"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for denying
the deity of the Son, Jesus Christ, insisting that He is a created being (identified with the archangel Michael). However, a deeper and arguably more
fundamental question arises: does their conception of God the Father – whom
they call “Jehovah” – align with the classical understanding of divine nature
in historic Christian theology? This treatise argues that the Watchtower
Society’s theology presents a profoundly deficient view of God, one that
is anthropomorphic, finite, and even materialistic in character. The “Jehovah”
of Watchtower theology is essentially a superhuman deity bound by time and
space, who conflates “spirit” with “energy” and possesses only selective
foreknowledge of future events. In many respects, this conception parallels
the controversial theological models of open theism and process
theology, which depict God as mutable and limited. By contrast, classical
Thomistic theism – rooted in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the
broader Christian tradition – offers a robust and coherent understanding of God
as actus purus (pure actuality), ipsum esse subsistens (Being
itself), who is infinite, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
In the discussion that follows, we will
critically examine the Watchtower’s doctrine of God. Key areas of focus include
the anthropomorphic limitations the Watchtower ascribes to God (such as
a localized “spirit body”), the conflation of spirit and energy in their
metaphysics, their teaching of selective divine foreknowledge (and its
affinity with open theism), and their denial of God’s omniscience and omnipresence.
We will contrast these ideas with the classical attributes of God as understood
in Thomistic and orthodox Christian theology. In doing so, the philosophical
and theological errors in the Watchtower’s theism will become evident,
highlighting why it is deficient when measured against the standard of
the transcendent God of Christianity. The implications of the Watchtower’s
finite God – for issues like divine providence, worship, and the reliability of
God’s promises – will also be explored, reinforcing the conclusion that the
classical vision of God is vastly superior and more faithful to Scripture and
reason.
The Watchtower’s Anthropomorphic and Finite God
Spatial and Temporal Limitations of “Jehovah”
From its earliest publications, the Watchtower
Bible and Tract Society (WBTS) has portrayed God in strikingly anthropomorphic
terms. Rather than affirming the omnipresence of the Creator, the Watchtower
has historically taught that God has a specific location in the universe.
Charles Taze Russell and his successors speculated that God’s throne resides
within the physical cosmos, notably identifying the Pleiades star cluster
as the divine abode. For example, one early Watchtower-era publication stated: “one
of the stars of that group is the dwelling-place of Jehovah and the place of
the highest heavens. ... the Pleiades is the place of the eternal throne of
God” (J. F. Rutherford, Reconciliation, 1928, p. 14). This idea was
reiterated in the Golden Age magazine, which in 1924 echoed the view
that “in the region of the Pleiades is located the throne of Jehovah God”
(The Golden Age, Sept. 10, 1924, pp. 793–794). The Pleiades theory
exemplifies the Watchtower’s tendency to depict God as a spatially localized
being – essentially as an extraordinarily powerful extraterrestrial
intelligence dwelling at a particular spot in the cosmos.
Although the Pleiades speculation was
officially abandoned in 1953 (the Society cautioned that dwelling on the
Pleiades as God’s throne could lead to improper veneration of that star cluster
– The Watchtower, Nov. 15, 1953, p. 703), the underlying concept of a
localized God persisted. The Watchtower still insists that Jehovah “has a
place where he resides”, possessing a form or body (albeit a “spirit body”)
that cannot be everywhere at once. “God, being an individual, a
Person with a spirit body, has a place where he resides, and so he could not be
at any other place at the same time” (The Watchtower, Feb. 15, 1981,
p. 6). In the Watchtower’s theology, God is not omnipresent; He is an embodied
person who lives in heaven (conceived as a literal place) and “is not
diffused everywhere throughout the universe” (Aid to Bible Understanding,
1971, p. 665). This implicitly limits God to one location at a time,
much like a physical being. Indeed, the WBTS literature even went so far as to
describe God in quasi-physical terms – for instance, teaching that God has a
personal form that includes bodily features. One early article absurdly mused
that Jehovah wears clothes in heaven (The Golden Age, Sept. 8,
1926, p. 777), a notion more at home in primitive mythology than in refined
theology. Such statements reveal the almost childishly anthropomorphic
conception of God’s nature within the Watchtower mindset.
Hand-in-hand with spatial limitation comes temporal
limitation in the Watchtower’s view of God. Jehovah is described as
existing “from everlasting to everlasting”, but the Society interprets
this to mean an infinite duration of time rather than an atemporal
eternity. In other words, they depict God as a being who has existed for
limitless ages within time, rather than one who transcends time
altogether. God’s experience is seen as sequential; He can change, react,
and even learn new information as events unfold. Watchtower publications
often take scriptural anthropomorphisms at face value, suggesting that God
literally “felt regret” or “was surprised” by outcomes (citing
verses like Genesis 6:6 or 22:12). For example, the Society taught that God did
not originally know that Adam and Eve would sin – their transgression
supposedly “came as a surprise” to Him, and only after their fall
did He set in motion the plan of redemption (The Watchtower, Jan. 15,
1964, p. 52). Jehovah’s Witnesses have thus embraced a concept of God that
includes change and passivity: God reacts to the creation,
acquires knowledge of events in time, and even alters His stated intentions
under certain circumstances (such as “repenting” from planned actions as in
Exodus 32:14).
This mutable, reactive God of the Watchtower
bears a marked resemblance to the deity of process theology, a modern
heretical framework in which God is intrinsically bound to the world’s process
and undergoes growth and change along with it. It also parallels the tenets of open
theism, which rejects classical omniscience and teaches that God discovers
aspects of the future as they happen. The Watchtower’s God exists in a timeline,
looking ahead and making plans, but without a comprehensive decree that fixes
all future events. He can be “affected” by what creatures do,
experiencing emotional changes and adapting His strategies. In short, the
Watchtower presents a God who, while far greater than any man, is still
essentially anthropomorphic – a deity with a superhuman body, limited
location, and a sequential mode of knowing. This conception stands
in stark contrast to the transcendent, immutable God affirmed by classical
Christianity.
