Heavenly Father,
It is only through the work of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus Christ that we can come to you in prayer today. We know that we are wicked and sinful, and we deserve eternal punishment for our infinite sins against an infinite, awesome God. And yet, we are so thankful that you have spared us from that torment by sending your son Jesus Christ to die the death that we deserved so that we can be made right with you, coming to you and praising you for all of eternity. We are so thankful that you desire all people to be saved, even people as undeserving as us. You are good and wise, and to be exalted above all other gods. Lord, you know better than anyone that we have so many other gods sometimes.
Father, thank you for this time we have together. We pray that it would be a productive time for your honor and glory. You know our hearts, Lord. Search us and expose to us the errors of our ways. Help us to speak carefully and thoughtfully. Fill us with your truth—not our own—so that the gospel would go forth unhindered this very day. I pray that as we argue our faith we would be intellectually and spiritually honest with ourselves, with each other, and ultimately with you. We want to know you for who you truly are, and I pray that you would be present with us in our endeavor to find you, knowing that we cannot find you unless you seek us out and reveal yourself to us. Reveal yourself to us today through your Word, Lord. Find us and call us to yourself. Change our hard hearts and conform us more to the image of Jesus Christ, your son.
I pray all these things in his precious name, the name above all names and the name before which every knee shall one day bow,
Amen.
Over the last few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about Jehovah's Witnesses (JW). For the last two Thursdays, I have seen groups of them with their temporary stands set up on campus, advertising "Free Bible Studies". Each time I have passed their stands, I've thought about what I would say should I find the courage to stop and actually talk to them. I've known that JW have some strange views, but I figured I first better do my research and determine exactly what those views are. So that is exactly what I have been doing for a little while now, and I believe I have a pretty good handle on some of the errors that JW make in their thinking.
In this post, I want to refute some of the most egregious doctrinal errors, and it is fully my intention to bring the contents of this post in some form or another to them in person this coming Thursday—hence the timing of this post: the day before Thursday. I ask that you pray for me as I do this. At the top of this post I included my own prayer, and I hope you find it a good insight into my heart as I engage with JW. It is not just to start an argument. It is not just an intellectual challenge. It is to bring them to a saving faith in Christ Jesus, the Lord of all.
The single most concerning part of JW doctrine is that it denies the deity of Christ. JW call themselves Christians, and yet they deny the most important belief of Christianity: that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, and it is through his divine nature that he can live a blameless life on our behalf and thus be an adequate sacrifice for own own sin—sin which condemns us to eternal punishment; another point JW disagree on and I originally planned on addressing in this post but ultimately ran out of time.
The issue of the deity of Christ is truly the only issue that we can discuss with JW. All of their other beliefs are auxiliary and are either of little significance or otherwise stem out of this fundamental belief. We thus do well to ignore all other issues that might get us sidetracked and focus first on this one, diving into the other issues such as the reliability of our English translations only when necessary.
Establishing the deity of Christ on Biblical grounds is not difficult. It may perhaps be more difficult to argue that Jesus is God without using the Bible, but I've found that extra-Biblical arguments are typically centered specifically around the resurrection, which is not our concern today. In any case, JW believe that the Bible is God's word and that it is authoritative for our lives today. Thus, we can fully rely on it and only it to make the case the Jesus Christ is God Almighty. There are multiple parts to this argument:
The Bible teaches that Jesus is God.
Jesus directly identifies himself as God.
Jesus indirectly identifies himself as God.
Jesus' actions—including miracles and his own death and resurrection —and prophesies about him point to him being God.
Unfortunately, for the sake of brevity, I cannot spell out this full argument now. I do not have the time to write it all, nor would I have time to share it all with the JW I will encounter later this week. I therefore wish to spend my time here on part #2 of the argument. Let it suffice for the purposes of this post that I only mention some passages that support the other parts, and then focus heavily on Jesus' direct claims about his deity.
A common argument of JW is that Jesus is never referred to as God by the New Testament (NT) authors. However, this is simply untrue. The author of Hebrews applies Psalm 102:25-27—which clearly refers to YHWH (or Jehovah if we must)—to Jesus, the Son in Hebrews 1:6-8. Thus, Jesus is referred to as God in the Bible.
