Vol. 8, No. 9, 1991

Defined, and Mis-Defined

David Henke

"A word not found in Scripture, but used to express the doctrine of the unity of God as subsisting in three Persons. The propositions involved in the doctrine are these: 1. That God is one, and that there is but one God. 2. That the Father is a distinct divine Person distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit. 3. That Jesus was truly God, and yet was a Person distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit. 4. That the Holy Spirit is also a distinct divine Person" (Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 1893).

In its attempt to support its unitarian theology the Watchtower has distorted the definition of the Trinity so that their attempts to refute it would seem more credible.

It has been their pattern for one hundred years to do one of two things in regard to the Trinity. First, they will mis-define it as three Gods in one God, or three Persons in one Person. Or, if they define it properly as three Persons in one God they will try to refute it as if this definition was saying there are three Persons in one Person, or three Gods in one God.

Most Jehovah's Witnesses think of the Trinity as three Persons in one Person which leads them to the question of who Jesus was praying to in the Garden of Gethsemane. Himself?

This confusion is specifically addressed in the Athanasian Creed. It says, "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of Holy Ghost. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God" (Make Sure of All Things, p. 484).

In this and all other Christian definitions of the Trinity there is complete agreement. Christians do not disagree on this foundational truth. Even secular sources are consistently accurate in their representation of the Trinity.

However, Charles T. Russell in his Studies In The Scriptures, (Volume V, 1899 edition, p. 55) describes the Trinity like this; "They declare in one breath that there is only one God, yet in the same breath they declare that there are three Gods. But how could there be three Gods and yet only one God?"

And again, on page 59 Russell contradicts himself, and the creeds, when he says; "The doctrine of the Trinity holds that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit `are one in person, equal in glory and in power,' as stated in the Church creeds." If a Jehovah's Witness should object that the above are old publications then a more recent statement is found in the booklet The Word Who Is He: According to John?. It says, "But even then, how could John say that the Word, as God the Son, was the Trinity made up of three Persons? How could one Person be three?" And again, on page 7 the Watchtower uses this outworn argument; "Since we cannot scientifically calculate that 1 God (the Father) 1 God (the Son) 1 God (the Holy Ghost) = 1 God, then we must calculate that 1/3 God (the Father) 1/3 God (the Son) 1/3 God (the Holy Ghost) = 3/3 God, or 1 God. Are readers of this booklet confused?"

In all these Watchtower statements we find "confusion of Persons" (confusing the Son with the Father) and "division of substance" (dividing the Trinity into three gods). This mis-definition of the Trinity illustrates that to communicate effectively with a Jehovah's Witness one must define terms.