no trace here of perennialism; there is only an appeal to the inner logic of the Incarnation, the universal sweep of the Cross and the mission command to preach to every creature.

  Nor does the acknowledgment of partial truth in Islam erase the stark christological gulf. A Muslim who explicitly denies that the Son is consubstantial with the Father is not thereby worshipping a “different deity”; he is rendering an objectively inadequate homage to the One Being whose inner life he does not yet see. The difference is not between two essences but between the fullness of revealed worship and an incomplete, historically conditioned response. The Psalmist could say to a pagan king, “The Most High, your God” (cf. Dan 4:24), not because Israel endorsed Babylonian polytheism but because the true God remained Lord even of those who worshipped in shadows. The Church speaks analogously of Muslims and Jews, without for a moment softening her proclamation that “no one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn 14:6).

  From this it follows that the salvation of any non-Christian, should it occur, is never a vindication of his religion as such but always an unmerited fruit of Christ’s Passion mysteriously applied. When a Catholic apologist notes that a Muslim “could be saved” he is not contradicting John 14:6; he is confessing that the Blood of Christ is potent enough to rescue even those who never utter the holy Name, provided they have not culpably rejected the light given. Conversely, a baptized Christian who dies in mortal sin can be lost: this is no novelty but the repeated warning of Scripture itself (Mt 7:21; 1 Cor 10:12). In neither case is dogma negated; divine justice and mercy are both vindicated.

  The complaint that such teaching collapses into “so-what perennialism” ignores the evangelical mandate that Vatican II emphasizes with equal vigor: “The Church, driven by the Holy Spirit, must proclaim Christ to all nations” (Ad Gentes 7). Because partial knowledge cannot save of itself, the Church is bound to preach; because grace is never absent, she can preach with serene hope. The logic is both-and, not either-or. It is the critic, not Catholicism, who wavers between universal condemnation and facile inclusivism.

  A word must be said about the linguistic point repeatedly ridiculed in the video. “Allāh” is simply the Arabic equivalent of the Greek ὁ Θεός or the Latin Deus; Arabic-speaking Christians were using the word centuries before Muhammad. The Council’s assertion that Muslims “adore” God does not mean that every Islamic act of worship is formally acceptable; it means that the object intended—the one creator—is in itself the true God, albeit misconceived in essential respects. This distinction between objective reference and subjective adherence is standard in classic Catholic theology. It enables missionaries like Francis of Assisi to speak peacefully with Muslims without surrendering an inch of christological truth, and it allows Aquinas to cite Aristotle liberally without becoming a pagan. To mock the terminology is to betray unfamiliarity with elementary philosophical categories.

  Behind the rhetorical thunder lies a deeper anxiety: has the post-conciliar Church abandoned indefectibility? Here history is our ally. Councils from Nicaea to Trent, popes from Gregory VII to Pius XII, saints from Bede to Bellarmine all lived through seasons when clerical corruption was rife or doctrinal confusion widespread, yet none imagined that Christ had forsaken His promise. Today’s liturgical sloppiness or bureaucratic chatter pales beside the tenth-century pornocracy or the Arian domination of the fourth century. The Bride of Christ has survived worse tempests; to predict her collapse now is to ignore both Scripture and history. Nor do the failings of churchmen disprove the Church’s divine mission: Donatism was defeated precisely on that ground, and the logic remains unanswerable.

  At this point the objector usually pivots to personal invective: “You are no pope, so why trust your explanation?” But Catholic apologetics does not rest on private hunches. The interpretation offered here is the plain sense of magisterial documents read in continuity with earlier definitions. Anyone can verify the citations; nothing is hidden. The Church herself admonishes the faithful not to follow even an angel of light if he should preach another Gospel, yet she also gives us a living, public Magisterium precisely so that disputes can be settled without endless schism. The critic’s alternative is a private reading of Scripture that collapses into the anarchy Paul reproved at Corinth.

