No. They don’t believe Jesus is divine, at least not in the sense God is. They consider only the Father to be a God. I believe Witnesses may even consider Trinitarian churches to be polytheistic, but I’m not positive.
And while the Trinity may be incomprehensible to mere mortals (most Christians tell me they accept it as a mystery that they can’t understand now) its exact nature was the source of many a schism in the early Church. It’s not something done to avoid the question; it’s the subject of an enormous amount of early theology. The Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox churches, and later the Eastern Orthodox churches (and probably more) all split off due (or mostly due) to difficulties over the exact nature of the Trinity and of Jesus’ divinity (obviously a closely related issue.)
You missed my entire point. I have no reason to explain John 20:17 because that is not what I was asking about. The inconsistencies of your bible are your business.
I asked why Jesus was the greatest man alive if he wasn’t god. He did nothing but perform magic tricks heal a few random people and start a religion that has bred both evil and good in the world. How is he better then the people that developed germ theory? Pioneered heart surgery? Developed human recombinant DNA insulin that I take every day to survive? Jesus never did anything of interest for me.
Interesting stuff. So what exactly was Jesus? Something like an angel, merely a powerful created person?
I know it was a topic of great debate. However, I do still believe that the answer arrived at by the mainstream Roman Catholic church was chosen at least partly because of its ability to reconcile monotheism and the divinity of Jesus, its convenience if you will.
Since brewster2 hasn’t shown up yet, I’ll field that- and from his perspective!
In JW thought, Jesus is not God, BUT he is still God’s Agent of Salvation. He is co-creator with Father Jehovah; he is the ransom sacrifice to cancel out the sins of humanity, he rose in spirit-form (his mortal body was disintegrated) to pioneer the spiritual resurrection of all people, and will return to rule over the Earthly Paradise Kingdom in which all people will be raised to learn Jehovah’s way of life & have opportunity to inherit eternal life by abiding in it.*
So, the JC of the JW’s, while not God, is still the next best thing & the closest to God we’re ever gonna get
There are intricate details about how the 144000 have a direct relationship with JC while the masses have a more indirect one, and also whether those people directly destroyed by God’s judgement in the OT & the NT will ever have a resurrection.
Thank you for your reply. I have a feeling you explained it better then the OP could have anyway. I guess I need to sit down and study the JW religion so I have a better grasp of what they believe in.
lambchops- as I noted before, Witness teaching is that Jesus was the first creation of Jehovah the Father and His only direct Creation. Jesus’s original identity was the Word, the Son, the Archangel Michael through whom & for whom Jehovah God created all else.
As for your assessment of the reason for the RCC (and Eastern Orthodox) doctrine of the Trinity- reconciling Monotheism w/ the divinity of JC- you’re right on the money.