Tag: monotheism

Andrew Perry on 1 Cor. 8:6 Part 5

Does Jesus just represent the Father? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, Perry claims that the best way to speak of Jesus is as one who has the name of YHWH not because He is YHWH, but because He is representing YHWH.

The best sense for ‘included within the divine identity’ is representative identity – i.e. where someone
represents (acts for) someone else.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things
under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is kyrios, to the glory of God
the Father. Phil 2:9-11 (KJV revised); cf. Rom 14:1

First off, it’s noteworthy that in this passage, everything bows down to Jesus and to God, meaning that there is a differentiation going on between Jesus and everything else save the Father. Some of you astute readers will be thinking that Paul is quoting Isaiah here. We are about to get to that.

The name given to Jesus that is above every name is not the common Jewish name of ‘Jesus’ but that of
‘Yhwh’. As we have noted above, the type for this is the giving of the name to the Angel of the Lord.
This framework of name-bearing is indicative of representation (acting/speaking50 in someone’s name).
This is clear from the example of the Angel of the Lord where God instructs that the people were to obey
his voice because “my name is in/with him” (Exod 23:21). The identity here is representative, one in
which someone represents the authority and the will of another. As such, it does not confuse the persons
of God and the Angel of the Lord. We can, if we want, gloss this kind of identity as an ‘inclusive’ identity:
the representative is part of the identity of the one represented.

Nothing is said of what if someone does think the Angel of the Lord is the preincarnate Christ and actually an appearance of YHWH? There are numerous occasions in the Old Testament where someone talks to the Angel of the Lord and it is as if they are speaking to God. There are also times the Angel speaks as if He is God, notably in Exodus 3. Perry in a footnote says the prophets represented God, which is true, but no one ever confused Isaiah for YHWH.

Paul quotes Isa 45:23 in Phil 2:9-11 which, while ‘anthropomorphic’, is quite specific in its personal
language: ‘my mouth’ and ‘unto me’ – this singular language doesn’t seem to offer much room for others
to receive obeisance.
I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return,
that unto me (yl yk) every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. (Isa 45:23 KJV)
Commentators assume that bowing ‘at the name of Jesus’ is equivalent to bowing before Jesus alone. It is
as if their exegesis drops ‘the name’ from their consideration of what Paul is saying. However, if you bow
‘at the name’ and that name is ‘Yhwh’, then Yahweh is involved as an indirect recipient of the obeisance
when the one being bowed to is a representative.

Absent is any mention of “I will not share my glory with another” from Isaiah 42:8. However, if Philippians says everyone bows at the name of Jesus and everyone is to bow to YHWH, it’s easy to make that parallel. It’s practically hard to avoid it.

In general, insofar as Christ does the same thing his Father does, the same action predicates are applied to
them both. For example,
To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. 1 Thess 3:13 (KJV)
…and kyrios my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. Zech 14:5 (KJV)

Yet this is not saying Jesus is doing the same action of YHWH. YHWH never comes to the Earth except at the end of Revelation and then it is the marriage of Heaven and Earth. It is Jesus that is coming to the Earth. Again, Paul is making a one-to-one parallel.

This allusion is an example of Yhwh texts that describe God acting on behalf of his people in the land.
The language of Yahweh coming in the person of another is seen, for example, in the case of the Arm of
the Lord (Isa 40:3; 10; 51:9; 53:1; John 12:38). This is God being manifest in the flesh (1 Tim 3:16) and
fulfilling his own declaration, ‘I will be who I will be’ (Exod 3:1460). That God is manifest in someone on
the ground is indicated by the prediction that ‘his feet’ would stand on the Mount of Olives. As Adey
observes, “A Biblical criterion of being the true God is that God’s identity can be depicted by another”.
The predicates of action are equally applicable to Yahweh as they are to the person on the ground.
There are criteria of application for these predicates which are satisfied by Yahweh and the person on
the ground. The point here is not that the person bears the name ‘Yhwh’, nor that they necessarily
represent Yahweh (pace foreign potentates brought against Israel), though this may be true: the point is
that God is manifesting himself in someone through the Spirit – their actions are the actions of God. In
this sense, that person is included in an identity with God (and vice-versa) but without any confusion of
persons.

The fact that some people can possibly have a confusion of persons shows why Paul wrote the way he did, regularly saying theos for the Father and kurios for the Lord Jesus. Of course, it would be difficult to describe in many ways, but the solution is not to change the doctrine, but to change the language the best we can. Yet what happens if someone says contrary to what Perry thinks about this?

Fletcher-Louis states, “Time and again we find divine action or functions ascribed to Christ in a way that
now makes sense if Christ belongs within the divine identity and if he fully participates in the divine
nature.” What we need to question here is the ‘fully participates in the divine nature’. This sounds like
theologically motivated eisegesis designed to support later church doctrine.

