Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been looking lately at the Watchtower booklet called “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” We’ve spent the past few days looking at the church fathers. Of course, we could not do an exhaustive search, but I recommend the reading of the fathers for all interested. We did see the Watchtower’s undocumented claims were quite contrary to what the fathers themselves taught. Tonight, we’re going to give a final conclusion.
The Watchtower cites Alvan Lamson as an authority that the church did not teach the Trinity. What is left out is that Lamson was a member of the American Unitarian Association. Does this make him wrong? No. It doesn’t. However, you would not know that he was a member of that group by reading their booklet. You could be thinking this is a Trinitarian who is giving embarrassing testimony that the church indeed did not teach this.
Note also how long ago Lamson lived. He died before the 1900’s. Again, this does not make him wrong, but the Watchtower has a tendency to cite the oldest materials out there, probably counting on their readers to not know this. Could it be that the Watchtower has to go back this far before they find something that they believe to be scholarship that agrees with their opinion?
When doing research of this kind, with some exceptions, one needs the latest and greatest material. In history, one uses ancient material to cite primary sources, but one needs the latest scholarship that is based on the latest finds in an area. This is the same with science. I consider philosophy and theology to be different. I have no problem with reading the latest material in these areas, but there is an important distinction.
For instance, in philosophy, most of us either lean towards Plato or towards Aristotle and the whole of the debate is often more towards which school is right. While I hold to Aristotle, I do not think we can go around saying “Plato has been debunked entirely.” In theology, it is the founders of the religion that are discussed and we build on their past teachings. We cannot change the teachings of Jesus for instance. We can only change our understanding of them.
What we saw repeatedly instead is that the Watchtower has only given snippets of what has been said and has done so without a documentation. Some of these quotes could not be found or maybe they exist but were found in a different translation that reads them differently. We cannot know because the Watchtower does not provide sources.
Note also that they speak of the testimony of the Scriptures and yet, not once did we see a portion of Scripture cited. To their credit, they will present some Scripture later, but one can hardly give half a page and think that in doing so, one has covered what Scripture says. The section on the Old Testament has four paragraphs and the section on the Greek has nine. By what standard can this really count as a look at the teaching of the Bible?
Tomorrow, we shall start looking at how the Watchtower says the Trinity developed.
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