One of our readers, Nana R, a former Jehovah’s Witness, has a blog chronicling her journey into the Catholic Church. I am reading her blog regularly now to follow her journey, and find her story fascinating.
Actually, I have always been fascinated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I was in 8th grade, I was embracing the Christian faith for myself, as I had been “saved” in November of 1989 at age 11. I became, for lack of a better word, overbearing. My parents told me to cool it and stop being so zealous, but I was convinced that I was the only one around who was truly “on fire” for God. One of my main interests was cults, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I read a lot about them (considering I was only 13). My favorite book was Why I Left Jehovah’s Witnesses by Ted Dencher, although I also enjoyed other books, including one by John Ankerberg (who, unlike other cult books I was reading, included the Catholic Church as a “cult”).
I even tried some of my book learning on real, live, Jehovah’s Witness girls my age, who didn’t seem too interested in debate. Even though I later moderated (and, until later in college, effectively abandoned any Christian faith I had, partly because of how I came to view my youthful fundamentalist period as pretty silly), I still have an interest in the theology of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Back in 1991, I was convinced that JWs simply “misread” the Bible, and I (of course) read it correctly. I would never use this argument today, because I am aware that every Christian group out there claims to simply “read the Bible correctly,” which leads to a lot of arguing in circles. While I believe the New World Translation is a horrible translation, and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses do read the Bible incorrectly, most JWs themselves would obviously disagree.
Nowadays, I tend to see the Jehovah’s Witnesses as simply another American sect rooted in late-19th century apocalyptic hysteria. These groups (which include the Adventists and Christian Scientists), besides embracing a certain futurist interpretation of the New Testament, are heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, which means that they, like the Gnostics of old, elevate the “mind” over physical things, and as such, embrace now outdated scholarship from that time which traced the roots of many Christian practices to pagan origins. They also shun ritual, tradition, and externals.
From both a Catholic and historical standpoint, Jehovah’s Witness claims make little sense. That God’s organization is headquartered in Brooklyn shows just how American and novel this denomination is. I could never seriously consider the concept that the Church right after Christ went into apostasy and then was restored in a sect in America in the late 1800s, although quite a few denominations founded in this period make this claim. Again, an American sect founded in the late 1800s is neither universal (catholic) nor historical.
Many JW practices are not very Catholic or historical either. The practice of allowing only “the 1914 generation” to receive communion is pretty odd, and comes from past failed predictions of the end of the world, when the Watchtower claimed that the 144,000 of Revelation were alive on earth during the return of Jesus in 1914 (later they claimed he returned invisibly, since, as is obvious, nobody saw Jesus return in 1914). I can’t imagine that very many JWs from that time are alive today, and receive communion, but considering the rationalistic, enlightenment background of the Watchtower, I doubt rituals are viewed as that important anyway. However, if I were a JW, I would wonder why virtually nobody receives the communion that Christ commanded his disciples to continue receiving after his death.
As is well-known, JWs also do not celebrate holidays. The Witnesses I knew in grade school did celebrate “Teddy Bear Week,” but not much else, although I am sure there is a website somewhere detailing the pagan origins of Teddy Bear Week! I have written on the so-called pagan origins of Christian holidays before, but I think something NanaR wrote, gets at the heart of why the JWs don’t celebrate holidays, and why they their theology is so peculiar: they don’t believe in the incarnation. I definitely agree with Nana R, and to expand her point, I think the Jehovah’s Witness denial of the incarnation, and thus the implications of the incarnation, explain a lot of their theology and praxis.
I would argue that most Christians whose churches were born during the 1800s do not have a strong theology of the incarnation (and this includes many fundamentalists and evangelicals), which prevents them from understanding the Catholic and Orthodox love of ritual, externals, festivals, fasts, and so forth. Even Protestants from the 16th and 17th century seem surprisingly Catholic, ritualistic, and sacramental compared to Protestant movements of the 19th century.