Unfortunately, Perry doesn’t question it. It is fine to question what it means and that would be a great discussion to have, but his response is “It sounds like theologically motivated eisegesis designed to support later church doctrine.” Obviously, Perry is free from any theological motivations whatsoever. Suppose I said “Perry’s writing sounds like theologically motivated eisegesis in order to avoid a doctrine he disagrees with.” Could I be right? Sure. Is that an argument to reject Perry? Not at all. The motivations don’t matter. The data does.

The framework for understanding the same divine action being attributed to God and to Christ is
representative. This is clear from the use of ‘parentheses’ in Paul,
Now God himself and our Father, (even our Lord Jesus Christ), direct our way unto you. 1 Thess
3:11 (KJV revised); cf. 2 Thess 3:5
The singular verb ‘to direct’ is attached to the subject ‘God’ as shown by the emphasis ‘himself’, but the
guidance is through the Lord Jesus, as shown by the ‘even’ sense of the conjunction. Paul uses the same
construction for emphasis in 1 Thess 5:23, “May the God of peace himself (Auvto.j de. o` qeo.j) sanctify you
wholly”, and 1 Cor 8:6 makes the relationship clear: spiritual things are of the Father but through the Son
(see below).

When I look at 2 Thess. 3:5, it’s hard to find a translation besides the KJV that translates it this way. The majority don’t have a problem. Looking at the other translations, it looks that Paul is asking that the audience be directed to qualities of the Father and of the Son, but it would not be as if these were mutually exclusive to one or the other. Consider this for an example:

May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.

Are we to think that if you want love, you go to the Father, but if you want perseverance, you go to the Son? Now granted, the Son is the only one who has been incarnate and persevered in suffering, but we are also told that God is patient with us. I doubt Perry would also question that the Son has love for us.

As for from the Father and through the Son, I agree with this. This is because I see Jesus as God’s Wisdom. This does not remove Jesus from the divine nature.

The singular verb attaches to the emphasized subject, God the Father, but the parenthesis provides a
substitution for the reader, a device which therefore does not contravene the normal grammar of noun-verb agreement.66 Fletcher-Louis’ grammatical analysis is therefore wrong “two persons grammatically
expressed as one acting subject”. It is rather, two grammatical subjects (one primary, one secondary)
available for one action verb.

And Perry can win this battle and lose the war. I don’t have a problem with this in my view of Jesus. It’s also something that really makes sense to me seeing as I don’t hold to unipersonalism.

Next time, we will discuss typological identity.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 5

Did we lose the teaching of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve already addressed John 10:36. Now it’s time to deal with John 5:19 which Buzzard uses in two paragraphs and these paragraphs are one right after the other. In this verse, Jesus says He can do nothing of Himself unless it is something He sees His Father doing. Absent from this is how the verse before the author says that Jesus is making Himself equal to God in His claims.

What would Buzzard think Jesus should say otherwise? “I don’t watch the Father do anything! I do what I want!” Of course not! If anything, this is showing a strong unity. The only actions Jesus does is what He sees the Father doing. This is also in reference to healing and doing “work” on the Sabbath, since obviously the Father never walked on Earth and healed on the Sabbath.

Buzzard again also says how easy it would be for Jesus to say “I am God, the second person of the triune Godhead.” Many times, Buzzard seems to indicate He knows why Jesus would not say this, and yet still dishes out the argument. Either he is forgetting what he said in those other places, or he is just being dishonest. You choose. At any rate, this would not have cleared things up. It would have made them more confusing instead!

He also says no Israelite could have remotely imagined reading the Scriptures that the Son of David would have been a member of the Godhead come down in human form. Quite likely! Nor could they have imagined that He would die on a cross for the sins of the world and be raised bodily in the middle of space and time. If Buzzard wants to go this route then, he should cease claiming those events are true as well. However, this argument works when it’s the doctrines Buzzard doesn’t believe in. Convenient, isn’t it?

He also says, another line used repeatedly, that to be the Son of God, you have to be a being who is not God. Very well. Then to be the Son of Man, you have to be a being who is not….oh wait. There’s a problem there. Unfortunately, it’s one Buzzard never brings up. His argument only works if God is unipersonal, which is the very claim under question.

He also says that believing in a being who is God on Earth and a being who is God in Heaven is a problem. Isn’t this two gods? Again, this is still the same assumption of unipersonalism. If this is a problem, what is going on in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:24?

Look it up. You have the name in there twice. The Lord rains down fire and brimstone from the Lord out of Heaven. We are also justified in believing there is still a figure on Earth called the Lord since He was just conversing with Abraham in the prior chapter. (Also noteworthy there were three people who came, but Abraham is said to talk to “the Lord.”)