25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. 26 They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, 27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
— Psalm 102:25-27 (ESV)
In this passage, it is clearly the LORD (YHWH or Jehovah) from verse one that is spoken of here.
6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.” 7 Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.” 8 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
— Hebrews 1:6-8 (ESV)
Note the quotation here and how it is clearly speaking "of the Son" and yet also referring to God.
More details can be found at Witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses—Part 1 from Stand to Reason.
There are many, many places in the NT where Jesus uses the same attributes of God when referring to himself.
Shepherd: Psalm 23:1, John 10:11
Judge: Psalm 75:7, Matthew 25:31-33
First & Last: Isaiah 44:6, Revelation 1:17
Light: Psalm 27:1, John 8:12
Savior: Isaiah 43:11, John 4:42
Glory: Isaiah 42:8, John 17:5
More details can be found at Witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses—Part 2 from Stand to Reason.
This is where I wish to spend the most amount of time with JW because this is my favorite argument. When making claims about who Jesus was, we should always talk about what Jesus says about himself, and it is very clear that Jesus thought himself to be God, which means that either he was, or he was delusional. I highly doubt our JW friends believe that Jesus was delusional, so that leaves only the alternative that he really is God.
Let's start again in the Old Testament:
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
— Exodus 3:13-15 (ESV)
In this passage, God is calling himself I am; the eternal, unchanging God who simply is. I love this passage because God speaks with such power and authority that whenever I read it, my response is always one of awe.
Perhaps very interesting to JW is that Jesus also uses this title in the gospel of John:
57 So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
— John 8:57-59 (ESV)
There are two interesting things to note here. The first and most obvious is that Jesus refers to himself as "I am" in the present tense, while "Abraham was" is past tense. This is clearly a reference to God's present-tense "I am" of Exodus 3:14. The second is that the Jews picked up stones to throw at him. This is significant because it shows very clearly that 1st century Jews understood what Jesus was saying. There was no typo here, no ambiguity; they know that Jesus was making a claim about himself, and that claim is that he is God. So, thinking that he was blaspheming the name of God, they desired to stone him.
This is, of course, not the only place that Jesus directly affirms his deity. After his resurrection, John tells us about Thomas:
24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
— John 20:24-29 (ESV)
Note in particular verse 28: Thomas responds to Jesus and calls him "my Lord and my God." There is no doubt that Thomas is calling Jesus God to his face. He uses both words, Lord and God. If Jesus did not believe that he was God, we would expect to find a rebuke following this response in verse 29. We do find a rebuke of sorts, but not the one we would expect if we were predisposed to believe that Jesus is not God Almighty himself in flesh. Jesus simply responds to Thomas with "blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed." In other words, Jesus is saying that Thomas responded rightly, but only after he saw with his eyes, and those that have not seen with their eyes and yet have the same response will be all the more blessed. Our response to Jesus Christ as Christians always ought to as Thomas': "my Lord and my God."
These two passages in John are perhaps the strongest in making this argument, but in case JW are not compelled, we find a few more passages:
Mark 14:61
John 14:6-7
These are by no means all of the other passages, but I find them useful in making the argument. Additionally, there are many places where the apostles claim that Jesus is God in the Bible. For example, Romans 10:9-13.
One of the arguments I anticipate from JW is that I am quoting passages from a corrupt translation of the Bible and that the New World Translation (NWT) says something different than what I am quoting. It is true that I am quoting something different than what the NWT says. However, the NWT is not a reliable translation. Scholars almost unanimously agree that it is in fact the NWT that is corrupt, and its compilation is intellectually dishonest at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. I personally tend to lean toward the latter, as I do not have high opinions of the Watchtower Society. That said, I will be making the former case instead, because as a student of Greek myself, I find it much easier to make the argument that the translation is simply intellectually dishonest.
When JW tell me that my translation is corrupt and that their Bibles say something different, my answer will be that we should abstain from using translations altogether then, and go right to the original languages. I hope to surprise them at this point, because it is unlikely that they have any knowledge of Greek—though it's possible and of course welcome! If they do know Greek, then it will be clear to them that the Greek argues what I am arguing out of my English translations. If they do not know Greek, then they will have to accept my authority as someone who does know Greek. In this section, I'm going to outline some of my arguments against the NWT, from the Greek texts.
