I Corinthians 8:6. “… there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we [exist] for Him… and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things… and we [exist] through Him.”
Q. How many Gods are there?
JWA. There is one Almighty God, and His Son Jesus is also a god, but not at the Almighty level.
Q. Sounds like you are saying “two” gods. But this passage says there is only one.
JWA. But did you note that this passage marks a difference between the one God and the one Lord? They are two separate entities, according to Paul.
Q. Yes, this is why we are looking at this verse. I’ll tell you even more. The translators have actually added a word, two times. The word “exist.” Your translation of course omits that. This is one time the tables are turned. What do you say about that?
JWA. We have tried to be consistent with our translating. If a word is not in the original, we should not add it, should we?
Q. Indeed. Yet we have pointed out several times when the NWT has done just that to prove JW doctrine. Let’s put that aside for the moment and examine this text. All things come from the Father. All things for us, would you not say?
JWA. Yes, that is fair. God has supplied everything we need.
Q. Therefore, says Paul, “we for Him.” He is for us, and we are for Him. He supplies everything for us, we [exist] for Him. Not really a stretch, is it? Then, everything was created by Jesus, says Paul. As in John 1:1-2. All things were made by/through Him (the Word.) And we too, are made by Him. We are kept by Him. We live through Him. We [exist] in Him. It makes perfect Biblical sense, and is enhanced by the addition of “exist”, not hurt in any way. We could leave it out, and most readers would still see what is being said. Many of the older Bibles, including one that you used at one time, the King James, leaves “exist” out. But we digress, don’t we? The question is, are there two separate entities mentioned in this passage, or only one, with two Persons?
Tell me, are you for both Jehovah and Jesus? And are you existing, living in both Jehovah and Jesus? Does one exclude the other?
CA: No, not at all. To say that I exist through Jesus is only to acknowledge that it was through Him, the Word, that God created the world. I do not exist any less through the Father because I exist through the Son. In the beginning God created and by Him , the Word, were all things created. No contradiction, no confusion. These two statements of Paul become nothing more than the old Hebrew parallelism whereby a single truth is stated in two parallel methods.
And Brother Thomas made it even easier to explain this dual statement when He simply cried out to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”
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