Walter Martin
Satonatuffet
SHAM SCHOLARSHIP AND
FALSE ORTHODOXY
The Christian Quest
THE LATE WALTER MARTIN'S
SHAM SCHOLARSHIP AND
FALSE ORTHODOXY
M. James Penton
In Volume III of They Lie in Wait to Deceive,1 Robert and Rosemary
Brown have thoroughly exposed the dishonesty of the late Walter Martin, the
self proclaimed "Bible Answer Man," and one of the best known
"anti-cultists" in the world today. But their critique of him does not
really serve the purpose they intend. Although Martin was a person of
monumental ego who gave a highly misleading picture of himself, that fact in
itself says little about the nature of his scholarship. Nor does it indicate
anything about the claim that he made to speak for "orthodoxy" within the
Reformed tradition.
That Martin's scholarship is bad can be proven by a careful
examination of Jehovah of the Watchtower2 and Kingdom of the Cults,3 two of
his best known books and ones which I have studied carefully because of my
personal interest both as a scholar and former Jehovah's Witness. In those
works he indulges in ad hominem arguments, character assassination, and
demonstrably unsound reasoning.
But why discuss his scholarship nearly a year after his death?
Would it not be better to let him rest in peace?
Quite frankly, no. His books are sold by almost every Evangelical
bookstore in North America and are still among the primary "anti-cult"
publications distributed today, and they continue to have a major impact on
a large number of uniformed readers. Religious communities such as the
Christian Scientists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Latter-day Saints,
whom those books attack, are open to searching criticism, but such criticism
should be fair and scholarly. Unfortunately, Martin's works are neither, and
the public needs to be warned that they are not to be regarded as such.
Then, too, there is another good reason for outlining just how bad
Martin's publications are. Over the years they have been printed, pub-
lished, and distributed by such Protestant Evangelical publishing houses as
Moody Press, Bethany House Publishers, and Vision House Publishers,
apparently without their showing any interest in examining carefully what
they have been selling. Hence those publishers, whose owners claim to be
Christians, need to be reminded that they have an obligation not to engage
in what amounts to the promotion of unsound scholarship and commercialized
hate peddling. So with these thoughts in mind, the following article will
give a brief analysis of some of the inadequacies of Martin's scholarship
which seem to reflect, in part at least, his own strangely warped life.
THE FALSE CHARGE OF PURJURY AGAINST C. T. RUSSELL
A prime example of Martin's bad scholarship relates to the false
charge of lying in court that he levels against Charles Taze Russell, the
first president of the Watch Tower Society. In Jehovah of the Watchtower
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1953) Martin and his co-author, Norman Klann, assert
that in March 1913, Russell, committed perjury in a Hamilton, Ontario,
courtroom. But this allegation is a serious distor- tion of the truth.
What happened is that Russell had brought charges against a Canadian
Baptist minister, the Rev. J. J. Ross, because Ross had written a booklet
attacking Russell's integrity as a religious leader. So scathing were Ross's
remarks that Russell wanted him brought into court on charges of criminal
libel. However, after a magistrate's court heard the matter and referred it
to a grand jury of the High Court of Ontario, that body ruled that if
Russell wanted to pursue it further, he would have do so by way of a civil
suit rather than through criminal action.4
Thereupon, Ross wrote a second booklet entitled Some Facts and More
Facts about the self styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell,5 in which he
accused Russell of having committed perjury.
Ross gives the following version of what supposedly occurred in a
Hamilton magistrate's courtroom on March 13, 1913:
"Do you know the Greek?" asked the Attorney.
"Oh, yes," was Russell's reply.
Here he was handed a copy of the New Testament in Greek, by Westcott
& Hort, and asked to read the letters as they appear on the top of page 447.
He did not know the Greek alphabet. "Now,"
Mr. Staunton asked [sic], "Are you familiar with the Greek
language?"
"No," said Mr. Russell without a blush.
6 An examination of the relevant portions of the official transcript
of record7 indicates, however, that Ross, who accused Russell of "devising
falsely" and of being "a fabricator,"8 was himself guilty of serious
dishonesty.
Prior to the interrogation that Ross recounts above, Russell had
already specifically stated in court that he had not been trained in Greek.
