"However, 1x1x1 does equal 1."
Heehee, I like that!
Jesus Is Jehovah/Jehovah Is Jesus
by snowbird 328 Replies latest watchtower bible
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abbagail
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possible-san
cabasilas.
Probably, you do not understand my explanation correctly.I have not denied the Trinity.
In explanation of the Trinity, the Father was in Heaven then.The strange false charge to me should stop.
possible
http://bb2.atbb.jp/possible/ -
cabasilas
Possible,
I appreciate you explaining your position. The traditional Christian idea that Yahweh (the Lord) could be both in heaven and on earth goes way back. For example, Tertullian (Against Praxeas, ch. XIII)said:
“That is a still grander statement which you will find expressly made in the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ There was One ‘who was’, and there was another ‘with whom’ He was. But I find in Scripture the name LORD also applied to them both: ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand.’ And Isaiah says this: ‘Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Now he would most certainly have said Thine Arm, if he had not wished us to understand that the Father is Lord, and the Son also is Lord. A much more ancient testimony we have also in Genesis: ‘Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.’ Now, either deny that this is Scripture; or else (let me ask) what sort of man you are, that you do not think words ought to be taken and understood in the sense in which they are written, especially when they are not expressed in allegories and parables, but in determinate and simple declarations?”
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jaguarbass
Wait till you get to the part that you see Jesus is Jehovah/ Jehovah is Jesus and they are both the Devil.
Dont shoot me I'm just the messenger on your journey.
Maybe you can go back to sleep for that part.
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cabasilas
Jaguarbass,
Sounds like you want to start another thread?
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Leolaia
Here Tertullian addresses the misunderstanding that orthodox Christians believed in a duality of gods or that monotheism required them to suppose that the Father was incarnated as well:
We who by grace of God have insight into the situations and contexts of the Scriptures (especially as we are disciples not of men but the Paraclete) declare that there are two beings, the Father and the Son (and even three, with the Holy Spirit, according to the principle of the 'economy,' which introduces plurality), lest (and this is your perverse conclusion) it be believed that the Father was born and died, an inadmissible belief, since it is not part of the tradition. Yet we have never given vent to the phrases 'two Gods,' or 'two Lords'; not that it is untrue that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; each is God. But we believe this inasmuch as in times past both were proclaimed as God and Lord, so that when Christ came he should be acknowledged as God and be called Lord, because he is the Son of him who is God and Lord... We declare that the Son is indivisible and inseperable from the Father, another not in quality but in sequence, who, although he is called God when he is named by himself, yet does not for that reason make a duality of gods, but one God, by the very fact that he has to be called God as a result of his unity with the Father" (Adversus Praxeas, 13, 19).
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Leolaia
And if people compare in the Greek original, people will understand that the Apostle Paul is not quoted strictly each time.
When he quoted from LXX in many cases, he quoted having put the words in another way, or translating freely (paraphrase).Sometimes he was paraphrasing, sometimes not. But in either case, his use of scripture was one that applied passages about the Lord God to Jesus. It's not that Paul didn't realize that such passages didn't refer to God. For instance, he (along with many other writers) had no qualms about using the material in Deutero-Isaiah in reference to Jesus, and anyone who knows anything about those texts would know that these are impassioned eloquent statements of exclusive monotheism -- it is the one God who is talking in those texts, and there is no other god beside him. My last post had a good example of Paul's use of scripture -- he quite clearly presented Jesus as the same Lord that the Israelites tested when they were in the wilderness. It isn't a matter of applying a half-remembered text to Jesus, he deliberately alludes to multiple scriptures and episodes that contribute to the same understanding.
If you thought literally "Jehovah is Jesus", when Jesus comes to the earth, it means "There is no God in Heaven."
I think that it is an absurd view.
Jehovah's Witnesses will surely make a fool of such views.Nobody has such a view at all. Certainly not trinitarians -- and I doubt that even modalists would go so far. If you think that this is what those who believe in the Deity of Christ believe, then you are quite mistaken. All trinitarians believe that Jesus is not the Father and heaven would be quite full of the Father's presence while Jesus was on earth. Jehovah's Witnesses might make "make a fool" of such a view, but if they do it would be because they do not understand the position they are arguing against.
