Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 136 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  aqwsed12345

  "You argued that Arians in the fourth century didn’t base their beliefs on scripture."

  This is a misrepresentation of what I said: I claimed that they started primarily (not exclusively) from speculation: that it CANNOT be this way (because it is not "logical"), therefore it is not so, and then they also looked for biblical passages for this conclusion. One is the mistranslated Septuagint It was Proverbs 8:22, the other was Colossians 1:15.As far as I know, they did not use Revelation 3:14, because according to them they did not think that being the "arkhe" of creation was the same as the first creation.

  The method of today's JWs is the same, on the one hand, based on an unproven assumption, a conspiracy theory, that the YHWH was "erased" from the original manuscripts of the New Testament. On the other hand, what is left is also mistranslated by NWT.

  I don't think that "the modern scholarship" (??? everyone? all? some? with full consensus? oh really?) would say that, you gave some excerpted quotes, I assume you haven't read any of their books in their entirety. I have no idea who Maurice Wiles, Rowan Williams, or Karen Armstrong, and how much authority they would actually represent in theology or church history.

  On what basis did "modern scholarship" come to a completely new conclusion? Perhaps previously unknown early Christian sources have come to light? They don't describe what they based their conclusions on, and you, as an authority, wave it in front of me.

  Well, according to the scientific methodology, you have to start from the primary sources. Have you read through even one entire writing of a single apostolic father? Or do you just collect quotes?
  

  This is also a typical WTS method: quote scissoring. This is the "work" of the Bethel workers, Raymond Franz also described it well, to look for a catchable half-sentence in lexicons that can be flagged: "See? Even he said that!"

  Then the discussion partner should run after the resources. Well, no, it's well known, the unfair citation method of the WTS, it was clearly shown when they cited some supposedly "supporting" scholars about the NWT, JW critics asked them, if they really meant it, and it turned out that they really didn't...

  "the Nicene/Athanasius faction was prone to using the language of philosophy to define their beliefs in terms of “essence”, something rejected by many as unscriptural."

  Yes, this was indeed an argument of the Arian faction, that since the term "ousia" is not found in the Greek Scriptures (which is true), it follows that the theological formula described by this term cannot be true either. Well, this claim would require proof. The term "ousia" indees doesn't appear in the Greek Scriptures, but there are many other terms known and used in Greek philosophy do, such as: pleroma, logos, arkhe, hypostasis, physis, etc. So the apostles were not at all averse to the use of terms and concepts that had their own precedents and parallels in Greek philosophy as well.

  Furthermore, the Arians also used the concept of ousia to describe their position, when they first described the relationship between the Father and the Son with the concept of heteroousios and then homoiousia.
  
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  slimboyfat

  Maurice Wiles came to the conclusion that Arians had been misrepresented by a close reading of the primary sources, as his book Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (1996) demonstrates at length. If you think my quotations of his work, or others, are not representative then I would welcome correction. His conclusion is that early Arians started from the Bible and that they are no more open to the charge of philosophising than the Nicene authors. Plus the later Arians in the West and the Goths had a very simple reliance on the language of the Bible and rejected philosophical language.

  I don’t think it’s relevant, because I am not claiming to be an expert on early church history—I am pointing to those who are experts—but just for your interest, I answer your query about what I have read from the original sources, to the best of my recollection. I have read a translation of the Apostolic Fathers that included Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatius, the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, letter of Barnabas, and probably some others I forget. This was a number of years ago. I have not read any other complete works but I have read substantial parts of Adversus Praxaen by Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, the Odes of Solomon, Athanasius, and small parts from lots of others. I may have got some of those names wrong, I am writing this from memory.

  You asked earlier where John Locke got the idea that pre-Nicene authors wrote like Arians. As best I can tell, from Wiles’ book, in common with many of his time who questioned the Trinity, including John Milton, Samuel Clarke, Isaac Newton, William Whiston, and others, Locke appears to have read voraciously in the texts of the early church and based his views on that.

  There is some evidence that Trinitarians in the fourth century attempted to alter the wording of Rev 3:14 from “the beginning of the creation of God” to “the beginning of the church of God”, to avoid the conclusion that Jesus was created, but in this instance their forgery did not succeed.

