If we think that Jesus Christ believed and
taught that he was equal to God, something is rather puzzling:
Why do we not read in the "New Testament" about
the effects that would necessarily have resulted from such a
teaching? What effects?
First, trinitarians might well benefit in considering how such a
teaching would have affected Jesus’ disciples. In the
beginning, they must have considered Jesus to be a mere man. (Compare
Mark 6:3.) Then, at some point, Jesus supposedly revealed to them
that he was God himself. How would they have reacted? How would you
react if you suddenly found yourself standing next to God?
Considering such a prospect, Andrews Norton, one of the first
professors at Harvard Divinity School in the 19th century,
exclaimed: "With what unspeakable astonishment should we
be overwhelmed!" And if a person really learned that he
had been in the physical presence of God, "how
continually would it be expressed in the most forcible language,
whenever we had occasion to speak of him!
But, in all honesty, as you read through the Gospels do you see
this astonished reaction in Jesus’ disciples? ‘That is
why the truth of it was gradually revealed to them by Jesus,’
a trinitarian may say. Why, then, is there no trace of such
astonishment even in the letters of the "New Testament,"
which were written years after Jesus’ death and
resurrection? Puzzling, is it not?
Besides this, there are other consequences that would necessarily
have resulted had Jesus taught that he was God. For the Jews, who
believed that "the LORD . . . is one LORD, it would
have been blasphemous to suggest that Christ was equal to God as
the second person of the Trinity. (Deuteronomy 6:4) This raises
two questions.
(1) Why do we not find the writers of the "New Testament"
explaining, clarifying, illustrating and defending this
unbelievable doctrine over and over again for the benefit of
believing Jews? No teaching would have required more explanation!
(2) And why do we not find unbelieving Jews, who bitterly and
passionately opposed Christianity, attacking the doctrine that to
them would have been abhorrent? No doctrine would have been
surrounded by more controversy!
Thus, Professor Norton observed:
"It appears, then, that while other questions of far less
difficulty (for instance, the circumcision of the Gentile
converts) were subjects of such doubt and controversy that even
the authority of the Apostles was barely sufficient to establish
the truth, this doctrine [the Trinity], so extraordinary, so
obnoxious, and so hard to be understood, was introduced in
silence, and received without hesitation, dislike, opposition, or
misapprehension."
Puzzling, to say the least!
So why was there no clarifying by the "New Testament"
writers? No attacks by Jewish opposers? Because neither Jesus nor
his apostles taught what is commonly believed in Christendom—the
Trinity!
(WT 1984, 2/1)