Month: March 2011

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the Watchtower booklet of “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” We’re not covering that Jesus never claimed to be God as I believe that has been sufficiently dealt with. Instead, I plan to move on to covering the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. According to the Watchtower, the Spirit is not a person but is rather God’s active force.

In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of Jehovah is to be over the surface of the waters preparing the acts of creation. Granted, this could work fine with an active force, but it could also work fine with a personal “force.” What the Watchtower will have to do is to both demonstrate that there is positive evidence in Scripture that the Spirit is non-personal, and also deal with all the positive evidence that the Spirit is personal.

The Watchtower also tells us that the Spirit came upon people as a form of enlightenment. Now that’s not the term I’d use, but there is really no quibble here. It was often noted in the Old Testament when the Spirit came upon someone so that they were prepared to do something unusual for God.

This also includes the recording of Scripture which the Watchtower tells us. Orthodox Christians also agree that men wrote from God as they were guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit moved through each writer to bring about what God wanted us to have. Again, we have total agreement with this.

The Spirit we are told also led Jesus into the wilderness after baptism which is an important point. Because God is directing someone to go somewhere, that does not mean it’s all going to be a bed of roses. The Spirit is not meant to be an antidote to suffering but a relief that one has in suffering.

The Watchtower fortunately also includes Psalm 139 but has an interesting take that God’s Spirit can reach anywhere. At this, I would disagree since Witnesses I know do not agree with omnipresence. It’s not that God can reach everywhere but that He is everywhere in the sense that He is the cause of the existence of every place.

We find the same thing when we get to the idea of power beyond normal which the Watchtower covers next. The Watchtower asks if a divine person entered Samson and caused him to defeat the lion. If they mean in the sense of possession as in demon possession, I would not think so. If they mean the Spirit gave some of His power to Samson in some sense, then yes. Just saying that the Holy Spirit caused Samson to do this does not argue against the personhood of the Spirit.

Do we have arguments against that? Yes we do. Those are in the next section however. This post is simply to lay down some groundwork. There are areas of agreement and it’s good to bring that up with the Witnesses you know. It’s where there are differences that the problems emerge, and we’ll cover that tomorrow.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve lately been looking at the Watchtower pamphlet of “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” Tonight, we’re going to be studying the topic of Jesus’s limited knowledge. This is a common objection and frankly, it is the first objection I can really see as one that can legitimately trouble some people. The rest fall on bad understanding, but this one does require more knowledge to it.

Why is it that Jesus did not know the day or hour of his return? What does it mean to say that Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered? Why is it that the revelation was given to Him? These are good questions and for an effective Christology, they need to be answered.

For Christians, the answer is that indeed, Jesus did not know some things. Why? Because he came as a human and as such, he took upon himself limitations. I believe that Jesus was only given knowledge that was absolutely essential to his mission. The knowledge of when he would come again in Matthew 24, however you interpret it, was not essential and frankly, we can be thankful in some ways I’m sure that he did not tell us.

Why did Jesus learn obedience? Jesus was a human for the first time and for the first time, he experienced what it means to obey God in the space-time continuum. Of course it would be something new. Jesus had to submit to the Father as a human and in doing so, he was being what we are all supposed to be.

Why was the revelation given to him? Again, Jesus was the servant and all the knowledge he had was coming from the source. Of course, I always like to take Witnesses to Revelation 19:12 where we are introduced to the man riding on the white horse, and there’s no doubt it’s Jesus. What are we told? He has a name that no one knows save he himself.

Ah. Are we to assume that God the Father does not know the name? If we interpret the verse the way Jehovah’s Witnesses do, then yes.

The reality is that passages like these being used indicate that more than anything, we need to be developing our Christology more and more. The reason the Witnesses have such great success is not I believe so much because of what they are doing, although we should certainly wish to have their zeal for evangelism. The reason they have such success is because of a biblical illiteracy and this is largely on the part of Christians.

What do we do? Churches ought to be trainers of their people. No. Not everyone can be an apologist. The pastor should have a basic knowledge of apologetics but even he is not necessarily to specialize in that. However, he should know someone who he can refer to who will be there to help someone. Could it actually be that it would help if every church had a member on staff who was a trained apologist?

It just might.

We shall continue later.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re through the Watchtower booklet of “Should You Believe In The Trinity? “Right now, we’re discussing the objections that the Watchtower raises. Tonight’s will be similar to last night’s, but there are some different objections.

The idea that the Watchtower wants to show is that God is superior at all times, yet once again they are making “The Father” synonymous with God. When God says “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved” the Watchtower asks if God was saying that he was His Son, sent Himself, and approved Himself.

It’s a shame any Christian would fall for such a statement. I hope readers of this blog are better informed and realize that the Watchtower has presented a straw man. Are we to think none of the Trinitarians in church history noticed that the Father sent the Son?

No. It’s not that God the Father sent God the Father. God the Father sent God the Son. There is no contradiction there and as we pointed out yesterday, there is nothing about superiority since it does not effect ontology, the being that one is. What the Watchtower has done is actually give a fine argument against modalism. In doing so, they’re ironically making a point Trinitarians WANT to be made.

