Transcription
All right, cuz Bren said we want to talk about divine plurality and specifically how we want to try to move from just the little baby step idea that there is such a thing as divine plurality in the Hebrew Scriptures on to the linkage of the attributes and person and titles of Yahweh, the God of Israel, to one other particular Elohim.
Because when you do that, when that becomes evident in the text, what you're going to see is that throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, there was an invisible Yahweh and then there was a visible Yahweh as well. Sometimes they're in the same scene together; many times they're separate. But again, you get both. And there are, again, linkages where there's this Tunis going on that is, once you sort of know what to look for, it becomes kind of transparent. So I want to go through that. It's going to be quick; you can get the slides. I'm going to send them to Brent, and he'll make sure that you have access to all of them.
So we're going to go through this a bit rapidly for the sake of time, but don't worry about that because there's nothing copyright here. You can, he'll have the slides, and that's not going to be an issue.
So the next slide is this: Is this a problem or a solution?
And again, it's very natural, especially if people have not heard of the ideas. They're going to think, "Well, is this a problem for monotheism? What about Jesus? What about the Godhead?" Again, New Testament thinking. If I affirm this stuff in the Old Testament, you're telling me about what? How does that affect what I affirm about Jesus?
Next slide. I would say the answer is, again in short form, is that Yahweh is an Elohim, but no Elohim is Yahweh. That sort of takes care of the monotheism issue. We need to affirm and note that Yahweh is ontologically unique. There is only one of him. "Ontology" is a nice fancy academic word for being; okay, what somebody is. We all have our own ontology; you know what that which makes us us, if I can put it that way. Yahweh is unique, so we need to affirm that not only for the sake of the Shema and Old Testament thinking that among all the Elohim, there's this one that is completely unique, but that's going to become an issue when this second figure, this second Yahweh figure begins to emerge.
Because that second figure is going to turn out to be Yeshua, Jesus. So ontologically they're going to be the same, and they need to be the same; they are the same. Again, divine plurality.
Next slide. I view as a first baby step toward Godhead thinking. And we're gonna start thinking Tunis now. Let's go through the next slide.
We all know this verse: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And there are those, again, when I give this presentation, I think, "Well, isn't this a violation of the Shema?" It's not. Again, I don't want to grab at straws over that.
But then, if you go to the next slide: John 1:18. You have to ask yourself, how could a Jew affirm the Shema, "Hear, O Israel," and then the wording, and then embrace this: "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side." No, wait a minute! "Oh, God at the Father's side!" I thought the Father was God. How can there be a God at the Father's side? It's not a, "No, no, that's the only God." I mean, how do we wrap our minds around that, especially if we're Jewish? Because, again, the Shema is at the core of our thinking.
Next slide. So the question is: How is it that a first-century Jew, who is so committed to monotheism, again the elevation of Yahweh above all gods—so committed that he or she would choose death rather than worship the Roman Emperor or a Roman god or any god—how could that person embrace Jesus of Nazareth as God in the flesh alongside the God of Israel? Is there some sort of conflict here? The answer is because Jews themselves had a belief in two powers in heaven prior to the New Testament period.
What I mean by that is this trajectory, this thought that there was a Godhead, is not new to them. What is new to them is the claim that this person standing in front of me, who I know is from Nazareth; I know his mom and dad—this person standing in front of me is claiming to be that part of that Godhead, that second Yahweh figure that I know from my Old Testament. That was the difficulty. The idea of Godhead was not. It's just that the notion that he's here, and not only is he here, because he was around in the Old Testament—but he actually passed through his mother's birth canal and was born a human being—that was a big deal. That was dramatic; it was different.
So the base idea, they were familiar with that, and I'm going to show you why. Next slide.
Let's take a look at some Old Testament passages, and I'm going to begin here with the passages that, if you were to go back—and I'm going to show you a book in case you're interested in this subject—you can go back through Jewish material here.
If you were to look at the rabbinical discussion of how Godhead thinking—how this idea that Christians were using—how that became a heresy within the Jewish community. If you were to read that material, your perception of that would begin at certain passages. I'm going to show you a few of these. Genesis 19:24. Next slide.
We look at this passage; of course, I have the divine name in all caps. I give you a chance to read it. Is there anything odd about it? I'll give you a hint. Next slide.
So the divine name occurs twice, and it's: how can you have Yahweh raining down all this stuff from Yahweh? I mean, you can kind of deal with that, but it just feels a little odd; it's a little awkward. And again, some people kind of notice this, and I wonder what's going on with that? It just sounds a little odd.
Another one: Amos 4:11. This is a little harder to spot. I give you a chance to read through this. I have wrought destruction upon you. Did you catch it?
Okay, the speaker is first person, and the speaker is God! So why is God referring to God in the third person?
Do you think that's funny? This is not the only place that happens. If it, again, when people are reading the text closely, they look at that and go, "Why is that?" That wording is really kind of odd. You know, Yahweh referring to God—what's going on with that?
Genesis 22. Now this is the Akedah, so it's very familiar again within the Jewish context. If you look at this, God tested Abraham and said to him, "Take your son, offering him as a burnt offering." But the angel of the Lord called to him from a blast. So, on and so forth. Did you catch the phrasing?
I'll give you another couple seconds here to read it. You know, go to the next slide, and then you're going to do some animations here. Wait until the slide is filled up. There we go.
So God tested him; the angel of the Lord called to him. He said, "I know that you fear God," but then it ends, "You've not withheld your only son from me." Whose line is it anyway? I mean, you know, who's speaking? The who and when? It just has this odd sort of feel to it, this mixing of 1st and 3rd person.
So they’re noticing this now.
The book that I mentioned is this one: It's called "Two Powers in Heaven." This is written by a Jew, Allen Siegel, who was a professor of Jewish and Talmudic literature. He just passed away two years ago, I believe. He wrote the book back in 1977. It’s available in paperback; it's still in print, and it is a rehearsal of how this idea of two powers in heaven was a part of Judaism in antiquity. It became a heresy around the second century, around 100 AD. So, his book is just about how that happened.
