Can any Witness possibly anwser this question? (page 5)

Kenneson

Sirona wrote: "It is considered by some that YHWH is plural and feminine."

Does that mean that YHWH is female and that there are many?

I think you're on the track -- if Jesus is "a god" at all -- false or true -- then there is a polytheism going on. Also, what about where in Isaiah Jehovah says there is no god before me created, nor will there be after me. So, that leaves just him as any God at all, right? Also, add to it who is the Alpha and Omega. Is he Jehovah or Jesus? I can't get anybody to answer that one for me either. I had two witnesses in to work on that, and they both answered opposite when I asked them -- they can't even agree. However, whoever the Alpha and Omega is, he is the "First and the Last" according to Isaiah, and also Revelation. Also, he holds the keys to DEATH AND HELL -- he admits there is one -- but also, curiously, he was DEAD and now LIVES forever and holds the keys. HUMMMMM. Alice

Adonai438

To Sirona,
Respectfully, 'who' thinks YHWH is feminine? The source is important here. In regards to the language itself it is not so I would not know from where the person is comming from on that. God does use plural in some titles like 'Elohim'. Elohim is hebrew for God but is plural. Not plural Gods but in some nature of it. For the Bible says ther is ONE- numerically ONE & in Union ONE- True God. Notice that when God made man in his image he made a man. Not that God is neccessarily has gender since thats a human thing, but it's interesting he is Always refered to as male/masculine in the words & tenses.

JWs can't get their own doctrine straight unfortunately.
They have historically flip flopped on who the alpha and Omega is, they used to think Jesus was comming in the flesh, They use to understand that Michael was NOT Jesus amnd so on. Even now they want to have it both ways on many issues. They want to claim to be monotheists but they have 2 'true Gods and a bunch of true false gods.
They will only admit to having 2 gods after much pressure and scripture that they can't answer. But even then they saY there is only one God- Jehovah.

I know we can't expect them to just jump at the idea of 'joining' christendom-- with all they've been taught, but I pray they at least join the side of reason and eventually find the truth.

4christ/Lauren-- nice to see you on here-- good questions and sharing, I hope someone has been helped by some of the info shared. You can -mail me too, anytime I have yet to see ANY of the hundreds of JWs I've talked with be able to answer these questions and many want to avaiod them period thinking that somehow looking into the scriptures will lead them AWAY from truth. Go figure

God bless y'all <>< Angie

jerome

I used the same line of reasoning on two witnesses that came by me recently.

They anwsered that Jesus is a god.

When I showed them isaiah 43:10-11, they just said that jesus called Satan a god so that explains it all.

They dident even know that by that statement they condemened them selves to being polythiest.(sp)

jerome

The Bible is a two edged sword wield it for evil and it you may get hurt.

Bang

I thought I should post that there's lots of gods, even 'household gods' - gods are served and admired, and people are jealous over gods, and desire to keep gods - so then, is it yourself or a new rolex watch, or the car or house?

When people hang on to things, to have them, they become a god for them (give away your coat also). Even sin becomes a god for some, a terrible master, as they don't release it, over shame - worldly glory - they hang on to it, and can even die "in" it. Imagine a JW elder who knows he has preached crap, but just can't admit it because he might have 'failed' to earn the kingdom - like the problem with Judas, a failure while trading, but it wasn't about trading. The prostitutes believe they've totally stuffed up, admit it, relinquish it all, and so enter the kingdom with Christ as saviour, not themselves.

There's lots of gods but not all have life and light within them, and some are called false gods - they don't last forever, the love isn't forever (could be lust).

The sons of God are named as Gods by God, served by Him - God became man for us - as real friends we should be God for God. Putting it simply, it's true friendship - by Him I was born to be His friend - how can I seek a false god ?

Bang

apostate man

OMG, Bang, now were going to argue about what a "GOD" is? The bible isn't talking about rolex watchs or houses. I swear, PEOPLE WILL ARGUE ABOUT EVERYTHING!

Were not talking material things, were talking about GOD. Not the false ones, not the true ones, not the lesser ones or the greater ones. Just GOD. There is ONE GOD, none other. I mean, really, you COULD call your cat a GOD, but is it?

Break the chains that bind you,
unless, of course, you're into that sort of thing.

Sirona

Hi All,

I moderate a forum on polytheism at delphi. The subject of Yahweh came up somewhere along the line... I will find the sources and post them as soon as I can.

I also have a book at home which suggests Yahweh is feminine, it is a book which discusses God as a Goddess "The witches goddess" by Janet and Stuart Farrar. I will fish it out and see what their source is for that assertion.

