Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, we’re continuing our look at the Watchtower booklet of “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” We’re finally coming to the topic of Jesus, which when the Witnesses visit me and want to go through “What Does The Bible Really Teach?”, I always want to skip ahead to the chapter on who is Jesus. Well let’s see what the Watchtower says.
We agree with the Watchtower that Jesus’s existence did not begin with the conception in Mary. The Watchtower says Jesus’s life force was transferred to the womb of Mary. (Again, note that such terminology you don’t see in the Bible. It’s wrong when it’s the Trinity you don’t see explicitly stated, but when it comes to life force being transferred, which in this case is that of the archangel Michael, it’s okay) Of course, we don’t hold to such a position here.
The Watchtower asks if his existence was as a person of an eternal triune Godhead. They answer no. The Bible plainly states that Jesus in his prehuman existence was a created spirit being.
Plainly states of course meaning “We teach that and even if we don’t have explicit chapter and verse, it’s okay anyway because we teach it, unlike those Trinitarians.”
Of course, we see Colossians 1:15 used. What the Witnesses miss is that this is a verse describing ontology and not chronology. Technically, if Jesus was the firstborn of creation, then it would really mean creation produced Jesus. What it really is doing is describing Jesus’s relation to the creation. Jesus is the Lord over all of creation. I have dealt more with this objection here.
Of course, that’s followed with Revelation 3:14. The Watchtower says John uses the word “Arche” for beginning several times and it always means a beginning. Of course, word usage is not determined by how often a word is used one way, but how it is used in the sentence it is used. In this case, it refers to the origin due to the other statements of deity in John and that John is likely using wisdom theology to show that Jesus is the means of the creation of God.
Speaking of wisdom, the Watchtower goes there immediately. They want to say Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is Jesus. Good! I agree! Unfortunately, if they really read the passage the way they intend to, they have a problem. Question to my Witness friends! When was God ever unwise? Did God create wisdom and then add wisdom to His nature? Was He an unwise God prior? Did He change to become wise even though Scripture tells us that He does not change?
More of my thoughts on that can be found here.
In fact, the very verses they use are central to the idea of Wisdom sharing in the divine identity. In the New Testament consistently, Jesus is seen as the means for God creating and the Father is seen as the source, the creator. This is not a problem. Unknowingly, the Watchtower has actually created a wonderful Trinitarian argument.
Next time, we’ll look further at some “objections” the Watchtower raises.