The Son in two persons

by Deputy Dog 332 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  reniaa

  You've been having fun in my absence :)

  Hi leolaia

  While I appreciate you indepth study on extra-biblical sources they cannot be considered proof or I could use ones didache that clearly only talks of Jesus being God's servant making it clear he wasn't considered God by the early writers that wrote it. And thats a very early apocrypha.

  I'm confused we think michael is just another name but you all insist we think it is another person when you all allow that lamb, logos, immanuel are just other names for Jesus?

  Why Is hypostatc union the only choice you guys are allowing as the only possibility? because as far as I am concerned no-one has yet put any sort of argument against this scripture which totally disproves it completely.

  John 1:14 (New American Standard Bible)

  14 And (A) the Word (B) became flesh, and (C) dwelt among us, and (D) we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of (E) grace and (F) truth. This scripture alone refutes any sort of hypostatic union and none you have addresses this clear constradiction to you hypostatic construct theory other than just blind denial of its blatant truth. the word 'became' past tense of 'become' in reference to this usage means a change of state from one thing to another completely. and not just stopping but clarifying it more saying once 'the word' became flesh it 'dwelt among us'. Reniaa
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  Leolaia

  The closest the Society came to weighing in on the question seems to have been in this article:

  *** w56 4/15 p. 238 Was Jesus a God-Man? ***

  When God's "firstborn" came to earth, the life force of the Word was transferred from heaven to the egg cell in the womb of Mary. This meant that the Word had to lay aside his heavenly glory, his spirit life.... Since Jesus as the Word "emptied himself" of his heavenly glory, he was no mighty spirit in a baby’s fleshly clothing just pretending to be ignorant like a newborn infant. Jesus was truly made flesh. His apostle John writes: "So the Word became flesh and resided among us." (John 1:14, NW) When the Word "became flesh" he was no longer a spirit creature. Indeed, he had to be a man in the real sense to fulfill this scripture: "We behold Jesus, who has been made a little lower than angels, crowned with glory and honor." If Jesus had been a God-Man, he could not have been really "lower than angels"....

  There were times when angels appeared as men, as when two angels appeared to Lot. (Gen. 19:1) Such would be a case of true incarnation. It is noteworthy that the angels visiting Lot materialized as full-grown men, not as babies. If Jesus had been a mere incarnation, then it would not have been necessary for God to transfer his life to an embryo in the virgin's womb and to have Jesus born as a helpless infant, subject to human parents; he could still have remained a spirit person and materialized a fully developed fleshly body just as the sons of God did in Noah's day and as the angel Gabriel did before Mary....So for Jesus to provide the ransom he must be a perfect man, no more, no less. Further, if Jesus had been a spirit garbed in flesh he could not really have died at man's hands; and if he did not really die, again we see that the ransom could not have been provided. But the Bible is clear that Jesus did provide the ransom and that he was a man, not God clothed in flesh.

  There seems to be a tension here in this argumentation with the JW doctrine about the soul, that one's "life force" is impersonal and like electricity doesn't bear one's individuality and personality (cf. Insight, 1988, Vol. 2, p. 1025; 8 August 1972 Awake!, p. 27-28; 1 January 1981 Watchtower, p. 31; 15 July 2002 Watchtower, p. 5; What Does the Bible Really Teach, 2005, p. 210). If this is the case, how is the "life force" supposed to transfer the Son's individuality to Mary's egg cell? It is worth noting what the Society says here: "The egg cell in the body of his human mother Mary was not fertilized by a human husband. It was Almighty God in heaven who infused life into Mary’s egg cell and made it develop into a perfect human creature. It was not a new life that the Almighty imparted to that human egg cell. Rather, he transferred the life-force of his heavenly Son known as The Word to the virgin’s egg cell and started it growing" (Divine Rulership, 1972, p. 11). The life-force of the heavenly Son is merely the catalyst that caused the egg to start growing, and because it is impersonal, it is hard to see how the baby produced from this catalyzed egg cell could be identified as the same person as the pre-existent Son. This problem is brought into even further relief in the following discussion of the role of one's "life-force" in conception:

  *** g72 8/8 p. 28 'The Spirit Returns to God' ***
  
  But does the impersonal spirit or life-force return to God's very presence in the heavens? No. This is because we humans did not receive that life-force directly from God. It was passed on from our parents to us through conception. Since the spirit or life-force had not come directly from God’s presence, it could not "return" to a place where it had not been before.

