Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, we’re looking at the Watchtower booklet “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” again. We’re going to be covering the sub-heading tonight of the Testimony of the Greek Scriptures.
To begin with, the Watchtower asks if the New Testament speaks clearly of a Trinity. The problem is that for them, clearly means explicitly. Let’s suppose that I gave the following facts.
Last year, I was the groom in a wedding on July 24th.
I go to sleep every night next to the same woman.
This woman now has the same last name as I do.
I wear a ring constantly on my left hand.
In all of these, I have not once said “I’m married!” but you don’t need to me to. All the information that is needed to reach that conclusion has been stated. In the same way, we have these truths presented in the Bible which will come much later in this series as biblical texts are examined.
The Father has the full nature of God.
The Son has the full nature of God.
The Spirit has the full nature of God.
These three persons are distinct.
There is only one God.
That’s all we need.
The next is a series of quotes from “The Triune God.” What is problematic is just how much is left out in these quotes. So much is left out it could be a blog in itself. Throughout Fortman’s book, he does give evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity. Of course we have no problem that the Bible does not explicitly teach the Trinity. We don’t need it to no more than you needed me to explicitly say I’m married.
I challenge any Jehovah’s Witness to simply go out and read Fortman’s book. Also, try to look up the quotes and see what was left out.
Other citations from other works are the same. The Watchtower wants to make much that the doctrine is not explicitly taught. Again, we do not have any disagreement with this. It would probably make my job a lot easier, but the ancients did not need to everything spelled out like so many moderns do.
The next quotation is from E. Washburn Hopkins. It goes as follows:
To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; . . . they say nothing about it.
Duly noted is that right before that Hopkins says “The beginning of the doctrine of the Trinity appears already in John.” Those who are skeptical can just go to page 336 of his book. It can easily be found on Google Books. On page 339, Hopkins also says the first simple Christians believed Jesus was God on Earth.
Note another statement. On page 335, Hopkins says the epiphany of Dionysus became that of Christ. Does the Watchtower agree with this?
Hopkins was not a friend of Christianity and neither was Weigall as we saw earlier who is quoted next. Of course, this does not make what they said wrong, but it is misleading on the part of the Watchtower to make no distinction between Christian and non-Christian.
The conclusion is that the New Testament does not clearly teach the doctrine. As in the case of the Old Testament, absent is any mention whatsoever of Scripture from the New Testament.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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