  The first Christological reading to surface is in Revelation 3:14. The title of the risen Christ, ‘the beginning of the creation of God’, κτίσεως τοῦ θεοῦ, is altered to the ‘begin- ning of the church of God’, ἐκκλησίας τοῦ θεοῦ.29 The change eliminates the possibility of placing Jesus within the created order and is conspicuous against the backdrop of the fourth century, defined as it was by its pitched theological battles over the precise nature of the Son. In fact, it is remarkable how close the Apocalypse’s original title comes to Arius’s own musings about the Son. In the Thalia fragments, one of the few primary sources believed to preserve Arius’s authentic words, we encounter the following assertion: ‘The one without beginning established the Son as the beginning of all creatures’.30 The ‘Arian’ statement is nearly indistinguishable from the Apocalypse’s original title. The eradication of such language in Codex Sinaiticus appears to indicate that the wording was a problem. The title of Revelation 3:14 was thus harmonized to the title of Colossians 1:18, where Jesus is ‘the head of the church’ (κεφαλὴ...τῆς ἐκκλησίας).31

  Remarkably, two centuries later Oecumenius would use Revelation 3:14 to weigh in on the Arian controversy of his day. Oecumenius’s text of Revelation 3:14 is identical to the ‘earliest attainable text’, and he displays no knowledge of the singular reading in Codex Sinaiticus. Yet, Oecumenius also reads Revelation 3:14 in light of Colossians 1:18 as he attempts to refute the idea that the Son was created. The singular reading of Codex Sinaiticus may therefore represent the earliest use of the Apocalypse (on record) to thwart an ‘Arian’ threat by reading it in light of Colossians.32

  Hernández Jr, J. (2015). Codex Sinaiticus: An Early Christian Commentary on the Apocalypse?. Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript, 107-26 (This article is available online if you search for it)
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  aqwsed12345

  I assume you work at the WTS headquarters, that's where they do like it. They collect all kinds of half-sentences that can be grasped, put them next to each other, and then our position can be presented as a scientific consensus. That’s false. There are a lot of apologists who went after the WT articles citations, cherry-pickings.

  Quotation picking are collected to support a pre-prepared concept, which is usually taken out of context, the opinion of the given scholar is often misrepresented, and the marginal opinion was completely falsely presented as if it were an established scientific consensus tomorrow, like the George Howard hypothesis.

  This is a completely dishonest and unscientific method, and in itself is evidence that their position is weak, but it is good for impressing the uneducated in religion with the idea that wow, even Dr. X said that? Moreover, another Dr. Prof. Y?

  Your citation says nothing about an intentional distorting of the Rev 3:14 is completely nonsense. Typical JW conspiracy theory, like the alleged removal of the YHWH from the NT. The Vulgate translated the same, since orthodoxy has nothing to “fear” about Son being called the arkhe of the creation. You can check the textual variants in the NA28.

  • https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/trinity.php
  • https://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-JW-SYBTT-Watchtower-BOOKLET-Should-You-Believe-the-Trinity-EXPOSED-REFUTED-pagan-section.htm
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    https://web.archive.org/web/20010329163628/http://home.online.no/~jansh/wteng/needchr.htm
    

  
  And in many passages of the divine oracles is the Son said to have been born/begotte , but nowhere to have come into being; which manifestly convicts those of misconception about the Lord’s generation, who presume to call His divine and ineffable generation a making, a creation.
  
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  vienne

  aqws is fond of strawman arguments and false assumptions. They allow him to avoid the point.
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  aqwsed12345

  So let's see the question specifically. There was a total of ONE textual variant, in this case the Codex Sinaiticus, which renders the ominous passage of 3:14 as "the arche of God's church", not "the beginning of God's creation". Well, if you look at the critical apparatus of NA28, it turns out that there were quite a few textual variants of the New Testament, in this case, okay, there was one in this one. And then you (or your selected source), what conclusion do you draw?

  1. The orthodox Nicene school must have been "afraid" of the original version. This is completely baseless. The fact that "the arche of God's creation" in the given Hellenic cultural-linguistic environment did not mean at all that he was the "first created being", but rather the primordial principle,, etc. of creation. This was the meaning of the word "arkhe" in the original language, which the English word "beginning" cannot accurately reflect.

