Jaded27:
Can you explain to me why it’s the “farthest thing from truth” like absolutely EVER? I’ve had Catholic friends all my life and I’ve never once heard THAT from them.
OK. Christianity is a relational belief system based upon Jesus; His teachings and His revelation to mankind. For one to be Christian he must adhere, or actively attempt to be adhering, to those teachings as well as seeking to come to a more fuller understanding of that revelation. From the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry the question has been posed in no better words than by the Master Himself: “Who do you say I am?”
According to my understanding the JW’s answer this question by saying in brief that Jesus was created By God the Father, whom the JW’s insist referring to as only Jehovah and by no other Name. Jesus was the Fathers first creation. At His creation he was Michael the Archangel. There is no incarnation, that is to say a time when God became flesh. Jesus is not Divine. Jesus is not worshiped. JW’s contend that the idea of the Divinity of Christ was invented by the Catholic Church and inserted into the Christian faith at the (First) Council of Nicea in AD 325, and by doing so bastardized Christianity and made it ‘pagan’ in nature.
The reality is that the JW’s cannot be further from the truth on just this single point. If what they say is true, then there would be no mention of the Trinity or the teachings from Christian leaders prior to AD 325 pointing to a Christian belief in the Divinity of Christ. Notice in the quotations below are all pre-AD325.
Ignatius of Antioch was a disciple of the Apostle John and ordained bishop by the Apostle Paul. On his way to his martyrdom he wrote to several Churches and his letters are extant to this day.
“Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . predestined from eternity for a glory that is lasting and unchanging, united and chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God” (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
“For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., 18:2).
“[T]o the Church beloved and enlightened after the love of Jesus Christ, our God, by the will of him that has willed everything which is” (Letter to the Romans 1 [A.D. 110]).
Aristides, Early Church Father: “[Christians] are they who, above every people of the earth, have found the truth, for they acknowledge God, the Creator and maker of all things, in the only-begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit” (Apology 16 [A.D. 140]).
Tatian the Syrian Early Church Father: “We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man” (Address to the Greeks 21 [A.D. 170]).
Melito of Sardis “It is no way necessary in dealing with persons of intelligence to adduce the actions of Christ after his baptism as proof that his soul and his body, his human nature, were like ours, real and not phantasmal. The activities of Christ after his baptism, and especially his miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the deity hidden in his flesh. Being God and likewise perfect man, he gave positive indications of his two natures: of his deity, by the miracles during the three years following after his baptism, of his humanity, in the thirty years which came before his baptism, during which, by reason of his condition according to the flesh, he concealed the signs of his deity, although he was the true God existing before the ages” (Fragment in Anastasius of Sinai’s The Guide 13 [A.D. 177]).
Irenaeus Church Historian: "For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, Father Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who announced through the prophets the dispensations and the comings, and the birth from a Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to reestablish all things; and the raising up again of all flesh of all humanity, in order that to Jesus Christ our Lord and God and Savior and King, in accord with the approval of the invisible Father, every knee shall bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth . . . " (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
“Nevertheless, what cannot be said of anyone else who ever lived, that he is himself in his own right God and Lord . . . may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth” (ibid., 3:19:1).
I’ll stop here. As this is way long. I am sure my point is made.
