Catholic Exchange

Your Mission, Should You Decide to Accept It

Unlike our separated brethren, the JWs deny essential truths of Christian doctrine. They redefine Christian terms with glib facility and they are adept at hop-scotching their way through a dizzying array of proof-texts. Your task is to slow them down, insisting on the careful definition of terms, forcing them to attend to the context of scriptures they cite or quote while maintaining an air of genuine inquiry that models for them the critical thinking skills atrophied by years in a cult.

What messes up a lot of Christians who engage Jehovah's Witnesses is that they cannot imagine you would really have to get this basic with people who are holding a Bible in their hands and using all these Christian-sounding words. They know the JWs deny the Deity of Christ, eternal damnation and the existence of a spiritual soul, but the implications of these denials don’t penetrate. Try to absorb this: they have a different god, another Jesus, and a conception of human life and future as foreign to yours as a Hindu’s.

The Bible, and the historic Christian understanding of it, presents God to us as having certain limitless attributes. God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere present). These three omni-attributes are coherent. They go hand in hand; you can't have one without the other. If God was not omnipresent, He could not be omniscient, because something could be going on in a place He was not. If He was not omnipotent, He could not be omnipresent because something could keep Him away from some location. God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are crucial to the Christian faith.

According to JWs, God is omnipotent — the Almighty. But when it comes to omniscience they are equivocal, and with regard to omnipresence, they flatly deny it. The denial begins with Charles Taze Russell teaching back in 1899 that there can be no soul, no sentient being — heavenly or earthly, spiritual or animal — without a body, therefore God would have to have a body.

Stop, Drop, and Define Terms

This argument is laid out on page 36 of the Jehovah's Witness study book, You can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth:

While most people say they believe in God, many do not think of him as a real person. Is he? Well, it can be seen that where there is intelligence there is a mind. For example, we may say, ‘I cannot make up my mind.’ And we know that where there is a mind there is a brain in a body of a definite shape. So, then, the great mind responsible for all creation belongs to the great Person, Almighty God. Although he does not have a material body, he has a spiritual one. A spirit person has a body? Yes, the Bible says: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one” — l Corinthians 15:44; John 4:24.

Here is the problem: Jehovah's Witnesses are using words like “spirit” and “body,” but they have lost the meaning. If you attempt to discuss this subject with them apart from recognizing this, you will be talking past them.

What is a body? A body is something that is extended in space. Scientifically, we would say that a body has mass. What is a spirit? A spirit is a being without a body; to be a spirit means to not have a body, as Jesus explained to His discliples:

As they were saying this, Jesus Himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have” — Luke 24:36-39.

Now remember, the JW book attempted this line of reasoning: “Well, it can be seen that where there is intelligence there is a mind. And we know that where there is a mind there is a brain in a body of a definite shape.” This is not true. We do not know that where there is a mind there is a brain in a body of a definite shape — we only know that where there is a human mind, in this life, on this world, there is a brain in a body of a definite shape. Actually, we also know that there are unintelligent brains in bodies of a definite shape — like the shape of animals, who have brains without minds. So why would we assert that there cannot be minds without brains? After all, does a thought have a shape? Does a thought have mass and take up space?

The last piece of the puzzle lies in their statement that “[a]lthough [God] does not have a material body, he has a spiritual one.” Then they quote the Bible: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.”

But a “spiritual body” is not a spirit — it is a physical body that has been glorified by the spirit to enter the heavenly realm. In saying the body is glorified we are saying that it is no longer subject to the restrictions of this universe, this space-time continuum. But it is still a body. When it comes into the space-time continuum it can be seen and touched like any other body, like Jesus' body after the resurrection. It may be a body that is perfectly united to a spirit, but it is still a body. And God does not have one of those.

Tying the Scriptures Up in Knots

When Jesus said that God is spirit (John 4: 24), He was not saying that God has a spirit body because there is no such thing — just like there is no dry water and no cold heat — and he was not saying that God has a “spiritual body,” because only beings who have once had a physical body can ever possess a glorified spiritual body. In fact, that is exactly what the scripture the JWs quote is referring to. Here it is in the context of 1 Cor 15:42-48:

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Note this part: “But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.” (Their own New World Translation clumsily, but still clearly, makes the same point at verse 46.) Before any one can have a spiritual body, he has to have had a physical body. If you are going to say this scripture refers to God, then you are saying that God once had a physical body (in which case the JW might rather make his way over to the Mormons instead). However, to say this scripture refers to God ignores what St. Paul wrote to introduce this passage in verse 42: “So also is the resurrection of the dead” (NWT).

What they need is a grammar lesson: To be “spiritual” does not mean to be “a spirit.” “Spiritual” is an adjective. In the context above it modifies “body.” You can be spiritual without being a spirit, just like you can be musical without being music, or fiery without being fire. Which brings us to a good illustration:

If I heat a piece of metal in fire, it will take on the characteristics of fire. It will glow and if you touch a paper to it, the paper will catch on fire. But the metal has not become fire; it is still metal.

So it is with a spiritual body. It is still a body (something extended in space) although it is so united to the spirit, so perfectly animated by the spirit, that it takes on characteristics of spirit — like not being limited by time and space and being able to dwell in heaven. To have such a body (the kind of body Jesus has) is our hope, “the hope of glory” — Colossians 1:27.

But God the Father (the only Person of the Godhead whose Deity is recognized by the Jehovah's Witnesses) does not have such a body. He is pure spirit. It is a misapplication of scripture (otherwise known as “scripture twisting”) for the JWs to attempt to use the same scripture (1 Cor 15:42-48) in which St. Paul explains the characteristics of the resurrected bodies of humans, to refer to the nature of God.

Well, there you have it: an argument that requires you to get very basic with the JWs. Define terms and make them look at the context of the scriptures they use. Show them that their god is smaller than the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Spirit you worship.

© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange

Mary Kochan, Lead Content Editor and Contributing Author to Catholic Exchange, was raised as a third-generation Jehovah’s Witness. Before converting to Roman Catholicism, she worked in Evangelical Protestant ministry, speaking and teaching in many settings. She is a member of St. Theresa parish in Douglasville, GA. Her tapes are available from Saint Joseph Communications.