I am not saying that a false doctrine is required for teaching truth. What I am saying is that every time there was a meeting of the church fathers (each of the ecumenical councils) it was for the purpose of articulating a particular statement of faith as a result of an introduction of a new or potentially false teaching. As various aspects of faith begin to be taught in different ways, it will sometimes prompt the Church to recognize the need to come to an agreement as to what should be properly taught as an accepted doctrine of the Christian faith and establish an orthodoxy.

This, to a large degree, still goes on today though it is mostly in many people’s personal faith.

As an example, a person may have been a “Christian” since childhood, but may only be so because their family went to church regularly and perhaps were active in their church. This person has faith, to a degree, but they can’t really articulate what they believe. When a truth is called into question, and the person has to then delve a bit deeper and search through the scriptures, Church history, what they’ve been taught, etc., they may then be able to articulate what they believe though they were not previously able to do so.

This is the same thing that happened with the Church fathers. In the case of the Nicaean Council, it wasn’t until Arianism was being taught and a rift began to form in the Church that they decided it was necessary to articulate what is the orthodox belief that should be held by the church.

I like how Warren Carroll puts it in The Building of Christendom when he says that in the Council of Nicaea “the Church had taken her first great step to define doctrine more precisely in response to a challenge from a heretical theology.”

As you probably know, the two major “players” in this debate were Arius (who was teaching a doctrine in which Jesus was NOT divine) and Athanasius (would supported the deity of Christ). The historian, Eusebius was also instrumental, though I don’t believe we have, today, the sources from which he drew his arguments.

In fact, according to Eusebius, some of the “most learned and distinguished of the ancient bishops had made use of consubstantial (or homoousious) in treating of the divinity of the Father and the Son.” Origen also uses this terminology in the same way.

There were other items discussed at the council, but the main topic was to determine whether the Father and the Son were one only in purpose or also in being. They debated for a month on this and finally came to the conclusion that the Father and the Son were homoousious (of the same essence) rather than homoiousious (of similar essence).

Therefore, in this matter, my faith leans on (though is not completely or solely dependent upon) the teachings of the Church fathers rather than a modern-day organization who has shown to be untrustworthy as a source of truth and has already been condemned by scripture as being an organization of false prophets.

There are many, many, many other reasons for my not following the teachings or interpretations of the Watchtower that I won’t get into in this format. However, I do want to thank you for your diligence and your comments.

If we never end up agreeing on what we individually believe to be truth, I do pray that whichever of us may be wrong receives a healthy dose of mercy from God.

As I continue to study and better understand an know truth and learn what beliefs I personally need to change to conform to God’s truth, I hope that you will continue to do the same. Perhaps someday, God willing, we will arrive at the same truth and enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven for eternity.

Grace, love and peace.

“The firstborn of all creation” and “the beginning of God’s creation” actually do very clearly present Christ as created when the FULL weight of evidence is considered (so with Rev. 3:14, it can’t mean source because tou theou shows the Father as the source and this would contradict all the texts that speak of Christ as the intermediate in creation and the Father as the source, while it certainly doesn’t mean ruler for the NT never uses the singular arche to mean ruler, it always uses archwn as in Revelation 1:5). Trinitarians, unfortunately, attempt to proof text their way out of those passages without a full examination of them.

Egw does mean I and eimi does mean am, but when you have these two words with an adverb of time past and an aorist infinitive, they can and are properly rendered “I have been. I can demonstrate this from other texts in the Bible and early Greek writings generally. That is why we do not translate at the single word level, but the phrase level.

Funny thing about the Jews and Exodus 3:14, the Hebrew word in question was translated differently in the LXX only two verses prior. You are in fact wrong though, the LXX identifies God as hO WN, not EGW EIMI. Yet other early Jewish translations of the OT render it just as the LXX does in 3:12, with ESOMAI. So, for example, HALOT, agrees with the NWT.

-Dave

The early church fathers did not teach the Trinity because until Arianism (which is basically what the Watchtower teachings are based on) came along and the church fathers needed to figure out which view, scripturally, was accurate, the concept was never articulated in such a way. But that does not mean that the idea didn’t exist. After much debate, it was determined that Arianism (insofar as teaching that Christ was a created being and therefore not divine) was a false teaching.

If that were not the case, if Jesus was never understood to be divine, the Council of Nicea would never have been held as there would have been no need to come to an agreement about whether or not this new Arianism was or was not true.

The Watchtower teaches that Christ was a created being. That does not bear out scripturally. Even when you try to use “proof-texts” about “first born of all creation” and such. When you follow those out, you find that the writer is either speaking metaphorically, speaking of the fact that Christ has ultimate authority in the way that Jewish firstborns inherited all their fathers wealth, or the Bible contradicts itself.