We know without a doubt that the NWT is unreliable. One of the ways we know this is that it injects the name Jehovah into many places in the NT where it does not belong, and in many cases, this distorts the meaning of the text. The first thing to point out about the Greek NT (or the OT for that matter) is that there is not a single place in any manuscript where the name Jehovah is used; instead, the Greek word for Lord, κύριος, is used for both Jesus and Jehovah. This is interesting because JW are insistent that "Jehovah" is the sole name for God to be used for all time, and yet there is no place where Jehovah can be found anywhere in the NT.
JW may attempt to justify this by stating that the NT manuscripts were changed at some point when they were copied by the scribes, or even that they were changed in the very first copies! The claim goes that the NT used to say "Jehovah" but now says "κύριος" because of a purposeful collusion of the scribes. This is alarming for a number of reasons:
There is absolutely no manuscript evidence to support this whatsoever. JW will never find a single shred of historical evidence that supports this claim because it doesn't exist.
It significantly undermines the reliability of the New Testament altogether. By stating that some changes were made without a trace, JW open up the possibility for other undetectable changes to have been made, and we would have no way of knowing, so we would have to dismiss the entire NT as unreliable, making this whole discussion about Jesus completely useless and quite frankly not even worth having.
Furthermore, there are places in the NT where substituting Jehovah in for κύριος would actually even further solidify the NT's claims that Jesus is Jehovah. Let's take a look at some of those, shall we?
9 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
— Romans 10:9-13 (ESV)
In particular, Paul is making it very clear in verse 9 that you must confess that Jesus is Lord in order to be saved. Furthermore, in verse 13 he says that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If you follow his reasoning, particularly through verse 12, you see clearly that this is the same Lord that Jesus is, and that this Lord is Lord of all.
If the NT manuscripts are corrupt and we should be using Jehovah instead of Lord, what is to prevent me from making the claim that what Paul really meant here is that "if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Jehovah and believe in your heart..." The argument works both ways and then we're back to the argument about Christ's deity. If JW are going to claim that the manuscripts were altered, why would it not also be altered here? Either way there is no manuscript evidence, so why not also make this claim and force JW to defend against it?
The perceptive JW will notice that Paul is quoting Joel 2:32 in verse 13, which does use the name Jehovah. They therefore assume that Paul must have intended to use that name in his quotation as well, but that actually completely misses the point; Paul is clearly applying the passage to Jesus because he believes that Jesus is Jehovah. This argument is fleshed out in a little more detail at this page provided by Stand to Reason: Jehovah’s Witnesses Can’t Consistently Affirm the Reliability of the New Testament.
We can also look at our passage with Thomas as well. Thomas's statement to Jesus: "my Lord and my God" wouldn't make much sense to JW if it were originally intended to read "my Jehovah and my God" or even just "Jehovah and my God." The reason this wouldn't make sense to JW is because Thomas would be calling Jesus "Jehovah," and again we are brought back to the argument about the deity of Christ.
Not only does the claim that the NT texts are corrupt cause problems for establishing its reliability, it also neuters the internal consistency of the NT itself.
In the NWT, John 1:1 is grossly mis-translated to undermine John's claims about Christ's deity:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.
— John 1:1 (NWT, emphasis mine)
Christians understand well that the Word being referred to is Jesus. The first and most obvious argument against the NWT translation is that John was a monotheist. He was a 1st century Jew, so combining that historical context with the words he actually wrote, it is clear that he did not believe there was more than one God. He believed in one God, and this is really undisputed. So, why would John write "the Word was a god" as though there were multiple gods in the beginning? How many gods were there? Was the Old Testament wrong about there only being one God? This raises too many theological questions for it to be a valid translation.
