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
Please read A Disclaimer first.
Briefly stated, Categoricalism posits that Yeshua was made by God to represent him–to be the final and complete image, form, appearance, proxy, or avatar of YHWH. Yeshua is thus the category of God, but not ontologically God. Categoricalism takes for granted that YHWH is one person (not three) and that Yeshua is not that person, yet allows for Yeshua to be considered divinity in that he was uniquely chosen by YHWH and made by YHWH to represent him. Thus, to speak of the man Yeshua is to speak of the god YHWH. To follow the man Yeshua is to follow the god YHWH. And to be saved by the man Yeshua is to be saved by the god YHWH.
All this is based around a Hebraic concept that one person can be identified as another without literally or ontologically being the other. A person is understood to stand in the other’s place and be the category of the other (thus, for instance, you have Peter referred to as Satan1, Satan referred to as God2, Moses referred to as God3, and numerous other examples). This is further explained by the concept of agency as we find it even in the earliest Rabbinic halacha, a man’s agent is as himself.
The saying does not speak ontologically, of course, but categorically. The one who is sent is viewed as if he is the other.
A man’s agent is like to himself.
Mishnah, Tractate Berakoth 5:5
In all circumstances do we find that a man’s representative is equivalent to himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nazir 12b
We find in the whole Torah that a man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nedarim 72b
A man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
It is logical that the hand of a slave is as the hand of his master.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
Although the agent remains subordinate to the sender, the agent and sender are considered equal to any third party. The agent has the same rank and authority as the sender. Whatever authority or rank a sender lacks cannot be held by the agent. They are one. So much so that, as the expression goes, when the agent speaks, it is as if the one who sent was speaking.
We need not wonder, therefore, how Yeshua, if only a man, could pronounce verily I say
instead of thus says YHWH,
for if Yeshua is uniquely YHWH’s agent and representative, his words should be considered YHWH’s.
The agent can do all that the sender can do. That which a sender cannot do, the agent cannot. The question, therefore, is not whether a mere man can bring salvation, can receive glory, can be worshiped, or the many other objections people have to Yeshua having divine status without being YHWH himself. The question is, rather, can YHWH bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped? If so, then he can appoint one in his name to bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped, for such is considered done by or to YHWH himself.
If an agent acts or speaks without having identified themselves as being sent or without having identified their sender, then such is considered done on the part of and by the individual themself. However, if an agent does provide this information, the representative nature is understood and such an idea as them claiming something of themselves and for themselves is untenable. If Yeshua were YHWH’s unique agent and representative, we would expect to find a proclamation of Yeshua’s agency and representation in the New Testament. And if we were lucky enough to find Yeshua describing this exact agent/sender relationship as we’ve already explored in terms of himself and God, we would know that Yeshua means for us to understand him in this way and not according to Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union. Surprisingly, the evidence is staggering (unequivocal claims of agency in CAPS):
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me RECEIVES HIM WHO SENT ME.
Matthew 10:40
Finally, HE [YHWH] SENT HIS SON [Yeshua].
Matthew 21:37
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, TO SET AT LIBERTY those who are oppressed.
Luke 4:18
The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me REJECTS HIM WHO SENT ME.
Luke 10:16
My food is TO DO THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME and TO ACCOMPLISH HIS WORK.
John 4:34
I CAN DO NOTHING ON MY OWN. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will BUT THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 5:30
For THE WORKS THAT THE FATHER HAS GIVEN ME TO ACCOMPLISH, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that THE FATHER HAS SENT ME.
John 5:36
So Jesus answered them, MY TEACHING IS NOT MINE, BUT HIS WHO SENT ME.
John 7:16
And Jesus cried out and said, Whoever believes in me, BELIEVES NOT IN ME BUT IN HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 12:44
For I HAVE NOT SPOKEN ON MY OWN AUTHORITY, BUT THE FATHER WHO SENT ME has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
John 12:49
And we have seen and testify that THE FATHER HAS SENT HIS SON TO BE THE SAVIOR of the world.
1 John 4:14
Those are just a sampling. Clearly, Yeshua is portraying himself to be not the literal nature and person of God himself, but is instead specifically using terms which describe himself as the functional representative and agent of God. He does not speak his own words but the words of his sender. He does not do his own deeds but the deeds of his sender. He has no authority other than the authority of his sender. But if they accept him, they accept his sender. If they believe in him, they have belief in his sender. If they know him, they know his sender. Et cetera. And clearly this concept was of primary concern. He even claims that believing himself to be the agent of YHWH is the marker of eternal life!4 To say that Yeshua used specific words again and again that meant one thing to his audience (agency) but really meant something entirely different (Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union) is not only to beg the question, but to make a mockery of the text.
Even in modern times we understand and utilize this concept of agency. No one would be confused if I said I watched and heard President Bush give a speech last night despite the fact that I was not actually in contact with the literal person of President Bush and even though I didn’t actually hear his voice. I watched thousands of flickering points of light on a television monitor and heard sounds created by pulsating speakers. The monitor light and speaker vibration represented Bush and his speech-giving in such a way that I can truthfully say I heard and saw him. In like concept then, YHWH made Yeshua to become his image and glorified him by giving him a name above every other name (his own) without Yeshua ever being God of his own self or being5. Our modern systems of jurisprudence have also incorporated this concept. If I were to appoint a man to marry a woman for me by proxy and she accepted, his vows, his presence, his signature, and his completion of the ceremony would be considered my own. Even if I had never met the woman, we would be legally wed.
