What New Testament critic Bart Ehrman categorizes as one of his “favorite apparent discrepancies” in the Bible would be relatively easy for him to resolve were he not hopelessly lost in a wooden literal labyrinth of his own making. In his book, Jesus Interrupted, he cites the problem as follows:

In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord where are you going?” A few verses later Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, “Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (John 16:5).

That leaves only two possibilities according to Ehrman: “Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters.”¹

First, it is instructive to note that were I to take Bart in the woodenly literal sense that he takes the Bible, I would be doing him a grave injustice. As such, it would hardly be fair to suppose that he really thinks it possible that “Jesus had a very short attention span.” Anyone who reads his book in context knows full well that Ehrman is convinced that John-who he characterizes as a “lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasant”²-did not write the gospel attributed to him and that the sources that were cobbled together to create the text were decidedly unreliable.

Furthermore, we must be careful not to fall for historical revisionists who, like Ehrman, would have us believe on the basis of Acts 4:13 that John was illiterate and therefore could not have written the fourth gospel. John may have been “unlettered” in the sense that he was not educated beyond the primary schooling available to boys at that time, but he was clearly not illiterate. Not only is it an uncharitable stretch to demean John as illiterate from the standpoint of his formal education, but this characterization neglects the immediate and overall context of the Book of Acts, where the “unlearned” apostles continually astonished the Jewish teachers of the Law with their knowledge and wisdom in much the same way as Jesus himself had-though He, too, was without the prerequisite rabbinic training demanded by Ehrman. Moreover, following the resurrection of the Master Teacher, there is every indication that the apostles devoted themselves to the study and ministry of the Word of God.³ An entire adult lifetime of such study can easily account for John’s ability to produce an astonishingly sophisticated and subtly nuanced literary masterpiece.

Finally, allow me to underscore what is painfully obvious to anyone who engages Bart’s so-called “problems with the Bible.”⁴ Professor Ehrman, it seems, is wholly incapable of comprehending the subtlety of sophisticated literary nuances. Instead, he is bent on forcing the text through a fundamentalist filter. Peter and Jesus obviously utter the words, “where are you going?” with decidedly different drifts. As the venerable New Testament scholar R. C. H. Lenski has well said, “Peter’s question in 13:36 was…only a selfish exclamation which would not hear of Jesus’ going away alone. And the assertion of Thomas in 14:5 was nothing but an expression of discouragement and dullness of mind….So here Jesus is leaving, his going to his Sender means so much to the disciples, and yet none of them requests one word of this precious information.”⁵ Put another way, while the disciples focused on mean earthly vanities, Christ intended to elevate their gaze to eternal verities.

Was Jesus a dummy with a painfully short attention span, as per Professor Ehrman? Or is Professor Ehrman hopelessly lost in a wooden literal labyrinth of his own making? You be the judge.

-Hank Hanegraaff

Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast heard daily throughout the United States and Canada. For a list of stations airing the Bible Answer Man, or to listen online, log on to Equip.org.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

NOTES

1. Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them) (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 9.

2. Ibid., 106.

3. See Acts 6:2-4.

4. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 6.

5. R.C.H. Lenski, Commentary on the New Testament: The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001 [originally published 1943]), 1078-79.

SYNOPSIS

In our age of information overload, Christians must learn to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsity. The need for discernment becomes particularly pressing in the face of sharp disagreement on critical issues among leading Christian apologists. A case in point concerns debate over the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL’s recent publication of CRI’s in-depth reevaluation of the “Local Church” Movement of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee (vol. 32/no. 6). Using the acronym D-I-S-C-E-R-N, I sort out the matter at hand and codify principles formatted as a memorable tool through which believers can, in general, separate wheat and chaff for themselves.

“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, To discern the sayings of understanding, To receive instruction in wise behavior, Righteousness, justice and equity; To give prudence to the naive, To the youth knowledge and discretion.”

-Proverbs 1:1-4 NASB

For me, the words discern and Solomon are virtually synonymous. Whenever I hear the word discern (or discernment), Solomon immediately flashes through my mind. The Creator of heaven and earth gave Solomon the opportunity to ask for whatever he wished. Solomon’s response is forever imprinted on the canvas of my consciousness. He did not ask for wealth or honor. Instead, he asked for the ability to discern between good and evil. So pleased was the Sovereign with Solomon’s choice that He granted him a wise and discerning heart-and He granted him riches and honor as well.¹

Like Solomon, we would do well to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsity. Indeed, we should so steep ourselves in his Proverbs that we, like he, may be able “to discern the sayings of understanding” (Prov. 1:2 NASB, emphasis added). Likewise, with Paul, we must pray that our “love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,” so that we “may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:9-10, emphasis added).²

Without the ability to discern, we stand impotent in an age of information overload. A glance back to 1999 may be instructive. Formidable intellects across the Christian landscape were busily propagating reckless rumors, spurious statistics, and anecdotal arguments respecting a bug that portended the demise of Western civilization. Although painful, the January 1999 issue of Esquire gave us a glimpse of the world’s perspective on the lack of discernment among Christians. Leaders were castigated for “mining the subjunctive, cultivating the seed of the threat buried inside each unrealized instance.”³ Not knowing how to discern between wheat and chaff, heat and light, followers were resigned to stalking up on freeze-dried food and generators. What was really in short supply, of course, was the ability to discern. As evidenced by my article in a 1999 edition of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, a modicum of discernment would have been sufficient to debug the millennium bug.⁴

Today we face another situation requiring the ability to discern. In January we published a special edition of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL featuring the culmination of a six-year primary research project respecting a movement originally founded by a Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee.⁵ Primary research was conducted not only in the U.S. but in such far-away places as China, Taiwan, South Korea, and England. It involved careful evaluation of literally hundreds of books, papers, church documents, and audio and video recordings. Even court documents. The result of our primary research is encapsulated in three words splashed across the front cover of our flagship magazine: “We Were Wrong.”

Shortly after publication, Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes issued a response expressing surprise at our conclusions: “Not only does CRI no longer believe the ['Local Church' Movement (LC)] is a cult, as they once did, but they do not even believe they are an ‘aberrant Christian group’ (47). They now call the LC ‘a solidly orthodox group of believers’ (47, emphasis added). Moreover, they say, members of the LC are in many ways ‘an exemplary group of Christians’ (29). All this has come as a great surprise to the majority of countercult ministries and apologists who have studied the matter and have come to the opposite conclusion.”⁶

For concerned Christians, this poses a significant dilemma. Are the primary research findings of the Christian Research Institute correct? Or are seventy-plus evangelical scholars from seven nations who “call on ‘local churches’ to renounce doctrines, legal attacks” on target?⁷ My purpose here is not merely to sort out the matter at hand, but to provide a memorable discernment tool through which you can separate wheat and chaff throughout the remainder of your Christian walk. As we think through this issue, bear in mind that we are not engaged in a mere ivory tower debate. Ideas have consequences. To unjustly label a brother or sister a cultist, or worse, may well lead to public humiliation and disgrace in the West-in the East it can lead to prison and death.

DOUBLE STANDARD

To discern between right and wrong, we must ever be wary of applying a “double standard.”⁸ In the present matter, the “local churches” (LC) are reproached for making unorthodox statements with respect to deification. As such, seventy-plus scholars from seven nations have called on the LC “to disavow and cease to publish”⁹ the following declaration: “We the believers are begotten of God. What is begotten of man is man, and what is begotten of God must be God. We are born of God; hence, in this sense, we are God.”¹⁰

What is neglected is the following qualifying sentence: “Nevertheless, we must know that we do not share God’s Person and cannot be worshiped by others. Only God Himself has the Person of God and can be worshiped by man.”¹¹ Not only so, but as the author makes clear elsewhere, “It is a great heresy to say that we are made like God in His Godhead.”¹² Or, as he writes, “From eternity to eternity He [God] remains the same in His essence. But in His economy the Triune God has changed in the sense of being processed.”¹³ As such, believers are infused with the life of God-and thus deified-through a “process involving regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification.”¹⁴

Apart from a double standard, Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373), widely regarded as the greatest theologian of his time, would likewise be accused of heresy for suggesting that “[the Word] was made man that we might be made God.”¹⁵ Not only so, but the apostle Peter would be suspect for stating that we are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4 NASB). Of course, in context, Peter is not suggesting that mere humans may be deified as gods, but he is speaking of believers undergoing a moral transformation from one that expresses the corruption of the world to one that reflects the character of God.

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

In initially viewing the list of people who allegedly signed the “Open Letter,”¹⁶ I was surprised-dare I say, shocked-at some of the names I encountered. My initial reaction was hardly in keeping with the maxim, Innocent until proven guilty. The first two scholars I called told me they were not aware of the Open Letter, did not endorse its conclusions, and never knowingly lent their names to it.¹⁷

Furthermore, when leaders in the LC testified to their belief in one God, revealed in three Persons who are eternally distinct; to the reality that human beings can never ontologically attain Godhood; and to the fact that they are “only the church” as opposed to being “the only church,” Christian charity alone compelled me to give them the benefit of the doubt. After a six-year primary research process, I am fully persuaded that the LC is innocent-rather than guilty-of compromising essential Christian doctrine. Moreover, it has become apparent that the Holy Spirit has moved in their midst to recover New Testament principles and practices widely neglected in the modern church.

Finally, what is true from a theological perspective is true sociologically as well. After meeting thousands of LC adherents and personally interacting with hundreds, I am not only convinced that they are innocent of the charge of cultism from a sociological perspective, but I can testify that they are among the finest Christians I have encountered in life and ministry. Even respecting litigation, every evidence points to the reality that the LC first tried diligently to reconcile libelous claims through peaceful fellowship as the Bible instructs in Matthew 18 and 2 Timothy 2. In three extreme cases in which the LC was accused of criminal behavior, the LC pursued requisite vindication through secular courts because Christian authors and publishers outright rejected their efforts to attain a Christ-honoring rapprochement.

SOPHISTRY

Sophistry might best be defined as subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation. At first blush the argument appears airtight, but on closer examination its flaws are exposed. An apt illustration was a video series by Chuck Missler and John Ankerberg titled, Will America Survive the Y2K Crisis?¹⁸ The series presented elaborate arguments designed to demonstrate just how vulnerable embedded chips made our banking system during the alleged Y2K crisis. Unless one is aware of the facts, the subtly deceptive reasoning appears to have real substance. The video, for example, contends that because January 1, 2000, was a Saturday, bank vaults would snap open making their contents accessible to crooks and making them inaccessible the following Monday to customers. This sophistry sounds persuasive until one realizes that the opening and closing of bank vaults is not regulated by embedded chips to begin with. Rather they are regulated by triply redundant, hand-wound mechanical timers set each evening by bank personnel. What was truly regrettable is that credible Christian leaders were soon parroting information garnered from the series.¹⁹

Sophistry with respect to the matter at hand is likewise troubling. Indeed, the Open Letter in question is a veritable case study in sophistry. Consider, for example, the matter of lawsuits. The LC is painted as a victimizer, despite the fact that Harvest House published a book by John Ankerberg and John Weldon that identifies the LC as a cult and defines a cult in terms of immoral and criminal behaviors, including murder, rape, prostitution, and child molestation.²⁰ As Elliot Miller commented, convincing a worldly court to hold Christians to a lower standard than it holds the world is hardly a cause for celebration.²¹

Furthermore, Harvest House, not the LC, initiated litigation. Harvest House has in fact engaged in more litigation against Christians than has the LC.²² Although the LC engaged in two other suits, they did so only after exhausting all other options. In both cases, the court concluded that distortions were deliberate and intentional. Not only was Witness Lee identified as the leader of a cult, but false statements conveyed that the LC engaged in deceptive recruiting practices in order to bring the weak and vulnerable into total subjugation.

Finally, as eminent social scientist Dr. Rodney Stark testified in court, charges of sexual and financial hanky-panky and quoting Lee’s theological statements so as to be diametrically opposed to what he was saying are not only libelous, but patently unfair.²³

CONTEXT

As frequently noted in Christian circles, a text without a context is a pretext. The same principle applies to broad-ranging matters of discernment. It particularly applies to present considerations. J. Gordon Melton, founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religions, testified that his examination of the research used by the Spiritual Counterfeits Project in their book on the LC (The God-Men) was among the more painful experiences of his Christian life. Not because he found the LC to be a cult, but because as he began to check quotes used against the LC he discovered time and time again that they were placed “in a foreign context” and made “to say just the opposite” of what was intended. Says Melton, “This was done while ignoring the plain teachings and affirmations concerning the great truths of the Christian faith found throughout Lee’s writings.”²⁴ Furthermore, although the Open Letter seeks to impugn Witness Lee and the LC with the heresy of modalism, the facts clearly point in another direction. Indeed, Lee clearly emphasized that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct centers of consciousness and volition, or three I’s eternally united in subject/object relationships. In commenting on John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”) he wrote, “Although the Father and the Son are one, between them there is still a distinction of I and the Father. We must not disregard this point, because if we do we would become modalists.“²⁵ Finally, if Lee is read in context, it is readily apparent that he makes a distinction between the essential and economic Trinity. As such, he stressed that from an outward objective aspect, Christ and the Spirit are two. However, from an inward subjective aspect, Christ and Spirit are one. Put another way, the Persons are never identical, but their manifest presence from a personal experiential perspective in the life of the believer is indistinguishable. Whether one agrees or disagrees, this is hardly a matter of heresy.

EQUIVOCATION

As I frequently communicate on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, words are not univocal, they are equivocal. Thus, their meanings are determined in large part by the context in which they are used. When I say that I hold to one God, revealed in three Persons, eternally distinct, I am clearly equivocating on the word Person. As such, I do not use Person in the sense of common parlance, but rather in the sense of “identity formed and completed on the basis of relationships” within the Godhead. To discern what someone means by what they say, we must carefully consider the principle of equivocation.26 As a case in point, the LC is often unjustly criticized for their practice of prophesying. This despite the fact that they do not prophesy in the sense of foretelling the future but rather in the 1 Corinthians 14 sense of forthtelling-of strengthening the faithful through encouragement, exhortation, edification, and equipping. The LC, likewise, equivocates on words such as “Christendom” and Babylon.” Properly understood, such words are not used to castigate Christians within denominations but rather denominationalism itself. As Lee makes abundantly clear in his writings, regardless of denominational background, if “we believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who was incarnated as a man, died on the cross for our sins, and resurrected from the dead, we are all redeemed, justified, regenerated and saved. And we all have the divine life within us. Therefore, we are all of one Body.”²⁷ Lest we become self-righteous in regard to some of the harsher equivocations used by Lee, we would do well to humbly remember our own sins. Many within evangelicalism have dubbed denominations who believe that God has only always had one congruent covenant community connected by the cross as replacement theologians guilty of spreading the message of anti-Semitism. In their own replacement ideology (to coin another equivocation), God has two people and one of those people (Israel) will replace the other (church) as the focus of God’s plans during the Tribulation. Despite the harshness of the rhetoric between these groups, they are yet of one body through faith in our resurrected redeemer.²⁸

RESEARCH

As J. Gordon Melton discovered with respect to the LC, to rightly discern between heat and light requires first-rate primary research. In working on his Encyclopedia of American Religions, he took note of “the ludicrous attempt to equate the Local Church’s practice of pray-reading with the use of mantras in Eastern religions.” As his research rightly revealed, “They bear no resemblance whatsoever.”²⁹ As I have personally discerned, Melton is right. While countercult authorities attempted to convince me that the LC used pray-reading to work devotees into an altered state of consciousness, primary research revealed precisely the opposite. Not only is pray-reading a means by which LC members memorize Scripture, it is also a meaningful link between their intake of Scripture and effective prayer. I fear that lack of primary research is at the root of much of the misinformation that continues to be communicated in evangelical circles. Shortly after publication of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL featuring the culmination of our six-year primary research project, Geisler and Rhodes issued the aforementioned response expressing surprise at our conclusions: “All of this has come as a great surprise to the majority of countercult ministries and apologists who have studied the matter and have come to the opposite conclusion.” Question is: Have they really studied the matter? Or has rhetoric replaced research?³⁰ Had Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP) genuinely applied proper research principles to their God-Men project, they would not have based the substance of their libelous charges on the unconfirmed account of a single hostile ex-member.³¹ As Melton rightly observed,

I was genuinely shaken as my research proceeded. I was concerned that such a parody on the life of a group of fellow Christians had been written, that it had been sponsored by such an organization as SCP, and then published by such a reputable publisher as InterVarsity Press. I was more shaken, however, by the obvious implications of the ethics involved in the production of such a book. The mistakes and misrepresentations in the book are so frequent and so consistent that it strains credulity to suggest that The God-Men is merely the product of poor scholarship.³²

My research into present accusations by the countercult community has left me similarly troubled and shaken. Perhaps it is the countercult community who need reformation.