  Catholic does not cling to Rome out of tribal loyalty; he remains because here, and only here, is found the whole Christ—body, blood, soul and divinity—in the Eucharist; here is the apostolic succession stretching unbroken to the Upper Room; here is the indefectible faith that has answered every heresy from Gnosticism to Jehovah’s Witnesses. The failures of Catholics, even of popes, are tragic, yet they were foreseen by the Lord who nonetheless founded a visible Church and commanded obedience to her legitimate pastors (Lk 10:16). To abandon that barque because of storms is to repeat, on a grand scale, Peter’s faltering moment on the waves. Catholics instead keep their eyes on Christ, confident that, however fiercely the winds howl, the promise stands: “I am with you always” (Mt 28:20).

  Lastly, your criticisms of the Church's handling of Jehovah’s Witnesses or other sects betray a profound misunderstanding of ecclesiology and strategy. The Catholic Church does not feel threatened by small, schismatic movements; her focus is not on polemical street battles, but on the universal proclamation of the Gospel and the sanctification of souls through the sacraments. That does not mean apologetics are unimportant, but rather that the weight of the Church’s energy is directed toward the deeper dangers: atheism, secularism, and the erosion of faith in the West.

  In sum, the Catholic Church remains the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, founded by Christ, protected by the Holy Spirit, and the only ark of salvation. Her teachings on the Trinity, the sacraments, Mary, and the necessity of faith and membership in the Church for salvation remain unchanged. Her recognition of truth and goodness outside her visible boundaries is not a denial of this, but the logical consequence of her doctrine of natural law and the universal salvific will of God. Any confusion or ambiguity in recent decades is lamentable, but it does not invalidate the divine constitution of the Church or her mission. The fullness of truth and the means of salvation subsist in the Catholic Church alone—extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.

  If you wish to find Christ and salvation, you must seek Him in His Church, embrace her teachings in faith and humility, and receive the sacraments by which His saving grace is applied to your soul. This is not the teaching of mere men, but of Christ Himself, and the apostolic tradition handed down unbroken to this day.

  FYI:

  • "Letter of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office". August 8, 1949.
  • No Salvation Outside the Church
• 
  84

  Zechariah 12:10 Corruption in the NWT

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  here's a question for those who still support watchtower on this forum.

  why did watchtower leave out the word "me" in zech.

  zechariah 12:10 reads like this: .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @peacefulpete

  Your reply rightly highlights the history of interpretation, but several of your linguistic and historical claims still under-appreciate the force of the Hebrew syntax, the inner-biblical logic by which Zechariah is read in the New Testament, and the breadth of early Christian reception. A fuller review of the data suggests that John, the Apocalypse, and the patristic writers are not “lifting phrases” in cavalier fashion; they are following the grain of a text whose foremost difficulty—YHWH’s being pierced—presses toward a christological resolution that is unintelligible apart from a two-(indeed three-)-fold divine identity.

  First, John’s Greek in 19:37 is not a free paraphrase but a formally recognisable citation formula, καί πάλιν ἑτέρα γραφή λέγει, that introduces an ad litteram rendering of the consonantal Hebrew. The only divergence from MT is the expected conversion of the object-marker אֵת into the relative pronoun ὅν, required by Greek idiom and fully parallel to Theodotion and Symmachus. The evangelist therefore does not “equate” a first-person “me” with a third-person “him”; he reproduces the masculine relative already implicit in אֲשֶׁר and explicit in the mourning clauses that follow. His only “liberty” is to omit the subsequent phrases about mourning—an omission explicable by narrative economy, not by embarrassment, since he has just narrated the Beloved Disciple’s own seeing and testifying at the cross (19:34–35). The purpose of the quotation is forensic: the spear thrust fulfils Scripture, and therefore Jesus’ death is neither accidental nor reversible by Pilate’s bone-breaking, but the locus of divine design.

