Chewing on the Trinity 3
In a previous post, we saw that Yeshua’s use of I am
or egw eimi
was pointing to the phrase before Abraham was
for its significance. What Yeshua says would therefore be better understood as: I am before Abraham was. But what does that mean?
The Trinitarian, as we saw in the debate video, is quick to say this means Yeshua is claiming a divine attribute for his own personal existence: eternality. This whole time while Yeshua has been telling people about how he is bringing about a day in which the word of YHWH will overcome death through himself, he suddenly decides, out of nowhere, to stop talking about that and to declare I have existed forever!
And surely no one can exist forever except God.
It would not need to be said had Trinitarians not been so blind to the problem of their own argument: Yeshua does not say forever, he says before Abraham.
There are trees and monumental structures created by humanity that existed before Abraham or stretch back as far or further in time from now as Yeshua did to the time of Abraham and no one would think to say they are eternal because of it. The angels existed prior to Abraham. Are they YHWH himself? Some patriarchs lived to be almost 1,000 years old according to various manuscripts of Genesis. Are they somehow specially divine because their lives have reached back beyond the limits of what we think of as ordinary human longevity? There is nothing in Yeshua saying I am before Abraham was
that requires the divine attribute of eternal existence. However, since reason doesn’t exclude the possibility of that interpretation, let’s have a look at what the text says and see if the subject of what Yeshua is saying and what the Jews understand him to be saying is anything like that at all or if there is something else going on (there I go again, daring to actually look at what the text says).
Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
John 8:52-58, KJV
What is going on? Yeshua is saying that his Father (YHWH) is making him greater/of more honor than their father (Abraham) or all the prophets who came after. What is the essence of that honor/greatness? That Yeshua is eternal? That he existed forever? Is that what the Jews think he means by before Abraham was?
It is clear in the text that the essence of Yeshua’s honor/greatness is that what he says overcomes death. Let’s see it again right there in the text in case you missed it: thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.
That is what Yeshua said to them and that is their problem with him because, obviously, they do not believe it! Abraham and the prophets spoke the word of God and the Jews follow the words that Abraham and the prophets spoke, but Abraham and the prophets all died and all those who follow their words die. So how can Yeshua’s word overcome death unless Yeshua were greater than Abraham and the prophets or carried a message from YHWH greater than they? Yeshua’s audience thinks he must be possessed of the devil and trying to falsely gain some honor or greatness that is not and never can be his.
Yeshua responds by saying that it is not only his Father (YHWH) who honors him, but even their father (Abraham) saw his day and was glad.
What is his day? In the context of everything that has just been said by Yeshua and by the Jews in response to him, it is a day they have never known: a day when the word from YHWH will overcome death. All other days with the word of YHWH ended in death. Abraham died and did not come back. The prophets died and did not come back. But Yeshua is claiming a day in which that end is overthrown. Surely Yeshua will die and not come back and what he says will not be able to bring anyone back either.
They respond by saying You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?
But this is not asking Yeshua how far back he exists (and thus does not have to do with eternality
) because they obviously do not believe from the getgo that he could exist far back in time (you are not yet 50
) and there has been nothing Yeshua said in the passage that indicates he was previously talking about being eternally existent. By saying You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?
, they are mocking his claim to bring into the world a word from YHWH that can overcome death by pointing out that what he says IS NEW. What he is claiming is not yet 50 years in the earth. But Abraham…boy, he goes WAY back. So how then can Abraham have known what Yeshua is claiming?
The issue is not whether Yeshua existed eternally or not. Nor is the issue whether Yeshua has existed for a very long time. The issue is whether this thing Yeshua is claiming about himself whoever keeps my words will not taste death
is new or whether it precedes him as far back as even Abraham. Yeshua said that Abraham knew of what he was claiming and approved, so that is where the Jews are taking their aim. There is nothing else in the text for them to take aim at—no claim of personal eternal existence, no declaration of I AM via the divine name, no statement that he, himself, is YHWH. What there IS, however, is the bold revelation that if those who follow Yeshua’s words will not taste death, then Yeshua himself, who lives by the very thing he is delivering, will escape death.
By saying I am before Abraham was,
Yeshua not only settles the issue at hand (that his claim isn’t new–it does precede him as far back as Abraham, which validates what he had just previously said about Abraham), but at the same time positively answers what is implicit about the claim: through the word given to him from the Father, Yeshua himself will overcome death. Not even Moses, who gave Israel the Torah From Heaven, escaped death! Frenzied at that claim and that assertion, the Jews pick up stones to put his word to the test. They intend to deliver him to death and thereby show him to be a fraud in what he says.
Unlike the Trinitarian, I do not come away from this text with the message Yeshua must be eternal and God himself.
Rather, my response is The word of the Lord. The word that conquers death. The word that is LIFE. Yeshua has it?” And then I read along further in the text and see that Yeshua rose from the grave and my reaction is “It is true! Yeshua’s way is life! Life greater than death! So I will believe what Yeshua says and follow him. Praise be to the Lord!
To the Trinitarian, John 8 is telling us something about the philosophical makeup of Yeshua’s being. To me, the non-Trinitarian, John 8 is preaching the gospel message.
Chewing on the Trinity 2
In a previous post, I talked about a debate between a Unitarian and a Trinitarian posted on YouTube where I had a few stunning revelations:
- A Trinitarian can actually make a good argument
- Whatever I am as a non-Trinitarian, I don’t fit very well into the Unitarian camp
- The Trinitarian, for the most part, destroyed the Unitarian’s arguments and won the debate by a landslide
The main reason, I think, for the Unitarian’s defeat was that he was outmatched and out-gunned. The Trinitarian knew his stuff and made good arguments. The Unitarian didn’t know his stuff and was unable to make arguments that worked with and overthrew his opponent’s criticisms.