NITPICKING

Last but not least is the matter of nitpicking. Jesus’ warnings in this regard are as instructive as they are sobering. Speaking to the Pharisees, He said, “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matt. 23:24). While our Lord counseled followers to make judgments based on right standards (John 7:24), He cautioned followers not to judge hypocritically (Matt. 7:1-5). Unnecessary and unjustified fault-finding does not undergird the kingdom of God-it ultimately undermines it. We all make mistakes. In his Systematic Theology, Geisler wrongly brands Dr. Kenneth Gentry a full preterist while rightly branding full preterism a heresy.³³ In truth, Dr. Gentry is anything but a heretic. Indeed, like me, he has spent a good portion of his life and ministry debunking full preterism. While the cost to Dr. Gentry is not insignificant, it would be less than charitable to dismiss Geisler’s prodigious volume on the basis of such imprecisions. In their response to the JOURNAL’S reassessment of the LC, Geisler and Rhodes imprecisely communicate that the Son proceeds from the Father.³⁴ At the risk of getting stuck in a psycho-epistemological cocoon or linguistic hall of mirrors, I much prefer classical creedal verbiage. The Son does not proceed, but is begotten of the Father; it is the Spirit who proceeds from the Father. As Dr. Robert Letham explains, “The Father is not begotten nor does he proceed; the Son does not beget, nor does he proceed; the Spirit neither begets nor spirates.”³⁵ Geisler and Rhodes, likewise, seem confused with respect to CRI’s former position regarding the LC. At the beginning of their article they incorrectly assert that CRI once held that the LC was a cult; at a later stage they correctly note that CRI did not label the LC a cult.³⁶ Whatever they really believe in this regard is largely irrelevant. To waste precious time and effort nitpicking such matters is in the words of Solomon, “Meaningless! Meaningless!…Utterly meaningless!” (Eccl. 1:2). What is meaningful is this: through game-changing primary research, we have discerned that We Were Wrong! Uttering those three words is never easy. From a personal and ministry standpoint, the cost has been enormous. In the end, however, the goal is not to be politically correct or to gain a larger platform; the goal is to hear our Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matt. 25:21). We live in an age in which Internet fabrications “travel half-way around the world before truth has had a chance to put its boots on.” Thus Paul’s words ring through the centuries with added urgency: “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist” (Eph. 6:14). Without the ability to discern between truth and falsity, the covering that protects us from the Devil’s schemes simply crumbles to the ground, leaving us naked and vulnerable.

Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast heard daily throughout the United States and Canada. For a list of stations airing the Bible Answer Man, or to listen online, log on to Equip.org.

NOTES

1 See 1 Kings 3.

2 Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

3 Tom Junod, “365 Days to the Apocalypse and We Still Don’t Know Where to Hide the Jews…and Other Notes from Pat Robertson’s Y2K Conference,” Esquire, January 1999, 96.

4 See Hank Hanegraaff, “The Millennium Bug Debugged,” Christian Research Journal 22, 1 (1999): 12-21.

5 See Christian Research Journal 32, 6 (2009).

6 Norm Geisler and Ron Rhodes, “A Response to the Christian Research Journal’s Recent Defense of the ‘Local Church’ Movement,” http://www.normangeisler.net/response-tochristian-research-journal-recent-defense-local-church-movement.html, emphasis in Geisler and Rhodes.

7 “Leading Evangelical Scholars Call on ‘Local Churches’ to Renounce Doctrines, Legal Attacks,” press release, January 9, 2007, http://www.open-letter.org/pdf/OL_PressRelease.pdf.

8 A point of clarification: the letters that constitute the acronym D-I-S-C-E-R-N represent carefully selected words that identify concepts important to remembering how to discern between wheat and chaff, heat and light. Some words employed in the acronym explicitly identify discernment principles, such as Innocent until proven guilty, Context, and Research. Other words identify common errors, such as Double standard and Nitpicking.

9 “An Open Letter to the Leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the ‘Local Churches,’” http://www.open-letter.org.

10 Witness Lee, A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1990), 53.

11 Ibid.

12 Witness Lee, The Christian Life (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1994), 134.

13 Witness Lee, The Conclusion of the New Testament, Messages 79-98 (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1997), 914. See also Lee, Divine Dispensing, 50; Witness Lee, The Spirit and the Body (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1976), 83-84.

14 The Editors, “The Crystallization: Union with the Triune God,” Affirmation and Critique 1, 3 (July 1996): 64.

15 de Incarnatione, 54.3.

16 See “An Open Letter to the Leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the ‘Local Churches.”

17 Given our research thus far, there is reason to suspect that the list of signatories has been inflated.

18 Chuck Missler and John Ankerberg, Will America Survive the Y2K Crisis? (Coeur d’Alene, ID: Koinonia House, 1998), video.

19 See Hank Hanegraaff, The Millennium Bug Debugged (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1999).

20 See Elliot Miller, “Cultic, Aberrant, or (Unconventionally) Orthodox? A Reassessment of the ‘Local Church’ Movement, Part 5,” Christian Research Journal 32, 6 (2010): 42-44.

21 See ibid., 44.

22 See ibid., 46.

23 See ibid., 41.

24 J. Gordon Melton, An Open Letter concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and The God-Men Controversy (Santa Barbara, CA: The Institute for the Study of American Religion, 1985), http://www.contendingforthefaith.com/libel-litigations/god-men/OpenLtr/open.html. Scholars at Fuller Theological Seminary came to similar conclusions as a result of their own independent and extensive study. In a summary of their findings they stated, “The teachings of Witness Lee have been grossly misrepresented and therefore most frequently misunderstood in the general Christian community, especially among those who classify themselves as evangelicals.” (“Statement from Fuller Theological Seminary,” January 5, 2006, http://lctestimony.org/FullerStatement.pdf.)

25 Witness Lee, The Conclusion of the New Testament, Messages 1-20 (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1997), 34, emphasis in original.

26 Although the word Equivocation (the E in D-I-S-C-E-R-N) often connotes an informal logical fallacy (within the category of fallacies of ambiguity), I’m employing the word’s denotative definition, namely, that nearly all words are vulnerable to more than one interpretation; and as such, context must be taken into account in order to properly discern an author’s intention (note that equivocation can itself be used in an equivocal manner).

27 Witness Lee, The Practical Expression of the Church (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1970), 98.

28 See Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code: Find Out What the Bible Really Says about the End Times…and Why It Matters Today (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

29 Melton, An Open Letter concerning the Local Church.

30 It should be noted that Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes continue to bear significant fruit in the vineyard of apologetics. I particularly appreciated Ron’s recent article on hermeneutics, “Recognizing and Interpreting Anthropomorphic Language” (Christian Research Journal 33, 2 [2010]: 6-7).

31 Melton, An Open Letter concerning the Local Church.

32 Ibid.

33 Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology: Volume Four: Church, Last Things (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2005), 635.

34 Geisler and Rhodes write, “the Father did not die for our sins, nor does the Father eternally proceed from the Father, as the Son does from the Father.” (“A Response to the Christian Research Journal.”)

35 Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 180.

36 On a more serious note, Geisler and Rhodes wrongly accuse the LC of litigation on theological grounds. In reality, the LC litigated due to libelous charges of sociological cultism.

This article first appeared in the Volume 21 / Number 4 / 1999 issue of the Christian Research Journal. For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: www.equip.org.

Summary:

Has an unusual increase in the frequency of big earthquakes afflicted civilizations in the last decades of the twentieth century? Is the supposed global increase in big earthquakes a fulfillment of prophetic statements concerning the “end of the age” made by Jesus? Contrary to the opinions of many prophecy teachers, global and regional earthquake data argue that big earthquakes have been decreasing in frequency through the twentieth century. Moreover, no clear scriptural warrant exists for the notion that earthquakes will increase in frequency just before the tribulation period and the return of Christ. Earthquakes of the present “church age” serve as reminders of creation’s present pain. A future cosmic shakedown will give birth suddenly to “a kingdom that cannot be shaken.”

According to a number of Christian writers and teachers on Bible prophecy, Jesus predicted in the Olivet Discourse that a pronounced increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes would occur just prior to His return to earth. Many of the same writers and teachers claim that the 1990s have experienced a pronounced increase in both the frequency and intensity of earthquakes as compared to earlier decades of the twentieth century. This supposed coincidence of Jesus’ prophetic statement and recent seismic events is seen as a clear indication of the nearness of Christ’s return.

Prophecy Teachers on Earthquakes

Hal Lindsey, the world’s best-known Bible prophecy teacher, writes in one of his latest books: “Earthquakes continue to increase in frequency and intensity, just as the Bible predict for the last days before the return of Christ. History shows that the number of killer quakes remain fairly constant until the 1950s—averaging between two to four per decade. In the 1950s, there were nine. In the 1960s, there were 13. In the 1970s there were 51. In the 1980s there were 86. From 1990 through 1996, there have been more than 150.”[1]

Lindsey first published such statistics in 1994 as a list in the first edition of his book Planet Earth 2000 A.D., and he defined “killer quakes” as being magnitude 6.0 and greater.[2] What is the source of Lindsey’s statistics? He cites the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Boulder, Colorado, but he does not give details of the report (report name, author, date, location, etc.).[3]

Grant R. Jeffery, another Bible prophecy teacher, cites similar earthquake statistics. In 1994, the same year Lindsey began publishing his statistics, Jeffery wrote:

However, since A.D. 1900, the growth in major earthquakes has been relentless. From 1900 to 1949 it averaged three major quakes per decade. From 1949 the increase became awesome with 9 killer quakes in the 1950’s; 13 in the 60’s; 56 in the 1970’s and an amazing 74 major quakes in the 1980’s. Finally, in the 1990’s as [sic] the present rate, we will experience 125 major killer quakes in this decade (source U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Report,, Boulder, Colorado).[4]

The statistics of Lindsey and Jeffery differ slightly, making it possible to distinguish whose numbers are being cited by later authors. Lindsey’s earthquake-frequency numbers have been widely circulated by popular prophecy speakers such as Chuck Missler, Jack Van Impe, Randal Ross, and Gary Stearman.[5] Tim LaHaye, however, uses Jeffery’s statistics.[6] These authors do not give any further information on the source of Lindsey’s or Jeffery’s statistics.

John Hagee references a report from the National Earthquake Information Center of the U.S. Geological Survey that “the number of large earthquakes (magnitude 6.0 or greater) have stayed relatively constant…” and that “the last decade has produced substantially fewer large earthquakes than shown in the long-term averages….”[7] Remarkably, Hagee goes on to directly contradict the government report: “It is true that the Bible predicts that earthquakes will increase in the last days, and the number of earthquakes measured has increased 1.58 times between 1983 and 1992” (emphasis in original).[8]

A different set of earthquake frequency numbers appears in the recent writings of Peter and Paul Lalonde:

Well, according to the sources from Energy, Mines and Resources Canada there were, from 1900 to 1969, about 48 earthquakes that registered at 6.5 or more on the Richter Scale. This is an average of 6 per decade. From 1970 to 1989 there were 33 earthquakes measuring 6.5 or more. This is an average of 17 per decade. From January 1990 to October 1992 there were 133 earthquakes which measured at 6.5 or greater. This averages out to 600 per decade.[9]

What is the specific source within Energy, Mines and Resources Canada that supplied these statistics? Again, details are lacking.

In light of such slipshod documentation, we are concerned about the wide spread claim within the Christian community that earthquakes are on the increase. Has the deployment of more seismographs during the past few decades made detection and cataloging of earthquakes more complete, thereby allowing for the perception of increase? Is the public perception further enhanced by the fact that earthquakes now strike larger urbanized populations, and therefore are more often reported by the news media? We believe these factors contribute to a self-sustaining “urban legend” especially embraced by Christians.

Global Earthquake Data

The year 1997 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the general deployment of standardized and calibrated seismographs. It started with nine seismograph stations in 1898, which were capable of detecting, locating, and measuring earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or larger anywhere on the planet. By 1931 there were 350 stations operating worldwide that were locating and measuring magnitude 6.5 and greater earthquakes globally. By the 1950s the system of seismographs could locate all magnitude 6.0 and greater events occurring worldwide. Earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 and greater were being located globally by the 1970s. Today a network of more than 4,000 seismograph stations is locating and measuring more than 17,000 events yearly, about 16,000 of these have magnitude less than 5.0.

Global earthquake data for the century have been synthesized and are available from several sources. We recommend two global standards for accuracy, completeness, and uniformity.

1. The Zirbes Data File. The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Denver maintains data on four million earthquakes.[10] The summary data file currently updated yearly by Madaleine Zirbes of the NEIC include global frequency data for magnitude 7.0 and larger earthquakes since 1900.[11]

2. The “Seismicity Catalog.” The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) distributes numerous data files within the “Seismicity Catalog.”[12] The catalog’s component data file, called “1900.EQ,” gives time, location, and magnitude for 17,690 magnitude 6.0 and greater earthquakes (5,667 if these are magnitude 6.5 and greater) globally from 1900 through 1995.

The Geological Evidence: Are Earthquakes Increasing?

If the notion of prophecy teachers is correct, two assertions about twentieth-century earthquakes must be true:

1. a comparative infrequency of big earthquakes occurred in the first half of the century, and

2. an obvious increase in the frequency of big earthquakes occurred since 1950.

Prophecy teachers must make these two assertions to support the notion that the “earthquake sign” is occurring in the 1995s. Both assertions, we maintain, are false. Using the best earthquake catalog data and statements of seismologists, we have concluded exactly the opposite:

1. a comparative excess of big earthquakes occurred in the first half of the century, and

2. an obvious decrease in the frequency of big earthquakes occurred since 1950.

Global Earthquake Frequency. The frequency of this century’s biggest earthquakes is summarized in Figure 1. The frequency of the biggest earthquakes (magnitude 7.0 and greater) by year 1900 through 1997 is shown in Figure 1a, which magnitude 7.0 and greater earthquakes per year. Fig. 1b shows the frequency of magnitude 6.5 and greater earthquakes beginning in the year 1931 when the seismograph detection system became established well enough to record a “globally complete” set of these larger events. Figure 1b displays a total of 4,593 earthquakes, an average of 69 magnitude 6.5 and greater events per year.

Line and curves are also plotted to the data in Figure 1. In both of the plots the best-fit linear equations have negative slope indicating an overall decreasing, not increasing, frequency with time. The noteworthy excess of big earthquakes (magnitude 7.0 and greater) in the fist half of the twentieth century is opposite to the statements of many prophecy teachers. In addition, a noteworthy decrease in the frequency of big earthquakes (magnitude 7.0 and greater) since 1950 conflicts with the assertion of the same prophecy teachers.

