Tim Murray writes: Philippians 2.6-11 (often known as the ‘Philippian Christ Hymn’) is one of the most important texts in the New Testament for our Christology. It seems to speak of the pre-existence of Jesus being “in the form of God”, who did not count this as “something to be grasped/held on to/exploited” but instead “emptying himself/making himself nothing” (kenotic theology anyone?), taking the downward journey towards crucifixion, as a result of which God exalted him, bestowing on him the name above all names (which is what?) and ultimately securing for him universal worship.
As my slashes show, this text is also notoriously difficult to translate, especially verse 6 and 7a, because of rare vocabulary and unusual grammatical constructions. Given both the theological significance of this text and its exegetical challenges it is no surprise that it has attracted a lot of scholarly attention over the years. So much, in fact, that one may well wonder if there is really anything new to say about this text or any way to move beyond the cluster of reasonably well established interpretive options that have emerged over the last hundred years.
Enter Crispin Fletcher Louis (CFL) with his 900 page The Divine Heartset: Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn, Metaphysical Affections, and Civic Virtues (Wipf and Stock 2023), an exhaustive study of this text, representing at least four monographs-worth of scholarship, that has taken him over a decade to write. There are not many scholarly works that convince me we need to retranslate our Bibles and immediately change my preaching, but this is one of them.
‘The form of a god’ not ‘the form of God’—what story is the Christ Hymn telling?
Whenever we are trying to work out what the author of an ancient text was trying to say, we must always account for who it is they are writing to and what the original recipients would likely have understood the original author to be saying, (which requires understanding the world they lived in, the way they used their language, etc.). One of the most convincing and important of CFL’s arguments is that the Christ Hymn reflects the language and narrative shape of a common kind of story in the Greco-Roman world: the self-transformations of the pagan gods. These metamorphoses were popular stories (everyone would have known, for example, the story of Zeus’s transforming himself into the form of a man in order to bed Alcmene and conceive Heracles), in which one of two things usually happened—either a god self-transformed or a god transformed a human into a different form.
CFL points out that when the Philippian church would have read about the form (morphē), likeness (omoiōma), appearance (schema) and becoming (ginomai) of Jesus—a story of a divine figure who takes human form, whose true identity is hidden and then revealed—they would find themselves wading in the typical language and narrative world of pagan divine-transformation narratives. For CFL, Philippians 3.20-21 is also part of the Christ Hymn, which describes the future transformation of humans, thus reflecting the other kind of divine-transformation common in such stories. If this is true, (and I for one am convinced), then the “primary narrative” of the Christ Hymn is a telling of the gospel of what Jesus has done, in the language and mode of pagan divine metamorphoses. Of course, CFL is not claiming that Paul presents Jesus as just another god, but rather that he uses and transforms this tradition to explain Jesus in ways that are familiar to his audience, whilst also subverting the tradition to demonstrate how Jesus differs from the pagan deities.
‘God-equal mode of being’ and ‘bridenapping’: changing my preaching on the incarnation
Once this is established as the primary narrative of the hymn, then we have a fresh angle with which to approach the notorious exegetical problems of verse 6. In chapter 4 CFL argues that the phrase to einai isa theōi which we usually translate “equal with God” or “equality with God” (denoting a divine status for Jesus) cannot be translated in these ways, because that takes the phrase isa theōi to have an adjectival meaning, but it is not an adjectival phrase, it is adverbial. His point is supported by a comprehensive analysis of god-equality language: what emerges from the linguistic minutia is that ancient authors had a range of options to write about god-equality and different ways of doing so were chosen for particular reasons. Philippians 2.6 is no exception. If Paul (or the hymn’s original author) had wanted to say “equal with God” (adjectival) there were common and obvious ways to do it, but instead he chose to write “in a manner equal with God” (adverbial).
So what was it that Jesus was/did that was in a God-equal manner? Here, in chapter 5 CFL supplies the answer—he was. He existed. Or, in platonic terms, “BEING in a manner equal with God”. If on a popular level divine self-transformation was a commonplace, for the philosophers it was unthinkable; the divine was unchanging “being” whereas everything else was mutable “becoming”. Thus, for the more educated Philippians, CFL argues that Paul deliberately describes the self-transformation of the incarnation in platonic terms to claim that in Jesus, divine being has, in fact, become. Paul thus argues for a new metaphysic where the nature of divine being is not one of separation and distance from the world but one where the divine chooses self-transformation out of love.
In the pagan stories, a common reason for divine self-transformation was in order to have sex with mortals, which CFL argues is the primary referent of the word harpagmos (bridenapping). Again his argument is supported by compelling lexical work and makes sense given the hymn’s primary narrative. If Jesus was in the form of a god (and therefore capable of self-transformation), and if he possessed being in a God-equal manner, then he chose to take the form of a man, not in order for sexual pleasure, like so many of the pagan gods, but in order to offer a different kind of love and union to humanity.
If you are reading this and feel like your head is spinning a little, then you are not alone! I found CFL’s arguments in these early chapters entirely compelling in their comprehensive lexical work, careful textual analysis and coherence (given his proposal about the hymn’s primary narrative); but if he is right I quickly realised that not only do our usual translations of verse 6 need changing, but so did my upcoming sermon on the incarnation! To my great delight, it turned out that the new way I was reading this text took me to rich theological pastures: seeing more clearly that the opening of verse six is causal “because he was in the form of God/a god” and reading to einai isa theōi as “being in a manner equal to God”, led to reflection on the incarnation as revealing the divine mode-of-being as self-giving love, which offers both some kind of summary of the gospel (looking back to 1.27) and the anchor of Paul’s pastoral instruction (e.g., 2.5).
Strengths of Heartset
I cannot continue to summarise the positions CFL takes and arguments he makes (he himself has done that on his website), but have done so for chapters 3–6 in part to try and illustrate the importance of this book and in part because, in my view, this is where CFL’s most significant contributions lie. Aside from specific arguments, I’m grateful to CFL for demonstrating the necessity of wrestling with the Greco-Roman world in interpreting the New Testament, a point that is well established in scholarship but still a struggle to communicate to the pastorate: it is still common to find New Testament texts explained “in their Jewish context” without similar attention to their Greco-Roman context; Heartset shows (again) the necessity of engaging with both. I’m also grateful for his discussion of empathy and the way in which this highlights the affective elements both of Paul’s letter and of human beings in general (!)—so often biblical scholarship or historical work proceeds with little allowance for the affective realities of life (what this shows about the typical personality type of the guild I decline to infer), but CFL puts his shoulder to the wheel in recovering what should be more obvious.
Amongst the many other strengths of the book I would particularly highlight the careful lexical work throughout (in addition to points already mentioned, I was convinced by his reading of eritheia in 2.3 as ‘corrupt practices’) and its systematic approach and careful interaction with existing scholarship—regularly offering comprehensive and helpful surveys of the field. Moreover, CFL is happy to adopt existing positions (and sometimes strengthen them)—there is no pretence of complete novelty. The result of these strengths is that Heartset now serves both as a starting point for future work (in part because of its surveys of existing scholarship) and an unavoidable conversation partner.
Finally, I want to record my respect for CFL in what this work has required of him personally. As my own conversations with Crispin have shown me, and as he speaks about in the preface, he has shown the humility to change his mind in his reading of the hymn. This is no small matter, for as he says, “exegetical judgements intertwine[] with hermeneutical commitments, values, desires…”). Thus, his scholarly labour has intertwined with personal discipleship. This is how it should be, but often isn’t—but it has been for Crispin. It must also be said that several of the years spent working on the book were as an independent scholar; thus, he had to write about cultures of honour, glory and status in the ancient world whilst experiencing the status and honour challenges that not holding a university post can bring in contemporary academia. And yet, I cannot help wondering, given the output pressures of a university post, would Heartset have had the time to mature to become all that it is if Crispin hadn’t been independent?
Weaknesses and objections
Having been clear about how highly I think of this book, I must be similarly candid about where I remain unconvinced. Simply put, it seems to me that CFL is a maximalist, and several major weaknesses stem from that disposition. CFL is brilliant in picking up the possible significance, meaning or allusion of any particular word or phrase, but this can regularly cross over into seeing almost every possible kind of meaning or allusion in every word or phrase. One example that sticks in the memory is where CFL argues that the phrase to einai isa theōi would have brought to mind a Greek wedding song, composed by Sappho (which we have only a fragment of), in which the groom is described as “equal to Ares” (isos Areui). But as CFL himself notes:
We do not know how often this Sapphic song was heard in the first century and there is no explicit linguistic allusion to it in Phil 2. Nevertheless, given the frequency with which Paul’s audience would have attended weddings and, so, may have heard Sappho’s processional song, some may have made a connection between Christ’s coming from heaven to earth and the climactic arrival of the god-equal groom at a wedding.
Really? I think that very unlikely given we have no idea whether this fragment represents anything that was used with any regularity anywhere in the first century. Moreover, the similarities between the texts are not strong enough to convince me that anyone would naturally think of one when hearing the other. That is just one example of the kind of maximalist reading which abounds in Heartset, but highly speculative arguments like this obscure better ones and CFL’s book would be stronger without them.
Similarly, the maximalist instinct leads CFL to find multiple meanings in texts where we might more naturally choose between alternative readings. For example, is it really possible to understand en morphē theou as both “in the form of a god” (in which the emphasis is that Jesus, as divine, has the power to self-transform—chapter 3, especially, for example, 160) and as “in the form of GOD” (in which the emphasis is that Jesus is incorporated into the divine identity of YHWH—for example on page 832)? CFL would have it that both meanings are not only present but carry the full significance he draws out for each reading.
One may reasonably object, then, how often CFL’s arguments extend beyond the evidence (just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it is probable), but the most significant weakness in his maximalist reading is the kind of Philippian reader that ends up being required to make sense of the letter. In reading Heartset one gets the impression that it’s really quite difficult to understand the ‘surface meaning’ of the text and then even harder to get beyond this surface meaning to the profundities beyond. One particular example of this is in CFL’s interpretation of Paul’s boasting in chapter 3, where he argues that Paul’s boasts are deliberately perverse, where he presents an illustration of the prevailing honour-culture he wants to undermine. For this interpretation to work, CFL has to make some highly questionable translation decisions (so, for example, ekklēsia in 3.6 does not refer to the church) and has to claim that:
Paul is deliberately working creative mischief with his usual way of speaking, for the sake of pointed tragedy… In Philippians Paul is confused. And that is the heart of it: he wants to seem confused, and confusing. His readers in Philippi are invited to hear him several ways and, perhaps also, to oscillate themselves betwixt his senseless and tragic meanings (732).