Sirona

** http://www.religioustolerance.org **

LittleToe

I would suggest the following be considered:
Maybe the name YHWH refers to God.
God consists of Father Son and Holy Spirit.
The idea of Father / Mother / Son as a worshipped triad is from the oldest histories. Was it of corrupt origin, or were the historic triad mimickeries of what existed in the heavens.
Maybe the Holy Spirit is the feminine form.

There are no specific genders in heaven, as we could truly term them, as highlighted by Jesus words concerning the resurrected.
Hence all three are refered to as "He".

This would also concur with many pagan sources (and I don't state that in any derogatory sense).

Back to the thread - they've got difficulty with the whole "person of the Holy Spirit" thing too, as the reasoning on "merely a force" is a bit tenuous.

Sirona

I would agree that God is genderless.

Sirona

** http://www.religioustolerance.org **

AlanF

I usually avoid getting involved in Trinity/Antitrinity arguments, but I have a bit of
time on my hands and so I will this time. Given that I no longer believe the Bible is
God's Word, and having examined a good deal of arguments on both sides of the issue,
I think I can make some useful comments. I already know, though, given the illogically
emotional attachment that people have for JW doctrines and for trinitarianism, that
they'll fall on deaf ears or insensible minds.

Because JWs are the most outspoken of antitrinitarians and I know all of their arguments,
I'll use them as the archetype antitrinitarian. Of course, there are many far less rabid
people who don't believe the trinity doctrine.

Because Evangelicals in my experience are the most outspoken trinitarians and I know a
great many of their arguments, I'll use them as the archetype trinitarians. There are
many less rabid people who believe the trinity doctrine. Interestingly, the most
advanced scholars in the mainstream churches -- Catholic and Protestant -- are gradually
moving away from traditional trinitarianism, and accepting the fact that the earliest
Bible writings contain no trace of the doctrine.

The simple fact is that the Bible writers went through an evolution of belief after
Jesus died. The earliest writings contain no trace of the trinity, and they can be read
quite understandably from a non-trinitarian point of view. By the time of Paul's writings,
traces of a "Jesus is theos" idea are seen. By the time the Gospel of John was
supposedly written, the "Jesus is theos" notion has become dogma, although the
precise meaning of the notion is not clear from the text. Later writers, whom the Church
deemed uninspired, continued the evolution of the idea until it became formalized in a
full-blown "Jesus is God" notion. I'm not going to consider the business of "the Holy
Spirit" in this post.

It's evident to objective observers that both JWs and Evangelicals tend to ignore each
other's arguments, ignore certain Bible passages that are difficult for their views,
misrepresent a good many things in general, and present quite horrible arguments in their
effort to defend their cherished doctrines.

For example, around 1990 the JWs produced a brochure on the Trinity. It contains massive
misrepresentations of the views of the early "Church Fathers". Such organizationally
sanctioned misrepresentation shows that the JWs know that something is very wrong with
their views -- otherwise why the misrepresentations? JWs are also hard put to make
sensible comments about exactly who is doing the talking in parts of Revelation. It's
pretty obvious that the writer makes no particular distinction between God and Jesus
at times.

Trinitarian arguments have problems as well. I won't go into most of these, since almost
almost all participants of this board have had exposure to some of them during their
course as JWs.

About the best pro-trinity technical discussion I know of is the book Jesus As God
by Murray J. Harris. Harris goes into excruciating detail about the precise meanings and
cultural uses of key Biblical words that meant things like "God, god, Lord, lord" and so
forth in Hebrew and Greek. He points out that the Greek theos, for instance, has
a wide variety of meanings in all Greek-influenced cultures, some of which are only
hinted at by the English "god", so that simply translating theos into some form
of "god" is likely to be misleading without a painful extra measure of explanation.

While Harris comes down solidly on the trinitarian side, he also objectively points out
many problems in traditional interpretations of "difficult" Bible passages such as
John 1:1. He points out that, because of the limitations of English, the rendering
"the Word was God" in John 1:1c is simply wrong, because it equates "the Word" with "God",
which is an heresy according to Evangelicals but not certain other Christians. Harris
argues that something like "the Word was divine" or, even better, "what God was the Word
was" are closer in meaning to the Greek.

Now for some comments about the arguments that pro-trinitarians have given in this thread.
I'm pointing out a number of flaws in the arguments because they're really bad. If ex-JWs
who believe in the Trinity can't manage to argue in favor of their belief without using
bogus arguments, then they're no better off than they were as JWs and they're committing
the same sort of fallacies.