However, if that isn't convincing, let's look at the Greek directly:1
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
— John 1:1 (SBLGNT)
This is rightly translated in the ESV:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
— John 1:1 (ESV)
How do we know that the ESV is rightly translated and the NWT is not? It's really quite simple: the grammatical construction of the phrase θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος is called a predicate nominative. In other words, it is asserting that ὁ λόγος (the Word) is θεὸς (God)—though with some voicing considerations that don't translate well into English, so we tend to go with the past-tense "was." In this case, θεὸς is not grammatically a noun, but it is functioning as an adjective, a qualifier. When taken that way, it is very clear that this is the first predicate position.2 Here, ἦν, the imperfect active indicative form of εἰμί, is explicitly stated, but it need not be; when omitted, εἰμί is implied. It would be just as valid to say θεὸς ὁ λόγος, "the Word is God." The construction is the same, and we know that this construction means "the Word is God" and not "God is the Word" because of the presence of the article ὁ in ὁ λόγος and its absence with θεὸς. Though both are in the nominative case, the subject of the predicate is clear because the article is present to emphasize it.
Perhaps the somewhat educated JW may make the claim that since θεὸς doesn't have the definite article ὁ, it should be translated indefinitely, in other words, as "a God" and not "the God" or simply "God." However, this is a naïve and faulty understanding of the article in Greek. In English, we have two articles: the definite article "the" and the indefinite article "a/an." It doesn't work that way in Greek. Greek only has one article, "ὁ," and this article is more like a weak demonstrative. It has so many more functions that just meaning "the." It frequently is used to indicate the subject of a clause where it might not otherwise be clear. It can also show possession, and function as a personal pronoun, among many other things. The point is, there are many, many uses for the Greek article, so many, in fact, that some Greek scholars don't even call it an article, but a different construct for which English has no parallel. Therefore, the presence or absence of ὁ before any particular noun really does nothing in determining whether or not that noun should be translated definitely or indefinitely.
Grammatical context will determine what a Greek sentence means, and in John 1:1, the context is very clear: the Word was God. The NWT can lie to its adherents and those adherents can say that all other English translations are corrupt, but the Greek texts expose this mis-translation for what it is: a purposeful attempt to cover up the deity of Christ.
Another egregious mistranslation from the Greek that the NWT makes can be found in the passage where Jesus uses God's name of I am, which I quoted above in the ESV when establishing the fact that Jesus claims to be God multiple times throughout the Gospels. Let's look at just John 8:58:
εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ἰησοῦς· Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί.
— John 8:58 (SBLGNT)
The NWT translates this as follows:
Jesus said to them: “Most truly I say to you, before Abraham came into existence, I have been.”
— John 8:58 (NWT)
Just as a reminder, the ESV translates this verse this way:
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
— John 8:58 (ESV)
I actually rather like the NWT translation of γενέσθαι here. My understanding of γίνομαι is much more in line with the idea of coming into existence, and though I think that "was" is a perfectly acceptable translation on the part of the ESV, perhaps "was brought into existence" would be an even better translation. Anyway, that is beyond the point.
The point here is very simple: the NWT is translating εἰμί in the phrase πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί as a past-tense verb, whereas the ESV rightly translates it as a present tense verb. How are we to know which is correct? This is not a difficult concept to grasp: verbs in Greek have tenses just like they do in English, and in the Greek text, we can very clearly see that γενέσθαι is an aorist middle infinitive in Greek, which roughly translates to English's past tense. Likewise, εἰμί is very clearly a present active indicative, which translates to English's present tense. When we look at the Greek text, there is thus no ambiguity whatsoever. The ESV translation renders this phrase properly, even though it seems grammatically incorrect both in Greek and in English.
The NWT tried to compensate for this grammatical irregularity to suppress the fact that it was spoken this way intentionally by Jesus as a statement that he is God. There is no doubt that 1st century Jews understood that Jesus was making a claim to be God when he said πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. That's exactly why in verse 59 they try to stone him! They perceive Jesus' statement not as that of a crazy man who doesn't know what he's talking about, but as a blasphemer intentionally claiming to be God himself. This argument can be made fairly well with reliable English translations such as the ESV, but I find it even more compelling in Greek.