One thing the Unitarian was on to, which he completely failed to lay out, was the problem with the Trinitarian’s assertion that when Yeshua said I am
(before Abraham) he was using the divine name to declare himself YHWH.
The Unitarian correctly pointed out that the Greek of I am
that Yeshua uses is egw eimi
and that when we look at what the translators of the Septuagint thought represented the divine name, YHWH, in Greek, it is NOT egw eimi,
but o wn.
Since Yeshua does not use the Greek equivalent of the divine name, the Trinitarian argument that Yeshua calls himself YHWH by saying egw eimi
falls flat on its face. The Unitarian should have won the argument. Instead, he let the Trinitarian run right over him by making the ridiculously false claims that egw eimi
actually does represent the name YHWH in Exodus 3 and that we can see this to be so in a passage like Deuteronomy 32:39 where the Greek renders the divine name as egw eimi.
Well, since this isn’t a debate, I have the luxury of actually looking at the verses in question and showing what they do and do not say instead of simply giving a verse reference, reading it in English, and then moving on as if I validated my point. So let’s do that.
First, let’s look at what Greek words the New Testament author(s) felt best represented what Yeshua said when Yeshua said before Abraham was I am.
John 8:58 according to the SBL Greek Text says before Abraham was: εγω ειμι.
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew, when we turn to Exodus 3:14, we see God say, Say to the Israelites I am ο ων. The I am
part of that is egw eimi,
but if we continue to read the passage, we see that the I am
or egw eimi
is NOT identified as the divine name YHWH. The verse continues, Thus you will say to the children of Israel ο ων has sent me to you. Not egw eimi,
but o wn.
Where the Septuaginat says ο ων has sent me to you, the Hebrew says YHWH has sent me to you,
clearly and unambiguously showing us that ο ων represents the divine name in Greek, not εγω ειμι. Yeshua does not say ο ων, but says another phrase that the Greek Old Testament doesn’t chose to identify with the name YHWH. The Trinitarian argument fails on the plain facts of the text.
So now let’s look at the claim that egw eimi
is being used in the manner of the divine name to identify YHWH in Deuteronomy 32:39.
The Septuagint says See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me.
The Greek for I am he
is εγω ειμι, a common and familiar expression used throughout the Old and New Testaments, but not for the divine name. So the question is whether egw eimi
is being used here to signify the divine name. We can answer that by looking at the Hebrew. Is the divine name used there where the Greek text says egw eimi
? And secondly, is the identification of who is YHWH by use of this expression the purpose and meaning of the text?
Deuteronomy 32:39 says in the Hebrew אני אני הוא, ani ani hu,
which means I, I [am] he.
So what the LXX renders as egw eimi
is not standing in for YHWH
in the Hebrew text. Those two Greek words are standing in for the two Hebrew pronouns I
and he.
Not only has the Trinitarian failed to show that what Yeshua says is to be identified with the divine name, but we see direct evidence in the very verse quoted by the Trinitarian in the video that where he believes this identification to be taking place in the Greek by the phrase egw eimi,
that very identification is absent. It’s nothing but air. And so is another Trinitarian argument that when Yeshua says I am
(egw eimi) he is calling himself YHWH.
But let’s not stop there. Let’s ask the second question. What IS the Deuteronomy text saying? Is the text using egw eimi
to tell us exactly who is YHWH? It that it’s purpose? Or does egw eimi
serve a different purpose? Because if we can understand how egw eimi
IS used as opposed to how it ISN’T, that will tell us something about what Yeshua might actually be saying instead of what Yeshua is not. Let’s look at the text (you will by now notice that I like to pay attention to what the text actually says, which I have continually found be the fatal stroke against most Trinitarian arguments).
And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Deuteronomy 32:37-39, KJV
So what’s going on here? People are looking to other gods to rescue them and to protect them. But only YHWH can do that for them. The phrase egw eimi,
is being used in a very specific sense. Not to tell us he is
or I am,
but to tell us something about what he is: the one who kills and makes alive, the one who wounds and heals, the one who can be protection or deliver from the enemy’s hand. The Trinitarian has put the emphasis on exactly the wrong part of what egw eimi
is used by the text to tell us. It does not refer to itself, but to something else that was said.
By seeing how egw eimi
is used, we can expect something of its use by Yeshua. Yeshua should be using I am
(egw eimi) to say something else about himself, not to say I AM. If we look at the text, it is obvious what he is: before Abraham was. Before Abraham
is the significance of egw eimi,
not egw eimi
itself. This would be best represented by the English translation I am before Abraham was.
So what does that mean? See part 3: I Am Before Abraham Was.
So I’m not a Trinitarian. I don’t hide that fact. The main reason is because I have never really seen any reason from the scriptures to think in Trinitarian ways. Almost without exception (there are exceptions), virtually every argument I have ever heard in support of the Trinity, I have researched and looked into, and found to be false, baseless, or downright misleading.
But I’m open to this long-established and cherished doctrine. I took an on-line course through Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a well-respected, very conservative school, where the primary emphasis was a defense of the Trinity. I wanted to know from people who know what they’re talking about and who have really looked into this what they thought and why. Lay it all down in front of me so I can see the cards you’re playing with. Unfortunately, I left thinking their game was a fraud.