And now, he was a Jew; he thinks it is a heresy because he was a good Jew. He just doesn't have one; you know, he knows where all this goes; he's not dumb, but he's not buying it. He doesn't accept, you know, Jesus. But nevertheless, he spent a good part of his academic career in this area.
Next slide.
So, summary: Certain passages in the Old Testament sounded to the ear like the God of Israel was—there were just two figures going on in here. Rabbis took note of that. Again, they were familiar with these texts. I'm not showing you anything that would be new to them. The belief used to be acceptable until around 100 AD, and one reason that it was reacted to was because if you have this Godhead idea, that sort of helps the Christians make their point.
So let's just say that that's bad. You know, let's take that point of our theology, and now we will just sort of do away with it because we want everybody in our community to know we don't want to think this way. That's not who we are. If you want to be that, then you've got to be a Christian; you might as well just jump ship.
Now, let's talk about Old Testament roots.
Next slide. Old Testament roots. We're going to go back and hit some more, actually a lot of passages, and this will be quick, so don't, you know, take heart; don't get discouraged.
Next slide is identifying. We'll start with these two issues: the phrase "the Moloch," I don't know, "angel of the Lord," or "angel of Yahweh," and then this thing or this phrasing referred to as "the name" or "Hashem." We'll start there.
So next slide. Exodus 3.
Now, Moses, of course, when familiar with this passage, the burning bush, tending the flock, Jethro, all that, get to verse 2. He goes to see the bush: "An angel of Yahweh" (the malach) appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. He said, "Boy, I need to go see that! We're going to check this out."
When Yahweh saw what he was doing, so there are two characters in the bush. The angel is in the bush, but so is—I don’t know, I saw his jaw away.
Okay, hold that thought. They are both in the bush.
Later in Exodus 23, we see this same figure, God speaking to Moses. This is Exodus 23, after the crossing of the Li gongfu: "I'm sending an angel before you," God says to Moses.
"Hey, I know it's going to be a long trip; could be lots of hazards, but take heart! I'm sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I've made ready. Pay heed to him and obey him; do not defy him, for he will not pardon your offenses." Why? "Since my name is in him."
But if you obey him and do all that I say, if you obey him and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies, so on and so forth.
So this angel is singled out—the one particular angel. And what makes him different is "my name is in him." Okay, hold that thought!
You go to Deuteronomy 12. This name talk shows up a number of places in the Old Testament. "Hashem," as you well know, is an academic term. Right here, academic alert, right here. But he's an academic term; this is a circumlocution. It's another way of saying it's another way of referring to Yahweh himself, his presence, his divine presence. Hashem, it's the same individual. So this talk shows up a lot, and especially in Deuteronomy.
So the Lord your God will choose amidst all your tribes as his habitation. He's going to choose a place to live, to dwell, to establish his name there. And there you are to go, and you are to bring your burnt offerings in sacraments, tithes, and contributions.
Down to verse 11: "You must bring everything that I command you to the site where the Lord your God will choose to establish his name."
Next slide. Look at how the name is used here. Psalm 20: "May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you."
Now the point here is not that if I get in trouble, I'm just going to go, "I don't know; I'm out of the jam!" No, the whole idea is that the presence of God, God himself, will protect you. Who is that? Well, it's Hashem.
What's the problem? Hashem, it's the same thing, the same person. And again, we're familiar with this language, but we often don't really think about what we're reading.
"Some trust in chariots, some in horses; we trust in the name of the Lord our God." And if it's a reference to him, to his presence, his person, not just four consonants—hey, the four consonants are going to protect me? I mean, if that's what you're thinking, then you've just turned the person of Yahweh into some sort of incantation. Okay, it's not four consonants; it's a person. That's the point.
Second Samuel 6, I like this one. Next slide. It's kind of interesting; the font never comes out when you play it in PowerPoint, so I apologize for the fog—it's actually reversed. So don't look at the Hebrew, okay? It's right on my screen; you can look at my screen later, but you don't need it.
David gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand, and David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Bajaliah to bring up from there the Ark of God, which is called the name of the Lord.
Now here's the trick. If you go to some translations, they will really fudge on this verse. You will read things like the ESV has, "called by the name of the Lord of hosts." They'll omit the second one.
It literally says, "which is called Shem," Shem, "which is called the name, the name of the Lord, God of hosts."
The ark was called the name! Now why would that be?
We always really good object. That's what I'm learning from this verse—he's just really a wood block. Why would the Ark be associated with the very presence of God? This is not a trick question.
Because that's where the high priest met him once a year. Okay, again, it's not a trick question. They associated that object with the very divine presence because that's where the divine presence, pardon the language, sat. Okay? The footstool, the throne, you know, all this language—that's where he was.
And so they could look at the object, "Oh, Hashem, the presence is there!" Where else would it be?
Next slide. Isaiah 37: "Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar."
Now we're getting language that makes the name sound like a person even more. In blazing wrath, with a heavy burden, his lips—the name has lips—in its anthropomorphic language speaking about the name as though the name is a person. Because, well, God is a person. How else would you talk about it? Lips full of fury, tongue like a devouring fire.
And I'm giving you the next verse—all these verses to go back to Exodus 23 and say that when God says to Moses, "Look, I've got a trip I'm going to send you to this land; you know all about it, I know you're a little scared, it's okay; I'll be with you. In fact, I'm going to send an angel with you, and I just want you to know that when you look at that angel, when you see him out there, my name is in him."
My presence, my essence, who and what I am is in that angel. That's me out there.
Now, God has a fundamental problem. We back up a little bit—why does the Old Testament do this?
Well, God actually has two problems. One is, okay, if I come to people the way I really am, they'll die. And that just kind of defeats the whole purpose because I can't really have a conversation if people are just going to start dropping dead. So I have a problem. The other problem is, even if they didn't drop dead, since I'm disembodied, I don't have a body—how will they know I'm there?