I just don’t find this plausible. I think Paul expected his readers in Philippi to understand what he was saying without spending eleven years thinking about it—and the kind of reading CFL proposes here seems so obscure that it would take about that long to come up with.
This critique needs to be made clear, because I think it is the biggest weakness in Heartset: how many of Paul’s Philippian readers would have been immersed in the polytheistic myths of the Greco-Roman world, have a reasonable grasp of platonic philosophical discourse, familiar with poetic and theatrical literature—not just Homer, but Sappho, the dramatists and the comedians (at the level of picking up on verbal/grammatical allusions and parallels, not just basic ideas), whilst also having a very good grasp of the Hebrew scriptures and the rudiments of Jewish theology? CFL is familiar with all of this, but he is a brilliant scholar who has spend much of his life in these texts. The Philippians were not. Most people were familiar with the stories of the gods and bits of Plato; perhaps some basic philosophical ideas and debates may have been fairly commonplace… but my reading of the evidence is that the philosophical schools or associations of the ancient world were largely populated by rich elites and we have little way of knowing how much philosophy your average Philippian citizen would have come across.
Similarly, I am amongst the more optimistic scholars about the number of people who were literate and familiar with texts in the ancient world, but I have serious doubts that most Philippian readers would pick up on the kind of verbal allusions and grammatical details that CFL considers necessary to really understand what Paul is saying. To put the objection simply: sometimes CFL’s interpretation of Philippians requires a degree of complexity and specialist knowledge that seems to put it beyond the reach of most people (ancient and modern): is it plausible not only for Paul to mean everything CFL wants him to signify, but for the letters readers to have ears to hear…
Of course in any book this long, every reader will find some arguments more plausible than others. I’ve already indicated some of the arguments/sections that leave me unconvinced; one final example would be CFL’s reading of 2.4, for which he offers a corporate rather than individual reading, so that Paul’s exhortation is that the Philippians should avoid preferring the interests of their social/political group. Here, unusually, CFL offers more assertion than argument and his reading seems difficult to hold with the immediate context, where Paul’s instructions only make sense if they refer to the internal dynamics of the community: in 2.2 he appeals for them to “be of one mind” with one another – surely an appeal to individuals in the church (for Paul would not ask the Philippians to be of one mind with the world beyond the church)… but if this is the case, then why should 2.4 not also naturally be taken to refer primarily to life within the Philippian community?
One final objection—Heartset is simply too long. I have said that one of its strengths is its comprehensive and systematic approach, but this is not the only reason for its length and I reckon a third of the book could be cut with no substantial loss (the worst culprit is chapter 11, which stands at 172 pages). CFL is not concise, partly, I think, because he wants to make sure he is understood. I can understand this desire, but in exhaustive explanation runs the risk of drowning or boring the reader; there is a lot of repetition and an unnecessary amount of self-referential material. At the very least it should have been possible to put the less important arguments and digressions in smaller text so they can easily be skipped. I wonder if a robust and assertive editor could have significantly improved Heartset and its accessibility; I wonder if a 200 page digest is necessary if CFL wants his arguments to have as wide a readership as possible.
A significant achievement
I must finish by making sure that I also am not misunderstood. I register these objections and criticisms to a work of scholarship that deserves robust engagement because it is so important. It has convinced me to retranslate parts of Philippians. It has changed my preaching. Serious scholars of Philippians will have to read it. I doubt anyone will agree with all of it, but all of us will learn much from it.
Crispin—well done, and thank you.
Dr Tim Murray gained his PhD in New Testament from Nottingham University before becoming one of the pastors at Amblecote Community Church in Dudley. He continues his academic teaching and research alongside work in the local church, including being on the leadership team of the Tyndale New Testament Study Group.
The book is too long. The article is too long fory phone and having skimmed a little, one comment on the adjective/verb aspect is that it dovetails with the I am of the Shechina Glory alongside the I ams of Jesus in John.
Jesus as the incarnate I am. Not a mere local deity of polytheism as found in Egypt, let alone Greek/Rome.
Doesn’t Christian theology, study, begin and end with doxology?
Does the book tether the passage in the OT.
This may help.
I am, who I am, text and short podcast.
“I Am Who I Am” from Ligonier Ministries https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts/things-unseen-with-sinclair-ferguson/i-am-who-i-am
The enormity of God, none Greater.
Geoff,
I read it all! Whilst simultaneously listening to Desert Island Disks.
To be sensitive to one’s audience and then be creative by giving old tropes a new twist, seems to be what’s required.
How long have you been listening to Desert Island disks, Steve? All year? You have been missing in inaction, too long. Multi-tasking elsewhere, methinks, while out on the streets.
Geoff,
Only sometimes out on the street, though I was there on Saturday. It’s the best place to try and do what Paul did. This post explains what Paul’s method was. I like it.
I still read but don’t feel the need to comment.
I would advise against reading on your phone!
So would I.
What did Christ empty himself of?
Not of his deity, but of his ( pre incarnation – John 17) glory: made himself of no reputation. New Bible Commentary, brackets are mine.
Im not sure about ’emptying’ but it seems he, or the Father, chose to limit himself as a human being. I suspect by the very nature of things, that was an inevitability. He said himself he didnt know when he would be returning, a piece of information the Father withheld from the human Son.
Many years ago there was a great article about what ’emptying’ means by Charlie Moule in ‘Christ, faith and history,’ edited by Stephen Sykes. From memory I think he said that it wasn’t some attribute or power that Christ gave up but that he was a non-grasping, non-assertive person who revealed that that was the character of Divinity.
Tim, yes, “a non-grasping, non-assertive person” who lovingly self sacrificed Himself in service of His Father’s Love and Will to redeem and raise mankind.
Anton, it depends on who you ask!
Kenosis, as I understand it, doesn’t imply that Christ gave up or lost His Divine nature and attributes. The baby Jesus was at the same time truly the Sovereign creator. The “emptying” of Christ then is is a lessening of his Glory, a “hiding” of His Divinity from human perception (maybe even, to different degrees and at different times, from the perception of His own human nature).
Some other Trinitarians hold that whilst Christ transmitted His Divine properties to His assumed humanity, but He did not use them (except occasionally in private, like the Transfiguration). According to others, the Word in His Incarnation stripped Himself of certain Divine attributes by a “self-limitation” – essentially a limited ‘Divinity’ while He was human.
So, 1) He either hide His Divinity, or 2) did not use His Divinity, or 3) His Incarnation involved a limited Divinity.
I’m sure thee are others!
Length is not bad simply in respect to patience for the average reader. It is bad for cost. I do not have the ~£60-£80 required to purchase a copy, and would struggle to justify it on expenses for a few verses in Philippians. I got enough pushback ordering a NICNT commentary.
Perhaps CFL needs to do a ‘Tom Wright’, and publish a common-reception version of this, maybe under the name ‘Crispy L’?
Fascinating stuff though. Much appreciation for the review.
Mat
‘Crispy L’ sounds excellent!
“In the pagan stories, a common reason for divine self-transformation was in order to have sex with mortals” — but of course this is the precise story of the Genesis 6:1-4 “sons of God”.
I realise in Protestant orthodoxy this is not the way it has been seen — but the overwhelming evidence now in the academy (even in Reformed circles) is that Genesis 6 is a reference to fallen angels taking human form and fathering children with human women.
The most detailed analysis I believe is in this published PhD:
Doedens, Jaap. The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4: Analysis and History of Exegesis. Oudtestamentische Studiën 76. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
In light of this, I would be amazed if Paul, a ‘Hebrew of a Hebrews’ had Greek mythology in mind rather than the biblical account?
Ian,
You say “I’m grateful to CFL for demonstrating the necessity of wrestling with the Greco-Roman world in interpreting the NT.”
I am not saying that this can be ignored, but the first appeal, many now would argue, should be to the OT understanding. I thought the academy was moving away from looking first to a Graeco-Roman view? I am just reading Richard Hayes’ Echoes of Scriptures of Scripture in the Gospels — a follow on to his ‘Echoes in the Letters of Paul’ — and it is amazing the depth of connection between the NT and the OT. I am sure he would suggest we go to the OT first?
You have read the study — if the reference was to the Genesis 6 event, would it make any difference to the thesis?
And the understanding that the Genesis 6:1-4 “sons of God” is about fallen angels is the basis of ths recently published PhD as below. I wonder how long Protestant orthodoxy can continue to simply ignore these studies coming out of evangelical biblical scholarship?
Stewart, Tyler A. The Origin and Persistence of Evil in Galatians. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Alten und Neuen Testament 2 Reihe 566. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022.
To see what a Hebrew Bible scholar, Peter Gentry (Senior Professor Emeritus, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) makes of Genesis 6:1–4 see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKtHwc3mMY8&ab_channel=SouthernSeminary
Colin, some ancient writers have speculated that the “sons of God” may have been fallen angels, given that Nephilim, their offspring, can mean “fallen ones” too. There never has been a unified view from Christian or Jewish tradition. Jewish views on this passage in Genesis rely heavily on the apocryphal – non-canonical – Books of Enoch.
Enoch (especially the ‘Book of the Watchers’ and the ‘Book of Parables’) may have been what Paul had in mind as it squares with Greco-Roman mythologies too. Authors of the New Testament were familiar with some content of Enoch as a short section of 1 Enoch is cited in Jude 1 and references to it are in Hebrews.
However, like the Greco-Roman myths, I doubt Paul was endorsing any idea that Christ was a pre-existent, created, angelic creature who took human form to wage war as God’s emissary on earth. The 1st and 2nd Books of Enoch, if taken seriously, presents an alternate ‘gospel’ and account of human sinfulness, its destruction and redemption.
Angels, of course, do not have corporeal bodies necessary for human procreation. Accepting the premise of Greco-Roman and Jewish mythology means we must accept that God is singular – not Trinity – and that these quasi-divine, pre-existent, created creatures were capable through their own power of taking human form for evil purposes, and that their physical off-spring were responsible for evil in the world.
‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ has several parallels with Genesis 6:1-4. The narrative of Genesis draws on other, earlier sources. It was inspired – but not literally true. It draws on Yahwist and the Elohist sources.
As Divinely inspired by God, the real question then is: what is this text truly saying? It includes none of the mythology of Gilgamesh or Enoch. What it does is reflect a shift from polytheistic religions to a monotheistic religion of one God. The juxtaposition of sons of God with wickedness and then destruction through the flood is the way to tear down that old myths. It’s meaning is subversive; these men who sought to make their names great were actually wicked. These relations with the daughters of men point to wickedness on their part; they took what they wanted. This results in the birth of these new hybrids who follow in the footsteps of their fathers and take what they want too.
The point being that the Nephilim were fallen ones, descendants of angels or not, and had fallen into decadence. Hence the Flood.
Ian didnt write this posting, Tim Murray did.
I dont see why Paul would automatically go to possible OT references first. We all live in a specific cultural time, Paul was no different. Given his letters were written to probably predominantly Gentile believers (or at least mixed churches), he would have used current ideas and cultural backgrounds to make his points, not necessarily the OT.
Even if you are correct re ‘sons of God’, I dont view that as literal truth – spiritual beings literally having sex with human women and producing offspring. That is one of the many mythical elements of Genesis. And the OT also reflected its own specific cultures in which it was written.
Do you view it as metaphorical truth? Or as what sort of truth? I notice that you qualify by using the word ‘literal’, rather than using the word ‘falsehood’.
I dont believe, for example, that the universe was created in literally 6 days, even though that’s what the text says. That is what I mean by literal.
From that, one cannot understand your meaning at all. My question was about ‘metaphorical’. Which number of days is 6 metaphorically? Is the claim a metaphorical claim, and if so, what does the word metaphorical mean? How does one decide which things are metaphorically true? Will there be agreement on that? What does ‘metaphorically true’ mean? Why is nothing ever allowed to be false?
Christopher, exactly the right questions. Genesis is either true or it is false and one should not duck the issue by saying that Genesis is ‘poetic’ or ‘metaphorical’, even assuming one knows what those words mean. For an example of metaphorical language one might go to Jer 32:17,
“Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm!”
God is metaphorically depicted as a mighty man. But the statement is still a factual one, conveying that God and not natural laws/properties created the universe. Like Jesus himself, the prophet understood Genesis literally. A few verses later he says:
“You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and outstretched arm.”
Following Colin Humphreys, I think the signs and wonders of the ten plagues were natural events. Nonetheless, they were manifestly short-lived demonstrations of divine power.
If the Creation is conceived as lasting 13.7 billion years, then so should the Exodus be.
“Why is nothing ever allowed to be false?”
Who says that? Clearly a talking snake is false. But that doesn’t mean tge narrative around that has no meaning.
The question is ‘what did the writers understand and believe
when they wrote the narrative that made them express themselves in the way that they did?’
That is the only emotionally intelligent question. The binary question of true/false is meaningless when it comes to understanding these texts.
Break it down into different assertions, and each will be true or false.
The point is simply that for a given text people should not have two options: literally true, metaphorically true. In the real world, most possible assertions, by far, are false.
At the end of any discourse we have to do a Duckworth-Lewis adjustment of all our results to take account of emotional intelligence. So for everything that is said, EI adjusts it 15-20 percent; if, for example, the end result was the number 6, EI would adjust it to 4.5.
Steven Robinson, you say ‘Genesis is either true or false.’. Not true. Each assertion in Genesis (once we have established the genre) can be tested for truth or falsehood. And we do not always have the tools to come to a definite conclusion. There are many assertions, so why would the answer be the same in the case of all of them?
Christopher, to answer your question, Genesis 1-2 is either all true or all false because the only basis on which it can be true is that God was the source of its assertions. If man was the source, then it is most certainly not true, but mere speculation, which – like the modern cosmogony which attempts to supplant it – is bound to be hopelessly wrong.
I don’t set much store by that answer, because it is at an incredibly generalised level. There’s any number of assertions, but you just say ‘0% or 100%’.
That would be bad enough but the lack of piecemeal analysis makes it worse.
And what makes it even worse than that is how unlikely it is. Most writers aim to be true, and consequently end up saying true things. Mostly truth can be hard to obtain, so that many writers striving for truth fail to an extent. None of that is anywhere near all-or-nothing, and that is even before we get onto genre. Genesis looks to me to be an aetiology far more than it is anything else – the aetiological element not only recurs but also is ubiqiuitous. An aetiology framed by a 7fold genealogy.
‘ubiquitous’
PC1 – it took the early Church 400 years to finally resolve its Christology through a slow process of Scripture study, prayer, theological argumentation, and deciding what was orthodox, heterodox and heretical. How do you think a newly formed church of Christians, steeped in Greco-Roman mythology handled this?
‘I’ don’t say anything. I didn’t write this.
Any letter writer wants his message to be understood. Therefore Paul would have expected most or all of his Philippian readers to have clearly understood what he had written in his letter to them, knowing that it may very well be circulated to various church gatherings. The deliverer of the letter would have read and explained anything people werent clear about. Obscure meanings are highly unlikely in that context. This book may add something to the standard understanding, but not much I think.
Hi PC1,
You say, “The deliverer of the letter would have read and explained anything people werent clear about.”
But that rather negates the point you are making?
The author of any such letter presumably thought that his readers would either intrinsically understand it from their present context — or as you say, that it would be explained by the bearer of the letter.
Although much study has been put into the original context of Scripture, it is still a work in progress, and thus might remain obscure to us.
my point is you shouldnt have to read book upon book to understand a letter. OT refs for example may have to be clarified to Gentile hearers.
Apologies for ascribing comments in the article to Ian, not Tim Murray — but I am surprised that Ian published the article without commenting on that, or the potential problem in the study ascribing to Greek mythology what is clearly taught in Scripture.
And if I am allowed another comment — I note Crispin Fletcher Louis was a founder of Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) — and of course the Genesis 6 ‘sons of god’ understanding does not reflect the ‘Westminster’ (Presbyterian) demythologised (Augustinian) worldview.
And I suggest this is a problem for sincere believers who think (like me when I first entered the academy) that they are reading a work of scholarship that is studying the text ‘as is’ – but in fact it is subject to a systematic (historical) paradigmatic framework — in this case as declared in the WTC basis of faith: “Westminster follows in the footsteps of the great Reformed theologians: John Calvin, Herman Bavinck, and Geerhardus Vos.” Calvin knew little of the background to the Genesis 6 story and simply followed Augustine.
To my mind, if CFL did not recognise the possibility of an allusion to this phenomenally well-known OT story, it would invalidate his study. Not because it would necessarily change the outcome of his study, but his ignorance of this would, for me, question his credentials as a biblical scholar — which is not synonymous with being a NT Greek linguist.
And to come to a point that Michael Heiser (one time ‘scholar in residence’ at Logos Software) made: What do we think people working on research-based biblical theology PhDs are doing? It is 75 years since the last of this ‘Westminster’ trio died (Calvin, Bavinck, Vos).
There have been literally thousands of such PhDs since then — many with a focus on the original context of the biblical text. Can they all be safely ignored? Would any other academic discipline be accepted as such in any other field of endeavour?
High horses, high hobby horses ‘spurred’ into self indignant action Colin, it seems to me.
The work may be correctly critiqued if it does not sufficiently root in the OT, without corralling your received categorical fallacies.
Colin,
What I’ve not picked up, if there is an underlying, undisclosed, presupposition influence of WCF, and all, on the book is any allusion to the name of God, I AM which the name of the covenant making, covenant keeping God. That certainly seems to be substantially remiss from a WCF position and the wouldn’t support your condentious criticisms.
The author of the review, Tim, writes that it is a book that convinces of the ‘need to retranslate our Bibles.’
It is what the Bible says, which precedes hermeneutics. But 900 pages and ten years to say what the Scripture says on this passage over eggs the pudding from within the scholars guild. And if it is primarily a matter of translation, your criticisms and mine are wide of the mark.
Geoff,
“What I’ve not picked up, if there is an underlying, undisclosed, presupposition influence of WCF… ”
Augustine ridiculed the early church understanding of Genesis 6 and Calvin specifically endorsed Augustine on this. If CFL had endorsed a fallen angels understanding he would have been specifically contradicting the Calvinistic basis of the academic institution he helped found.
This is not a small point — Augustine was a deliberate and self-conscious demythologiser and Reformed theology in particular has followed that path on a range of Scripture texts.
It is interesting that the Southern Baptist seminary where Peter Gentry used to teach (see above YouTube video) has avoided an overtly Reformed Confession of faith.
There never was a unified “early church understanding of Genesis 6.” And much of Augustine’s analyse is not accepted by subsequent theologians, East and West, as his understanding of “original sin” and human “depravity” was, let’s say, limited.
The ‘Westminster’ in the centre title is the place in London, not the ‘place’ within Christian theology.
Of course! But surely an intentional illusion to their theology demonstrated by the three scholars they cite. As you know, Presbyterianism is specifically based on Calvin.
Otherwise, it would be like having a seminary on Baptist Road and calling it The Baptist College, but suggesting you don’t embrace Baptist theology?
… and in their statement of faith citing Charles Spurgeon!
Michael Heiser argues that Christ was incarnate precisely because of the incarnation of the fallen angels in Genesis 6, and the offspring they produced. Certainly, the incarnate Christ via the virgin Mary seems a precise, albeit strange, mirror image.
If so, if Crispin Fletcher Louis does not reference Genesis 6 — he is surely missing a key point in Paul’s allusion?
And to come back to context — Second Temple Judaism, in particular the book of Enoch, has a focus on Genesis 6 and the incursion of the fallen angels (the Watchers) — as the book is quoted in the NT it is not impossible to imagine that the Philippians would have known about it.
Colin,
Let what you have written really sink in, with a self critique. Imagination. Imagine that from a scholar, the only imagination, imaginative opinion that carries weight as. corroborative evidence!
It’s far from the first time you’ve mentioned. Heisler and sons of God and it is far from new even to this layman.
Of greater concern to me in the context would be no allusion to the covenanting God, Yahweh, I Am by the author and perhaps no direct reference by you. And the fact that he doesn’t somewhat undermines your contention that he was swayed by his theology, just as where you center your comment shows to me that you are swayed, driven even, by your pre-existing theology, received as it is.
