Watchtower Society’s founder Charles T. Russell finds much common ground with Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen

(or Why did Andrew Katay say he was giving his audience a red pill when it was actually the blue one?)

A few days ago I stopped to chat with a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve discussed the Watchtower’s heretical theology with its representatives (face-to-face and through correspondence) and I prefer these days, when asked what “brand” of Christianity I uphold, to just state immediately that I’m a Trinitarian. This avoids the unfruitful and highly irrelevant task of responding to their well-rehearsed doctrinaire training of passing judgement on the implied deficiencies of your denominational preference. It also allows me to point the conversation in the direction where I want it to go.

These two were no different and this allowed me to quickly show them 2 verses in John’s Gospel where Jesus is called ‘The God’ (20:28) and the Holy Spirit is called by the masculine pronoun (16:13). I point out at the same time that a universal rule (i.e. Jesus is never called The God and God’s spirit is just a thing) is no longer sound if just 1 counter-example can be raised.

The woman’s final response to all of this was to ask what being a Trinitarian can give me over what she, an Arian, has obtained. I said that it was all a matter of truth for truth’s sake. There is something cleansing, edifying and proper about chasing after truthful knowledge. If hers is a false representation then it’s akin to a libellous editorial or a gossip magazine’s invention about some celebrity’s person life. If Jesus really is God, then her substandard portrait just plainly misses the mark.

This later got me to thinking about The Watchtower’s creation theology. Witnesses present Jesus as merely a god and although they admit he is a creator, of sorts, they understate and misunderstand the meaning of the ‘through’ in Colossians’ “all things were created through him”, thus approximating him to a Gnostic or neo-platonic demiurge. This creator is not co-eternal with the Father and merely serves as an organiser of matter, making the real creator one step removed from the cosmos.

It was somewhat ironic that last week the SAD minister Andrew Katay was also giving a talk at Sydney University’s EU titled, ‘Wake Up!: Seeing the World God’s Way’. On the poster was a blown-up picture of Keanu Reeves reflected in Morpheus’ glasses reaching out for one of the two pills on offer. (By the way, I wonder if EU had corporate permission to use this still from The Matrix.) Andrew, for those who are unfamiliar with him, toes the party line on creation quite faithfully. This was rather efficiently evinced in his debate with Sydney University philosopher Adrian Heathcote when Andrew rather proudly announced at its conclusion that he “had no problems with Big Bangs and 18 billion years”, thus guaranteeing that the preponderantly young audience that lunchtime dined on a generous portion of Gnostic theology.

SAD theology introduces a foreign element or principle to Christianity. Not persuaded by appeals to pellucid Scripture passages which unanimously declare the world young, the Sydney Diocese turns to an understanding of the cosmos which injects time as the operative principle. Time allows God to step back and permits things to just unfold, very, very slowly. In fact, God, when you think about his role in their heresy, does little. Sure, he’s God so he must do something, but exactly what and how remain vacuous when SADs are questioned. Unbelievably they frequently try to drag you into their nescience by answering with the presumptuous, “We don’t know and you certainly don’t!”

At least the pagans have an excuse. Their gods are feckless and invisible, in the immediate sense of things that is, and so pagan religions have to have something to get things happening. The most logical is ‘time’ - well, ‘Time’, to be more accurate. If there is one thing certain in this world, both empirically and deductively, it is this: the more time one has, the more things happen. So what better ‘demiurge’ is there than Chronos? If “magic”, as Polkinghorne puts it in his polemic attack on the miracles of the Bible, is ruled out, then the slow, relentless hand of time will accomplish everything…and anything. As C.S. Lewis mentioned, paganism’s (and Islam’s) “miracles” are pointless and incredulous, so to explain why there is something rather than a zero, time serves its cause rather well.

Christianity, on the other hand, has no use of time as a means to bring forth the wonders and riches of creation. Solomon quite rightly writes that, “not without these, wisdom and discernment, the Lord based earth, the Lord framed heaven; not without skill of his did the waters well up from beneath us”.

We at this blog ask our heretical friends just how you propose that these triune attributes of God can come to bear as creative energies when the huge amounts of time you put forward cancel out their effectiveness. Wisdom, discernment and skill are not seen when something is occurring at a snail’s pace but when order is brought from chaos quickly. God, as the Bible tells us, has no need for another partner. He does things quickly because he is supremely intelligent and intelligent beings, by definition, don’t waste time putting their plans into reality.

“Wisdom is the Lord’s gift; only by his word spoken comes true knowledge, true discernment.”