An illustration of the Watchtower’s
anthropomorphic view is their explanation of how God communicates and acts at a
distance. Since Jehovah is not omnipresent, the Society teaches that He employs
created spirit messengers (angels) to carry out His will and relay
information. Notably, early Watchtower literature claimed that it takes time
for angels to travel from God’s throne to earth. One article speculated
that messages from God could be delayed as angels traverse the vast expanse of
space – implying that even God must wait for news to arrive (The Golden Age,
Aug. 15, 1925, p. 755). Such a scenario is virtually indistinguishable from the
limitations of the gods in ancient mythologies (who lived in the sky and sent
messengers like Hermes or Iris to do their bidding). The need for God to rely
on couriers underscores the finite, non-ubiquitous nature of the
Watchtower’s deity. Rather than God being immediately present to all creation
(as in Psalm 139:7–10), He is essentially a remote being, and only His
power or influence (conceived almost like a radio signal or electric current
called holy spirit) reaches everywhere, not His own self.
In sum, the Watchtower’s portrayal of Jehovah
is that of a finite, localized, and mutable heavenly Father. While they
ascribe great power and longevity to Him, they stop short of recognizing Him as
the infinite and omnipresent Reality that classical theism upholds. The
implications of such a view are significant. A God who is confined to a place
and time, who learns and adapts, is far removed from the sovereign
Lord of Scripture who declares “I am God, and there is none like Me,
declaring the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:9–10). As we will see,
this limited God cannot guarantee the unfailing accomplishment of His will, and
his promises become probabilistic. First, however, we turn to another serious
error in Watchtower theology: the confusion of “spirit” with “energy” that
further reduces their God to something quasi-material.
Conflation of “Spirit” with “Energy”
A critical aspect of the Watchtower’s deficient
theism is its materialistic conception of spirit. In classical Christian
philosophy, a fundamental distinction is drawn between material reality
(which is extended in space, made of matter/energy, and subject to change) and spiritual
reality (which is immaterial, not located in space, and not composed of
divisible parts). God, as well as angels and souls, belong to the order of
spirit, not matter. The Watchtower, however, blurs this distinction by
treating “spirit” almost as a subtle form of matter or energy.
Watchtower literature frequently describes
God’s nature as spirit in quantitative, physical terms. A particularly
telling example appears in a doctrinal article which asserted: “Jehovah has
vast reserves of dynamic energy” that He used in creating the universe (The
Watchtower, Feb. 1, 1992, p. 9). This language – “vast dynamic energy
reserves” – implies that God’s power is a measurable reservoir that can
be depleted or expended, much like a fuel tank. Creation, in this view, was not
creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing by the sheer fiat of God’s
will), but rather the expansion or deployment of pre-existing energy
from God’s own being. The Insight on the Scriptures reference work (the
successor to Aid to Bible Understanding) explicitly equates spirit with energic
force, saying that God’s spirit is a kind of invisible active force
that can be likened to electricity. Even God’s own person is described as
consisting of “spirit,” which the Watchtower interprets as an actual substance
or matter (albeit invisible).
By conflating spirit with energy or matter, the
Watchtower reduces God to the level of a creature – a being who exists
within the same ontological continuum as the physical universe. In effect, they
imagine God as part of the furniture of the cosmos: enormously powerful
and ancient, yes, but ultimately a thing among things, composed of
something, existing somewhere, and bound by the same sort of physical realities
(like space, time, and energy) that constrain everything else. This is a
radically unbiblical and philosophically naive view of God. In Scripture, God
is “Spirit” (John 4:24), meaning immaterial and of a higher order
of existence than creation. He is “the High and Lofty One who inhabits
eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), not one who inhabits a region of space.
Thomistic metaphysics helps clarify the error
here. Matter (and energy, which modern physics shows to be interchangeable with
matter) is the principle of potentiality in things – it is what can
change, be extended, be divided, and be acted upon. Spirit, by contrast, is a
principle of actuality not limited by matter – it cannot be divided or
quantified, and it isn’t bound by spatial dimensions. God, as pure spirit, is utterly
simple (having no parts) and immutable. The Watchtower’s notion of a
“spirit body” composed of energy is self-contradictory: a body made of
energy is basically a material entity, since it has parts and
occupies space (even if those “parts” are energy quanta or whatnot). The
Society has essentially constructed a view of God akin to a science-fiction
“energy being” – like a powerful alien composed of electromagnetic energy who
can take form and expend power. This is miles away from the transcendent Spirit
of historic Christianity.
One might trace this confusion to the
Watchtower’s reliance on human reason unaided by sound philosophy, and
perhaps to occult influence. Notably, the Watchtower in the past
endorsed (and even translated) the works of Johannes Greber, a spiritist whose
descriptions of God were shaped by occult spirit communications. Greber’s book Communication
with the Spirit World of God described God as “a spirit personality with
a form” and suggested that God’s knowledge was acquired through a chain of
intermediary spirits (Greber, 1932, pp. 260–265). This eerily resembles the
Watchtower’s teaching that God has a spirit form and uses angels to gather
information. The convergence of Watchtower doctrine with occult ideas is
troubling, and it underscores how far afield from classical theism the
Society has strayed. Instead of recognizing spirit as supramaterial, the
Watchtower effectively dumbs down the divine to something
quasi-physical.
By treating “spirit” as essentially energy, the
WBTS also stumbles into other theological problems. For instance, if God’s
creative act was simply using up some of His “energy reserves” to fashion the
universe, this implies a finite limit to what God can do – energy, after
all, is a finite quantity in any system. It also implies pantheism or
emanationism, since creation would consist of God’s own substance (energy)
in another form, rather than being totally distinct from God. The Society would
deny pantheism, but its terminology blurs the Creator/creature distinction
dangerously. Classical Christian doctrine safeguards the distinction: God’s act
of creation is ex nihilo, not from preexisting material and certainly
not from God’s own essence. An omnipotent deity does not lose “energy” when
creating; He simply wills things into being and they exist, without any
depletion of His power. The Watchtower’s language, however, portrays God almost
as a cosmic engineer who burns divine calories to get things done,
thereby lowering God to the level of a creature constrained by resources.
To sum up, the Watchtower’s conflation of
spirit with energy contributes to a materialized and debased concept of God.
