Back by popular demand, we have a post that's again, not a book or movie review. This review is more about a belief system, namely the Jehovah's Witness belief that Jesus was not God because the Bible portrays him as being created. This post was originally part of a discussion for school, but several friends asked that I share it here (you know who you are and you better read this), and so I have. And without further ado (save those four words which were really unnecessary to begin with because I could have just began so that there would have been less ado, four words less as a matter of fact, and then you could have gotten too...oh...yeah.
Jesus: Creator or Created?
The Watchtower tract “Should You Believe in the Trinity”
sets forth many arguments that portray Jesus Christ as a mere human who did not
proclaim to be God. To the uneducated reader, and even to the fairly
well-informed Christian, their arguments sound confident, coherent, and
correct. Unfortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses must misuse, misapply, and
misinterpret the Biblical text in order to support their claim.
Of the various arguments set forth in the tract, the most
troubling was the Watchtower’s belief that Jesus was created by Jehovah (God).
This section is contains many Scriptural references that the Jehovah’s
Witnesses use to give weight to the idea that when Jesus was called the “the
first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15 NJB), the implication was that Jesus was
literally created first in the order of creation.
If the Watchtower’s argument is correct, then Jesus was not divine, but merely a spirit being like an angel that God sent in human form.
According to the tract Should You Believe in the Trinity?:
“Jesus had an existence in heaven before coming to
the earth. But was it as one of the persons in an almighty, eternal triune
Godhead? No, for the Bible plainly states that in his prehuman existence, Jesus
was a created spirit being, just as angels were spirit beings created by God.
Neither the angels nor Jesus had existed before their creation.” (SYBITT)
This post is going to sift through the section “Jesus:
A Separate Creation” of Should You
Believe in the Trinity? and take a look the various points of evidence that
Jehovah’s Witnesses use to bolster the above claim.
First, they do admit to the prehuman existence of
Jesus, which makes them different from other groups who deny the divinity of
Jesus. They believe that Jesus was more than man, but less than God. To assert
that Jesus began to exist they cite verses such as Colossians 1:15, where Jesus
is called “the firstborn over all creation” and Revelation 3:14 where is called
“the beginning of the creation of God.” (KJV) In regards to the Revelation passage, they
claim that the word translated “beginning,” archē
, cannot be interpreted as “Beginner.”
--
Colossians
1:15-17
I would like to submit that Jesus’ position as the “firstborn
over all creation” does not preclude his divinity. The verses following the
fifteenth verse show this, with verse 16 saying “by him all things were created”
and verse 17 declaring “He is before all things.” If Jesus was before all and
created all, then obviously he is not a part of the “all” that is creation. Jehovah’s
Witnesses get around this by reinterpreting the sixteenth and seventeenth
verses in their New World Translation
of the Bible:
“He is the image of
the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because by means of him all [other] things were
created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible,
no matter whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities.
All [other] things have been created through him and for him.”
(Colossians 1:16-17, NWT)
Incredibly, the bracketed text
appears precisely as such. Unless the NWT translators have a good reason for
interpolating the word “other” into the text, this is just a rather obvious
attempt to make the Scripture fit their preconceived notions. As
I noted in my response to Natasha’s thread, Walter Martin has said that the NWT
“translation committee had no known
translators with recognized degrees in Hebrew or Greek exegesis or translation.”
(KOTC) Therefore, one has little basis to believe that the NWT
translators have made a good decision by altering the Biblical text.
(Furthermore, why leave the interpolations in brackets if for no other reason
than to note the obvious and importance difference?) However, for the sake of
argument, let us look at the text. The word translated ”all things” in the NIV
and “all [other] things” in the NWT is the Greek word pas. Regarding this word, Strong’s records the meaning as “all, any, every, the whole” (Strong’s). The NAS Exhaustive
Concordance lists the number of times the word occurs and how it is translated
each time. (Strong’s) Thus on the basis of verse 16 and 17, Jesus cannot have
been created.
But we’ve not really even
discussed verse fifteen, which began all this with the word “firstborn.” The
Greek word here is prōtotokos, from prōtos meaning “foremost” and tiktō
meaning “to produce.” Together, it is translated as firstborn or
first-begotten. With all due respect to Hannah—I do not think she is wrong—but
I do believe that, just as I commented in Christine’s thread, there is a deeper
implication here. Therefore, if this verse was speaking of firstborn as a reference to the Sonship of Jesus,
then I would reiterate my argument there about the translation and
interpretation of monogenes. Instead,
I believe what is meant by “firstborn” is something akin to “first in rank” or “preeminent.”
The reason this is so closely associated with the word “firstborn” is that, in
biblical times, it was normally the firstborn that was the preeminent son. Evidence
that the term “firstborn” can carry the meaning of preeminence comes in the
Psalms, where David is called “my firstborn” (Psalm 89:27) though
he was the youngest of Jesse’s children (1 Samuel 16:11-13). Jesus is
preeminent over all creation, because he is the Creator (Colossians 1:16).
As a last point to this verse, even if the Jehovah’s
Witnesses will not accept that the interpolation “other” is a bad translation of
the Biblical text, they will at least accept that Jesus created “all [other]
things.” This, however, runs in contradiction to what the Old Testament says
about God in Isaiah 44:24: “I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone
stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” (NIV) Even the
Jehovah’s Witnesses translation shows this contradiction: “I, Jehovah, am doing everything, stretching out the
heavens by myself, laying out the earth.” (NWT)
If the Old Testament claims that the LORD (Yahweh)
created and the New Testament claims that Jesus created, then it is obvious
that the Bible proclaims the LORDship and deity of Jesus.
--
Revelation 3:14
The problem at hand here
in the word archē. This verse declares that
Jesus is the “the beginning of the creation of God.” Jehovah’s
Witnesses would have us to believe that the word archē means
that Jesus must have had a beginning, and was therefore created. However,
evidence from Strong’s suggests otherwise. According to Strong’s, while in
abstract terms it means “a commencement,” in the concrete it means “chief…magistrate,
power, principality…” (Strong’s)I find it quite ironic that while the Jehovah’s
Witnesses insist that the word means “beginning,” they themselves translate the
word as “government officials and authorities”
when it is used in Luke 12:11. It is obvious that this text is not a valid
argument against Christ’s deity, but instead supports it by proclaiming him the
“the ruler of God's creation” (as per the NIV).
--
Proverbs
8:22-31
Lastly, we consider the claim that the figurative “Wisdom”
in Proverbs is a personification of the preincarnate Jesus. Hannah made an
excellent point when she noted that “Wisdom” was personified as a female—both
in Proverbs and by Jesus in Luke 8. Given the poetic nature of the book of
Proverbs, it seems clear that this is a poetic personification and not meant to
imply any real individual, let alone Christ. This passage in Proverbs shows
that it took wisdom to create the universe, not that this wisdom was Jesus.
--
Thus, every argument
given by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to claim that Jesus was created has been shown
to actually proclaim Jesus’ is uncreated deity, one in essence with the Father.
--
KOTC – Walter Martin, The Kingdom
of the Cults, rev. ed., Ed. by Ravi Zacharias (Minneapolis: Bethany House,
2003), 93.
NWT – New World Translation of
the Holy Scriptures - http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/index.htm
Strong’s - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/3956.htm
(pas) http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/746.htm (archē)
SYBITT
– Should You Believe in the Trinity -
http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_05.htm
1 comments:
way to go Josh! very well argued. I feel much smarter having read this :)
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