Categoricalism has many further advantages. For one, it makes sense of every theophany without turning YHWH into something he isn’t or turning something that isn’t God into him and does so simply without need of complicated and arbitrary theological formulations. It allows one to call the burning bush a form or image of YHWH, the pillar of fire a form or image of YHWH, the Shekinah a form or image of YHWH, and so on and so forth up to Yeshua himself as the final and complete representation without having to delimit divinity. We need not wonder, for example, that all three visitors to Abraham are called by the divine name reserved only for the Father and that all three are worshiped by the Patriarch while simultaneously being called men.6 Likewise, we are not confounded by the messenger who speaks one moment as someone and something other than YHWH and the next, without qualification, as YHWH himself.7 For another, it requires no distortion of scriptural data. So, for instance, the Categoricalist need not create terms like God the Son
in replacement of scriptural ones like Son of God.
And when referring to a scriptural term like Son of God,
the Categoricalist need not define it in a way foreign to the text or its ancient Near Eastern background. Instead of understanding it as speaking of the philosophical makeup of a person’s ontological being or descriptive of their own personal divinity, which is nowhere present in scripture’s use of the term, it defines Son of God as scripture does: generally as either a righteous person or Israel herself and then specifically as Israel’s representative head, Messiah, or King.8 In fact, the idea of divine sonship as applying to the election of a human figurehead was quite common in ancient Syria and Palestine. So, for instance, we find that the kings of Damascus in the ninth century BC were titled “Son of Hadad” (Hadad being another name for the Canaanite god Baal) and at least one Syrian king was called “Son of Rakib” after the god Rakib-El.9
If this were all (and it is not), it would be more than enough for Categoricalism to make better sense of Hebraic perspective, ancient culture, and scriptural text than Trinitarianism. But since this theology is especially hard for Orthodox
Christians, fundamentalists, and proof-texters to accept, I offer up in conclusion a small but powerful list of passages in the New Testament that are not only misleading, but outright contradictory if meant to convey to its readers that Yeshua is and should be known fundamentally as YHWH himself. Instead, these verses literally define and speak of Yeshua as something other.
He is the IMAGE [not the actual person or literal divine being] of the invisible God.
Colossians 1:15
He is the REFLECTION of God’s glory [instead of the source or origin] and the REPRESENTATION of God’s being. [instead of God’s being, essence, or nature itself]
Hebrews 1:3
who existing in the FORM of God . . . [instead of the person or literal being of God]
Philippians 2:6
who is the IMAGE of God. [instead of the person or literal being of God]
2 Corinthians 4:4
I have undertaken in the next post to describe the fundamental propositions of a new theology to stand in replacement of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union (as well as their various so-called heretical offshoots). The formulation of this theology was necessitated by an unsought-for and unwanted realization of two supremely undesirable situations: firstly, the complete failure of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union to make sense of scriptural text, to properly align with a non-Hellenistic, ancient Jewish world-view, and to maintain rational coherence or consistency, and secondly, the absolute and unassailable position to which this doctrine has been glorified above every essential aspect of Christian faith. In other words, I did not seek from some pedestal of pride and rebellion to cast Trinitarianism down from a worthy place. Rather, having found the pedestal on which Trinitarianism resided so weak and it’s fall so great that it crushed all dependence I had set upon it, I was forced, like a fish thrust out of water, to wriggle and writhe in search of something that could rescue me from devastation. Those who have not similarly been betrayed will, of course, find little reason for replacing their theology with this new one, but it is not my purpose to show the utter frailty of that foundation (I am quite confident that unless the theology remains critically unexamined, it will eventually fail them as well). In the following post, I hope to lay out a new theological position based on historical world-view and scriptural text which, I believe, give better answers and a better theological foundation for the identity and person of Yeshua in terms of YHWH than Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union can provide. At some later point in time, I hope to augment this description with the analysis of various textual narratives, which will better show how this new theological position makes better sense of the evidence. But before the evidence can be shown and the texts examined, the idea must be presented.
Proceed to An Introduction To Categoricalism.
It may be a surprise for some to learn that in ancient Hebraic texts, Yeshua was neither the first nor last to be called the Son of God (or even the first-born Son of God). It appears that the collected tribes of Jacob, Israel herself, was the first to gain this distinction.
Thus says YHWH, Israel is my Son, my first-born.
Exodus 4:22
Referring back to this event, a prophet says in the name of YHWH:
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my Son.
Hosea 11:1
In Joseph and Aseneth, a Jewish romance and missionary novel dated sometime, perhaps, in the first century of the common era, Joseph is referred to three times as the Son of God—twice by his bride-to-be (Aseneth) and once by Pharaoh.
And how will Joseph, the Son of God, regard me, for I have spoken evil of him? …I spoke evil of him and did not know that Joseph is the Son of God.
Joseph and Aseneth 6:2, 6
And Pharaoh was astonished at her beauty and said, “The Lord will bless you [Aseneth], the God of Joseph, who has chosen you to be his bride, for he [Joseph] is the first-born Son of God…
Joseph and Aseneth 21:3
This is by no means a complete listing of such occurrences, but it serves to show that this term has been abused in some theological circles by injecting it with all sorts of meanings incompatible with its ancient usage. Son of God
no more refers to divinity or third person of the Trinity when speaking of Yeshua than it does when descriptive of the nation of Israel or Joseph. As it has been noted by many others, Son of God
is a functional title, not the ontological description of a person’s being.
