Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gross@dg-rtp.dg.com (Gene Gross) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Help me understand these Scriptures Message-ID: Date: 14 Nov 90 08:25:46 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC Lines: 161 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Steve Peterson listed several passages of Scripture to show his doctrine concerning the Deity of Jesus Christ. I have chosen to deal with two of those passages. One in some depth. >4) After he had returned to his heavenly glory, Jesus was under the Headship of >*God* 1Cor11:3 Let's start with the last verse mentioned. 1 Cor. 11:3 says: "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." (NIV) This verse implies nothing concerning the deity of Jesus Christ. Rather it shows the principle of "headship" that applies in Jehovah's order of things. If we took this passage as the Witnesses are taught to, we'd have to conclude that women are a lower form of life then men. So I must ask the question, are women somehow inferior to men? To which, I answer -- NOT at all!! It is simply Jehovah's arrangement that someone act as head, and He assigned that role to the man. Likewise, within the Godhead -- the Father acts as head without diminishing the full deity of the Son. Let's explore this a bit further. Paul writes to the Colossians saying: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." (Col. 2:9, NIV) In _The Bible in Living English_, translated by Steven T. Byington, and published by the Watchtower Society, 1972, this is rendered: "in him all the fullness of deity is resident in bodily form." The Watchtower's New World Translation (NWT) attempts to water down the message of this verse by rendering it: "because it is in him that all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily." But the reference edition (footnote) and the interlinear version of their Bible both admoit that the Greek word they translate as "divine quality" literally means "godship." What does it mean that the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form? Is this not further evidence that Jesus Christ is more than just another human? Does it not also mean that Jesus is more than a mere archangel named Michael? The apostles thought so. Consider what Thomas says: "In answer Thomas said to him: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28, NWT) Thomas literally said, "The Lord of me and the God of me!" Now, supposing for a moment that the Society's teaching that Jesus is Michael the archangel is true, what Thomas says is blasphemy in the extreme. Thomas has equated Jesus Christ, an archangel, with Jehovah God. Thomas was raised a Jew, and for him to call any human or angel "My Lord and my God!" would have been blasphemous to what he had been taught. Further, such a blasphemy would not have escaped Jesus. Did Jesus then turn around a rebuke Thomas for such blasphemy!? Not at all, here are the words of Jesus: "Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29, NIV) Now that does not appear to be a rebuke to me. Now, in conversations with various Witnesses over the years, I have gotten one line of argument over this passage that seems worthy of further consideration. From their book, _Reasoning from the Scriptures_, published in 1985, on page 213, they will point out that the 20th chapter of John ends by saying that "these have been written down that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God..." (v. 31) To Witnesses, the fact that the Father is God, and Jesus is the Son of the Father, automatically rules out the Son's deity. But this is not what Scripture teaches. The Witnesses also quote, as Steve does, John 20:17, where Jesus refers to the Father as "my God," as so-called proof that Jesus is not God. Yet, at Hebrews 1:10, the Father calls the Son "Lord" -- obviously without casting doubt on the fact that the Father, too, is "Lord." Since the Society's postion requires that Witnesses refer to Jesus as "a god" in contrast with the Father, whom they call "the God," you may wish to have a look at John 20:28 in the Society's own _Kingdom Interlinear_ (1985) Bible. The word-for-word English under the Greek text shows that Thomas literally called Jesus, "The Lord of me and the God of me!" I think that the evidence is clearly there to point to the Diety of Jesus Christ. This topic will usually lead to an all out discussion on the Trinity. So let me broach that topic briefly here. The Society points out, and correctly so, that the word "trinity" is not found in the Bible. For them, this automatically impugns the validity of the concept expressed. This is odd since one of the favorite words of the Society, "theocracy," is not anywhere found in the text either. Are we to assume that the word and its concept are to be impugned because it is not found in the text? Certainly not! The Trinity is used to express the idea that there is only one God. Yet, there are three Persons within that one God. Christians who accept the Trinity realize that we are not to confound the Persons, nor divide the substance (the essence). We do not believe that there is one person revealing himself as three persons. The three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are the one God, Jehovah. We believe there are three distinct personalities; therefore, we do not teach Jesus is the Father, or the Holy Spirit is Jesus. The Society has misrepresented this doctrine. In fact, in the book, _You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth_, 1982, page 39, the Society describes the Trinity rather plainly. But then they proceed to prove that the Almighty God (the Father only, to Witnesses) and Jesus are not the same person, as though this was inconsistent with trinitarian thought. I can hear some Witnesses out there now asking, "Well, isn't it?" No. As I said previously, Jesus is not the Father; they are two separate persons. While Jesus walked as a man, the Father was greater than Jesus. But that is nowhere shown in the Scriptures to be true before Jesus humbled Himself and took on the nature of a man! There are a number of places in the Society's literature where the Trinity is misrepresented. However, what caused my to re-evaluate my association with the Society was checking out something that I found in the 1953 edition of _Make Sure of All Things_. On page 386 of this book, the Society refers to Alexander Hislop's book, _The Two Babylons_, as a source of refutation of the Trinity. So I found a copy of this book and began to read. Lo, and behold, Hislop turns out to be a Trinitarian. On page 17, which is one of the pages the Society references in the _Make Sure of All Things_, Hislop points out that the images of the "Triune God, with three heads on one body" found in some of the papacy's churches, "utterly debase the conceptions of those, among whom such images prevail, in regard to that sublime mystery of our faith." Notice that he says "our faith." Clearly, Hislop believes the Trinity. [I make no claims as to the accuracy of Hislop's overall treatise on the RCC. However, since the Society uses this book, I quote from it here only to refute their notion that Hislop was refuting the Trinity. What he seems to have refuted was what he saw as the RCC corruption of this concept. Again, I am not making any stand for Hislop and his arguments concerning the RCC.] Also, the _Make Sure of All Things_ refers to McClintock and Strong's _Cyclopaedia_ article on the Trinity. If a Witness were to read this article, he's be in for a real shocker since this article completely refutes the Society's position on the Trinity. Possibly, the Society meant to refer Witnesses to the article that follows, "Trinity, Heathen Notions of." If so, then by all means read it, but notice what is said in the beginning of the article: "In examining the various heathen philosophies and mythologies, we find clear evidence of a belief in a certain sort of trinity, and yet something very different from the Trinity of the Bible." Let me go back to the term "theocracy" for a moment. Again, this word is not found in the Bible. The Roman Empire had a theocracy of sorts wherein the emperor was considered a god himself, a deified king. This is true again in Egypt, where the pharaoh was a god ruling the nation. The Society claims to be a theocracy, governed from the "Divine Ruler" down, across the whole of God's people (all the Jehovah's Witnesses). (See 'The Watchtower,' December 15, 1971, p. 749.) The fact that a "theocracy" is found in pagan structures, and that the word is not found in the Bible, doesn't rule out the fact that the concept might be Biblical, does it? Standing on the Solid Rock, Gene Gross