Hal Lindsey is aware of the Zirbes Data File and the evidence from the USGS, which says magnitude 7.0 and greater earthquakes are not increasing in our century. His response is: “The USGS traditionally defined a major earthquake as being ‘6.5 magnitude or greater, and causing significant death or damage.’ That is still the category heading used when they compile their own statistics. By the simple expedient of raising the minimum magnitude level for the basic criteria [to 7.0], earthquakes statistics can be manipulated to support their contention of no increase in major earthquakes.”[13]

Is the USGS “selectively manipulating”[14] its magnitude criteria (7.0 and greater instead of 6.5 and greater) in order to conceal the increase in frequency as asserted by Lindsey? His claim of malpractice or deception by seismologists is easily refuted by going to the magnitude 6.5 and greater frequency plot in Figure 1b. The frequency plot is where the obvious increase of the 1980s and 1990s should be most apparent, according to Linsey, but we see that Figure 1b (from “1900.EQ”) has general declining frequency like Figure 1a. The best-fit linear equations shown by dashed lines possessing negative slopes in Figure 1a and 1b indicate the declining frequency. No evidence of pronounced frequency increase is evident for the 1980s and 1990s.

Regional Earthquake Frequency. Lindsey writes of increasing earthquake frequency recently in California, Japan, and the Middle East.[15] Regional earthquake catalogs should show the recent increase if Lindsey’s claim is correct. Seismologist L.K. Hutton and L.M Jones performed a detailed study of magnitude 5.0 and greater events since 1932 in Southern California and found no significant region-wide rate change, including the period after 1980.[16] R. Stein and T. Hanks constructed their “Southern California Catalog,” which is complete for magnitude 6.0 and greater earthquakes from 1903 through 1997.[17] They say of Southern California, “We find no evidence that the rate of seismicity is increasing, now or at any other time since 1900.”[18] Their findings contradiction both Lindsey’s statistics and conclusions.

As the world’s most seismically active region, Japan should have an interesting story to tell. Does it show a recent increase, as the urban legend supposes? Y. Ogata and K. Abe, two Japanese seismologist, compared earthquake frequency variation within a 95-year period between the entire world and the region of Japan. They wrote, “The occurrence rate of earthquakes in the two areas is high in the period of 1920’s through 1940’s and low in the last 30 years.”[19]

The Eastern Mediterranean region and the Middle East, because of their importance in Bible prophecy, might show an increasing frequency trend in our century. Yet, a noteworthy and continuing decline of earthquakes is apparent there as well. Seismologist N.N. Ambraseys writes: “Most certainly, there has been no increase in the seismic activity of the Mediterranean the activity of this century has been abnormally low when compared with that of the 10^th-12^th and 18^th centuries.”[20]

Are “Killer Quakes” on the Increase? Global and regional data show that the geographic distribution of earthquakes has not significantly changed in our century. Could the depths of earthquakes changed in recent decades? It is a well-known fact that earthquakes occur by rupture along fault surfaces at differing depths within the earth. Some earthquakes occur or rupture surfaces up to 800 kilometers (500 miles) below the earth’s surface. Because of their distance from the earth’s surface, the deeper earthquakes do not cause significant damage or deaths in human population. Shallow earthquakes (depths of less than 70 kilometers) cause the largest number of deaths and the most sever property damage. Could the recent decades of this century have experienced more shallow earthquakes than previous decades? Could the rise in frequency of such shallow “killer quakes” be a sign to our generation?

Figure 2 shows magnitude 5.0 and greater earthquakes for the period of 1977 through 1998 from NEC database.[21] This magnitude range, of course, includes all “killer quakes.” Figure 2 color-codes the depth of each earthquake. No significant increase in the frequency or intensity of shallow “killer quakes” (yellow and orange circles) is apparent since 1977 from the data of Figure 2. Also no significant decrease in the deepest “non-killer” earthquakes (red and purple circles) is evident in 1977.

Historical data disputes the whole idea that “killer quakes” are on the increase. Johnson and Herbst compared earthquake death estimates from equivalent decades of the eighteenth century to the twentieth century.[22] For the period 1715 through 1786, they estimated 1.37 million deaths globally, but only 1.21 million deaths from 1915 through 1983. Earthquake deaths are on the decrease, even though there has been a six-fold increase in world population since the eighteenth century.

The Biblical Evidence: Did Jesus Predict An Increase in Earthquakes Before the End?

If earthquakes are not on the increase, then what shall we make of the biblical evidence? Does this mean that the return of Christ cannot be near? Closer examination of the New Testament evidence will reveal that the prophecy teachers are wrong on this count as well. Not only are earthquakes not increasing, but also the biblical text never indicated they would.

Earthquakes in Biblical Literature. Earthquakes and other cataclysmic events often carry theophanic (God-manifesting) significance in Scripture, demonstrating God’s awesome power. Many seismic theophanies are manifestations of God’s anger and righteous judgment (cf. 1 Sam. 14:15; Ps. 18:7-8; Isa. 5:25; 13:13; 29:6; Joel 3:16; Amos 1:1-2; 8:7-8; Mic. 1:3-7; Nah. 1:5-6; Hag. 2:6, 21).

The most elaborate judgment motif in Scripture is the Day of the Lord. Without faith that day is marked by earthquakes and associated celestial disturbances (Isa. 2:19, 21; 13:13; 24:18; 29:5-6; Ezek. 38:19-22; Joel 2:10; Zech 14:4-5). When the armies of Gog attack Israel, those armies are demolished at the decree of the Lord by earthquake and hailstones (Ezek. 38:17-23). Zechariah is even more explicit about the extraordinary geologic upheaval in the Holy Land associated with the Day of the Lord. A final earthquake will split the Mount of Olives, uplift Jerusalem on its site, and depress the surrounding Judean Mountains (Zech. 14:1-10).

Earthquakes are also associated with God’s self-revelation in the eschatology of the Book of Hebrews (12:25-29). The author warned his readers to heed the God who spoke at Sinai (“And His voice shook the earth then,” Heb. 12:26; cf. Exod. 19:18).[23] The author then passes through the history from Sinai to the end times and the promise of a great cosmic upheaval (“yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven,” Heb. 12:16; cf. Hag. 2:6). God’s ultimate purpose is to give believers “a kingdom which cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28).

Such passages provide the eschatological backdrop for the Book of Revelation, where earthquakes are symbols of God’s final judgment upon the earth. Five earthquakes (Greek: seismos) are described (Rev. 6:12; 8:5; 11:13, 19; 16:18), splitting Jerusalem into three parts and destroying the cities of the nations.

While demonstrating the awesome power and presence of God, these passages do not indicate an increase in earthquakes in the present age. For those of us who follow a futuristic and dispensational interpretation of Revelation, these earthquakes occur during the Great Tribulation, not before it. They are no precursors to the Day of the Lord but evidence of its presence.

The Olivet Discourse. The Olivet Discourse is set in the context of Jesus’ statement concerning the destruction of Jerusalem (Matt. 24:1) and the disciples’ question, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and the end of the age?” (v. 3). Our primary concern is with the fist part of the discourse.[24] Here Jesus warned against being deceived by false christs or being alarmed at wars, rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes:

And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many. And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth-pangs” (Matt. 24:4-8).

Among dispensationalists there are two interpretations of these verses:

1. Some dispensationalist (and other futurists) see the whole of the Olivet discourse as relating to the tribulation of the first half of the tribulation period while verses 9-26 concern the second half—the Great Tribulation.[25] Evidence for this is claimed in the similarity between the events described in verses 4-8 and those associated with the seven seals of Revelation 6.[26] For advocates of this view, the earthquakes identified in verses 7-8 are not part of the present church age but rather the tribulation period. In this case, even if the birth image in verse 8 were to indicate an increase in earthquakes (which is not necessary; see discussion below), this increase occurs during the tribulation, not during the present church age. Present data concerning earthquake frequency has little or no bearing on the text.

2. Other dispensationalists (and almost all non-dispensationalists) claim that verses 4-8 (or vv. 4-14) concern not the tribulation period, but general signs that are characteristic of the present age. Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote that the events described in verses 4-8 “are the characteristics of the unforeseen intervening or intercalary age”[27]—that is, the church age. John Walvoord similarly affirms that “verses 4-14 are general prophecies that can find fulfillment throughout the present age, with verses 15-30 fulfilled in the Great Tribulation.”[28] He adds, however, that these former events “are repeated in the Great Tribulation when what was perhaps partially fulfilled earlier then have an very literal and devastating fulfillment.”[29] The primary evidence that verses 4-14 are signs characteristic of the present age are their general nature and the fact that Jesus identified them as events that do not indicate the end (“but that is not yet the end”) and so should not provoke apocalyptic fervor (“see that you are not alarmed”).

In this latter view, therefore, Jesus warned His disciples against mistaking catastrophic events in human history with the cataclysmic events that will characterize the End. Dispensational writers who take verses 4-14 as part of the present age recognize this qualitative difference between the “general signs” of verses 4-14 and the “specific signs” that follow in verses 15-26. John Walvoord writes,

Taken as a whole, the opening section, ending with Matthew 24:14, itemizes general signs, events, and situations which mark the progress of the age, and, with growing intensity, indicating that the end of the age is approaching. These signs, however, by their very characteristics are because they have occurred throughout the present age, do not constitute a direct answer to the question of “the sign” of the coming of the Lord.[30]

While Walvoord affirms that these are events common to the present age and that they, therefore, do not constitute the answer to the disciples’ question (“what will be the sign of your coming?”), he jumps to the unwarranted conclusion that these “general signs” will increase with intensity as the end of the age approaches. Jesus did not indicate such an increase. He downplayed their significance and encouraged His followers not to be alarmed or disturbed by them. He certainly did not say to count their frequency and calculate the end.

Eschatological Birth Pains. The only statement that might suggest an increase in famine and earthquake activity is the final clause, “But these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs (oidines)” (Matt. 24:8). Because birth pains begin small and then increase in intensity and frequency, this passage could be interpreted to mean that earthquakes will gradually increase. When they reach their greatest severity and frequency, they will give birth to the new age.

Is this the correct way to interpret this clause? If so, the lack of seismic increase we have noted above would confirm that Jesus’ return is not near. This would then contradict the many biblical statements that it is near! But there is good reason to believe Jesus’ words do not indicate an increase in frequency or severity of these “general signs,” but they only indicate their continued recurrence until the end of the age.

The image of eschatological birth pains was not new to Jesus. Moreover, it was a common one in Jewish apocalyptic and later rabbinic writings. The “messianic woes” or “birth pains of the Messiah” referred to a period of suffering that would immediately precede the coming of the messianic age.[31] The primary point of the image was not that the pain would increase in intensity but that the joy of new birth (i.e. salvation and restoration) would follow the present period of suffering. Pain will give way to rejoicing for those who persevere.

The apostle Paul used the birth image in a similar way in Romans 8:18-25. The present creation—for which salvation has been achieved but not consummated—“waits eagerly for the revealing” of the children of God (v. 19). This period of waiting is metaphorically described as groaning and suffering “the pains of child-birth (sunodino)” (v. 22). The point is not that creation’s pain is growing worse but that the pain itself (the enduring effects of humanity’s fall) provokes eager longing for the new birth (the consummation of salvation).

Paul used the birth image elsewhere to illustrate the abruptness of the arrival of the Day of the Lord. It will be unexpected “like a thief in the night” and “like birth pangs” of a pregnant woman (1 Thess. 5:2-3). Paul’s two images are reminiscent of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:8, 43-44). Obviously, Paul was not saying here that we can predict our Lord’s appearance by noting precursor birth pains.

What We’ve Learned

A number of prophecy teachers say that a pronounced increase in frequency and intensity of earthquakes has occurred in the latter part of the twentieth century—a worldwide trend fulfilling a prophecy made by Jesus. Yet, no obvious trend is found to indicate an abnormal increase in the frequency of large earthquakes during the last half of the twentieth century. Neither was there a relative infrequency of earthquakes in the first half of the century. Graphical plots of global earthquake frequency indicate overall a decreasing frequency of earthquakes.

The decades of the seventies, eighties, and nineties experienced a decrease of larger earthquakes compared to earlier decades of the twentieth century. The seventies, eighties, and nineties are precisely those decades that many prophecy teachers erroneously suppose show a dramatic surplus of larger earthquakes. Regional earthquake data also do not argue for increasing earthquake frequency in California, Japan, and the Eastern Mediterranean during the final decades of our century. “Killer quakes” do not appear to be increasing globally in the same decades, and earthquake deaths in the twentieth century do not significantly exceed earthquake deaths of earlier centuries.

At the time of Christ, the Jews had a heightened understanding of wars, famines, pestilence, and earthquakes as signs having apocalyptic significance. Jesus responded to apocalyptic expectations in His Olivet discourse. Whether one interprets Matthew 24:4-14 as (1) events that will occur during the tribulation period or (2) general signs of the present age, there is no clear scriptural warrant for the claim that earthquakes will increase dramatically prior to Christ’s return. In the former interpretation, these earthquakes would be part of the tribulation period and of little significance for any increase in earthquakes during the present church age. In the latter interpretation, earthquakes are seen as recurring catastrophic events common to the present age—events that must not be misinterpreted as “sings” of an immediate end. It is ironic that a passage that intentionally teaches that earthquakes are not indicators of the “end of the age” should be frequently interpreted as teaching the exact opposite.

Jesus’ statement “all these things are merely the beginning of birth-pangs” (Matt. 24:8), has been misunderstood to imply that pain would increase steadily in time. The birth image associated with such signs does not point to an increase in pain with time. Paul’s understanding of creation’s pain (Rom. 8:18-25) is not that pain will grow steadily worse but that the present period of suffering provokes eager longing for the new birth and the consummation of the coming age. The author of Hebrews offered a similar hope, not in anticipating a future “sing” of increasing earthquake activity, but in coming of a sudden cosmic cataclysm producing a “kingdom which cannot be shaken.” (Heb. 12:28).

Steve A. Austin, Ph.D., is Chairman of the Geology Department at the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, California.

Mark L. Strauss, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary San Diego

Synopsis

Through Oprah Winfrey’s remarkable influence, motivational speaker and author Eckhart Tolle’s teachings have become a staple for the spiritually hungry. Tolle’s message, however, consists of an eclectic mix of ideas from Eastern Religions (e.g., Buddhism and Hinduism), the Mind Sciences, and the New Age Movement, which he weaves together into a unique belief system. Central to his teaching is the belief that the ego (rational thoughts, emotions, memories, perceptions, and self) is an illusion hiding us from the truth that all is one and all is God (monistic pantheism). This “truth,” in Tolle’s view, is not discerned through objective means, but through subjective experience and is not exclusive to a single religion. Tolle teaches that one discerns the core of truth in all religions by a subjective “inner knowing.”

There are several flaws in Tolle’s teaching. The idea that all is one and all is god is refuted by the clear teaching of the Bible. Subjective spiritual experiences are notoriously unreliable and must be tested in light of the objective standard of Holy Scripture. Contrary to Tolle’s belief, the world’s religions at their core are not compatible with one another. Finally, the spiritual counsel Tolle offers leads to absurd solutions to real-life problems.

Imagine being set free from nagging thoughts that well up feelings of shame. Or imagine experiencing a connection with a cosmic reality greater than yourself that offers safety, security, and self-improvement. Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and author of bestsellers The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to En­light­enment¹ and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,² claims to have realized such desirable states of being and seeks to pass on his spiritual wisdom to others. Tolle believes, further, that the spiritual awakening that he hopes to induce in others constitutes “the next step in human evolution”³ and is “the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world.”⁴ In reality, however, the spiritual teaching of Tolle is like a cosmic hot fudge sundae with extra nuts, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries laced with arsenic—certainly tantalizing, but nutritionally impotent and ultimately toxic.

