Do Jehovah's Witnesses worship Two Gods?

score:2

Accepted answer

Do Jehovah's Witnesses worship Two Gods? Absolutely not! They worship only Jehovah God and they pray only to Jehovah God (in the name of Jesus Christ). That is because they see the pre-mortal Jesus as a created being who is lower than Jehovah God, his Father. Also, they say before Jesus came to earth to be born of a woman he was known as Michael the Archangel and since his spirit returned to heaven, is still known as Michael the Archangel (What Doe the Bible Really Teach, Appendix page 218).

Obviously, it would be utterly wrong for anybody to worship a created angel (Revelation 19:10). Jehovah’s Witnesses say Jehovah is God (the only God to be worshipped) and Jesus is “a god” (who must not be worshipped).

“Reverent adoration should be expressed only to God. To render worship to anyone or anything else would be a form of idolatry, which is condemned in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Accordingly, true Christians do well to direct their worship only to Jehovah God, the Almighty." (8 April 2000 Awake pp 26-27)

The conclusion drawn is that when anyone worships Jesus, it is idolatry. This would be consistent with what the 1 November 1964 Watchtower (page 671) said:

“Jehovah's Witnesses say that it is unscriptural for worshipers of the living and true God to render worship to the Son of God, Jesus Christ."

However, it was not until 1 January 1954 that this view was first adopted (on page 31 of that Watchtower issue). The inconsistency is that from 1914 up until 1954, it had never been defined that worship of Jesus was idolatry. Here is one example:

“Jehovah God commands all to worship Christ Jesus because Christ Jesus is the express image of his Father, Jehovah, and because he is the Executive Officer of Jehovah always carrying out Jehovah's purpose (Heb.:3-6)." 15 November 1939 Watchtower (p 339)

The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was first published in 1950 (if follows the text of Westcot & Hort). The complete NWT was published in 1961 then revised in 1970 and 1984. Since then, another revision has been published, but I don’t have access to it. One thing is clear – at some point after 1954 the NWT replaced “worship” with “obeisance” every time it applies to Jesus, but every time the word applies to Jehovah God, they render it as worship. That is because they refuse to worship Jesus Christ.

Upvote:2

The problem is that English doesn't have a particularly good word to describe the Greek anarthrous nominative predicate "theos" as a qualitative descriptor, as found in John 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:16.

"A god" is grammatically acceptable, but "gody" would be more accurate as it's a qualitative descriptor, not a second God... but that sounds weird in english. "Divine" in john 1:1 and "divinity" in 1 tim 3:16 would be accurate to describe a simple heavenly nature, but people confuse "divinity (heavenliness)" with "being THE divine (God)."

So no. We do not worship two Gods. Jesus is neither a "true God" nor a "false God." He is beyond human, beyond his heavenly peers (hebrews 1:9)... but there is for us only one God, the Father (1 Corinthians 8:6) and it is him alone we should worship (rev 19:10 and 22:9). Christ is still our King, kurios, lord, messiah, savior and redeemer.

Upvote:2

Either Jesus is God or not.

I disagree. Words can have different meanings in different contexts. And those overlapping complex sets of meanings can differ between languages. This is one of the things that makes translation tricky. Consider “their god is their belly” in Philippians 3, and the fact that Psalm 82 refers to human judges as “gods” (the latter is referenced by Jesus in John 10). Even without diving into the details of Witness theology, it’s clear that there’s no necessary contradiction here. A god may be anything worshipped, whether or not it is divine or even exists, or any powerful being with authority, or a number of other things.

More post

Search Posts

Related post