The Holy Trinity

Originally posted by galveston75
Good play with words Manny. Your still forgetting that Jesus himself said he was the first of all creations. God was never created and has always been. You guys still play with words and twist them to make them fit this made up doctrine that never existed at all in the Bible and still does not exist in the Bible.
I'm not going to get back into this wi ...[text shortened]... y have been suckered into this.
It's sad because you guys are too smart to let this happen.

Jesus said, "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all
judgement to the Son, in order that all may honor the Son, even as they
honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the
Father who sent Him." (John 5:22-23 NASB)

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Deity of Christ

DJ512
CRI Statement

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or Jehovah’s Witnesses, has always taught from its inception in 1896 that Jesus Christ was no more than a perfect man, “certainly not the supreme God Almighty in the flesh.” Amplifying this, they state categorically that He was in no sense both God and man. “Some insist that Jesus while on earth was both God and man. This theory is wrong...

By maintaining that our Lord was the “first and direct creation of Jehovah God,” and that prior to His earthly life He was Michael the Archangel, the Witnesses deny the very foundation of the historic Christian faith.

In contrast to this teaching, the Bible and Christian Church declare the full Deity of Jesus Christ and His equality with God the Father. In the first verse of John’s gospel, Christ is revealed as the eternal Word of God who became flesh (verse 14) — the “image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Consider the emphasis. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

Note that John 1:1 states that the Word was in the beginning — it does not say the Word “became” or “was created” by God as Jehovah’s Witnesses teach. The Witnesses also mistranslate this text to read “the Word was a god” but their translation is by both context and grammar an impossibility according to all recognized authorities on Greek grammar.

Moreover, the Scriptures proclaim that Christ made “himself equal with God” (John 5:18) and that “in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). The Bible further states that Christ claimed to be the great I AM (Jehovah) of the Old Testament (see Exod. 3:13-16 with John 8:58), and the Jews during His ministry understood Him so clearly that they sought to stone Him to death for blasphemy (John 8:59; cf. 10:28, 33).

Jehovah’s Witnesses pervert these texts and many others in their determined attempt to demote our Lord from His position of God and Creator (Colossians 1; Hebrews 1), and they compound their error by translating the Greek of the New Testament in many places contrary to all known grammatical authorities. It is certainly true that during His earthly life our Lord voluntarily limited Himself as a man (Phil. 2:6-8), and thus He never strove to usurp the prerogatives of Deity. But one does not have to “rob” what is His by inheritance (Hebrews 1). As we have already shown, He was true deity — “the great God” (Titus 2:13).

We must not forget that Christ humbled Himself even to the death of the cross and therefore as a man could say, “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). However, let us not forget that Christ never said, “My Father is better than I”; “better” is a term of comparison between natures (Heb. 1:4) while “greater,” as in the context of John 14, is a term of comparison relative to positions.

Our President, for instance, is greater in position than any of his fellow Americans by virtue of his office as President of the United States; but he would be the first to insist that as a human being he is not necessarily better. So Christ was admittedly inferior to His Father positionally while on earth as a man but the Scriptures indicate He was His Father’s equal on the spiritual plane at all times (Heb. 1:3; John 5:18).

Jehovah’s Witnesses always point to Christ’s humanity in the Scriptures; they carefully omit mention of His claim to full Deity and they thus “wrest...the...scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16).

Our Lord taught His full deity (John 8:58, John 8:24) and the Bible calls Him the “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last” (Rev. 1:17, 18). Yet it is Jehovah alone who declares that He is “the first, and...the last” (Isa. 44:6). Since there can be only one first and last, God fully manifested Himself in Jesus Christ, “the first and the last” (Rev. 1:17, 18), as the Scriptures and the Christian Church maintain.

