Why Christians Don't Use "Jehovah" As Often

Answering a question on Quora:

Why do you rarely hear Christians who are non-Jehovah's Witnesses, referring to God as Jehovah God (or rarely even Just Jehovah) like the Jehovah's Witnesses do?

The Watchtower (the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization) teaches that God has a personal name, and it is Jehovah. It teaches that knowing and using God’s name is critical to being able to worship Him.

Many Christians (non-Jehovah’s Witnesses) do use the name Jehovah, but much less for several reasons. If you want a short answer, skip to the end; but if you want to learn the reasons behind the answer, keep reading.

A more complex doctrine of God requires more terms.

The Bible gives evidence that Persons called the Father, the Son (Jesus, Christ, Messiah, the Lord, the Son of Man), and the Holy Spirit are God — and yet, there is but one God. Modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals try to solve this apparent paradox by saying that God switches between personas. However, this creates problems such as when the Son and the Father speak to each other and when scriptures say the Father subjects all things to the Son except Himself. Latter Day Saints (“Mormons”) say Jesus was, like all angels, demons, and humans, a spirit-child of God the Father who will become a god of his own world on Judgment Day. This, like the Modalist god, violates the scriptures’ teaching that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The Jewish faith denies the evidence that Jesus was divine, and many deny that He even existed. The Watchtower accepts that Jesus existed, but teaches that He was an angel, a small-g god who became Jesus of Nazareth and then became an exalted angel (again, see Hebrews 13:8).

Christians resolve the paradox by supposing that the Creator of the universe – meaning that God created not only matter and energy, but also space-time – can do anything He wishes, so long as it is good and not a logical impossibility. From the scriptures’ claims, they conclude that God used creative power to function in and experience space-time as three Persons. This Tri-unity (one God as three Persons) is a solution, not a problem. It bypasses many problems that Bible-recognizing religions face when they reject the Trinity.

As a result, to Christians, God has a more complex identity. They can speak of God in general as God, the Almighty, the Creator, etc.; or they might speak of a specific person, namely, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. (Note that God is “Lord,” regardless of which Person you speak of; but for the sake of communication, the scriptures often distinguish the Father from the Son by calling the Father, God, and calling Christ, Lord.)

Jehovah is not God's name.

Another reason Christians do not use the term Jehovah very often is that it is not actually God’s name! God does not need a name. There are no other real gods from whom to distinguish Him. Also, no god preceded and created Him, so nobody had the authority to name Him. On the other hand, God does take many descriptive titles and names, not for His own sake, but for ours.

The name "Jehovah" started when the Israelites were enslaved in a land with many so-called gods. (You will see, a few paragraphs later, why I put "Jehovah" in scare quotes.) When God was commissioning Moses to lead the Israelites, Moses asked whom he should say was sending him. God responded, “say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" This was a functional name chosen by God, not for His own sake, but for Israel’s. He is the I AM, as contrasted with all the other gods, who ARE NOT.

Jehovah is an incorrect pronunciation

The Hebrew word translated I AM is YHWH. Note that ancient Hebrew writing had no vowels. It had only consonants.

During the 400 years before Christ, the Jews had a revival of respect for God. They became so obsessed with rules that they would not dare to pronounce YHWH. Instead, when speaking, such as when reading scriptures aloud, they substituted the name Adonai, which means Lord. Consequently, they forgot how YHWH was pronounced! By the time of Christ, it had become common practice to combine the vowels from Adonai with the consonants YHWH, which produced Yahowah or Yahweh.

Now, transliterate Yahowah to Greek, transliterate that to Latin, and transliterate that to English, and you get Jehovah. So Jehovah is, at best, a twisted pronunciation of a word whose pronunciation was lost over 2,000 years ago.

Jehovah is an obsolete transliteration

In 1611, the Authorized Version (King James Version or KJV) used the word Jehovah in some places (and LORD, in all caps, in most places) to translate YHWH. Many readers of the KJV use the word Jehovah as a name for God. But many others simply use God or Lord, and the spread of modern Bible translations that do not use the word Jehovah reinforces that trend.

