Some say one thing, and some say something completely different

[Juan Rivera]

@Pudgy

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

…. When someone says “that’s not the question that should be asked…” because it’s offensive or inappropriate or awkward, or just plain embarrassing……

That’s the question you should be asking!

 

 

I don’t answer rhetorical questions. There is another, better way, to engage in dialogue, and we will not be able to overcome our disagreements until we choose to enter the more noble truth-seeking, unity-seeking way of dialogue.

I rarely participate in the open forum, precisely because I’m trying to cultivate charitable, rational dialogue, and that requires screening out those who are just looking for a soapbox, those who do not refrain from personal attacks, or those who have no interest in genuinely engaging the evidence or argumentation of others, or engaging the topic to which the comment box is attached. 

12 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

I have 3 questions: Who is a neighbor according to the JW understanding and are there internal classifications of "neighbors"? Is the ex-JW a neighbor?

Yes , the Ex-JW is our neighbor. Everyone, including our enemies are our neighbor regardless of race, nationality or religion.

8 hours ago, Pudgy said:

 

I think SS’s questions, whatever else they may or may not be the case, need to be addressed, if you want to have a dialog … it’s a two-way street.

in a forum such as this one asking someone not to ask certain questions reeks of petty tyranny at worst, and arrogance at best.

The way to handle it is if you don’t think the question is appropriate … too bad.

You are in the wrong room.

Just ignore the question and leave it unanswered. 

 

Questions do not establish anything, nor are they a substitute for an argument. All I said was that If someone wants to argue for a position, then they need to use statements, not questions. If their questions are merely rhetorical, and not sincere questions, then there is no reason for us to answer them, or for them to post them. The general rule of thumb within the context of genuine dialogue aimed at the pursuit of truth is that we should only ask sincere questions. A sincere question is one whose answer we do not yet know and by which, in the very act of asking the question, we are requesting enlightenment from our interlocutor concerning the answer to our question. So, if someone has a sincere question, I’m sure people here will be glad to answer them. But if the questions are merely rhetorical, then please refrain from making use of such questions.

 

[Srecko Sostar]

58 minutes ago, George88 said:

Therefore, it is only logical to question the source of spiritual food.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. - 1 John 4:1

GB said people; do not question our doctrines or you be labeled as apostate.

 

Bible gives power to individual to try, test doctrines made by GB. GB said you have no right to test. 

Again; Some say one thing, and some say something completely different.

 

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, George88 said:

Ever pondered on the strategies employed by other religious organizations? I vividly remember when the Australian Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a Cardinal who had been accused of sexual child abuse.

Experience and facts tell us that such institutions are interested in having a clean face in public.

[Srecko Sostar]

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

[Juan Rivera]

1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. - 1 John 4:1

GB said people; do not question our doctrines or you be labeled as apostate.

Bible gives power to individual to try, test doctrines made by GB. GB said you have no right to test. 

Again; Some say one thing, and some say something completely different.

 

Sure, but the Bible also teaches, as DOCTRINE, that we are to submit to the Congregation. That is a teaching of the Bible, just as much as the ones that tell us to watch out for false prophets. Think about it. The problem here is that you assume that the way to "test everything" is by determining whether it matches your own interpretation of Scripture. In short, you get out of these verses the very assumptions you bring to them, and these assumptions you are bringing to Scripture are foreign to the faith of the early Christians, for whom the final decision in the resolution of interpretive disputes belonged to the Congregation, not the individual.

 

[Juan Rivera]

@Srecko Sostar Here’s my understanding of some passages that are used by former and current Witnesses alike. Perhaps it can help you understand your nagging questions in a broader  context and light. I don’t think any Witnesses here would agree with my understanding. But as I have already stated before, I have a stronger view of Ecclesiology than the members here in the forum, so take it for what is worth.  

There is nothing wrong with the scriptures people present and every Jehovah’s witness will concur. (1Th 5:21; Ga 1:7-9; 1 John 4:1; Acts 17:11, Revelation 2:2)  I agree what 1 Th 5:21 says, but the Bible also teaches, as DOCTRINE that we are to submit to the Congregation.(Hebrews 13:17, Acts 1,5 & 15) That is a teaching of the Bible, just as much as the ones that tell us to make sure of all things.

