|
Boards
My church
Greek
Reformation Theology
Disputes:
v. JW
v. Rome
v. ignert
Systematics
Pleasures of God
Theo
Links
Apolo
Links
Software
Hardware
Photo
New
| |
Verse-by-Verse Defense of the Trinity
Refuting the Watchtower
Isaiah
by Dave Sherrill
Return to the verse-by-verse index
Comments and Responses Welcome
 If you would like to offer supplemental comments or a rebuttal to the analysis presented here, feel free to drop me a note. Be aware that by sending an email response, you are giving implied consent for me to publish it on this site if I so choose. All email will be read and considered. The inclusion or exclusion of any email is at my discretion. I will make one promise to you right now. If I choose to include your response on a supplemental page, I will include your original note in full, without altering it.
Isaiah 45:5
I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; (NASB)
The Watchtower's comments on Isaiah 45:5 in SYBT are found in this section under the subheading "God Is One, Not Three". Their comments are as follows.
Instead, what the Bible writers did make abundantly clear is that God is one Person--a unique, unpartitioned Being who has no equal: "I am Jehovah, and there is none else. With the exception of me there is no God. (Isaiah 45:5)" (SYBT, p.13)
Repeat After Me
I'm sorry to continue repeating myself but the Watchtower continually repeats the same errors about the doctrine of the Trinity. The argument presented here is a familiar one with followers of the Watchtower. They are trying again to establish monotheism, somehow thinking that this will overturn the Trinity. It doesn't. Trinitarians are monotheists, not polytheists. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is one God, exclusive of all others who claim to be God. The Watchtower is attempting to highlight their description of God--"a unique, unpartitioned Being who has no equal"--as if this was in conflict with the doctrine of the Trinity. It is not. Allow me to repeat a definition of the Trinity provided in the introduction to these articles.
Trinity. The term designating one God in three persons. Although not itself a biblical term, "the Trinity" has been found a convenient designation for the one God self-revealed in Scripture as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It signifies that within the one essence of the Godhead we have to distinguish three "persons" who are neither three gods on the one side, nor three parts or modes of God on the other, but coequally and coeternally God. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Walter Elwell--Editor, p.1112)
Trinity Is Not Polytheism, Watchtower Is Not Monotheism
The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is "a unique, unpartitioned Being who has no equal." (My, doesn't that sound familiar?) We do not hold, as the Watchtower falsely accuses us, that God exists in "parts", that God is not unique, or that God has any equals. The Watchtower has missed the mark in refuting the Trinity. They have attempted to refute the Trinity by presenting an argument for monotheism as opposed to polytheism. In doing so, the Watchtower has demonstrated their failure to grasp that Trinitarians are monotheists who oppose polytheism. In fact, Trinitarians are monotheists, while JWs are the actual polytheists, specifically Platonic henotheists. This will be documented fully in the topical section of this study. In light of this--JW henotheism-- their argument here is a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black. They accuse Trinitarians of polytheism while asserting their monotheism, when they truly are not monotheists at all, but are henotheists.
|