Jerome presents a so-called dialog in which he tries to confuse his opponent by various
uses of "god" and "God", ending up going down a rather tired path where the object is
to present the seemingly confusing question, "Is Jesus a true god or a false god?" The
object here is akin to asking someone, "Are you fit to sleep with pigs?", which appears
to have no answer that leaves the one questioned without looking like an idiot. But
the right answer for most people is, "Yes, I'm fit to sleep with pigs. Are you?" I'll
leave it to the reader to figure out why. Similarly, the right answer to the first
question, according to the Bible is, "Jesus is a true god." The reason this answer looks
wrong to trinitarians is that they rarely understand the full range of meaning of the
Greek theos and they blindly accept the rather stupid argument along these lines
given by, I believe, Ron Rhodes in his critical book on JWs. This argument deliberately
confuses the uses of theos in Greek culture and the New Testament, as well as the
proper distinction between "god" and "God" in English.

Anyone who wants to see what a truly good Evangelical scholar has to say on these points
ought to read Murray Harris's book.

In English, "god" generally refers to some sort of powerful mythological creature, or to
any entity that is held in extremely high regard or worshipped. Thus, the entity that
English cultures call "God" is a god. Highly regarded sports figures and strikingly
good-looking people are sometimes called "gods". Because of hundreds of years of
intimate ties to Christianity, English-speaking cultures have come to use the capitalized
version, "God", to refer exclusively to the Supreme Creator, whether that be the Christian
God or Allah or whatever. More narrowly, "God" usually refers to "the God of the Bible".

Theos takes in all of the English meanings and a lot more besides. Because Greek
in New Testament times was written exclusively in capital letters, there was no way to
distinguish "theos = god" from "theos = God" except by context. Often, a Greek speaker
might preface theos with ho, the article for "the", i.e., "the god", in order to
refer to what English speakers would call God or perhaps The True God. However, this rule
was not fixed in stone, and in the New Testament as well as other Greek writings we can
find cases where context indicates that theos alone or ho theos refer to
"god" or "God". Thus, as Harris and other reasonably objective writers point out, the
proper translation of certain passages containing a form of theos will depend upon
the translator's overall understanding of the New Testament as a whole and his
understanding of the specific context. In other words, there are cases where even the
best scholars cannot determine the proper meaning based on textual considerations alone.

Theos, unlike "god", is often used as an adjective even though it is also a noun,
much as "human" is used both as a noun and an adjective. Thus, "Harry is a human" means
essentially the same thing as "Harry is human", but there is a subtle distinction between
the two uses: one focuses on Harry's being an entity that is a member of the
category called "human", whereas the other focuses on Harry's being a member of that
category. Similarly, a girl might properly say, "Leonardo Di Caprio" is a god!" but she
would be quite misunderstood if she said, "Leonardo Di Caprio is god" or worse,
"Leonardo Di Caprio is God". Of course, in spoken conversation the latter two would
be indistinguishable. In English, we just don't use "god" or "God" as adjectives.
That's a limitation of English, but not of Greek, but not many Christians are aware of
these subtlties.

In contrast, it is perfectly proper in Greek usage to say the equivalent of "Zeus is god"
because it simply means "Zeus is a member of the generic category 'god' ". It would be
perfectly proper for a Christian to say and believe this, because it simply acknowledges
normal usage in the Greek language. It's the same as saying, "Zeus is A god". However, if
one wanted to be clear about how one viewed Zeus, one might say the equivalent of "Zeus
is THE god", which would be the equivalent of saying "Zeus is the most powerful of all
the gods" or even "Zeus is God". And of course, we can just as properly say that "the
Father is God", "the Father is god" (where 'god' is used as an adjective), "the Father is
a god", "Jesus is god", "Jesus is a god", and "Jesus is God" (but see below for a major
caveat). Each phrase has a slightly different focus.

Given the above considerations, it's easy to see why one can properly say that Jesus
is a "true god". By both Greek and English usage, being a highly regarded and powerful
entity, he truly is a "god" because he is in the category 'god', or theos. He is
a "true god" in the same sense as each of us on this forum is a "true human". In other
words, here "god" and "human" are used in the generic sense, not in the sense of pointing
to a specific instance of a "god" or a "human". Of course, by conventional usage English
speakers sometimes refer to "false gods", but not "false humans". We really have no idea
what a "false human" would be, except perhaps in the science fiction sense of "some entity
pretending to be a real human". Again by conventional usage, the term "false god" refers
not to an entity only pretending to be a god, but to one improperly given or
demanding the worship that is supposed to be reserved for God, i.e., The One True God.
Thus, English bibles properly translate the Greek in ways such as, "Satan is the god of
this world", "you are gods", and so forth. Both humans and Satan are "gods" within the
meaning of the Greek, and this was perfectly understood by Christians of NT times. This
in no way implies that these "gods" ought to be highly regarded or worshiped; they are
"gods" by reason of being "powerful entities".

Jerome's argument confuses these distinctions by implicitly and improperly equating the
term "true god" with "The One True God". Thus the argument is an implicitly circular one,
because his question really means, "Is Jesus The One True God or a false god?" Obviously
this is begging the question because it leaves the one questioned with only one good
apparent answer, when other good answers exist. Thus, an argument based on the one
questioned's being unable to come up with a third alternative is fallacious.