Within and outside Christianity there are movements such as Hebrew Roots that make a big deal about pronouncing YHWH and Jesus with original Hebrew pronunciations. This sounds cool and may make a person feel that he has special knowledge or special reverence for God, but biblical Christians do not think there is magical power in words and pronunciations. The power is in the meaning they convey, and God is omni-lingual.

Jehovah is Jesus

There’s yet another reason Christians use the word Jehovah less often. John chapter 1 teaches that Jesus is the Word, meaning that He is the expressive member of the Tri-unity. Jesus Himself said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” In other words, it was God the Son, before he took on the bodily form we call Jesus, who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. So, in a monumental irony, the term that the Watchtower uses to label God actually refers to the Person whose deity they deny!

Summary

Christians use the word Jehovah less than Jehovah’s Witnesses do because the Jehovah's Witnesses inflate its usage and misuse it. Christians use it even less than they used to because laymen (as contrasted with clergy) are growing in awareness that it is a descriptive label rather than a personal name, it is a bad transliteration of a word whose pronunciation has been forgotten, it is not a general label for God, it is an incorrect label for God the Father, and Christians reject the idea that words and pronunciations have intrinsic power. God is just as good a "name" for the Creator as any other.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use (meaning, you don't make money by plagiarizing it). But please give credit where credit is due.

From a question on Quora:

Is the separation of "the entirety", the one god, into multiple gods or aspects due to our inability to comprehend "the entirety" as the singular aspect of all of creation?

In Hinduism, a multiplicity of minor gods make up components of a unified cosmic stew. The answer for Hinduism could be yes. I won't speak for them. My answer comes from a Christian perspective.

From a Christian perspective, the answer is no. The question reveals a lack of understanding of Christian theology. It comprises major non sequiturs which the following statements answer:

1. In Christian theology, one God is not separated into multiple gods or aspects. I’ll explain this below.
2. The “members” of the Trinity did not evolve from human imagination, but rather, are discerned from divine revelation.
3. The definition of the Christian God is not a convenience for the sake of comprehension, but rather, is a hindrance to the comprehension of many people such as Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians, and Muslims. The majority of trinitarians still accept it by faith despite the difficulty of comprehending it, and you may find the following explanation to be unique even among top Christian apologists and philosophers.
4. God is separate from His creation and not an aspect of creation. The way the question is worded is like asking whether an egg is an aspect of a hen or a painting is an aspect of an artist.

According to current cosmology, the Inflationary period and the Big Bang mean that the universe had a beginning. Matter, energy, space, and time are so intertwined that if the universe had a beginning, then even time and space had a beginning.

According to the Cosmological argument, everything that begins to exist has a cause, so the universe had a cause that was immensely powerful, timeless, spaceless, and volitional. Skipping other arguments that fill in attributes… according to Christian theology, that cause was a singular God.

Some people, thinking themselves clever, ask, “Then what caused God? And what caused the cause? [This is actually compatible with Gnosticism.] You end up with an infinite regression of causes of causes, but an infinite regression is impossible because if you start at the other end, you can never get to this time.” The argument creates two logical absurdities.

• If God had a Cause, then that Cause had to be greater than God. But if the Cause was greater than God, then God is not God. (Reference the Ontological Argument and St. Anselm’s definition of God.)
• Multiple causes and effects requires sequence, and sequence is meaningless outside of time. Thus, it is nonsensical to assume that, outside of time, God began to exist due to a preceding Cause.

Existing outside of time and space and having creative power over the universe, God can enter or “reach into” His creation, reveal Himself to us, and experience it as one, three, or any number of apparent (apparent to us, that is) entities.

The Scriptures pose problems that the Jewish faith never dealt with. The clues are scattered throughout the Old Testament and are made more clear in the New Testament. The Father is clearly God, Christ is clearly God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and each of these has a distinct consciousness in time. Yet the scriptures explicitly teach that there is exactly one God.

