Dave Ruffino posted a good comment to the recent thread on “Stopping Abductions with Prayer.” For those who haven’t been following the comments, here’s the part of Dave’s post I want to focus on:
The one thing that I really wanted to touch upon though is what some of the researchers said about the name of Yeshua not working for some people. True that maybe this is allowed to happen for some purpose that only Yahweh knows but here is something else. We have to discover who the victim considers Yeshua to be. I will explain further. I had one case where a woman called me for counseling and said that she had called on Yeshua’s name a few times with no result. After talking with her a while she revealed to me that she believed in the New Age Jesus, or just a being who once came to earth with the “Christ Consciousness” and who was on the same par as Buddha, Mohammed and other renown philosophers. When she called on Yeshua, she was calling on that personage. Basically, she was calling on one satanic force to rescue her from the aliens (another satanic force). Might as well have called on Bill Clinton or Howdy Doody because the results would have been the same. We have to wonder, and it is pretty well set in my mind, that if, let’s say that a Muslim called on Yeshua it might not work because he only sees Yeshua as one of many great prophets, and not the Son of God, or God Himself. It is also possible that a Mormon wouldn’t be able to afford the help because they have a warped (by Biblical standards) sense of who Yeshua really is, seeing that they believe that Yeshua and Satan are brothers. This idea can be used with all other religions, and especially if they don’t recognize Yeshua as being Yahweh!
I’ve read the paragraph a couple times now, closely. It appears to me that I could boil this down to “If you are not a Bible-believing Christian, it is useless to invoke the name of Jesus for deliverance in an abduction experience.” Mind you, Dave may not believe this as I’ve summarized it, which is why I want to bring it up for readers. In what follows, I am assuming that Dave might also go beyond the abduction experience in this regard — that is, he might believe it is useless for unbelievers (non-Christians) to invoke the name of Jesus for deliverance in ANY regard – that is, God doesn’t answer the prayers of non-Christians. If I need correcting there, Dave will do so in comments. But I’d like to pursue this issue. I used to believe this. What changed my mind? The Bible.
Now, for sure there are passages that speak to the issue of God not hearing the prayers of the wicked (who would not be a believer). See for example, John 9:31; Prov. 28:9. While it is true that, in biblical theology, someone who is not a believer is “lost” as a sinner (and all humans are described as such) and alienated from God (Rom. 3:10; Rom. 3:12; Rom. 3:23; Col. 1:21-22; Eph. 2:19), and that “the wrath of God remains on the unbeliever” (John 3:36), the Bible DOES make a distinction between unbelievers in general and God-fearing unbelievers — unbelievers who are seeking God in a way that God honors, who are not thumbing their nose at God, so to speak. The best example is Cornelius.
The basic question of whether God answers the prayer of an unbeliever appears to be answered affirmatively in Acts 10, with Cornelius. Cornelius is described as a God-fearing man. More precisely, Cornelius was a God-fearing pagan Gentile, not a Jew – the whole point of Acts 10 in the book of Acts is to show the gospel spreading FROM Jews TO pagans / Gentiles.1 This is not a contradiction, since MANY pagans were monotheists in the ancient world. The best scholarly study on this is Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Now, someone could argue, “Well, God only heard and answered Cornelius because he was asking God how to go to heaven” or something like that. This argument has two problems. First, the biblical text never actually tells us the content of Cornelius’ prayer, so the argument is based on nothing; it’s an argument from silence (or speculation). Second, even if the argument is on the right track and Cornelius WAS seeking to know the true God and the way of salvation, then what do we have? We have a man who was seeking truth, imperfectly or with a certain amount (maybe a great amount) of theological ineptitude. God didn’t seem to mind.
This is an important point for the “New Age Jesus” crowd. The New Age Jesus is certainly not the Jesus of the New Testament. Reading the material of both views will tell you that pretty quickly. But can God look at the heart of someone whose theology about Jesus is incorrect, or even a mess, and still answer their prayer? I think Cornelius would say “of course; been there, done that, got the toga.” Now, someone could say, “Well, God might answer the prayer of someone seeking him” – after all Hebrews 11:6 says seeking in faith is what God wants – “but he won’t answer the prayer of an unbeliever in other cases, like abductions. The seeker of salvation will get their prayer answered but that’s the only exception.” We’ve already seen that we actually don’t know that Cornelius was praying for. But let’s put him in the seeker box and address this related question: Does God hear the prayer of a non-Christian in some other circumstance besides seeking salvation?