When questioned by Ross's lawyer, George Lynch-Staunton, he had given the
following testimony:
Question: "You don't profess, then, to be schooled in the Latin
language?"
Answer: "No, Sir."
Question: "Or in Greek?"
Answer: "No, Sir."
At that point Lynch-Staunton asked Russell if he knew the Greek
alphabet. The testimony from the transcript of record reads:
Question: "Do you know the Greek alphabet?"
Answer: "Oh, Yes."
Question: "Can you tell me the correct letters if you see them?"
Answer: "Some of them, I might make a mistake on some of them."
Question: "Would you tell me the names of the letters of those on
the top of the page, page 447 I have got here [from Westcott and Hort]?"
Answer: "Well, I don't know that I would be able to."
Question: "You can't tell what those letters are, look at them and
see if you know."
Answer: "My way ..." [At this point he was interrupted by the court
and not allowed to explain.]
Immediately after this, Lynch-Staunton asked Russell the question:
"Are you familiar with the Greek language?"
Russell's reply was an emphatic "No!"
Russell explained later what he had meant when he indicated that he
"knew" the Greek alphabet. He had simply developed a schoolboy's ability to
recognize Greek words in Strong's and Young's concordances of the Bible.9
William Whalen, an advocate of the perjury theory, says as much.10 Probably,
too, Russell could repeat from memory the names of the Greek letters from
alpha to omega. More importantly, before Lynch-Staunton showed him certain
Greek letters in Westcott and Hort's recension of the New Testament, he had
already stated that he might not be able to recognize all of the letters of
the Greek alphabet in print. What can therefore be said with assurance is
that when Ross stated that Russell had "claimed to know the Greek" in court,
it was Ross, not Russell, who was lying. The most that Russell claimed was
that he "knew" the Greek alphabet-not a very outstanding claim-and he
admitted that he might not recognize all the letters in print.
Those present at the trial did not seem to think that Russell had
perjured himself in any way. Magistrate George H. Jelfs did not; it was he
who committed Ross to appear before the grand jury of the High Court. The
correspondent for the Hamilton Spectator did not; he simply mentioned
questions relating to the Watch Tower president's education in passing.11
George Lynch-Staunton wrote later that he personally felt that Russell was a
"first-water fakir" and stated that he had been led to believe that Russell
had "accumulated a great amount of wealth from his victims."
He admitted, though, that "this was never verified" and said nothing
about Russell's having committed perjury.12 Hence, the perjury story grew
entirely out of Ross's biased and false ac- count, and has been perpetuated
by critics of Russell such as Martin and Klann who did not take adequate
time to check all the facts.
In their 1953 edition of Jehovah of the Watchtower, Walter Martin and
Norman Klann quote directly from Ross's Some Facts and More Facts about the
Self-Styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell. Their account of the trial (p. 19)
reads as follows:
The cross examination continued for five hours. Here is a sample of
how the "Pastor" perjured himself.
Question: (Attorney Staunton) - "Do you know the Greek?"
Answer: (Russell) - "Oh yes."
At this point Russell was handed a copy of Westcott and Hort's Greek
New Testament and asked to read the letters of the alphabet as they appeared
on the top of page 447. Russell did not even know the Greek alphabet.
Counsellor Staunton continued -
Question: (Counsellor Staunton) - "Now, are you familiar with the
Greek?"
Answer: (Russell) "No."
Here is conclusive evidence, the "Pastor" under oath perjured
himself beyond question.
As made evident by these quotations, Martin and Klann were originally
so anxious to publish Ross's account that they did not bother to check the
official transcript of record of the Hamilton case to determine its
accuracy. In a latter version of Jehovah of the Watchtower (1974), after
finally having examined the transcript of record of Russell v. Ross at Watch
Tower headquarters,13 they published an accurate version of the the portion
of the transcript in question. But significantly, they continued to try to
make the old perjury charge stick, as does Martin in his Kingdom of the
Cults.
This evaluation should not be seen as an attempt to whitewash Russell.
There was much wrong with the man. He took ideas from others without giving
them due credit; he could be incredibly naïve; he treated his wife badly;
and worst of all, he suffered from spiritual arrogance.14 In charging him
with these defects, Martin and Klann are quite right. Yet this does not
excuse their attempt to distort the facts of history because they think
Russell was the founder of a movement that they describe as a "cult."