So if you stay alive, you can't detect me. So let's talk—I mean, how are you going to do this?
So this is why God chooses to appear in ways that can be discerned with the human senses so that you know he's there, and you're not really getting the full Him because if you did, you'd drop over dead. So, it's flame; it's clouds, and often it's a human, it's human form, it's this messenger, it's this angel—that's how you know I'm there; that's how I'm going to do it.
So you're safe. We've solved both problems: You know I'm there, and you ain't gonna die. That's the whole point.
God has to be veiled in some way.
Now Deuteronomy 4, we get another interesting little tidbit here, verse 37: "Because he, God, loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence."
When? Wait, I thought it was, "I don't know who brought them up."
No, no, no! It's the mouth of Yahweh who brought them out! No, no, no, no! It's a punny—it's really all the same thing.
Now, I bring this passage in to make the point that my name—we can, I've been saying the name is the presence, the very essence of Yahweh.
Right here we have it; it's the punny. I mean, this is how God, again, in the Hebrew text refers to God when he meets directly with people.
Okay, Moses, God met with Moses face to face, honey, honey, you know, all that sort of language—it's him! It's really him!
It's not like, it's not like near God or almost God or sort of 99.9 ivory soap god. It's him! It really is him!
Again, that's going to become important because you're going to hit passages where we're not quite there yet; they're both going to be in the same scene.
Now we've already seen that they're both sort of in the same scene because one is referring to the other. You've already seen that.
Next slide.
Deuteronomy 33, it says it again: "My presence will go with you."
How clear can I be?
Well, you know, Moses, if you're not understanding this—like if you don't know Hashem, if you don't know this angel, I'm a punny. If those three terms really aren't hitting it, well, let's talk about divine ontology, you know?
I'll give you three credits for that, you know? We'll meet for fifteen weeks, and maybe you'll get an A, but you need at least a C to leave!
Come on! He can't be much clearer with the language that Moses is going to be able to comprehend. It's really him! I'm being as clear as I possibly can be. It's me!
Next slide. Judges 2. Now you go to Judges 2, and something really unusual happens. I go through the whole thing here because you gotta follow this one.
The verse: "The Malach of Yahweh comes up from Gilgal to Bohem, and said, I brought you up."
This is Judges 2: "I brought you up from Egypt and I took you into the land which I had promised on oath to your fathers."
Who's the speaker? "I brought you up from Egypt."
I said, "I will never break my covenant." Wait a minute! Whose covenant? Wasn't that burning bush thing—wasn't that thing my father was Yahweh? Yeah, it was!
Don't worry about it—it's the same guy!
"I will never break my covenant, but you have not obeyed me."
Again, the angel is using first-person language here, making the point and basically saying, "Look, we had this plan. I brought you here, and you blew it."
So, what you have—anybody remember what happens in this passage?
The angel says this—this is my long paraphrase—"Hey, look, I traveled with you guys for forty years; you got up every morning; you saw me every day. We ran around the desert listening to you complain, and I didn't believe. Now that we're here, I actually did what I told you I was going to do, and now you're turning to idolatry—it’s time for me to say goodbye."
So for the first time in forty-plus years, they're gonna wake up the next day, and he ain't gonna be there.
That's why they called the name of the place "Bokim"—weeping! He isn't here; he actually left.
Next slide—Genesis 30:1. This is the Jacob incident. In the breeding season of the flock, I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped and spotted and modeled.
And the angel of God said to me in the dream, "Jacob! Here I am!"
He said, "Lift up your eyes and see," and so on and so forth.
We get down to verse 13: What does the angel say to him?
"I am the God of Bethel."
Number when Jacob fled Esau went to Bethel—sacrifice their God again!
How much clearer can it possibly be?
Next slide. This is probably my favorite passage in the Old Testament. This is just too cool for words, okay?
This is when Jacob is blessing the sons of Joseph.
If you know any Hebrew, you're going to get a real—you’re going to get a buzz out of this one, okay? If you know any Hebrew grammar.
So he says, "Israel," Jacob stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, thus crossing his hands although Manasseh was the firstborn.
And he blessed Joseph, saying, "But the God—in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked—this is his oath!"
Now it's Halloween! Next slide.
"The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day; again, hi Elohim."
There's one more line: "Guess what—angel!"
The angel who has redeemed me from all harm.
And here's the kicker: may he bless these boys—these lads!
In Hebrew, that is a P-A fundamental singular verb form. If the writer had wanted to make sure you didn't misread the text, that there's more than one—that we need to keep the angel and God separate—he could have done so right here, but he doesn't!
You can't fuse the two any tighter than this! "Maybe the God, the God who did this, the God who did that, the angel—may he do XYZ."
That was just too cool for words!
Judges 6: "The angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terebinth at Oprah, which belonged to Joash, the Obys."
Right? His son Gideon was then beating out wheat inside a winepress in order to keep it safe from the Midianites. The angel of Yahweh, the malach, appeared to him and said to him, "Yahweh is with you—okay?"
So they're distinguished here—Yahweh is with you, valiant warrior!
Gideon, again paraphrased, says, "You gotta be kidding! Do you know what's going on here?"
Now, why is all this? You follow this next slide.
And so it says, and Yahweh turned to him. Okay? They remember this? We're looking at “to Yahweh turned to him,” which is a curious phrase, isn't it?
It is!
Yahweh embodied!
I can—all Yahweh turned to him and said, "Go, and this might be yours, and save Israel from the hand of Midian."
Do not I send you?
And he said to him, "Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my client is the weakest in Manasseh; I’m the least of my father's house."
And Yahweh said to him, "Okay, okay! Alright, alright! I get it!"
There were two!
The angel of the Lord met him there, and it said that Yahweh was there too!
So I guess Yahweh's talking, and he's just kind of staring at the angel whose lips aren't moving! It's like a ventriloquist thing! Is this what's going on?
Again, it's a little confusing because you got two—it's going to get a little worse.
Yahweh said to him, but I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.
And then Gideon said to him, we don't know—it just says "him." What it's ambiguous!