So, Jerome, are you fit to sleep with pigs?

Jerome, you also attempted to deal with John 1:1. Let me ask you this: Is John here
saying that the Word is identical to God? Why or why not? If not, then why does John
say, "the Word was God"? Could John properly say, "the Word is God"? Or "God is
the Word"? Why or why not?

I note, Adonai438, that you're quite unable to distinguish "god" from "God". Perhaps
you're not a native English speaker and do not know that the two usages are quite
different.

4christ, I note that you make the ridiculous argument that understanding the trinity
can be compared to understanding that 1x1x1=1. I don't know who invented this argument,
but whoever did is an idiot. Why? Because they have no understanding of mathematics
and have completely misapplied it. We all know perfectly well what it means to take
hold of three distinct humans, put them in a group and count them. One, two, three!
This can be expressed mathematically by saying that each person is represented by a "1",
and then counting by "1s": 1, 2, 3! Thus there is a direct, gut-level understanding
of what it means to "count people" -- you simply count them. We can observe, say,
Jerome, Adonai438 and 4christ standing on a street, count them, and say, "Ha! There
are three people!" We can then mathematically describe what we've done by the equation
1+1+1=3. We can sensibly say that Jerome + Adonai438 + 4christ = three people because
we know exactly what we mean by "counting people".

On the other hand, there is no corresponding concept of "multiplying people". What does
it mean to observe Jerome, Adonai438 and 4christ standing on a street and then multiplying
them? Do we obtain anything sensible by saying that we're multiplying Jerome by Adonai438
by 4christ? What would we say the product is? Clearly the notion of "multiplying people"
is meaningless. So is the notion of "multiplying Gods". What does it mean to multiply
the Father by the Son and then multiply the "product" by the Holy Spirit? Can you tell
me anything sensible? No, you can not. So your argument is meaningless. And because you're
using a meaningless concept to illustrate what is supposedly a clearly given Bible
teaching about the nature of God, your argument is ridiculous. Now apply this to the
statements of ApostateMan, who oh-so-knowingly says:

: Yes, 1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1x1= 1
: JehovahxJesusxYahwehxGodxAlmightyxFatherxSaviourxSonxWordxHolySpiritxETC...= 1

These sorts of statements are as meaningless as claims by JWs that they just know
that their Governing Body speaks for God.

I note too, 4christ, that you do not seem to understand English very well at all. You
asked MavMan, "Is Jesus a true God? A false God?" But by common English usage, and
therefore by definition, "God" is exclusively "the true God". And there is no such
thing as "a false God" because God is by definition "the true God". And so your question
is the same as, "Is Jesus a false true God?", which is obviously meaningless.

Another notion that trinitarians royally screw up is that of polytheism. Now, dictionaries
define that word something like, "belief in or worship of more than one god". Note that
there are two concepts in the definition: "belief in" and "worship". All good
Christians would say that it is wrong to worship many gods, because worship is supposed
to be given only to The One True God. So in that particular sense, polytheism is wrong by
Christian standards. However, Paul himself had a "belief in" more than one god, because
the Bible explicitly has him saying that the god of this world, Satan, has blinded the
minds of the unbelievers. (2 Corinthians 4:4) This certainly does not mean that Paul's
"belief in" Satan meant that Paul worshiped Satan, any more than Jesus' "belief in"
Satan meant that he worshiped him. The fallacy of this "polytheism" argument is that it
fails to account for the two meanings of "polytheism", and so, just like the Watchtower
Society which will often deliberately misuse words that have multiple meanings so as to
mislead its readers, people who use it are either deceitful, or they simply do not think
logically. They somehow argue -- perhaps without knowing it -- that "belief in" something
implies worship of it.

The silliness of this argument is seen in the amazingly fuzzy statement by alazenby:

: if Jesus is "a god" at all -- false or true -- then there is a polytheism going on.

"Polytheism going on"? So what?

Yet another notion I sometimes see expressed is that one cannot understand the Trinity
doctrine without the Holy Spirit somehow putting the understanding into one's heart.
This is no different from the JW doctrine that one can't understand a lot of their
teachings without "divine guidance" of some sort. The concepts are so vague as to be
meaningless.

At this point it should be evident that I consider most JWs and most Evangelicals to be
prone to giving horribly bogus arguments. I believe that long association with either
camp tends to produce unthinking "followers of men" who deceive themselves into thinking
they're following God and are figuring out all sorts of wonderful "spiritual truths" on
their own. I wholeheartedly agree with M. James Penton's assessment: they're all pups
from the same bitch.

AlanF

Can any Witness possibly anwser this question?

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