There is, however, much more to the matter at hand than this. What is
curious is that, over and over again, Martin charges Russell with a variety
of sins of which he himself was guilty. In fact, the parallels between the
things that Martin says about Russell and Martin's own traits and attitudes
are amazing.
THROWING STONES WHILE LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE
Note specifically the following points: On page 15 of Jehovah of the
Watchtower (1974), Martin and Klann publish an unflattering obituary of
Russell which was printed originally in the November 1, 1916 issue of The
Brooklyn Daily Eagle "to illustrate Russell's character." That obituary
includes the information that Russell's wife left him in 1897 and that in
1903 she sued him for separation. Furthermore, the article in question also
repeats the assertion that "there was much litigation then that was quite
undesirable from the 'Pastor's' point of view regarding alimony for his
wife, but it was settled in 1909 by the payment of $6,036 to Mrs. Russell."
However, it is interesting to note that Martin's marital history was much
worse than that of Russell.
Russell was divorced from bed and board once, partly, at least,
because he and his wife, Maria, never consummated their marriage;15 Martin
was divorced twice for cruelty and was married three times.16 While Russell
may have been harsh and arrogant towards his wife, there is no evidence that
he threatened her or struck her in the way that Martin is alleged to have
done to his second wife.17 Martin and Klann make much of the fact that
Russell was never "ordained by a bishop, clergyman, presbytery, council, or
any body of men living," something which Russell not only regarded as
unnecessary but as wrong. While Martin admits in Kingdom of the Cults that
Rus- sell was elected as the pastor of his local church in Pittsburgh in
1876 (p. 38), he always puts that title before Russell's name in quotation
marks to make it seem that Russell had no right to it.
But again, Russell was far more honest in this matter than was Martin.
Russell's followers elected him their pastor, and while it is true that he
was never "ordained" by any recognized ecclesiastical body, neither was John
Calvin. Acting on the basis of the doctrine of the priesthood of the
believer, Russell held that a body of believers had the right to select
their own elders and pastors. But Martin claimed to be ordained by two
Baptist conventions of which he was a member when he was not-a far more
serious matter.
Although he had been ordained by the General Association of Regular
Baptists in 1951, just after his first wife divorced him, that ordination
was revoked two years later after his Ordination Council learned that he had
remarried. Yet without any shadow of a right to do so, he later claimed
under oath to be "an ordained minister of the American Baptist Convention in
good standing" and "an ordained member of the Southern Baptist Convention."
Russell never lied about his situation; Martin did.18
In Jehovah of the Watchtower and Kingdom of the Cults, Martin and
Klann as joint authors and Martin as sole author, respectively, make much of
Russell's lack of formal education. On page 20 of the former volume (1974
edition), Martin and Klann state:
"By denying Ross's charges, Russell automatically claimed high
scholastic ascendancy, recognized theological training (systematic and
historical), working knowledge of the dead languages (Greek, Hebrew, etc.),
and valid ordination by a recognized body."
Quoting Ross, Martin makes similar charges in Kingdom of the Cults
(pp. 42-46). It should be noted, however, that Russell never claimed to have
had any advanced education in a university or seminary; Ross's allegations,
which Martin promotes, are thoroughgoing lies. On the other hand, Martin
made claims which, from an academic standpoint, are absolutely despicable.
As Robert and Rosemary Brown have shown, he claimed degrees either directly
or indirectly-that he did not have and granted himself a doctorate before he
had any shadow of a right to it. As a matter of fact, on the paperback cover
of Jehovah of the Watchtower (1974) one can find the following statement:
"WALTER R. MARTIN, president of Christian Research, Inc., is also a
well-known author and lecturer on cults and the occult. Dr. Martin is a
member of the National Association of Evangelicals and is listed in Who's
Who in the East."
Yet as the Browns demonstrate, Martin did not get his Ph.D., such as
it was, until 1976!19
MARTIN'S LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF HEBREW AND GREEK
It is strange, too, that Martin made so much of Charles Taze Russell's
lack of knowledge of biblical languages, for Martin himself demonstrates
ignorance of them. For example, on page 69 of Kingdom of the Cults (1985
edition), he attempts to exegete Deuteronomy 6:4 AV- "Hear, O Israel, the
LORD our God is one LORD"-so that the word "one" in Hebrew, that is echod,
is understood as "not solitary, but composite unity." But this old canard,
which is used to attempt to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is present
in the Old Testament, will not do.