The best argument I had ever heard for the Trinity was something Francis Schaeffer said (or maybe it was C.S. Lewis? Or a combination of both?). His (their?) point was that there are attributes of YHWH that make no sense unless there is an relationship—particularly love. YHWH is love. And yet how can YHWH be love if there is no one/nothing to love since love is an interchange and if YHWH is only one God or one person, there cannot be an interchange? It would make that attribute of God dependent upon creation or upon something that is less than God. And how can something that is not God define an attribute of God? There must be something or someone in God that allows for the interchange of love. That makes sense. That is a good argument. Not a great argument (it certainly doesn’t require Trinitarianism), but a good one.
So to get to what I really wanted to discuss here… I just finished watching a really informative debate between a Trinitarian and a Unitarian on YouTube. Here is the beginning of that debate (it is in 12 parts).
This is the first time that I have EVER heard a good defense from a Trinitarian (and he even brings up the Schaeffer/Lewis argument…in his own way). I’m not saying it’s a great defense (it has a whole host of problems), but it is a good one. I, of course, align more with the Unitarian perspective (not to be confused with Unitarian Universalist
). Although after watching that video, I think I differ from Unitariansim in a great many respects. But I am very willing to concede that the Trinitarian wipes the floor with his opponent. I often come away from Trinitarian arguments thinking this person has no concept of what the biblical text is or is not saying and is trying to substitute this strange concept into it.
And yet throughout the debate at the link above, I felt like the Unitarian had no concept of Trinitarianism and spent most of his time either trying to understand what his opponent thought (or what Trinitarianism was) and kept going back over his own thoughts without answering the challenges his opponent brought to those thoughts. The Trinitarian makes some good arguments and counter-arguments and they deserve to be answered well in turn.
So as I ponder those arguments and counter-arguments, I was wondering what stood out to you, dear reader? Not only in support of Trinitarianism, but also against it. (Yes, I realize I am asking that you watch the whole thing. And, yes, I realize that I am asking those who probably support one or the other of those positions to try to allow their perspective or bias to be challenged, but I think it is possible.)
Let me get the ball rolling…
One thing that stood out to me as a Unitarian
(so to speak
since I differ from that Unitarian and from that Trinitarian’s experience with other Unitarians) is how so much of the Trinitarian argument rests upon and results from specific theological perspectives without which those arguments would fall apart. One theological perspective it requires (and that I am not so sure—in fact, very doubtful—I follow) is Original Sin. The Trinitarian’s belief in Original Sin (combined with other requisite beliefs), makes Yeshua have to be a certain way in order for his salvation (as that is understood—another specific theological belief) to be genuine or effective. So the Trinitarian perspective is a natural outflow of what the biblical texts say about Yeshua within the confines of the interpreter’s underlying set of theological beliefs. Since, however, I do not share many of those underlying theological beliefs, I am not restricted in my interpretation of scripture to a Trinitarian perspective. The Trinitarian’s argument would have been stronger had he shown why all his underlying theological beliefs are valid. But, of course, there is never enough time in a debate to do something like that (one reason why I generally hate debates).
Perhaps the most lucid argument the Trinitarian made, which is something I’m going to have to chew on for a while, is that if Yeshua was ever able to sin, then is he able to sin now that he stands at the right hand of YHWH? Does Yeshua have the ability to turn away from YHWH either back then, now, or ever? My perspective has been—contrary to the Trinitarian and slightly different from the Unitarian (the Unitarian believes Yeshua had the capacity to sin but was ALWAYS sinless)—that Yeshua could have sinned and that there was a point at which he became sinless. But even if that is so…does that mean Yeshua could ever cease to be sinless? Because if Yeshua can… Well, that opens up a whole can of worms that is pretty yucky to deal with. And it also creates other issues such as free will or choice and how that relates to YHWH (not my will, but your will
). My position is not an easy one. And I certainly don’t have all the answers for it. The Trinitarian argument that says Yeshua was always sinless and never could sin because Yeshua is God himself in his being is a much better or easier road to take since it means the Trinitarian doesn’t have to worry about his eternal fate whereas mine will never be completely and totally certain.
And yet the counter-point is also a strong one: if Yeshua never could have sinned, if he was never able to do so (the Trinitarian belief), then the word temptation
is pretty much meaningless (though technically, I know, the meaning is probably more like trial
or test
). How can God be tempted? Scripture indeed says it is impossible. And while saying that Yeshua was both 100% man and 100% God enables him to be tempted/tried/tested as a man but not as God solves the problem philosophically, it doesn’t deal with the language and story issue. What does temptation mean? If temptation for Yeshua means temptation in a way that is totally unlike all other temptation experienced by humanity, then what’s the point of the story at all?
Of course, the Trinitarian will answer the point is to show and tell us that Yeshua is God himself in his being and thus cannot be tempted/tested/tried.
But that, to me, avoids the question and cheapens scripture. That is not the way to go about telling us Yeshua is God in his being and cannot be tempted/tested/tried. Rather, that is the way to go about saying Yeshua could be tempted and yet in the end triumphed.
The Trinitarian’s response (at least from those videos) would be that I am trying to hold the word of God to my own judgment. That I am saying if the word of God is going to communicate to me, it has to do so on my terms.
This misses the point, however, because what I am saying is, look, I know something about how stories and literature are written. And I know that there are ways to communicate that make sense of a certain kind of text and ways that don’t.
This is called literary competence.
Like when I read a phone bill, I don’t expect it to tell me the weather because I know from my experience with weather reports and phone bills that they have certain ways of telling me things. So if I read a text and it’s telling me something in the way a phone bill should and would, it should be interpreted as the information of a phone bill and not as a weather report. And yet I ALSO know if someone told me my phone bill is trying to tell me the weather, that such a thing cannot be right because that is not what a phone bill does. I am not trying to tell scripture how it should speak instead of allowing it to say what it does. I am saying, look, this phone bill isn’t a weather report!