This is, in fact, one method by which one can determine if a writer is using metaphor or being literal. As my old pastor used to say, “The best commentary for scripture is scripture.” If one passage says something and it isn’t clear of they are being literal or metaphorical, look at the rest of scripture and see if one way would be contradictory. In this case, to use the “firstborn” literally contradicts scripture.

As for the “I AM” passage….the Greek “ego ami” is translated as “I AM” and not “I have been.” If it were translated as “I have been” then why would John 8:59 have ever happened?

Several times throughout the scriptures when orthodox Christians maintain that a given verse is a proof-text or even a help-text to show the divinity of Christ, the Watchtower followers try to posit that we have mis-translated the text. Yet, several of these times, Jesus was almost stone for claiming to be God.

I’ll have to go back to the Watchtower’s false prophecies as a witness to why I have no faith in what they teach and that they have proven to have prophesied falsely, therefore, according to scripture, they are by default out of the running as a trustworthy authority for Christian doctrine or truth of any kind.

Considering that the Jews pre-dated all of Christianity and the biblical texts, a quick look at how those who actually spoke Hebrew translate Exodus 3:14 shows that even the Jews agree that this is translated “I AM” and not “I shall prove to be” as the NWT reads.

I maintain that Christ is/was/always will be divine and the scriptures bear out the fact that He has all of the attributes of divinity: eternality, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. He shared diving titles with God, shared divine prerogatives and authorities, etc.

In short, He was God in the flesh. At the same time, God was in Heaven. After Christ’s ascension, God the Holy Spirit made His dwelling in all those who believe. Three separate, distinct persons (or centers of conscious, if you will) all of whom are co-equal co-eternal yet are all One True God. One cannot exist with out the other two.

It would take volumes to describe this concept and it would still not be fully explained. Nonetheless, it is all scriptural. And the church fathers at Nicea knew this. That is the reason they decided to fully articulate this fact, so that people would not fall victim to Arianism in its original or later forms (such as the Watchtower teaches).

Grace, love and peace.

Simply inaccurate. The 1970 NASB had the same translation as the NWT in the footnote for John 8:58. They only removed it after it was used to defend the NWT! I believe the other text you are referring to is Exodus 3:14, yet modern scholarship well supports and even favors the NWT’s rendering.

Further, if you read the *earliest* church fathers, they do not teach the Trinity. A common mistake is to argue that calling Jesus theos demonstrates Trinity. I fully reject the Trinity but fully embrace calling him theos.

-Dave

I understand where you’re going with that, but at a certain level we still need to rely on what history teaches about what the church fathers believed in light of what we have insofar as scriptures and make sure they all line up backward and forward. Because I am not a Greek or Hebrew linguist, I have little choice but to rely on experts in those fields.

I agree that the method you describe is useful, however it is only as accurate as the translation. If the writing has been tampered with by someone who is trying to push a false agenda by going back and forth in the text and changing things to make them “fit.”

One example is with the statements by God and Jesus where they each identify themselves as “I AM.” In the NWT, both passages have been changed in order to detract from such an identifying statement and try to pass it off as just a matter-of-fact statement (along the lines of if both you and I were to make a statement like…”I have lived for over 20 years.” Of course, I’m assuming that you’re older than 20…but I’m sure you’re still young at heart )

So, to me, it seems best to use scripture, history, historical teachings, tradition (to a degree, though this can easily be taken too far) and modern science/linguistics to discern the truth of the Gospels.

Grace, love and peace.

For example, when the NT authors referenced God in the Old Testament, did they identify this one with the Trinity, Jesus or the Father? The answer time and time again is that they did so with the Father. So, for example, in Hebrews 1:1-2 we find that the God who spoke to the prophets is not Jesus or the Trinity, but the Father. Therefore, when we look into the Old Testament and we find God speaking to a prophet, we know who God is.

Similarly, specific Old Testament events are at times spoke of, as in Hebrews 3 with a reference to Numbers 12. In Hebrews the reference to “his house” is Jehovah’s “house” in Numbers, when he spoke Aaron and Miriam. Yet because Jesus is ‘a son over his house,’ per Hebrews, we know that this Jehovah was the Father.

-Dave

You are absolutely correct. I believe that one should take caution with this for that very reason. This is why, while I may use these experts as a reference, I only use this reference to the extent that it follows the long-standing teaching of the church and, ultimately, the scriptures themselves.