I would suggest that there is evidence for the idea that a non-Christian can pray a prayer that is not STRICTLY the “prayer of salvation / repentance.” The key seems to be that the non-Christian is one who respects God, as opposed to being in open rebellion against God. John 9:31 (cited above) gives us this insight: “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.” Psalm 145:19 gives the same general principle. Here’s the point: If a non-believer / non-Christian is trying to know God in sincerity, God takes notice and, in his will and at his discretion, can respond to that person. Here are some interesting passages that, while not as explicit as the case of the God-fearing pagan Cornelius, still point in the same direction:
2 Chron. 6:32-33 (Solomon’s prayer at the temple dedication): 32 “Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for the sake of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when he comes and prays toward this house, 33 hear from heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.
Gen 30:25 As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 26 Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” 27 But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you.
The first example is pretty straightforward. Solomon, at the height of his walk with Yahweh, prays that Yahweh will hear and answer when foreigners who come to visit the temple (now there’s something odd – Gentiles in or near the temple) out of reverence for the name of Yahweh and offer prayer to him. There seem to be no other theological preconditions except reverence for the God of Israel. And Solomon doesn’t restrict the prayer to one of repentance or “becoming an Israelite” – he asks Yahweh to answer “according to all” the stranger asks. Pretty wide latitude for the prayer request! Now, we could be cynical and say God rolled his eyes at this request and Solomon was wrong to pray this, but then we’d be judging the passage by our own assumptions and silence of the text — hardly a sound hermeneutic.
The second passage is interesting because Yahweh answers the divinatory request of Laban, hardly a shining example of a God seeker. The word for “divination” here is, incidentally, also occurs in Deut. 18:9-14 (cf. vv. 10, 14). I’ve recently written an article on how it is that followers of Yahweh at times use the same divination techniques condemned in Deut 18 (but that’s off track here). At any rate, God answers Laban’s request and gives him information only he and Jacob knew, since God had spoken to Jacob about blessing him and his herds. It was really Yahweh, Laban really did use divination to contact God, and God really did answer. I wouldn’t call Laban a believer. Was he a seeker? Maybe. Hard to know what he is. It’s true that Jacob’s wife Rachel steals the “household gods” (teraphim) from her father Laban when Jacob leaves town, but teraphim aren’t necessarily idols (they may or may not be used in idolatry – again, veering off topic). I don’t see any evidence that Laban was a Yahweh-follower, but it’s hard to tell “how pagan” or how theologically misguided he was. He at least had respect for Jacob’s God and tried to contact him.
So how does this relate to the bigger issue raised by Dave Ruffino’s post? It should be apparent. Here’s what we can say with confidence (and humility) with respect to the Bible. It is quite possible for a non-Christian to pray and be answered by God. This would include a prayer for deliverance in an abduction experience. However, even if the victim is a Christian, an answer of deliverance depends on God’s will in the matter. God is no vending machine. However, God will not hear the prayer of the wicked, the person who is in rebellion and disrespectful of God, unless the prayer offered is a prayer of repentance (something the Bible says God always hears). What this means for the abduction discussion is that an affirmatively-answered prayer for deliverance in the name of Jesus from the abduction experience is not proof positive that the delivered person is a Christian, nor is an unanswered prayer for such deliverance proof positive the victim is not a Christian. If the non-Christian victim has been seeking God sincerely, but ineptly with respect to biblical theology, God can hear that prayer and may answer it. Those who work with abductees and are Christians should do that work with humility, not assuming their own omniscience as to whether a non-Christian is seeking God “enough” or “in the right way” so as to be delivered. Discerning the heart of the seeking non-Christian vs. an unrepentant and wicked heart of a non-Christian (or believer!) is part of God’s job description, not ours. If the abduction experience is demonic, in whole or in part, Jesus is Lord over that evil. And in dealing with that evil, Jesus may surprise us. If we believe he is God the Son, then we need to let him be God and not build a box for him to work in. To borrow a line from C. S. Lewis about Aslan, the Christ figure of the Chronicles of Narnia, “he is not a tame lion.”
