Should you believe the JWs?
| In the days of the "Early Church Fathers," it was a basic principle of theirs that they only started to define teachings (ie The Trinity, Godhead of Jesus) as or when the questions arose in the face of heresy. Here again the J.W. suggest a question of a problem that actually doesn't exist in history. You will also find that their knowledge of early church history is very selective. They don't really know history very well.
Any pupil only knows what the teacher imparts. The J.W. at your door only knows what he/she has been taught. They are taught to accept what comes from above without question. Hence they have very probably never read church history for themselves.
ALEXANDER, (BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA) c. 313, began the ARIAN controversy c. 318 when he attempted a major sermon titled "UNITY IN TRINITY." The Arian view of the relationship between FATHER & SON was not exactly new, but had appeared as a question in different forms much earlier. The fact that the question was always arising and always being thrown out shows beyond doubt that the majority of orthodox Christian leaders had no problem with the view that JESUS the Son of God, Son of Man, was fully divine i.e. GOD, that the Holy Spirit was in the same category and yet these are only ONE GOD in TRINITY. N.B. THROUGHOUT early church history any who suggest the SON is somehow CREATED are branded HERETIC and are THROWN OUT if they will not convert. No matter how difficult it is to explain, or whether they make a good job of it or not, the early orthodox Christian believed the SON to be CO-ETERNAL with the FATHER and ONE with the FATHER after quoting "I and the FATHER are ONE." |
COUNCIL OF NICEA The Emperor Constantine in a letter to the Catholic Church says "the Holy Spirit dwelling in the minds of the gathered assembly enlightened them to the divine truth." CONSTANTINE says "More than 300 attended" AD 325. ATHANASIUS says "300 more or less" in AD 350-1. ATHANASIUS later says "318" AD 369. In a letter DECEMBER 325 Constantine talks about devotion to the saviour God on a matter about serious attitude to Jesus. Ask the J.W. how the canon of the N.T. and O.T. was sorted out and finalised. We know the N.T. canon had exactly the same kind of history as the doctrine of the Trinity. It was not until Athanasius in 367 AD that we have the list of 27 as we know them now. The O.T. was fixed in the same way by the Rabbi's of Alexandria at the COUNCIL of JAMNIA in AD 90. Does all this mean earlier people than these dates didn't believe the books or what they contained. What happened is that the Church eventually officially canonised what was already commonly accepted and closed the lists. JN 2028 and HEB 1031 demonstrate the inconsistency of J.W. Greek on questions about the inclusion or exclusion of the definite article. Throughout this booklet they don't seem to understand the nature of God's revelation in both O.T. and N.T. . Neither do they seem to understand historical development of doctrine or the history of the early Fathers. Regardless of what appears to be overwhelming evidence, you must always remember that the amount of evidence against their Hebrew and Greek is vastly more, |