First, a little bit of historical context: The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament which was created roughly 300 years before Christ. Hebrew was falling out of common usage by Jews living in a post-Alexander-the-Great world, and whether the Jews liked it or not, Greek was the trade language of the day, so for them to be successful in society, they had to speak Greek. Over time, they came to speak almost exclusively Greek, and so having a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures was necessary. It is also important to point out here that the Septuagint was considered very reliable. It was translated by the Jews themselves, and was regarded very highly as a result.
With that in mind, we see that the Septuagint is very clearly the translation that Jesus and other 1st century Jews would have used to read the Old Testament. They were very familiar with it. In fact, the Septuagint is quoted far more than the Hebrew texts are in the New Testament both by Jesus and the other NT writers. While it isn't perfect, we know without a doubt that it was reliable enough not only for the apostles, but for Jesus himself, and all of the other Jews of the day.
So let us now visit Exodus 3:14 in the Septuagint. These are exactly the words that Jesus would've been referring to, and these are exactly the words that those Jews would've been so familiar with in their personal studies of the scriptures:
καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν καὶ εἶπεν οὕτως ἐρεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ ὁ ὢνἀπέσταλκέν με πρὸς ὑμᾶς
— Exodus 3:14 (LXX)
Notice that we see our good friend εἰμι again when God speaks. The Septuagint, the text that the Jews would've done their daily studying out of, says in Exodus 3:14, "And God said to Moses, 'I am who I am" or if you rather, "I am the I am." While I do not know Hebrew myself, I am told that there is some ambiguity in the underlying Hebrew here, and so the NWT translation of this passage might actually not be too far off:
So God said to Moses: “I Will Become What I Choose to Become.”
— Exodus 3:14 (NWT)
This is certainly an odd translation and a rather unpopular one at that, but I think that the Hebrew technically allows for it. However, the Jews speaking with Jesus would've read ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν in their texts, which literally translates to "I am who I am" because εἰμι is a present active indicative, and ὤν is the present active participle of the same word. Therefore, Jesus is clearly quoting Exodus 3:14 as God, and the Jews clearly knew that. The NWT loses this clarity by translating εἰμι completely incorrectly in the New Testament, and opting for a strange and unconventional translation of the Hebrew in the Old Testament.
I regret that I can only scratch the surface of the argument that could be made here. However, I believe that this is sufficient material for at least one conversation with some JW. There were many more topics I wanted to cover here, but I had to distill it down to the most essential: The deity of Christ and the reliability of the scriptures that establish it. As I mentioned, there are no issues more important to address with JW. Blood transfusions, the wooden apparatus on which Christ died, and more are of little significance in the grand scheme of things. The deity of Christ however, has eternal significance; get that one thing wrong, and you will spend an eternity paying for it.
It is my desire that the JW would come to know Christ for who he truly is. I desperately want to present a compelling case not just to get JW all worked up, but to show them that there is something truer that can be known for certain. We should always want to get back to Scripture, and the thing I find with with cults such as Mormons and JW is that they typically hold another text on the same level of authority as the Bible, which is what causes these strange, heretical beliefs. Ultimately only God can change their hearts, but it is on us, his chosen people, to share the Bible and the Gospel contained within it so that all can see that the Bible is sufficient. We don't need to supplement it with other books, or newspapers, or magazines, or anything else.
Likewise, we don't need to rely on an organization such as the JW to tell us what truth is and interpret the Bible for us. We can do so for ourselves. Jesus did not come to establish an organization. He came to establish his Church, not so that the Church could dictate truth, but so that believers can fellowship as they spread the Gospel to every nation and tongue.
I have one final point, which is the one I made about Islam: the JW movement came about far too late in history to be useful. When we are evaluating claims, we should always desire to go back to the earliest manuscripts and the earliest beliefs, because they are going to be the closest to the original. JW came about so far after Christianity that it really can have no business contradicting so much of Christianity on matters that have been so well established. For two millennia, the Church was rather undivided on the topic of the deity of Christ, because there is no good reason to doubt it. We should thus be wary of groups and organizations that pop up and make contrary claims that are not well supported.
I apologize in advance to readers that can't read or understand Greek; this is a technical argument that only works with an adequate foundation of Biblical Greek. ↩
This may or may not be terminology that is specific to Mounce. In any case, I am referring to one of the three positions an adjective may take in Greek when functioning as a predicate. ↩