In looking at the Reformers and the Trinity, Buzzard says they emphasized Paul over Jesus. Even if that is so, does this somehow change the argument? Does Buzzard not think that Paul and Jesus agree? His argument only works if one disagrees with the other.

He talks about Jacob’s wrestling with the angel in Genesis which he says is not repeated in the New Testament. Correct. And? What has that to do with the price of tea in China. He says that the text says Jacob was wrestling with a man, but when Justin Martyr dialogued with Trypho the Jew, who seems stunned by the argument. Go through and read the dialogue some time, Buzzard. Trypho objects to a lot of arguments you would agree to as well. Still, if you go back to Genesis, what does Jacob say? He saw the face of God and lived and he is told by the man “That he has struggled with man and God and prevailed.”

Oh, no. I have no idea where Justin could have got this crazy interpretation he holds! Maybe he just read the text or something?!

Let’s also deal with this argument that God never dies and thus needs to be resurrected. Okay. What does it mean to die? Did Jesus cease to exist? If so, then we have a problem in Col. 1 since it says by Him, all things hold together. If Jesus holds everything together and He ceases to exist….I think you know what happens.

Instead, what if dying just means the soul of Jesus was separated from the body of Jesus? Many Christians think that’s what happens to them when they die, rightly or wrongly. It is a perfectly sensible idea and deals with the problem.

He also says Jesus never demanded worship as God. True enough. However, he also never denied it when it was given Him. He also says Jesus is to be honored in the highest sense, short of making Him equal to God, but Jesus Himself says in John 5:23 that Jesus must be honored just as the Father is honored.

Buzzard also considers the reply of Jesus to the rich young ruler that “No one is good but God alone!” Okay. Buzzard agrees that Jesus is a sinless human being in this chapter. Is a sinless human being not good? Even Adam was said to be good before the Fall. Did he have something Jesus never had? Does Buzzard want to say Jesus is not good?

But wait, if Jesus is good, and no one is good but God alone, then Jesus is…

Does Buzzard want to go there? Does he want to say Jesus isn’t good to defend his position? It seems he has to.

There is a statement also of what it would mean if the three persons took upon themselves a human nature. Yes. That is what he says. No, Buzzard. That did not happen. Only one person took on a human nature. He also sees Galatians 4:4 as saying Jesus came into existence through a woman. We’ll deal more with preexistence later on.

He says the point of the Messiah is he needs to be a Son of David. He can’t be a non-human creature. Good. We agree. The problem? Does he not realize that all Trinitarians say Jesus was fully human?

Reading Buzzard, you sometimes wonder if he really knows what he’s arguing against.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 3

Is the Trinity dogma? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, we’re again going to not bother dealing with the number of times Buzzard repeats the same Shema and Unitarian arguments ad nauseum. Of course, had he eliminated them, this book would be considerably shorter, thus part of my great regret he didn’t. At any rate, in this chapter, Buzzard wants to pit biblical fact against dogma. That’s fine, but I contend the dogma is only on one side.

So at one point, he cites Karen Armstrong on the Trinity saying the makers of the dogma did not intend for the doctrine to be subjected to reasoned analysis.

It’s hard to believe anyone claiming to be taken seriously on church history could think such a thing. I don’t know what got Armstrong to think such a thing if she is being represented accurately and I don’t know why Buzzard would even believe such a thing. These guys were analyzing every single bit of their theology, but their doctrine of God was one they were going to be careless about?

He also says Gregory of Nazianzus considered three men ought to be one since they shared a common humanity. Unfortunately, this is not quoted at all. It’s my understanding that Gregory was asking why that wouldn’t be the case and was responding to that.

He barely touches Matthew 28:19 and 2 Cor. 13:14 just saying that this doesn’t mean the three are one God. On their own? No. In connection with all the other data we have? They certainly help the case. Buzzard has nothing to say about the Matthew reference referring to the singular name of three different persons.

He also says the word God never refers to all three persons. In the Old Testament, I think this would be far more likely. However, with the New Testament, I think the term God is normally referred to the Father and Lord refers to Jesus. There are exceptions, of course, but this seems to be the general principle. If anything, that God has to be given the explanation of, the Father, regularly shows that some differentiation is going on.

Romans 9:5 and 1 John 5:20 are both mentioned, but they are not interacted with. Instead, right after that, lo and behold, Buzzard references the Shema. It’s getting to the point where Buzzard pointing to the Shema is like Mormons pointing to their testimony relentlessly.

He says that for Jesus to say He was God while presenting His Father as God would lead the people to think there were two Gods. I agree with this. Hence, I think if the Trinity is to be revealed correctly, it has to be done slowly and cautiously. Unfortunately, Buzzard never goes down this route.

Buzzard also says the same thing about if Jesus had said “I am God.” However, he says that Jesus’s dependence on God doesn’t make sense. What would He prefer Jesus to say? “I don’t need the Father for anything. I can do whatever I want!” We certainly wouldn’t have a Trinity then.