Regarding Galatians 1:8-9, Paul is not teaching that individual christians should subjugate the teaching authority in the congregation to their own interpretation of Scripture. Paul is saying that the Galatians must not abandon the gospel which he and all the other Apostles had preached to them. The foundation laid is absolutely true and therefore must never be torn up and re-founded on something different. That initial apostolic preaching is an infallible and irrevocable foundation. But the gospel that Paul and the others had preached was not defined as the individual Galatian believer’s own personal interpretation of Scripture. It was something much bigger than that. It was the faith that had been preached throughout the world by the Apostles. There was a communal, historical and personal dimension to the received faith and its identity. To see whether someone was teaching a novel teaching, one would compare the message in question to the teaching universally received from the Apostles throughout the whole Congregation. The standard by which to measure the message in question was not “my interpretation of Scripture.” Otherwise, anyone following his own novel interpretation of Scripture could claim to be following the original gospel. Instead, Paul is exhorting the Galatian believers to test the spirits against what had been originally given to them and to the whole world by the Apostles, namely the Apostolic faith. He is not advocating the authoritative supremacy of private interpretation of Scripture but rather the irreversibility and irrevocability of the Apostolic message received.

If an elder came along who taught contrary to the Apostolic faith that had been taught and believed throughout the Christian Congregation, we must not follow him because he is a going against it. But the standard is not our own private interpretation of Scripture, rather, the public and communally-shared faith received by the whole Congregation from the Apostles is the standard. It is public and communal, not a standard of private interpretation. So the Governing Body was not requiring anyone to give more obedience to those taking the lead after the Apostles than did Paul, because Paul was not teaching that each individual had supreme individual interpretive authority. The duty to submit to present interpretive authority is not incompatible with a duty to hold to what has previously been given. The two duties go together, and neither nullifies the other. The duty to hold on to what has been handed down does not give us a green light to pick as our ecclesial ‘authorities’ those who teach according to our own interpretation of Scripture. In other words, the duty to hold on to the Apostolic faith and not to forsake it does not justify doing what Paul condemns in 2 Timothy 4:3,4, choosing one’s ecclesial ‘authority’ on the basis of their agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Now in regards to 1 John 4:1 – No one is expecting you to be a blind follower @Srecko Sostar, but God does expect you to distinguish between when you have such prerogatives (test the inspired expressions) and when you don’t.

For example if you were back in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, and you saw the elders and the apostles make the proclamation of doctrine that they did for the whole Christian Congregation in Acts 15:10-12, would you have the prerogative to stand and say “Hey Guys, I don’t believe what you are saying is right. God has led me by the Holy Spirit that it is wrong. And if you don’t change it, I’m leaving and starting my own church?” If you did, the next thing you would have experienced is disfellowshipping. That is the way the Congregation works, and that is how we keep “ one Lord, one faith, one baptism. On the other hand if, according to 1 John 4:1 some false prophet comes to you and says “Jehovah isn’t God”, naturally, you have the right to turn away and reject him. In other words, you can call him a “false prophet”, but you would not be able to call the elders and the apostles false prophets. And if you can’t call elders and the apostles a false prophet, then you couldn’t call the Governing Body appointed by Jehovah in Acts 15 false prophets. Those are important distinctions you need to keep in mind.

Acts 17:1 – If you get a chance to examine this passage about the Bereans who search the scriptures after Paul told them that Jesus was the Christ. This is highly misinterpreted by people who are trying to support biblicism, because they think that because the Bereans are checking scripture they only believe scripture and that somehow Paul is beneath the scriptures and the Bereans are using scripture over Paul and as the authority over Paul.  But that is not the case at all, as a matter of fact what is occurring here as you read the whole chapter. Paul comes to them and says that this Jesus that I tell you about is the Christ of the old testament. Now that would give them pause because the Old Testament never named the Messiah. It never called him Jesus. Now here, Paul is coming with new revelation to them, apostolic authority no less. And he is saying that the Jesus that I preach is the Christ. So they go back and read those passages about the Messiah “the Christ” and they say: “yeah, he was going to suffer and die, he wasn’t going to be a king, yes we can agree with Paul that this Jesus who suffered and died in the torturing stake is the Christ of the old testament”. You see what the Bereans are doing? They are not saying that scripture is the authority over Paul. Paul just gave them a revelation that Jesus is the Messiah. Where did he get that revelation? It wasn’t from the Hebrew Scriptures, it was directly from Jesus. Jesus talked to Paul on the road to Damascus and told him I am Jesus whom your persecuting, that’s where he got that revelation from. So no, the Bereans are not practicing biblicism, here, as a matter of fact they are getting an education on how to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures. That is what the education is all about here.