  2. This text variant was a deliberate, purposeful forgery. And this is the usual JW conspiracy theory, about the evil corrupt church that was willing to falsify the Bible. It was certainly just as random a copyist's error as any of the textual variants seen in the footnotes of NA28. It is typical that he assumes some malicious intention behind everything.

  3. There was a central church effort to falsify the Revelation 3:14. Well, the Church has never ordered this, no such church instruction, decree, synodal decision exists, no deliberate mistranslation has ever spread, and the Vulgate officially accepted by the Latin Church did not contain this, nor did the Patriarchal Text used by the Eastern Church.

  Well, it is not the Catholics or Orthodox who deliberately falsify the Scriptures, but rather the Arians. The mistranslation of Proverbs 8:22 is not their fault, but an inadvertent mistake of the Jewish translators before Christ, but they persisted in it even after it was revealed that it was a mistranslation of the corresponding Hebrew verb ('qanah', not 'bara') in the appropriate place.

  The Arians of the 4th century did not interpret John 1:1c as saying that the Word was only "a lesser god", a demigod, but interpreted this verse by putting a period, a full stop after «God was», and the end of the verse, "the Word" was placed as the beginning of sentence in the next verse.
  

  The Gothic translation made by the Arian Wulfila (Ulfias) is a good example of this, Philippians 2:6, which correctly means "thought it not robbery [harpagmos] to be equal with God", the Gothic Arian Bible has "thought it not robbery to be similar (galeiko) with God".

  The NWT is the worst of all these, which clearly and intentionally mistranslates a bunch of christologically relevant verses.
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  aqwsed12345

  John Locke was not a church historian and his claim is completely baseless.

  Of course, driven by various intentions, there are many well-known people who, largely without indicating specific historical facts, suggest similar things to what the JWs do today, that early Christianity, the Edict of Milan and the Council of Nicea was the true, uncorrupted church. And after that it went bad and became evil. Oh really? What about Jesus promise in Matthew 16:18? Even the gates hell cannot take over the Church of Jesus, but according to the JWs, it went totally "apostate" just in a few decades!

  Restorianist tendencies are understandably disturbed by the abundance of early Christian literature, which clearly points out that the institution, faith, practice and traditions of the Church are essentially intact and consistent and unchanged for two thousand years. External sources also point to this.

  These restorationists claim that the Christians of the apostolic age professed exactly what they do today. In other words, the faith of the churches of the apostolic age was just like that of today's JW (which one? according to the current "light"?). They considered Jesus as the archangel Michael, a creature, thought that Jesus was executed on a simple stake (cf. Alexamenos graffito), referred to God with the name Jehovah, only celebrated the Lord's Supper annually, and believed in a two-class system of salvation, and waited for the 1914 etc., when they were erased from history "just once".

  Of course, this assumption is completely unfounded. You can cite quotes, but you won't be able to prove it, because it's a conteo.

  Of course, the terminology used to describe the relationship and position of the Father and the Son changed and fluctuated. What words to use, hypostasis, physis, prosopon, persona, ousia etc.. The meaning and nuance of these expressions have also changed by time. This is normal, for example, in English, the word "gun" originally meant cannon, and then took on the general meaning of "firearm".

  But it is clear that the earliest Christians declared that Jesus was God, eternal, etc. They didn't make excuses that "oh, he's not really God in the true sense, but really just an angel, namely Michael."
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  vienne

  Do you even know who John Locke was? His place in Christian history? You spew but you do not address the arguments.
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  aqwsed12345

  LOL, was it a serious question? No, I don't even have a far idea who John Locke was, ehh..

  Was he a theologian? If we are talking about history of dogma development, church history, it would be logical, to look up for primary sources, and church historians about the issue.
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  aqwsed12345

  slimboyfat

  Let's check your citation from the First Apology 21 of Justin Martyr:

  "Τῷ δὲ καὶ τὸν λόγον, ὅ ἐστι πρῶτον γέννημα τοῦ θεοῦ, ἄνευ ἐπιμιξίας φάσκειν ἡμᾶς γεγεννῆσθαι..."