In Hebrew the word echod is used as is the cardinal number "one" and
the ordinal number "first" in English. That is, it is used to denote one
unit or one set, or the first unit or the first set of anything. So there is
no necessary concept of composite unity in the word at all. Any- one
doubting this should take a look at George V. Wigram's The Englishman's
Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1970), pages 41 and 42, where the biblical uses of echod are
given.
Anyone trying to foist the idea that echod necessarily has a composite
meaning is either dishonest or unaware of the facts. Thus Martin's safari
into Hebrew is specious. It is, however, in his attempt to explicate
biblical Greek that he shows real ignorance. In his attacks on Jehovah's
Witnesses, Martin often huffs and puffs about their New World Translation
and various doctrinal positions which they have taken. In some instances, it
must be admitted, he is quite right. The Witnesses can often be guilty of
false reasoning, distorted facts, half truths, and poor translations. Yet
what Martin asserts is too often simply the flip side of the same coin.
Martin frequently makes extreme statements about particular texts or
words. For example, on page 48 of Jehovah of the Watchtower (1974), he and
Klann quote John 1:1 from the King James Version and make the following
assertion:
"Contrary to the translations of the Emphatic Diaglott and the New
World Translation, the Greek grammatical construction leaves no doubt
whatsoever that this [the King James Version's translation] is the only
possible rendering of the text."
Strangely, he seems never to have read the many learned commentaries
on this passage which disagree with him20 nor the many biblical translations
which differ from the King James Version.21 Otherwise, he would have
realized just how difficult it is to understand what John originally meant
in the first verse of the prologue to his gospel.
On page 52 of Jehovah of the Watchtower Martin and Klann say
respecting John 8:58: "In comparing this with the Septuagint translation of
Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10-13, we find that the translation is identical.
In Exodus 3:14 Jehovah, speaking to Moses, said, 'I AM,' which is synonymous
with God." Yet again Martin and Klann are wrong. Apart from the fact that
the Septuagint's translation does not reflect the original Hebrew
accurately, it does not have Jehovah say that he is "I AM" but, rather, "I
am the being (or existing) one," which in Greek is ego eimi ho on. 22
Martin and Klann run into their greatest difficulty when they attempt
to explain certain specific Greek words. For instance, according to them (p.
59) the word pro-totokos at Colossians 1:15 should be trans- lated "First"
rather than "firstborn"-the standard rendering of that word which appears in
the overwhelming majority of biblical translations in English and other
western languages. For to use "firstborn" would "rob Christ of His deity and
make Him a created being with a 'beginning.'" Hence to give the word the
meaning that their theology requires, they engage in deception and
absurdities. They say:
"Further proof of this synthesis [their own] is the fact that the
best and most authoritative manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) have protos
'First.' The Alexandrinian [sic] manuscript, since it possesses no accent
marks, should be translated 'Original Bringer Forth.'" Yet in checking the
United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament and Bruce M. Metzger's A Textual
Commentary on the Greek New Testament, there is simply no evidence to show
that there is any manuscript problem with Colossians 1:15 or that the
Sinaitic and Vatican 1209 manuscripts give pro-tos rather than pro-totokos.
As far as the Alexandrine manuscript is con- cerned, it is an uncial
manuscript [one using "capital" letters] and as such does not possess accent
marks. But it is simply foolish to suggest that for that reason pro-totokos
"should be translated 'Original Bringer Forth.'"
If this were not enough, there is more evidence to demonstrate Martin
and Klann's superficiality. They reveal that they do not know the simplest
things about the Greek language. On pages 55 and 56 of Jehovah of the
Watchtower, they discuss the words theotes and theiotes to which they
attempt to give the meanings "Deity" and "divinity" respectively. In so
doing, however, they show rather clearly that they have no knowledge of how
to decline nouns in Greek. In quoting Thayer's Greek Lexicon (1886), wherein
Thayer uses the stems of those two nouns, they do not seem to realize that
he has evidently left off the case endings, and they assume that the stems
are the proper forms of the words in question. When they do use the word
theote-s in a way in which one is required to use the nominative case-that
is ho theotes they give the genitive-"Tes Theotetos."