Instead of the pure, infinite Spirit upholding all reality, their Jehovah is
essentially a kind of super-powerful alien made of a refined form of
matter. This not only conflicts with Scripture (“God is light, and in Him is
no darkness at all” – 1 John 1:5 – indicating God’s perfection and
immaterial purity), but it also fails the test of philosophical coherence. A
being composed of parts (even energy parts) would need a composer; it would be
a contingent being, not the ultimate ground of being. The Thomistic
vision, on the other hand, understands God as ipsum esse – the fullness
of Being Itself, qualitatively distinct from any composite or material entity.
The deficiencies in the Watchtower’s view become even more apparent when we
examine how they handle divine knowledge and foreknowledge, to which we turn
next.
“Selective Foreknowledge”: The Watchtower’s
Open Theism
One of the most striking (and troubling)
doctrines promoted by Jehovah’s Witnesses is the idea of selective
foreknowledge. According to the Watchtower, God is able to know all
future events, but He chooses not to know certain things that free moral
agents will do. In other words, Jehovah self-limits His omniscience in
order to allow creatures absolute freedom of choice. This teaching is a
cornerstone of Watchtower theodicy – it is used, for example, to explain the
presence of evil (God supposedly did not foreknow Adam’s sin, so He did not
prevent it, giving Adam a genuine chance to exercise free will). The Society’s Aid
to Bible Understanding reference book stated this doctrine clearly: “Selective
foreknowledge means that God could choose not to foreknow (indiscriminately)
all the future acts of his creatures.” (Aid to Bible Understanding, 1971,
p. 595). Similarly, Insight on the Scriptures explains that Jehovah, out
of respect for our free will and motivated by love, decided not to predetermine
or even foreknow humanity’s fall into sin (Insight on the Scriptures, vol. 1,
p. 852–853).
This concept of selective foreknowledge aligns
almost exactly with open theism, a theological position developed by
some modern Protestant thinkers (though the Watchtower arrived at it
independently earlier). Open theism contends that in order for human freedom to
be meaningful, the future must be partly “open” even to God – meaning God knows
all possibilities but not all actual future choices, because those choices
aren’t decided until free beings make them. The Watchtower’s Jehovah, in like
manner, is portrayed as having opted not to peer into the future decisions
of His creatures. The result is a God who often discovers things as they
happen. Watchtower articles have asserted, for instance, that Jehovah “was
disappointed” by how some of his angelic sons behaved (turning wicked
during Noah’s time), implying He didn’t fully anticipate it; or that Jehovah “came
to know” Abraham’s loyalty only after Abraham raised the knife to sacrifice
Isaac, as if that were new information to God (see their interpretation of
Genesis 22:12).
The logical and theological problems with this
view are manifold. Firstly, logic: As critics have pointed out, the
notion of “choosing not to know” presupposes an already existent knowledge. The
Christian apologist Robert Morey put it succinctly: “For God to refrain from
knowing something, He would first have to know that thing in order to decide
not to know it” (Morey, Battle of the Gods, 1989, p. 68). In other
words, the idea is self-defeating – a truly ignorant God wouldn’t know what
He’s missing, and an omniscient God cannot unknow what He by nature
knows. The Watchtower’s explanation is that God’s perfect power gives Him the ability
to limit or compartmentalize His own knowledge, but this runs into
paradoxes (can God perform the intellectual equivalent of plugging His ears and
saying “I choose not to hear that”?).
Secondly, biblical evidence overwhelmingly
affirms God’s complete foreknowledge. Jehovah’s Witnesses appeal to verses
like Genesis 6:6 (“Jehovah regretted that He had made men on the earth”) or
Genesis 22:12 (“Now I know that you fear God”) to support their view. But these
verses, understood in context and alongside the whole counsel of Scripture, are
clearly anthropomorphic – they describe God’s interaction in human terms, not
literal deficiencies in God’s knowledge. In contrast, many scriptures
explicitly teach that nothing is hidden from God’s sight (Hebrews 4:13),
that He “knows all things” (1 John 3:20), and that He declares “the end
from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). The Watchtower even concedes that God
accurately foretells many specific events – their entire eschatology is built
on the premise that Jehovah has infallible prophetic knowledge. It is
inconsistent to assert God precisely foretold the rise and fall of empires (as
in the book of Daniel) but somehow did not know the pivotal event of Adam’s
fall until after it happened. The Society tries to resolve this by saying God
foreknows whatever He chooses to and deliberately avoids foreknowing
other things. Yet this selective approach finds no support in Scripture
– one searches the Bible in vain for a statement like “God has deliberately not
foreseen certain choices of man.” This appears to be an ad hoc solution to a
theological conundrum (the problem of evil and free will), rather than a
revealed truth.
The practical implications of selective
foreknowledge are unsettling. If God’s knowledge is contingent and
probabilistic, then God could, in theory, be surprised by outcomes.
The Watchtower assures believers that Jehovah’s wisdom is so great He can
anticipate possibilities better than anyone; He is likened to a master chess
player who can foresee many moves ahead. But “foreseeing many moves” is not the
same as guaranteeing a checkmate. In fact, former Jehovah’s Witness
Duane Magnani humorously dubbed the Watchtower’s God “the Heavenly
Weatherman”, because He predicts the future with impressive (but not
absolute) accuracy, much as a skilled meteorologist predicts weather patterns
(Magnani, The Heavenly Weatherman, 1987, pp. 197–287). Yet even the best
weatherman can be wrong. If Jehovah is in the position of a cosmic
prognosticator rather than the author of history, can His promises be trusted
unconditionally? For example, Jehovah promises in Watchtower teaching that a
paradise earth will soon be reality and that He will wipe out evil. But if
human freedom is truly indeterminate to God, what if some free agents (say,
future “perfect” humans in paradise or an unforeseen new Satan) choose
rebellion again? Could not the saga of sin repeat itself, surprising God once
more? The Watchtower’s answer might be that God now chooses to foresee
that such will not happen – but one begins to see the arbitrary nature of this
doctrine.