Born in Germany, Tolle graduated from the University of London and studied at Cambridge University. At the age of twenty-nine he experienced “a profound inner trans­form­a­tion,” which altered the course of his life.⁵ He came to realize that the “self” by which he identified himself, which he thoroughly loathed, was not his true identity; and through this realization he experienced a psychological release wherein his false sense of self gave way to his true identity, which he describes as “pure consciousness.” Here is how he tells of this awakening:

I was deeply identified with a very unhappy, egoic entity I believed was “me.” For years I lived in depression and continuous anxiety. One night I couldn’t stand it anymore. The thought came into my mind, “I cannot live with myself any longer.” Then I saw that my thought contained a subject and an object: I and myself. I stood back from the thought and asked, “Who is the self that I cannot live with? There must be two here. Who am I, and who is the self that is impossible to live with?” In that moment, that mind-based sense of self collapsed. What remained was I—not the form “I,” not the story-based “I,” the mental story of me—but a deeper sense of being, of presence. I died that night psychologically. The mind-made entity died. I knew myself as pure consciousness, prior to form before it becomes something, before it becomes a thought, before it becomes a life-form: the One Life, the One Consciousness that is prior to egoic identity. Then came enormous peace.⁶

After his spiritual epiphany, Tolle devoted a few years to “understanding, integrating and deepening that trans­form­ation,” which eventually led him into his career as a spiritual advisor to others.⁷ Since the publication of his first book, The Power of Now, he has gained a significant following, with his most renowned disciple being Oprah Winfrey. Actress Meg Ryan initially gave the New Age matriarch The Power of Now, which Oprah found to be “life changing.” In reading A New Earth, Oprah purports to have experienced many more spirit­ual “aha” moments.⁸ Through Oprah’s unsettling influence, Tolle’s teachings have spread like wildfire, as she has promoted A New Earth via her book club and has hosted a massively attended online class with Tolle as the instructor.

One cannot deny that something profound happened to Tolle. As tested by the teachings of the Bible, however, what Tolle discovered is not ultimate truth. Despite the prevalence of Christian terms (e.g., Jesus, sin, and salvation) and biblical passages in his writings, an examination of the core of his message reveals an eclectic mix of ideas from Eastern Religions (e.g., Buddhism and Hinduism), the Mind Sciences, and the New Age Movement, which are woven together into a belief system that has no resemblance to true Christianity. Indeed, in reading Tolle, one must learn to scale a language barrier as he redefines Christian terms and concepts in light of esoteric Eastern spirituality. Some of the more troubling aspects of his teachings include monism, pantheism, pluralism, and relativism.

MONISM

Tolle’s belief system begins with the notion that within every­one is the “ego” or the “illusory self.”⁹ As mentioned, this ego is not one’s true identity, but a distortion, and the ego forms the basis for all misinterpretation of reality.¹⁰ In order to attain spiritual awakening, then, one must identify the complex way the “ego” functions¹¹ and perceive the false reality generated by it. He writes,

When forms that you identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.¹²

According to Tolle, the entire universe, despite the appear­ance of seemingly infinite forms, is essentially one thing. This is known philosophically as monism—the view that all is one. Such diverse and wondrous things, then, as “flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds” are simply “temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness.”¹³ In other words, the myriad perceived forms are manifestations of the same reality. It is the mind that creates “an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship,” which gives the appearance that an individual is distinct from the rest of the universe; but this is ultimately “the illusion of separateness.”¹⁴

The monism of Tolle, however, is contrary to Scripture. The problem becomes clear when one carefully considers what it means in the orthodox Christian view for God to be both immanent¹⁵ and transcendent.¹⁶ God and creation are in intimate relationship with one another but ontologically (essentially or substantially) separate from each other. God, according to Scripture, sustains and interacts person­ally with creation (Gen. 2:7; Exod. 29:45; Matt. 10:29; Acts 17:27; Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3, 10); He also, however, transcends crea­tion (Deut. 4:39; 10:14; 1 Kings 8:27; Ps. 113:5, 6; Acts 17:24–25; Eph. 4:6). He is not the creation, nor is the creation a part of His being. Tolle, however, believes intimacy between God and man exists because there is no ontological difference between the two; they are ultimately the same, and any observed differences are, in his opinion, just an illusion.

Tolle’s monism, moreover, renders certain virtues worthless. If the universe is just one thing, then virtues such as love and tolerance become meaningless. Since an aspect of love involves one person performing an act of selfless compassion toward another person, and inasmuch as monism denies love’s prerequisite of the existence of two distinct persons, monism is incompatible with real love. Monism is also incompatible with tolerance, since this virtue involves one person putting up with the conflicting beliefs and/or practices of another person. Love and tolerance, then, are virtues that presuppose a universe with multiple beings and cannot exist in a universe of only one being. Oprah, ironically, would be hard-pressed to find in Tolle’s universe any value for her acts of philanthropy, since she would not be showing compassion to a distinct other person. Her acts of kindness are really a remnant of the Christian worldview in which she was raised.

PANTHEISM

A corollary to Tolle’s monistic universe is the belief in a pantheistic deity. Pantheism is the idea that all is God and God is all.¹⁷ After quoting from the Upanishads (part of the Hindu scriptures), Tolle declares, “God, the scripture is saying, is formless consciousness and the essence of who you are.”¹⁸ He also explains that conscious­ness “is the unmanifested, the eternal….Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. It was never born and does not die.”¹⁹ Again he writes, “Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature.”²⁰ Tolle, therefore, not only understands the universe to be one thing, but believes that that one thing is conscious Being.

Tolle also prefers not to use the word “God,” because he believes it is an inadequate term to use when referring to an infinitely transcendent being. He explains that “God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse.” It is also a “closed concept” that leads one to create “a mental representation of someone or something outside…almost inevitably a male some­one or something.” Although Tolle thinks “God” and “Being” are both inadequate words, he opts for the latter because it is an “open concept” and “does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity.”²¹ Whether we use the word “God” or “Being,” however, in Tolle’s view each represents that which is ultimately indistinguishable from the universe.

Pantheism logically leads to absurdity, particularly given the idea that people can come to the realization that they are, in reality, God or Being. As we have seen, Tolle teaches that God or Being is infinite, timeless, and changeless consciousness and also that in our true essence or nature we, too, are infinite, timeless, and changeless consciousness. If we come to realize this truth, however, as Tolle did at twenty-nine years of age, then we have changed. We, therefore, cannot be actually infinite, timeless, and changeless consciousness in our essence, and Tolle is mistaken in believing that his spiritual experience was a glimpse into his own true identity as Being.²²

That God is infinite means not only that He is endless in terms of existence, but that He is boundless in terms of all of His attributes; He is not constrained by any limitations. He is, therefore, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, and omnipresent.²³ God does not change with respect to these attributes. This is the nature of an infinite God. He cannot age, for He is eternal with no beginning or end. He cannot grow tired or be hindered by an obstacle, because He is all-powerful. He cannot be ignorant of anything or need an education, because He knows all things. His love never fails. He cannot be confined to a location or move from one place to another, for He is immediately present to all things.

Finite creatures such as humans, however, do not possess God’s incommunicable, infinite qualities. Humans are born and experience time. Human existence does extend beyond the grave in everlasting life or everlasting condemnation; however, although human existence has no end, it still has a beginning. God’s existence has neither beginning nor end. Humans have varying degrees of strength, knowledge, and love. As they naturally mature from infancy to adulthood, their capacity of strength, knowledge, and love also matures. Even before the fall, Adam could exercise strength, know­ledge, and love only in accordance with his good but finite nature. Humans can find faster ways to get from one place to another, but they remain limited by time and space. As mentioned, Tolle cannot be God, since he experiences change and personal growth, which the infinite, eternal, and changeless God does not experience at all.

TRUTH, PLURALISM, AND RELATIVISM

Tolle acknowledges that his oneness view of the universe must account for the diversity of religious ideas we encounter in the world. He attempts to resolve this tension by positing that substantive truth cannot be found in any single religion, though partial truth may be present in many religions. He finds certain concepts taught by other spiritual teachers (Buddha, Jesus, and so forth) to be helpful; however, he states that these teachings were only “precursors” to the ultimate truth, and “their message became largely misunderstood and often greatly distorted. It certainly did not transform human behavior, except in a small minority of people.”²⁴

Tolle declares, moreover, “All religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them. You can use them in the service of the ego, or you can use them in the service of the Truth.”²⁵ This happens, he teaches, because religions may start with truth, but over time they get corrupted.²⁶ In other words, the major religions never effectively recovered “the transformative power of the original teachings.”²⁷ All religions, therefore, Tolle believes, offer only glimpses of truth, and no religion has the total truth.

When dealing with any clear disparity between his teachings and other religions, Tolle notes, “Man made ‘God’ in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as ‘my god’ or ‘our god.’”²⁸ The truth, then, according to Tolle, rests in the continuity of ideas that all religions have with one another. Elaborating on the idea of man making God in his own image, he explains,

If you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place. It’s a question of going deeper, so there’s no conflict here. The important thing is that religion doesn’t become an ideology….the moment you say “only my belief” or “our belief” is true, and you deny other people’s beliefs, then you’ve adopted an ideology. And then religion becomes a closed door. But, potentially, religion can also be an open door.²⁹

Any contradiction between religious beliefs thus, Tolle believes, can be attributed to a manmade construct or ideology, and not to the truth; conversely, any agreement between the beliefs among religions (which there must be, since they are the same, he believes, at their core) is the truth.

In reality, all religions are not the same at their core. Hindu­ism at its core affirms pantheistic monism, in which many gods and human personalities appear to interact with each other, but do no such thing, since they are ultimately just extensions of the one absolute reality of the impersonal Brahman. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, on the other hand, all affirm the existence of a monotheistic God who is ontologically separate from His crea­tion.³⁰ Moreover, Christianity at its core affirms that the one true and living God is triune,³¹ whereas Judaism and Islam teach a strictly Unitarian deity. The list of incompatible core teachings among the world’s religions is extensive.

Quite disparate religions might have externally common features (e.g., the moral imperative to feed the poor), but even at this level it becomes clear on analysis that fundamental differences exist (e.g., why we should feed the poor). The Christian belief in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and the good works that follow in response to salvation should not be confused with the Buddhist realization of suffering and its Eightfold Path to eliminate suffering.³²

Pointing out the distinguishing features of religion, moreover, is simply telling the truth, not advocating an “ideology,” as Tolle would have us believe. If when a student answers on her math test that “1 + 1 = 3” and the teacher marks it incorrect, the teacher is not touting an ideology; the teacher is just pointing to truth.

Tolle’s final arbiter of truth, however, is subjective experience. He purports that “the New Testament contains deep spiritual truth as well as distortions,” with the latter occurring because of “a misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching” or “because people had an agenda,” but teaches that by accessing one’s “inner knowing,” one can “sense what is true and what was added on or distorted.”³³

There are good reasons, however, to believe that the New Testament writers did not distort the teaching of Jesus. Since the writings of the New Testament can be dated prior to AD 70,³⁴ it is not likely that the writers had an opportunity to distort either His teaching, or teachings about Him. Not enough time had elapsed between the events and the writing for that to occur, and many eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus would have been around to correct any distortions or myths.³⁵

Tolle is also inconsistent in his own perspective on religion. He argues, on one hand, that those who make absolute truth-claims, like “only my belief” is true, are motivated by a deception of ideology. On the other hand, he asserts many absolute truth-claims in his own writings and teachings, including the truth-claim that those who make truth-claims are motivated by a deception of ideology! Tolle pronounces, moreover, that “millions are now ready to awaken because spiritual awakening is not an option anymore, but a necessity if humanity and the planet are to survive.”³⁶

Tolle certainly has no way of validating the truth-claim that his teaching is the one truth that can bring mass spiritual enlightenment for all humanity. He may have the testimony of his obscure spiritual epiphany, but he has no objective means of verifying his truth-claim. Christians, however, readily point to credible historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus in support of their belief in Him as God and Messiah. Only Jesus’ resurrection can account for the remarkable New Testament departure of the people of God from observance of the Mosaic Law concerning animal sacrifice.³⁷

SCRIPTURE TWISTING

The principal method Tolle uses to harmonize the Bible and Christian theology with other religions is an esoteric redefinition of terms based on his subjective experience. More directly, Tolle attempts to discern whatever “spiritual truth” is in a biblical passage by relying on an “inner knowing,” and this purely subjective knowing conforms to an Eastern spirituality—ideas drawn from Hinduism, Buddhism, Mind Sciences, and the New Age Movement. For example, the “new earth” (Rev. 21:1; cf. Isa. 65:17) is “the outer forms created by awakened doing.”³⁸ The term “sin” is redefined as “to miss the point of human existence” (emphasis in original).³⁹ Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), are not a declaration of being humanity’s only means of entering into a relationship with the Almighty, but “the innermost I Am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form, in fact.”⁴⁰ Elsewhere, Tolle teaches on the “transformation of human consciousness” and makes the following error: “In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation” (emphases in original).⁴¹

Tolle’s method of biblical interpretation is not new, as many cults follow the same pattern of twisting Scripture to accord with their heresies. His method, again, is to interpret whatever biblical text he encounters in such a way as to conform with his subjective views of his own experience, which are influenced by Eastern spirituality. Insofar as his method of biblical interpretation is driven by untestable subjectivity, there is no exegetical warrant to adopt his interpretations. In addressing a concerned student on her observation of discrepancies between his teaching and what she learned being brought up a Catholic, Tolle responds,

Well, religion can be an open doorway into spirituality, and religion can be a closed door. It prevents you from going deeper.…And when I went through this inner transformation, and for the first time accidentally I picked up a copy of the New Testament at my mother’s place.[sic] And I started reading and I immediately recognized the deep truths that is there, and I realize the truth that is deeper, that is expressed in what Jesus said, is much deeper than what you, how the church interprets it.[sic] There’s a depth to it. And it reflects your own depth when you read it. So there’s no conflict between this teaching, which is purely spiritual, and any religion….Because if you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place. It’s a question of going deeper, so there’s no conflict here.⁴²

Tolle’s method of interpreting the Bible, then, begins with his “inner transformation,” which allows him to discover for the first time deeper truths than what the student or the church has ever understood. This spiritualizing of the text, he believes, prevents the Bible from conflicting with the teachings of other religions.

Sound hermeneutics, by contrast, requires the Bible student to discover the message that the inspired author intended to com­mu­ni­cate to his original audience, which involves under­standing what each passage meant within its original historical and grammatical context. Once the student discovers the objective interpretation, he or she can draw out a personal application.⁴³ The spiritual message Tolle attempts to read into the biblical text, however, is utterly foreign to the first-century Jewish context of Jesus’ teachings and the inspired writings of the New Testament.⁴⁴

AWAKENING TO MISS LIFE’S PURPOSE

Tolle’s teaching in general focuses on practical ways to identify the complex deceptions that the ego allegedly manufactures, offering spiritual exercises to awaken to a true consciousness. These spiritual exercises are not benign; rather, they reaffirm the practitioner’s belief in the erroneous aspects of his metaphysical worldview (e.g., monism, pantheism, and so forth), and consequently lead practitioners into adopting absurd solutions to real-life problems, ultimately missing out on the whole purpose of life in general.