What is even less excusable, though, is that they assume that
prepositions in Greek have case (rather than governing case) and that the
rough breathing sign over an initial vowel can be ignored when Greek words
are transliterated into the Roman alphabet. On page 63 they say: "The Greek
word para (with) is used in the dative case at John 17: 5 ...." And on pages
54, 63, and 124, they transliterate a number of words incorrectly. They
transliterate hypostasis as upostaseos (again using the genitive rather than
the nominative case), hyparchon as uparchon, and harpazo as arpazo when
anyone who has had even a smattering of elementary Greek would know better.
MARTIN'S FALSE "ORTHODOXY"
What, then, about Martin's vaunted "orthodoxy"? Does it pass muster
from a traditional Reformed stance or that of the other great churches of
Christendom since the Council of Nicaea? Surprisingly the answer is an
emphatic "No." In the very area in which Martin attacks the "cults" with the
greatest vehemence-that is the nature of God and the divinity of Christ-he
is in heresy himself!
He never seems to be quite sure who Jehovah is. In most cases he
equates Jesus with Jehovah, thus virtually slipping into modalism-the idea
that the one person of the God of Israel appeared to mankind in different
modes or guises at different times. In at least one case, however, he
identifies Jehovah with God the Father. Hence one never quite knows from his
writings whether the name Jehovah denotes the first person, or the second
person of the Trinity, or the Trinity per se. Yet insofar as this doctrinal
confusion is concerned, Martin is no more inconsistent nor unorthodox than
the vast majority of theologians, both Catholic and Protestant. Where he
does deviate seriously from trinitarian orthodoxy, however, is in his denial
of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the second person of the
Trinity, the Son, from God the Father.
On pages 115-117 of The Kingdom of the Cults (1985 edition) where he
discusses the meaning of the Greek term monogenes Martin talks about the
fourth-century Arian Controversy and remarks:
Arius derived many of his ideas from his teacher, Lucian of Antioch,
who in turn borrowed them from Origen, who himself had introduced the term
"eternal generation" or the concept that God from all eternity generates a
second person like Himself, ergo the "eternal Son." Arius of course rejected
this as illogical and unreasonable, which it is, and taking the other horn
of the dilemma squarely between his teeth reduced the eternal Word of God to
the rank of a creation! It is a significant fact, however, that in the
earliest writings of the church fathers dating from the first century to the
year 230 the term "eternal generation" was never used, but it has been this
dogma later adopted by the Roman Catholic theology which has fed the Arian
heresy through the centuries and today continues to feed the Christology of
Jehovah's Witnesses.
Later, in the same discussion, Martin also says:
The Scripture nowhere calls Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God, and
He is never called Son at all prior to the incarnation, except in prophetic
passages in the Old Testament.
The term "Son" itself is a functional term, as is the term "Father"
and has no meaning apart from time. The term"Father" incidentally never
carries the descriptive adjective "eternal" in Scripture; as a matter of
fact, only the Spirit is called eternal ("the eternal Spirit" Hebrews 9:14),
emphasizing that the words Father and Son are purely functional as
previously stated. Many heresies have seized upon the confusion created by
the illogical "eternal Sonship" or "eternal generation" theory of Roman
Catholic theology, unfortunately carried over to some aspects of Protestant
theology.
Finally; there cannot be any such thing as eternal Sonship, for
there is a logical contradiction of terminology due to the fact that the
word "Son" predicates time and the involvement of creativity. Christ, the
Scripture tells us, as the Logos, is timeless. "... the Word was in the
beginning"not the Son!
Now these are quite amazing statements from one who constantly paraded
his "orthodoxy" within the Reformed tradition. Not only are many of his
supposed "facts" wrong, but in some ways he plays his tune on Arius's fiddle
as much as do Jehovah's Witnesses.