Buzzard says Christian Theology speaks of God as He and not it, but does the Trinity consider God to be a person? He references Lewis in Christian Reflections saying that Christianity does not believe God to be a person but a Trinity of persons. Lewis says this saying that it’s the same way a cube is not the same as a square. This does not mean that one cannot use singular pronouns when speaking of God though. Buzzard gives no reason to think we can’t.

He also says that the term Echad used in the Shema refers to a one. Yes, but the word echad also refers to a unity one, just as the man and woman become one flesh, even there are definitely two bodies. He also refers to N.T. Wright and the Christianization of the Shema in 1 Cor. 8:4-6. Buzzard doesn’t reply to the arguments but if anything, pits Paul against Jesus.

This is a quite strange path. Are we going to look at Scripture and say what Jesus says is more valid than Paul if we think all of it is God-breathed? If there is no contradiction, then Paul will fully agree with Jesus. Is this what it takes to avoid the Trinity?

He says something about Psalm 110:1, but that’s largely spoken of in a later chapter.

He returns to Wright and the Shema in 1 Cor. 8 but instead of dealing with Wright’s argument, goes to his talking point again and says that Paul sees God as one person in 1 Tim. 2:5 and in Gal. 3:20. Neither of these say God is one person and he even adds in the word person in Gal. 3:20.

He then returns to Wright and says God and Jesus are not Lord in the same sense. Amusingly, he accuses Wright of begging the question, despite how many times Buzzard trumpets the Shema. If we go with Buzzard, then if there is one Lord, then the Father cannot be Lord. Does Buzzard want to go that route? When he gets to Bauckham saying the same thing, Buzzard says this wouldn’t be done since it would violate the creed and adding a person to the Godhead was unthinkable.

But keep in mind, Wright is the one begging the question.

So once again, Buzzard has pretty much one argument consistently. It doesn’t work no matter how many times he repeats it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 1

What is the foundation of Christology? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t know if this one will be as long as the prologue since Buzzard’s whole argument seems to be to reference Mark 12:29, Deut 6:4, and say “Shema” and “Monotheism” over and over. He does reference Ken Samples talking about the importance of the Shema, which all Trinitarians would agree with. At the same time, he does seem to reference Ken Samples as if Samples would agree with him. He would not. I have interviewed Samples and he is indeed an orthodox Trinitarian.

Buzzard does say there is not a word of such revolutionary changes in the nature of God in the New Testament, but this could also be because the idea of a multiplicity in the Godhead was not unfamiliar to the Jews. There is no interaction with the intertestamental literature thus far that I have seen that did inform the Jewish background of Second Temple Judaism Jesus lived in. ONe such work would be the Wisdom of Solomon where Wisdom is presented in terms reminiscent of that of God in passages like the Exodus. I highly encourage readers to read How God Became Jesus. (Unfortunately, my copy is back in Tennessee.)

Buzzard also writes about how a Calvinist pastor once called him a heretic. This is seen as an unloving attitude, but is it? If the pastor really thinks that, is that not more of a warning to Buzzard? We can say all we want that perhaps the tact wasn’t there, but how are we to assume it was done out of an unloving spirit.

Despite this, the next part talks about him speaking and some older ladies in the church come up after his talk and beg he and his family to repent lest they face eternal hellfire. Whatever you think about the doctrine of Hell, I have no doubt the ladies came from a place of love, but Buzzard is apparently upset about that as well. It could just be that Buzzard doesn’t like to be challenged. He also says they seemed unaware of the Unitarian creed (Assumption again) of Jesus and any knowledge of the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity was absent.

Ah yes. If only those stupid old ladies were as informed as Dr. Buzzard is. They should be grateful that he just graces them with his presence.

When we get to the history of the doctrine, he talks about the controversy after Arius and says that the fact that there was such controversy should alert us that there is a problem. There wasn’t any of this with the doctrine of God in the ministry of Jesus. In this, there is a big question unanswered.

Why were Jews at the time upset about the ministry of the early church following in the footsteps of Jesus? What were Jesus and His followers doing that was so shocking? Buzzard has already said it wasn’t their doctrine of God, so what was it? What created such a scandal? Thus far, I have no idea from Buzzard.

Also, when the Arian controversy started, it wasn’t the Trinity that was the new doctrine bringing about chaos. It was Arianism. In other words, had someone not been upsetting the apple cart, there would have been no controversy. Also, as was said before, there were problems in actions on both sides. Buzzard will only give you one side.

He also writes about how the average Englishman (Which Buzzard is) who believes in the Trinity doesn’t often understand it. So what? For one thing, if you fully understand your doctrine of God, you have a pretty small God. One problem comes with the question of asking if Jesus is God.