You’ve gone off on one Colin undermining any claim you make on the contents of the book, which you haven’t read and can not cite in support of denunciation WCF, Calvin, Augustine, fallacies.
I’d agree your earlier points about rooting in the OT and Hays, Reading Backwards, but your illustration of sons of God, is but one and lacks balance by ignoring even more substantial OT Biblical theological passages, themes, patterns, types, shadows, themes.
Having literally just finished my essay on Philippians 2:1-11 for my LLM course, I’m not sure I dare read this…
Oh go on!
That was supposed to have a smiley face on it!
It seems they are not allowed on this blog. 🙂
This is really interesting. I wonder if the understanding in the book impinges on our understanding of the Trinity?
Of course it does. It’s a denial of the Trinity towards the Arianism expousd by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I am sure many on this blog think this has been an arcane and obscure conversation and simply do not ‘get it’.
But seemingly the first generation of church ‘fathers’ embraced the view that the cross was a victory against the powers of darkness and evil — and specifically against the fallen angels (as in Genesis 3 and 6).
And although the later Augustine (d. 430) opposed such concepts, Gustaf Aulén in his 1931 book Christus Victor, argues that this was the dominant view until the (Roman Catholic) Archbishop of Canterbury Anselm (d. 1109) — when the focus switched to a ‘satisfaction’ for sins and a perceived problematic relationship for humanity with Adam. Rome followed Anselm and the Reformers did not challenge it.
Our story became not a fall of Satan (as Scripture describes) but a fall of Adam. Aulén’s Christus Victor analysis was endorsed by David Ford, at the time Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
And that is where we are today. The ‘Adamic template’ is hugely invested in statements of faith, infrastructure, churches and seminaries, and the associated salaries that go with it.
But it seems an undeniable fact that academic evangelical biblical theology is progressively recovering that original perspective — I have cited just two recent PhD’s on this blog as above.
And it is a significant theological gap. Christus Victor sees that the bifurcation of humanity is outlined in Eden — in the two trees and the two seeds — the ‘seed of Satan’ and the ‘seed of the woman’, i.e. Christ — seemingly confirmed by Jesus’ comment in John 8:44 and the specific teaching in 1 John 3:8–10. And of course, the famous Ephesians 6 ‘armour’ — is for the enemy without, not the enemy within (a ‘sinful nature’).
And scattered throughout the NT, where Farrar and Williams show that Satan is mentioned in the NT at least 137 times, by every NT author, and ‘topically’ (that is, when Satan is the subject of the discourse) in 14 out of the 27 books (Thomas J. Farrar and Guy J. Williams, “Talk of the Devil: Unpacking the Language of New Testament Satanology,” JSNT 39 (1) (2016): 79‒96).
And of course, this is the focus of Second Temple Judaism.
But, for Reformed theology, the bifurcation is between Adam and Christ — we are locked in an Adamic sinful nature and his imputed sin/guilt. This concept is certainly not found in the OT (e.g. Deut 24:16). And as regards the NT it is based almost entirely on Romans 5: 12–21 — which even the two most stalwart evangelical Reformed commentators on Romans — Douglas Moo and Thomas Schreiner have recently called into question (I suggest it is no coincidence that they are both in their 70s, with presumably secure pensions, and the wisdom of age and mature reflection).
This is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater — it is Adamic anthropology and the concept of ‘Total Depravity’ that is being challenged (no problem with the ‘ULIP’ of ‘TULIP’) — but an Adamic ‘fallen nature’ is supported by a remarkably scant evidence in Scripture despite the fervent adherence to the concept.
Thanks James.
Your point 4 would represent a refutation of Colin Hamers comments, denunciation, that the book espoused the doctrines of WCF, Augustine Calvin.
Galloping hobby horse keeps on riding on his own gallops round and round. Colin, more than once you’ve passed this way before. You are way off course , delineated by the bounds of the book review and the unread book itself.
Colin H – if I’m reading you correctly, and I may not be, but your views tend more towards Gnosticism than Christianity – i.e., evil came into the world through hybrid off-spring resulting from copulation between demons and humans, rather than a rebellion of Adam, following the demonic deception of Eve, to do his own thing.
The early Church Fathers were trying to figure out the relationship and interaction between Adam’s fall and the Satanic rebellion, not separate them as you seem to be doing. They saw Scripture as progressive revelation, only fully revealed in Jesus and His teachings. How did evil and loss of communion with God befall man from a ‘tempter’ if man was made “good”? How did this happen to the angels? They searched Scripture to understand the trigger for this rebellion in heaven and on earth; its consequences for us today; and its resolution in union with Christ.
I am grateful for this review as I don’t have the time or money to read a 900 page book, but I do venture these brief thoughts.
1. It is highly unlikely that Paul was presupposing classical Greek pagan allusions in writing to the Philippians- and certainly not Sappho! I agree with the comments above that the Old Testament is the proper matrix for Paul’s thought and language.
2. Paul was a monotheistic Jew, not a polytheistic Greek, so to speak of Messiah Jesus being “the shape of a god” sounds highly unlikely, to say the least.
3. Building an edifice on one or two debated grammatical points is a hazardous enterprise. You have to look at the whole picture to make better sense of the details. CFL seems to have it backwards.
4. CFL wrote a monograph some years ago arguing that the NT thought of the pre-incarnate Jesus as a great angel (not the eternal Son). This present work sounds like a continuation of those heterodox ideas that lead to dumping the Trinity.
James, to be fair to the author, it’s suggested he’s saying Paul subverted the Greco-Roman paganism by using ‘gods’ in the sense they understood, not accepting or teaching these.
Paul himself certainly knew something of Greek philosophers as we see Acts 17:22-31.
Then, in Revelation 12 we have something which, unlike much of that book, does not reference ideas in the Hebrews scriptures, but subverts a well known pagan myth.
That Paul, writing to Philippi, knowing the people there, might take pagan ideas and subvert them does not seem impossible.
David W – especially given the context in Philippi at the time of the letter.
We can lose the message of Paul if we focussing on the minutia of his every word. Arians, Gnostics, Adoptionists, Sabellianists, Donatists, and their latter day successors (Unitarians and Jehovah – Witnesses), do the same.
What was Paul teaching them in this letter – that’s the point.
Actually, Rev 12 does both. All the characters in the action are from Scripture.
Time seems circular not linear in Rev 12 – and the nature/form of God’s “Messiah” is not clear here. In its other chapters it is less shrouded. Unitarians take advantage of a lack of clear distinction here between God and Christ. They see God, singular, as the Almighty, and Christ as His pre-existent, created agent.
David, what is the pagan myth you think Rev 12 is specifically alluding to, please? I am not aware of any such allusion.
Hi James, this is Crispin (CF-L). I have never argued anywhere that Jesus was a great angel. I argued in my doctoral dissertation (published as Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology) that there are places where Jewish angel traditions help us understand the portrayal of Christ in Luke-Acts. I have always believed that Jesus was the eternal Son. My primary research project (to which The Divine Heartset is an ancillary contribution) is to argue that Jesus himself believed himself to be the eternal Son.
Meanwhile back at the text. Anton posited the question: ” What did Christ empty himself of “? Before the discussion launched into the theological/intellectual stratosphere, virtually everyone (including Tim Murray) glided over the phrase following the kenosis text -” taking the very form of a servant (slave), being made in human likeness” ;somewhat more noteworthy than PCI’s “chose to limit himself as a human being”.
And if Steve had chosen to follow the NBC on the actual text itself , he would have come across the following (the second of three stanzas cited by Francis Foulkes): “The second tells us of three steps in humbling himself – emptying himself of His glory, acting as a slave rather than as Lord of all and, though truly God, taking on himself our humanity. ” Straightforward, simple and sticking to the text!
Apologies to Steve (last paragraph). That should have been Geoff!
Colin, thanks for that.
I did it far too quickly after glancing at the commentary.
Which has nothing to do with fallen Angels, that Colin H is linkink it to.
Colin H has lost the plot here,
Colin M,
Yes! There was no sense that the fallen angels who took on corporeal form were ‘emptying themselves’ and forsaking any glory to serve us — for them it was a forbidden lust — Jude 6–7 specifically comparing it to the sexual deviancy of Sodom and Gomorrah.
To my mind if the framework for Paul’s account is Genesis 6 it adds a depth and poignancy to the points he is making.
The fallen angels it seems wanted to usurp God — but Christ ‘did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped’.
The fallen angels chose to take corporeal form for their own ends — but Christ “being found in human form” — having been sent by God.
The fallen angels came to take, not give, to satisfy their own lustful desires with God’s human creation. In contrast Christ came to give, and serve God’s human creation with his life and his death .
The fallen angels wanted to propagate earthly children who it is thought caused mayhem and destruction on the earth. Christ looked to father metaphorical children of faith that would form the basis of the church that would be a witness to the world.
you mean he didnt choose to limit himself to be able to be a human slave?
PC1 – “Limit Himself” in what way?
Jesus. Fully man, fully God.
I gave the example of the Son not knowing when he would be returning, only the Father knows that. At least while the Son was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth he did not have all knowledge. Therefore he was, by definition, limited. Or do you disagree with Jesus’ own words about himself? Perhaps ‘limited’ is the wrong word to use.
The distinct impression I get is that in being fully human, Jesus relied wholly on the Spirit to do what he could do – ‘If by the Spirit of God…’ – rather than his own person. But that, I suspect, was the inevitable choice God made for the incarnation to be actualised.
but like the Trinity, I or anyone else are hardly going to fully understand the incarnation of the Son to a human body. But one tries.
David Bentley Hart offers this rendering of the text in his translation of the New Testament:
“…who, subsisting in a god’s form, did not deem existing in the manner of a god a thing to be grasped…” (The New Testament, A Translation, Second Edition – 2023).
David Bentley Hart’s “theology” is eccentric and heterodox in so many ways. He is a poor guide.
As soon as you admit that a translator’s prior theological commitments might affect the way he translates a passage, all translations can be subject to the same criticism. Then for English in particular, the history of translation casts a long shadow. Modern translators dare not choose a better rendering of a passage, lest they provoke the ire of folk who have built a complex theology on the detailed wording of that passage in an old translation.
Hart does give reasons for his translation in some cases, in footnotes and an extensive postscript. You need to take issue with these, not his theology.