Jehovah’s Witnesses deny these and many other great doctrines of the Bible. They are therefore misguided followers of a fallible, human organization. Consequently, they too, desperately need the salvation that the God-man, Jesus Christ, alone offers to all men who will come to Him and accept Him as their Savior and Lord (John 3:16, 5:24).

http://www.equip.org/articles/jehovah-s-witnesses-and-the-deity-of-christ

Manny

Originally posted by menace71
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Deity of Christ

DJ512
CRI Statement

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or Jehovah’s Witnesses, has always taught from its inception in 1896 that Jesus Christ was no more than a perfect man, “certainly not the supreme God Almighty in the flesh.” Amplifying this, they state categorically that He was in no sense both God ...[text shortened]... , 5:24).

http://www.equip.org/articles/jehovah-s-witnesses-and-the-deity-of-christ

Manny

It is a shame that galveston75 thinks we are the ones tricked by Satan.
It is very hard to get through to a Jehovah's Witness because they have
been so brained washed into believing we have adopted pagan beliefs
because of the Catholic churches errors in judgement in the past. The
Catholics still hold many of these false teachings today. They would
probably have been even worse, if Martin Luther had not had the
courage to challenge their authority.

Originally posted by RJHinds
It is a shame that galveston75 thinks we are the ones tricked by Satan.
It is very hard to get through to a Jehovah's Witness because they have
been so brained washed into believing we have adopted pagan beliefs
because of the Catholic churches errors in judgement in the past. The
Catholics still hold many of these false teachings today. They would
pr ...[text shortened]... y have been even worse, if Martin Luther had not had the
courage to challenge their authority.

Indeed. I think their lack of education or at least lack of trying to understand and research history and why and what the early church fathers believed hinders the JW's from seeing Christ fully.
While I don't want to go off on the Catholic Church I agree that they have done harm in history no doubt.


Manny

John 1:1 and the New World Translation

What Do the Greek Scholars Really Say?
DJ520
CRI Statement

A. T. Robertson: "So in Jo. 1:1 theos en ho logos the meaning has to be the Logos was God, not God was the Logos." A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament, by A. T. Robertson and W. Hersey Davis (Baker Book House, 1977), p. 279.

E. M. Sidebottom: "...the tendency to write 'the Word was divine' for theos en ho logos springs from a reticence to attribute the full Christian position to John." The Christ of the Fourth Gospel (S. P. C. K., 1961), p. 461.

E. C. Colwell: "...predicate nouns preceding the verb cannot be regarded as indefinite or qualitative simply because they lack the article; it could be regarded as indefinite or qualitative only if this is demanded by the context and in the case of John 1:1c this is not so." "A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament," Journal of Biblical Literature, 52 (1933), p. 20.

C. K.Barrett: "The absence of the article indicates that the Word is God, but is not the only being of whom this is true; if ho theos had been written it would have implied that no divine being existed outside the second person of the Trinity." The Gospel According to St. John (S.P.C.K., 1955), p.76.

C. H. Dodd: "On this analogy, the meaning of theos en ho logos will be that the ousia of ho logos, that which it truly is, is rightly denominated theos...That this is the ousia of ho theos (the personal God of Abraham, the Father) goes without saying. In fact, the Nicene homoousios to patri is a perfect paraphrase. "New Testament Translation Problems II," The Bible Translator, 28, 1 (Jan. 1977), p. 104.

Randolph O. Yeager: "Only sophomores in Greek grammar are going to translate '...and the Word was a God.' The article with logos, shows that logos is the subject of the verb en and the fact that theos is without the article designates it as the predicate nominative. The emphatic position of theos demands that we translate '...and the Word was God.' John is not saying as Jehovah's Witnesses are fond of teaching that Jesus was only one of many Gods. He is saying precisely the opposite." The Renaissance New Testament, Vol. 4 (Renaissance Press, 1980), p.4.

James Moffatt: "'The Word was God...And the Word became flesh,' simply means "The word was divine...And the Word became human.' The Nicene faith, in the Chalcedon definition, was intended to conserve both of these truths against theories that failed to present Jesus as truly God and truly man..." Jesus Christ the Same (Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1945), p.61.

Philip B. Harner: "Perhaps the clause could be translated, 'the Word had the same nature as God." This would be one way of representing John's thought, which is, as I understand it, that ho logos, no less than ho theos, had the nature of theos." "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1," Journal of Biblical Literature, 92, 1 (March 1973, p. 87.