First, he does not seem to realize that Arius was much more in harmony
with earlier Christian writers than was Athanasius.23
Second, Arius's connection with Lucian of Antioch and Origin is
historically rather tenuous.24
And, most important, while Martin is correct in assuming that the idea
of eternal generation did not come into Christianity until the third
century, he seems quite unaware of the fact that it was a major aspect of
trinitarian orthodoxy from the beginning. Not only was it defended with
vigor by Alexander and Athanasius,25
Arius's two Alexandrian episcopal adversaries, but it is included in
the Nicene Creed of 325 C. E. That creed, as amended at Constantinople in
381 C. E., reads: "I Believe in one God THE FATHER ALMIGHTY; Maker of heaven
and earth, and all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord JESUS
CHRIST, the only begotten [Greek: monogenes; Latin: unigenitum] Son of God,
begotten [Greek; gennethenta; Latin: natum] of the Father before all worlds,
Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one
substance with the Father ...." Thus the doctrine of eternal generation
became a basic concept of "orthodox" Christian doctrine which virtually all
mainline Protestants have accepted with equally as much fervor as have
Catholics. Luther, Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, and the divines of both the
Church of England and the English Presbyterian Church all taught it.
It is stated as an article of faith in Luther's Small Catechism, the
Second Helvetic Confession (Bullinger), the French Confession of Faith
(Calvin), the Belgic Confession of Faith (De Brès), the Thirty-Nine Articles
of the Church of England, and the Westminster Confession of Faith.26
What is rather amusing about Martin's "orthodoxy" is that, had he
lived in sixteenth-century Geneva during the time of John Calvin, he might
well have been dispatched for heresy and condemned to eternal hellfire by
the very people whom he long regarded as his spiritual forebears. Note that
on October 26, 1553, Michael Servetus was executed for denying the Trinity
and the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. As he died in
terrible agony while being burned to death at the stake, he cried: "Jesus,
Thou Son of the eternal God." However, Calvin's colleague and fellow pastor,
Guillaume Farel, who was standing by at the time, asserted that Servetus
could not be saved.
Had he called out, "Jesus, Thou eternal Son of God," perhaps he could
have been. But he put the adjective "eternal" in the wrong place, denied the
doctrine of eternal generation, and was therefore eternally damned in the
view of Farel, Calvin, and most Protestants.27
MARTIN'S WORKS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIANITY
What is clearly evident, then, is that besides being hate literature,
Martin's works are filled with bad theology from almost everyone's
standpoint. Because they attack religions which themselves have been guilty
of teaching many false and twisted doctrines, what they have to say is often
taken at face value. But because they have sometimes exposed movements that
deserve to be exposed, that does not make them any better. Bearing false
witness against others-regardless of their moral qualities or teachings is
simply inexcusable from a Christian standpoint. Thus Martin's books need to
be shown for what they are. Furthermore, their nature needs to be brought to
the attention of those who market them. As has been pointed out above, they
too have an obligation to see that the public is not fed with what amount to
bad scholarship, distortions, and outright lies.
1 Mesa, Arizona: Brownsworth Publishing, 1986.
2 Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Jehovah of the Watchtower
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1953, 1974). The 1974 edition was revised and updated
by Martin.
3 Water Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis: Bethany House
Publishers, 1965, 1977, 1985).
4 J. F. Rutherford, A Great Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens
(New York: printed privately, 1915) gives the full details of the case.
Although Rutherford, who had acted as Russell's attorney, is quite often an
untrustworthy witness, in the case of Russell v. Ross the information which
he gives accords with that of other sources, particularly newspaper reports.
5 J. J. Ross, Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-Styled
"Pastor" Charles T. Russell (Philadelphia: Philadelphia School of the Bible,
1913). Strange as it may seem, Ross did not even bother to get his lawyer's
name right. The man's name was George Lynch-Staunton, not Staunton. Martin
and Klann repeat Ross's mistake in all versions of their Jehovah of the
Watchtower.
6 Ibid., p. 18.
7 The only copy of the transcript of record of Russell v. Ross was
long possessed by the Watch Tower Society at its Brooklyn headquarters. It
was made available to Marley Cole when he prepared his Jehovah's Witnesses
(New York: Vantage Press, 1955) and later to Walter Martin, as Martin
states. For further details on this matter, see note 10 below. When I was
researching my Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada,
1976) in the early 1970s, I was informed that that copy had been lost.
