Jehovah's Witness on Mark 10:18

My mother lives right next to a Kingdom Hall, a meeting place for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She’s been real interested in them and what they believe lately, which is a bit suspicious, seeing how she’s an agnostic. But I suppose its good because now her and I have a lot more discussions about God, the Christian lifestyle, and comparative religion. One of the things I really emphasize with her is that the JWs rejection of the full deity of Christ is false.

One day, I was talking to this JWs on the street and she says Jesus is not God and she points to Mark 10:18 (in their own version). This one actually doesn’t take too much thinking to get out of.
Mark 10:18 (NIV) reads “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’”

Seems a bit fishy on the surface. It would seem that Jesus is saying that he is not good, and since only God is good, he could not be God. Logically, it would look like this:

1. If you are good, then you are God
2. Jesus is not good
3. Therefore, Jesus is not God

Now, Christians and JWs agree on premise number one, that only God is good. But when it comes to the conclusion, we split. So the disagreement is premise number two. So then

1. If you are good, then you are God
2. ?
3. Therefore, Jesus is God

What has to be said in premise number two to make the conclusion true? Obviously, Jesus is good . Is this a premise that the JWs agree with? Actually, it is! 1st Peter 2:22, 1st John 3:5, John 8:46, Hebrews 4:15. But if both premises are true (which JWs ought grant), then the conclusion logically follows, and Jesus is indeed God. The JWs would then be wrong, and this scripture actually works against them, not for them.

Comments

  1. Danny HaszardNovember 14, 2012 at 4:04 AM

    Jehovah's Witnesses are in *breach of the preach*.
    Jehovah's Witnesses proselytizing is a false Gospel. (Gal. 1:8)

    Straight up doctrinal facts on Jehovah Witness.
    The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach preach that Jesus had his return aka second coming October 1914,then they spin all sorts of doctrinal embellishments on that date.
    They teach only 144,000 go to heaven,on and on and on with made up man made dogmas……They have infighting,crime and child abuse as bad as any church out there.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses promotion of their Watchtower sect has the net effect of stumbling and turning people off to the real Gospel.
    Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte; and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Matt 23:15)
    -
    Danny Haszard born 3rd generation Jehovah's Witness
    *Tell the truth don't be afraid*
    FMI dannyhaszard(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 5, 2013 at 8:35 PM

    But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. "(Mark 13:32)

    Bible verse never say that Jesus hesitate to preach about the Judgment day, but simply he did not know. So the question arises, whether the same three gods are really coequal in unity? or theyare just separate entity with different minds. For indeed father is greatest, beyond comparison to Jesus.

    Jesus: "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God (the father?) Only. (Mark 10:18)

    Obviously Jesus is not God nor is he comparable to God

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AdrianJune 6, 2013 at 9:46 PM

      That is not obvious at all. What is obvious is that you do not understand the Trinity when you say that they are three Gods. This is not Trinitarian teaching.

      But anywho, just because He took on a human nature does not mean he is no longer truly divine. It just means that certain facts are reserved for the subliminal and subconscious. And clearly you aren't reading what I'm writing because I addressed the application of Mark 10:18. So, please come back when you're ready to have a conversation.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo

Image
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...
Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Birth Control?

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.
Read more

Is Canon 28 Binding?

In my previous post , I discussed Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (you'll find the full text of the canon there). But I should have put an asterisk on the conversation because Canon 28 isn't properly part of the council. You'll remember from an earlier post , that what makes a council ecumenical is ratification from the Roman Pontiff. Canons are part of councils. And naturally, canons also have to be ratified. However, Canon 28 was not ratified by Pope Leo (Roman Pontiff at the time). So Canon 28 isn't part of the council and thus isn't binding.  If you are Orthodox, this may sound too convenient. I've already suggested why Roman Ratification is the correct theory in the previous link. However, I want to add two things. First, even Saints in the East agree with the Roman position, and second, a case can be made for Canon 28 not being problematic for Catholicism.  First, there are the sayings of Pope St. Gelasius (about 490 AD), and Pope St. Gelasius is...
Read more