Henry Alford: "Theos must then be taken as implying God, in substance and essence,--not ho theos, 'the Father,' in person. It does not = theios, nor is it to be rendered a God--but, as in sarx egeneto, sarx expresses that state into which the Divine Word entered by a definite act, so in theos en, theos expresses that essence which was His en arche:--that He was very God. So that this first verse might be connected thus: the Logos was from eternity,--was with God (the Father),--and was Himself God." Alford's Greek Testament: An Exegetical and Critical Commentary, Vol. I, Part II (Guardian Press, 1975; originally published 1871), p. 681.

Donald Guthrie: "The absence of the article with Theos has misled some into thinking that the correct understanding of the statement would be that 'the word was a God' (or divine), but this is grammatically indefensible since Theos is a predicate." New Testament Theology (InterVarsity Press, 1981), p. 327.

Bruce Metzger: "It must be stated quite frankly that, if the Jehovah's Witnesses take this translation seriously, they are polytheists... As a matter of solid fact, however, such a rendering is a frightful mistranslation." "The Jehovah's Witnesses and Jesus Christ," Theology Today (April 1953), p. 75.

Julius R. Mantey: "Since Colwell's and Harner's article in JBL, especially that of Harner, it is neither scholarly nor reasonable to translate John 1:1 "The Word was a god." Word-order has made obsolete and incorrect such a rendering... In view of the preceding facts, especially because you have been quoting me out of context, I herewith request you not to quote the Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament again, which you have been doing for 24 years." Letter from Mantey to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. "A Grossly Misleading Translation... John 1:1, which reads 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.' is shockingly mistranslated, "Originally the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god,' in a New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, published under the auspices of Jehovah's Witnesses." Statement by J. R. Mantey, published in various sources.

B. F. Westcott: "The predicate (God) stands emphatically first, as in v.24. It is necessarily without the article (theos not ho theos) inasmuch as it describes the nature of the Word and does not identify His Person... No idea of inferiority of nature is suggested by the form of expression, which simply affirms the true deity of the Word." The Gospel According to St. John (Eerdmans, 1958 reprint), p. 3.

Who are these scholars? Many of them are world-renowned Greek scholars whose works the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves have quoted in their publications, notably Robertson, Harner, and Mantey, in defense of their "a god" translation of John 1:1! Westcott is the Greek scholar who with Hort edited the Greek text of the New Testament used by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeager is a professor of Greek and the star pupil of Julius Mantey. Metzger is the world's leading scholar on the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament. It is scholars of this caliber who insist that the words of John 1:1 cannot be taken to mean anything less than that the Word is the one true Almighty God.

http://www.equip.org/articles/john-1-1-and-the-new-world-translation

Manny

Originally posted by menace71
Indeed. I think their lack of education or at least lack of trying to understand and research history and why and what the early church fathers believed hinders the JW's from seeing Christ fully.
While I don't want to go off on the Catholic Church I agree that they have done harm in history no doubt.


Manny

You believe in your early church Fathers whoever they were, we'll stick with the Bible. No pagan origins with that.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]======================================
Can you find me any place in all of Acts or indeed the new testament where the disciples used this formula? There aren't any.

Every time the disciples baptised into the name (not names) of Jesus.

Jesus is the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the "one name given amongst men by Son and the Holy Spirit"

6.) " We now baptize you into Christ. "[/b]

It's not about pronouncements, formulas, doctrines, creeds, sects, religions, Sabbaths new moons or special dates. It's about the revelation of WHO Jesus Christ is:

He is:
The Alpha & Omega, the beginning and the end
The Everlasting Father
The Mighty God
The given Son
The Wonderful Councillor
The Prince of Peace

There is only one God, who is the one Saviour and the one Lord of all (not 2 saviours as the JW's believe), and he is revealed in several ways. The current revelation is that of redeeming saviour Jesus Christ.

http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/contents/doctrine/the%20origin%20of%20the%20trinity.htm

http://www.prudentialpublishing.info/trinity_doctrine_origins.htm

Originally posted by galveston75
http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/contents/doctrine/the%20origin%20of%20the%20trinity.htm

Exactly.

http://www.christadelphia.org/trinityhistory.htm

http://www.truegospelofjesus.org/articles/trinity.html

http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_04.htm

http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/trinity.html

http://www.sign2god.com/folders/oorsprong-3eenheid-en.html