So in the temptation
of Yeshua, we have a very clear story being played out in which Yeshua goes through the water, is lead into the wilderness by YHWH for 40 days, is tested/tried/tempted, and then enters the Promised Land. This is very obviously a story that is trying to equate Yeshua with the formation of Israel in the Exodus story. In that story, Israel is lead through the waters and into the wilderness for 40 years where they are tempted/tried/tested by YHWH in a very real sense in which they could fail or they could triumph. And they fail. But Yeshua does not! And through this contrast we see that Yeshua is the foundation of a new and better Israel. The significance of the story and its relation is entirely lost if Yeshua could never have failed and the whole point was to tell us that Yeshua is God himself because he can’t be tempted. The Trinitarian perspective requires one to negate the relevance of the exodus and wilderness story that the gospels are trying to communicate about Yeshua’s mission and position and replaces it with a philosophical concept of Yeshua’s being. In terms of literary competence, that is like saying the phone bill is a weather report. It just ain’t so!
This sort of thing (replacing the relevance of the story with a philosophical concept of Yeshua’s being) seems to be a common thread in Trinitarian arguments. It is ironic that the Trinitarian in the video spends so much time trying to show how the Trinitarian belief is not Platonistic, but the Unitarian’s is, and yet by replacing this fundamental Jewish story and its significance to Yeshua with a philosophical concept about the makeup and character of Yeshua’s being, the Trinitarian does nothing but exchange the shoes of a Judaic perspective and worldview with the shoes of a Hellenistic philosopher. The Gospel of John seems to be ripe for this sort of activity. To be fair, though, I suppose if you believe in Trinitarianism, it would be a natural thing to do. Like Pentecostals who see demonic warfare in all sorts of scriptural passages when there is nothing there to give that impression. To err is to be human. And in that respect, I am no better off than the Trinitarian.
Behold, beloved reader, I admonish and advise you, if you seek God with all your heart, and do not wish to be deceived; depend not upon men and their doctrine, no matter however old, holy and excellent they may be esteemed; for the divines, both ancient and modern are opposed to each other; but put your trust, alone in Christ and his word, in the sure instruction and practice of his holy apostles, and you will through the grace of God, be perfectly safe from all false doctrines and the power of the devil; and may walk with a free and pious mind before God.
As a Mennonite, I think Menno Simons had some very important—nay, necessary things to say. And while I appreciate the way Menno focuses faith around the words and ways of Yeshua, including the praxis of the apostles and disciples of the early church, I am deeply concerned with his reliance upon Sola Scriptura evident in the phrase above. Whom among us will say, looking at history, that he spoke truly? That after people turned away from outside instruction and sought wisdom, understanding, doctrine, and faith simply and solely through reading the scriptures, that this caused false doctrines to fall away and that it led to better and clearer understanding? Dear reader, whether you are a follower of Yeshua or otherwise, can you honestly say that the mass of Protestants in the world today have found more common ground and drawn closer together in common truth on account of their free
reading of biblical texts than otherwise? Has not Menno’s sincere belief in the illumination provided by scriptural reading birthed a myriad of conflicting interpretations, gave rise to multitudes of contrasting beliefs, splintered those who would follow Yeshua into a plethora of factions, spawned hordes of mystery sects and end-time cults, and cast a great many into what seems to be impenetrable darkness?
One of Menno’s favorite words to describe scripture is plain.
The plain meaning. The plain reading. The plain understanding. What is stated plainly. We Anabaptists like to use the word plain,
but what we mean is a turning away/separation from worldly things like materialism, fashion, luxury, hedonism, or dependence on tyrannical and oppressive systems that take away our self-governance or endanger the outworking of our faith by making it subservient to other interests and powers. For Menno, however, plain
was how one approached or understood scripture. Truth was available to all if only we would turn away from the hardness of our hearts, listen, and accept what scripture says. One could take one of Anabaptism’s fundamental criticisms as an opposing example:
Remember also how the early writers contended about infant baptism. Had it been apostolic, and found in the gospel, why should they have thus wrangled?
If such were a true criteria, it would invalidate a great many things Menno himself took to be self-evident. As an example, for some time, the number of Christians who believed in Arianism may actually have been greater than those who believed in Trinitarianism. It took an ecclesiastical debate, whose conclusion was backed up by the excommunication and banishment of any Christian who believed differently through the power of the Emperor, in order to make Trinitarianism the orthodox and valid scriptural interpretation for the church. Trinitarianism is no more contained in scripture or defined by the apostles than infant baptism. Yet Menno would hardly abandon the first.
What Menno overlooked (and what many other Modernists continue to overlook) is the part that one’s own perception, culture, time, experience, language, world-views, etc, play in the formation of meaning. We are, in a very real sense, prisoners of culture and history. Plain
the scriptures may have been to a Palestinian Jew in the First Century. Plain
they are no longer—either to a Radical Dutch Reformer or to us. It is a fanciful delusion, I think, to say that YHWH will bypass our own cultural, historical, and mental structures of thinking and understanding in order to reveal divine truth to us. If that were the case—if YHWH did reveal truth to us which came from outside our own perceptive lens, how could we possibly know it unless we changed and warped it to make it subservient to that lens? The way to true understanding does not come by denying the existence and influence of one’s perceptive lens, but by allowing new ways of thinking and understanding (at least to us) to change our lens. If we want to understand what texts written by Jews in Palestine in the First Century meant, we need to think like a First Century Palestinian Jew. And that will, by no means, involve turning away from outside instruction to simply and naively read the text and see it as we see it.
