Colossians – Page 4

Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 4

March 26, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

You and two hypothetical Jehovah’s Witnesses are having a discussion, and they’ve pointed you to Colossians 1.15, where Christ is said to be the “firstborn of all creation.” We’ve noted that the operative word here is the term firstborn, and we’ve set out to discover what it means.

Defining the key terms

Since words have multiple meanings, we need to gather a list of what this key term could possibly mean. We’ve noted that according to its etymology, it simply means that the person is the first one to be born, or to come into existence. That means that our Jehovah’s Witness friends are winning.

But we’ve also noted that etymology is notoriously unreliable as an indicator of meaning. We need to look further.

Step 3: Possible meanings–context

The best indicator of a word’s meaning is how it’s actually used. If Michael Jackson used the word bad to mean “good,” then we need to know that when one of his fans uses the word bad.

Similarly, we need to survey how the word firstborn is used. The most reliable indicator is typically how it’s used in “near context”—the same chapter, the same epistle, the same author. The word does appear just a few verses below this occurrence, in verse 18; we’ll come back to that later. For now, we notice that it appears 3 times in Paul, twice in Hebrews, and twice in the Gospels. If you’re being extra diligent and using Strong’s numbers to check the underlying Greek word, you find 2 more uses, translated “first begotten” in the KJV, both in Hebrews.

So 9 uses in the New Testament. That’s a problem in that 9 uses are nowhere enough to constitute a meaningful dataset; statisticians will tell you that you need 50 whatevers before you can start drawing statistical conclusions. Furthermore, the problem gets worse; of these 9 occurrences, 8 of them are simply calling Jesus the firstborn, which is the very thing we’re trying to figure out. We need verses that use the term to refer to other things, so we can see what the term actually means. Our one instance in the NT, Hebrews 11.28, is a reference to Passover, when the death angel destroyed the firstborn of Egypt, and that’s talking about people and animals that were literally the first ones to come into existence.

Too little evidence, and what little we have says that the Jehovah’s Witness is still winning.

Drat. Again.

But we do have another resource. The Old Testament, the Scripture of the same cultural group, was translated into Greek about 200 years before Christ, which is close enough in time to be useful as evidence. We can take a look at that Greek OT, the Septuagint, to see how much it uses the term.

Firstborn occurs in the KJV OT 110 times. Now there’s a dataset. (If you get more technical and count the number of times the Greek word prototokos occurs in the Septuagint, you’ll get 124. That number’s different for several reasons, which won’t make any significant difference in our work here.)

Of those 110 occurrences, about 97% are literal—that is, we’re talking about a human or animal that is literally the first one born. So 97% of the time, this word speaks of coming into existence.

Who’s winning? The Jehovah’s Witness. Still. And by a mile.

But 97% is not 100%. There are a few instances where the word is used of someone or something that is not the first one born:

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son (Ex 4.22).
And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth (Ps 89.27).
With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back, I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn (Jer 31.9).

Next time we’ll take a closer look at one of those passages, and we’ll learn of a second possible meaning for our word.

And, more importantly, we’ll also learn how not to completely abuse the Scripture in the process.

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 3

March 22, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

Defining the key terms

So you’re deep in conversation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you’re discussing the deity of Christ, and the spokesman clobbers you with Colossians 1.15: Christ is “the firstborn of all creation.” He’s the first created being.

Now what?

Well, you treat this passage like any other. You follow the exegetical process to determine what it means. Since this is a short passage and a simple statement, the process will be a little simpler than if you’re working in, say, Ezekiel 40-48, so this shouldn’t take long.

Step 1: Identifying the key words

You begin by looking at the words. (Were you expecting something more, well, profound?) What are the key words in the passage? You’re going to start with the subject and the main verb, then other nouns and verbs, then adjectives and adverbs. If you were dealing with a longer passage, you’d look closely at conjunctions as well, to see how the statements fit together.

The main verb of the verse is simply a form of “to be,” which in this case is fairly simple. There are nouns—image, God, creature—which here have fairly plain meaning (image excepted, perhaps) and in any case are not the focus of the theological disagreement. Both you and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to agree that the key word, the central character in the disagreement, is the adjective firstborn. What does it mean that Jesus is “firstborn”? Everything hangs on the answer to that question.

Step 2: Possible meanings–etymology

Now that you’ve identified the key word(s), you need to find out what they mean. This process will involve multiple steps.

You begin with a critical observation: words mean more than one thing. If you look up any word (in any language, come to think of it) in the dictionary, it’s pretty much always going to have more than one definition. There are exceptions, mostly very technical terms—deoxyribonucleic, for example—but every biblical word I’ve ever studied has multiple definitions (or, as the scholars like to say, “nuances”).

It might seem like the logical place to start is with the question, “Well, where did the word come from?” Or, to put it more technically, what is the word’s etymology? The word firstborn looks pretty obvious, and it is: it comes from two words meaning, um, “first” and “born.” So, the first one to be born, or to come into being. Jesus is the first one to come into being.