The Bereans were noble because they accepted Paul’s apostolic authority on the identity of the Messiah, not because they could extract for themselves from the Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Thus, their “examination” of Scripture was limited to reevaluating those passages which spoke of the Messiah as the one who had to suffer, die, and rise again; not to prove or disprove that Jesus was the Messiah. Before Paul’s teaching, the Bereans, like most Jews, thought that the Messiah would be recognized by a majestic appearance and a subsequent conquering of the Gentiles. It was not until Paul pointed out that the Old Testament passages which spoke of God’s servant as one who had to suffer must be interpreted to apply to the Messiah and, more importantly that his name was Jesus. The typical Jew, although he knew his Scripture, invariably skipped over the numerous passages in the Old Testament that suggested his Messiah had to first come as one to suffer and die. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:14-16:
But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

After Paul was done teaching, the now enlightened Jew could read a passage like Isaiah 53 and see it in a whole different light (cf. Luke 24:26;Acts 8:26-35). It was in connecting Paul’s divine revelation of the person of Jesus with the suffering passages of the Hebrew Scriptures, that the Berean “examined Scripture to see if what Paul said was true.” The Berean did not first believe that Jesus was the Messiah and then examine Scripture to see if Paul’s identifying of Jesus as the Messiah was true. No, he examined the Scriptures that spoke of the suffering servant and then accepted by faith that the “Jesus” about whom Paul spoke was indeed the Messiah. His faith was based on accepting Paul’s authority to interpret Scripture, while Scripture served mainly as a witness to what Paul preached. Scripture could not serve as the sole determinant of what Paul taught for the simple reason that Scripture never identified “the Christ” specifically as “Jesus.” He was designated with names like “the prophet” (Deut. 18:15) 

In addition, the practice of Jewish non-Christians being evangelized by a Christian should not be taken as normative for Christians already incorporated into the Congregation. Non Christians would not yet have recognized Paul’s authority as an Apostle, since they did not yet recognize Jesus as the Son of God. But those persons already incorporated into the Cong. recognize the authority of the Apostles and those appointed by them. That’s not to say that Christians should not search the Scriptures, but Christians search the Scriptures not in order to come to faith, but to grow in the faith, not to determine whether their doctrines are true, but to seek to understand how they are contained and presented in Scripture. This passage in Acts 17 is about the truth-seeking open-mindedness of the non-Christian Jews of Berea to the preaching of the Good News. Paul was explaining to them that Jesus Christ fulfilled the prophesies and covenant of the Hebrew Scriptures , and as Jews, they were examining the Scripture to see whether what he was saying about the Hebrew Scriptures was true. They didn’t yet recognize the authority of Paul as an Apostle. The truth-seeking open-mindedness of the Bereans is a model for us all. But their way of verifying what Paul said is not a model for how baptized Christians should relate to the Apostles or to overseers or Governing Body (of Acts 15). That’s because becoming a Christian means to come into the Congregation and thus come under the authority of the elders and overseers (Governing Body) Of course coming under their authority doesn’t mean that one can’t look up verses if they say, for example, “The prophet Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 31 that in the New Covenant, God will write His law on our hearts.” But it does mean that the Cong. determination of what the Bible says (i.e. what is orthodoxy and what is heresy) is authoritative for us, rather than our interpretation of Scripture being the standard by which the Cong.  is judged to be orthodox or heterodox.

In Regards to Revelation 2:2 and putting to the test those who say are apostles. The present letter is written to the overseer of Ephesus. He is praised for his hard work and his rejection of evil men. He has a knack for spotting “false apostles” and exposing them. If the overseer at this time was Timothy, then we can see echoes of the Revelation letter in Paul's epistle to Timothy, referring to some of the members of the Ephesian Congregation in 1 Tim 6:4-12. All this to say that the ultimate judge as to who is following the Bible is not you or me, but the Congregation that God has put in authority to judge such things. The Bible is just as adamant against vigilante Christianity as it is about false prophets.

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, Juan Rivera said:

Sure, but the Bible also teaches, as DOCTRINE, that we are to submit to the Congregation.

A congregation is a group of people, believers. The JW congregation is led and governed by elders. Elderse is set by GB. Consequently, the GB governs all doctrines and instructions in the congregation, not the group of believers. 

Submission to the JW congregation is direct submission to the GB at US Headquarter.

[Juan Rivera]

52 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

A congregation is a group of people, believers. The JW congregation is led and governed by elders. Elderse is set by GB. Consequently, the GB governs all doctrines and instructions in the congregation, not the group of believers. 