One absurd solution to real-life problems derived from Tolle’s spirituality is the discouragement of rational thought. The quest to understand “Being,” according to Tolle, is already within one’s deepest self. “But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind,” he advises. “Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.”⁴⁵ Apparently, thinking is “the root of the ego.”⁴⁶

Another example of Tolle’s absurd solutions to real-life problems is seen in an aspect of the alleged ego called the “pain-body,” which dwells within each person. He teaches that this is a “semi-autonomous psychic entity,” which is formed by “negative emotions that were not faced, accepted, and then let go in the moment they arose” and are “stored in the cells of the body.”⁴⁷ Tolle says there is also a “collective human pain-body containing the pain suffered by countless human beings throughout history.”⁴⁸ He believes the “pain-body” is the source and cause of our negative experiences. For example,

When you realize that pain-bodies unconsciously seek more pain, that is to say, that they want something bad to happen, you will understand that many traffic accidents are caused by drivers whose pain-bodies are active at the time. When two drivers with active pain-bodies arrive at an intersection at the same time, the likelihood of an accident is many times greater than under normal circumstances. Unconsciously they both want the accident to happen.⁴⁹

Tolle also believes that the active “pain-body” energy of one person can be transferred to another. He realized this through experiencing a series of events, which began with an intense counseling session with a female client with lots of emotional baggage. A few minutes after the session had ended and the woman left, a friend came into the room where the counseling took place and blurted, “The energy feels heavy and murky—it almost makes me feel sick. You need to open the windows, burn some incense.” Tolle later had dinner in a restaurant and witnessed an outburst by another patron. He then concluded, “I suspected that the universal human pain-body had come back to tell me, ‘You thought you defeated me. Look, I’m still here.’ I also considered the possibility that the released energy field left behind after our session followed me to the restaurant and attached itself to the one person in whom it found a compatible vibrational frequency, that is to say, a heavy pain-body.”⁵⁰

If one grants the plausibility of a worldview like Tolle’s in which God is indistinguishable from the universe, perhaps something like a pain-body hypothesis has some explanatory power. As we have seen, however, such a worldview is wholly incompatible with a biblical worldview and cannot stand up to the harsh light of reason. Without such a pantheistic monism in which to adhere, Tolle’s pain-body hypothesis has no credible rationale to commend it. It seems instead simply fanciful.

The way Tolle describes the activity of the “pain-body” also creates a confusing system of ethics, particularly in the way one determines right and wrong, as well as reward and punishment. After posing the question, “Does this mean that people are not responsible for what they do when possessed by the pain-body?” Tolle answers, “How can they be? How can you be responsible when you are unconscious, when you don’t know what you are doing? However, in the greater scheme of things, human beings are meant to evolve into conscious beings, and those who don’t will suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness. They are out of alignment with the evolutionary impulse of the universe.”⁵¹ Tolle’s answer is a paradox: because people who are governed by the “pain-body” are unconscious of reality, they cannot be held responsible for what the “pain-body” makes them do; nonetheless, they will continue to suffer the consequences of their unconscious actions until they learn their lesson and become conscious.

Tolle therefore sees the “pain-body” playing a role in enlight­en­ment. He reasons, “When you can’t stand the endless cycle of suffering anymore, you begin to awaken. So the pain-body too has its necessary place in the larger picture.”⁵² The “pain-body,” then, is a source of traumatic experiences, but also part of the process of awakening to the truth.

Since Tolle’s monistic and pantheistic universe is untenable, no good reason exists for one to think that life’s purpose is to employ Tolle’s spiritual techniques to detach oneself from the illusion of the self (i.e., one’s thoughts, feelings, memories, individuality, relationships, and social status) to awaken to the ultimate reality of Being. Commitment to his false spiritual quest is missing life’s purpose. The Christian, however, can look to the certainty of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as evidence of the truthfulness of His message. Christ taught that life’s ultimate purpose is to enter by faith into a relationship with God through the way He forged via His own death and resurrection. Becoming a redeemed creation eternally worshipping the Creator is what God intended from the beginning.

Warren G. Nozaki received his M.Div. from Talbot School of Theology and is a research specialist at the Christian Research Institute (CRI). This article was first published in booklet form for CRI under the title of Paradise Still Lost in a New Earth: Exposing the Errors of Eckhart Tolle (Charlotte, NC: Christian Research Institute, 2008).

notes

1 Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004).

2 Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (New York: Plume, 2005).

3 “Biography,” Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/eckhart_biography, accessed March 28, 2008.

4 Tolle, A New Earth, back cover; cf. “Biography,” Eckhart Teachings.

5 “Biography,” Eckhart Teachings.

6 Kathy Juline, “The Presence of Now,” News, Interviews, Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/interviews_74, accessed March 28, 2008.

7 “Biography,” Eckhart Teachings.

8 “A New Earth Online Class: Chapter 1 Transcript,” Book Club, A New Earth, Oprah.com, http://images.oprah.com/images/obc_classic/book/2008/anewearth/ ane_chapter1_transcript.pdf, accessed March 28, 2008. As of this writing, A New Earth is number one on the New York Times Paperback Advice “Best Sellers” list and has been on the list for nine weeks; Tolle’s The Power of Now is number two on the same list and has been on the list for twenty-four weeks (http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/03/ 30/books/bestseller/0330bestpaperadvice.html, accessed April 10, 2008).

9 Tolle, A New Earth, 27–28.

10 Ibid., 28.

11 Tolle explains in A New Earth that the ego is conditioned by past events consisting of “content” and “structure” (p. 34). The “content” aspect of the ego is conditioned by “environment,” “upbringing, and surrounding culture” (34), whereas the “structure” aspect of the ego brings the self into existence via identification with things (material and immaterial) (35), the body (gender identity, fitness, appearance, etc.) (49–52), and thought forms (thoughts and emotions) (53–54).

12 Tolle, A New Earth, 56–57.

13 Ibid., 3–4.

14 Eckhart Tolle, “You Are Not Your Mind,” News, Interviews, Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/interviews_72, accessed March 28, 2008.

15 God’s immanence refers to His “presence and activity within nature, human nature, and history” (Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985], 302).

16 That God is transcendent means that He is superior to, separate from, and independent of creation (Erickson, 312).

17 Pantheism comes from the Greek words pan (all) and theos (God). For a pantheist, “God ‘is all in all.’ God pervades all things, contains all things, subsumes all things, and is found within all things. Nothing exists apart from God, and all things are in some way identified with God. The world is God, and God is the world. But more precisely, in pantheism all is God, and God is all” (Norman Geisler, Encyclopedia of Apologetics [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999], 580).

18 Tolle, A New Earth, 219.

19 Ibid., 291. Tolle explains that the universe evolves over time and becomes conscious, though consciousness itself underlies the universe and is timeless and unchanging.

20 Tolle, “You Are Not Your Mind.”

21 Ibid.

22 See Tolle, A New Earth, 56–57.

23 The Scriptures attest to these attributes of God. He created the universe (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1–4), He is eternal (Col. 1:17), He is all-powerful (Ps. 147:5; Job. 11:7–9), He is all-knowing (Rom. 11:33), He is all-loving (1 John 4:7–10), and He is everywhere present (1 Kings 8:27; Isa. 40:12; 55:8–9; 66:1–2).

24 Tolle, A New Earth, 6.

25 Ibid., 70.

26 Ibid., 14–15.

27 Ibid., 16–17. Tolle also appears to incorporate terms and concepts from other world religions to describe the meticulous architecture of his belief system; however, he often abandons their original meaning (see discussion under “Scripture Twisting”).

28 Ibid., 15.

29 “A New Earth Online Class: Chapter 1 Transcript,” Oprah.com.

30 Monotheism holds that there is only one infinite, transcendent, eternal, almighty, perfect, and personal God, who alone created and sustains the world. Though God transcends the creation, He is also immanent in that He interacts with the creation.

31 Within the Being of the one true God exist three eternally distinct and coequal Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three Persons are the one true God.

32 For more on the incompatibility among the teachings of world religions, see Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answer Book (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2004); and James Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

33 “Dear Eckhart,” Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/dear_eckhart_28, accessed March 28, 2008.

34 Cf. John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000).

35 For more on the reliability of the New Testament, see Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), Darrell L. Bock, Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), and Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, Jesus under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

36 Eckhart Tolle, “The One Thing,” Books, A New Earth, Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/a_new_earth, accessed March 28, 2008.

37 See Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000).

38 Kathy Juline, “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” News, Interviews, Eckhart Teachings, http://eckharttolle.com/interviews_68, accessed March 28, 2008.

39 Tolle, A New Earth, 9.

40 Ibid., 71.

41 Ibid., 13.

42 “A New Earth Online Class: Chapter 1 Transcript.”

43 For further study, see Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003); Walter Russell, Playing with Fire: How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2000); and R. C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977). See also Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

44 For further study, see Habermas, The Historical Jesus; Bock, Jesus according to Scripture; and Wilkins and Moreland, Jesus under Fire.

45 Tolle, “You Are Not Your Mind.”

46 Tolle, A New Earth, 55.

47 “A New Earth Online Class: Chapter 2 Transcript,” Book Club, A New Earth, Oprah.com, http://images.oprah.com/images/obc_classic/book/2008/anewearth/ ane_chapter2_transcript.pdf, accessed March 28, 2008.

48 Juline, “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.”

49 Tolle, A New Earth, 162–63.

50 Ibid., 164–68.

51 Ibid., 163.

52 Ibid., 164.

For centuries, the mystery of the Incarnation has served as a source of wonder for Christians and an insurmountable obstacle for unbelievers. How can a man be God and yet stillbe fully man? Could God become man without losing His deity?The early church recognized Jesus Christ as possessing twonatures in one person, stating at the Council of Chalcedon thatHe was “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood,truly God and truly man.”² However, the human mind cannotfully grasp how Christ could be both God and human: a perfectunion in one person of two distinct and unique natures that areseemingly opposite but in no way nullify or suppress one another.

This paradox of the Incarnation has led to countless alter native theories, many of which appeal to Scripture for their proofand support. One of the most common theories proposes that Jesuswas not actually God, but only human, and Philippians 2:6–7 isoften used as a proof text for this theory. The Jehovah’s Witnessesare particularly vocal proponents of this idea. To address thisspecific question regarding the person of Jesus, we need tounderstand both the argument of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and themeaning of Philippians 2:6–7.

Understanding the Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In aneffort to make their faith more tenable and reasonable, Jehovah’sWitnesses broke with the traditional understanding of Jesus Christand instead argue that He was not God at all, but was merely aman. Two of their fundamental beliefs about the origin andidentity of Jesus are as follows: (1) Jesus is not God, rather Hewas God’s first creation. Regarding Jesus’ life on earth, the WatchTower Society states, “In every period of his [Jesus’] existence,whether in heaven or on earth, his speech and conduct reflectsubordination to God. God is always the superior, Jesus the lesserone who was created by God.”³ (2) On earth, Jesus was onlyhuman with no claim to deity. He was “not an incarnation, not agod-man, but a perfect man, ‘lower than angels.’”⁴

This is a succinct summary of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’beliefs about Jesus, especially regarding His earthly life andministry. Their literature is very adamant about Jesus’ inferiorityas compared to Jehovah God, with one article clearly stating,“The Father and the Son were not equal before Jesus came to theearth or during his earthly life.”⁵ In defending this view, Jehovah’sWitnesses use Philippians 2:6–7 to simultaneously refute Jesus’deity and prove His humanity.

Understanding Jesus’ Deity. Paul begins Philippians 2:6 byasserting that Jesus was “in the form of God.” In using this phrase, Paul does not mean that Jesus externally resembled God or that He was a mere representation of God. The Greek word morph (form) should not be understood in external, physical terms, but in ontological terms. The NIV captures this meaning with its translation of verse 6: “being in very nature God.” Paul uses the word morph to point to a deep theological truth. Jesus did not merely possess divine characteristics; He was God. Before describing any of Jesus’ other attributes or actions, Paul begins with the most important: Jesus’ deity.

Correctly interpreting the first phrase of verse six is critical for understanding the second phrase: “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Jehovah’s Witnesses use this phrase to support their belief that Jesus was inferior to God, which is expressed in their faulty translation of verse six: “who, although he was existing in God’s form, gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God” (NWT). One article states that this verse demonstrates “that Jesus did not think it was appropriate [to be equal to God].”⁶

These interpretations ignore Paul’s emphasis that Jesus is God. Acknowledging Jesus’ deity is essential in understanding the rest of verse six, which presupposes Jesus’ equality with God. Therefore, in this verse the word “grasped” should not be interpreted as an attempt to acquire or safeguard equality with God. In fact, Paul’s account reveals that Jesus’ actions are the opposite of “grasping.” Instead of selfishly exploiting His equality with God, Jesus instead uses it to redeem fallen humanity. He adds humanity to His deity,providing a powerful example of humility and self-sacrifice: “He who was God and never ceased to be otherwise humbled himself in the incarnation.”⁷ This is the progression of Philippians 2:6–7. After emphasizing Jesus’ deity, Paul addresses Jesus’ humanity.

Understanding Jesus’ Humanity. Philippians 2:7 earned its place in the debates regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ because of its use of the Greek word ekenosen. The NRSV and NASB translate ekenosen as “to empty,” which results in the phrase, “he emptied himself.” This translation of ekenosen laid the foundation for the idea that Jesus emptied Himself of His deity, so that He was neither God nor divine, but only man. Since the exegesis of this verse hinges on the translation of one verb, it is crucial to under stand whether ekenosen is functioning literally or figuratively in Philippians 2:7.

Did Paul mean that Christ literally emptied Himself of His deity, or is he metaphorically describing the Incarnation? In order to answer this question, the usage of kenoo (the root of ekenosen) in the New Testament must be examined. The verb kenoo appears in only four other New Testament verses, each time at the hand of Paul: Romans 4:14, 1 Corinthians 1:17, 1 Corinthians 9:15, and 2 Corinthians 9:3. In Romans 4:14, Paul claims that for those who follow the law, “faith is null.” Here kenoo is used to figuratively describe how faith is of no value, account, or significance for those who are relying on the law for salvation. In 1 Corinthians 1:17, if Paul used the verb kenoo literally, the English translation would only read, “lest the cross of Christ be emptied.” Both the NIV and the ESV, however, translate the end of this verse as, “lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” In adding the phrase “of its power,” translators recognize Paul’s original intent to use kenoo metaphorically. His fear is not that the cross would be literally empty, but that human eloquence would undermine the significance of the cross of Christ. Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 9:15 and 2 Corinthians 9:3, Paul uses kenoo figuratively. In each of these four occurrences of kenoo, Paul eschews the literal meaning of the word for its evocative figurative interpretation. Since kenoo is a rare verb in the New Testament—used five times and only by Paul—and is clearly used figuratively in four of these occurrences, there is overwhelming linguistic evidence for a figurative interpretation in Philippians 2:7 as well.⁸

The specific usage of kenoo in Philippians 2:7, moreover, supports a figurative interpretation. Paul uses the final two phrases of the verse to expound on the meaning of ekenosen: Christ did not literally empty Himself of anything, but He made Himself of no worldly significance when He took “the form of a servant” and was “born in the likeness of men.” Literal interpretations of kenoo twist the meaning of this passage. Paul’s intent was not to show his readers how Christ became man, but to reveal Jesus’ refusal to exploit what was inherently His and instead humble Himself by becoming man in order to redeem humanity. Through verse seven, Paul provides the Philippians a beautiful illustration of the Incarnation, not a thorough explanation of how the Incarnation took place. In light of this context and the linguistic evidence of kenoo, it is clear that Paul is not using ekenosen to claim that Christ emptied Himself of anything, but to instead metaphorically describe the Incarnation.⁹

Understanding the Jesus of Philippians 2:6–7. Paul’s fundamental beliefs about the identity of Jesus Christ in these verses blatantly contradict those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In verse six, Paul demonstrates that Jesus is God, existing in the same form as Him and equal to Him, possessing the same nature and character. This statement directly opposes the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ first assertion, that Jesus is not God. In verse seven, Paul strongly contrasts the idea of holding on to equality with God with what Jesus actually did: He “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Jesus does not use His equality with God to further His own interest or to secure His eternal position, but instead, leverages it on behalf of sinful humanity. As has already been proved, He does not cease to be God, but retains the “form of God” and, according to Philippians 2:8, is “found in human form”: two natures perfectly united in one person. Paul makes it clear that Christ was both the “form of God” and “found in human form.” Using Paul’s logic, in order to assert Christ’s humanity, one must also acknowledge His deity. This mystery of the Incarnation expressed by Paul refutes the Jehovah’s Witnesses second belief: on Earth, Jesus was only human, with no claim to deity.