  It was also a self goal, Justin doesn't say here, that the Logos was a creature at all! This text (proton gennēma tou theou) doesn't mean "first created" either, but the opposite: it means the "first-birth", "first begotten", or simply "firstborn" of God. It's terminology rather corresponds the Nicene Creed: "γεννηθέντα ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς" [gennēthenta ek tou Patros], "γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα" [gennēthenta, ou poiēthenta].

  You should look up if there any early Christians who use use the verbs "ktízō", and even more so "poiéō" (or phrases formed from these) for the generation of the Son from the Father, and finally start to doubt the credibility of your sources.

  I suggest you to read Newman’s book 'The Arians of the Fourth Century'.
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  slimboyfat

  In your earlier post you mentioned that Watchtower has misquoted authors on the Trinity. I think many here would agree with that. People here on the whole are not Watchtower apologists. Watchtower also misquoted scientists about evolution, probably worse than the Trinity misquotes.

  It doesn’t change the fact that the Trinity is a non-biblical teaching. A fair reading of mainstream scholarship confirms the view that the early Christians had views about Jesus that were closer to JWs (and Arius, and later Arians) than to Trinitarians. Take the passage in Phil 2.5–11, for example. In the updated edition of the NRSV, which is the standard scholarly reference Bible, it reads:

  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

  6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
  did not regard equality with God
  as something to be grasped,
  7 but emptied himself,
  taking the form of a slave,
  assuming human likeness.
  And being found in appearance as a human,
  8 he humbled himself
  and became obedient to the point of death—
  even death on a cross.

  9 Therefore God exalted him even more highly
  and gave him the name
  that is above every other name,
  10 so that at the name given to Jesus
  every knee should bend,
  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
  11 and every tongue should confess
  that Jesus Christ is Lord,
  to the glory of God the Father.

  
  

  John Ziesler explains this passage as follows in his book Pauline Christianity (1990), part of three Oxford Bible Series:

  Though (v.6) Christ like Adam was in the image (‘form’: the words in Greek can be synonymous) of God, unlike Adam he did not regard equality with God (i.e. being like God, see Gen 3:5) a matter of grabbing (or perhaps a prize to be snatched). Indeed unlike Adam (v. 7) he voluntarily accepted servanthood and mortality even to the point of a humiliating death on the cross (v. 8) … The ruling function that properly belongs to Yahweh alone is now Christ’s also; he is cosmic Lord and as such receives honour that hitherto has been given only to Yahweh. Yet before we rashly conclude that the two have simply become identified, we must note that the element of subordination remains. It all happens, even the exaltation of Christ, ‘to the glory of God the Father’ (v.11), and Christ does not exalt himself but is exalted by God and is given the title ‘Lord’ by him (v.9). Christ has become the bearer of the powers of God and the recipient of divine homage (v. 10), but is still distinct from him and subject to him. Pages 45 and 46

  We may also compare Phil 2.10ff with Isa. 45:23 where the reference is similarly altered to Christ from Yahweh. There is at least a close association between the two figures, but in fact they are never identified (see again 1 Cor. 8:5f) In 1 Cor 15:24, 28, Christ at the end hands over the kingdom to the Father, and the final subjection of all things to God includes the subjection of Christ himself. It is such passages that lend force to the often quoted words of L. Cerfaux that ‘Christ is Lord because he is God’s vice-regent, exercising power that belongs to God.’ This seems to be exactly right. God’s powers and reign are exercised through Christ as God’s plenipotentiary representative, but Christ is not identical with God. Things traditionally said about God may now properly be said about Christ, but not that he is God, for the element of subordination remains. Page 39

  Compared with ‘Lord’, this title [Son of God] is used by Paul infrequently, but see Rom. 1:3f, 9; 1 Cor 1:9 as examples. By the Second Century, it came to refer to Jesus as divine, but originally it was not a particularly lofty title. It is not the same as God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity … Rather, being Son of God meant obedient service to God on the one hand, and divine commissioning and endorsement on the other. In our society we tend to forget that the first thing about a son was that he obeyed his father; therefore calling Jesus Christ Sin of God meant first of all that he did what God wanted. He was the obedient one. Pages 41 and 42.