Does the giving of authority indicate superiority? Not unless every time in human history a boss has promoted someone it’s been because they are superior. Would Caesar be superior to a governor by ontology? Would the centurion would be superior to the soldiers that he sent to talk to Jesus? The Watchtower consistently confuses function with essence.

The Watchtower says that Jesus told the mother of James and John that to sit at his right and left belonged to his Father, that is, God. However, here the Watchtower makes clear their misrepresentation. They have equated God with the Father so that any time you make a case for Jesus being God, they think you are saying he is the Father. If you demonstrate that Jesus is not the Father then, for a follower of the Watchtower, you demonstrate that he is not God. This only works however if God is unipersonal, which the Watchtower has yet to demonstrate.

The Watchtower returns to their straw man with Jesus praying about the cross and asking if the cup could be removed. Was Jesus praying to himself or to part of himself? No. This is confusing Jesus with the Father and confusing Jesus with the entirety of the Trinity. No Trinitarian makes these kinds of arguments, yet here the Watchtower tries to present to people that they are giving an honest impression of the Trinity.

For the sake of argument, I and other Trinitarians could be entirely wrong on what we believe. We’re not, but I could say that for the sake of argument, I’d grant that. That does not mean the criticisms of the Watchtower are true. You can have bad arguments against a false position. I’m not a believer in macroevolutionary theory at the moment for instance, but I know that there are bad arguments against it that should not be used. A lot of Christians use them thinking since they’re arguing against a position they believe to be false, they’re serving God. God is best served by good arguments, not bad ones. If you think your arguments are good, they should be enough to make the other side at least think their position is being fairly represented.

The Watchtower also says that if Jesus was God, then Habakkuk 1:12 is wrong as it says God does not die. However, did God die? No. The human being who happens to have the same ontological nature as God died. The deity did not die however. The Bible says that the highest heavens cannot contain God in 1 Kings 8, yet when we read in the Israel wanderings, we see that God dwelt in the tabernacle. Can a tabernacle contain God? Then if so, 1 Kings 8 is wrong.

No. God’s presence was made manifest in areas like the tabernacle. God was not limited to that place however. It’s interesting that the idea also of John 1:14 is that Jesus tabernacled among us. When Jesus died, God did not die. (In fact, the early church argued against the idea that the Father suffered throuuh Son on the cross.) The human Jesus died, but the Son as God never suffered. The death was also not a sham. He really was dead and he gave his life to God, to which God granted that life back in a new and glorified state.

What about miracles? It’s not that Jesus did miracles, but how he did them. He claimed the finger of God at work in his miracles. He claimed to do them in his name. Elijah would not have gone around saying “In my name, I command you to be healed.” Jesus did. Jesus saw his miracles as the direct act of God on Earth through his person in a unique way. He was God’s presence on Earth bringing about what would be the new kingdom.

It’s really sad to read argumentation like that of the Watchtower and sadder still that some Christians deconvert over it. We can do better. No one should deconvert over weak argumentation like this.

We shall continue next time.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through lately the Watchtower booklet of “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” Currently, the Watchtower in our study is presenting arguments against the Trinity. Tonight, we’re going to look at the case of Jesus being God’s submissive servant.

To begin with, it’s important to note that a believer in the Trinity does believe that Jesus was a submissive servant to God. Thus, if the Watchtower wants to present this as evidence prima facie that Jesus is not ontologically equal to the Father, then it falls flat with just that statement. They do want to do a bit more as they want to show why that should be a problem for Trinitarianism. Let’s see if it is.

We are given a verse like John 5:19 where Jesus says he only does what he sees the Father doing. The Watchtower presents verses like this as if it would be a problem. What do they expect we think they should say if Jesus was ontologically equal to God?

“I do what I want and if the Father doesn’t want to do it, I do it anyway.”

“I come to teach my doctrine. What the Father teaches does not have to agree.”

“I did not come to do the will of my Father. I came to do my own will.”

Each of these would be highly contrary statements to both the doctrine of the Watchtower and Trinitarianism. They are not a problem for us however, nor do I think in themselves they would be one for the Watchtower. Trinitarians have never had a problem with Jesus doing the will of the Father and submitting to that perfectly in every angle. That’s what he was supposed to do in the life of a perfect man.

The Watchtower asks if the one who sends is superior to the one who is sent, but there is an equivocation here. When the centurion sends his servants to Jesus to ask him to come heal his sick servant, surely the centurion was superior to the servants, but in what way? Was the centurion superior in humanity or was he higher in rank? When a wife submits to her husband in a biblical way, is she doing so because she is inferior to her husband? (I would love to have a husband and wife couple use a superiority type argument like this and then get to ask the wife how inferior she is in humanity to her husband.)