Submission to the JW congregation is direct submission to the GB at US Headquarter.

I should point out that you misunderstood what I said as though I were suggesting that only the Governing Body is the Congregation. That is not what I was saying or implying. The divinely appointed shepherds of the Congregation are a very important organ in the body of Christ, but they are not the whole body. 

When the Bible speaks about the Congregation and its prerogatives to judge, you will find, for example, in Acts 5:1-6 when Annanias and Saphira were judged by Peter as hoarding money, with the result that they were struck dead on the spot. Acts 15, as I said in an earlier post, speaks of the Apostles and elders judging whether Christians could partake in various practices. 1 Cor 5:1-11 speaks of Paul judging the man caught in fornication and telling the elders to remove him from the Congregation. There are many more such instances. Peter and Paul are not acting independently, but as leaders of the Congregation of that day. And thus, whatever Congregation you think existed back then, it was the Congregation that was judging individuals.

I agree that Jehovah was not bound to do it this way. Jehovah, being omnipotent, could have done it other ways. He could have set up His Congregation such that it had no visible hierarchy, and each man was guided entirely by the holy spirit through his own reading of Scripture. But, that would be entirely unfitting to human nature. We are social beings, and our nature is expressed in societies, as Aristotle explains in his Politics. In addition, Jehovah delights in allowing us to participate in His work, and by setting up a hierarchy, Jehovah and Jesus have given men the gift of participating in many unique ways in the extension of their work, with their authorization. The Body is an extension of the Head. The Apostles and those taking the lead have been given the great gift of participating in a very special way in the work of Christ, governing Christ’s Congregation, sharing in ministry, and guarding and providing the interpretation of the faith.

Ecclesial egalitarianism with respect to interpretive authority is precisely the individualism that makes each man his own Governing Body. The decision of the Jerusalem council (of Acts 15) was definitely more authoritative than any Bob or Joe's interpretation of Scripture opposing that council's decision. (I'm hoping that we at least agree on that point.) 

If Christ's ecclesial setup was that each Christian has a direct, unmediated pipeline to God regarding the truth of the content of the gospel and the proper interpretation of Scripture and the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, such that there was no need for Apostles and elders but something like Montanism were true, then Christ wouldn't have chosen, trained, authorized and commissioned Apostles. Instead, on the day of Pentecost each person would have been zapped by the holy spirit directly, and there never would have been a Jerusalem Council, because the spirit would have already guided all Christians to the same position, so the resolution of the dispute at the Council would have been unnecessary. In fact, you and I wouldn't be in disagreement right now, because the spirit would have already guided us into the very same unity of the faith. Presumably, your response will be that either I'm not listening to the spirit, or that I'm not being reasonable, one of the two. Well, if you think I'm not being reasonable, feel free to show where and how. But if you think I'm not listening to the spirit (but you are listening to the spirit), then we need to talk about how we know who is really following the spirit, and who is co opting the spirit to support their own opinion.

[Srecko Sostar]

28 minutes ago, Juan Rivera said:

Paul is saying that the Galatians must not abandon the gospel which he and all the other Apostles had preached to them.

 

33 minutes ago, Juan Rivera said:

If an elder came along who taught contrary to the Apostolic faith that had been taught and believed throughout the Christian Congregation, we must not follow him because he is a going against it. But the standard is not our own private interpretation of Scripture, rather, the public and communally-shared faith received by the whole Congregation from the Apostles is the standard. It is public and communal, not a standard of private interpretation. So the Governing Body was not requiring anyone to give more obedience to those taking the lead after the Apostles than did Paul, because Paul was not teaching that each individual had supreme individual interpretive authority. The duty to submit to present interpretive authority is not incompatible with a duty to hold to what has previously been given. The two duties go together, and neither nullifies the other. The duty to hold on to what has been handed down does not give us a green light to pick as our ecclesial ‘authorities’ those who teach according to our own interpretation of Scripture. In other words, the duty to hold on to the Apostolic faith and not to forsake it does not justify doing what Paul condemns in 2 Timothy 4:3,4, choosing one’s ecclesial ‘authority’ on the basis of their agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

The dilemma is 2000 years old. For/To WTJWorg GB, the Gospel was not transmitted from the Apostles.  So the chain of reliability of information transmission was broken a long time ago.