This is, indeed, a disparagement of Sola Scriptura. Apart from the traditions and doctrines of humanity, no divine meaning or understanding can exist. It may sound pious to say you have rejected worthless human traditions in order to follow, unadulterated, only that which is revealed in the biblical texts, but all you have really done is replaced one human tradition or doctrine with another and pretended to eliminate it from consideration. While I respect Menno on account of many significant insights and the fruits of a faith that was real, I must at the same time gainsay the naively impressionistic method he advocated. It does not befit the one who calls themself a child of YHWH or follower of Yeshua to take scripture so lightly as to think it requires nothing from us other than an honest and open heart in order to yield up its treasures.
Rethink Afghanistan: Christianity and the Global War on Terror
featuring Jake Diliberto and Glen Stassen
Thursday, Oct 22, 7:00-9:00 PM, Fuller Theological Seminary, Travis Auditorium
In light of the recent escalation of the US presence in Afghanistan, and the 8th year anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the conversation has often evaded Christians. What are we supposed to think about the global war in light of our faith?
Jake is a Fuller student, and a decorated marine veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. His is a unique story of transformation from a maker of violence to a just-peace peacemaker. He now questions US military policy and the US presence in the Middle East. Jake has testified before congress, and is the founder of Veterans for Rethink Afghanistan,
an organization which has mobilized 20 million peace
activists. Come to hear his story, and why we need to rethink Afghanistan.
Peace and Justice Advocates will show a portion of the poignant documentary created by Rethink Afghanistan. Fuller’s Christian Ethics Professor Dr. Glen Stassen will offer a theological and ethical reflection on the situation.
It is always exciting to stand among a group of Christians who are seriously seeking a way to achieve a good end through nonviolent means instead of supporting violence as a means to that end or even simply accepting it as a necessary evil. More often than not, I stand alone. Even Anabaptists and Mennonites like myself (we who are the historical Peace Church of Protestantism) are divided on the issue. There are large numbers of Anabaptists who have chosen to follow Luther’s two kingdom
dichotomy in which YHWH has willed two different kingdoms to exist side-by-side (the church and the world), providentially ordaining that one should operate one way (do no violence or evil = the church) and one the other (do violence and what would be considered evil of a Christian in order to maintain justice and peace = the world).
On the other hand, even among a group of Christians seeking an end to war and violence like the one meeting this Thursday in Pasadena, there will be some who are there for reasons that I do not share, like, for instance, because they are leftist, liberal Democrats who are pushing their political party’s propaganda and/or agenda, or because they have false notions of social, religious, and political realities, or even, perhaps, because they are stirred more by emotions, guilt, and even false guilt, than they are by reason. Last time I attended one of these meetings, it seemed to me that frightening statistics concerning the escalation in major international terrorist attacks were being fallaciously shoehorned into a polemic against the U.S.’s support and use of torture instead of acknowledging the many other things that have contributed significantly to the dumbfounding rise in terrorist violence that we have seen in the West over the past decade. Hopefully, those attending the meeting this time around will be more willing to struggle with the truths of the matter and not what those in the group wish those truths would be.
Everything we think begins and ends with our epistemology, so I thought I would briefly summarize my own. My epistemology is a combination of antithesis (A = A and non-A cannot equal A), Natural Theology (truth can be known through the natural light of human reason), and Critical Realism (there is a story-telling human and there is a story-laden world, the human observes the world, challenges that observation by critical reflection on self–so it is not Phenomenalism–and on what is observed–so it is not Positivism–and then may be able, through story, to speak truly about the world).
As a prelude to this post, please watch Walter Brueggemann on the Bible.
While I appreciate the influence Brueggemann has had in and on scholarship, I am not a fan. In fact, my own Old Testament theology is directly antithetical to his own. However, there are three things Brueggemann says in that video that I strongly appreciate. The quotes below, elaborated by my own commentary, represent a recent revelatory breakthrough. This post is deeply personal and may turn out to be the most important thing I have to say on this blog all year. I know there are multitudes out there, both those with faith and those without, who have very real issues with the biblical texts and with the God therein. I hope that the following analysis will deal with some of these tough questions and issues and will prove as liberating for them as it has for me.