“You need to take issue with these, not his theology.” Exactly so. Anything else is ad hominem. This applies all the more to the proper approach to reading Scripture generally. E.g. it’s not proper to read it with a priori trinitarian spectacles and then making it say what you want it to say rather than what it does say. We must base our theology on what Scripture says.
In John 21:23 John warns against not paying sufficient attention to the actual words.
John 1:18 ESV – ‘No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known’ in my copy – is an example of a nonsensical translation partly led astray by a priori trinitarianism, partly through making the wrong choice in a situation where the Greek text has variants.
The misuse of Jer 29:11 is a classic example of not paying sufficient attention to the actual words, in this case by disregarding the context.
Reading is a skill.
James, for all his errors, DBH is a Trinitarian.
Notice in his translation he uses the word “subsisting”, i.e., “existence as a substance”. The Greek “morphe” means that the outward appearance or form truly represents and embodies the very nature of the inner essence. To be “in the form” or “morphe” of God, or here “a god”, means to be equal to or to have God’s very nature. Paul is saying Christ is of the same essence as God.
I can see how introducing the more accurate translation (assuming it is, I’m not a Greek scholar!), “a god” can unsettle our theology or confirm some into error.
Paul is saying that if Jesus the Christ could have asserted the social status and honour of being God (not too unlike the the ‘god’ Emperor) and chose not to for our benefit, then we have no excuse for not abandoning our own social status, rivalries, and disputes for the benefit of others. If Jesus became the servant of all and suffered death, then we should become the servant of others and put to death whatever stands in the way.
Yes, DBH has many errors. Along with his scholarship, bombast and assertion are his principal tools. Note that James Dunn has a rsther different tranlation of Philippians 2 – although Dunn denied this referred to pre-existence.
Just imagine the cacophony of responses if Christ appeared today asking professional theologians: “And you who do you say I am?”
In fact, an early meeting of the British New Testament Society c late 1970s, co-founded by James Dunn, focussed on the issue of Christ’s preexistence one year when JD unfortunately had to be absent. They issued the following report at the end:
‘We salute our friend JAMES from a distance;
But Anthony Hanson’s insistence
Convinced everyone
That we’re not quite DUNN
With the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence.’.
I suspect the hand of Michael Goulder.
To go back to the precise point of the article which seems to have caused difficulty is the Crispin Fletcher Louis translation that Jesus took ‘the form of a god’ not ‘the form of God’
The Hebrew Bible calls angels ‘gods’ (elohim) — so a single created angel is ‘a god’. The LXX often helps out with this by translating elohim as ‘angels’. This is not polytheism — the Hebrew Bible is consistent that there is only one eternal God — YHWH who brought into being everything that is — including the unseen spiritual realm.
Of course, there are instances in the OT when angels appear in human form, but what CFL has highlighted, I believe, is that Paul is consciously alluding to the Genesis 6 event when elohim (‘gods’/’angels’) chose to take corporeal form to do evil — and God’s response was recorded in Genesis 6:5–7.
I had not realised the Greek could (or perhaps should?) have been translated that way and I think, on reflection (as I mention above), that Paul is contrasting the Genesis 6 incident — which many in Second Temple Judaism saw as a crucial turning point in the Bible’s metanarrative — with Christ’s own incarnation.
“who though he took ‘the form of a god’ …
That should of course be “who, though he was in the form of a god” – which would be understood, I suggest, to be saying that Jesus was ‘like’ (in the form of) an angel – in that they do not have a body – not that he was an angel.
… and Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped ” – which the fallen angels did.
Thus the loss of Eden and the then the flood. This is how Second Temple Judaism saw it.
The beings of Genesis 6 are not cslled “gods’ but ‘sons of Elohim’.
James – ‘el’ across the ancient near East was the terminology for God.
So Elohim were the sons of God.
Where in the Genesis story does it say those ‘gods/angels’ (if that is how they should be understood) were ‘fallen’ or grasped at equality with God?
Colin, Crispin here. I’m very grateful for Tim’s review. However, he unfortunately gives the impression that I translate Phil 2:6 “in the form of a god”. I don’t. I translate it “in the form of God” or “In God’s form”. However, as several specialists have recently observed the absence of the definite in the article of line 6a—hos en morphē theou hyparchōn—means that some readers in Philippi would have wondered, on first hearing, if the pre-Incarnate Christ was being identified as simply “a god” like the pagan gods. But as the passage makes clear in what follows Christ is a unique personal manifestation of the one God.
The passage in Philippians is not about fallen angels.
Its doxological character is not to fallen angels.
Geoff,
“Its doxological character is not to fallen angels.”
I am suggesting (I had not seen this before) that the hymn is praising Christ — in that although he was ‘in the form of an angel’ — in other words, he belonged to that spiritual realm and did not have a body — he did not, like the fallen angels and their representative who rebelled (Ezekiel 28:12–19), become incarnate to serve his own ends — instead he became incarnate in obedience to God so as to serve us.
The pre-incarnate Jesus was in the form of an angel, was he? Where is an angel equated to God in Triunity and to be worshipped?
Hebrews 1-2 explicitly denies that the Son is an angel: ‘To which of his angels did he ever say ….’ And Paul never calls Christ an angel. CFL commits the errors of excessive focus on a couple of details and eccentricity, so that he cannot see the wood for the trees. That way lies heresy.
New Testament Christology reads Hebrews, Paul and John together, not in competition.
James – nobody, I think is claiming that Jesus was an angel. But he was a non corporeal spiritual being ‘like’ the angels – he shared those characteristics with them.
Indeed James.
It doesn’t take a scholar to see and understand this, but it may take a scholar to be unable to see it, or even to self contradict and backtrack when followed through to its scriptural-logical conclusion.
Jesus was/is not a created being such as angels.
Colin, when in a heretical hole, stop digging in, if that’s where scholarship leads in the Triunity of God.
James, there are currently some who think that in Philippians Christ is an angel, or angelomorphic being, following esp. James McGrath and Sam Vollenweider (Zurich). I discuss this possibility and firmly reject it in Divine Heartset Chapter 1.
Yes, I find James McGrath’s argument here very odd.
Geoff
Like I said to James below – nobody, I think is claiming that Jesus was an angel. But he was a non corporeal spiritual being ‘like’ the angels – he shared those characteristics with them.
If you think about it – He was not in the form of God – he was God.
Colin H – except these “non corporeal spiritual beings” were created by God and so did not share His essence/substance. All our limited senses can do is apply reason and logic to revealed truth and imagine a timeless, internal communication within the Divine Trinity prior to and then active in creation and the Incarnation. Of course for God, it didn’t happen that way!
Colin,
See my comment to James above.
It makes the same point as HJ.
Colin the pre-incarnate Son did not share the same characteristics of angels. Neither did they share his: His are the attributes of God.
Neither does the risen ascended enthroned Jesus, who angels worship.
Happy to agree with Jack(!) and Geoff. If the New Testament is the work of the Holy Spirit through chosen human agents, they will agree. If it is the imperfect perceptions of humans, there will be error admixed with truth. Fletcher Lewis seems to have opted for this liberal view.
Hi James, Geoff, HJ
For us to be made in the image of God presupposes we share some things with God – I would suggest that this includes agency volition and his spirit (ruach). This does not mean we are God. But in the communicable attributes we are like God. This is Protestant orthodoxy.
Angels also have agency volition and the ruach. So they also share those things with God – but neither God nor angels are corporeal beings.
The Bible specifically and repeatedly describes what we call angels as ‘gods’. The various writers of the Hebrew Bible were never confused about the eternal creator God and a ‘god’.
The pre-incarnate second member of the trinity shared some attributes with both angels and humans that includes, volition agency and the ruach.
God is eternal and self existent but angels like humans are created.
Humans uniquely in these comparisons have a body and a soul.
So in various ways, humans God and angels share various attributes – in these ways they are ‘like’ each other.
To suggest in some way that I am denying the Trinity or the deity of Christ in anything I have said on this blog is it seems disingenuous – or a confusion about the teaching of scripture?
Colin H, as I said earlier, Genesis draws on both Yahwist and the Elohist mythical sources and combines them in a Divinely inspired way to subvert polytheism and reveal theism. Scripture progressively reveals a personal, loving Father with whom we can have a relationship. Angels, whether good or evil, although having agency like man, do not have the ability to incarnate.
What a superb scholar, & look forward to consuming and digesting.
The passage is likely a distillation of the central Christology of Hebrews (a difficult letter, also written to Rome a year or two earlier, which could do with a distillation for comprehension’s sake). The thought parallels and cross references include 4 main ones (when we see which potential cross references rise to the top against all competitors), which is tremendously out of proportion.
When writing a letter, thought is often happening fast, and some dimensions that could be inferred from wording/diction therefore never had time to be in the writer’s mind, nor secondly will the writer always perfectly express themselves (even if it were possible for words perfectly to express ideas, which it is not).
Yep, Scripture wasn’t dictated ….
I don’t accept your premise. Are you saying that it was known to be Scripture (a retrospective word) at the time of composition?
Christopher S – are you asking HJ that question?
If so, I would say they knew they were writing texts under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It’s easy to affirm this about the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation.
The various letters written before these Christian works are less certain. However, they do address key teachings of the Apostolic Church. Romans, for example, is exceptionally long for its time and ‘deep’ in theology. This, coupled with the teaching content of his other writings, although sometimes local and situational, indicates he knew at the very least he was fashioning important works of Christian literature, also inspired by God.
But, as I said, Scripture wasn’t dictated. And, I’d say, any lack of clarity or apparent contradiction is there by Design, not human error.
Writing texts under the dictation of the Holy Spirit is a simply awesome reality.
It is a reality to which none of these ever once refers.
So they experienced something incredible throughout the text to whose every word we have access, yet unite in never once mentioning it? You would think that the more incredible it was, the more they would be likely to mention it.
What I say applies to the Gospels and Acts. Revelation’s claims are completely different and accord with your presentation.
Jack,
Plenty of the written laws of Moses were dictated. Qute often the phrase “I am YHWH” recurs. No believing human being would dare to write that otherwise.
Was Genesis dictated, Anton?
Jack,
I’m simply giving a counter-example to your claim that scripture was not dictated: many of the written laws of Moses were.