While He is, when we say this, we are using shorthand. It is a statement that Jesus fully possesses the nature of God in His being. It does not mean that Jesus is the Father. We are speaking of God in a sense of nature.

Buzzard also says Jesus foresaw a time of killing coming in John 16:2. Why does Buzzard need to look to the Arian controversy? That killing started with Stephen and keep in mind, Buzzard can’t say it was over the doctrine of God by his own position, so what was it?

He also says that in Matthew 16 Jesus could have said about His identity “I am God, and upon this rock, I will build my church.” Sure. That would have solved everything. Then the question would be “Are you the Father?” This is why the understanding of the Trinity was a gradual matter. Jesus had to show who He is and He also had to show He is not the Father. He trusted us to work it out.

Buzzard actually knows this because he says the same thing when replying to Witherington. He goes a step further and says that any claim to be the God of Israel would have been nonsensical. No Jew would understand it. First off, if that’s the case, then it’s obvious why Jesus didn’t say it. Second, would it be nonsensical? Buzzard has not told us why. He has just assumed it.

The final section has Buzzard saying that the creed was unitarian and thus if Jesus was said to be God, then there would have to be two gods since God is unipersonal. Thus, Buzzard’s assumption that the Shema is Unitarian, which he has not demonstrated, drives his doctrine. We all agree that if God is unipersonal, then two persons cannot be God. The question is “Is God unipersonal?” I can fully say I agree with the Shema. How could I not? I just don’t agree with Buzzard’s interpretation of it.

We will continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Atheist Manifesto Part 2

What more do I have to think of Onfray’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Reading Onfray is a task for anyone who tries. It’s hard to read without thinking that you’re really the temper tantrum of a child who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. He will be talking about one thing and then suddenly seemingly jump to something else.

In part 2 of his book he talks about monotheisms. One of the first sections is about down with intelligence! Monotheism hates intelligence!

Remember? The monotheisms that are people of the book? The Christians who are responsible for copying and transmitting the ancient pagan works that we have, the founding of the university, and the rise of science? Yes. Those people. They were obviously haters of intelligence!

For Onfray, if you are a man of reason you will be on guard against magical thinking. I was unaware that just saying something is magical thinking is a refutation of it. Who knew? Some people might have questioned the idea I have of presuppositional atheism that if you’re an atheist, your thinking is automatically rational and if you’re a theist, it’s stupid. Onfray comes incredibly close by saying such statements about magical thinking and reason to saying exactly what I have been saying.

Of course, this comes to us well in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Onfray doesn’t bother to say it’s good and evil. It’s not the tree of the knowledge of science or history or literature. It’s good and evil. In Hebrew thinking, this is a merism. It contrasts two opposite things to say everything between them. What is really at stake here is not knowledge so much as wisdom. It is mankind wanting himself to be the fount of wisdom instead of God.

We also have this part about the three monotheisms. It is the picture I shared last time. We are haters of reason, intelligence, books, and freedom. I say this, by the way, as I sit in my library in my apartment surrounded by my books and if you go outside of this room, you will find books scattered throughout our apartment.

We also hate women, sexuality, pleasure, the feminine, and desires and drives.

I am a married man.

I enjoy being a married man.

I enjoy the benefits of being a married man. I have yet to meet a married man who hates sex and the feminine and the body and such. Of course, such a person could be out there, but I doubt it. I find this especially bizarre to say about Islam since Muhammad had about a dozen wives and his followers could have up to four. Yes. They obviously hated sex and women.

Onfray also tells us that there were numerous apocryphal writings, more than those that are in the New Testament. Indeed. So what happened to them? Eusebius through Constantine is what happened! At this point, it is clear why Onfray doesn’t have notes in his book. Good luck finding this one.

He also tells us that Paul demanded the burning of forbidden books in Acts 19:19, but no such demand exists. From the account, the people themselves decided to do it. Besides, one would think Onfray would support this since these were books about magical spells, likely to ward off demons. Is Onfray upset that these books were lost to us?

Naturally, there is the idea of the hatred of science. The Catholic church impeded scientific research. Again, good luck with this one. There were plenty of scientists doing science in the time and the ones that were persecuted (All two of them!) were not in the Middle Ages.

Onfray also tells us the religions of the book detest women. You know, like how in Genesis man and woman are both equally 100% in the image of God. That kind of thing. Jesus having disciples who were women and openly communicating with them and Paul sending a woman to deliver, which would also entail and answering questions about, his most important letter, the letter to the Romans. For Onfray, we who are monotheists only see women as good for sex and only then when we want to reproduce. As he says “For a monotheist, there can be no more hideous oxymoron than a barren, sterile, woman.”

I wonder what monotheists he is talking to. I have not met any who think this way.