It is funny, because even when I would read about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their views on Jesus, I tended to focus on the deity of Christ as opposed to his incarnation. I don’t recall even reading much about the incarnation of God in Christ when I was studying the evangelical response to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I don’t know if I could even tell you what the incarnation was. I am sure most of the books I read back in 1991 took the incarnation for granted, but the fact that it and its implications were rarely discussed shows me that many of those writing against the Jehovah’s Witnesses probably came from denominational traditions that owe a lot to the enlightenment trends that contributed to the founding of the Watchtower.
However, I think it is impossible to understand the Jehovah’s Witnesses unique theology and practice without looking at their views about the incarnation (or really, a lack of a theology of the incarnation). So many of their ideas flow from the denial of this doctrine: opposition to sacraments, dislike of the cross, refusal to celebrate holidays, avoidance of blood transfusions, believing that Jesus was resurrected spiritually, their prophecy-heavy futurism, etc. The question remains, do the Jehovah’s Witnesses dislike the incarnation because they have a strong dislike of the created world, or does the dislike of material things flow from their lack of an incarnational theology? It is hard to say, since both are so intertwined. Either way, while they are Christological heirs to the ancient Arians (in denying that Jesus is fully God), they are also the heirs to the ancient Gnostics and Docetists.
In the early Church, the Gnostics and Docetists denied the Incarnation. While they did not have a problem with Christ’s divinity per se (as the JWs do), they had serious issues with the created world. That God would become flesh, in this evil world was so troubling that they believed that Jesus only appeared human. Orthodox Christians throughout history have seen things differently, although there have been Gnostic tendencies even among the orthodox. Saint John and Ignatius of Antioch both took great pains to emphasize that while Jesus was God, he was also fully human, pre-and-post Resurrection. Ignatius incorporated the following hymn into his Letter to the Ephesians:
There is one Physician
who is possessed both of flesh and spirit;
both born and unborn;
God existing in flesh;
true life in death;
both of Mary and of God;
first passible and then impassible,
— Jesus Christ our Lord.
During the 8th century, when the Iconoclast controversy was raging, similar debates were raised as were during the time of the Gnostics. Was it appropriate to create images of Jesus? What St. John of Damascus and others pointed out was that we are material beings, and on account of the Incarnation, God redeemed material things for His use. In his In Defense of Icons, John of Damascus writes about how it is through the visible, created order, that we learn of, worship, and encounter the invisible God, since we are material beings:
For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images. We see images in creation which remind us faintly of God, as when, for instance, we speak of the holy and adorable Trinity, imaged by the sun, or light, or burning rays, or by a running fountain, or a full river, or by the mind, speech, or the spirit within us, or by a rose tree, or a sprouting flower, or a sweet fragrance.
Thus, unlike the Gnostics who focused exclusively on spiritual formulas and secret prayers, Catholic and Orthodox Christians understand that God uses physical things for salvation: sacraments, the cross, people, the Bible, and of course, the physical incarnation of his son! Flowing from this comes an appreciation of physical stuff, like icons, foods, incense, relics, and even holidays and holiday customs. Again, if a person lacks a theology of God truly becoming flesh in our physical world, then he is not going to have context to understand how someone can take a tree into one’s home and decorate it in honor of Christ. He will have no understanding of the importance of taking bread and wine, blessing them, and through God’s blessing transforming them substantially into the body and blood of Christ. I have raised this point on the blog before, but I believe that the main difference between denominations founded in the late 1800s, heavily influenced by the enlightenment, and Catholicism and Orthodoxy, is a sacramental mentality, which of course is rooted in the incarnation. The former denominations seek to ignore or escape the physical world (whether through an over-focus on future prophetic events or denying the possibility of sacraments, and so forth), while Catholics and Orthodox recognize that God not only redeemed creation, but he also uses it! God could have sent an angel to save the world, sending him with some secret formulas for salvation and liberation from the physical world, but instead, he sent his own Son, himself fully God, into the created world, becoming one of us! A theology rooted in secret formulas and lacking the incarnation is not only anti-material, but impersonal (since God couldn’t be bothered to become one of us to save us), while the Catholic view recognizes that God works in the created order, and is highly personal. I should note that many Protestants share the Catholic view in this case.
While the denial of the incarnation is certainly not the only reason why Jehovah’s Witnesses believe what they do, I believe it is a major factor, a factor rooted in enlightenment American religion at the time the Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded.
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