- Cornelius was well respected by the Jews, but is not lumped in with the Jews – Acts 10:22; his name is clearly Gentile, not Jewish/Semitic. Acts 10:28 tells us plainly that Cornelius was not a Jew. ↩
Great article Mike. Here’s another thing to consider. Since we don’t know the full mind of Yahweh we may never know the answer until we are changed and are like HIM. But we know that Yahweh is outside of time and space. He can see if a person is going to get saved or if they will remain wicked and perish in their sins. Perhaps, he will answer the prayer of an unbeliever if he knows that the person’s heart is ripe for salvation and He answers so as to satisfy that person’s question as to if there really is a God, or the question of Yeshua being the Messiah or something of that nature. This is a possibility I feel. Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:3-6
Now, this brings us to what some consider to be a can of worms. I’m a fisherman and I like to use worms, so I’ll open up the can. Myself, I lean toward Calvanism, meaning that I believe that there are people predestined to be saved and others born to perdition. Some use this to avoid preaching to everyone, figuring that they know what category a person falls into. I shudder at that thought. My thought is that Yahweh is a predestinationist too, only in that since He is outside of time and space, and He is on both sides of the beginning and the end, then of course He knows beforehand who will be saved and who will not be. I guess I’m a Calvaminist. So, perhaps, since He knows a person’s fate, and that perhaps that person is only crying out the name of Yeshua for personal gain and that plea will have no intrinsic value in the long run; maybe that is why crying out the name of Yeshua works for some and not for others. That, in combination that they are locked into their own belief system or faith could be the identifying factor. Just some food for thought…..Dave
Michael:
The use of Luke’s ACTS and the ramblings of St. Paul make me a little intellectually queasy.
Paul’s concepts about Jesus/Christ are brilliant, of course, and set Christianity on its way.
But the man was nuts….yet ingenious.
Paul’s theology allows many things, but he was Gnostic, as Pagels points out, and his views are neo-Jewish, not Christological.
As for the divinations in the OT or Hebrew Bible, they result from the interaction of the demiurge, Yahweh, with his sycophants and those he played with, who were not Jewish or Hebrew in any real way – men and women who were heterodox.
For UFO abductees to get relief from an alien kidnapping, they may pray, but that only assuages their mental state, and so they are becalmed by their own psychosomatic methodology – prayer (or something like it).
God, and Jesus, can only be reached by arcane ritual, as the Cabalists have it.
And the God above god (Yahweh or His counterpart) is not accessible.
But Jesus and/or Mary (his mother) do seem to be available, via prayer, even though I think Jesus is near death or dead perhaps….but that for another time.
So what is the mechanism that assuages the abduction experience? It’s belief by the abductee that removes the experience, which is a psychical disturbance of some kind.
History is replete with calls to God that are answered, but only among the mentally deficient.
Normal persons don’t get relief by way of prayer, since they are not affected by their own subjective machinations, and calling to God doesn’t save them: Giordano Bruno, Jeanne d’Arc, Jesus himself, et al.
@druffino: Actually, we don’t know if Yahweh is outside space and time. For sure he is superior to space and time, but that is a separate issue. This is actually a thorny theological problem, so any conclusions based on what you think is a certain answer are tenuous. If you are interested in this topic, I’d recommend the articles at the link below by William Lane Craig (an evangelical). I’d start with “God and Real Time” and then follow it with “God, Time, and Eternity”.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/eternity.html
@RRRGroup: I’m not sure why your citation of “things as they are” is so selective. For example:
“Paul’s concepts about Jesus/Christ are brilliant, of course, and set Christianity on its way.” This assumes there are fundamental and irreconcilable disagreements between Paul and Luke. Gnostic thinking has argued that for some time, unpersuasively to the dominant majority of the scholarly academy, both evangelical and agnostic. And please don’t think that the Jesus Seminar represents the non-evangelical majority. It doesn’t. I know – I go to the SBL meetings. The Jesus seminary is viewed as a fringe affair across the board. If Paul was a Gnostic, why do so many Pauline scholars of all persuasions disagree with that? Answer: they don’t have a Gnostic axe to grind. If you are interested in this sort of thing, you should go to the scholarly conferences and move away from the people who publish popularly. Yes, some of them are scholars, but going to the academic meetings would tell you that their views are far from anything you’d call a sweeping influence.