So is Gideon speaking to the angel, or is he speaking to Yahweh?
Well, if I found favor—yes! The answer is yes!
Doesn’t it matter that they’re both going to hear? If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it's you who speaks with me!
Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present.
Okay? Stay here; I'm going to go make a present. I'll come back. Just don’t go anywhere!
Okay, so he said—whoever he was, angel or Yahweh says, "Okay, I'll stick around."
Next slide.
So Gideon brought them to him under the terebinth—wait a minute! He brought the sacrifice to who—who was under the terebinth?
Anybody remember?
How did the chapter begin?
Who was under the terebinth tree?
The angel was under! The angel of God said to him—wait a minute! If Yahweh was the guy talking, why did he bring this present to the eighth?
Take the meat, unleavened cakes; put them on this rock and pour the broth over them. And he did so.
The angel of the Lord reached out to its staff. Fire springs up from the rock, consumes the little offering, and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight!
Then Gideon says, "Wow! Alas, O Lord God, for now I've seen the angel of the Lord face to face!"
Yahweh’s still there; he’s still in the scene! Yahweh said to him, "Don't worry; you're not going to die!"
Now, if I revealed myself to you, without the angel, then you die! Okay? They're both in the same scene, but they're both mixed and separated!
Okay, my suggestion is all of that "quote-unquote" confusing stuff is deliberate! You're not supposed to be able to make a neat picture because they're both him! He is him, and he's not him! But did therapy still him?
It’s kind of like we talked about Jesus: Jesus is, but isn't God.
Well, he is God because he's the same essence! But he's not the Father!
Okay, don't ask me questions. It's the same sort of dilemma!
You know, like how do you express that adequately?
Got the same problem here!
Summary:
Next slide. So far, again, we've got clear indications that there's this Tunnes going on. The name is another way to refer to Yahweh himself. The name is within the angel, and the angel, of course, is in human form.
Next slide.
Mother, second Yahweh clues. Next slide: the word. Next slide: Genesis 15.
So we talked about the angel; we’ve talked about Hashem. Now we're going to talk about the word—hon devar.
After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
I would suggest to you that when you have visions, you see things; otherwise, it wouldn't be a vision!
Okay, it's not just that he's hearing; he's seeing; he's seeing the word!
Okay? The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: "Don't be afraid, Abram! I am your shield; your reward will be very great."
Next slide.
1st Samuel 3. This is my second favorite passage. Now the young man Samuel was ministering to the Lord—got a divine name under Eli, a lien—and the word of the Lord was rare in those days.
See, now we think that that means God wasn't talking much, but what does the rest of the line say? There was no frequent vision!
The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.
Down to verse 7: Now Samuel had not yet experienced the Lord; the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.
And the Lord called Samuel again the third time; you know another story—he wants to go to sleep; he hears his voice, "Samuel!" and he gets up; he thinks it’s Eli, “I know what you want!” And they go back and forth a little while.
And then Eli, of course, says, "Well, the next time it happens!"
Next slide.
Next time it happens, say, "Speak, Lord; your servant hears!"
Eli has it figured out.
So here's what we read: "And the Lord again, Yahweh, came and stood."
I would suggest that that's the language of embodiment! The Lord came and stood! Calling it as at the other times—it’s the same guy, same person.
"Samuel!"
"Samuel!"
Same as, "Speak, for your servant hears!"
And then they have this conversation that basically goes, "I just thought I'd come to you and tell you that Eli is doomed!"
Right? You can go tell her.
Thanks a lot!
You go down to the rest of the chapter, verse 19: "And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and led none of his words to fall to the ground."
And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord.
Why?
Because the Lord appeared again at Shiloh! The Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by—or as, however we want to translate, as the word of the Lord!
He kept coming back, but he only spoke to Samuel!
That's how people knew that, hey, guess Samuel's a prophet, because the word of the Lord keeps showing up there!
This is not okay—you're thinking John 1:1!
In the beginning was the word; the Word was God; the Word was with—John didn't just sit down one day and say, "Hey, I want to do something clever! I want to talk about Jesus in a different way!"
All those other Gospels are boring.
You know, like genealogies—who wants to do that?
Yeah, enough of that!
I'm going to do something clever! What should I make up?
Okay, he's getting it from his Old Testament!
It's not new; it's not invented!
Next slide. Jeremiah 1:1. Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "When Jeremiah," and speaking before, "I formed you..." You know Jeremiah relating this, anyway!
And here's the speaker, God: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you!”
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God!"
"Not an Elohim! Truly, I do not know how to speak! I don’t know what to say, for I'm only a boy!"
But the Lord, again, he, Yahweh, said to me, "Don't say, ‘I'm only a boy!’ for you shall go to all to whom I send you."
Then the Lord, again the third time—now we got the divine name put out his hand and did what?
It's here's a hand!
But it's not really real—"I just want you to think it's a hand!"
No! He reaches out his hand and touches him!
This is the God of Israel embodied! Who is referred to as the Lord and in the first verse, the word!
This is the embodied word in the Old Testament, just like it was with Samuel and with Abraham; we get it with Jeremiah here, and it’s even more dramatic because he touches him!
So now I put my words in your mouth!
Next slide.
Let's do another one!
Yeah, we're just rattling through these.
The cloud rider—he who rides the clouds.
Now, this one takes a little explanation! This is not a biblical passage!
You're looking at, it is a passage from the Baal cycle from Gerard.
And I start off with this for this reason— all the stuff that we've been through, again, it's been my experience that people still try to say this isn't God embodied!
We can't have two Yahweh's in the Old Testament; it's just Yahweh, and this secondary being—this angel thing is who’s less than Yahweh!
Now, not only don't I think that that works with what we've seen so far, I think what we've seen so far is sufficient to blow that away; but this one just destroys it!
Because everybody in the ancient world knew that Baal was not a flunky angel!
This is a, okay, in everybody's mind, Baal is a big deal!
He is deity; he's not one of these underlings; he's deity!