In Philippians 2:6–7, Paul presents a balanced, complete view of Christ: fully God and fully man. To maintain the truth of Christ’s humanity while at the same time denying the truth of His deity is to rob the Incarnation of its awesome power. He who eternally is God became fully man in order to fully redeem mankind. Truly God and truly man, what a glorious mystery!

—Kristen Forbes

Kristen Forbes holds an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theo logical Seminary and currently works in youth ministry in Matthews, North Carolina.

notes

1 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from the English Standard Version.

2 From the Chalcedonian Creed, available at http://www.apuritansmind.com/Creeds/ChalcedonianCreed.htm.

3 The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, “Is God Always Superior to Jesus?” http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_06.htm.

4 Ibid, “What Does the Bible Say about God and Jesus?” http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_05.htm.

5 “Is Jesus God Almighty?” The Watchtower, September 15, 2005, http://www.watchtower.org/e/20050915/diagram_01.htm.

6 The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, “What about Trinity Proof Texts?”http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_08.htm.

7 Peter T. O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 216.

8 Ibid, 217.

9 The NIV and the ESV recognize this original intent in their translation “made himself nothing.”

Word-Faith leaders take a different—though even more heretical—spin on the verse. Kenneth Copeland, for example, asserts that Jesus “had to give up His righteousness”³ and “accepted the sin nature of Satan.”⁴ Benny Hinn likewise declares that Jesus “did not take my sin; He became my sin….He became one with the nature of Satan.”⁵

In what follows, I will demonstrate in brief fashion that there are five key hermeneutic principles that disallow such distorted understandings of Christ and His salvific mission. These principles, which guide our understanding of the apostle Paul’s intended meaning (the only correct meaning), are: (1) interpret Bible verses in context; (2) correctly understand, assess, and draw insights from Old Testament typology; (3) interpret verses in accordance with lexical insights gained from the original languages of the Bible; (4) interpret Scripture by Scripture, recognizing that Scripture is its own best interpreter; and (5) interpret difficult verses in light of the clear verses.

1. Interpret Bible Verses in Context. The immediate context of 2 Corinthians 5:21 centers on reconciliation to God (see vv. 18–20). The Greek word for reconciliation in these verses, katallages, refers to “the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship.”⁶ The state of hostility exists because of human sin against a holy God, which, according to the apostle Paul, was dealt with at the cross of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14–15). In view of this, the friendly relationship that Adam and Eve lost can now be restored through faith in Christ. The basis of Paul’s reconciliatory message is then stated in verse 21: God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

2. Correctly Understand, Assess, and Draw Insights from Old Testament Typology. A type is an Old Testament institution, event, person, object, or ceremony that has reality and purpose in biblical history, but that also—by divine design—foreshadows something yet to be revealed. The Passover lamb in the Old Testament (Exod. 12:21) was a “type” of Christ, who is Himself the Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36).

An understanding of the Passover Lamb in the Old Testament provides significant insight on the concept of substitu tion. For example, the sacrificial lamb had to be “unblemished” (Exod. 12:5; Lev. 4:3, 23, 32). At the time of the sacrifice, a hand would be laid on the unblemished sacrificial animal to symbolize a transfer of guilt (Lev. 4:4, 24, 33). Notice that the sacrificial lamb did not thereby actually become sinful by nature; rather, sin was imputed to the animal and the animal acted as a sacrificial substitute. In like manner, Christ the Lamb of God was utterly unblemished (1 Pet. 1:19), but our sin was imputed to Him and He was our sacrificial substitute on the cross of Calvary. Simply because our sin was imputed to Him does not mean He changed in nature or actually became sinful.

3. Interpret Verses in Accordance with Lexical Insights Gained from the Original Languages of the Bible. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, the phrase “on our behalf” (“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf ”) derives from the Greek term huper. This word can bear a number of nuances, not all of them substitutionary in nature. As professor Daniel Wallace has noted in his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, however, there are a number of factors that argue in favor of a substitutionary use of the word in New Testament times. For example, the substitutionary sense of huper is found in extra-New Testament Greek literature (see, e.g., Plato, Republic 590a; Xenophon, Anabasis 7.4.9–10), the Septuagint (e.g., Deut. 24:16; Isa. 43:3–4), and in the papyri (e.g., Oxyrhyn chus Papyrus 1281.11–12; Tebtunis Papyrus 380.43–44).⁷ One papyri example relates to a scribe who wrote a document on behalf of a person who did not know how to write. In all, Wallace counts 87 examples from the papyri in which huper is used in a substitutionary sense, and this by no means exhausts the extantpapyri data. Wallace thus concludes that “this evidence is over whelming in favor of treating huper as bearing a substitutionary force in the NT era.”⁸ The Friberg Greek Lexicon likewise affirms that the word is used “with a component of representation or substitution in the place of, for, in the name of, instead of.”⁹

Christ’s death, as the Lamb of God, was “for” (huper) us in the sense that it was on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). The word is used in this same on-behalf-of sense elsewhere in Scripture. Jesus at the Last Supper said: “This is My body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19, emphasis added here and in the verses that follow). Likewise, in John 10:15 Jesus affirmed, “I lay down My life for the sheep.” Paul thus exults that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8; see also Gal. 3:13; 1 Tim. 2:6; Heb. 2:9). Jesus “gave Himself for us to redeem us” (Titus 2:14), “the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18; see also 2:21). The idea of substitution richly permeates these verses.

4. Interpret Scripture by Scripture. Since Scripture is its own best interpreter, we must approach 2 Corinthians 5:21 in light of the clear teaching of other verses. While there are quite a number of pertinent theological facts we could derive from other verses that may have relevance for a proper under stand ing of this verse, for illustration’s sake I cite one alone: the immutability of Christ. Scripture reveals that Christ, as God, is unchanging and unchangeable (cf. Mal. 3:6; James 1:17). In Hebrews 1:12 the Father—drawing a contrast between the universe that ages and is passing away, and Jesus who is untouched by the passing of time—says of Jesus, “You are the same, and your years will not come to an end” (emphasis added). We are assured of the divine Savior: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8, emphasis added). Whatever else we might conclude from such verses, they certainly prohibit any suggestion that Jesus changed in His essential nature as God, or, more specifically, took on the nature of Satan.

5. Interpret Difficult Verses in Light of the Clear Verses. Among the more obvious teachings in the clear verses of Scripture is the perpetual sinlessness of Jesus Christ (emphasis is added in the following verses). The writer of Hebrews affirmed that “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Jesus was “holy, innocent, [and] undefiled” (Heb. 7:26). He was One “who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22). Jesus’ betrayer was remorseful, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). A hardened Roman soldier cried out, “Certainly this man was innocent” (Luke 23:47). The apostle Peter affirmed that we are redeemed not “with perishable things like silver or gold…but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). John said, “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). In view of such verses, it is impossible to argue that Jesus’ essential nature actually became tainted or corrupted by sin.

The Apostle Paul’s Intended Meaning. Based on the preceding hermeneutic considerations, we conclude that the apostle Paul’s intended meaning in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is that Jesus was always without sin actually, but at the cross He was made to be sin for us judicially. While Jesus never committed a sin personally, He was made to be sin for us substitutionally.¹⁰ Just as the righteousness that is imputed to Christians in justification is extrinsic to them, so the sin that was imputed to Christ on the cross was extrinsic to Him and never in any sense contaminated His essential nature. As one Bible expositor put it, “The innocent was punished voluntarily as if guilty, that the guilty might be gratuitously rewarded as if innocent.”¹¹

In a nutshell, then, the whole redemptive plan is one of substitution—and without such substitution there can be no salvation. It was by His utterly selfless sacrificial death on the cross that our sinless Savior—the unblemished Lamb of God—paid the penalty for our sins and thereby canceled the debt of sin against us, thus wondrously making possible our reconciliation with God. The redeemed of God can only respond in exultation and praise: “To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood…to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 1:5–6).

—Ron Rhodes

Ron Rhodes, Th.D., is president of Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries and adjunct professor of theology at Biola University (La Mirada, California), Southern Evangelical Seminary (Charlotte, North Carolina), and at Golden Gate Seminary (Southern California campus). He is an award-winning author of numerous books and articles.

notes

1 Frank Jannaway, ed., Christadelphian Answers (Houston: Herald Press, 1920), 24.

2 Ibid., 24.

3 Kenneth Copeland, “The Incarnation,” Audiotape #01-0402 (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1985), side 2.

4 Kenneth Copeland, “What Happened from the Cross to the Throne,” Audiotape #02-0017 (Fort Worth: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1990), side 2.

5 Benny Hinn, quoted in Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1993), 155–56.

6 Walter Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., ed. and rev. Frederick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 521.

7 Daniel Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 383–88.

8 Ibid., 386.

9 Timothy Friberg, Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, in BibleWorks software, BibleWorks, LLC.

10 See Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, Correcting the Cults (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 244.

11 Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown’s Commentary, in PC Study Bible software, BibleSoft.

In July of 2008 a flurry of academic journals and news sources reported a new archaeological artifact that might “shake our basic view of Christianity”—especially about first-century mes-sianic expectations and the resurrection accounts. The new find was a large stone tablet on which was written eighty-seven lines of Hebrew text in ink, but much of the text was missing. The message of the text, thought to be composed just before the time of Jesus, is being called Gabriel’s Revelation. A scholar named Israel Knohl created headlines about this artifact by filling in some of the missing text with words that line up with his idea that the notion of a suffering and dying messiah who rises on the third day was part of the consciousness of Judaism before Christianity emerged and is therefore the source of the stories about Jesus. Evangelical scholars have concluded that even if Knohl’s recreation of the text of the tablet is correct, there is no threat to the New Testament picture of Jesus. Indeed, Knohl’s views, if proven true, could actually bolster the Christian case.

Almost every year now as we approach the traditional Easter holiday, we brace ourselves for news that will “shock the faithful worldwide.” In the Spring of 2007, it was this:

An incredible archaeological discovery in Israel changes history and shocks the world. Tombs with the names Maria, Jesus son of Joseph, Mariamne e Mara, and Judah, their son, are found and an investigation begins. The Jesus Family Tomb [movie] is a riveting archaeological adventure, a real-life detective story, co-produced by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and Titanic director James Cameron. In 1980, in East Talpiot, Jerusalem, a bulldozer accidentally uncovered what may be the most explosive archaeological discovery of all time.…What they find is the discovery of a lifetime, and raises questions about the historical Jesus.¹

Of course, after the dust settled with regard to the purported family tomb of Jesus, the only thing “remarkable” and “shocking” was the speed and cleverness of a group of pseudoscholars to grab some headlines, sell a book and a DVD, and hightail it out of town before people with real knowledge about such matters were able to weigh in.² I believe Jacobovici and Cameron set a whole new standard with regard to profitable hit-and-run Jesus exposés.

We have seen a number of these kinds of issues exploited both for financial gain and for the purpose of undermining the picture of Jesus that emerges from the New Testament documents. The DaVinci Code, the various Gnostic Gospels, the lost years of Jesus, the Passover Plot, and so on. Of course, the “shocking conclusion” of each new conjecture never seems to be that we have compelling and reliable evidence to know that an extraordinary, innocent man died at the hands of a Roman crucifixion squad and returned from the dead several days later in first-century Jerusalem just as He and the Scriptures predicted!

A DEAD SEA SCROLL ON STONE

The latest archaeological find that is being used by some to call into question the New Testament witness to Jesus is being called “Gabriel’s Revelation” (also called the Vision of Gabriel, or Hazon Gabriel in Hebrew). The filmmakers and exploiters have not yet arrived on the scene of this relic—but the day is young.

Gabriel’s Revelation is a Hebrew apocalyptic text written on the face of a thick stone tablet measuring three feet by one foot.³ One would expect the inscription to be engraved into the stone, but the message here was painted onto a smooth surface of the tablet using ink. The text is arranged in two columns with a total of eighty-seven lines. The arrangement of the text is very much like that on a scroll; hence some scholars have been calling it a “scroll on stone.”

The tablet was cracked into three pieces in its journey through the centuries, but all the pieces are accounted for. The Hebrew lettering on the tablet, however, did not fare so well. It is a very poorly preserved artifact and a good deal of the text is either gone or indecipherable—but this is, of course, a key reason for the mystery and the current controversy surrounding it. Paleographic analysis (that is, a study of the script and materials of writing) place the date of composition from the late first-century BC to the early first century AD—the same general time frame that has been assigned to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In both appearance and apocalyptic tenor, the Gabriel Tablet appears to have more than a little in common with these other ancient Hebrew texts from the Qumran community.⁴

Although scholars are comfortable with the date range of the writing on the tablet, they really have no idea who wrote it or anything about its provenance. The tablet surfaced about a decade ago in the possession of a Jordanian antiquities dealer. It was then purchased by David Jeselsohn, an Israeli collector living in Zurich, who kept the artifact at his home. Although a knowledgeable antiquities patron himself, Jeselsohn did not know the importance of the coffee-table-sized stone occupying three square feet of his living room.

Eventually he showed it to Ada Yardeni, an expert in ancient Hebrew scripts, paleography, and epigraphy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Yardeni, in collaboration with Binyamin Elitzur, recognized the text as the work of a professional scribe and clearly from the first-centuries time frame already mentioned based on “the shape and the form of the letters.”⁵ According to a New York Times report, chemical analysis of the artifact done by a renowned expert in archaeological dating, Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, confirmed the proposed date range from paleography.⁶ The question of the basic time-frame of composition seems for the most part closed, but where it was and who had it for 2,000 years is still wide open.

After spending some quality time with the Gabriel Tablet, Yardeni and Elitzur published an article in 2007 in the Hebrew language periodical Cathedra.⁷ In that article they offered their best attempt at a transcription of the lines of ancient Hebrew.⁸ Their own English translation was published on the Web site of the Biblical Archaeology Review and shows all of the missing and illegible parts according to their expert analysis.⁹ This is important because these two textual scholars were most concerned with reconstructing and reading the actual text and less concerned with broader interpretation or how it might “shake the very foundation of Christian history.”

Upon reading Yardeni’s and Elitzur’s English translation of Gabriel’s Revelation and the English-language summary of their article from Cathedra’s Web site, one wonders what the controversy could possibly be?¹⁰ No doubt this is a fascinating find. We have here a very unusual artifact emerging from the Second Temple period that gives us a new but very small window into the variety of Jewish prophetic literature of the period. As Yardeni herself wrote,

The text has not been identified, but it is clearly a literary composition, similar to Biblical prophecies. It is written in the first person, perhaps by someone named Gabriel….It is apparently a collection of short prophecies addressed to someone in the second person…. It is difficult to say more. Perhaps this intriguing text only emphasizes the variety of Jewish movements at the turn of the era—and how much about them we don’t know.¹¹

Yardeni displayed great scholarly restraint in her analysis by sticking to the legible text on the tablet without making grand extrapolations to determine what the text was “really” all about.

Enter Israel Knohl.

GABRIEL’S REVELATION AS TEXTUAL MISSING LINK?

