What are Jehovah’s Witnesses Taught about God and the Trinity?

(Extracted from Fast Facts on Jehovah’s Witnesses (ATRI Publishing: 2011)

The Jehovah’s Witnesses deviate from the biblical view of God in several important areas. First, God is only one person, not three persons or triune. Second, God is limited to a specific locale and is not omnipresent. Thus the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ God is “not part of [the] Triune Godhead, with other coequal members.”^[1] And, “The true God is not omnipresent, for he is spoken of as having a location (1 Kings 8:49; John 16:28; Hebrews 9:24). His throne is in heaven (Isaiah 66:1).”^[2] “[God is] not omnipresent, but can project spirit anywhere to accomplish His purpose.”^[3]

As we will see in our discussion of the Society’s position on salvation, it is also true in Watchtower theology that, as far as God is concerned, “the stress appears clearly to lie upon the side of his power and his inexorable justice rather than upon the side of his love and forgiveness.”^[4] Nevertheless, the Watchtower Society’s abhorrence of a “pagan Trinity” makes the Christian God abhorrent to Witnesses. C.T. Russell blasphemously taught that the Christian God was, in fact, the devil: “The clergy’s God is plainly not Jehovah but the ancient deity, hoary with the iniquity of the ages—Baal, the Devil Himself.”^[5]

There are five principal reasons why the Trinity is rejected by the Watchtower Society:

The Trinity was not part of the early church but a development from paganism.

“This doctrine was unknown to the Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles.... The early Christians who were taught directly by Jesus Christ did not believe that God is a ‘Trinity.’ The trinity is referred to as ‘that idea of pagan imagination.’”^[6] [However, a study of the earliest church Fathers proves the early church did believe in the Trinity, because it was clearly the teaching of the New Testament, as documented in our Knowing the Truth About the Trinity.]

The Trinity is not found in the Bible.

“Their word ‘Trinity’ does not occur in the Holy Bible.”^[7] [Lack of a descriptive term does not require the doctrine be absent. Neither does “monotheism,” “Jehovah,” “theocratic,” or “New World Society.”]

The Trinity was invented by Satan to malign Jehovah’s name and to deceive and confuse people.

“The doctrine of the Trinity is a false doctrine and is promulgated by Satan for the purpose of defaming Jehovah’s name.”^[8]

“The plain truth is that this is another of Satan’s attempts to keep God-fearing persons from learning the truth of Jehovah and his Son, Christ Jesus.”^[9] [If it is biblical teaching, the doctrine can neither be satanic nor malign God’s name.]

“There can be no compromise with God’s truths. Hence, to worship God on his terms means to reject the Trinity doctrine.... God’s interests are not served by making him confusing and mysterious. Instead, the more that people become confused about God and his purposes, the better it suits God’s Adversary, Satan the Devil, the ‘god of this world:’ It is he who promotes such false doctrines to ‘blind the minds of unbelievers’ (2 Corinthians 4:4).”^[10]

The Trinity is a doctrine of polytheism, teaching three gods.

“If there are three Almighty Ones, how could there be one most mighty?”^[11]

“However, according to Trinity teachers, when ‘the Word became flesh,’ Mary became the mother of God. But since they say God is a Trinity, then the Jewish virgin Mary became the mother of merely a third of God, not ‘the mother of God.’”^[12]

“[It is] a bit difficult to love and worship a complicated, freakish-looking, three-headed God.”^[13] [These are incorrect descriptions or caricatures of the historic doctrine of the Trinity, which teaches belief in one God. We discussed this in Knowing the Truth About the Trinity.]

The doctrine of the Trinity “is irrational.”^[14]

Many things are beyond our full comprehension, such as particle physics. This does not make them irrational.

The extent of Watchtower Society distortion surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity, even in its more recent scholarly literature, such as Greg Stafford’s Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, is difficult to imagine for those who have not read it. After analyzing the anti-Trinitarian argumentation in Let God Be True (a brief statement of Watchtower beliefs in outline form), Professor Edmund Gruss makes the comment:

“After starting with no evidence, misrepresenting orthodoxy; using Scripture out of context, not understanding the meaning of a word, misrepresenting the source of the Trinity doctrine, bringing in irrelevant material and changing the events of church history, the Witnesses make this ‘authoritative’ statement: ‘The obvious conclusion is, therefore, that Satan is the originator of the trinity doctrine.”^[15] (For biblical documentation of the Trinity, see our Knowing the Truth About the Trinity.)

Endnotes

1. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Make Sure of All Things; Hold Fast to What Is Fine (Brooklyn: WTBS, 1965), p. 267.↑
2. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Aid to Bible Understanding (Brooklyn, NY: WBTS, 1971), p. 665.↑
3. WTBS, Make Sure, p. 267.↑
4. W.M. Nelson, R.K. Smith, “Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part II, Their Mission,” in David J. Hesselgrave (ed.), Dynamic Religious Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978), p. 188.↑
5. Quoted in Nelson and Smith, ibid., in Hesselgrave, p. 181; Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. 7 (The Finished Mystery), p. 410.↑
6. The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, p. 22; Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Then Is Finished the Mystery of God (Brooklyn: WBTS, 1969), p. 10.↑
7. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, Things in Which It Is Impossible for God to Lie (Brooklyn: WETS, 1965), p. 256.↑
8. Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, Uncovered (1937), pp. 48-49 cited in Charles S. Braden, These Also Believe: A Study of Modern American Cults and Minority Religious Movements (NY: MacMillan, 1970), p. 371.↑
9. Let God Be True, 2nd ed., p. 111, cited in J.K. Van Baalen, Chaos of the Cults (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), p. 268.↑
10. “Worship God on His Terms,” https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101989308.↑
11. Things in Which It Is Impossible for God to Lie, p. 259.↑
12. “The Word” – Who Is He According to John? p. 12.↑
13. Let God be True (1946, rev. 1952), p. 102, cited in Edmund Gruss, Apostles of Denial: An Examination and Expose of the History; Doctrines and Claims of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 110↑
14. Personal conversations with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Incomprehensibility is not the same as irrationality.↑
15. Gruss, Apostles of Denial, pp. 101,109-10.↑