Another: “As for the divinations in the OT or Hebrew Bible, they result from the interaction of the demiurge, Yahweh, with his sycophants and those he played with, who were not Jewish or Hebrew in any real way – men and women who were heterodox.” This just isn’t coherent – all you need to do is look up lineages to know it’s false. It is a Gnostic insertion into the text and nothing more. They can rewrite the Bible, but they can’t expect people to not notice they’re doing it.
A third: “God, and Jesus, can only be reached by arcane ritual, as the Cabalists have it. And the God above god (Yahweh or His counterpart) is not accessible.” Depending on how you want to limit the focus of this statement, it could run contrary to certain Gnostic material about Jesus (Gnostic theology does not have unanimity on this and a variety of other points). Also, just because the Gnostics say that the God of the OT was an evil, created being doesn’t make it so. That position really extends out of the perception that the traditional / orthodox position on the problem of evil lacks coherence (I’d agree there), and that there is no other position that is better (there is, so I’d disagree there).
Fourth, if the Gnostic view about Jesus is correct, he cannot be die nor can he die. This isn’t a very consistent statement if you are espousing Gnosticism, at least in a “pure” form via Nag Hammadi.
Lastly: “History is replete with calls to God that are answered, but only among the mentally deficient.” Does this include the Gnostics? Didn’t they believe in answered prayer? If they are mentally deficient, why should we listen to them either? Are you so sure of your own omniscience that you want to make this statement?
I have never before heard that Paul was a gnostic….
hmmmm….
Anyway, I appreciate what you had to say about GOD hearing the prayers of non-Christians…I think GOD can or does hear the prayers of anybody he wants, and decides how he wants to handle it, in his omniscience all things work together so that in the end his divine will is ultimately done.
Michael:
I’m only presenting a view of Gnosticism that is an amalgam of the various offshoots of the gnosis way.
Yes, it is confusing, but not any more so than the theological views argued about at Church conferences since the establishment of Christianity, a while after the death of Christ and Paul, who furthered his view of what Jesus/Christ was, despite evidence to the contrary – Jesus alleged pronouncements in the NT.
There are accretions to what Jesus supposedly said. And while I take the Gospels as rooted in truths promulgated by the writers (whomever they are); that is, the Gospel writers weren’t trying to deceive anyone, even if they were propagandizing (which is only partly true I’m thinking).
The accretions have come after the fact, and were begun by Paul, who seems to have had an hysterical reaction to his persecutions.
I know you cut Yahweh a lot of slack, and do so by scholarly attention to what was writer about him.
But a superficial (or cursory) reading of the Biblical texts seem to show a mad being in the form of Yahweh, but who may have been in competition with another God, Adonai.
You’ll combine the two I’m guessing but I take the two natures as showing two separate beings.
Praying to these gods is futile, since they are really gods.
As for Jesus…is He the offspring of the ultimate Being who is God? Or is Jesus a son of Yahweh?
Praying to him is then a crap-shoot….is He’s really God, then prayers will be efficacious; if he’s not, then prayers will be unanswered, of course, and any benefits derived from those prayers will be co-incidental or self-induced.
Your corrective?
Rich
@RRRGroup: see **
I’m only presenting a view of Gnosticism that is an amalgam of the various offshoots of the gnosis way.
** understood
Yes, it is confusing, but not any more so than the theological views argued about at Church conferences since the establishment of Christianity, a while after the death of Christ and Paul, who furthered his view of what Jesus/Christ was, despite evidence to the contrary – Jesus alleged pronouncements in the NT.
** agreed on the doctrinal confusion and development, but not about the deity of Christ – it is a fact of history that Aryanism was a later development and viewed itself as a corrective to an already entrenched view of Jesus as deity incarnate. In other words, Aryanism was a reaction TO the deity view (which goes all the way back to Israelite religion, though you’ll never see that in a theology book); the deity view was not a reaction to the Aryan view.
** where did Jesus deny he was God?
There are accretions to what Jesus supposedly said. And while I take the Gospels as rooted in truths promulgated by the writers (whomever they are); that is, the Gospel writers weren’t trying to deceive anyone, even if they were propagandizing (which is only partly true I’m thinking).
** this seems fair, though propagandizing is not inherently divorced from truth (it’s a technique or delivery system).
The accretions have come after the fact, and were begun by Paul, who seems to have had an hysterical reaction to his persecutions.