Repeated attempts to find another copy proved unfruitful. Thus I found it
necessary to piece together quotations from the transcript from secondary
sources, specifically from Cole, pp. 70-71 and from Martin and Klann's 1974
edition of Jehovah of the Watchtower. There is no reason to doubt the
accuracy of those quotations.
8 Ross, p. 20.
9 The Watch Tower, 1914, pp. 286-91.
10 William J, Whalen, Armageddon around the Corner (New York: John
Day Company, 1962), pp. 42-43.
11 Hamilton Spectator, March 17, 1913.
12 Letter to Ernest Chambers, June 17, 1918. This letter may be
found in the National Archives of Canada at Ottawa in file CPC 206-B-6.
13 On page 21, Martin and Klann state: "In order to clarify the
evidence as irrefutable, we refer any curious doubters to the files of the
Watchtower Society itself, Russell vs. Ross 'defamatory libel,' March 17,
1913. The authors have personally seen this transcript and compared it with
the copy we obtained. Jehovah's Witnesses cannot deny this documentary
evidence; it is too well sub- stantiated. This is no 'religionist scheme' to
'smear' the pastor's memory; we offer it as open proof of their founder's
inherent dishonesty." Yet it is evident that the two Baptist authors were
not being fair. They do not note that the earlier "copy" of the transcript
that they had used was from Ross's Facts and More Facts, or that they had
made an important change in the 1974 edition of their book in reporting what
the transcript said. The Bethel librarian at Watchtower headquarters stated
to me in 1975 that the transcript of record had disappeared immediately
after Walter Martin had examined it. Although the librarian believed that
Martin had taken it, in all fairness that seems unlikely. Had he done so,
why would he have quoted from it accurately, thereby weakening his own case?
It seems more probable that it was simply lost somewhere within the
labyrinth of Watchtower Society headquarters.
14 For a discussion of some of these matters, see M. James Penton,
Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 33-46.
15 For the details of Russell's relations with his wife, see Ibid.,
pp. 35-40.
16 For the details of Martin's marriages and divorces, see Robert
and Rosemary Brown, Vol. III, pp. 3-7, 193-217, 293-302.
17 Ibid., pp. 193-217.
18 Ibid., pp. 1-27.
19 Ibid., pp. 29-65.
20 It is interesting to note that both Justin Martyr and Origen
expressed very different points of view from Martin on this matter, and so,
too, do many modern scholars. See Edwin R. Goodenough, The Theology of
Justin Martyr (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 19680, pp. 141-7 and Philip Schaff,
History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdman's, 1971),
Vol 2, pp. 551-3 for comments on these ancient church fathers. For a
contemporary discussion of the problems surrounding John 1:1, see Raymond E.
Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation and Commentary
in the Anchor Bible series (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 4,5,
24-25.
21 These include Moffatt, Goodspeed, the New English Bible, and the
Revised English Bible. Besides that, The New American Bible for Catholics
says in a marginal commentary on John 1:1: "Was God: lack of a definite
article with 'God' in Greek signifies predication rather than
identification," a statement that indicates that the New American Bible
translators agree more with Moffatt, Goodspeed, the New English Bible, and
the Revised English Bible than with the King James Version. All of these
translations except the Revised English Bible were in existence when Martin
and Klann published Jehovah of the Watchtower in 1974.
22 For further details on this subject, see my article "The 'I AM'
of John 8:58." The Christian Quest, 1, no. 1 (Winter, 1988): 49-64.
23 This point is generally recognized by the scholarly community
today. For a brief sketch of Arius's life and ideas, see Frances M. Young,
From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), pp.58-64. See also Robert C. Gregg and
Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1981).
24 Ibid., p. 164.
25 See Athanasius's "Orations against the Arians." Book 1, 13 and 14
in William G. Rusch, trans./ed., The Trinitarian Controversy 75-77.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
26 To find all these creedal statements, except the one in Luther's
Small Catechism, see Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1977), Vol I.
27 Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael
Servetus, 1511-1553 (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1960), pp. 210-215
w.kimbler
william
"Satonatuffet" <n...@no.not> wrote in message
news:%74xb.344$1U6.4...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net...
> them due credit; he could be incredibly naďve; he treated his wife badly;
> (Calvin), the Belgic Confession of Faith (De Brčs), the Thirty-Nine
Mr. Bla
matter much because it is completely footnoted but I was just wondering