To the Jewish and others who believe in a monolithic God, the idea of one God entering time and space as three Persons — the Trinity — is a problem. The evidence does not fit their understanding of God. However, to those who build their understanding around the evidence, the Trinity is a solution. It fits the scriptural evidence, and now we know it fits with science, as well.

In Christian theology, the three Persons are fully God, share the same spiritual substance, and share all the same attributes. The apparent (from our perspective) differences stem from the three cooperating by voluntarily accepting differing roles. Differences such as hierarchy of authority derive from the roles, not from the natures of the participant.

Another difference results from Christ joining with a human body so that, as the Son, He became fully man while retaining the nature of being fully God. Through this incarnation, He could experience the temptations, trials, and pains of life as a human, becoming a fitting proxy for us when God poured out judgment. At the same time, as God, He could live a sinless life, thus not needing to be judged for His own sins; and He could bear and recover from a judgment that would have destroyed us.

Thus, God is both eternal and temporal, transcendent and condescending, just and loving, responsible for creating a universe in which evil would happen and responsible for providing a way to offer redemption at His own expense. This is the maximally great God, far greater than any of the monolithic, “entirety” gods.

So God is creator of the universe, not an aspect of it. This one God is not separated into multiple gods or aspects. Rather, He exists as a continuing Unity. If we could see God from a perspective outside of time, we would see one God, whereas seeing God from within time, we see three co-equal Persons voluntarily fulfilling separate roles. Rather than man developing the Trinity as a convenience for our comprehension, the concept was discerned from divine revelation in spite of its challenge to our comprehension.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Feel free to use for personal, non-profit use, provided you give credit where credit is due.

A Partial Case for the Trinity

God is Jesus, God is the Father, but Jesus Is Not the Father

I wrote this for someone on Quora who seemed unsure about whether Jesus is God, but not the Father.

Science tells us that, when God made the universe, it had to involve creating energy, matter, space, and time. Having creative power over space and time, God entered time to experience it in three roles. From our perspective, God is three Persons, yet one God.

It is, as we used to say, mind-blowing! Here is just a sample of of the biblical evidence:

• Jesus called Himself “I Am” (John 8:58).  God called Himself I AM (Exodus 3:14) 
  
  (Note: Through translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, YHWH turned into “Jehovah,” which has little resemblance to the original word. For this reason, sects that make a big deal out of knowing the name “Jehovah” are founded on a myth.)
  
  
• Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham, who lived about 1900 years earlier. (John 8:58)
  
  
• John wrote that God the Son (“the Word”) made all things that have come into being. (John 1:3)
  
  
• Paul wrote that God the Son created all things, and He is what holds all things together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
  
  (Note 1: In verse 16, one very bad translation inserts the word “other” so it reads, “created all other things.” They insert the word because they deny that the Son of God was created and not the Creator.
  
  Note 2: Some will say, “But look at verse 15! It says he was the first one born, so He was created. However, the Greek word translated “firstborn” in verse 15 does not mean “first one born.” It means Preeminent One. If you search the scriptures, you will find men who were called firstborn but were not the first ones among their siblings to be born. They were “firstborns” despite not being first ones born.)
  
  
• Jesus existed with the Father before creation, sharing in God’s glory. (John 1:1-2, John 17:5, John 17:24)
  
  
• If you read the last reference in context (John 17), you will notice that Jesus talks to the Father as separate Persons. The Father sends, glorifies, give authority to, gives followers to, gives a mission to, and shares glory with the Son. The Son prays to, glorifies, receives glory from, accomplishes work assigned by, shared and will share the glory of, conveys the words of, goes forth from and returns to, the Father. And that’s just the evidence from one chapter that, although the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are two distinct persons.
  

As I said, this is just a sample of the evidence. Many scoff at the Trinity, but they have to twist hard to get the scriptures to indicate that the Son and Holy Spirit are not Persons of God, or that God just switches identities to trick us into thinking a single Person doesn’t pray to Himself, delegate to Himself, send Himself, go forth from Himself, and obey Himself.

Here’s why this is very important: If you were saved by the wrong God, you still need to be saved.