Okay? Keep that in mind!
One of Baal's titles was "the charioteer of the clouds."
He who rides the clouds!
This idea that Baal's up there, and he’s driving around in his chariot looking around—you know, being the boss or something like that?
Okay, so it's a title that's used of a deity that everybody knows who that is!
Well, my guys, there's a conclusion we can draw!
Yahweh and Baal were the same!
No, you dunderhead!
The conclusion we would draw is that the biblical writer is capitalizing on the fact that everybody knows who Baal is, and now I'm going to take this title, a Baal that everybody knows, and I'm going to give it to you, Yahweh!
And what I'm communicating theologically is that Yahweh is the real rider on the clouds, not this Baal guy!
I'm telegraphic! I'm using language that even you will understand, you little Baal worshipers!
I'm using a language that you'll understand, so you get the point!
So there is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens.
Next slide.
Psalm 68: "O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God! Sing praises to the Lord, to Yahweh, to him who rides in the heavens."
Next slide.
Psalm 104: "Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great!"
Go down to verse three: "He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot!"
Who makes the clouds his chariot?
By God!
Alright, Isaiah 19, you must have the Baal cycle...
Next slide.
Isaiah 19: "An oracle concerning Egypt: Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud!"
It's not Baal!
No, no!
What Baal's riding—I don't know what he's driving these days, but it ain’t this!
Okay? His car is in the shop and his chariot's getting fixed or whatever—it’s impounded!
Now, all those—and this is a crucial text for the two powers issue within Judaism—all those that I just showed you let's go the next slide—were very specifically tying, tethering that phrase, that description to Yahweh himself!
The only exception in the Old Testament is this passage right here, Daniel 7, verses 9 to 13.
It begins, "As I looked," Daniel said, "Thrones were set in place."
Thrones were set in place! The Ancient of Days took his seat. We know who that is; he's presiding over the event!
Next slide.
His garment was like white snow, the hair of his head was like lamb's wool; his throne was tongues of flame, its wheels were blazing fire.
You know just this grand scene in heaven!
In the middle of the passage, the court or the council, and however you want to translate it, sat, and the books were opened.
And one like a human being came with the clouds of heaven!
Hey, the cloud rider decided to come!
He got the memo!
Wait a minute! I thought the cloud rider was Yahweh!
Yes!
Well, isn't Yahweh in the scene already?
Correct!
Well, then we’ve got another one here that would be the case. Okay? One like a human being came upon her, came with the clouds of heaven.
He reached the Ancient of Days and was presented to him.
Okay? What was presented? Dominion, glory, and kingship!
Hey, this is a crucial passage because you might want to be—you might be able to argue yourself, I think really badly out of the angel and the name and the word and all this other stuff; but everybody knows who the cloud rider is!
You're not faking your way through that one!
By the way, this is the passage Jesus quotes when he's on trial in front of Caiaphas when Caiaphas wants to know who he really is.
Next slide: Matthew 26.
Yeah, I think I have it in here too—a seagull, again. Quote, you know, the Jewish guy who wrote the two powers book.
Next slide.
There's a quote from Siegel here: "Daniel describes a heavenly enthronement scene involving two divine manifestations." The son of man and the Ancient of Days.
It may easily be describing two separate divine figures: yes, Alan, it is, and your ancestors understood that, and it really bothered them after Jesus showed up.
It was something that needed to be dealt with because we're going to lose points; we're going to lose this argument from our own Bible if we don't do something!
So let's make it a heresy! That sounds great, that's great!
You know, I don't know; we kind of minimized the heresy thing today because I don't know; maybe we're just too independent or not community-minded enough, but that was really a powerful thing to be excluded from your community!
Okay? That was—it was a serious thing!
Next slide.
So again, summary: Old Testament theology includes the idea that Yahweh can be present in two persons, sometimes in the same scene.
Old Testament theology also teaches the second Yahweh figure portrayed in human form and, at times, physically embodied.
This sounds awfully like something else! What would that be?
That would be Christology!
Next slide. Now I'll probably— all week, we could hit—we have time. It's a question I often get: a lot of this is new to me. I'm just used to thinking of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God.
How does this relate to that description of Jesus?
Next slide.
It's a good question! The Old Testament has other sons of God who weren't human—Job, obvious one, Psalm 82, of course.
So since Jesus was identified with Yahweh, he was different than the other sons of God.
So we need a way to distinguish him, don't we?
We need a way to distinguish him! The New Testament does that in several ways.
One of them is the use of the term "Monogeneis," which we sort of awkwardly translate "only begotten." Until the late 19th, early 20th century, it was assumed that Monogeneis came from two Greek words "Manas," meaning water, and "ganado," which means to beget; hence the phrase only-begotten.
But later discoveries, though, confirm that that was not really those were not the constituent parts of the term.
It really came from "Manas" only and the Greek noun "Jenay," which means kind or type.
One of a kind! Unique!
"Monogeneis" does not mean "only begotten"; it means unique!
It has nothing to do with begetting or beginning!
If you've ever talked to a Jehovah's Witness, they need to see that! Okay? They're just thinking "big" often that means you had being!
It's not even what the word means!
And you know what you need for proof of that? You go to Hebrews 11:17, because Isaac is referred to in that passage as the "Monogeneis" of Abraham!
It's time! It's jeopardy time!
Was Isaac the only begotten son of Abraham?
Think!
No, not really!
Well, then what would "Monogeneis" mean if it's used of Isaac?
It means that Isaac is unique in some way, and you know how he's unique—he is the son of the promise!
He is Sarah's boy!
That's why he's "Monogeneis," because out of their kids, there’s Ishmael, and Ishmael was even born first!
Next slide.
We'll skip through here. If you actually do a search of "Monogeneis," you'll see that "unique" really does work a whole lot better!
We'll skip that.
Let's go to the summary slide.
So, a summary: only-begotten language speaks to uniqueness, not point of origin. Since Yahweh was unique and Jesus was identified with unique, the term was kind of important.