By contrast, classical theism (and indeed the
Bible itself) presents divine foreknowledge as absolute yet mysteriously
compatible with human freedom. God’s knowledge of future free acts does not cause
those acts in a coercive way (from our time-bound perspective we choose
freely), but if God is eternal (outside time), then all
moments of time are equally present to Him in one eternal now. Thus, God
doesn’t foresee in the sense of looking down the corridors of time;
rather, He simply sees reality – all of it – in His eternal vision. From
our vantage, events are future; from God’s vantage, all events – past, present,
future – are immediately before Him. He comprehends our free acts as part of
His single act of knowing and willing. The Watchtower misses this profound view
because it insists on picturing God as a temporal being who has to
deliberately “decide” whether or not to look at future time. In doing so, they
diminish God’s sovereignty and undermine the very basis of prophecy and
providence.
It is noteworthy that the Watchtower’s stance
on foreknowledge seems driven more by philosophical bias (a commitment
to libertarian free will at all costs) than by exegesis. In their aversion to
what they see as “predestinarian” implications of God’s complete foreknowledge,
they have swung to an extreme that creates a limited God. This resembles
the error of ancient pagans who could conceive of powerful gods, but not an
all-knowing one – in mythology, gods often are deceived or taken by surprise.
The God of the Bible, however, issues challenges like: “Who then is like Me?
… Let them declare to them the things that are coming and that will happen”
(Isaiah 44:7). God’s foreknowledge is a hallmark of His true Deity, separating
Him from false gods. By attributing to Jehovah ignorance of even some future
events, the Watchtower inadvertently demotes Him to something less than
fully God in the classical sense. This is a grave theological deficiency.
In summary, the Watchtower’s doctrine of
selective foreknowledge thrusts it into alignment with open theism, a
position widely considered heterodox in Christian theology. It portrays God as not
truly omniscient, introduces logical paradox into His knowledge, and sows
doubt about the certainty of His purposes. We will later contrast this with the
Thomistic understanding of how God’s omniscience and human freedom coexist. But
before that, we should note another parallel concept in Watchtower theology:
the resemblance of their mutable, limited God to the God of process theology,
as mentioned earlier.
Parallels with Process Theology and Pagan Myth
It has been observed by religious scholars that
the Jehovah’s Witnesses conception of God shares similarities not only with
open theism but also with process theology (a 20th-century theology
influenced by Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy). Process theology asserts
that God is in some respects changeable, growing in knowledge and
affected by temporal events – God has a dual aspect, one eternal and
unchanging aspect and another that is mutable and in process. While the
Watchtower would reject many tenets of process philosophy, it effectively
embraces the idea of a mutable God by insisting that God experiences
sequences of before and after (e.g., “God was sorry that…” or “God
became happy that…”). The God of the Watchtower learns, reacts, and even
changes His mind (they often cite examples like Jonah’s prophecy against
Nineveh which God revoked when Nineveh repented, as evidence that God’s
purposes are flexible).
In Watchtower teaching, Jehovah’s attributes
such as love and justice can motivate Him to adjust His dealings based on new
circumstances. This is a sort of “dipolar” God concept: His character is
consistent, but His actions and knowledge can vary with the flow of
history. This is quite akin to process thought, in which God’s knowledge is
said to increase as new events occur and God’s experience of the world deepens.
While the Society would not frame it as “God evolving,” the functional picture
is similar: a God who is co-temporal with creation and undergoes a kind of
history alongside creation. This is dramatically different from the immutable,
impassible God of classical theism, who dwells in eternity and for whom
there is no change or shadow of turning (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).
Furthermore, one cannot help but notice that
the Watchtower’s God has more in common with pagan gods than with the
God of historic Christian orthodoxy. Consider the characteristics of many
ancient Near Eastern deities or Greco-Roman gods: they were thought of as
superhuman beings residing at specific locations (e.g., on Mount Olympus or in
a temple), having humanoid forms, limited power (though greater than humans),
and not knowing everything (they could be deceived or surprised). They often
had to gather information (e.g., Zeus might send Hermes to find out something)
and could be thwarted or change plans. The Watchtower’s description of Jehovah
is arguably a modern, monotheistic re-casting of that kind of finite deity
concept. Indeed, J.F. Rutherford (the early Watchtower president)
explicitly ridiculed the traditional Christian God as “formless and bodiless,”
favoring instead a God who could be more concretely imagined. The irony is that
by fleeing from what he saw as an abstract deity, Rutherford and the Watchtower
fell into an opposite extreme – a God all too creature-like and
limited.
Modern cult researchers and Christian
apologists have sometimes connected the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ theology to the “ancient
astronaut” ideas that pervade some new religious movements. William J.
Alnor, in UFOs in the New Age (1992), documents how some new age
channeled messages claim that the biblical God is actually an extraterrestrial
from the Pleiades (a curious convergence with early Watchtower Pleiades
teachings). While Jehovah’s Witnesses do not claim “Jehovah is an alien from
space” in those terms, their theology practically describes Him as an
extraterrestrial life-form (just one that is the highest and uncreated). Ken
Raines, a researcher on Watchtower history, noted that during the Rutherford
era, Jehovah was essentially portrayed as “a space-bound humanoid” –
residing in the star cluster, driving a celestial chariot if you will,
dispatching angels across the cosmos (Ken Raines, “Jehovah: Ancient Astronaut
from the Pleiades?”, 2006). Raines even jested that the Watchtower’s God and
angels scenario “sounds more like Erich von Däniken’s gods from outer space
than the Alpha and Omega of Scripture” (von Däniken being the proponent of
the theory that gods were aliens). This is a provocative comparison, but it
underscores the theological poverty of a system that brings God down to
the creaturely level.
Having surveyed the major features of the
Watchtower’s doctrine of God – anthropomorphism, materialized spirit, selective
foreknowledge, mutability – we can already see that it diverges sharply from
the mainstream Christian conception of a maximally great Being. To further
highlight the contrast, we will now turn to Thomistic theism, which
provides a classical model for understanding God’s nature. In examining the
Thomistic attributes of God, the deficiencies of the Watchtower’s theism
will become even more apparent by comparison.