Another Child of God like Jesus

Asked on Quora: Would God ever have another child and let him come to Earth like Jesus?

Summary Answer

No. It's a silly question to any Christian, but the reasons behind the answer are an instructive exercise.

Background

The Bible makes three claims about the nature of God.

• Exactly one God has existed, exists, and will ever exist.
• Modern physics shows that mass, energy, space, and even time are intimately intertwined. If God created the heavens and Earth, then God created time and space. Having creative power over time and space, God is able to exist in and experience time and space as three identical Persons.
• The three Persons voluntarily adopt separate and complementary roles, self-identifying as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the roles.

Many people, instead of following a model that reconciles the three claims, reject one or more of the claims. They can argue that the following explanation is incorrect, but they cannot argue that it is a spurious or held by a minority.

God existed outside of time (which I will call “eternity”) and space as a Unity and exists within His creation as a Trinity of Persons (not a trinity of gods).

Accepted doctrine stops there. Many believe God exists only within time, but science says that time had a beginning. That leaves unanswered the question of how the three Persons could have the same essence and be one God.

I counter that the choice is not either eternal or temporal. I believe God exists both outside time as a Unity of substance and a Trinity of personhood and inside time as a Trinity. For me, accepting that God’s creative power enables Him to be both One God yet three Persons fits all the evidence in the Bible. And it is consistent with science. It also explains how God can be omnipresent and omniscient (including knowing the future).

How the Son became the Son is unclear. There are a passages that say Jesus and the Holy Spirit “proceed from” the Father. However, this could be interpreted either as a duplication of essence or as a sending forth, like a soldier who is sent on a task by an officer.

The sending meaning is far more likely. First, we know that the Father has assigned duties to Son and the Spirit. Second, sending implies sequence, and sequence must occur within time. Since the Son and the Spirit took part in creating time, the Father could not have duplicated Himself within time. “Proceed from” must mean that the Son and the Spirit were sent.

Detailed Answer

Having a child and letting him/her/it come to Earth reflects an image of God like that of humans creating children within time. Human children and parents are separate entities. In contrast, if God is a Unity outside of time, and God created time, then the Son did not come into being during time’s existence. That is, God could not “have” a child like the Son because the Son has always been.

Suppose God “had another child.” Since the new child comes into being within time, he/she/it cannot be eternal like the Son is. The child would also have limited experience, knowledge, and power. Moreover, the term “child” implies a need to mature, which the Son did not need to do. The Jesus body had to mature, but the divine Person, God the Son, did not. Since the new child would have an inferior nature, he/she/it might be similar to a great angel but could not be God. Since “another” implies of the same kind, the new child would not be “another.”

Here’s another reason why God could not “have another child.” God calls the second Person the Son primarily because that label fits the role. Consistent with that label, John 3:16 calls Jesus only-begotten. Many translations dilute the term. “One and only” is only half wrong because it conveys the metaphorical meaning of only-begotten. However, it fails to convey the literal meaning.

Here, a bit of language definition helps. Beget and conceive are counterpart words. Whereas a female conceives and births a child, a male begets a child. The accounts of the witnesses say that God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, turned one of Mary’s eggs into an embryo. While the Son already existed, He clothed himself with that body and subjected Himself to all the burdens and infirmities that we experience.

Only-begotten, then implies three things.

• God begot the Jesus body through creative power.
• The Son has the same nature that the Father has (that is, He is God).
• Jesus, Son of God, is one-of-a-kind.

If God “had” another “child,” then Jesus would not be the only-begotten. By calling Jesus “only-begotten” in the scriptures, God would be a liar. Since God is Truth, lying would make Him not God. God cannot be both Truth and liar or both God and not God.

Let’s forget God’s honesty for a moment. God could beget another body, but the same Son would have to inhabit it. However, upon His resurrection, God re-vivified and transformed Jesus’ body into a transcendent body. Jesus still has that transcendent body in heaven and would have to discard it in order to inhabit the newly begotten body. If the Son took on a new body, we couldn’t recognize Him either in heaven when we die or on earth when He returns. 