Now while Jews have some statements about women being impure during menstruation and after birth and the Koran has some negative statements, Christianity has not escaped! After all, in 585 there was discussion over a book called Paradoxical Dissertation in Which We Attempt To Prove That Women Are Not Human Creatures. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that I granted that this is all historical and this is a book that a Christian wrote.

This is still ridiculous. One Christian wrote a book one year and it was discussed. Therefore, this represents the opinion of all Christians throughout all time.

Fortunately, at least in dealing with monotheisms, we have a section dealing with arguments for theism and…..oh of course we don’t! Onfray never bothers to deal with what his opponents actually say. That would interrupt the rant.

And next time we look at his work, we will look at obviously the most problematic religion, Christianity. (Funny how that so often works out that way isn’t it?)

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Seeing Through Christianity Part 3

Does the idea of the devil make sense? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The next chapter in Zuersher’s book is on the devil. The first question Zuersher asks is why would an omnipotent God need helpers? Again, this falls into the category of “God does something I don’t understand. Therefore, He doesn’t exist.” It also assumes that everything that is done is done out of need. Why should I think that?

The interesting thing about an atheist giving theological objections like this is you want to ask how it is they did their theology. What criteria did they use? Did they go out and study the best works they could find, or did they just sit down one day and think about things and see what they thought was a hole and ran with it?

He also says angels don’t fit into monotheism. How? Your guess is as good as mine. This is a mistake even Rodney Stark makes in his latest book Why God? It’s thought that Jews, Christians, and Muslims aren’t true monotheists because we believe in beings like angels, but monotheism means belief in one God. It doesn’t exclude other spiritual beings.

Zuersher also says God could have created angels with a nature more like His own. Who is to say He didn’t? He couldn’t create them with a nature exactly like His because a created being will always have limitations, such as dependence on another for their existence. Creating a being doesn’t mean that God necessitates how that being will behave. That’s part of free-will.

He also says that the snake being the devil creates problems, such as why punish snakes? The answer is simply that the language spoken of the devil in this passage is that of shaming. It’s not making a categorical statement about snakes for all time.

Ironically, he does get something right. He does point out that the word for devil does mean adversary. This means many times what the Old Testament translates as satan could best be read as the adversary. It’s sad that the paragraph after this, he ignores the very suggestion he made in order to get at a contradiction he sees.

This is the account of the census in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles. In 1 Chronicles, satan is said to be responsible while in 2 Samuel, God is. Who is responsible? My solution is to say that satan refers to an adversary that God allowed to be raised up. David decides this is a good time to count his fighting men in response. Had Zuersher followed the rule in the very prior paragraph, he could have found a solution to what he considers an embarrassing contradiction and passages that are generally avoided.

The same would apply to Balaam’s donkey. The term used to describe the angel is a term that is translated as lesatan. Again, this can refer to an adversary. If you read it like this, the problem vanishes. Balaam is on his way and he encounters someone who opposes him.

So how did the devil enter into the system to begin with? Zuersher says that during the exile, Jews came into contact with Zoroastrianism and got the devil from them. We would really like to see the hard evidence of this. For someone who doesn’t accept oral tradition easily, why accept the claims of what Zoroaster taught when those really come to us from the time AFTER Christianity?

Finally, some people might want to say who are Chrisitans that the devil is behind works like Zuersher. I would say if so, the devil could find much better argumentation to use. Too many Christians have a tendency to blame the devil for everything and make him quite often on par with YHWH. Unfortunately, such fixation on the devil gives people like Zuersher more ammunition.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Resurrecting The Trinity

What do I think of M. James Sawyer’s book published by Weaver Book Company? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Trinity is something that many people do not really pay attention to in Christianity. Sawyer is certainly right that for many Christians today that if the Trinity was proven false, their church services and worship style would be little changed if any. We are often mere monotheists, confessing Trinitarians but practicing Arians.

Of course, we do lip service to the Trinity, but that’s where it usually ends. The only other time we open up the Trinity box is when Jehovah’s Witnesses come by so we can beat them up with it and win in a battle that we don’t often see the importance of and then the Trinity goes back on the shelf. Sawyer wants us to see the Trinity as a life-changing doctrine.

In our modern secular world, we can often view God through a scientific lens where He often plays no active role in our universe except for an occasional miracle. This is why deism is such a possibility for so many people. The universe can run on its own power with laws of nature being active. God is not really necessary. The universe is just a big machine.

Go back to the past and in fact to many other traditions today like the Orthodox church and the Trinity is a living reality to them. We can make many statements about God that would be easily agreed to by a Muslim or a Jew. To some extent, this is understandable. There is no philosophical argument that can prove the Trinity. If we have just reason alone, we can get so far, but the problem is we often act like reason alone has got us as far as we can go.