Thomistic Theism: God as Actus Purus
(Pure Act)
In Catholic and broader Christian philosophical
theology, the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) remain a pinnacle of
clarity on the doctrine of God. Aquinas synthesized biblical revelation with
the sound philosophical insights of Plato and Aristotle, yielding a conception
of God that has withstood centuries of scrutiny. Thomistic theism can serve as
a corrective lens through which to view the Watchtower’s claims. Where
the Watchtower portrays a God who is finite and changeable, Thomism proclaims a
God who is infinite and immutable. Where the Watchtower sees God as a
being within the universe (albeit the highest one), Thomism understands
God as absolutely transcendent, the creator of even space and time.
Key Thomistic principles about God include His aseity, simplicity, eternity,
immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Let us examine
these and contrast them with the Watchtower’s view:
God’s Aseity and Simplicity: Ipsum Esse
Subsistens
Aseity means that God exists in and of Himself,
depending on nothing else. This is encapsulated in God’s declaration “I AM
WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14) – God is the self-existent One. The Watchtower
would agree that God is uncreated and the source of life. However, their
theology does not fully appreciate the implications of aseity because they
still envision God as composed of “something” (even if it’s spirit substance)
and existing in a place. Thomistic aseity goes hand-in-hand with the
doctrine of divine simplicity, which Aquinas articulates: God is not
just another being, He is Being Itself (Latin: ipsum esse subsistens).
God’s essence is existence. In created things, we can distinguish what a
thing is (its essence) from the fact that it is (its act of existence). But in
God, there is no composition of essence and existence – they are one and the
same. Therefore, God is not composed of parts, properties, or any kind of
constituents; if He were, those parts would be more fundamental than He, and
He’d depend on them, which violates aseity.
In Thomistic thought, all the attributes of God
(omniscience, will, power, goodness, etc.) are ultimately identical with
God’s simple essence. We speak of them as different attributes from our
finite perspective, but in God they are one. “God is whatever He has”,
as Augustine said; thus God doesn’t merely have knowledge or have
power – He is knowledge, He is power, in the sense that His
singular simple being includes these perfections intrinsically. This contrasts
strongly with the Watchtower’s quasi-anthropomorphic picture where God has
separate qualities that could, theoretically, be segmented or modulated (like
deciding to use knowledge here but not there). The Watchtower even entertains
the idea that love is God’s paramount attribute, sometimes played against
justice, etc., as if these were separable components of His psychology.
Classical theism instead insists that God’s attributes are all perfectly
harmonious expressions of his one essence.
Because God is simple and self-existent, He is
absolutely immutable (unchangeable). Change implies a transition from
potential to actual, or the gain/loss of some attribute; but a simple, pure act
has no potential to gain or lose anything – it simply is all that it is,
infinitely. Scripture echoes this: “I, Jehovah, do not change” (Malachi
3:6). The Watchtower tries to circumvent this by suggesting God’s principles
don’t change but His dealings can, yet this is only a semantic half-measure.
Thomism maintains that in God Himself there is literally no change
– what changes is the created effects or relations as they experience God
differently. For instance, when a sinner becomes a saint, God is not the one
who changed; the person changed in relation to the unchanging goodness of God.
This solves the biblical language of God “repenting” or “becoming angry”
without attributing real internal changes to God’s being. Such language is
understood as analogical or figurative, describing changes in God’s
actions toward us or changes in our standing before God, not
changes in God’s inner state. Jehovah’s Witnesses, lacking this nuance, end up
with a God who really changes in knowledge or mood, which is
philosophically problematic. A changing God is inevitably a dependent
God – dependent on the world to be this way or that at different times.
God’s Eternity and Omnipresence (Transcendence
of Space-Time)
Another vital Thomistic (and broadly classical)
doctrine is God’s eternity. Eternity, in the theological sense, does not
just mean “lasting forever”; it means outside of time altogether.
Aquinas defines eternity as “the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession
of interminable life.” God’s life is not stretched out in a series of
moments – He does not “live through” a timeline as we do. Rather, He is
altogether beyond the flow of time. All times are present to Him at once. This
concept far exceeds the Watchtower’s view of God as simply extremely ancient
and everlasting within time. If God truly created all things, that must
include time itself (since time is a feature of the created, physical
universe, per modern cosmology and implied in Genesis 1: “in the beginning…”).
A temporal deity cannot be the creator of time; he would be constrained by a
dimension he didn’t originate. Classical theism rightly positions God as the Lord
of time who can step into time (as in the Incarnation) but whose proper
state is timeless.
The omnipresence of God flows from His
transcendence of space. God is not a being with a size or location
at all. Rather, in a metaphysical sense, God is present to every location
because every creature is completely dependent on God’s creative act at
every moment. In Aquinas’s view, God is in all things by essence, presence,
and power. By essence, meaning everything is ontologically sustained
by God’s being (not that things are part of God, but they exist participating
in the existence God grants). By presence, meaning God’s knowledge and
attention encompasses all places (nothing escapes His sight). By power,
meaning His power extends everywhere to uphold and govern. Importantly, God’s
omnipresence is not an instance of God “stretching out” like an ether.
God is fully present in Los Angeles and fully present in Tokyo at the same
time, not as a part here and a part there, but wholly (because God has no
parts). This is beyond our full comprehension, but it underscores that God’s
mode of existence is utterly unlike a physical body.
The Watchtower’s rejection of omnipresence
(because they imagine it would mean God has to be a spirit gas diffused in
space) stems from picturing God in creaturely categories. Thomism warns
against such imagination-driven theology. We do not apprehend God by picturing
a larger and larger entity; we apprehend Him by abstracting and understanding being
itself and its source. God, as infinite spirit, can be everywhere precisely
because He is not a localized thing. Psalm 139 beautifully conveys this
omnipresence: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? … If I ascend to heaven, You
are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” The
Watchtower might answer, “God is in heaven, but His spirit (active force) can
reach Sheol.” The classical reply is that God’s own being and knowledge are
directly in Sheol and everywhere else, sustaining it, not through a
long-distance medium, but by ontological necessity – if God withdrew His
sustaining will, the place would cease to exist.
God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence
In Thomistic theism, God’s knowledge
(omniscience) and power (omnipotence) are also understood in a distinctive way
that magnifies God far above the Watchtower’s conception.
Omniscience: God knows all things by knowing Himself.