So when New Testament writers referred to Jesus as "Monogeneis," they’re thinking, "Okay, okay, okay. Jesus is God in the flesh."
So there's other sons of God in the Old Testament, and the Jews probably won't forget that.
So what's the best way we can describe what we're thinking here?
Okay, son of God, but different than—oh, how about just saying he's unique?
And then we can take that and mesh it with other arguments about Jesus, like the word in John 17 when he prays and he says that he's received the name from the Father and in Jude 5 when it's Jesus who leads the people out of Egypt.
Jesus led the people out of Egypt!
The court has a book of Jude!
I thought it was the angel!
I thought it was the presence!
I thought it was Yahweh!
Yeah, yeah, it was!
Okay, again, these things are not accidental! They are telegraphing ideas through what they're writing!
Next slide. What about the Spirit?
I will close with this. New Testament theology—a two-person Godhead seems pretty clear, and the Old Testament, I would say!
But again, I sort of live with this; this is one of those things that kind of dominates my thinking.
What about a Trinity? What about three? What about the Spirit?
Backslide!
Well, two observations here: once you know the strategies, the Old Testament writers used to convey a two Yahweh's idea, which, of course, is where we get the two powers idea of Judaism, once you know sort of how they do that, you can detect certain passages where these same phrases and wordings are used of the Spirit.
It's kind of interesting!
New Testament writers then repurpose all this stuff!
They repurpose this one—this two-head thinking in the Old Testament to link the Spirit to both Jesus and God the Father.
Let me give you some examples!
Next slide.
We have here Isaiah 63, verse 7, and I've colorized the terms for a specific reason so they stand out here!
This is Isaiah 63, verse 7, and then Psalm 78 to the right is a parallel.
I’ll get, I’m going to start with Isaiah: no mention why I have the psalm there.
So Isaiah 63: "I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord," again, this Yahweh, "the praises of the Lord," the "correspond all the Lord has granted us," the "great goodness of the house of Israel," so on and so forth.
Talks about again his deliverance!
You get to verse 9: "In all their affliction, he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence!"
Notice how it conflates the two? The angel and the presence!
"The angel of his presence saved them in his love and his pity; he redeemed them in"—he gets them through the desert through all the complaining—all these episodes we all know about.
But they rebelled! Verse 10: "And grieved His Holy Spirit!"
How did he get in there? They rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.
"Therefore he turned to be their enemy, and he himself fought against them."
He remembered the days of old, of Moses and his people: "Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd's of his flock? Where is he who put him in the midst of them, his whole spirit?"
Well, I thought God put the angel in them!
Oh! The psalmist is so confused!
No, actually, he's not!
If you look at Psalm 78— or I should say Isaiah's confused!
If you look at Psalm 78, this is a parallel passage.
If you read the whole song, I pick two verses out because the verb "love" is here—"rebelled" and "grieved" are the same Hebrew words as in Psalm 78!
But look at what happens in Psalm 78: "How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!"
They tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel!
You compare these two; it aligns the Spirit with God!
And in Isaiah 63, you have the angel conflated with the Spirit!
That's three—thinking!
That's pardon upon triangulation!
Okay, that's what that is!
Again, New Testament writers and readers are not half-wits!
Okay? They know the text extraordinarily well!
They're not sitting there thinking, goodness, the Jews have a two-person God, and we don't want that—we need something different.
Well, let's throw somebody else in there, then we can say we have one more than you do!
No! They're getting it!
They're getting the thought trajectories from their Old Testament!
They're not making it up!
Next slide: Ezekiel 8.
Again, slide doesn't work real well!
Hilbert, well, we’ll get through it!
Ezekiel 8: "Then I looked, and behold, a form that had the appearance of a man!"
Below what appeared to be his waist was fire, and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness—like gleaming metal!
Before, in Ezekiel chapter one, specifically, the guy sitting on the throne, that would be God!
Okay? But here it's someone that looks like a man!
He put out the form of a hand—oh, he must have been reading Jeremiah!
He put out the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head, and who lifted me up? The Spirit!
So we have an embodied deity from chapter one—just he’s and he’s also human in form in chapter one—here we get him described as a man in chapter eight, and it’s the Spirit!
Oh, they’re so confused!
They just needed a good professor back then!
Verse five: "Then he said to me, 'Son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north.'"
So I lifted up my eyes toward the north: "Behold, the north of the altar—get him!"
He's looking!
Again, this is, he's seeing the temple.
You go down to the bottom; it's obscured here, but I'll read the rest of it for you: "Son of man, do you see what they're doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here to drive me from my sanctuary?"
Again, you've got God, you've got a body mint; you’ve got the Spirit—which one is it?
All of the above!
I'll check!
Be all of the above!
Next slide!
Now, again, if you're thinking in these modes, let's talk about the New Testament before we quit here.
On the left-hand side, what you have going on in the New Testament is they know what's going on here in the Old!
This column is Old Testament: you've got Yahweh, the invisible Yahweh; you've got a second visible Yahweh figure, and you've got it connected to the Spirit!
In the New Testament, we have God the Father, and we have Jesus, and the Spirit!
New Testament writers to telegraph the fact that we've got a correspondence going here in these passages!
Acts 16, Philippians 1:19, Romans 8, 1 Peter 1:11—look at the phrases they’re used: "the Spirit of Jesus!"
So if Christians are thinking, "Well I can really see that two person Godhead here," I mean, our buddies the Jews are talking about two powers in heaven—we know what that is!
And they're using the two-headed Godhead here, and then they’re linking the Spirit to Jesus, who is God; "the Spirit of God," "the Spirit of Jesus"—same, same, same thing!
"Spirit of God," "Spirit of Christ!"
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts!
See, God didn't send the Spirit of God into our hearts!
He sent the Spirit of Jesus!
Again, it doesn’t matter to the New Testament writer which noun they choose; they’re all interchangeable when they write stuff like this!
They know that it is consistent with their Old Testament!
You know, think about it! Wouldn't they have a problem if they're accepting the Old Testament as canonical, as sacred, and it contradicts half of what they're writing in the Old Testament?