The Watchtower assumes that lower in rank means lower in nature. That does not follow. The example that we have shown demonstrate that. Now to be fair, it could mean that. God is superior to the angels and the angels are described as servants. (Note that Jesus is also described as superior) That one has to submit to another is necessary to show superiority of essence, but it is not sufficient. Because there is submission, that does not prove that there is superiority of essence.

Because the followers of Jesus viewed him as God’s submissive servant, it does not rule out their viewing him as deity.

We shall continue next time.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re going to continue our study tonight of the Watchtower booklet “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” We’re right now looking at the objections that the Watchtower raises and tonight we’re going to discuss how the Watchtower says Jesus is distinguished from God.

The problem the Watchtower has is similar to one addressed earlier. The Watchtower does not realize that generally in New Testament usage, God was used to refer to the Father and Lord was used to refer to Jesus Christ. One could say that God is distinguished from the Lord in the New Testament, therefore God must not be the Lord. This is fallacious, but it’s the same kind of argument that the Watchtower is presenting.

Thus, we do not expect to find Jesus referred to as God explicitly many times as that would have led to confusion. Why call two persons within the same sentence God? There are other ways to say that Jesus has ontological equality with the Father and I believe that those have been done. However, this is not the place for that as we are here simply examining the arguments the Watchtower puts forward.

The Watchtower states that Paul had no problem speaking of God and Jesus as separate and cites 1 Cor. 8:6. Indeed, this is the kind of example I am speaking about. By their standard, God is separate from the Lord and therefore God cannot be said to be the Lord.

What’s more problematic however is the scholarly work of Richard Bauckham in “God Crucified” where he argues persuasively that what Paul is doing in a text like this is in fact Christianizing the great Shema of Israel. Lord and God were both referred to and Paul is making a strong statement of monotheism. If Bauckham is correct, and I think he is, then Paul is not arguing against Jesus being ontologically equal with God, but is rather going to great lengths to show that Jesus fits into the divine identity.

The Watchtower also gives us John 8:17-18 which has Jesus saying that he is one witness and the Father is another. How could this be unless they were two separate entities? The irony I find in this is that this is a passage that I regularly use when I argue against modalists and point to this passage to show that Jesus and the Father are two separate persons. Indeed, this is what Jesus says. He says his Father is one witness and He is another. He does not say God.

Finally, Mark 10:18 has the rich young ruler referring to Jesus as good teacher and Jesus says “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” The Watchtower says Jesus is denying that He is as good as God. Where is the denial? Jesus is just stating that only God is truly good. He is not saying outright that he himself is. Note also that in the ancient world, one would not answer this question saying “Yep! You’d better say I’m good!” That would be seen as trying to claim honor unjustly for oneself. Jesus gave a humble answer and left it to the man to work out the implications.

Again, I am not convinced by anything the Watchtower has said so far. It’s also worth noting that so far no Trinitarians have been cited in these arguments.

We shall continue later.

Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through lately the Watchtower booklet “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” Thus far, our conclusion has been that the Watchtower has not given us a reason to not believe in it. This is not so much about giving evidence for the Trinity but rather answering the “arguments” as to why we shouldn’t.

Today, we’re going to look at the question of if Jesus was considered to be God. The Watchtower states that Son of God did not mean that Jesus was God, or as we would say, God the Son. In itself, they are correct in this. Others were also called sons of God. The question however is if Jesus was one son among many or if there was something different about him.

It is true that ones like the centurion at the cross said that Jesus was the son of God, but what would this mean? For a Roman, it would not be monotheism, but at least the recognition that Jesus was a divine being. He was no ordinary man. His death and what happened would have shown that Jesus was to be seen as a king. If we take all the events as literal, that is fine. If we take them as apocalyptic, then that does not damage the belief that Jesus is seen as a king.

The Watchtower says that Jesus was seen as the Son of God and that there is only one God. They are correct, but the problem is they are assuming unipersonalism. God is one and the Father is God therefore the Father alone is God. If by one, it means one person, then they would be correct. They have not shown that this is what it means. For Jesus, it would mean that He is the Son of the Father, not the Son of Himself as some, including atheistic critics, would say.

The Watchtower tells us that Jesus is the mediator between God and men. They tell us that a mediator must be other than the parties they represent, so Jesus could not be God. Well if that’s the case, then why should I believe that he can in fact be man? By that standard, Jesus could not have been a man to be our mediator. Of course, it could be that if they are consistent with their beliefs on Jesus being Michael, they will deny the humanity of Christ, however the text itself says that there is one mediator, the MAN Christ Jesus.

A Trinitarian however can say that the mediator between the Father and men is the man Jesus Christ. He can mediate because he is both God and man. There can be no better mediator. The Son can mediate because He is not sinful humanity, though He is human, and He is not the Father, though He has ontological equality with the Father.

Thus, is there a distinction between the Father and the Son in Scripture? Absolutely. That is essential for Trinitarianism. There is a distinction between Peter and Paul in Scripture, yet both are fully human. The Watchtower is just making the assumption of unipersonalism, probably the #1 mistake critics of the Trinity make.

We shall continue next time.