Because God is the cause of all that exists, and because He is outside time,
God’s knowledge is not discursive (reasoning step by step) nor derived from
things outside Himself. Rather, God eternally knows His own essence perfectly,
and in knowing Himself, He knows every way in which His power could be imitated
or participated in by creatures. This means God knows not only all actual
things, but all possible things – every event that could happen
under every hypothetical scenario (this is sometimes called God’s knowledge of
“middle knowledge” or conditional futures in later theology). Aquinas explains
that God’s knowledge is simultaneous, not successive – one eternal act
of intellect that comprehends all truth (Summa Theologiae I, q.14, a.7). This
sublime view stands in stark contrast to the Watchtower’s limited God, who
apparently engages in selective ignorance. The idea of God learning is
anathema in classical theism: “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or
as His counselor has taught Him?” (Isaiah 40:13). The rhetorical answer is
no one, because God has never lacked any knowledge to be taught. The
dynamic of God “finding out” or “realizing” something is simply not applicable
to the true God. It only appears so when scripture accommodates our
perspective; for instance, when God “tests” someone to manifest their
qualities, the test is for their sake or for the sake of others, not
because God literally needed to find something out (cf. John 2:24–25, which
says Jesus “knew what was in man” and had no need to be told anything about
human hearts).
Omnipotence: The Watchtower certainly calls God “Almighty,”
but their theological framework again diminishes this attribute. As noted,
picturing God’s power as a stored energy reserve is a very limiting idea.
Classical theism maintains that God’s power is infinite, meaning there
is no effect possible that God cannot produce, unless it’s a logical
contradiction or against His nature (for example, God cannot lie, because lying
is a deficiency and God is perfect truth). God’s omnipotence is such that He
creates from nothing and is not taxed by any exertion. Jeremiah 32:17 exclaims,
“Nothing is too difficult for You.” For God, causing a million galaxies
or moving a mountain is no harder than causing a single atom – He wills
it, and it is. Since God is not a material force, His power is not expended by
use. A Thomist would cringe at the notion of God having a finite “amount” of
power. Rather, God is the perpetual source of all the power that exists in
creation; all creaturely power is just a participation in His.
This means, importantly, that God’s power is
not in competition with creaturely power. This is an area where the
Watchtower’s misunderstanding of sovereignty versus freedom leads them to open
theism. In classical theism, God can sovereignly will an event and a creature
can freely will it, without conflict, because God’s causality works at a higher
ontological level (primary cause) enabling and encompassing the creature’s
causality (secondary cause). God’s omnipotent providence can ensure His plan
while not violating the nature of the creaturely causes He has ordained
(including free human choices). The net effect is that God’s plan is never in
jeopardy; His omnipotence extends to the direction of history itself, not by
micromanaging every choice, but by infallibly integrating every choice
(foreknown infallibly) into His overarching purpose (Romans 8:28, Ephesians
1:11). The Watchtower’s God, lacking full foreknowledge, cannot guarantee
such sovereignty – hence their theology often places the completion of God’s
purpose contingent on what humans decide (for example, their Armageddon timing
doctrines have historically shifted when expected human responses or dates
didn’t pan out).
Summary Comparison
To crystallize the differences, we can briefly
compare the Watchtower’s theism and Thomistic theism side by side on key
attributes:
- Being
and Nature: Watchtower:
God is a being, an individual person with a spirit body, composed
of spirit “energy,” dwelling in one location in the spirit realm. He is
the highest being but part of the continuum of reality. Thomism:
God is Being Itself, utterly simple and immaterial, the source of
all existence. He has no body, no composition, and is ontologically
separate from creation (transcendent).
- Omnipresence: Watchtower: Denied in
the proper sense. God’s power or influence can reach everywhere
(via "holy spirit" as a force), but God’s person itself is localized in heaven. He
is not personally present in multiple places at once. Thomism:
Strongly affirmed. God is fully present to every place and every creature,
not as a localized entity but as the sustainer. There is nowhere and no
moment from which God is absent.
- Eternity
(Relation to Time): Watchtower: God is eternally existent through time,
but time is the duration of His being. He experiences sequence
(before/after). He had an existence “before” creation but still in a
temporal sense of duration (they sometimes use “eternity” to mean endless
time). Thomism: God is completely outside time; time began
with creation. God’s life is a single eternal now. All times are present
to Him at once. Thus, “foreknowledge” is a human way of speaking; God
simply knows, eternally.
- Omniscience: Watchtower: God is
all-knowing in capacity, but in practice withholds His knowledge of
some future free acts (“selective foreknowledge”). He learns certain
things as they occur. His knowledge is great but can be described as “progressive”
in some respects (He can express regret, change stated outcomes based on
new developments). Thomism: God’s knowledge is complete and
unchanging. There is no potential in God’s knowledge (He never
comes to know something new). What appears as God changing His mind is
from our temporal view only. All events and possibilities are comprehended
in the single act of God’s self-knowledge.
- Omnipotence: Watchtower: God is
almighty but works mainly through His impersonal active force. Creation
was accomplished by using “dynamic energy.” His power, though immense, is
conceptually finite (bounded by the amount of energy and the decision of
how to use it). He cannot do what is against logical possibility (which is
true in classical view as well), but moreover Watchtower implies certain
things God chooses not to do to respect creaturely freedom (thus will
not or cannot intervene in certain ways, limiting His exercise
of power). Thomism: God’s power is truly infinite. Creation
did not diminish God’s power one iota. He can do all things that are not
self-contradictory or against His nature. His will is always accomplished,
though it can allow subordinate freedoms. There is no external limit on
God’s power; only His wisdom and goodness “channel” it (He doesn’t do evil
or nonsense because omnipotence is not the power to do the logically
impossible).
- Immutability
and Emotions: Watchtower:
God has emotions in a literal sense (love, anger, sorrow) and can change
in how He feels or in His intentions in response to creaturely actions. He
is not impassible; they argue God’s impassibility would contradict
scriptures that show Him loving, getting angry, etc. They thus see God as
having a psychology somewhat analogous to human experience (though
perfectly controlled). Thomism: God is impassible – meaning
He cannot undergo emotional fluctuations or suffering due to an external
agent. God’s love and wrath in scripture are analogical, describing either
His benevolent will or His justice in action, not emotional tides. God is unchangeable
in His being and decrees. Immutability doesn’t mean God is inert; it means
He is so perfect that He does not change. Love in God is an eternal
willing of good, not a passion that comes and goes.