Even worse, if the Son discarded His Jesus body to inhabit the new one, the Jesus body would die again. That contradicts explicit statements that the transcendent body is immortal.

So the terms have (meaning, the verbs create, beget, or birth), child, and another all reflect ideas that conflict with what we can learn about God from the Bible. For multiple logical reasons, God could not “have another child” or “let him come to Earth.”

Since this answer was posted on Quora, a copyright would have no force. However, I can ask that if you use it, please give credit where credit is due.

Another Illustration of the Trinity

Tri-une God, a Scientific Possibility

According to physicists and cosmologist, when the Universe was created, not only were mass and energy created, but so were time and space.  In other words, God has creative power over time. To Him, our past, present, and future are all one.  If He wishes to enter into time and space from three different "directions" and experience our "reality" as three Persons, He can do so; and yet, in that place outside of time, He remains a united God of one Mind and united substance.

The new illustration

Remember, no illustration using the physical can adequately represent the spiritual.  Even I see gaps in this illustration; but perfection is not my aim.

Imagine a Carpenter building a dollhouse with three openings. Then he creates puppets to inhabit the dollhouse. This Carpenter inserts his head through the front opening, his right hand through a side opening, and his left hand through the other side opening. 

 

Moreover, on his right hand, he dons a puppet costume so that his hand looks just like the occupants. His right hand has not changed its form; rather, it has taken on additional form.

Inside the dollhouse, the Walter puppet says there are three Carpenters. He counts, "One, two, three Carpenters." No connection between them can be seen; the Right Hand has a visibly different nature than the other two; and they have a clear hierarchy.

 

The Achmed puppet says, "The Head is God, the left hand is his angel, and Right Hand is his prophet. Headahu Akbar! Alalalalalalalalalalalal!"

The Lamb Chop puppet says. "All three are the same Carpenter: Carpenter the Head, Carpenter the Right (who has taken on puppet form), and Carpenter the Left. The three act independently, yet in perfect coordination, all of the same mind."

Obviously, the Carpenter represents God; the dollhouse represents His creation of time, space, mass, and energy; and the puppets represent His human creations. The face, left hand, and right hand represent how we perceive God's entry into and interaction with his creation, and the right hand's donning of the hand puppet represents Christ's incarnation. 

Naturalism makes the mistake of saying that we are only flesh. Some forms of Eastern religions make the mistake of saying that we are only spirit, and flesh is an illusion.  One variation that combines those those says that Jesus changed forms. Jehovah's Witlesses say He was angel, then man, then a god. Mormons say He was spirit child, then a man, and then a god (or will become a god, and so will all the rest of the "good" Mormons). 

The Trinitarian view holds that Christ was God from the beginning, and that never changed. At the incarnation, He added human form, although he refrained from exercising His divine abilities, most of the time. Within the dimension of time, He ever has been God and ever shall remain both God and human; and outside time, he is eternally One with the Father and the Spirit.

(One fine point that I have not seen addressed is whether Jesus consists only of divine spirit and human flesh, or additionally consists of human spirit. TMI?)

My purpose is not to "prove."  Many minds greater than mine have already gone over the evidence in greater depth than I can comprehend.  "Proof" is another subject entirely, but the mind cannot accept the proof of something that seems impossible.  My purpose is merely to stretch the mind, open the minds of non-tri-unitarians, and make them more comfortable with what has been revealed.

 

Copyright  2015, Richard Wheeler -- Permission granted for personal use; Please give attribution in group settings.

Bad Logic and Errors of Those Who Reject the Trinity

Denial leads to further denial.

One non-Christian belief holds that Christ Jesus is not God the Word come in the flesh (John 1:1, 2, 14). One symptom of this is the denial that their Jesus took part in his resurrection. They hold that their Jesus was entirely passive. Conceding that Christ had a part in raising Himself would imply His deity. Therefore, they must contradict the evidence.

My convention: The human Jesus of the deniers of Christ is he. The Christ Jesus of the Bible is He.

He really did say it.

