There are two main problems with the Jehovah’s Witness theology that are tough to work though when discussing the matter of Jesus being God:
- Jehovah’s Witnesses demand that no doctrine cause confusion to the limits of the human mind.
- Jehovah’s Witnesses forget that the expression “Son of God” is a play on words both in Semitic terms and, at the same time, heathen religion.
Human limits on God: As their New World Translation puts it: “God is [a God], not of disorder, but of peace.” (1 Corinthians 14:33) The JW uses this verse as a definition for what type of doctrine is allowed and what must be dismissed. If a doctrine transcends human reasoning, states official JW doctrine, this could not come from a God of order. Since the Trinity confuses the human mind and cannot make sense according to reason as a mortal can conceive it, the Trinity doctrine must be false.
Part of the appeal of the JW religion is that it sets limits on God and tosses all ambiguity out. For the Witness faith is not something that co-exists in the face of doubt, instead faith is knowing the absolute unquestionable truth or facts.
This of course means you don’t need faith or hope, but that’s a totally different subject for another thread.
“Son” has to mean what it does in English: This is the problem that even we Catholics sometimes forget.
The reason we know Jesus is God is because that is what the Semitic word “Son” means in this case. To be a “son” of something or someone meant you were one-and-the-same with the subject or were an incarnation of the subject.
For example, Jesus mentions in prayer in John 17 that all the apostles are safe but one, Judas Iscariot. But Jesus doesn’t call Judas by name. Instead he calls Judas “the son of destruction.” (John 17:12) Christ is often recorded as referring to himself as the “Son of Man” and is often called “Son of David,” and at his death a heathen is recorded as saying that Jesus truly was “the Son of God” at Matthew 27:54.
In all these expressions the word “son” never means a direct or immediate descendent of the subject “father.” Jesus is no more the immediate descendent of King David as Judas is not a literal “son of destruction,” as if destruction were something that could procreate. No, the term means that Jesus is the equivalent or fullness of what King David was, namely the Messiah and that Jesus was the Greater Adam of 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45 (the word “man” in “Son of Man” literally means “Son of Adam”). And as Judas was the incarnation of “destruction” by his actions, Jesus was the incarnation of God–”son of destruction”=Judas, “Son of God,” Jesus.
There is one other play on words going on. In the first century the Caesars claimed the title “Divi filius” for themselves. It is Latin for “son of God.” You see the Caesars claimed to be mundane incarnations of a greater divine self that they returned to being upon their death. When the emperor was with his subjects on earth, humans were witnessing a human form or a god in the state of being a “human son.”
When the Roman army officer who witnessed the events of Jesus’ death stated that Jesus must have been God’s Son at Matthew 27:54, he was using the word “Son” in the Roman emperor sense, meaning Jesus was the incarnation of God himself.
Of course to the JW, “son” has to mean a literal immediate offspring and only that in the case of Jesus, even though John 17:12 calls Judas the “son of destruction” in the own New World Translation.
And the reason why it has to mean this to the JW is because they are not comfortable with embracing the transcendence of God, nor do they accept mystery and the incapacity of human intellect to fully deal with God as holy.
For them God has to be controlled by proof texts and the scope of human reasoning.
Since neither exists for the fullness of the Trinity, the Witness dismisses it.