Instead, the Trinity is to show us what God is like mainly through Christ. Christ doesn’t appease an angry side of God. Christ shows us what the Father Himself is like. If we think the Father is eager to judge us, then we have to ask why Jesus doesn’t seem the same way. There is no dark side of God. What you see is what you get. When you look at Jesus, you see what God is like.

Sawyer also shows that we can have those false views of God such as the kind of name-it, claim-it God or the God who is eager to smite us all. To some extent, we all have these ideas of God at some time in our lives I suppose. It has been rightly said that whatever your idea of God is, it is inadequate. Still, we should strive for as truthful a view as possible.

Sawyer also says that this has often led to a certain moralizing in our walk. Holiness can become a burden when it needn’t be because we are trying to appease the angry God. There is no problem with being moral, but the issue is did Jesus really come to establish a new morality, or did He come to give us God? By all means, He showed us a better way, but did He not show God as well?

When we look at our theology, it is too easy to not have it really be informed by Jesus. The God of the philosophers is tempting to stick with, but the God revealed in Christ is a huge step forward. Too many of us are too tempted to stick with all the omni traits, which we should not deny, and just leave it at that instead of interacting with the whole theological picture.

There isn’t as much in defense of the Trinity here against objections, but that’s fine. There is some grounding of the idea and how it contrasts with Rabbinic thought and about what happened in the Arian controversy, but I think the whole of the work doesn’t seek to defend the Trinity as much as it seeks to show why the Trinity matters. This is indeed something that we need restored to the church today.

The only major area I think I’d disagree with is that Sawyer does seem to hold a higher view of The Shack than I would like. It’s quite interesting that one of the main reasons I didn’t like that book was because of the way it treated the Trinity. If you are like me, you can still get a lot out of this as it doesn’t play a major role in the book.

I hope a book like Sawyer’s is appreciated. The church needs to reclaim the revelation that has been given in Christ. Our doctrine has become largely about morality and such instead of really about a revelation of who God is so that He can often seem just as distant to us as He would have been before the revelation of Jesus. There is a better way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/8/2015: Win Corduan

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We all know the story of civilization. That ages ago savages lived in fear of animistic gods. Slowly these gods became more and more dignified and powerful in the eyes of the people with the traditions evolving as it were. Then we get to a polytheistic system like the Greeks and Romans had. After that, society reaches the peak in deities and goes to monotheism. Of course, some think that this goes a step further when the people realize that there is no need for even the monotheistic deity and move straight to atheism. This is the story of the history of mankind that we all know.

Or do we?

According to Winfried Corduan, we have it wrong. Who is he?

Win Corduan

Dr. Corduan was born in 1949 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1963 he moved to the U.S. and in 1970 got a B.S. in Zoology at the University of Maryland. He went on to earn a Master’s in philosophy of religion at Trinity Evangelical Divinity school and got a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Rice University. From 1977-2008 he was the professor of Philosophy and Religion at Taylor University, and retired on disability in 2008 as Emeritus professor of Philosophy and Religion. He is the writer of books like Neighboring Faiths, No Doubt About it, and In The Beginning God.

The last book is the book that we will be discussing on the show. Corduan contends that when we get back to the earliest traditions of primitive man, that we find that they did believe in one monotheistic deity. Now of course, they could have other beings out there that were non-human entities, like Christians, Jews, and Muslims believing in angels, but only one has the right to be called “God formally and that is the supreme being of these religious systems.

The book is a thorough and entertaining look at the subject and as you can imagine, I have reviewed it here. The reader will not get lost in highly technical details too much and will find that this is a quite interesting area and in many ways, one that we do not really discuss too much in apologetics circles but one that is certainly worth discussing.

I will be asking Dr. Corduan about the history of this kind of research. If we are Christians today, why does it matter how we start out as long as we know that today there is one God? Were the leading pioneers in this area arguing for an original monotheism simply Christians just letting their bias dictate their research? How is it that we can even do so research to get back to what people believed thousands of years ago? Wouldn’t it have changed over the years?

These are all questions on a topic that as I said, we don’t really talk about much, but maybe we should. That will be for you to judge after you hear the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast when I interview Dr. Winfried Corduan. I hope you’ll be watching your ITunes feed.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: In The Beginning God

What do I think of Dr. Winfried Corduan’s book published by B&H Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“In The Beginning God”. Most of us upon hearing that think “Created the Heavens and the Earth. Yeah. We know. Can we move on?” Dr. Corduan’s book doesn’t want to move on. It wants to stay right there in the beginning, but what beginning? This time not the beginning of the universe, but the beginning of religion. Today, much of the world is monotheistic, but how did we get to that point? Did religion just evolve from a primitive state of animism all the way up to the point where eventually one God came out to be supreme and now many of us today are monotheistic? Or, did religion start out as monotheistic and men moved away from that until later on, we returned to it?