With the understanding that Genesis is a different subject, I find the views of PJ Wiseman (d. 1948) compelling. He recognised that Genesis is a compiled sequence of ancient texts written originally on stone tablets. Many stone tablets from Mesopotamia, dated as old as Abraham and Noah, have been uncovered, and they have their own writing conventions, which Wiseman recognised within Genesis. The retaining of those conventions by the compiler – presumably Moses, who also wrote the last part of Genesis, set in Egypt – shows that he copied faithfully. Moses simply added the names of places which had changed name by his time. We even know who each tablet was written by (or for), because the earlier, Mesopotamian parts of Genesis each end (not begin!) with the phrase “These are the toledoth of…”; toledoth means “historical origins”. (For example, “these are the toledoth of Jacob” in Genesis 37:2; our chapter divisions do not match this understanding.) Each section gives information which only that man could have known or found out reliably, and runs up almost to the death of the man named yet never reaches it.
The other four books of Moses have been reliably dated to the era of which they speak in ‘The Books of Moses Revisited’ by Paul Lawrence, who shows that the covenants in the Law bear strong similarities to the inter-state treaties of the second millennium BC in the Ancient Near East.
Anton, so, briefly stated, Scripture is Divinely inspired using the knowledge and sources of a particular age.
2 Timothy 3: 16-17, uses the word “theopneustos” – literally “God breathed-out.” As 2 Peter 1:21 says, the Holy Spirit moved Bible writers – “they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” God is the Author of Scripture, but the human authors were true authors too and both must be considered when interpreting Scripture.
I never disputed that, Jack, as my comment about Genesis implies. I insist that *some* scripture was dictated, but I never said all of it. I think we agree!
The term “morphe” refers to a form which expresses the being that underlies it. It can mean: “appearance”, “substance”, “nature”, “outline”, “kind”, or “type”. It could mean Christ was pre-existent in a number of different forms. Paul isn’t actually going into this in this letter. He’s focussing on other issues.
To a gentile Greco-Roman audience the display of Divine powers by Jesus, even His resurrection, with the backstory of His virgin birth, would have been seen as the power of “a god” whether they be actual “gods” or “superhuman beings”.
The most important theological debate of the early centuries of the church was over Arianism – was Jesus Christ, the Logos, fully and truly God or the first and preeminent creation of a singular God? It is easy to see why Philippians 2:5-11 would be critical in the debates with Arians and why still today it can cause confusion.
John I: 1, which settles it, was not available in written form at the time. Hence attempts to re-present this too with a Universalist or JW spin (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”).
The low/high Christology dispute was only resolved over the course of centuries by acceptance of the Chalcedonian Trinitarian Christian formula as orthodox. The one God outside of time and space, entered into time and space and became human. The Incarnate Jesus is one essence/nature/substance with the Father, and also the same nature/essence of man – two wills, two natures, in one Person. Thus He is simultaneously fully human and fully Divine. He became man to restore us to full communion with God through His suffering, and because of His resurrection and exultation as the God-man, actually to a sharing and participation in Divinity itself.
“Mind-blowing” as we oldies might have said back in the 1960s – as some did in later life!
It was a remarkable achievement, inspired by the Holy Spirit, drawing on both Jewish Scripture and Greek thinking, to help us begin to have some working appreciation of what remains a deep mystery.
The late Georg Luck discusses this passage in his paper “Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament” in particular a conjecture by S. Reinach https://rabida.uhu.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10272/5039/b15501292.pdf
Hi James, Geoff, HJ
I repeat this reply I have made above in case it gets lost in the reply chain:
For us to be made in the image of God presupposes we share some things with God – I would suggest that this includes agency, volition, and his spirit (ruach). This does not mean we are God. But in the communicable attributes we are like God. This is Protestant orthodoxy.
Angels also have agency, volition, and the ruach. So they also share those things with God – but neither God nor angels are corporeal beings.
The Bible specifically and repeatedly describes what we call angels as ‘gods’. The various writers of the Hebrew Bible were never confused about the distinction between the eternal creator God and a ‘god’.
The pre-incarnate second member of the trinity shares some attributes with both angels and humans that includes, volition, agency, and the ruach.
God is eternal and self existent and thus in this way not ‘like’ angels and humans who are created.
Humans uniquely in these comparisons have a body and a soul.
So in various ways, humans, God, and angels share various attributes – and in these ways they are ‘like’ each other.
To suggest in some way that I am denying the Trinity or the deity of Christ in anything I have said on this blog is, it seems, disingenuous – or is it simply a confusion about the teaching of scripture?
I suggest any confusion is based a lack of familiarity with the Hebrew Bible and its terminology for God’s unseen realm creation of spirit beings. They are called elohim – a literal translation is ‘gods’ – thus the first Commandment says ‘we are to have no other gods’ – there really are such things.
Because of the confusion, later in Israel’s history, in its Greco-Roman world, the LXX helped out by translating ‘gods’ as angelos. But that is a job title when a elohim is a messenger – as opposed, for example, a guardian to God’s throne – that would be a cherub.
I have not (yet) read CFL’s study – but I suspect from the analysis in the article he has an insecure grip on Hebrew Bible teaching on the issues raised. But for me, it has still been a useful article to read and – where possible – share insights and thoughts in an orderly academic manner.
According to Maimonides, in his ‘Guide for the Perplexed’: “I must premise that every Hebrew [now] knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries …”
Exactly. It seems he was a rabbi who knew his stuff?
But the Masoretic Text which dates from his era it seems, based on evidence from the Dead Sea scrolls, deliberately changed the text in Deuteronomy 32:8 from elohim – ‘sons of God’ to ‘sons of Israel’. Apparently it cannot have been a transcription error. And seems to be a clear case of rabbinic Judaism trying to adopt a more Western demytholgised approach to their own faith. And different English translations take different views on it.
But any discussion on that would have to wait for another time?
But just to say… I do not think there is a single verse in the whole of scripture which highlights the two world views more clearly – and dramatically.
NIV opts for the demythologised Western view, and goes with this late change to the Masoretic text. No surprise there? And I suspect – as I have articulated in this blog – that CFL is firmly located in that Western world view of Scripture.
It’s a fascinating how particular translations appear to reflect different scribes preferences and outlooks when determining the meaning and significance of particular words. Apparently there were multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures in Second Temple Judaism with variations with between them and with the later Masoretic text. The Septuagint translations, which Our Lord used, is from the third and second centuries BC and has notable differences from the Masoretic text.
I understand this later Masoretic text was used as the basis for most Bibles – King James Version, English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, and New International Version. It has also been used for some Catholic Bibles – New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint as the authoritative text for the Old Testament. All this raises a troubling question: shouldn’t we use a translation of the Septuagint that matches quotations in the New Testament?
Again, as I understand it, Jews abandoned the Septuagint early on because gentile Christians were using it. As it lost Jewish sanction, they then turned to this later Masoretic text. Even Greek-speaking Jews tended towards other Jewish versions in Greek as they seemed more in line with these more contemporary Hebrew texts.
The ‘Tower of Babylon’ springs to mind.
As you say, a subject matter for later discussions!
Jack,
For the OT a Hebrew text should absolutely be primary. The original language has so many overtones compared to any translation. But the Septuagint is translated from an older text than the Masoretic and the differences are significant in the messianic passages. Scholars should therefore do their best to reconstruct the original Hebrew, then translate it into any target language.
Colin,
It is worth remembering also that the OT requires a word for “the gods of other nations”, eg “thou shalt have no other gods before me”. That word is indeed ‘elohim’. Then there is Psalm 82…
The first thing about the ‘image of God’ is that it means we have enough in common with God to have relationship with him. (OK, you can ask what ‘relationship’ means, but this moves towards fruitless philosophising.) The cosmos, earth and life reflect God’s power, intelligence and goodness, but man reflects God himself. Man is not a puppet but knows he can make choices, and this gift reflects God’s love (‘if you love something, give it freedom’). Man has creativity (music and poetry, and gadgets and machines since the Industrial Revolution) and words (notably ‘why?’ – reason, and ‘I’ – self-awareness). Man has a conscience, understanding justice and mercy. Man has feelings. But it’s complicated because man is also fallen today, which means that working things out by introspection is not to be trusted; some things, we need to be told.
1. Yes Anton
2. The citation of M by HJ seems as as though M could be embracing polytheism.
3. There has been some debate over whether Moses was a monotheist. Evidently M thought Moses wasn’t.
4. The mention of Elohim by M seems that he was a forerunner of the Higher/Historical critics, and Documentary Hypothesis where God was given different names in scripture was seen as indicative of different gods at different periods of history. Jehovah being another name.
5. M wrote that the Messiah would be merely human.
6. Archangel Micheal is the son of God to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Anton – well said. I’ll repeat what I’ve written earlier:
Colin, some ancient writers have speculated that the “sons of God” may have been fallen angels, given that Nephilim, their offspring, can mean “fallen ones” too. There never has been a unified view from Christian or Jewish tradition. Jewish views on this passage in Genesis rely heavily on the apocryphal – non-canonical – Books of Enoch.
Enoch (especially the ‘Book of the Watchers’ and the ‘Book of Parables’) may have been what Paul had in mind as it squares with Greco-Roman mythologies too. Authors of the New Testament were familiar with some content of Enoch as a short section of 1 Enoch is cited in Jude 1 and references to it are in Hebrews.
However, like the Greco-Roman myths, I doubt Paul was endorsing any idea that Christ was a pre-existent, created, angelic creature who took human form to wage war as God’s emissary on earth. The 1st and 2nd Books of Enoch, if taken seriously, presents an alternate ‘gospel’ and account of human sinfulness, its destruction and redemption.
Angels, of course, do not have corporeal bodies necessary for human procreation. Accepting the premise of Greco-Roman and Jewish mythology means we must accept that God is singular – not Trinity – and that these quasi-divine, pre-existent, created creatures were capable through their own power of taking human form for evil purposes, and that their physical off-spring were responsible for evil in the world.
‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ has several parallels with Genesis 6:1-4. The narrative of Genesis draws on other, earlier sources. It was inspired – but not literally true. It draws on Yahwist and the Elohist sources.