The God of the Bible is deeply implicated in, uh, in this inheritance of violence.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
First is the recognition that the God of the OT (and even the NT—the “God of Love” that is so frequently identified in the NT is just as vividly present in the OT and the “God of Judgment” so frequently identified in the OT is just as vividly present in the NT—but we are speaking of the Hebrew scriptures at the moment) sometimes stands condemned according to modern moral judgment. Held up to the lens of the way we think about and understand ourselves and our world, YHWH has been blood-thirsty, violent, and oppressive, and has committed heinous and grotesque atrocities. But it will not do for us who face this reality and dislike it to therefore deny it or try to cover it over with clever scholarship or smooth-sounding apologetics (and vice versa)—to lie for God as Job says in accusation of his “pious” friends. No, to do so would either be to deny our own world-view and cut ourselves off from the present (and therefore to either become enemies of the present or lose all ability to communicate with it) or to hijack the past and reshape it in the image of ourselves. And this is based on the second vital recognition:
The big revelatory moments before Jesus and Jesus and after Jesus are characteristically departures from what has been taken for granted.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
The God of ancient Israel thought and operated (and the people who wrote of him thought and operated) in a way that is very different from how we think and operate today. And that is precisely why we face this conflict of interest in which the very God we would turn to for a moral compass in our lives appears sometimes to be an abomination of it instead—because we have radically departed from the way things used to be and gone in new and different directions. Moral and ethical perspectives that were taken for granted or even heartily supported thousands of years ago are either no longer operative or adamantly opposed today. But the texts we are reading were not written today, they were written thousands of years ago outside of our perspectives and without foundation in our values. There is a rift between ourselves and the characters in the scriptures—including YHWH himself in those scriptures—that crosses every field of our existence from language to culture to politics to philosophy to religion. That rift exists not because we have necessarily veered away from what the God of those scriptures would have of us (although we do!), but because humanity’s world-views, perspectives, values, and judgments have changed rather drastically over time while the scriptures have retained a great deal of their original perspectives, values, world-views, and judgments. In other words, we have moved so much faster and further than our scriptures that it has come to the point where the very scriptures we turn to are alien and oppositional to us. This, of course, is not a new phenomena—it has been happening for a long time—as long as the scriptures have preserved the integrity of their viewpoints and perspectives in the midst of human change. Yet amidst these competing claims, we need to be aware of the third vital component that Brueggemann draws our attention to:
Our faith is requiring us to move in a new direction . . . Eventually, those departures can only be explained by the movement of God’s spirit, far beyond all that we can ask or think or imagine.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
This is where the rubber hits the road. The texts are bound to particular perspectives and cultures and understandings (that we don’t share). In much the same sense, so are we in that we have changed and moved in directions for specific historical reasons and we cannot change the past. But the Spirit is not so bound. The Spirit of God is not imprisoned inside an ancient text with foreign values and alien perspectives, nor defined and developed by the progression of time and change as we are. Rather, the Spirit is separate from and moves through and within history (or “above the waters” as we read in Genesis). It is active in all modes and forms that human society undergoes. And it can act in different times in different ways to direct creation at that point in history. Our texts tell us about the Spirit’s work in particular moments in the distant past, but it is not a complete record of the Spirit’s work and it does not mean that whatever way the Spirit worked then must be the way it will work now. Behold, YHWH does a new thing! Something our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers never saw and never knew! Something that contradicts what they thought or knew in their lifetimes—something that can even contradict what people in scripture saw and knew in theirs.
This is not itself a new idea for those of us who call ourselves Christians. Indeed, we claim that YHWH did something new in Christ—something no one before could have understood—something no one before could have participated in. A new covenant, a new kingship, a new Jerusalem, a new heavens and a new earth. And it is astonishing! It is astonishing, for instance, that women should be so abused and dehumanized in the ancient world and in our ancient scriptures and by our own ancient God within the ancient scriptures of the ancient world. And it is astonishing that the Spirit should bring us to a place outside the scriptures and outside that world where we can stand up for the dignity of women and fight against the silencing of their voices and work to release them from the shackles of male possession, dominance, and control. It is not biblical, but it is the Spirit of God active and alive in our history outside and beyond the biblical text.
The biblical God, confined to the texts, may sometimes appear vile to us looking in from outside that frame, but the extra-biblical God, the God who exists outside the frame of scripture and who cannot be contained by any text, surpasses such judgments just as he surpasses the texts and just as he surpasses ourselves. To say that the biblical God is misogynistic or any other number of modern judgments is not only short-sighted, since it pigeonholes God within a singular historical expression (the ancient text’s), it is anachronistic since it judges the biblical God as if he were acting within our perspectives, cultures, world-views, and values while denying him that very participation (since the biblical world is not our own). For us to adequately assess the biblical God, we have to enter the Biblical world in which he is operating, not pass judgment from outside. Would an ancient Babylonian or an ancient Egyptian or other ancient peoples have judged the Jewish God in the way we are tempted to do? Most likely not. Many things we would take strong moral issue with would be considered bizarre and laughed at in the biblical world within which the biblical God is operating. But when we look at the extra-biblical God, we see he is working to free womankind and to elevate this other whole of the divine image to her proper position. The God who in the scriptures did not condemn, but in fact supported and upheld human slavery as any good God would in the ancient world is the God who today has shattered the acceptance of human slavery amidst vast quarters of the world. The God who in the scriptures commanded the slaughtering of innocents and the extermination of peoples as any good God would in the ancient world is the God who later raised a son, Yeshua, Prince of Peace, to teach us the way of self-sacrifice and love toward our enemies instead of violence and slaughter. The God who in the scriptures supported and even initiated Jewish holocausts (Assyria, Babylon, and Rome) as any good God would in the ancient world who was wrathful against a people is the God who has since sought an end to all holocausts and has no continuance with Nazi Germany. It’s all about perspective. When we are reading the biblical texts, the God therein is operating according to a different perspective than our own. Realizing this will mean we are careful not to read our own contexts into those texts or into the God operating within them.
So last year was the 10 year anniversary of the film Gattaca. It’s an interesting film that questions whether science really has all the answers when it comes out smarting Nature. It puts us in a world where if you where not genetically enhanced you are a second class citizen divorced of all the rights we enjoy now, all because you are a health risk, since science can supposedly predict before birth exactly what you will die from. Have you ever sat back and thought about what if the technology shown in that film was available to us today, whether we should use it or it not?
I tend think about these things any time I watch a great Sci-fi film like Gattaca, and then find my self wondering if and when any of the films’ predictions will come true. Take blade runner for example, it predicted that by 2015 that we would have flying cars and so over run in pollution in LA that we would have Acid rain all of the time. Well we have the acid rain but still no flying cars, and LA is cleaner than it has been in years, mainly due to advances in energy efficient cars and machinery, granted we still have a ways to go, to really clean the City up for good, but it’s in a better position then what Blade Runner assumed we would be at by now.