Of course, when we say that religious systems have evolved, it must be clear that this is not saying anything about the scientific theory. For the sake of argument, it could be that scientific evolution of non-life to life in a sort of theistic evolutionary sense could be true and Dr. Corduan’s argument in this book is entirely correct as well. The truth of Corduan’s argument does not rely on that. However, he does want us to realize that evolution being true in one field does not mean that it will necessarily apply in every other field. (In fact, it would seem a whole plethora of gods would be much more complex than one major deity.)

For the research of this book, it will involve looking at the traditions of tribal peoples around the world and seeing what they believed. We will also look at those who have been impacted by Christian missionaries to see if missionaries might have changed any of the beliefs of these people on these major areas. We will also see if the evidence is being allowed to change the ideas, or if the ideas are changing how the evidence is viewed. Corduan will contend that too often the latter is happening. For this, Corduan will rely especially on the work of two in the field, one a Christian and one not. The Christian is Wilhelm Schmidt and the non-Christian is Andrew Lang, though Lang was open to something that would be called “supernatural.” (Regular readers of my writings know that I do not like to use that term.)

Corduan contends in fact that when Lang and Schmidt did the work to show an original monotheism, that their work was for the most part ignored. Of course, it could be for Schmidt that since he wrote around 11,000 pages that few people took the time to read. Corduan also shows that it would be wrong to think that missionaries showed up and changed a central core belief of the people and that the people then left everything else intact. What happens more often is that sometimes other gods can get added later on or other spirits in an animistic sense (Monotheistic religions do believe in other spiritual beings after all like angels and demons), that when you start talking about the one supreme God, that they know who you’re talking about.

Corduan’s book is highly accessible and entertaining. I do wish to thank him also for sending a personal review copy. I had read a recently re-released work of Schmidt’s, but I must say it’s easy to get lost in the jargon of Schmidt and Schmidt wrote as if everyone was familiar with the people in the field. That’s understandable, but it makes it difficult for those of us who do not know the names in the field. Corduan’s work gives you a history of the field and introduces you to the major names. It also ends with the importance that this can have for Christian apologetics with some cautions as well on what we can and cannot say.

I found the work to be highly interesting. If anything, I would have liked to have seen more on what other cultures believed that we don’t hear about regularly, but I know that wasn’t the purpose of the book and probably would have expanded it greatly to an unnecessary degree. For those curious about this kind of area, this is a work that you can enjoy. It’s got good information in it, but you won’t likely get lost in technicalities save for perhaps a few areas.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Origin and Growth of Religion

What do I think of Schmidt’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Wilhelm Schmidt. Neither had I. Why? Because he died around the middle of the twentieth century and wrote about a topic that not many of us learn about frankly. Schmidt was a student of the origins of religion in that he sought to find the most primitive cultures and study them and see what their original ideas relating to the questions of deity were.

Many of our concepts of religion are based on an evolutionary theory of religion. This is not saying anything about evolution in science. Evolution in science could be entirely true and evolution of the kind spoken of in religion could be entirely false. The common theory of religion that we have is that at the start, mankind believed in many gods, such as in an animistic sense, and then gradually religion evolved up to henotheism and then finally moved on to monotheism.

But what if this is false?

Schmidt’s work was to study various people groups of the world and see what they believed about the origins of religion, and this would be apart from what any of us would call special revelation. Through a study of cultures, the goal was to find which ones were the oldest and which beliefs in those cultures were the oldest. Fortunately in some cases, the beliefs had quite likely not changed much over time.

Some might be interested in the Biblical questions, but while there are bits and pieces of that here and there, the book as a whole does not really say much about the matter. However, the overall thesis would prove troubling to those who held to a JEPD theory on the evolutionary origins of the Pentateuch that said that monotheism was a late development.

Schmidt in his studies also determined that many many tribes believed originally in a supreme being who would sound surprisingly consistent (to those who hold to an evolutionary theory of religion) with the God described in the great monotheistic systems. In fact, while there could be images of other gods and perhaps totems and such, this God is often seen as invisible and cannot be imaged.

It goes further. In a polytheistic system, many gods are said to have wives and/or consorts and often times children, but in many tribes, this deity does not have a wife and in fact the idea that He would have a wife is seen as ridiculous. This deity is also seen as all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good. He is the source of morality and the giver of life and the bringer of death.

Included in all of this would be questions related to sin and prayer and sacrifice. These generally do exist in these primitive cultures. There is seen as a place of reward and rest for those who live good lives and a place of punishment for those who lead wicked lives. There is even often said to be an evil being who stands opposed to the supreme being, but this evil being is in no way anything like an actual competitor. His power cannot begin to compare to that of the supreme being.

Students interested in the origin of religion will find this fascinating. It is certainly a bit dated for our times, but it was one of the major works in its day and has now been redone so students can learn from it once more. If this is an area of interest to you, this is a book you need to get your hands on.

In Christ,
Nick Peters