Obviously to weigh them against scripture puts us right back to trusting the modern experts. However, if these translations follow with the old teachings and what was taught about Jesus and do not contradict themselves, I submit that this is persuasive enough to be able to trust these experts to have accurately translated the text (insofar as the language barriers allow).

Grace, love and peace.

You equally cannot dismiss that those same experts have a theological motivation for denouncing the NWT as well. Therefore their opinions are highly suspect.

That’s pretty cool that you would go through the trouble to get that information. Thanks for that.

From Mr. Voth’s reply, it still leaves me with the same concern, however. While I can certainly see that it would be far more difficult to go directly from the ancient texts to every language and dialect, he does state that they use these texts for the major languages and then it sounds like they use the process described above for other dialects and forms that are based on, but not exactly like, those major languages.

That being the case, my concern is not altogether alleviated and is, on a certain level, actually reinforced. I might be more comfortable if it were shown that the NWT followed the same scholarship, but I have seen no such claim…only a reference to the 1985 English translation being used as a basis for other languages.

Suffice to say, there are far more concerns with the Watchtower than just these. But, in the area of linguistic scholarship, I can hardly overlook the fact that the overwhelming majority of experts in the field denounce the NWT as being a poor, misleading and even “distorted” translation of scripture.

In the end, I still come to the conclusion that the commonly accepted translations more accurately portray the authorial intent of the scriptures (though I do tend to avoid the Message, the NLT, the TNIV and a couple other just because I fear they may be a little TOO “culturally relevant” in their wording and some of the teaching).

Grace, love and peace.

To your questions:

“…why would the English translation be used to translate into other languages? Why would the same text used to translate into English be used to translate into French or German or Spanish or whatever other languages they were?”

Whether you would agree with this as being simply a practical matter or not, it may interest you to know that most all Bible Societies of today do often employ the very same method for facilitating the distribution of God’s Word into other languages.

As you might expect, finding individuals of the different language groups of the world, that is, those who would have the qualifications necessary to translate from the original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek into their native tongues, would certainly be a difficult task. Therefore, in order to afford peoples of other language groups to acquire and read a copy of the Bible in their own language, such a technique for translating is quite often employed – and not only by us, but by other Bible Societies as well.

It may interest you to know that, once I saw your posting here, I took the initiative to write to the United Bible Societies [http://www.biblesociety.org/] and asked:

“Please, can you tell me, when the different Bible Societies work on translating the Bible into other languages, do they always translate from the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) or do they often translate from other English translations?”

This morning, concurring in essence with what I had stated above, this is the reply I received:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The UBS translation projects into majority languages such as English, Spanish, and Pörtuguese, always translate from the best Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts available.

However, translations into indigenous languages done by teams of indigenous translators often times translate from different Spanish versions, as Spanish is their second language. This process is carefully supervised by a UBS Translation Consultant who always has a PHD in Biblical Languages and Anthropology. The consultant serves the indigenous translation team and provides exegetical and translational advice. In addition we have computer programs that are very sophisticated that constantly run tests on the indigenous texts produced of the Bible. We firmly believe that the translation has to be done by native speakers.

Cordially in Christ,
Esteban Voth
Area Translation Coordinator for the Americas

Esteban Voth
Sociedades Bìblicas Unidas
Virrey Arredondo 2553 “19″
1426 Capital Federal
Argentina
541147825395

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whereas, I was speaking about their use of English as a base, Mr. Voth explained that many of their projects involve work as done by an “indigenous translation team,” “by native speakers”; and, even though these are “carefully supervised,” what they do in the Americas is “translate from different Spanish versions, as Spanish is their second language.”

Even though he was speaking about their work for those within the Americas (in utilizing Spanish as the base language), I take by his reply that, when it comes to other ‘indigenous translation teams,’ another language might otherwise be used.

In fact, as I understand it, the “Good New Bible” (as produced by the American Bible Society) has been utilized in just such a way. And, if I am not mistaken, the following is an example of just such a work (as translated from the English of that work into Tagalog):

“Magandang Balita Biblia: may Deuterocanonico.” Edition Information: Revised, Tagalog Popular Version. Summary: “Good News Bible with Deuterocanonico.” (Manila, Philippines: Philippine Bible Society, c2005). ISBN: 9712909166; 9712999165. MLCME 2008/00197 (B) / 2009316065.

Therefore, not discounting the other “UBS translation projects into majority languages,” whereby, they would “always translate from the best Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts available,” the other practice as described above (as is also utilized by the “Watchtower Bible and Tract Society”) is not that unusual as all – apparently, it happens within the work among current day Bible Societies – done more often than people are aware.

Agape, Alan.