The Jehovah`s Witnesses have vacillated in their teaching down the years between calling Jesus a man, and calling Him a god. It is quite evident that the Bible sees Him as far greater than just a man (although it does see Him as totally and completely Man), and present day Witnesses accept this, but they will not accept that He was anything more than a god, inferior to the Father. They say that early Christians did not regard Jesus as God, and that the Doctrine of the Trinity was a late invention of the Church, brought in from paganism in the 4th Century AD. "The Church has given undue prominence to Jesus, so that Christendom might almost be equated with Jesus worship. This denigrates Jehovah, and is a device of Satan" they say
Anyone who reads the New Testament with open eyes, however, will plainly see that the early Church put Jesus at the very centre of its teaching. When Paul stood on Mars Hill, and preached to the Athenians, at first they misunderstood him. "He would appear to be a propagandist for foreign deities", they said. (Acts 17.18). They thought that he was preaching about two deities, "JESUS" and "ANASTASIS", and that he wanted to add these two gods to all the other gods the city paid allegiance to.
But Paul wasn’t preaching TWO gods at all. He was preaching about JESUS and HIS RESURRECTION (Greek: `Anastasis`). This was the very centre, the very core of his message. Later in the chapter, we see that, when the Athenians caught the drift of his argument about the Resurrection they thought he had gone mad.
The Old Testament had constantly talked about Jehovah and His dealings with men. The New Testament appears to shift focus - in it Jesus occupies the central position. But as time passes by something startling begins to emerge. The Church has become an illegal association banned by the Roman Government, and Christians who will not worship the Emperor are put to death. The reason they will not worship Caesar is that they worship someone else, someone they refuse to betray. Who is it that they worship?
A letter from Pliny to Trajan written about 110 AD complains of the difficulties he has been having with the Christian sect. (Pliny was Praetor in AD93 or 94). They refuse to worship the Emperor, he says, and goes on to explain the reason why: "They sing to Christ as though to a god". Trials of Christians for this `crime` had been going on for many years, even before Pliny was a Praetor, and certainly long before the last Apostle had died. Now, we have to ask ourselves, "Was this Jesus worship a distortion that had crept into the Church? Was it limited to one set of Christians, whilst there was in existence another set of Christians who worshipped only Jehovah? Is Jesus worship unknown in the New Testament? Is it wrong?
Well, there is no record that there were two sets of Christians, one worshipping Jesus, the other worshipping Jehovah. Wherever worship is found in the early Church, Jesus is worshipped on the same level as the Father. The only difference we can trace in the New Testament is that of the Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentile Christians be circumcised and keep the Jewish Law. (St. Paul`s Epistle to the Galatians is written to counter that argument). Where there is any disagreement in the early Church about the Person of Jesus, it is whether or not He was really a man - it is never, ever about His position of God. The question early Christians struggled with was "How is it possible for the Divine and the Human Nature to exist in one person?". That is why St. John`s Gospel and his letters were written.
Even Jehovah`s Witnesses concede that John wrote his first Epistle because false teachers had come into the Church (See their book: `Aid to Bible Understanding` - introduction to St. John`s Epistles). What they do not mention is what was the teaching of these false teachers! They do say that these teachers denied that Jesus had come in the flesh; what they do not say is what those teachers meant when they said this.
The actual heresy St. John was countering was a heresy called Gnosticism. Gnosticism said that matter is essentially evil, and spirit is essentially good. They went on to argue that, since this is so, God cannot touch matter, therefore He did not create the world. What He did was to put out a series of emanations - each emanations was further and further from God, until, at last, there was one emanation so distant from God that it could touch matter - that emanation was the creator of the world. On its own the idea is bad enough, but it was made worse by what they said next - each emanation knew less and less about God, until there was a stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God, but actually hostile to God. So the Gnostics concluded that the creator god was not only different from the real God, but also quite ignorant and hostile towards Him. In reply, St John presents the Christian Doctrine that God made the world, and His presence fills the world that He has made.
But Gnostic belief also affected the way its followers thought about Jesus. Their beliefs took two different paths:
1. Some Gnostics believed that Jesus was one of the emanations. That He was not in any real sense divine, but only a kind of demigod, more or less distant from God - one of a chain of lesser beings between God and the world.