  Secondly, your assertion that no early Christian applies the mourning motif to Jesus overlooks at least five bodies of evidence. Revelation 1:7, which you yourself cite, expands Zechariah’s “they shall mourn” into πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς κόψονται ἐπ᾿ αὐτόν, an unmistakable globalisation of Zechariah 12:12–14 whose masculine pronoun again identifies the lamented with the pierced Son of Man. The Syriac Odes of Solomon 20.2–3 (late first or early second century) speak of the nations who “looked upon him and were astounded,” then “beat their breasts” over his crucifixion. Justin Dial. 52 and 118 explains Israel’s future repentance precisely in terms of Zech 12:10–12, “when they recognise him whom they pierced.” Tertullian, Adv. Jud. 14; Adv. Marcion 3.22, and Origen, C. Cels. 2.30, reiterate the same linkage. So do the earliest Latin liturgical intercessions for Good Friday, Popule meus, which combine Is 52–53 with Zech 12:10–11. Early Christian exegesis therefore embraces the mourning motif, not suppresses it.

  Thirdly, the claim that the masculine pronominal suffixes can—or should—be treated as neuter misunderstands Hebrew morpho-syntax. Classical Hebrew has no neuter noun class, but its pronominal system marks gender, and a masculine singular suffix invariably expects a personal (or at minimum gendered) antecedent. Where an abstract or collective is intended, the language can—and frequently does—use a feminine singular (e.g., Ps 35:17 נַפְשִׁי “my life/being” with f.sg. verbs) or a plural. Zechariah’s repeated עָלָיו and עָלָיו יתְמָרַרָה, together with the demonstrative הַהוּא applied to an individual clan head in v. 12, cannot be made neuter without special pleading. The collective reinterpretations in the Targum and later midrashim arise precisely because the grammar would not permit the text to remain as-is once the idea of YHWH’s being pierced became theologically intolerable.

  Fourthly, the analogy with Ezekiel 6:9 reinforces rather than relativises Zechariah’s anthropopathism. Ezekiel’s God says נִשְׁבַּרְתִּי, “I was broken,” a metaphorical pathos which scribes indeed softened. Zechariah pushes the idiom further: from broken heart to pierced body. The intensification is deliberate—note the parallel in 13:7 where YHWH commands, “Strike the shepherd”—and coheres with post-exilic prophetic reflection on vicarious suffering (Isa 53). It does not surprise that some strands of Second-Temple Judaism responded by positing a shaliaḥ (agent) who suffers, whether the corporate Israel, a new Josiah, or a messiah ben-Joseph. Such developments testify to the perceived necessity of relocating the blow while preserving the sanctity of the text.

  Fifthly, it is an over-statement to say NT authors “removed ambiguity” simply by “assuming” Jesus and YHWH are one. Rather, they exploited the ambiguity already inscribed: the speaker is YHWH, yet the grammar anticipates a third-person sufferer. John’s high-priestly prayer (17:5) and the Apocalypse (22:1–4) articulate that tension in overt dyadic terms: the Son shares glory with the Father yet is distinguishable from Him. That is proto-Nicene rather than post-biblical.

  Finally, the wider canonical pattern strengthens rather than weakens a trinitarian construal. Isaiah envisages a Servant “wounded for our transgressions” (53:5) whose exaltation prompts kings to shut their mouths; Zechariah speaks of a figure through whom YHWH himself is struck and for whom the land will weep; Daniel presents a human-like figure enthroned with the Ancient of Days; the Psalter celebrates the king whom nations must kiss lest he be angry (Ps 2:12 MT/LXX). The New Testament does not invent a two-stage messiah; it recognises in Jesus of Nazareth the convergence of these trajectories—suffering Davidic shepherd, vindicated Son of Man, and divine Lord.

  In short, the rhetorical awkwardness of Zechariah 12:10 is the very device by which the prophet projects a mystery that neither pre-Christian Judaism nor post-biblical criticism can finally resolve without recourse to a multiplicity within the one God. Early Christian writers did not misread the verse; they followed its own sign-posts to the crucified-and-glorified Jesus, in whom the Lord of hosts is both pierced and the giver of the Spirit of supplication.