  If the Society were to be consistent, then this would mean that Mary's egg cell already received life-force from Mary. It needed another parent's life-force in order for it to develop into an individual person, since each person's life-force is "passed on from our parents to us through conception". This essentially makes the heavenly Son the father of Jesus, as it is the heavenly Son's life-force that is passed on to Jesus through conception. A child, a son, is always a separate person, a separate individual from the parents who pass their impersonal life-force to the child. Jesus, who draws on both the life-force of Mary and the life-force of the heavenly Son, must logically be someone else from the heavenly Son. The Society wants to say that something individual, something personal was tranferred from the heavenly Son to Mary's egg, but this exceeds the concept already expressed on what a "life-force" is supposed to be; it veers quite close to the concept of a "soul", which according to the Society does not exist.
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  Narkissos

  Watchtower 1997 2/1 gets a little more "personal":

  Jehovah did not send an angel to earth to pretend to die by laying down an incarnated body while he lived on as a spirit. Instead, by performing a miracle that only God, the Creator, could have devised, he transferred the life-force and personality pattern of a heavenly son to the womb of a woman, Mary the daughter of Heli, of the tribe of Judah. God’s active force, his holy spirit, safeguarded the development of the child in its mother’s womb, and it was born a perfect human. (Luke 1:35; 1 Peter 2:22) This one then had at his disposal the price needed to provide a ransom that would fully satisfy the requirements of divine justice.—Hebrews 10:5.
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  Leolaia

  reniaa....If Michael is only called an "archangel" in the Bible in a passage that directly quotes from an extracanonical book, then of course one has to look at the extracanonical literature. The story in Jude 9 .... is that from the OT? Do you recall any such story about Moses's body from Deuteronomy? Of course not. It comes from the Assumption of Moses. The author of Jude quotes and alludes to 1 Enoch all over the place in the epistle, a source that very explicitly refers to a plurality of archangels. You cannot take the two uses of the word "archangel" in the NT and attempt to represent what the word meant (as the Society does) in isolation from the broader context of how the word was actually used in the apocalyptic and testamentary literature that constitued the sources of the two references (notice that the reference in 1 Thessalonians is in an apocalyptic passage and the reference in Jude in an allusion to a pseudepigraphical testament). The word wasn't invented by the Bible writers. It was borrowed from the extracanonical (pseudepigraphal) literature.
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  jonathan dough

  Reniaa wrote:

  John 1:14 (New American Standard Bible)

  14 And (A) the Word (B) became flesh, and (C) dwelt among us, and (D) we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of (E) grace and (F) truth. This scripture alone refutes any sort of hypostatic union and none you have addresses this clear constradiction to you hypostatic construct theory other than just blind denial of its blatant truth. the word 'became' past tense of 'become' in reference to this usage means a change of state from one thing to another completely. and not just stopping but clarifying it more saying once 'the word' became flesh it 'dwelt among us'. Reniaa REPLY: Your tail is wagging the dog. If Jesus was, and is, God, which he was and is, then John 1:14 cannot be read literally the way you do. The only way your theory works is if you prove Jesus was nothing more than a man, and conversely that He was not God. Which you can't. But you have made a concerted effort to sidestep this very big issue. Here is the proof. http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-5.html#20 JD II
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  reniaa

  hi leolaia

  The greek scriptures and hebrew do mention or refer to points from non-canonical sources but all that testifies too is the point they refer too, it in no way canonisies the source material itself which is written without inspiration so cannot be considered authoritive or proof on any of it's other content.

  All jude does is validate archangel michael as correct nothing more or less.

  Reniaa
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  reniaa

  Hi Jon

  I completely disagree with you since I consider John 17-1-3 as ample proof among others that JEsus isn't the 'one true God' so we are at an impasse. I completely repudiate your claim that the bible in any way states Jesus is the 'One true god' .

  Aside from that your reasoning is circular using one unproven theory to validate another unproven theory. that are both challenged by witnesses and their lack of mention by the bible.

  Does the bible ever say Jesus is the 'One true God? No.

  Does it say Jesus is the son of the father who is the 'One true God alone? YES john 17:1-3

  Does the bible say at any point Jesus is joined to a flesh creature Jesus? No

  Does it say 'The word' became flesh not joined to flesh? Yes john 1:14

  Reniaa
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  jonathan dough

  Reniaa said:

  Hi Jon

  I completely disagree with you since I consider John 17-1-3 as ample proof among others that JEsus isn't the 'one true God' so we are at an impasse. I completely repudiate your claim that the bible in any way states Jesus is the 'One true god' .

  Aside from that your reasoning is circular using one unproven theory to validate another unproven theory. that are both challenged by witnesses and their lack of mention by the bible.

  Does the bible ever say Jesus is the 'One true God? No.

