Question: Do you think the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a valid Christian denomination? I think they deny the Nicene Creed, but even some Baptists do too.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, under the leadership of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, are not recognised as a valid Christian body within the Orthodox Church for several critical and doctrinal reasons.
First and foremost, Jehovah’s Witnesses explicitly reject all the Ecumenical Creeds—namely, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Apostles’ Creed (insofar as the Western tradition affirms it), and the Athanasian Creed. The Orthodox Church regards the Nicene Creed, finalised at the First and Second Ecumenical Councils (325 and 381 A.D.), as the authoritative summary of the apostolic Christian faith. The rejection of this Creed is tantamount to a denial of essential Christian dogma, particularly the doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.
Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Trinity. Instead, they believe that God (Jehovah) is a singular being and reject the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is a direct contradiction to the Trinitarian theology affirmed by the Orthodox Church as defined in the Ecumenical Councils.
They also reject the full divinity of Christ. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that Jesus is a created being, the archangel Michael incarnate, and not homoousios (of the same essence) with the Father. They call Christ “a god”, which means they have more than one god in their belief system. This denial was condemned by the First Ecumenical Council, which refuted the Arian heresy, of which their Christology is essentially a modern reiteration.
Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the Holy Spirit as a Person. They outright deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit, reducing Him to an impersonal active force, which again contravenes the dogmatic proclamations of the Church regarding the Holy Trinity.
Concerning the sacramental life, the Witnesses do not practise baptism or the Eucharist in a manner remotely consistent with early Christianity. Members are baptised into the name of their religious organisation. Their version of baptism is not Trinitarian, and they refuse to participate in true Eucharist.
They are spiritually ignorant of Apostolic Succession and early Church ecclesiology. They have no valid priesthood, no apostolic succession, no bishops, and no sacramental understanding of the Church. Their leadership model is an organisational hierarchy governed by a corporate board, primarily involved in court cases and the sale of real estate, not a spiritual body rooted in the Apostles and Fathers.
Their translation of Scriptures, called the New World Translation, is not a faithful rendering of the original biblical texts. It has been extensively altered to reflect their own theological biases, especially in passages that affirm the divinity of Christ. This alone disqualifies it from use in any serious Christian setting.
The Orthodox Church views such radical departures not as theological disagreements among brethren but as a total deviation from the Apostolic Faith. To be Christian, according to the ancient and universal understanding of the Church, is to uphold the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), which includes fidelity to the Ecumenical Councils, the Creeds, the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, and the sacramental life of the Church.
Thus, the Eastern Orthodox Church does not and can not recognise Jehovah’s Witnesses or other similar sects as Christians in any theological or ecclesial sense. Their teachings are heretical, their practices schismatic, and their ecclesiology non-existent. They are outside the bounds of the Church, and their claim to Christian identity is, by Orthodox criteria, invalid.
In fact, any group—Protestant or otherwise—that consciously rejects the Ecumenical Creeds, particularly the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, falls outside the bounds of what the Orthodox Church understands as authentic, apostolic Christianity.
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not define the Christian faith by personal conviction alone, nor by an individual’s claim to follow the Bible. Rather, it defines Christianity by fidelity to the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). The faith is defined by the Holy Scriptures, rightly interpreted within the mind of the Church; the Seven Ecumenical Councils, which represent the authoritative, Spirit-guided decisions of the undivided Church; the Creeds, especially the Nicene Creed, which articulate the non-negotiable truths of the Christian faith; Apostolic Succession, whereby bishops transmit the faith and sacramental life of the Church from generation to generation; the Sacramental Life, particularly Baptism, the Eucharist, and the other Holy Mysteries, which are the normative means of union with Christ and the Church.
Any Protestant group or individual that reject the Creeds are rejecting not human inventions but Spirit-guided formulations that safeguard the identity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the integrity of the Church.
While it is true that many Protestant denominations retain some semblance of Trinitarian belief, those who deny or downplay the use of the Creeds—such as many non-denominational churches, certain Baptists, Oneness Pentecostals, or Restorationist sects—implicitly sever themselves from the dogmatic and ecclesial continuity of the Apostolic Church. Some even go so far as to claim the Creeds are unnecessary, “man-made traditions,” despite their formulation arising precisely to preserve the apostolic teaching against heresy. From the Orthodox perspective, such rejection is not a neutral theological disagreement—it is a rupture from the very confession of faith that defines what it means to be a Christian in the historical and universal sense. As St. Vincent of Lérins taught, true Christian doctrine is that which has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all.”
To the extent that any Protestant group denies the Ecumenical Creeds, they place themselves outside of the canonical and theological boundaries of the Church. They may possess partial truths, they may quote the Bible, and they may sincerely believe in Christ—but they do so without the fullness of the apostolic faith and without communion with the Body of Christ, the Church.
Rejection of the Ecumenical Creeds is not a small matter. It is a dangerous departure from the very foundations of Christian orthodoxy. Whether it is the Watchtower or certain sectarian Protestant groups, such deviation places them outside the Church as understood by the Fathers and maintained unaltered in the Orthodox tradition.
May God have mercy on all who sincerely come to His Church in humility and with repentance.
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