On a personal level in modern times (20th and 21st century) all generations of newly baptized persons are faced with the fact that the doctrines they accepted through BS with a brother or sister has been changed in the meantime. If they would adhere to the principle stated in your comment, then these people should not subject themselves to new interpretations that arose after their baptism.

Which statement is stronger? Perfect Direct Instruction from Galatians or the Imperfect Interpretation  by GB based on the biblical passage about "the light that shines more and more"?

The first thesis (direct instruction), is based on a clearly expressed position of the writer. Is the apostle's statement open to some interpretation that might be softened by the GB's interpretation about "progressive knowledge"? Shall we allow to water down the Apostolic faith?

One excludes the other, and GB must decide which Doctrine, between these two, it wants to implement in practice.

As an illustration of how an individual should act in such cases, we can use the well-known "command" to obey God more than people. In the JW doctrine that explains the position of Christians before worldly authority, it is ordered to disobey the authorities when that something goes against God's commandments. Any JW would therefore be able to reject GB doctrines and instructions without consequence, as he would HAVE to use his conscience in deciding. Not WTJWorg Doctrine and Instruction, but own Conscience.

The issue of shaping/reshaping the JW member conscience is a new topic.

 

[Juan Rivera]

6 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

 

The dilemma is 2000 years old. For/To WTJWorg GB, the Gospel was not transmitted from the Apostles.  So the chain of reliability of information transmission was broken a long time ago.

On a personal level in modern times (20th and 21st century) all generations of newly baptized persons are faced with the fact that the doctrines they accepted through BS with a brother or sister has been changed in the meantime. If they would adhere to the principle stated in your comment, then these people should not subject themselves to new interpretations that arose after their baptism.

Which statement is stronger? Perfect Direct Instruction from Galatians or the Imperfect Interpretation  by GB based on the biblical passage about "the light that shines more and more"?

The first thesis (direct instruction), is based on a clearly expressed position of the writer. Is the apostle's statement open to some interpretation that might be softened by the GB's interpretation about "progressive knowledge"? Shall we allow to water down the Apostolic faith?

One excludes the other, and GB must decide which Doctrine, between these two, it wants to implement in practice.

As an illustration of how an individual should act in such cases, we can use the well-known "command" to obey God more than people. In the JW doctrine that explains the position of Christians before worldly authority, it is ordered to disobey the authorities when that something goes against God's commandments. Any JW would therefore be able to reject GB doctrines and instructions without consequence, as he would HAVE to use his conscience in deciding. Not WTJWorg Doctrine and Instruction, but own Conscience.

The issue of shaping/reshaping the JW member conscience is a new topic.

 

Every time we appeal to the Bible, we are appealing to an interpretation of the Bible. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the the Bible to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. The person who fails to recognize this is failing to know himself.

Obeying Jehovah rather than men is not a justification for rebellion against divinely established authority, it is rather a recognition that rebellion against God on the part of those who have been given such authority does not require those over whom they have been given authority to follow them in that rebellion, we must not follow rebellious leaders in their rebellion against God. We cannot justifiably rebel against the Lord’s anointed when he sins, except if he were to command us to believe or do something that contradicted prior authoritative teachings, in which case witnesses must not follow them. The standard for obedience to God isn’t one’s own interpretation of Scripture, such that any brother taking the lead who doesn’t conform to one’s own interpretation of Scripture is by that very act in rebellion and therefore can rightfully be disregarded.

In my experience many of the criticisms that you and others have mentioned do not take into account, nor make the distinctions between the different declarations that the Governing body makes and the answer those declarations require of Jehovah's Witnesses. 

So you must distinguish between the Governing Body’s  teachings on faith and morals on the one hand, and on the other hand prudential judgments, disciplines, or practices. Do the teachings have to do with faith, with morals? Are they prudential judgments, policies, disciplines, practices, admonitions, worship? Prophecies, symbolic language, parables, prophetic passages? 

Not all of the Governing Body's declarations have the same level of authority and not all of them are open to the same conditions. What do I mean by that? Well, some declarations deal with provisional aspects of policies, practices, worship, prudential judgements and discipline. This category always has space to be better formulated, clarified and defined. It would be an oversimplification to think that either we must submit to all the teaching statements of the governing body or that we are entitled to disagree from anything not formally taught. But it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that as Witnesses we are expected to give our private and public assent to the Governing body’s teachings. Sometimes we are giving prudential admonitions or judgments by the GB and congregation elders. Other times we receive concrete applications of biblical principles. We should give serious consideration and attention to these, but we can legitimately differ or disagree. Some of our teachings have different status of obligatory force, not all of them are in the same category or levels of authority. For example, when the Governing Body departs from or changes some prudential measure observed previously, they are not necessarily saying that they were wrong before. They can be saying that this is what they believe Jehovah is calling them to do in this present time for some particular reason.  Even if it were to turn out that they are wrong that Jehovah is calling them to these actions or that it is prudential for them to take these actions at this time. It does not mean that the way things were handled before are wrong or incompatible with the way things are handled now. Such measures can be for a particular person, or a particular season, because of what it is needed for a particular time or circumstance.