As Divinely inspired by God, the real question then is: what is this text truly saying? It includes none of the mythology of Gilgamesh or Enoch. What it does is reflect a shift from polytheistic religions to a monotheistic religion of one God. The juxtaposition of sons of God with wickedness and then destruction through the flood is the way to tear down that old myths. It’s meaning is subversive; these men who sought to make their names great were actually wicked. These relations with the daughters of men point to wickedness on their part; they took what they wanted. This results in the birth of these new hybrids who follow in the footsteps of their fathers and take what they want too.
The point being that the Nephilim were fallen ones, descendants of angels or not, and had fallen into decadence. Hence the Flood .
Mythology from all over the world has ‘gods’ having sex with human women to produce mighty beings such as Hercules. I think Genesis 6:1-4 is a key and an antidote to such mythologies. What I wonder about is the laconic phrase ‘and also afterwards’ in verse 4.
I agree. Genesis 6: 1-8, is there to subvert these mythologies to introduce a monotheist God and as a forerunner to understanding God’s (YHWH’s) response to our human inclination to evil and sin. “My Spirit,” is now understood as referring to the Holy Spirit.
Oh, and, from the perspective of the Book of Enoch, “also afterward” probably means that these fallen angels who begat the Nephilim, the hybrid human-demonic beings, then bred with other women. As I said, it presents an alternative to the Christian view of the Fall and an alternative resolution to eliminating it. It might also help understand the Mosaic stress on lineage and condemnation of sex with other nations still infected. Evil inclinations being transmitted by sex and propagation. Instead of Adam’s rebellion breaking communion with God and causing evil inclinations in man, it places this on sex with evil angels who took on the form of men. Didn’t the Jews accuse Jesus of being possessed by a demon?
I was wondering whether “and also afterwards” ended with the Flood or whether this ghastly miscegenation still goes on, on a small scale. I have no idea.
There is speculation that Paul’s phrase “because of the angels” in 1 Corinthians 11 means that women wearing hats are less attractive to disgraceful angels who view them from above. I really don’t know.
Personally, I wouldn’t go down that particular rabbit hole!
Jews are divided on the interpretations of “son of God” and “Nephilim.” from Jewish Midrash and commentaries put together in the second century. Here’s a brief summary of three perspectives:
https://www.yeshiva.co/ask/54965
Dialectic leaps abound.
Of particular interest in this debate is the figure of Rashi (an acronym for Rabbi Solomon Ben Isaac – 1040-1105). Rashi was probably the most prolific Jewish theologian and Biblical scholar of the medieval period.
I say” of particular interest” because there is an ongoing debate at this time between traditional Jewish scholars and their Messianic Jewish counterparts, and with specific reference to Rashi concerning ( a) the role and authority of the Tanakh (OT) and (b) the questions pertaining to Jesus as the Messiah. The traditionalists , of course, form their arguments around a wider- based Talmudic approach; the Messianics not only largely accept the authority of the OT, but the NT as well. Needless to say, they believe in Jesus as the Messiah!
Having read the comments, I wonder if anyone sees the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6 as the sons of Seth, that is, the godly line, rather than fallen angels? Constable lists many commentators who read it as such.
I agree. Genesis 6: 1-8, is there to subvert these mythologies to introduce a monotheist God and as a forerunner to understanding God’s (YHWH’s) response to our human inclination to evil and sin. “My Spirit,” is now understood as referring to the Holy Spirit.
Genesis does not ‘introduce’ monotheism.
Nor does most (all?) of the Hebrew Bible.
Nor, perhaps, does the NT, which admits of other gods. Monotheism, as we understand it, is very late.
1 Cor 8.6 based on the Sh’ma (Deut 6.4) makes both OT and NT fall foul of your generalisation.
Paul himself says in such a connection that obviously many are termed gods in conventional speech, not least because corresponding powers exist. We are talking two different realities even if the vocab does not exist.
PCD – please note I wrote: “to introduce a monotheist God and as a forerunner to understanding God’s (YHWH’s) …. ”
Within the Old Testament there is evidence that the Israelites once believed in the existence of other deities. In the OT God reveals increasingly more about Himself and about the fundamental nature of the world over time. So we should expect the OT to evince a transition over time from error into truth. We can agree the Bible does not begin as completely monotheistic.
However, eventually the Israelites did come to the understanding that those “gods” were powerless; that the other “gods” were impotent; and then to the understanding that they were not God, but fallen angels/demons/false pagan gods. Explicitly monotheistic passages increasingly take centre stage with this progressive revelation.
The Bible is not the direct word of God but His inspired word; the indirect, inspired word of God, because: (1) God revealed something to prophets, (2) that prophet and others struggled with the meaning of that revelation, and, to make sense of it, contextualised it into the contemporary situation before (3) committing it to writing.
The plan of salvation unfolds in stages. God guided the Israelites in a progressive fashion from darkness, slavery and sin into the fullness of Truth. God came down to the Israelites in their idolatry, in their brokenness, in their sin, to guide them throughout the course of centuries to the point at which they and the world were ready to receive the promised Saviour.
I would dispute then that the NT “admits of other gods.”
That argument follows atheistic lines, such as from Dawkins and historical, higher criticism and documentary hypotheses, J, E, D and P and documentary presumptions of fallacy of the ” unilinear evolution” from many gods, polytheism to monotheism.
It is not very late. What is late modern is the claim that it is very late.
There’s nothing sinister or atheistic in the concept of “progressive revelation”. It does not mean the “evolution of truth”!
If we agree that Christ in the flesh is a fuller revelation of God than the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets, and the action of God in His history with Israel, then surely we can agree that revelation is progressive? Indeed, Jesus progressively revealed Himself to His disciples in the New Testament.
HJ,
That is a differnt argument, point, from the one PDC claims. Yours, is a one I agree with.
In the beginning God…
There is evidence aplenty that the ancient Israelites and Judahites worshipped many gods. When they began to worship one god (post exile?) this did not mean that they did not recognise that other gods existed. Otherwise there wouldn’t be references to them in the HB. Some of these gods were later finessed into angels or demons, but they still lurk in the NT. They are there on Paul’s great theology of the general resurrection.
There is nothing ‘atheist’ about this. The knowledge that polytheism persisted long in antiquity doesn’t undermine a belief in monotheism. As I have observed many times before, the Bible is not univocal and expecting to see monotheism in Genesis isn’t reading scripture either seriously or theologically.
In the beginning God.
Abram was called out from Ur of the Chaldees, by God of creation from the worship of false gods, local gods.
There is a redemptive historical canonical line in scripture by God of Genesis.
The God of Christianity as revealed in the OT and New, one and the same God, of promises and covenants. He
is no neo- Marcionite.
It is reading the whole canon, as revealed, through a Biblical theological lens, coherent and cogent.
It is a biblical theology that seems to have been uncomprehended by those of a libereal bent, perhaps stuck in the Bultmann discipleship vein and its closed-material- world system, presuppositional theology, mixed today, with universal pluralism supported by postmodernism, even though canonical Biblical theology is is not new.
Penny, what do you mean when you say ‘they worshipped many gods’? Did Abraham worship many gods? Did Moses encounter many gods at the burning bush? Were there many gods on Sinai?
I am not clear what you are claiming here.
Ian
As I’m sure you know there is evidence of Baal worship and Asherah worship ( inter alia) in the HB. Some of the texts were written to ‘correct’ this and to aver that worship of other gods had never/no longer existed.
The figures of Abraham and of Moses were part of that rewriting. As is Nehemiah etc. I cannot understand why Israelites/Judahites worshipping many gods, or even their acknowledgement that there were many gods, or Adonai assuming some of Baal’s attributes, undermines the development (late though it may be) of a monotheism understood in Judaism and Christianity of late antiquity.
The reason is that you have provided zero evidence for it!
You say that it is clear that there was (I assume you mean approved of) worship of other gods, but the texts were then written to cover this up.
If the text covered it up…where is the evidence…?
Where is the evidence of ‘late development’ of monotheism?
Ian
Have you come across Paula Frederickson or David Burnett?
The latter, especially, argues that monotheism is a modern construct and that Second Temple Judaism, early Judaism and Christianity, and late antiquity were not monotheistic. There’s plenty of evidence in the HB of course, but it’s also there in 1 Cor. powers and principalities – the gods of the gentile world – still very much a reality for Paul and for early Xians and Jews.
Cf also stars, planets etc.
Penny, you have just changed the argument. ‘Monotheism’ is commonly used to mean that only one god is to be worshipped—that there is only one true god worthy of our devotion.
You have now shifted into the technical language, in which we need to distinguish between monotheism in the technical sense (only one divine power exists) to henotheism (only one god is rightly to be worshipped).
In those terms, of course the whole Bible is henotheistic rather than monotheistic.
But you used the term ‘monotheism’ in the other sense when you claimed that other gods were rightly worshipped. Scripture does not record this.
If you can use the terms consistently, then we can have a sensible discussion.
Ian I haven’t changed into ‘technical’ language. Henotheism isn’t much used in scholarly circles today (again it’s a modern construct not an ancient one) and I’m increasingly convinced that monotheism is a recent construct which would have meant as much to Paul as would stopping him on Ephesus to ask him which missionary journey he was on.
Paul, as a Pharisee, may well have believed that he was worshipping the one true God, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the gods of other nations or that he doubted their reality.
Ian
And ‘rightly worshipped’ is your inference.
I never claimed that Israelites/Judahites were ‘right’ to worship Asherah or Baal.
Geoff
If you don’t agree with a comment throwing around ‘liberal’, Bultmann, ‘pluralism’, and ‘postmodernism’, isn’t really a convincing argument.
As a former Bible teacher you will understand the influence of all those on the academic teaching and theological formation which sees no coherences across the canon which are developed by schools of systematic and Biblical theology. And are influences which can readily result in neo- Marcionism.
We’ve been here before.
Your comment on the passage of scripture and the article may be of interest and revealing, Penelope, if not convincing.
Sorry, I forgot ‘neo Marcionism’.
That is interesting. No one do fat has said that about the passage in Philippians nor the article.
N
But from a paid up subscriber it was bound to come yo mind at some stage, especially with a reminder.
For do fat, read so far.