Who’s winning so far? The Jehovah’s Witness.

You can double-check in a formal source, like the Oxford English Dictionary (at the library), or Merriam Webster’s, or even dictionary.com. They’ll all say the same thing. First. Born.

Hmm. Well, how about the Greek? I don’t recommend that people who don’t know Greek set out to “check the Greek,” for reasons both practical and professional, but I’ll save you the trouble. The Greek word is prototokos. Proto, “first.” Tokos, “born.”

Drat.

He’s still winning.

I’ll tell you a little secret, though.

Etymology is a lousy way to find out what a word means. There’s even an exegetical error called the “etymological fallacy.” The reason for that is really simple: we’re in the image of God, and God’s creative, and consequently so are we. One of the ways we show that is by coming up with creative uses for our existing words. One reason you can’t understand half the things your teenagers say is that they’re using existing words with meanings that only they and their friends know. Back in the 80s Michael Jackson decided that the word bad actually meant “good,” and we’ve been messed up ever since.

If I were to say, “When the sun set, I polished my chess set while my wife set her hair,” you wouldn’t have any problem understanding the sentence, although it would seem like an odd juxtaposition of observations. The word set occurs in that sentence with 3 completely different and unrelated meanings (to go down; a collection of objects; and to harden in place), but if you’re a native speaker of English, it didn’t even slow you down. How did you sort out the meanings?

Context. The accompanying words sun, chess, and hair told you which meaning, or nuance, I intended in each instance.

So to find out what our word firstborn means, we’re going to have to do some work with context.

Next time.

Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 2

March 19, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1

The battleground

So you’re standing on the porch, or maybe sitting in your living room, and the conversation begins. You have a couple of choices. You can just let them talk, and ask clarifying questions along the way, or you can drive the conversation yourself. Either way, eventually you’re going to get to the most serious difference between JW theology and biblical Christianity: the deity of Christ.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, as modern ideological descendants of Arius and his followers, believe that Jesus is a created being, the first of God’s creatures, and then the creator of everything else. They happily show you where your Bible teaches that:

Who [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1.15).

The designated spokesman of the pair will show you the passage in your Bible and then say, trying not to sound triumphal, “You see, this verse clearly says that Jesus was the first created being.”

What are you going to say to that? Many Christians find the statement a little troubling and seek to counter it with a bunch of other verses that, they say, teach the deity of Christ. You know, verses like John 1.1 (boy, is there going to be an argument about that one; few things are more comically futile than two people who don’t know Greek arguing about what the Greek says), and John 8.58, and Titus 2.13, and Isaiah 9.6, and …

But there’s a problem or three with that approach. First, you’re trying to win an argument by having the more verses. And in doing that you’re implying that the Bible teaches both sides, and the side with the more verses wins. And that’s an implicit denial of the unity and inerrancy of Scripture. Second, you’ve failed to respond meaningfully to his argument, thereby giving him a solidly planted tent peg that he doesn’t deserve. And most important, you haven’t gained from the Word what this verse actually teaches. If all the Scripture is profitable (2Ti 3.16), then you ought to mine the gold from this passage.

So what do you say about this passage? Here you have a wonderful opportunity to teach beyond the argument. You have a chance to teach these folks some exegesis, through which, if they heed it, they’ll be finding problems with their own theology all by themselves for the rest of their time as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But it’s going to take some time. So, I suppose, those of you who are sitting on comfortable couches and drinking iced tea will have a bit of an advantage.

Exegesis is simply the process of getting the author’s intended meaning from a piece of writing. You do exegesis all the time, even if you’ve never heard the word before. In fact, you’re doing it right now—you’re reading my words and getting the meaning from them.

Most of our daily exegesis is pretty simple: Stop. Authorized personnel only. Exit left. Wait here to be seated. Waffles $8.95. Electronics Department. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But lots of writing requires more care in understanding correctly. Good poetry, for example, typically requires some scratching of the head, stroking of the beard, and furrowing of the brow. Narrative is much easier. In biblical studies, epistolary literature, of which Colossians is one example, requires considerable thought, especially when it’s developing an argument over multiple paragraphs and even chapters.

That means there’s a process for exegeting challenging writing. This process has multiple steps, each of which you need to do in its order and with careful thought. This passage is a great opportunity to learn the process, because it’s brief, but it also requires all the steps of the process if you’re going to understand what it’s saying. Further—and this is really cool—if you follow the process carefully, the meaning is absolutely clear, and it’s absolutely impossible for the passage to say what the Jehovah’s Witness claims it says. But all along the way, until the very end, your JW friend is going to think that he’s headed for a win; he’s going to be the proverbial hare to your tortoise.

All of that makes the exercise deeply enjoyable.

So next time, we’ll head jauntily off toward Understanding.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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