Recently, an old friend of mine, upon reading some of what I have written on this site, expressed his concern that some of the things I have written are a “departure from orthodoxy.” He asked what happened to me since he knew me last that had led to these views. Copied below are the two emails I wrote him in response to his email. I have edited the emails, removing things of a more private nature. Continue reading
Category Archives: Old Testament Teaching
Thomas Jefferson on Jesus vs. Calvin
The following is an excerpt of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, written June 26, 1822. In the excerpt, Jefferson contrasts the “simple” teachings of Jesus, which “tend all to the happiness of man”, with what Jefferson describes (rightly, in my opinion) as the “blasphemies”, “deliria”, “horrors” of John Calvin. Continue reading
Andrews Norton on Christianity
Below is what I regard a most apt description of what has happened to the doctrines of the Christian religion as taught by Jesus and those whom he designated his apostles. It comes from the unitarian Christian scholar Andrews Norton (1786 - 1853), one-time professor at Harvard University and author of several books including the classic A Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians
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Israel’s Kings as Messiahs or Christs
In a previous post, I pointed out that in the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures Israel’s kings are spoken of as God’s anointed ones. In the Hebrew texts the word for “anointed one” is mashiach (משיח), which is anglicized as “messiah.” And in the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures used by early Christians, mashiach was rendered christos (χριστος), which is anglicized as “christ.” Here are some examples of this usage of the term mashiach in the Hebrew texts and christos in the Greek translations. This usage, of course, is critical for rightly understanding Jesus as mashiach or christos. Against the background of Israel’s kings as mashiach or christos, it is evident that the claim Jesus is the Messiah or Christ is the claim that Jesus is the king appointed by God. Continue reading
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob; Not of the Philosophers and Intellectuals
According to so-called “classical theism,” God is wholly immutable, or unchanging. Not only can he never change in character, or nature; he cannot change in any respect whatsoever. He does not have changing thoughts; he does not have changing emotions (he is “impassible”). Indeed, he does not even experience sequence in his thoughts, emotions, or life generally. He is wholly “timeless,” with no before or after, with no sequence at all. His existence is somehow a timeless nunc (“now”). Continue reading
The God of the Flood
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved to his heart. Yahweh said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6.5-7)
All Bible readers are familiar with the story of the flood recorded in the Book of Genesis (or Bereshit as it is called in the Jewish tradition). The story is a sober one. After all, God destroyed the entire world, except for one family and representative pairs of animals. But from the story, particularly the introduction of the story in Genesis 6.5-7, we can learn a lot about God that might surprise us when we compare how this ancient Hebrew narrative depicts God with the “classical” conception of God rooted in Greek philosophy. Continue reading
Why Did Adam and Eve Sin?
According to the Book of Genesis, after God created the first human beings, Adam and then Eve, he issued a specific command that they should not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2.17a). And he affixed to this command a sanction that, should they disobey the command, then on that day they would “surely die” (Genesis 2.17b). The narrative then goes on to tell the story of how Eve, tempted by a speaking serpent, chose to disobey God’s command by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3.1-6a). Moreover, we are told that Eve gave of the fruit to Adam, and he too then ate and thus disobeyed God’s command as well (Genesis 3.6b). Continue reading