It’s a very long time since I studied the matter, but I think it was a common enough idea in 19th century liberal-rationalistic studies in Germany that ‘religion’ went through different stages (magic, animism, polytheism, henotheism, monotheism) to which the next and final logical step was atheism and the explaining (or explaining away) of religion on psychological grounds. The proponents (with their own differences) of this rationalist view of cultural history included some Jacobins, Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, and their ideas spilled over into rationalist biblical studies in Germany, especially in Wellhausen. In Martin Noth’s work, for example, IIRC, the different names for God in the patriarchal narratives are explained as local deities eventually combined. It is also commonly asserted that monotheism first appears in the OT with Deutero-Isaiah; and there are numerous riffs on this claim. Prior to this, it is asserted that Yahweh was just a local deity of the Habiru. A more straightforward story is that monotheism was the heart of Mosaic religion from the beginning, but many Israelites struggled with this and found the temptation to Baalism irresistible; hence the endless diatribes of the prophets against Baalism, Moloch etc. The rationalist rejoinder, of course, is that Moses and montheism are fictional constructs
(along with a non-existent exodus and conquest); so an enormous amount is at stake in this discussion.
Of course, Jesus in the Gospels assumes the historical veracity of the Abrahamic and Mosaic narratives; and for the avoidance of doubt, so do I. Penny seems to accept the 19th century German rationalist view of Abraham and Moses. Fair enough. But she needs to follow through consistently on the presuppositions of Feuerbach, Wellhausen, Freud et al, and not make an arbitrary cut off. Christianity cannot hang in the air without historical foundations, a y more than Mormonism can.
Penny does no such thing.
Nor does she believe in a nice tidy progression towards a nice tidy monotheism.
It’s the conservatives here who think scripture speaks like gemutlich nineteenth century German protestants, not I.
I wrote: “Penny seems to accept the 19th century German rationalist view of Abraham and Moses.” Penny wrote: “As I’m sure you know there is evidence of Baal worship and Asherah worship ( inter alia) in the HB. Some of the texts were written to ‘correct’ this and to aver that worship of other gods had never/no longer existed.
The figures of Abraham and of Moses were part of that rewriting.”
This is pretty much the same thing. This isn’t what the Gospels tell us about Jesus (that he believed the OT accounts of the lives and beliefs of Abraham and Moses), but what could he have known, being but a man of his times?
“Nor does she believe in a nice tidy progression towards a nice tidy monotheism.”
Not really important. The basic progression from magic to monotheism is the leitmotif of 19th century rationalism, even if it has some twists and turns on itself. And that basic paradigm still persists in the academy, even if it is no longer safe to express oneself with the same clarity (e.g., left-wingers and liberals in New Zealand today are frightened to dismiss Maori mythology as nonsense). It is based on cultural anthropology, which seriously began in the early 19th century as European academics encountered the “primitive peoples” of Africa, South America and the Pacific (and shamanism in Siberia) and began recording and analysing their mythologies. Such peoples were presumed to retain the original ‘Gedankenwelt’ of advanced literate cultures, whether European, Indic or Sinitic.
A comparable trend began in the 1870s when archaeology uncovered Mesopotamian and Sumerian artefacts and comparison with the Bible became inevitable.
Wilhelm Schmidt in his 12-volume Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (1912–55) – there are shorter English translations of his work – showed convincingly that monotheism was an ancient belief and other forms of religion (notably polytheism) were degenerate forms of it. Other anthropologists found themselves agreeing, often reluctantly – e.g. Konrad Preuss, Mircea Eliade.
Mesopotamian works such as Atrahasis, Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish contain numerous echoes of Genesis 1-8. When George Smith in 1872 announced the discovery of a Mesopotamian Deluge account, which was certainly an earlier text than Genesis, it did not occur to any of the intellectual elite that the Hebrew and Mesopotamian texts both derived from an oral tradition, which the Hebrews rendered faithfully because of their monotheism, but the Mesopotamians distorted because of their polytheism.
I show in my own work that polytheism was not an innocent development but the product of a wilful act of apostasy, and it happened in late 4th-millennium Uruk and Babylon.
That’s it James, in summary.
It certainly does not represent God who in the beginning ordains hetero normative sexuality, male and female.
To be fair, not even radical rationalists in the 19th century would have espoused ‘gender fluidity’ or the host of daft ideas that have been unleashed in the past 20 years or so. These ideas incubated in the humanities staff rooms of American universities, places which have long since ceased to have anything worthwhile to say because they forgot what the true function of the humanities is, to discover the virtues (what it means to be truly human) and to enable students to pursue that goal through literature and philosophy. These departments became deserts obsessed with angry recriminations, while the type of student attracted to that shallow bitterness also declined in ability.
It’s so funny how people stress that ancient Western Asia wasn’t at all like the contemporary world and that the Enlightenment has obscured this, until it’s pointed out that the ancient world was indeed very different and that a commitment to monotheism is a very modern construct. Modern religious people seem to lack theological imagination (as well as any archaeological and historical curiosity).
Postmodern religious people are an admixture of modern and subjective absolutes, of hyper ‘chronological snobbery’ with a cauterized yet untethered imagining, followers of pluralism and Foucault.
A claim of monotheism being late is unsubstantiated.
The unknown god of PDC, as a Bible teacher, appears to be sub- Christian, not God in Triunity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, a god of deconstructionism and reconstructed in our image, altogether far to human and imprisoned in the bounds of unimaginative intellectual materialism.
Which god do you believe, PDC and why?
I suspect Penny began with fairly conventional Catholic beliefs but has since absorbed quite a lot of the general radical-rationalist picture of the history of religion (‘from magic to monotheism’) I outlined above, but hasn’t yet figured out how they can possibly cohere – if they do.
It reminds me of what I heard Don Carson say years ago about a painful conversation he had with his Doktorvater in Cambridge, Barnabas Lindars. Carson observed to Lindars that he, Lindars, had a very high, catholic view of the eucharist and all it theologically affirms, yet in his commentaries he expressed great scepticism about the historicity and language of John’s Gospel. He asked Lindars how he could maintain the two conflicting outlooks and Lindars with considerable pain and discomfiture answered that he didn’t know how. This has always seemed the Achilles’ heal of liberalism and why it must logically end in agnosticism (at best). This was a road I was tempted to take until I rediscovered the first principles of theology and revelation. It was no surprise that another Anglo-Catholic, Richard Holloway, basically ended up in atheism as well. I always suspected that Holloway would end up with humanistic ideas about Jesus – just like David Strauss – and lo and behold, he did.
What Penny calls ‘lack [of] theological imagination’ and ‘archaeological and historical curiosity’ can equally be called ‘confidence in the faithfulness of Scripture as the Word of God’. Imagination is not a virtue in itself when it leads to confused and contradictory ideas, the very opposite of reason. Penny doesn’t realise how many hostages to fortune she has given by accepting basic rationalist premises.
‘Achilles’ heel’, not ‘heal’. Nobody could heal Achilles.
The God of Christianity is far, so very far beyond, unsanctified human finite imagination, which deigns Him as offensive or as foolishness to be mocked.
But He is knowable even in our limited finitude, through His self revelation and in union and communion with Him in Triuinty.
Geoff, what you describe is classical theological realism, which I espouse as well. Penny’s ideas seem to be much more along the lines of Sallie McFague, the American feminist and lesbian writer who asserted that ‘theology is mostly fiction’ and the Bible is a storehouse of metaphors to be deployed as we think best, but with no pretense that these ‘metaphors’ are God-given revelation or final. Duncan Fergusson, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, are on ‘a post-Christian trajectory’ and McFague described her own views as ‘panentheist’.
What is notable about McFague is that she started as a neo-orthodox Barthian and over the years progressively shed that outlook as she deepened in biblical scepticism and rejected the Trinity – a step Barth would never have taken. She was certainly rich in ‘theological imagination’ – or rather ‘religious imagination’ because in the end she discarded most theology for a panentheism in which Jesus was certainly not what the Creeds declare him to be.
But that’s like the path that George Eliot took when she abandoned evangelicalism for the works of Feuerbach and David Strauss.
I meant to write: “Duncan Fergusson, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, said McFague’s views are on ‘a post-Christian trajectory’.
Oh James, I’ve never been a conventional Catholic.
And, Geoff, I’m delighted you’ve chucked Foucault into the conversation now. My bingo card is almost full.
Counterfeit gods ‘before him’, all:
functional replacement polytheistic worship.
And yet another joins the ranks, the god of luck.
Lost. Jesus is the Way. the Truth, the Life. There is no other. Turn to him in repentance for life in him, with him, down eternity. Otherwise you’re on your own and it’ll just be hell.
Do you have a problem with comprehension, Geoff?
My observation that monotheism is an anachronistic construct for the ‘religions’ of ancient Western Asia doesn’t mean that I, a 21stC European Christian, am a polytheist!
And I may be going to hell, but I doubt it’ll be because I read Paula Fredrikson and understand history.
But that is the most serious of all matters, not a ‘hell, heaven – same difference’.
Penny, I know you make up your religion as you go along. But you did once describe yourself as an “orthodox Catholic”, just as Sallie McFague was once a neo-orthodox Barthian, and Richard Holloway was once a conventional Anglo-Catholic. No surprise there – people change in their beliefs. Some American evangelicals can also lose their faith. From your own words, you do seem to have followed McFague’s panentheism, sometimes appropriating Christian language but reinterpreting it as McFague did. As you afirm to Geoff, you are not a polytheist. But you are likely a panentheist, not a classical theist. You seem to think that Abraham and Moses (if they really existed, as Jesus believed) were really polytheists (possibly henotheists but polytheists nonetheless) and that the OT distorts the historical truth about them. You owe this belief to 19th century radical rationalism, the old “magic to monotheism” school. This is what you mean when you humbly assert that you “understand history”.
What utter twaddle James. You clearly know nothing of my heart or mind; or even what I believe. I am certainly orthodox: I recite the Creed, I believe in the incarnation, the Virgin birth (or, rather, conception), and the resurrection.
I don’t think orthodoxy requires me to believe in modern cultural constructs like polytheism or monotheism. Henotheism is even more suspect.
Maybe there is a need to look at modern day idols. Tim Kellers, Counterfeit gods, could be a good place to start.
The ‘heart’ is a perpetual idol factory as functional gods above the true God of Christianity.
What on earth is 21C European Christian?
Who do you believe: which God?
It is yet another contentless claim, a bit thin from a Bible teacher.
Penelope,
How about you?
Back to Philippians 2:10 -11
every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?
No exceptions, inclusivity guaranteed. In adoration or defiant rebellion?
https://www.gotquestions.org/every-knee-shall-bow.html