In any case, God is omnipresent already in Jewish thought (cf. Jeremiah 23:23-24, "The Lord declares: Do I not fill heaven and earth? Am I only a God nearby and not far away?", cf. also Psalm 139:7-10, Wisdom 1:7), and omnipresence is a feature shared by both Christ and the Father in some forms of early Christianity. We read that the Father is "over all, through all, and within all" (Ephesians 4:6), that "Christ is everything and he is in everything" (Colossians 3:11), that "in him [Christ] all things hold together ... whether things on earth or things in heaven" (Colossians 1:19-20), that Christ "fills all things" from the lower parts of the earth to the highest heaven (Ephesians 4:10; cf. 1:22-23), that Jesus says if you "split a piece of wood I am there, lift up a stone and you will find me there" (Gospel of Thomas 77), that no place exists where "one can flee from him who embraces the universe" (1 Clement 28:4), that the Father "fills the heavens, and views the abysses, is also present with every one of us" (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.19.2), "the Son of God is always everywhere and not circumcribed anywhere" (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 8.2.5), that "God is within depths, and exists everywhere but in might and power; and the Son being indivisible from the Father is everywhere with him" (Tertullian, Adversus Praxeas, 23), etc.
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possible-san
Hi, Leolaia.
I always appreciate your reply.I said all the things that I would like to say mostly.
I think that people have the freedom of worship.
So, people also have the freedom of believing "Jehovah is Jesus."
However, I only think that it is a foolish argument.
And I think that Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept such a foolish view by any means.Thus, they will have misunderstanding further, saying, "The Trinity was refuted."
And they will continue deceiving many people from now on.Only accurate knowledge can save people from a cult (swindler).
Thank you for your reply, Leolaia.
possible
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sacolton
I'm still trying to grasp the whole Jesus is a symbol statement. Are you saying that Jesus wasn't a real person? When I think of "symbol" it seems to imply an idea and not a actual person. Possible-San, your avatar is a symbol ... are you that symbol?
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Narkissos
Part of the potential misunderstanding here, imo, is due to the fact that some posters are thinking of fixed signifiés (signified) e.g. "Jehovah" as "an eternal and unique 'God' in heaven" or "Jesus" as "a man or Godman on earth" while others are thinking of evolving, fluid and changeable signifiants (signifiers).
From the former perspective, it is irrelevant whether the same signifié is called "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" or "Lord" or "God" -- it's the same "thing" (or "person") they are talking about. From the latter, the difference is essential, because divine names (or titles) are not interchangeable and represent very different notions of the deity -- different deities, as it were. Even the same name (Yhwh, for instance) can stand for wildly different signifiés depending on the historical and literary context (the son of El and tutelary god of Israel in older OT texts, OR the only God in later OT texts, for instance).
So the initial question must be questioned: which 'Jehovah' are we talking about? And from this standpoint it is by no means indifferent that the deity to whom Jesus is identified (or related) in the NT texts is NEVER "Yhwh" (let alone 'Jehovah') but, most often (and rather consistently in Paul), "(the) Lord". Of course the Greek kurios is originally a substitute for the Hebrew Yhwh but the change in wording doesn't leave the "referent" unchanged. Iow, we cannot simply retrovert kurios into Yahweh (let alone Jehovah) and assume that "Jesus is Lord" is semantically equivalent to "Jesus is Yahweh" (even though "Lord" originally stood for Yhwh). The kurios concept has evolved in the meantime, and the history of ideas and beliefs doesn't work backwards. (Side comment: we cannot expect the NT authors, including Paul, who most likely quote OT scriptures from memory or testimonia rather than from complete "books", to have such a clear idea of the initial context and meaning of their quotations as we can very easily get.)
In sum, I believe it is a huge methodological mistake to skip the "Lord" step (and the conceptual changes it entails) in the question. "Jesus is Lord" doesn't mean that Jesus "is" the Yahweh of Deutero-Isaiah (in its original context) anymore than he is the son of El, the husband of Asherah, or the henotheistic deity of Josiah. Belief systems change, and "Yahweh" simply doesn't belong to the vast majority of "Christian" belief systems.