Wouldn't it be a problem?
I want to make them look kind of schizophrenic or just kind of dumb!
They know we're—cut, they're getting it from somewhere!
Next slide.
So I think we'll end here. Again, when you understand that—to yet one—how that's revealed in the Old Testament, you can detect when the Spirit is brought into the conversation in the same way.
And again, you get—you move from a Tunis, you know? The angel is but isn’t Yahweh—he is Yahweh!
He’s the presence; he’s all this. But there’s holy Yahweh out there—they're still separate.
Again, you know what's going on there, and then the Spirit gets brought into it.
This is exactly what they're doing in the New Testament with Jesus!
Okay? Referring back again to the second power!
So the Old Testament—two yet one Yahweh's; the New Testament times equates the Spirit with the second Yahweh.
The result is you get three!
Now, I want to make one other comment just to tie up a loose end! I mentioned them real briefly, but I want to mention them again just so that you get the idea!
The New Testament writers are trying to deliberately link Jesus to the God of the Old Testament and to the angel because they're both Yahweh!
So on one hand, Paul—he's not the only one to do it: Paul will quote the Old Testament.
He'll have some passage that says, you know, "Yahweh said this or that or the other thing," and then he'll quote it in what he's writing, and then he'll take the Yahweh part, and he'll write either "Kurious," "the Lord," or "Christos," "or yes, Jesus."
They actually do that!
They'll quote the Old Testament, and then they'll swap in a name or a title associated with Jesus!
That is to telegraph theology to the writer that we're the same!
They do that with the angel too!
I mentioned John 17; I mentioned the book of Jude!
Of course, we know about John 1:1 with the word.
And I'll close with the scene again with Caiaphas.
In Matthew 26, Jesus is on trial, and Caiaphas has sort of had enough of it, and he says, "Quit beating around the bush! Tell us who you are!"
And then Jesus quotes Daniel 7, and we read that and think of Jesus as trying to be clever; he's trying to sort of put one over on Caiaphas.
He’s going to give Caiaphas a riddle—I'll be clever; that’ll irritate him!
He says, "You want to know who I am? Hereafter, you will see the Son of man coming upon the clouds with great glory!"
Does that answer your question?
Now Caiaphas knows instantly what he just heard!
He just heard this man standing in front of him claim to be the cloud rider—the second Yahweh figure in Daniel 7!
You know why we know that Caiaphas got that message?
What does he do?
He rips his garments and says, "This is blasphemy! We have no further need of witnesses!"
Out the door!
He knows instantly what Jesus is saying and, of course, Jesus does too!
Figure this out, okay? Put your thinking cap on, Caiaphas, because I'm going to tell you, and it’s literally the end of the conversation!
That's the end of him!
So, again, this is—you have to, again, be thinking in these modes to catch some of the kasama, but just looks, you know, like throwaway stuff right over our heads!
But it's not!
There’s just a lot in there, so slow down, take a careful look, and you'll pick some of it up!
Go ahead!
If it's what about like—when Jesus breathes on his disciples and tells them to wait for the gift of the Spirit?!
I'll answer that this way: Jesus is but isn’t God the Father!
We understand that He is God because they're the same essence!
But he's not the Father!
The Spirit is but isn’t Jesus!
Jesus, in effect, promises to be with them unto the end of the age!
Wherever they are—where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them!
Why?
Because I'm the Spirit too!
He is me, and I am him!
So he's just telling them, "I'm going, but I'm not really going!"
Okay?
The Spirit is Jesus!
But he isn't Jesus!
Now, we get the Spirit, which is really interesting when you start to think about, okay, the Spirit is Jesus!
Jesus is God!
Jesus is the second power!
The presence of God—the same presence that lived in the tabernacle—wait a minute! The same presence that lived in the tabernacle—maybe that's why Paul refers to us as tabernacles of skin!
And maybe that's why Paul uses verbs like the Spirit tabernacles in us!
Just maybe that might be why that language is used!
You know, we're not waiting—he's not telling his disciples to wait for a thing that is less than him!
He's telling them to wait until the Spirit comes, who is him!
But you know, again, it's this, I am, but I’m not!
It's hard for us to talk like this because we don't have such attributes!
I mean, we can come up with analogies that sort of work; you know, I kind of have a lustrated value—but we can never be entirely someone else while still being ourselves.
But that's what's going on!
Same, but different—in really complete sort of ways.
All we can do is sort of mimic it!
We should do this really fast!
So, yes to run the questioning!
Conservative Genesis 1:2 and then Genesis 1—I think it's 26, the plural language there.
I actually do not think that Genesis 1:26 is a Trinitarian passage!
After all you've heard, you may think—"You know, that's kind of weird, Mike!"
I do think, though, that in Genesis 1, you do have...
Let me put it this way: when it comes to Old Testament creation theology, there are three who play a role!
You don't really get two or more than two in Genesis 1!
But Proverbs 8 introduces a third character with wisdom, whose motifs and descriptions are applied to Jesus elsewhere.
Now, just to head this off, well, wait a minute!
In Proverbs 8, it's a woman—wisdom as lady wisdom; and he's saying Jesus is a woman now, and hermaphrodite, or you know, what's going on here?
Wisdom is feminine in Hebrew because it's grammatically feminine!
"Hokhmah" is grammatically feminine!
It's just the way languages work!
Okay? That’s all it is!
You know, there are other issues, but we don't need to rabbit hole with that!
Now, going back to Genesis, you have the Spirit; you’ve got God; you have this co-creator from Proverbs chapter 8—everybody gets a part!
So it's consistent with New Testament presentations of Jesus being the divine agent of creation!
There's no contradiction there!
Back to Genesis 1:26: I take the plural—the plural language there—is a plural of exhortation!
God is announcing to a group because it's plural, "Hey! Let us create—let's create humankind!"
Okay?
When the verbs of creation—when the creation actually happens, they are all grammatically singular!
They're never plural!