It becomes evident that the Watchtower’s God
is a being far smaller and more limited than the God of classical theism.
The differences are not in degree but in kind. We essentially have two
different concepts of God: one sees God as the highest creature-like entity
in a hierarchy, the other sees God as the transcendent ground of all reality.
Thomistic theism provides a coherent, exalted view that honors the mystery
of God’s infinity, whereas the Watchtower’s view almost evacuates the term
“God” of its classical meaning.
Philosophical and Theological Errors in the
Watchtower’s Doctrine
The deficiencies of the Watchtower’s theism are
not merely a matter of missing some abstract philosophical niceties; they
strike at the heart of what it means for God to be God. Here we will
highlight some overarching errors in the Watchtower conception and why they
matter:
- Failure
to Ground God’s Uniqueness: In Christian thought, God’s attributes of infinity, omniscience,
omnipotence, etc., are what set Him apart absolutely from creation. By
attributing finitude to God (whether spatial, cognitive, or temporal), the
Watchtower blurs the line between Creator and creature. Their God is
essentially on the same spectrum of being as angels and humans – differing
in magnitude, but not in fundamental type of existence. This raises the
classic question: Why then is there only one such god? If God is
just a very powerful being within the universe, one could conceive of
others or ask what power produced Him. The Watchtower dodges this by
affirming monotheism from Scripture, but it lacks a metaphysical
rationale for why only one God can exist. Classical theism, on the
other hand, shows that ipsum esse must be unique (you cannot have
two “infinites” or two Acts of Being Itself, as they would limit each
other). The Watchtower’s God does not clearly meet the criteria of the necessary
being in philosophical terms. He is everlasting and powerful, but not
obviously the source of all being in a radical sense (especially if His
creative act is reforming energy rather than true ex nihilo creation).
- Incoherent
View of Omniscience: The idea of selective foreknowledge introduces internal
inconsistency in God. If God is truly almighty and all-wise, His
deliberate ignorance is either impossible (He would automatically know
whatever is knowable) or it implies a lack in God’s beatitude (He is
willfully limiting a perfection). It also makes God’s knowledge contingent
on creaturely decisions, which subordinates God to time and history –
a metaphysical absurdity if God is the creator of time and history.
Essentially, the Watchtower’s God depends on the world to determine
what He knows, whereas in classical theism the world depends on God’s
knowledge to determine what it becomes. This is almost an inversion of the
proper Creator-creature relationship.
- Undermining
of Providence and Trust: A God who does not know the future exhaustively cannot give a
guarantee of how things will turn out except in the most general terms.
The Watchtower teaches that Jehovah chooses to know certain key
prophecies (like the Battle of Armageddon’s outcome), but once one allows
uncertainty into God’s knowledge, logically any detailed promise
could be subject to revision. The biblical assurance that “all things
work together for good to those who love God” (Rom 8:28) rests on
God’s sovereign orchestration of all events – something the Watchtower’s
God would struggle to ensure without full foreknowledge. This might
explain why Jehovah’s Witnesses have historically had to adjust their
expectations (numerous end-time dates and interpretations have failed),
because in a sense their theology expects God to adjust to circumstances.
It fosters a mindset of conditional confidence: “Jehovah will
deliver us… unless something unexpected necessitates a change.” In
contrast, the classical view of providence gives unshakable confidence in
God’s plan (Eph 1:11, Isa 14:24).
- Diminished
Worship: A God
who is not infinite and ultimately mysterious ends up being less
awe-inspiring. The Watchtower, in its effort to make God
understandable and approachable, has paradoxically made Him smaller
in the eyes of worshipers. Their worship tends to stress God’s deeds (like
creation, miracles) and His moral qualities, which are good, but there is
little sense of the mystical adoration that comes from realizing
God’s ineffable greatness and transcendence. The grand liturgical praises
of historic Christianity (“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and
earth are full of Your glory”) reflect a recognition of God’s boundless
majesty – something one misses in the rather prosaic descriptions found in
Watchtower literature. If God is viewed almost as an elder brother in the
universe (just older and stronger), the depth of reverence is curtailed.
The Watchtower also denies the Trinity, which is beyond our scope here,
but suffice it to say that in doing so they also lose the richness of
understanding God as a being of infinite love in Himself (Father, Son,
Holy Spirit). A finite, lone monad deity is actually poorer in a
religious sense.
- The
Company It Keeps: Theologically, the Watchtower’s doctrines about God align with
groups far outside the Christian mainstream – not just open theists and
process theologians, but even with Mormonism and certain occult
or New Age ideas. For instance, Mormonism teaches that God is an
exalted man living in space-time (even on a planet or star named Kolob in
their lore) – a startling parallel to Watchtower’s early Pleiades
teaching. Both deny classical omnipresence and eternity. Occult/New Age
spirituality often posits finite “gods” or cosmic beings who are part of
the universe. By contrast, virtually all branches of historic
Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), despite their
differences, have agreed on the core divine attributes of infinity,
omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, etc. When one finds oneself
defining God more like the pagans or heretics did, it’s a strong sign of
error. The Watchtower rails against what it calls “Christendom’s”
teachings, yet on the doctrine of God, it is Christendom that has
preserved the truth of God’s greatness, while the Watchtower has embraced
concepts reminiscent of the very religions it claims to oppose.
- Biblical
Misinterpretation: Much of the Watchtower’s deficient theology stems from an overly
literal or wooden interpretation of certain biblical texts, coupled
with a disregard for the broader systematic context. They read passages
about God’s “face,” “hands,” or dwelling place and deduce a literal body
and location, not appreciating anthropomorphism. They read about God’s “repentance”
or “not remembering sins” and think it denotes literal gaps in knowledge
or changes in mind, instead of metaphorical language for forgiving or for
humanly-understood relational changes. They insist that if Jesus said
“only the Father knows the day and hour” (Mark 13:32), it must mean the
Father could choose not to know something – rather than seeing it as a
statement about Jesus’ incarnational role or the idiom of the Son
voluntarily not disclosing it. A robust hermeneutic, guided by the
totality of Scripture and the illumination of theological tradition, would
avoid such pitfalls. The result of the Watchtower’s approach is a
patchwork theology that lifts certain verses out of context to construct a
picture of God at odds with the overarching biblical revelation of His
omnipotence and omniscience.
