Trinity- True or False (page 15)

ozziepost

Ummm....bit of a mist rolling over the Western Isles right now, LT?

LittleToe

Joseph:

We have grammatical rules today and may think that similar rules existed then but did they? And were such authors schooled in such rules? Further has anyone ever broken a grammatical rule to emphasize a point?

Which is it?

You're making it up as you go along, aren't you?

Cygnus:

That's why I said your ideas would probably fundamentally differ from an Eastern Orthodoxian.

Which ideas would those be? I'm just arguing a position, and need not necessarily be presenting my own ideas at all. That may be one reason that I'm not so emotionally invested in the subject...

That having been said, I do hold to Jesus being the very Son of God. A distinct person, and yet identical to his Father in every way.

Ok, lets deal with your quotes. First off the '67 one only deals with his life, not Divinity. Ask a JW if immortality means godhood and they'll disagree with you point blank.

Secondly the '51 one, which was a loooong time ago (new light, old light, new light, old light):

Man is not the only creature that has bounds set to his relative freedom. Since it is written that man is ‘made a little lower than the angels’, it appears that the area of relative freedom enjoyed by the angels would be somewhat greater than that of faithful man. (Heb. 2:6, 7, NW) Then there are the 144,000 members of the glorified Kingdom organization in heaven who are “sharers in divine nature”, which is a status still higher than that of any of the angels. So with like reasoning it must be concluded that these glorious immortal sons of God enjoy a vast field of relative freedom conformative to their new creation. (2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 5:17, NW) Of the resurrected Christ Jesus, the King, it is written, “He is the reflection of his [God’s] glory and the exact representation of his very being.” (Heb. 1:3, NW) Truly this exalted one has a relative freedom of great free-will action that must approximate that of God himself. Yet, in fact, Jehovah as the Sovereign Superior is the sole one who has absolute freedom.

Let me elaborate, blow by blow. The WTS holds that:

the "divine nature" is only a status, not a quality
Jesus' freedom "approximates" that of God, but is not comparable
scriptures can be bent and re-contextualised to their own ends

To highlight their use of quotations, try reading them in context; for example:

Heb.2:6, 7 - does this speak of all of mankind or specifically "the man"?
2Pet.1:4 - What is Peter actually suggesting has been offered to his readers?
2Cor.5:17 - New creations - Is Jesus also such a "new creation"?
Heb.1:3 - How "exact" a copy is he?

Finally, does the context of that paragraph within the article give further clarification as to what JWs believe?

Well, LT, I apologize but I think we've exhausted this discussion and I'm going to step aside. You and I differ because you have an emotional investment in this, and I honestly couldn't care less if Jesus, the Buddha, and Don my next door neighbor were all manifestations of God. My father, a JW for 40+ years says I'm right. Robert King/e-watchman, a devout and frothing-at-the-mouth-over-doctrine-quasi-JW says I'm right, and what I read in the WT says I'm right. I don't think you can apply, what did you say?, old light-new light-old light to this subject. The WT has never taught differently than what I've presented. Some JWs may not understand it or even agree to it, but it is the stated doctrine.

Nice to dialogue again with you, LT, and again, many thanks for posting my words above when I asked you to as a favor. :)

Edited to add: LT wrote, : Ask a JW if immortality means godhood and they'll disagree with you point blank. They are not synonyms, as Moses was made "God" in Exodus (theos in LXX), but a JW would definitely agree that Jesus possesses both godhood (in fact, always did, even the angels do, as does Satan, as one definition of godhood means powerfulness, i.e. Herod proclaiming himself to be a god, or the islanders saying Paul was a god) and immortality NOW, post-resurrection. So that's not really my argument. You gotta define what sort of "godhood" you mean, and then understand what "immortality" means to a JW, i.e. post-humans after the 1000 years will be perfected and undying, but not immortal. It's strange and weird and a little tough to comprehend, that's likely why you have to go back to 1951 or the Studies in the Scriptures to get a decent explanation. Many contemporary JWs would read what I posted and go, "Huh?"

LittleToe

Cygnus:

LT wrote: I'm just arguing a position, and need not necessarily be presenting my own ideas at all. That may be one reason that I'm not so emotionally invested in the subject...
Cygnus wrote: You and I differ because you have an emotional investment in this...

Ermm, excuse me???

You've offered no rebuttal to my points at all, but you've certainly appealed to some interesting "authorities".

You know fine well that the WTS speaks out of both sides of it's mouth at the same time. What do YOU think they trying to say when they state that Christ is "divine"?

LittleToe

The reason that you have to go back that far to get a "decent explanation" isn't because that's what they still believe, but because they droped those previously held beliefs. The majority of current JW's have been so for less than ten years, and have never read those articles.

Try reading their current literature to understand what they now believe.

Every last current JW would state that current teachings supercede past ones (hence my new light, old light comment). Take the "Christ as redeemer only for the anointed" belief, as an example of one that slipped past many, though.

Hellrider

What good are grammar arguments in proving a something like this? We have grammatical rules today and may think that similar rules existed then but did they? And were such authors schooled in such rules? Further has anyone ever broken a grammatical rule to emphasize a point?

This isn`t just an argument concerning the topic in question, but an argument that could undermine the authority of the entire Bible, in my opinion. If we were to assume that God wouldn`t protect his legacy by at least making sure the ones that wrote down his words, were capable of writing grammatically correct, the entire Bible must be seen as a fairytale. And yes, many people (writers do it all the time) break grammatical rules to prove a point. Like when Jesus says "I am he", that`s not a gramatically correct sentence in english (I don`t know about in greek, though). If the author of the text was capable of doing such things, it is likely that he was very a very capable writer, as using "grammatical errors" as a literary tool is something most people won`t use until they are very capable in a language (unlike me in english, for example..) If grammatical rules were different back then (of course they were), it is a task for biblical researchers/ linguists to work on these things, showing us how the sentence are to be understood, in the light of that (ancient) grammar. That the authors of the texts were skilled in the grammar of that day, is beyond doubt, in my opinion.

LittleToe

...and as such appears to be an allusion to the OT (LXX)...

JosephMalik

Hellrider, You should know what everyone else already knows in that Doctrine Rules not Grammar. Translators say what they want not what the text says or is trying to teach. This is the real world we must face not the fictional one in which reason and truth prevails. Now reason can prevail but it is up to each one of us to do this for ourselves not such translators, scholars or grammatical analysts. You seem to think the text was written with precision and protected by God in this way? That is your argument but anyone should be able to see that God did not protect the text in this way. You see regardless of how it was written, it was not copied with precision much less translated thus. There are many variations, additions or versions some of which are difficult to resolve. The Cannon itself is a best guess. The protection is somewhere else and is not compromised by such alteration or those responsible for them. Joseph

LittleToe

...disingenuous to the last.

Trinity- True or False

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