New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner referred to Knohl as an “iconoclastic” scholar because Bronner picked up on the fact that Knohl was interested in nothing less than to “shake the world of Christology.”¹² In the preface to a book he published in 2000 (in which he believed he was the first ever to find the elusive connection between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament), Knohl was upfront with his deep desire to overturn long cherished beliefs: “In the present work I challenge the point of view dominant in New Testament scholarship for over a hundred years.…I have a strong compulsion to reveal the truth as I see it.”¹³ Over the years, Knohl’s work is known to be competent, creative, and bold—necessary attributes for notable work in ancient texts and history. However, no one would ever accuse him of “under reaching” in his attempts to draw conclusions from limited evidence.¹⁴

Professor Knohl first read about the tablet and Gabriel’s Revelation in the Yardeni and Elitzur article in Cathedra. His interest in seeing the stone was immediate. The New York Times article captured the reason for this. “Mr. Knohl posited in a book in [the year] 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.”¹⁵ For Knohl, Gabriel’s Revelation was the missing link he needed.

ISRAEL KNOHL AND THE “PREQUEL” TO JESUS’ RESURRECTION

After studying the tablet himself, Knohl published three articles—one scholarly and two popular—from April 2007 to April 2008.16 A subsequent New York Times report on his conclusions regarding Gabriel’s Revelation became the top blogged and e-mailed story on the newspaper’s Web site for a period of time.¹⁷ Knohl’s conclusions—or at least the way he was packaging them—were magnetic for the media and garnered broad and immediate popular interest.

Of the eighty-seven lines of text on the tablet, Knohl knew just where to focus his gaze in order to find the controversy—the now infamous line 80. According to Yardeni’s original study of the tablet, lines 80 and 81 read as follows (of course, ellipses, brackets, and question marks indicate missing and unreadable text):

80. In three days li[ve], I, Gabri’el …[?],

81. the Prince of Princes, …, narrow holes(?) …[…]…¹⁸

Israel Knohl rendered the same two lines this way:

80. In three days, live, I Gabriel com[mand] yo[u]

81. prince of the princes, the dung of the rocky crevices []… ..[]¹⁹

In comparing Yardeni’s original version to Knohl’s, it is easy to see that Knohl filled in some key blank spots in the tablet’s text. The insertions he made, though, make the message very sympathetic to his long-held position that the picture of a dying and rising messiah was part of the Jewish consciousness in the years before Jesus arrived on the scene. When Knohl rendered line 80 as “In three days, live, I Gabriel command you,” he was massaging the text to express the idea that a powerful angel (Gabriel) was ordering a messianic figure (prince of the princes) to rise from the dead after three days.

Knohl, of course, does not believe in the supernatural resurrection of Jesus on the third day as the Gospels attest, so in his mind the tablet helps provide a naturalistic explanation as to how this central Christian idea took hold among the earliest believers. In Knohl’s own words, “This should shake our basic view of Christianity.…Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”²⁰

In all fairness, Knohl’s reflections on Gabriel’s Revelation go far beyond his provocative thoughts about line 80. He draws other conclusions from the prophetic lines of the tablet and weaves them together with other texts and trends from the time to form some interesting ideas about the variety of messianic expectations during the Second Temple period. However, with limited space here, those cannot be addressed.

POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC

Scholarly reactions to Knohl’s work on the Gabriel Tablet can be placed in two categories. There are reactions to his interpolations of the text itself and reactions to his overall interpretation—especially the cause-and-effect relationship he sees between the tablet and the early ideas about Jesus. Although Ada Yardeni has come out in support of one of the key illegible words (“live” in line 80) proposed by Knohl,²¹ others such as Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher, President of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language, concluded (with a tip of the hat to the obvious) that “in crucial places of the text there is a lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two or three crucial lines of text there are a lot of words missing.”²²

Like many in the decades before him who overreached on their interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls to reveal the “real” origins of Christianity and make headlines, Knohl appears a little too desperate to find the foundation-shaking evidence for which he longs. In doing so he seems to have welded himself to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (“after this, therefore because of this”). It is not the case that just because the messianic movement featuring Jesus of Nazareth followed the composing of Gabriel’s Revelation that Gabriel’s Revelation was necessarily the cause or source of the central ideas of the movement. Positing this, even with a bevy of scholarly qualifiers, is mostly wish fulfillment and goes well beyond what the hard evidence warrants.

SO WHAT?

Evangelical scholars have been less concerned about how Knohl has reconstructed the missing lines and illegible characters of the text and have instead focused on the simple but important question, “So what?”23 That is, what would it mean for our traditional views of Jesus as the resurrected Christ if Knohl’s textual rendering of Gabriel’s Revelation (not his broader interpretation) turned out to be correct? The early consensus of noteworthy evangelical scholars who have weighed in (mostly informally on Internet sites) is that, ironically, if Knohl’s reading is right, it would be more helpful than harmful to our traditional views in several ways.²⁴

Perhaps the most important positive would be that Knohl’s view would do significant harm to the pervasive idea promoted for years by radical Jesus scholars that the predictions made by Jesus about His own passion and resurrection²⁵ were not authentic sayings, but rather were words put into His mouth by later followers. Leaders among the modern messianic Jewish movement picked up on this helpful attribute right away. Here is some “evidence that Jesus was the kind of messiah Israel was waiting for, even if the rabbis now teach that Jesus failed to meet the biblical messianic criteria.”²⁶

In addition, if correct, Knohl’s broader ideas correlate in modest ways with Daniel 9:26 and the Anointed One being “cut off.” It corresponds well with the suffering messiah of Isaiah 53:5. It brings to life the idea of the Sign of the Prophet Jonah mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 12:39–41. It also can help us understand why Paul would claim that Christ was raised on the third day “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:4). Of course, these are all things that evangelicals have promoted vigorously.

The only downside noticed by Resurrection experts such as Gary R. Habermas, if Knohl is correct, has been that apologists who make much of the fact that the death and resurrection of Christ caught His followers completely off guard need to dial down that point.²⁷ Perhaps there was a stronger expectation in the air about a suffering and rising messiah than previously thought.

With all of this said, it is important to remember two things. First, Knohl’s broader interpretation is based on text that he is reading into the blank spots on the tablet. Second, even if he is right, the original belief and early proclamation of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus derive from eyewitness accounts of an empty tomb and a risen Christ. Early Jewish messianic expectations alone would simply not have been enough to propel this early movement forward.

As Prof. John J. Collins of Yale Divinity School concluded,

But even if Knohl’s interpretation were right, it would hardly warrant the ensuing fuss. Everyone who has taken an introductory New Testament course knows that the early Christians understood Jesus in light of Jewish prophecies and expectations. The motif of resurrection after three days is based on a passage from the prophet Hosea about restoration of the people: “on the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him.” If Knohl’s interpretation should prove to be right, it would be an interesting contribution to the history of religion. But its supposed threat to Christian theology is no more than a marketing strategy. In that respect, the Vision of Gabriel is only the latest of many discoveries that have been sensationalized for the sake of publicity.²⁸

At this point, the fast-buck filmmakers and executives from cable channels desperate for provocative programming have not descended on the Gabriel Revelation as a new way to boost ratings and revenue. But just wait. Another Easter season will come soon enough.

Craig J. Hazen, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the M.A. program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University and the editor of the scholarly journal, Philosophia Christi. His latest book is the breakout new apologetics novel Five Sacred Crossings (Harvest House, 2008).

notes

1 http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com (accessed January 9, 2009), and http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/movie_overview/about.html (accessed January 9, 2009).

2 For detailed and thorough responses to the claims about the “Jesus Family Tomb” in Talpiot, see Gary R. Habermas, The Secret of the Talpiot Tomb (Nashville: B and H Publishing Group, 2007) and Charles L. Quarles, ed., Buried Hope and Risen Savior (Nashville: B and H Publishing Group, 2008).

3 An “apocalyptic text” is a written record of a special revelation about the future (but sometimes the past and present) in deeply symbolic language. These apocalyptic revelations usually come in the form of dreams or visions and often involve angels as messengers or interpreters. They usually have as their purpose the bringing of hope and encouragement to people of faith undergoing difficult times and tribulations.

4 The “Qumran community” is the name of the settlement near the Dead Sea where it is thought that a group of Jewish separatists called the Essenes had a kind of wilderness retreat or monastic outpost. It is believed that the Essenes in the Qumran community were responsible for writing and then hiding in caves the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

5 Ada Yardeni, Biblical Archaeology Review 34 ( January/February 2008), 60.

6 Ethan Bronner, “Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection,” New York Times, World Section, July 6, 2008. Also according to the article, Goren’s results have been submitted to a peer-reviewed academic journal. Hence details of the analysis will be coming forth in the near future.

7 Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur, “Document: A First-Century BCE Prophetic Text Written on a Stone; First Publication,” Cathedra 123 (2007): 155–66.

8 Ibid., 158.

9 See http://www.bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_english.pdf (accessed January 9, 2009).

10 See Cathedra abstracts at the Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Web site at http://ybz.org.il/?ArticleID =1712 (accessed January 9, 2009).

11 Yardeni, Biblical Archaeology Review, 60, 61. Emphasis added.

12 Bronner.

13 Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls, trans. David Maisel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), xi.

14 See, e.g., the review of Knohl’s The Messiah before Jesus by Eileen M. Schuller in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 21 (2002): 153–56.

15 Bronner.

16 Israel Knohl, “In Three Days, You Shall Live” Haaretz, April 19, 2007; “‘By Three Days Live’: Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel,” Journal of Religion 88 (April 2008): 147–58; and “The Messiah Son of Joseph: ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’ and the Birth of a New Messianic Model,” Biblical Archaeology Review 34 (September/October 2008): 58–62.

17 According to Alan Abbey of the Shalom Hartman Institute Blog, July 7, 2008. http://hartmaninstitute.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/hartmans-israel-knohl-in-the-newsfor-pre-jesus-jewish-tablet/ (accessed January 9, 2009).

18 From http://www.bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_english.pdf (accessed January 9, 2009).

19 Found in Knohl, “The Messiah Son of Joseph,” 62.

20 Bronner.

21 See the letter to the Biblical Archaeology Review editor, Hershel Shanks, from Ada Yardeni at the BAR Web site. http://www.bib-arch.org/bar/extra.asp?ArticleID=11&ParentArticleID= 14 (accessed January 9, 2009).

22 Bronner.

23 See Ben Witherington’s blog post “The Death and Resurrection of Messiah—Written in Stone,” July 5, 2008, at http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2008/07/death-andresurrection-of-messiah.html (accessed January 9, 2009).

24 See, e.g., Gary R. Habermas, “‘Gabriel’s Vision’ and the Resurrection of Jesus,” July 2008 at http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/gabrielsvision1/gabrielsvision.htm (accessed January 9, 2009); Witherington, “The Death and Resurrection of Messiah;” and Craig Blomberg, “No Threat Here!” July 7, 2008. Blog post at http://blog.bible.org/ primetimejesus/content/and-raised-3d-day%3F (accessed January 9, 2009).

25 Such as in Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34; and 14:27–28.

26 Quote from Israeli historian Gershon Nirel as reported by Ryan Jones on the Israel Today Magazine Web site on July 11, 2008, http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid= 178&nid=16576 (accessed January 9, 2009).

27 Habermas, “‘Gabriel’s Vision’ and the Resurrection of Jesus.”

28 John J. Collins, “The Vision of Gabriel,” Yale Alumni Magazine (September/October 2008) at http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2008_09/forum.html (accessed January 9, 2009).

Synopsis

Many people, especially Christians, have serious questions about divorce and remarriage. As the American family appears to be imploding with divorce, and as blended families become a major challenge to negotiate and develop by those who remarry, it is wise for us to examine again Paul’s instructions about divorce and remarriage in First Corinthians 7.

When may a person biblically and ethically divorce a spouse and remarry another? Marriage is founded upon the biblical basis of a covenant. Violations of the marriage covenant may lead to the dissolution of the marriage covenant. Paul clearly sets forth this underlying assumption and then develops an inspired hermeneutic for dealing with troubled marriages and the questions surrounding divorce for Christians.

We live in a broken world, and everything in this world is broken as well. In the creation, God formed a perfect world and declared it all “very good” (Gen. 1:31, ESV)¹. The basic parameters of life, set forth in the creation in Genesis, chapters 1 and 2, have been damaged by the human fall into sin. Man’s dominion over creation; gender identity and roles; love, marriage, and child-rearing; domestic life in the home; community solidarity and safety; and the value and sanctity of human life have all been damaged by sin (as is evidenced in Genesis 3 ff., and the evening news on ABC, FOX, or CNN). Paul David Tripp metaphorically likens our world to an old, broken-down house:

The world you live in is a lot like that broken-down house. Every single room has been dirtied and damaged by sin. Not one part of it shines with anything like the pure glory that was so evident when it was first made. Sin has left this world in a sorry condition. You see it everywhere you look.

You see it in great cities and small communities. You see it in the environment, blighted by pollution and misuse. You see it in government, often focused more on caring for itself than on serving the people. You see it in entertainment that replaces what is truly beautiful with what is essentially pornography. You see it in the family, as the place designed for growth and protection often becomes a source of life’s greatest hurts. You see it in a staggering, diseased economy that has finally exhausted itself after decades of financial debauchery. You see it in art and culture that often debases the very concept of beauty. You see it in history, with instance after instance of man’s inhumanity to man. You see it in each life as we all struggle with physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational brokenness every day.²

Of all God’s ordinances and institutions marred by sin and teetering from spiritual and moral decay, perhaps none bears the marks of damage as much as marriage. Studies, both public and private, religious and secular, surrounding the condition of marriages in America are legion. Those of a conservative, biblical, and historic Protestant theology are greatly alarmed by the social indicators that do not bode well for the institution of marriage.³ Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association wrote back in 2004:

In my lifetime I have seen changes I would never have dreamed would occur in our nation. We have abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion. Pornography is everywhere, from comic books to the Internet, reaching nearly every home in our country. Gambling is a state-run business promoted to our youth and our poor. The work ethic has been devalued. Divorce has played havoc with the social structure. The list goes on and on.

Now comes the biggest and—if we don’t win—the last battle: homosexual marriage. The fact is, radical homosexuals don’t really want marriage. What they want is approval for a perverted lifestyle. And if marriage is destroyed in the process, so be it. And yet politicians, businesses, even some church leaders have jumped on the bandwagon. ⁴

Lest Wildmon be accused of narrow-minded censoriousness toward those of “alternative views,” I would remind the reader that the protection of heterosexual marriage benefits society at large—not just the evangelical church. James Dobson of Focus on the Family Ministries gives us a well-balanced, historically valid, and professional opinion when he summarizes the benefits of solid marriages:

In short, marriage, when it functions as intended, is good for everyone—for men, for women, for children, for the community, for the nation, and for the world. Marriage is the means by which the human race is propagated, and the means by which spiritual teaching is passed down through the generations. Research consistently shows that heterosexual married adults do better in virtually every measure of emotional and physical health than people who are divorced or never married. They live longer and have happier lives. They recover from illness more quickly, earn and save more money, are more reliable employees, suffer less stress, and are less likely to become victims of any kind of violence. They find the job of parenting more enjoyable, and they have more satisfying and fulfilling sex lives.⁵

What may surprise many is this statement: the greatest threat to marriages in America is not homosexuality, same-sex marriages, feminism, or premarital sex, but rather divorce. Unbiblical divorce constitutes the major sinful pattern in our broken world, threatening the preservation of life’s first and most basic institution. So prevalent is divorce today that church members divorce at the same rate and percentage as nonchurched individuals. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), approved a study on the subject of divorce and remarriage and adopted the Position Paper on Divorce and Remarriage⁶. This position paper began with these words:

The PCA reaffirms that sex is a gift from God which should be expressed only in marriage between a man and a woman. Therefore all sexual intercourse outside marriage, including homosexuality and lesbianism, is contrary to God’s Word (the Bible), and is sin. We acknowledge that the Bible declares that those who continuously and unrepentantly sin shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, and we sorrow for their plight. Yet we also joyfully acknowledge that God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ forgives repentant sinners and welcomes such forgiven, cleansed and changed sinners into the Church of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 6:9–11)⁷.