Which brings me back to Gattaca…
- Do you think in our life time we will be able to genetically enhance our children during conception?
- When do you think we will have such technology available to us, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years or more?
- If do end up creating that technology do you think that our society will fall into the same traps as Gattaca depicted in the film? If so why?
As I’ve been pondering these questions lately, I found it weird that, today I happened to stumble upon something that excited me as much as it frightened me, at how close we really are to having a world just as Gattaca predicted it could be.
See Rejecting Job – Part 1
Job does not escape without rebuke himself, however. There is one thing about Job’s reasoning which was wrong. Job was wrong to think that he really mattered that much, that he was very important, that God was too much concerned with mankind and paid more attention to their wrongs than he should. Instead, God shows us through several long speeches that mankind is of small worth and of little consequence in terms of everything that exists in the cosmos. A long list of things are presented which far outweigh a concern for humanity such as the founding and the laying of the earth and the basic operations of running the universe. Job’s fate is ultimately not a big deal to God and it shouldn’t be a big deal to Job either. Job repents and acknowledges he was wrong: See, I am of small account
(40:4).
This is one of the major problems I have with the book of Job. This message directly contradicts the message delivered by Yeshua when he said that just look at the birds of the air, how God looks after them and is concerned about each one of them, or the grass of the field which he sends rain upon to give them life or withholds it so they wither in the heat of the sun, are you not more important to God than all of those (Matthew 6:25-33)? Or again, Yeshua says that just as sparrows are not worth much, but God forgets none of them, so also every hair of your head is numbered by God and you are more valuable to him than they are (Luke 12:6-7). Indeed, this message in Job runs contrary to virtually the entire corpus of Hebrew scripture in which God shows great concern for humanity and works through all of history for humanity’s benefit. Indeed, humanity is even set apart and elevated from the rest of creation so that we bear his image. The fate of humanity or of a single human–YOU matter to God, quite contrary to the message of Job.
Some might try to say that this message serves to stop humans from becoming self-righteous—but this is not the case. Job WAS righteous. And God agreed that he was. And if someone were to say that this might help people not think the universe revolves around them, this misses the point also. Job wasn’t saying the universe revolves around himself. He was saying that the punishment by God against him was unjust and that that was important. And this leads to the second major problem I have with the book of Job.
What Job tells us, quite contrary to the rest of scripture, is that God does not award the righteous and punish the wicked. That God is unjust. Job was put on trial by God and by the satan, but it is God himself who is on trial in the book of Job. God is condemned for having a definition of justice that is meaningless to humanity because what is just to God cannot be measured or be known by our definition of justice. And God says this is correct and that Job has spoken the truth of the matter! Who has not spoken the truth? Who has lied for God (13:7)? Job’s three friends (and Elihu) who tell him God does not pervert justice, who tell him punishment from God can be traced to sin or to unrighteousness, who tell him humans cannot be righteous before God, who tell him God only does what is right, and that God destroys the wicked but not the blameless. The book of Job—God himself in the book of Job–tells us they are wrong. This leaves us with a God who cannot, himself, be vindicated of wrongdoing because he actually agrees that he does wrong without reason (2:3). God is capricious. God cannot be trusted. God’s justice cannot be known or depended on. His promises are therefore empty and he is thereby unfaithful. This message stands in outrageously strong contradiction to all of scripture.
Even if we were to suppose that there is an afterlife or a resurrection, it would mean nothing because the judgment that will be given cannot be known or depended on by anybody for any rational, consistent, or coherent reason. All one would know is that God could destroy you or hold you accountable just like he did Job—simply because of an arbitrary whim. He could flip a coin, let his own law of gravity operate without interference, and assign you to eternal glory or eternal damnation based on the result. Appealing to an afterlife solves nothing, it only worsens the theological mess one has to deal with.
We all know that the innocent can suffer injustice or that bad things can happen to good people. We also know that God sometimes brings evil on people and does things that we see as not being right or good. These messages occur throughout scripture. What makes these messages different in Job as opposed to the rest of scripture is that in Job there is no reason, no mercy, and no justice to account for it, whereas in the rest of scripture, there is. In the rest of scripture, there are rules that apply to the world because of the character of God. In Job, because of the character of God, there are no rules that can apply to the world. Even the pessimism and vanity
of Qohelth/Ecclesiastes can say it is good to follow God and that this can have good results. Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes might end by saying everyone goes to the same place or that everyone gets dealt the same card—death—but there is no obliteration of reason and justice until the end. In Qohelth/Ecclesiastes, one cannot count on justice always being served, but that is different than saying God is not just as the book of Job does. In a canonical context, Qoheleth can be augmented by the message of the rest of scripture, but Job can only destroy the scripture around it or be destroyed by it.
The only halfway decent message Job contains is that one’s service to God should be because he is God and not because one will reap any kind of reward or benefit for doing so. The satan thinks Job follows God because of his rewards and if God takes away those rewards, Job won’t follow him. The satan is shown wrong and Job is afterward blessed for continuing to follow him despite the suffering it brings him. This is a good message. But it is only so if good
can faithfully describe God. If God is not good, then it would not be good to follow him regardless of the consequences. The gods of Greece were not good or evil gods, they simply were gods. They did good and they did evil and sometimes humanity benefited and sometimes it didn’t. This kind of religion could never result in any kind of overarching message or principle that it was good to follow the gods even if they did evil or wrong, because that was obviously not the case. Since the gods were capricious like human beings, humans and gods could only manipulate each other to further their own good. Since the god of Job is not good, there is no reason to follow him regardless of the consequences just as God can give no reason for the lack of justice that Job experiences. God could have equally chosen for no reason to not bless Job at the end and to leave him in his misery. That God goes one way or another is non-rational just as it is non-rational to say that Job did well to follow God. Only someone who’s faith is completely severed from their reason can accept this.