Christ claimed to have the power to rise from the dead (John 10:17-18). Before the fact, He demonstrated the truth of His claim by raising others from the dead. This is crucial to us because Christ promised that He would raise believers from the dead in the Last Days. 

If Christ lacks such power, then He is a liar. Even worse, He is a blasphemer because He promised to do what only God can do. But if Christ can do what God can do, then He must be God. This is the truth that anti-Trinitarians must deny.

In Mark 8:31, Mark 9:9, John 2:19, Christ used active voice, meaning that he would do the raising -- I will rise or I will raise; and in Luke 18:33, He used middle voice, meaning that He would perform the raising on Himself -- I will raise myself. (1) 

One cannot deny that Christ Jesus said He would raise Himself without either treating the gospels as unreliable and non inspired or else contradicting Him. And one cannot contradict Christ without implying that He was a false prophet who did not keep his word. 

Non-Trinitarians would not openly call their Jesus a false prophet. They would not openly call the gospels non inspired. But their doctrine requires either one or the other.

If God says I will, does He need to say I did?

They argue that nobody in the New Testament says, after the resurrection, that Christ had an active role in raising Himself. This is false both factually and logically. 

It is true that throughout Acts and the epistles, the authors do not use active voice (He rose). They usually state that God raised Christ from the dead. Grammatically, however, this is not a solid claim. Many occurrences of the verbs are ambiguous; they could be translated as either passive voice (He was raised) or middle voice (He raised Himself).

To a Trinitarian -- or to a Jew -- the statements that God the Father raised Jesus illustrate the Father's seal of approval on the Son. Christ stated that the Holy Spirit bore witness to His identity through the miracles He performed. Similarly, the Father's involvement in Christ's resurrection validated Christ's identity, so a Trinitarian expects many references to the Father's involvement. Congruent actions of Christ and the Father give evidence of Christ's divine nature. Admitting to this would undermine the non-Trinitarian view, so they must deny it.

Factually, Mark wrote that Christ rose (active voice in Mark 16:9), and the resurrected Christ Jesus Himself explained to the disciples that the Old Testament prophesied that the Christ would rise out from the dead (active voice in Luke 24:46; see also John 20:9). If only the Father were involved those sentences would all have used the passive voice (he was raised).

Logically, if Jesus Christ is the Truth (John 14:6), then He cannot lie; neither can He prophesy falsely. If He said something before the resurrection, it stands, regardless of whether somebody else later confirmed that He kept His word. To say otherwise is to call Jesus a liar, to call Jesus a false prophet, or to deny the reliability of Mark, Luke, and John.

Pitiful Logic

Another facet of their contradiction of what Christ said points to the many statements in Acts and the epistles that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. According to their faulty reasoning, if God the Father raised Jesus, then Christ did not. 

Such pitiful logic follows an either-or relation and rejects, without justification, an either-or-and relation. In logic, or does not preclude the possibility of both propositions being true. (If one and only one out of two alternatives can be true, it is call an exclusive or.) Their reasoning is like looking at a quarter and concluding that it either has the face of George Washington or it has the image of an eagle, but it cannot have both. Their logic is faulty because both descriptions are true.

A Trinitarian can reconcile saying both that Christ does something and that God does it because Christ is God the Son. God the Son can raise Jesus' body from the dead, God the Father can, and the two Persons can do it cooperatively. Thus, Trinitarians do not have to attack the character of Christ or the gospels, nor do they have to use faulty logic as the non Trinitarians do.

Warning

Christ's involvement in His resurrection has an importance greater than that regarding the future resurrection of believers. According to 1 Corinthians 12:3, one who does not confess, Lord Jesus -- which implies His deity -- does not have the Holy Spirit. Rather, according to 2 John 1:7, the person who denies that Christ Jesus came in the flesh -- which is meaningless if we do not accept His pre-existent deity -- is guided by antichrist. 

Beware Unitarians, liberal mainliners, Jehovah's Witnesses, or any other theological cult that denies the deity of Christ. You don't want to follow that spirit.

Copyright 2015, Richard Wheeler