The PCA acknowledges that marriage and the church exist within a broken world. The church also recognizes that both God’s law and God’s grace must shape and guide our understanding of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. As such, the Westminster Confession of Faith (the PCA doctrinal standards) reflects the biblical teaching that permits divorce for two reasons- adultery and irreconcilable desertion:

Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage: yet, nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church, or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage: wherein, a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case. (Westminster Confession of Faith 24–26)⁸

These two reasons for legitimate divorce are clearly set forth by Jesus Christ (Matt. 5, 19) and His apostles (1 Cor.7) in the New Testament. Adultery and desertion remain the only two explicit reasons whereby a person may divorce a spouse. The traditional and historic understanding of this “biblical divorce” doctrine was set forth clearly by the Princeton theologian and professor, Alexander A. Hodge, in 1869: “The divine law as to divorce is, that marriage is a contract for life between one man and one woman, and that it is, ipso facto, dissolved only by death (Rom. vii, 2, 3); and that the only causes upon which any civil authority can dissolve the union of those whom God has joined together are (a.) adultery, (b.) willful, causeless, and incurable desertion.”⁹

I will briefly examine these two reasons for divorce, and their implications for marriage and remarriage, by looking at the biblical texts and their teachings, which are relevant to today.

Divorce Due to Adultery

Jesus Christ Himself is the first in the New Testament to refine the Jewish practice, instituted by Moses, which allowed for divorce. Twice Christ qualified and greatly restricted the practices of rabbinical Judaism in His day. The rabbis had developed a convoluted way in which a man could divorce his wife. They succumbed to cultural and pagan pressures to relax even further Moses’ instructions in the law (Torah). In Deuteronomy 24:1–4, the lawgiver set forth this perpetual statute:

When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Fourteen centuries later, Moses’ words, “if she then finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her,” had been interpreted in the broadest sense of the phrase to mean anything that might displease a husband (e.g., being a poor cook, hard to get along with, barren and unable to bear children, overweight, old, etc.). One can only imagine both the frivolous reasons concocted by unloving husbands and the unjust treatment meted out to faithful wives due to this rabbinic interpretation. The rabbis focused only on the “letter of the law”—in this case, making sure the divorce certificate was filled out, filed, and prosecuted properly. The heart and spirit of the law was lost in its legalistic mechanics. Keep in mind that the rabbinical rules benefited only the husband and not the wife.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ brings such chauvinistic abuses to marriage to a screeching halt. In His reiteration and reinterpretation of God’s law, Jesus says the following: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:31–32).

What Christ meant by this was simple. The Holy Spirit used two distinct Greek words in relating to the Apostles the essence of Christ’s teachings and the Scripture we now possess. Each Greek word related to a family of Greek words used to express ideas about illicit sex, referring to sex outside the bounds of a monogamous marriage. Here is what Christ literally said: “Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of porneia (sexual immorality), makes her moichao (commit adultery). And anyone who marries a divorced woman (i.e., one who has been divorced for other cause than adultery, or who divorces her husband for other cause than adultery) moichao (commits adultery himself).” Understanding these two Greek words is very important in our interpretation of Christ’s teaching on divorce and remarriage.

The first word (porneia) comes from a family of words used to describe illicit sex outside the bounds of a legal and monogamous marriage. Both Greco-Roman law and Jewish law highly valued the institution of marriage. The Greek language reflects these values. This family of porn-words describes all types of illicit sex. The Greek verb porneuo (to fornicate) is related to the Greek words porneo(harlot), pornos (fornicator), and porneia (fornication).

The second word is more specific. Moichao is a verb used for adultery in marriage. It meant to “have sex with someone other than your spouse to whom you are married.” The cognate of the verb, moicheia, always referred to adultery, and nothing else.

So here is what Jesus says: “If a man divorces his wife for other reason than that she engaged in sexual immorality, and was sexually unfaithful to him, and if he marries another, he commits adultery because he is still married to his first and faithful wife in God’s eyes, and in society’s as well. And if he puts a sexually faithful wife away, and she then marries another man, he has forced her into an illicit marriage, and this too is therefore a form of adultery.”

Later in His ministry, Jesus expounded on this viewpoint in Matthew 19:1–12. Again, the issue of divorce is raised by the crowd. The Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” Jesus is frank and clear. He explains four things to the Pharisees and those listening to their discourse.

1. From the beginning of creation, God had always intended a marriage to be between one man and one woman, in a lifetime commitment. Christ references Genesis 2:18–25.2. Moses did not prescribe Deuteronomy 24:1–4, at the inspiration of God, in order to loosen the demands of marriage but rather to restrict divorces. It was the “hardness of the heart” that was in view in Deuteronomy 24:1–4. In other words, the “certificate of divorce” was intended to make divorce more difficult to obtain, not to facilitate dissolutions of marriage.3. Only porneia or moicheia (sex outside of marriage) are the acceptable grounds for divorce.4. Those who divorce other than for sexual infidelity will commit moicheia (adultery).

My wife and I have recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya, a society much troubled by polygamy. We traveled there at the invitation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Kibera, in order to speak at a marriage conference. I must admit that I was surprised by the questions asked me during this week of biblical preaching and teaching:-“My husband has taken a second and now a third wife. Am I free to leave him and seek a divorce?”-“My husband is legally married to me, but back in his home village, he has a second wife—a tribal marriage, though not official. Can I divorce him?”-“My wife and I are not legally married. As in most Kenyan marriages, we have just lived together. I no longer want my wife. Am I free to leave her?”-“My husband has repeatedly had forced sex with our thirteen-year-old daughter. Can I leave him over this?”-“My husband has had sex with animals. These encounters have been verified by another woman in our village. I have separated from him for the past two months. He says the Devil makes him do it. May I divorce him over this?”-“My husband has AIDS. I do not…yet. May I divorce him to protect myself and my daughters?”-“My husband likes to have sex with men. Do I have to remain with him or am I free to divorce and remarry?”

“Incredible!” you say? So it is. But real, nevertheless. All of these situations reflect three realities:

1. The distortion of marriage due to cultural norms and practices directly at odds with God’s Word.2. Gross violations of the central issue in a covenant of marriage: sexual fidelity.3. The presence of sexual immorality (porneia) that constitutes permissible grounds for divorce.

We in America may not practice such base, tribalistic forms of unbridled sexual lusts, but in substance we violate the sanctity of marriage to the same degree as these Kenyans.

Multiple marriages and divorces are nothing short of “serial polygamy.” Incest, rape, and molestation are not infrequent in American families. Homosexuality is on the rise and fornication is as common as dating and often assumed to go hand-in-hand. Pornography, graphic movies, lewd dress, and a pitiful preoccupation with sex characterize our culture. AIDS is a growing concern. The Internet includes Web sites advocating legal polygamy. How are we so different from “primitive” Kenya?

John Calvin, in Book Two of his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion, explains to us the importance of the seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14 and Deut. 5:18). He comments:

The purpose of this commandment is: because God loves modesty and purity, all uncleanness must be far from us. To sum up, then: we should not become defiled with any filth or lustful intemperance of the flesh. To this corresponds the affirmative commandment that we chastely and continently regulate all parts of our life. But he expressly forbids fornication, to which all lust tends, in order through the foulness of fornication, which is grosser and more palpable, in so far as it brands the body also with its mark, to lead us to abominate all lust.Therefore, the Lord sufficiently provided for us in this matter when he established marriage, the fellowship of which, begun on his authority, he also sanctified by his blessing. From this it is clear that any other union apart from marriage is accursed in his sight; and that the companionship of marriage has been ordained as a necessary remedy to keep us from plunging into unbridled lust.10

Divorce Due to Desertion

The church recognizes one other biblical ground for a legitimate divorce: willful desertion that cannot be remedied. Jesus did not speak of this ground for divorces, but His apostle, Paul of Tarsus, did, in 1 Corinthians 7. Some view this ground as inferior to that of adultery, and a few even reject willful desertion as a biblical ground for divorce. One’s view of Scripture will affect one’s view on this issue. If a person accepts the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, then it cannot stand that what Jesus said in Matthew carries more authority than what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians. Both men spoke from God (2 Pet. 1:21) and both men complement each other’s teaching in reflecting the Holy Spirit’s inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16–17).

In fact, Paul makes it quite clear that the Lord Jesus Christ led him to certain ideas about marriage, desertion, and divorce, while in other places he spoke from his own understanding of the will of God. In both cases, we have the reliable Word of God: the words of Christ while He was on earth, and the words of the Holy Spirit speaking through the apostle Paul (cf. v. 40). Our understanding of Scripture, therefore, places Christ’s and Paul’s statements on equal ground. Both are the inspired Word of God. If one accepts the inspiration of the New Testament, then one must accept that willful and impenitent desertion is a ground for divorce equal to that of adultery. Here is what Paul wrote concerning desertion and divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:10–16:

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

Paul’s instructions are straightforward, if not obvious at first glance. He sets forth four principles concerning marriage, desertion, and divorce.

1. Generally, husbands and wives should not leave (desert) or seek to divorce their spouses (1 Cor. 7:10–11).2. If a person leaves a spouse for a reason other than adultery, that person should:a. be reconciled to his/her spouse;b. if not, he/she should remain separated without seeking divorce andc. without remarrying another person (1 Cor. 7:11).3. If a Christian is married to an unbeliever (non-Christian person), the believer should not leave nor put away the unbelieving spouse, if that spouse is content to remain married (1 Cor. 7:12–14, 16).4. If an unbelieving spouse leaves and seeks a divorce, then the Christian in that marriage is “not enslaved” (i.e., not bound to remain married), and may divorce the absentee spouse after indication is given that the absent spouse does not intend to return to the marriage (1 Cor. 7:15).

In summary, Paul teaches that Christians, even those “unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14), should always do all they can to preserve their marriages, both for the honor of Christ and for the spiritual good of spouse and children (1 Cor. 7:14). But if the non-Christian spouse decides either to desert the marriage or to seek divorce, the Christian does not need to work to preserve the marriage. The believer is free to grant a divorce or seek a divorce on the basis of “willful desertion”; and, having been granted that divorce, is free to remarry—but only to a fellow Christian. The deserted and divorced spouse falls into the same category as a widowed person: free to remarry, but “only in the Lord,” that is, to another Christian (1 Cor. 7:39–40).

Some may say, “Well, isn’t this rather utilitarian! A Christian operates by a set of rules that always benefits him, but never the non-Christian spouse! Is this not horrible revisionism of God’s law and that which Jesus taught?” I will admit that at first glance Paul’s teaching looks that way, but further reflection and study reveal quite the opposite.

Paul reviews in 1 Corinthians 7 the entire scope of the Christian view of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. He sets forth a very demanding and difficult charge to his fellow Christians: they were to remain married as much as possible and as long as possible, because the gospel of Christ has called us to peace (1 Cor. 7:15). In doing so, Paul sets forth several general guidelines.¹¹

Paul, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, seeks not to make divorce easier for people, but rather to regulate divorce in this broken world, hold Christians to a higher standard, while allowing for the fact that human depravity and sin may often make marriage impossible to sustain. Paul’s teaching, like Christ’s, reflects the beautiful combination of a high view of God’s law, a measure of sympathetic grace, and wisdom in the face of the realistic facts of life.

THE COVENANT BASIS OF MARRIAGE

Both Christ’s teaching on adultery and divorce and Paul’s instructions on desertion and divorce reflect God’s covenantal design for marriage. The Lord ordained marriage as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman. In Scripture we can observe four purposes to this covenant:1. The spiritual partnership and mutual edification of husband and wife in pursuing the will of the Lord (Gen. 2:18–25; Eph. 5:22–33; 1 Pet. 3:1–7).2. The procreation of children and the nurture of the human family (Gen. 1:26–28).3. The development of spiritual intimacy and the fulfillment of sexual pleasures through conjugal love (Gen. 1:18–25).4. Protection against lusts, immorality, and sexual temptations (Prov. 5:15–23; 1 Cor. 7:1–9; 1 Thess. 4:1–12).

When we understand marriage as a covenant it follows that violations of any one of its four covenant purposes could constitute grounds for divorce. Adultery and willful desertion are obvious and potentially irreparable violations of covenant love. It would seem that there are other sins against marriage that could rise to the same level of covenant unfaithfulness as adultery and desertion, including physical abuse, refusal to work and support the family, illicit and illegal activities that threaten the safety of the family, refusal to engage in marital sex, refusal to bear or care for children, unrepentant addiction to pornography, alcoholism or drug abuse, forsaking the home for long periods of time unnecessarily, and engagement in occult activities or other spiritual actions harmful to the family. It could be argued that these violations of the marriage covenant may constitute biblical grounds for divorce, even though they are not specifically named as such in the New Testament.

In such cases, the church, through its ordained officers, must be engaged for advice, assistance, and biblical guidance. In the end, the dissolution of a marriage is never the decision of one aggrieved spouse. Just as it took four parties to contract the marriage—husband, wife, church, and state—so it will necessitate the interaction of the same four parties to dissolve the marriage. The goal, in every instance and situation, is not to make divorce easier, but rather to regulate divorce so as to honor God’s law, seek for the peace of the gospel, work for the grace of reconciliation and forgiveness, protect the innocent party from undue harm, and, when necessary, to dissolve the marriage in an orderly manner.

Such are the realities of marriage, divorce, and remarriage in a broken world. To accomplish God’s will in all of this, Christians will need to revamp the way they think about the covenant of marriage. Christians must reconcile themselves to a radical idea: God’s call to holiness in marriage trumps their own pursuit of happiness. Gary Thomas, in his book, Sacred Marriage, puts forth this challenge: “What if God didn’t design marriage to be ‘easier’? What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness, our comfort, and our desire to be infatuated and happy as if the world were a perfect place? What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”¹²

In a broken world, holiness may be more difficult to find than happiness. But such is our calling as Christians in marriage. We may not like that message, but it is biblical. As Paul wrote, “And I think I too have the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 7:40).

Michael F. Ross, M.Div., Columbia Biblical Seminary; D.Min., Reformed Theological Seminary, is senior minister of Christ Covenant Church, Matthews, North Carolina.

notes

1 All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.

2 Paul David Tripp, Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2009), 17.

3 Mark Regnerus, “The Case for Early Marriage,” Christianity Today (August 2009), 23.

4 As quoted in James Dobson, Marriage under Fire (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Press, 2004),

5. 5 Ibid., 17.

6 “Position Papers” are the result of formal and in-depth studies of theological and moral issuesby pastors, elders, and theologians in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). These study committees are commissioned by our General Assembly as these needs arise. The resulting Position Papers are received and reviewed by a subsequent General Assembly, and then voted on by the body of assembly representatives from the local churches. Once approved, they hold no binding authority over the PCA, but rather reflect the mind of the denomination on a specific issue. They are published to help guide local churches concerning difficult issues.

7 Presbyterian Church of America, Paul Gilchrist, ed., “Divorce and Remarriage,” Digest of Position Papers: 1973–1993, part five (Atlanta: Christian Education and Publications, 1993), 182.

8 Presbyterian Church in America, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 24, “Of Marriage and Divorce” (Atlanta: Christian Education and Publications, 1990), 81–82.

9 Alexander A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith: A Handbook of Christian Doctrine Expounding the Westminster Confession (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1978), 307–8.

10 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion: 2.8.41, vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 405–6.

11 See Charles Hodge’s summary of 1 Corinthians 7 in his Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1956), 107–8.

12 Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Books, 2000), 13.