In light of all this, one must conclude that
the Watchtower’s God is too small. The Society has effectively crafted a
depotentiated deity – one who may be easier for the human mind to grasp
or for their own system to manage (since a less sovereign God gives their human
organization a larger controlling role in the outworking of God’s plan), but
who ultimately cannot bear the weight of being the ultimate explanation of
reality. Theologically, it is a form of idolatry – not in the sense of
an intentional false god, since they intend to worship the God of the Bible,
but in the sense of a false idea of God, an image made by human
imagination and reasoning that falls far short of God’s glory (cf. Psalm 50:21,
“you thought that I was one like yourself”).
Implications and Conclusion
The differences between the Watchtower’s theism
and Thomistic (biblical-classical) theism are not mere academic quibbles; they
have far-reaching implications for faith and practice. A few closing
reflections on why this issue matters:
- Reliability
of Divine Promises: A classical, omniscient, omnipotent God can unconditionally
promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” and “nothing
can snatch [the sheep] out of My hand” (Hebrews 13:5, John 10:28), and
the believer can trust such promises absolutely. In the Watchtower
framework, one might wonder: could God be taken by surprise or caught
off-guard such that plans change? Jehovah’s Witnesses live with a level of
eschatological anxiety – dates like 1914, 1925, 1975 were heralded
for the end, only to pass, often blamed on human misunderstanding. But
perhas a theology where God Himself isn’t fully certain opens the door to
such disappointments. By restoring a high view of God’s sovereignty,
Christians find assurance that no purpose of God’s can fail (Job 42:2).
- Spiritual
Intimacy and Presence: The denial of omnipresence in Watchtower theology also affects how
one relates to God. Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught to think of Jehovah as
hearing prayers in heaven (perhaps relayed by angels) and dispatching help
via His spirit. But the sense of God’s immediate indwelling presence
is absent – something Christians through the ages have found deeply
comforting (e.g., practicing the presence of God, the Holy Spirit living
in us as God’s personal presence). If God is not personally everywhere,
one might feel a certain distance. Indeed, many ex-JWs report that their
relationship with God felt impersonal, like serving a distant monarch
through organizational protocols. Classical theism combined with the
doctrine of the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit provides a balance of
transcendence and immanence: God almighty, high and lifted up, yet
closer to us than we are to ourselves. The Watchtower theology tilts
toward transcendence in an out-of-reach way (God far off in the heavens)
while also oddly not transcendent enough (as we’ve seen, their God is bound
by many creaturely limits).
- Approach
to Scripture and Mystery: The Watchtower prides itself on having a "logical" (?) answer for
everything, often deriding the mysteries of Christian theology (like the
Trinity or the dual nature of Christ) as “confusion”. In doing so,
however, they have sacrificed mystery for simplicity at the cost of
truth. A God who can be fully comprehended and never surpasses our reason
is likely a God made in our image. Thomistic theism acknowledges via
negativa – we often best describe God by what He is not (infinite =
not finite, immortal = not mortal, etc.), recognizing the limits of
human language. Embracing that God is beyond our full understanding is
itself a form of worship. The Watchtower’s hyper-rationalism leads them to
cut God down to size so that nothing transcends their interpretive schema.
In an academic sense, this could be seen as epistemological hubris.
Paradoxically, a more academic approach would be to respect the mystery
when evidence warrants – e.g., the Bible portrays God as knowing all,
ordaining all, yet humans as responsible; rather than drop one truth
(omniscience) to save another (free will), classical theology holds both
in tension.
In conclusion, when judged by the standards of
classical theism (and, we would argue, by the testimony of Scripture rightly
understood), the Watchtower’s view of God is profoundly deficient. It is
not simply a case of a few peripheral errors; it is an entire reimagining of
God along sub-biblical lines. The Watchtower has made God smaller, weaker,
and more like us, whereas true religion calls us to recognize God as
infinitely greater, stronger, and other than us. In doing so, Jehovah’s
Witnesses inadvertently rob God of much of His glory and undermine the
foundation of trust and worship that His true nature provides.
The Thomistic vision of God, as actus purus,
infinite Being and perfect Goodness, offers a far more compelling and coherent
object of faith. This God can be fully trusted, because nothing can
thwart His will. This God can be deeply adored, because His greatness is
unsearchable and inexhaustible. And this God can genuinely be called the
Almighty without reservation, for no part of reality lies outside His
sustaining power and knowledge. Such is the God revealed in the Bible and
affirmed by the sound reasoning of the Church through the ages – a God truly
worthy of the name Jehovah (He who causes to be) in the ultimate sense.
By contrast, the Watchtower’s “Jehovah” is a
being of self-imposed limitations and quasi-physical constraints, a
being who might be more relatable to the finite mind but at the cost of being
much less than the true God. In apologetic dialogue, it is important to help
Jehovah’s Witnesses see that a deficient view of God will pervade and
weaken every aspect of their theology and worship. The first step in calling
them (or any others in similar error) to a fuller Christianity is to
reintroduce them to the real God – the God who is not an exalted
creature, but the transcendent Creator; not a reactive sky-monarch, but the
sovereign Lord of history; not a limited local deity, but the One in whom “we
live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
In the final analysis, The Deficient Theism
of the Watchtower serves as a cautionary tale. It shows how straying from
the doctrine of God’s true nature can lead to a cascade of theological
problems. For believers committed to classical, biblically grounded theism, it
reaffirms the importance of holding fast to the high and mysterious view of God
handed down through Scripture and tradition. For Jehovah’s Witnesses or others
influenced by similar ideas, it is an invitation to “widen out” their
conception of God – to let God be as great as He truly is, even if that
shatters the comfortable categories one once had. Only then can we begin to
worship God “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24) in the fullness that He deserves.
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