For these reasons, I have torn Job from my canon. It cannot be an inspired work which teaches us of God. I suggest you do the same.
Not long ago, for various reasons that will not be highlighted here, I came to the point of rejecting any kind of canonical
status for the book of Revelation—a judgment that a great many Christians before me, including Martin Luther, have shared. From taking a class on the methodologies in the study of biblical literature, I’ve since altered my position somewhat regarding that text. Though I am not really a student of the New Testament, my education in Redaction Criticism has enabled me to see quite clearly the composite nature of the Apocalypse and thus to distinguish between the letters which prefix the apocalypse and the apocalypse proper. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I now accept back into my canon the letters to the churches in Revelation. There is one text, however, which almost no Christian throughout the church’s history has stood against, but which has so thoroughly disgusted and offended my understanding of Judaism and Christianity that it has now become the second book to be unequivocally rejected from my canon: Job.
Like Revelation, Job has undergone its own editing and redaction over time. Some believe that the narrative portions were distinct from the poetic portions and that each part had a different purpose and understanding of Job before being combined. This may be the case. However, both narrative and poetic portions, whether separate or combined, should be equally offensive and abominable to anyone but a Fideist or a consistent Calvinist (I consider both fideism and Calvinism antithetical to Christian faith). After combing through many Christian analyses of Job online to see if anyone, anywhere was dealing with the very specific situations and answers in Job that have caused me so much consternation, I was shocked to find only two types of Job responses represented. Either blindly ignorant statements were made or the most important things that cut to the heart of the problem with Job were smoothed over or ignored completely. Before we bring out the big issues that nobody seems to want to talk about, it would be good to dispel some errant assumptions about Job.
First, Job does not have a happy ending by any true or good standard of judgment. Yes, Job receives enormous riches and an even bigger family with more kids and so forth. However, this neither fixes nor resolves the situation at hand. Job’s children and servants were slain by God. God does not give them back to him or to their loved ones. Nobody would agree that if their child was permanently severed from their lives, that having several other children could either make up for or replace the one that was destroyed. We know Job loved his children dearly. He even sacrificed on their behalf lest they should fall into sin. A significant part of the wretchedness of his state throughout the book is the fact of his children’s destruction. Having a great deal more children and servants later does not redeem him or the families of the slain servants from their loss. And then there is the appalling suggestion of a just ending for those who have, themselves, been destroyed. Would you think if God were to kill you for no fault of your own, that if God then gave someone else to your loved ones, it made up for your own destruction? Would you consider it a fair trade if your existence was replaced with someone else’s at merely the whim of the deity? Surely no one other than the suicidal and the depressed would even consider that a valid suggestion. And to think that great riches far exceeding the riches Job had before are any type of consolation to someone who has gone through these sorts of things is utterly pathetic. Only someone who believes that love and happiness have a cash value would give it any thought.
Second, no one should be fooled into thinking that Job does not turn his face against God and condemn God for his situation and for God’s injustice. He does not curse God like his wife says he should and like the satan had wagered he would, but his complaints and arguments against God are bitter, strong, and blasphemous. He says that God judges mankind too harshly or makes too much of mankind’s sin and fallibility. Why should an All-mighty God need to cause such suffering to the innocent? He says God perverts justice and covers over the eyes of the judges so that they pass faulty decrees. He says God is capricious and strikes down the sinner and the righteous. He says that if there were anyone who could stand up against God and defend Job, Job would be found innocent—but the fact is that God is both the judge and the accuser and so no one, even if they are in the right, could win their case (though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse
–9:20). He says God is responsible for his own injustice and a great deal of injustice in the world.
Third, there is no afterlife in Job—no justice to be served after death to make up for the injustice in this life. This seems to be something a lot of Christians overlook. They assume that redemption and vindication in resurrection or afterlife is part of the story in Job, but it is not. Job is consistent in his portrayal of the finality of death. A tree that is cut down can rise up again, but not mortals (14:7). An often misunderstood passage, 19:23-26, does not say that Job will rise from the dead or be vindicated at a final judgment in the afterlife. Rather, it says Job knows that some day later in his life, his judgment against God will be proven true and God will be seen to agree with him or be on his side.
In case this happens after he is long dead, he asks that his testimony and witness be written down and preserved since he won’t be. Job 16:19 echoes this whole situation. Job wishes that when he dies, his blood not be covered up by the earth and his outcry not be silenced, so that his witness against God can continue (because he does not continue to witness for himself). Indeed, all this is fulfilled at the end of the book when God appears to Job and confirms Job’s own words. God defends and supports Job’s own argument against God and instead rebukes and condemns Job’s friends
for not speaking correctly about Job or the situation (you [Job’s friends
] have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has
– 42:7). In the narrative portion, with the satan in the heavenly court speaking to God about Job, an afterlife or a resurrection is never mentioned. Throughout their counsel
to Job, his friends never mention an afterlife or a resurrection as a possible way that Job may be vindicated and injustice dealt with. And when God appears to Job in the end, God says nothing about an afterlife where injustice will be dealt with and justice established. The Testament of Job, a Hellenistic document written by someone like myself who was extremely uncomfortable with what Job actually says, has Job rewarded eternally in afterlife for his sufferings, but this is not part of the Hebrew text.
See Rejecting Job – Part 2
