There are many points of disagreement that separate Jehovah’s Witnesses from Catholics. The most important of these is the Witnesses’ rejection of the dogma of the Trinity and Jesus Christ’s divinity. “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15) is indeed the question that defines the Christian religion, and because Witnesses and Catholics (along with virtually all other Christians) come down on different sides of that issue, it’s not surprising that many consider the Jehovah’s Witness religion not be Christian at all.
The Witnesses are not, however, in agreement with the Muslims or Jews, either, because they believe that Christ was more than a man. Their belief is actually almost identical to the ancient heresy of Arius, which occasioned the Council of Nicaea. This heresy asserted that Christ is the greatest of all creatures, or a sort of super-angel. (In fact, the Witnesses identify Jesus with Michael the Archangel, a digression I’ll tackle momentarily.)
Following quite closely Arius’s line of reasoning, the Witnesses focus on the separate personhood of Christ and any Scriptures that portray him as secondary to the Father or imply subordination. John 14:28 is often reached for (“the Father is greater than I”) along with 1 Corinthians 15:28, where the conquering Son becomes subject to the Father at the end of time.
Let’s give the Witnesses their due: There’s obviously more going on here than just the subjection Christ in his humanity would experience before the infinite, non-bodily Godhead of the Father. There’s something like an economic (i.e., related to the proper and practical ordering of things rather than to their essential realities) “subordination” of the Son to the Father (what Eastern Christians call the “monarchy” of the Father) that is part of the intrapersonal trinitarian relationships. There’s a procession to the Persons: No Christian would begin prayer with “In the name of the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father.” And the God of the creed that comes from God is the Son; to suggest that the roles be swapped is not only heretical, but nonsensical.
Having acknowledged, then, this point that seems so obvious and irrefutable to the Witness, you have already gone some of the way toward disarming him. This subjection of the Son, even qua his status as an eternal divine Person, does not change his essential divine nature. Scripture emphatically leaves us with clear evidence that the Son shares in the divinity of the Father.
The first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews is Exhibit A. Here we find a detailed exposition of exactly why Christ is not just an angel, but the creator of all things (v. 2), the inheritor of God’s name (v. 4), and of the same nature as God (v. 3). Christ is explicitly contrasted with angels, multiple times (vv. 4, 5-7, 13, 14), which is important to point out in dialogue with Witnesses, chiefly because they identify Christ with Michael the Archangel. This unique belief derives from St. Paul describing Our Lord as being accompanied at his second coming by “an archangel’s voice” (1 Thess. 4:16). Because of the importance ascribed in Scripture to St. Michael’s angelic leadership and spiritual combat, and because Witnesses believe that Christ is nothing more than the greatest angel, it’s not hard to see why this verse provides Witnesses with what they think is the perfect opportunity to connect the two entities.
Presented with the evidence of Hebrews 1, a Witness might respond, “Yes, but the Father gave Jesus all this, and so Jesus cannot be God.” Once again, don’t just dismiss that concern. As Catholics, we can accept the “from-ness” of Christ’s deity from the Father. It doesn’t change the fact of it, amply insisted upon here in Hebrews. If there’s one God, who created all things, who is absolutely unique, then Christian revelation is apparently telling us that this Jesus is part of who God is. Otherwise, how could the “fullness” of deity dwell bodily in him (Col. 2:9)?
John 1:1 is a precise statement of the Trinitarian divinity of Christ, but its usefulness is diminished because the Witnesses mistranslate it. The Greek construction for “the Word was God” doesn’t mean “a god,” as they’ve rendered it. It means “divine,” more literally (75-87). The dogma of the Trinity is the only possible way someone could be with the absolutely unique divine Being while at the same time being equally divine.
Though most active Witnesses have no knowledge of (or interest in) the early Church Fathers, it’s crucial to realize that no Christians held views like theirs about the nature of Christ until Arius came along at the turn of the fourth century. Other nontrinitarians will dispute this, but their examples are generally of early Fathers using theological terms imprecisely, or simply references to the “economic” subordination I described above.[i] This is to be expected; before Nicaea, the Church hadn’t settled on precisely how to articulate its understanding of the Godhead. That certainly doesn’t mean there wasn’t a generally accepted, lived expression of that understanding from the very beginning.
That lived expression was (and is, within the Catholic Church) a relationship with God via the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Humanity and all creation are healed by the union between Creator and created. Pray for the Witnesses, whose theology precludes their experiencing this wonderful truth—the truth on which the Christian religion is built.
[i] The example I recently encountered was a former Witness arguing that St. Theophilus of Antioch held that because the Father cannot be contained in creation or any one place, and that because by contrast his Word can be contained in one place (in the Old Testament theophanies, for one, but even more so in the Incarnation), then necessarily the two must be ontologically distinct (To Autolycus, II, 22). He ignores what else Theophilus says—namely, that this same Word “always exists, residing within the heart of God,” “before anything came into being,” and that this Word “being God” created all things. Theophilus certainly uses the term person differently from how post-Nicene theology does, and his point about the Father and Son differing as to their potential to be incarnate may admit of several heterodox interpretations, but it is clear from even this passage that for him the Word or the Son is not an angel, but some entity intrinsic to God’s identity.