  Does it say Jesus is the son of the father who is the 'One true God alone? YES john 17:1-3

  Does the bible say at any point Jesus is joined to a flesh creature Jesus? No

  Does it say 'The word' became flesh not joined to flesh? Yes john 1:14

  Reniaa

  REPLY: Christian theology on this issue is not circular at all, and by virtue of your argument you're being a hypocrite because how many times have we heard the old refrain from the Society that you must "weigh all the evidence." You're not weighing anything; you are letting the tail wag the dog. There is a mountain of evidence that proves you wrong but you won't even stick your toe in the water because you know full well you don't have a leg to stand on.

  First, you have completely ignored dozens upon dozens of verses that prove the Divinity of Jesus, that he was and is God. Until you can face up to those verses and deal with that your theory is completely baseless.

  Secondly, contrary to what you claim, 1 John 5 :20 does refer to Jesus as the true God, but that is just one piece of the pie, one small piece in addition to the vast number of other scriptureal proofs.

  Third, you keep misleading the public by telling them that Christians believe that Jesus the creature is the Almighty Father, but they don't teach that, and your repetition of that distortion doesn't make you right some how.

  Fourth, neither do Christians teach "Jesus is joined to a flesh creature Jesus?". Why do you persist on such misleading tactics. You are just making yourself look bad, and devious. Jesus was/is a divine person who assumed a human nature. That is mainstream Christianity. If you believe otherwise, then the Society has greatly mislead you into believing something that is not true and you need to have a serious talk with them.

  Fifth, therefore, the Word did not "become" flesh in the modular sense and become just a man, nothing more or less. The overwhelming weight of scriptural authority proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that He was not just a mere man, or a created angel.It's all right here:

  http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-5.html#20

  JD II
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos.....That's a very interesting quote that partly addresses the problem (although in a rather tacked-on ad hoc way), since "life-force" doesn't cut it in terms of transferring one's individuality. But what is a "personality pattern"? The only discussion that explains what this is interestingly distinguishes a "personality pattern" from a soul by the former's physicality:

  *** w63 4/15 p. 242 par. 37 Identifying the Resurrected ***
  
  Each one develops his own personality pattern, and this is stored up in each one’s brain, also in the blood to some extent. The seat of intelligence, of thought, of memory, or consciousness and of personality is not some pagan Greek idea of a soul or psykhé. Pagans argue that a soul resides in each of us and is the seat of intelligence and personality; but we know that if the physical brain is damaged in anyone, he loses his intelligence or sanity and no so-called soul inside him keeps him intelligent, sane or possessed of memory and thinking ability. This disproves the pagan theory of an immortal soul as the seat of life and thought.

  Since a "spirit creature" has an altogether different physicality (or lack of physicality, if angels have to materialize bodies), it is still an open question of how such a transferral of personality occurs between the prehuman Son and the developing egg-cell. Does God mold the brain of the fetal Jesus so as to replicate in some fashion the personality of the heavenly Son? In this scenario, there is no departure of a unique individual from the heavenly realm to the earthly one. There seems to be some implicit understanding that the Son left heaven to dwell on the earth, and this is in fact stated in so many words: "Jehovah's only-begotten Son willingly left heaven and came down to earth to live as a human" (What Does the Bible Really Teach, 2005, p. 42). Transferring some of the Son's life-force to Mary's egg cell does not imply that the Son ceases to exist in heaven, no more than a father imparting his own life-force to his wife's egg cell causes the father to continue to exist only as the fertilized embryo. And guiding the development of Jesus' brain to mimic the personality of the heavenly Son similarly does not necessitate the ceasing of the Son's existence in heaven, either. So unless God somehow destroys the heavenly Jesus (in a similar fashion, I suppose, as the Society teaches that he destroyed Jesus' human body in the resurrection), the prenatal Jesus would co-exist with the heavenly Son and thus could not be the same individual. But even if we presume that God blinked the heavenly Son out of existence the same instant he conceived the human Jesus in the womb of Mary, this still doesn't identify the one with the other.
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  Narkissos

  The WT consistently substituted a modern, abstract or quasi-technical verbiage (force, pattern) to the mythological "words-beings" of traditional religious anthropology (spirit, soul) -- especially in the 50s it seems: was some of the structuralist Zeitgeist seeping in, through some writers at least?

  As shown almost clinically here by JW apologists falling back from this verbiage to scriptural formulations of a traditional/mythological kind (e.g. he became, descended, came down, goes back up, which implies unity of subject) this abstract revamping proves to be narratively unsatisfying: because a person (real or imaginary) is a mythological unit (individual = non-divisible), which qualitatively exceeds the addition of "things" like "matters" and "forces" and "patterns": no amount of "things" will add up to "someone". When the witch turns the prince into a toad the prince has to be the prince "within" the toad as it were. That's how our stories work and how "we" work.