So I look at that and say God the Father is announcing to some group, which I take to be the divine council—just the guys in the room to hear the plan, and they say, "You're the boss! You know!"
So—but when it actually comes to the creation event, only God is acting!
It's consistently singular in verbs; it's consistently singular in pronouns: "In the image of God, he created them!"
In His own image—there are singular pronouns too!
It's very clear!
It's not like ancient Near Eastern cosmologies when you have gods doing a whole bunch of things, you know, and you get multiple deities involved and all this kind of stuff!
The Hebrew Bible is painstakingly clear to not cross into that territory!
And that in and of itself is a theological statement!
I expect that microphone to be back really quickly!
I think it could be used to blur the distinction between Jesus and the Spirit.
I think it’s a—you know, it's sort of a formulaic way of saying I was under the control of the Spirit!
But even if that's the case, the fact that Jesus is mixed into there—into the language!
I think, yeah, there could be an intentional blurring there that you're—what's happening to John is actually happening to him at the behest of and under the influence of two.
Who else were in the New Testament are the same but yet different?
So I think it's consistent with that blurring that happens elsewhere!
I’m just wondering if you would agree—in Acts 5 about Ananias and it says, but—God!
Yeah, you're like—you're like, "Yeah, I don't have any problem with that argument!"
Because I don't think that—I think you could still argue the personhood of the Spirit with personal pronouns, which is kind of traditionally, you know, the way it's done!
But I think in the context of this other language about Jesus being the Spirit but yet not being the Spirit!
And the Spirit is Jesus but yet he's different—there's no ambiguity about Jesus being a person!
And so once you link the two, that becomes the foundational issue!
That after you recognize that, then you can look at these pronouns and go, "Well, that makes a lot of sense! How else would you do it?"
You know, that kind of thing!
For example, literary writing!
My tale about within the scriptures or something—something alongside just good literary artistry!
I would be somewhat inclined to say it's a stalemate if there was just a handful of these, but it is literally everywhere!
And you're talking about authors that lived over a millennium apart!
And they all do have their own agendas—
But somehow, even despite their own—and when I say agenda, I'm not saying it in a sinister way!
I mean they've got stuff they need to take care of!
There's a reason why they're writing—despite all that, there is just hundreds—maybe, I mean, if you got really picky about it, you might be even in four digits—just threads that keep getting connected over and over and over again!
Now, I think it would be an overwhelming effort just as a human enterprise to do that!
And frankly, I don't know anything like it!
I mean, there’s nothing else even in the discussion in terms of thread continuity—theological continuity!
But on another level, it's sort of a moot question because I don't divorce literary artistry from inspiration!
God isn't taking a talented writer and saying we're going to have some inspiration time today!
I want you to turn off your brain!
If you can't do that, I'll turn it off for you, and I'm going to start dictating!
God prepares people for the task that they were doing—he not only prepares the original authors—those who come up with the first, you know, bulk of the composition!
But there is clear evidence in a number of cases, and you pre—you can probably find a good example of this in most every Old Testament book!
New Testament, probably the Gospels at least—of editorial hand that is fashioning material that has been left to someone putting it together!
Even those guys!
Like, I'll give you an example.
The first three verses in Ezekiel, if you have your Bible, you could look at him!
The person's change!
It begins in the third person; you know, it begins in the first person!
"I—you know, I was here by the river Kebar; it was in the year of whatever, whatever!"
And then it said—and then he refers to Ezekiel the prophet!
It's a switch between the first and the third person!
It shows that someone had content that is eco probably preached!
You'd have—you have schools of the prophets!
You know, people following these people around, preachers!
They're recording things!
Or after they die, they put them into writing, and then somebody has to make a book out of it!
I like to say it this way: I do not believe in the holy stapler!
That is not part of my theology!
Or we say, "Well, Mike, what do you mean by the holy stapler?"
What I mean is we have this idea of inspiration that sort of removes these human elements you're talking about and makes inspiration, again, these series of paranormal events!
Where, you know, let's say we're followers of Ezekiel, and we're following him around, and some of us are taking notes!
And, you know, we go out and we listen to him!
You know, Ezekiel's out again: "What weird things are going to do today? Is he gonna get naked? Is he gonna—you know, what he does? All these weird things? We go follow him around, we write stuff down, and all of a sudden he just drops over dead!"
Then we're like, "Now what do we do?"
Okay! I'm suggesting that the Spirit prompts somebody in that group to say, "Well, we better write this stuff down!"
Okay?
Whoever had notes, we're gonna meet tomorrow at two o'clock, and you bring everything you've got!
And so, you know what I mean, it's Starbucks!
And so they get all—they gather all together, and it's like, "Okay, give me your pile! And, okay, you got one? You got two sheets?"
Okay?
You know, put them all together, make sure the edges are nice and even—where’s the stapler?
Kachunk!
There’s the book of Ezekiel!
It’s not how books are made!
Somebody's going to be tasked with, "We're going to take the master sermons now, and we're going to make them readable!"
We're going to put him in an order that people will understand.
Maybe it's chronological; maybe it'll be topical.
We're going to do a good job with it!
Who knows how to write?
Anybody a scribe here?
Know you in the back of the room—you’re elected!
Okay?
You know what you're doing; here’s the material!
Produce something for our people—for posterity!
We want people to know what Ezekiel said!
We want people to know what God spoke through him!
You know the passage in Jeremiah where Jeremiah writes something, and then the King tears it up?
And God says, "Go make another copy!"
God actually says in that passage, he says that the words that Jeremiah is writing are my words!
"Do a good job because my name's going on this, or I'm getting linked to this; it's the Word of God!"
People don't expect a hack term paper!
Okay?
They expect something that's really well done!
And God knows that!
God knows it's going to get passed down!
So I don't really divorce these things.
But even if I did, it would be a really difficult argument to say that they just all were so smart and so brilliant that they could connect thousands of things even though they didn't know each other and lived at a different time, and it went through more than one hand!
You know, it would just be a phenomenally difficult argument.