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, Juan Rivera said:

And if you can’t call elders and the apostles a false prophet, then you couldn’t call the Governing Body appointed by Jehovah in Acts 15 false prophets. Those are important distinctions you need to keep in mind.

Sorry, but they put themselves in this or that category with their doctrines. They publicly say/claim that Jesus did not promise to distribute perfect spiritual food through the FDS.

Hey,  didn't to a single JW in the world explode his own brain after GB member Gerrit Losch stated that on JWTV? Memories fading.., collectively?

Gerrit Losch, to this day, has not been sanctioned for his statement by the rest of GB.

In fact, he should not be sanctioned because Jesus did not promise to distribute perfect spiritual food through WTJWorg GB, ..........but through HS.

But the rest of the GB team should have removed him for a simple reason. It causes public embarrassment, scandal and threatens followers' faith in the Organization.

[Juan Rivera]

@Srecko Sostar We are spinning wheels here and arguing in circles. So let me give you the bottom line, so we can move the discussion forward. Perhaps no one has told you this, so let me level with you in the big picture grand scheme  of things and perhaps it would help you stop thinking and writing so much about Jehovah’s Witnesses and go back to square one.

Going back to what I told you previously at the beginning of your post. According to the JW framework and a great majority of Christians, specially those EX-JWs who still consider or identify as Christians, an individual person works out a set of doctrines from Scripture, and then finds those persons who are teaching it and joins their community and submits to them. An apparent problem with this framework (or rather, one apparent problem with this framework) is what this means if it is true (which is what the majority of the thousands of denominations of Christianity believe). It falls prey to the authority problem, namely, that authority chosen on the basis of agreement with oneself is no authority at all. To submit to others only when one agrees with them, is to submit to oneself. But submission to oneself is an oxymoron, because it is indistinguishable from not submitting at all, from doing whatever one wants. It is an expression of the maxim: “When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me.

A Congregation that is not infallible, cannot bind anyone’s conscience, because the individual knows that everything the Congregation says could be false, and no one can be bound in conscience to believe what he knows could be false. So long as those taking the lead are fallible, they cannot bind the conscience, and so long as they cannot bind the conscience, people may reject what they say, and may do so without culpability. They are only ‘binding’ if you want to stay in that Congregation, i.e. if that Congregation’s  interpretation fits your own. And that’s not binding at all. I cannot be bound by a Congregation’s decision if the basis for my ‘submission’ to that denomination is its conformity to my interpretation of Scripture.

What I give, I can take away. So if my consent is that by which I give to those taking the lead authority over me, then removal of my consent is that by which I can remove their authority over me. This is precisely why Jehovah's Witnesses can (without rightly being charged with rebelling against ecclesial authority) leave our community when they cease to agree with its interpretations even if our authority forbids them to leave. So if ecclesial authority arises by consent, and if I come to disagree with the doctrine/interpretation shared by those who by their consent established the existing ecclesial authority in which I presently exist, then that existing ecclesial authority in fact has no actual ecclesial authority over me, for I no longer participate in that act of consent by which it can have authority over me. 

So you have to make a distinction between those parts of a publication that are direct quotations from Scripture, and those parts that are interpretation of Scripture. The parts that are direct quotations from Scripture have authority because God is their author. But strictly speaking, they are not statements of faith; they are just small 'photocopies' of parts of the Bible. The other parts of the publications (besides the direct restatements of Scripture) have no authority, because the only possible basis for their authority is that someone agrees with them, and 'agreement with oneself is an insufficient basis for authority over oneself.

We can go in depth on this topic, but I do advise you to stop writing about Witnesses so much as if you have a personal vendetta against them and examine your own Philosophical and Theological Framework. At some point you have to ask yourself where are you getting your starting assumptions and have the courage to see if they are true and properly grounded. So this is not about putting labels on people and things or ideas, but rather it’s  about seeing the nature of things as they are.