2. Other Gnostics held the view that Jesus had no real body. He couldn`t have had a body, they said, for a body is matter and matter is evil, and God cannot touch matter. They therefore held that Jesus was a kind of phantom without real flesh and blood - that, when He stepped on the ground He left no footprint, for His body had no weight or substance. They could never say, as John did, "The Word became FLESH", which is why, in his First Letter he insists that Jesus CAME IN THE FLESH! He says that anyone who denies this is moved by the spirit of antichrist. John took it for granted, as all Christians did, that Jesus was God - His powerful argument here is that, in Jesus, GOD DWELT IN THE FLESH, that both God and Man are to be seen totally in Him.
The heresy John argues against is one that went by the name of "DOCETISM" (from the Greek word `dokein`, `to seem`). The heretics preached that Jesus only SEEMED to be a man. St. John writes his first letter to demolish this theory. His Gospel was also written to correct this heresy. Right through it he stresses the true humanity of Jesus - He was physically tired (ch4 v6) - He was offered food by His Disciples (4.31) - He had sympathy with the hungry (6. vv 5 &20) - He knew grief and wept tears (11.33). Jesus is no shadowy docetic figure to John. He shows us Someone who knew the weariness of an exhausted body and the wounds of a distressed mind and heart. It is the totally HUMAN Jesus which the Fourth Gospel sets before us.
At the same time it is this Gospel which sets the other side before us. In it he counters not just the heresy of Docetism and its theory that Jesus was God but not really Man, he also counters the opposite Gnostic heresy when they said that Jesus WAS Man, but, because matter was evil and God would not touch it, then it was only an emanation, a demi-god, occupying the body of Jesus. St. John`s Gospel shows us not just the HUMANITY, but also the TRUE DEITY AND GODHOOD OF JESUS.
The Gnostics said that God had nothing to do with the creation of the world - John begins his Gospel with a ringing contradiction, "ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM, AND WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE THAT WAS MADE". He presents the Good News of a God who made the world and whose presence fills it.
Now do you see where we have arrived at? If John was really saying, as the Jehovah`s Witnesses claim, that Jesus was only a god, a lesser kind of god, then he is agreeing with the Gnostic heresy, not demolishing it! If he is really says at the beginning of his Gospel what the Jehovah`s Witnesses Translation of his Gospel makes him say, "In (the) beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god", and that it was THIS god who created the world (as the J.W`s teach), then he is agreeing with the Gnostics, who said exactly the same!
But John`s Gospel does not agree with the Gnostics. It was written to counter a growing heresy. The Apostle Paul had written to the Colossians years earlier determined to stamp out the heresy in its infancy, declaring throughout his letter that God, in and through Christ, created the world. If Christ wasn’t God, but just a god as the J.W`s teach, then Paul is agreeing with his opponents! Therefore the whole purpose of the Epistle to the Colossians is futile!
The Witnesses position does not stand up to the light of the early Church`s History. It doesn`t stand up to the light of the Bible. Time and time again Holy Scripture makes it plain that there IS no other God besides Jehovah. That means that no other gods exist! Yet the Jehovah`s Witness, in trying to explain away Thomas`s exclamation "My Lord and My God!" reply, "Ah, yes! But Scripture says, `there are many gods and many lords`. It certainly does, but only to make the point that these other so-called gods and lords are not gods at all. They do not exist. Once more it punches home the truth that there is "no God but one", and that God is Jehovah.
The Witnesses try to have it both ways. At times they say that Jesus was just a man; at other times that He is a god. But we cannot have it both ways. If Jesus is NOT God (of the same substance, co-eternal, co-equal, co-existent with the Father), then He must be just a man, for "there is no other God but Me. Beside me there is no Saviour", says God.
We have the whole witness of the New Testament against this position. The whole teaching of the early Church was against it, for it held Christ to be divine (and down the years the Witnesses have changed their teaching from saying that he was just a man, to acknowledging that He does have some kind of divinity). The New Testament presents us with a very lofty doctrine of Christ`s Person.
There are but two choices - Either Christ was just a man OR He was God in all the fullness of that title as well as Man. If He was (and is) God, then we have a real mystery. It was a mystery those early Christians struggled with. They worshipped Christ as God, as they worshipped the Father - yet they believed that God is One. They struggled right from the beginning with the fact of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the end they recognised God as "THREE IN ONE". (In the next Study. "The Trinity - Myth or Mystery).
