There is one point from our conversation that I want to focus on: Jehovah Witnesses do not believe in the Trinity. They have two reasons for this disbelief. First, they believe that Christ is not God, but the archangel Michael. Second, they believe the Holy Spirit is a force and not a person. In this blog, I will focus on Jesus's divinity and I will write about the personhood of the Holy Spirit in a future blog post.
The main scripture Jehovah Witnesses use to argue against the divinity of Christ is in John 14.
John 14:28 ESVI replied with with the main teaching passages on the divinity of Christ: John 1, Ephesians 1, and Hebrews 1. I also explained that Christ was on earth as a man. He humbled himself to carry out God the Father's purposes to save mankind (John 3:16). Christ said the Father was greater than he was because he was voluntarily serving the Father on the Father's mission. Christ was equal to God in personhood, but subordinated himself to God in this mission to redeem mankind.
You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
I was not completely happy with my response so after I came back, I looked up the passage in a commentary.
Royce Gordon GruenlerThe example that comes to mind is the Secret Service protecting the president. If you asked most of the presidents, "Whether a president's life is worth more than the men and women who are protecting them?" I hope they would answer, "No, of course not." However, using the biblical terminology, if you ask Secret Service agents why they would give up their lives to protect the president, they would answer in something like the following manner, "In order to serve and protect my country in this assignment, I have to believe that the president's life is greater than my own. I would need to sacrifice my life to protect the president for the greater good of protecting my country." In terms of the worth of the individual human being, all men are created equal. However, in terms of service to one's country, someone may have to value their own lives as subordinate to another person's life for the greater good.
Jesus the obedient and deferential Son acclaims the Father as greater than he in language that is typical of the divine disposability, where none of the persons exults over the other, but each defers to the other with loving hospitality and availability. The subordination theme also refers to Jesus' incarnate existence as servant. If the disciples really loved Jesus the Son (as they will come to love him and know him through the Holy Spirit), they would understand that his imminent departure to the Father means that his future glorification is greater than his present and humble incarnate life in the flesh; hence, "the Father is greater than I" reflects the deference of the incarnate Son to Father. Yet in light of other paradoxical utterances, it would seem that here again the Son is making a statement that tells us something of his attitude toward the Father within the divine Triunity itself: the Son subordinates himself to the Father not because he is less than the Father but because it is the nature of all three persons of the Triune Family to subordinate themselves to one another in ultimate deferential love and hospitality. Jesus also expects deferential love and hospitality from his disciples. It is simply and profoundly the way Jesus the Son thinks and speaks that he says to them:
If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I."Similarly at the close of the discourse, as Jesus predicts the coming of the ruler of this world who will curtail his speaking in the final suffering of the cross (although he has no ultimate power over the Son), Jesus places himself again at the disposal of the Father in obedient love, that the world may know of his love for the Father. (pp. 105-106, The Trinity in the Gospel of John: A Thematic Commentary of the Fourth Gospel)
