Tag: Deity of Christ
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the man Jesus who died on Good Friday did not come back — that his body was dissolved into atoms and a spirit creature named Michael was constructed to take his place. This is a primary-source documented study of that doctrine — what the Watchtower actually teaches, why it cannot be reconciled with the apostolic Scriptures, and why the Jesus who rose is the same man who died.
The claim that the Synoptic Gospels present a theologically simple Jesus — a great teacher, an exalted prophet, an agent of God rather than God himself — is one of the most persistent errors in biblical interpretation. This article dismantles it text by text, argument by argument, across Psalm 110, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and two thousand years of unbroken patristic testimony. The centerpiece is the argument that has never been successfully answered: in Matthew 5, Jesus places his own personal legislative word over against the Lex talionis — the foundational principle of all Mosaic criminal justice — from his own first-person authority. Deuteronomy 18:20 leaves exactly two categories of person who would do that. A false prophet condemned to death. Or the Lawgiver himself. There is no third category.
The claim that the Synoptic Gospels present a theologically shallow Jesus — a prophet, a moral teacher, an exalted but merely human Messiah — is one of the most persistent errors in the history of biblical interpretation. This article dismantles that claim text by text, from the Virgin Birth to the Great Commission, showing that Matthew, Mark, and Luke consistently place Jesus within the unique divine identity of Yahweh: forgiving sins as the ultimate creditor, claiming sovereignty over the Sabbath and the Temple, receiving worship that belongs to God alone, knowing the thoughts of every heart, and exercising the judgment reserved for Yahweh alone over all nations. The centerpiece is the argument that has no satisfactory non-Trinitarian answer — the Sermon on the Mount antitheses, where Jesus places his own legislative word in direct authority over the Torah of Sinai. Delegation operates under Torah. Jesus legislates over it. There is no third category.
The Hebrew Bible reserves the title *Savior* exclusively for YHWH — the one God who declares, "besides Me there is no savior." When the inspired authors of the New Testament apply the compound Greek title *Theos Sōtēr* — God and Savior — to Jesus Christ, they are making not a devotional flourish but a precise theological claim: the man from Nazareth, crucified and risen, is the God of Israel incarnate. This article examines that claim through the lens of the Old Testament background, New Testament grammar, first-century linguistic milieu, and the unanimous testimony of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
Jehovah's Witnesses say Jesus is "a god," not God. We examine the Greek of John 1:1, the NWT's insertion of "other" in Colossians 1, John 14:28, and Christ as YHWH in the New Testament.
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