** sorry to say this so bluntly, but none of that is remotely provable. The idea of a binitarian God goes all the way back to Israelite religion. It is nothing new to the NT or Paul. You are way behind the literature here, RRR. If you are interested in the binitarian godhead idea in Judaism, the best book is Segal’s Two Powers in Heaven. He traces the idea back to about 200-300 BC. My own dissertation picked up where he left off, and I trace the doctrine back into Israelite religion. This isn’t Pauline, and Paul certainly did nothing to oppose the idea. It’s consistent.
I know you cut Yahweh a lot of slack, and do so by scholarly attention to what was writer about him.
But a superficial (or cursory) reading of the Biblical texts seem to show a mad being in the form of Yahweh, but who may have been in competition with another God, Adonai.
** Doesn’t cohere. Those who wrote and or edited the biblical text explicitly link Yahweh to the term “lord” (adonay) and elohim. Can you produce a verse as an example? Where do we have adonay used of a deity in Israelite religion and that deity is not Yahweh?
You’ll combine the two I’m guessing but I take the two natures as showing two separate beings.
** I don’t conflate them – the creators of the Hebrew Bible see them together. They saved me the work! Your view ought to be easy for you to demonstrate if you have any data – see the above question, but reworded here: Show me some material where Yahweh and “adonay” are separate beings in Israelite religion and they have separate natures.
Praying to these gods is futile, since they are really gods.
** Makes little sense – I assume by your response that you presume that, if these are really gods, our pleas and requests would be a waste of time to him/them. But here you put yourself in the stead of the gods. Who are you to know what gods will or will not deem a waste of time? Who are you to tell gods what they can or can not answer? If we are dealing with gods, they can do what they want.
As for Jesus…is He the offspring of the ultimate Being who is God? Or is Jesus a son of Yahweh?
** so I have to accept your Gnostic premise to answer the question? I don’t think so.
BTW, we’re getting too far afield here, as entertaining as this is to us and (perhaps) to (desperate!) readers. We need to keep this tied to UFO stuff for me to approve the comments (but I will certainly approve any response to THIS comment).
Mike
Praying to him is then a crap-shoot….is He’s really God, then prayers will be efficacious; if he’s not, then prayers will be unanswered, of course, and any benefits derived from those prayers will be co-incidental or self-induced.
Your corrective?
Michael:
I’ll take your suggestion and try to gather some data to bolster my views….and take the material to PaleoBabble.
The UFO problem, to my mind, is more convoluted by the insertion of religious material into the matrix.
UFOs today are separate from the (perhaps) UFO connection in early religious (God) events.
Your hermeneutic study of the UFO connection (or not) in Hebrew history is interesting, but to extrapolate that early connection to UFO sightings extant might becloud the mystery even more than it is already.
UFOs are one thing; religion (and God) are another.
Should the twain meet?
Rich
@RRRGroup: Since I don’t think UFOs are in the Bible, I’m not sure what connection you see that I see in Hebrew history (or maybe that’s the point). UFOs and religion will always meet since the experience takes so many people back to the “big questions” of who we are, how we got here, etc. That may be quite misguided, but it’s going to happen. Same for abductions, though (at best) we have humans rights abuses there, and so religion has more of a de facto role there, no matter how that experienced is processed.
Hello Mike! You said in the above post that ufos are not in the Bible…I have heard it said that the wheeled thingy that is talked about in Ezekial is a ufo, if it isn’t, why so? I don’t have a dog in this race, I’m just parroting what I have heard and don’t really have an opinion on it either way…I have read the passage and I can’t really tell what it is…also I have read somewhere that in the book of Enoch when he is shown some of the levels (?) in heaven, that this was an abduction…my first guess would be that he had some kind of mystical experience and saw all these visions in his head, but is it possible it could have been an abduction?
RRRGroup– Before I answer your “As for Jesus…is He the offspring of the ultimate Being who is God? Or is Jesus a son of Yahweh?” please know that I concur with Mike’s “so I have to accept your Gnostic premise to answer the question? I don’t think so”. This being the case my hope is that you will consider it reasonably redundant when I ask if your question as framed in a Gnostic premise is requisite to receiving answers?
RRRGroup– P.S. Just so we’re all on the same page, I opened with the above in order to appropriately address your prayer efficacy/”crap-shoot” issue.
@Catherine_B: This web page is in dire need of updating – it’s six years old – but here’s why. We know what Ezekiel saw because we have iconography of the throne vision. I would NOW take the eyes, though, as astronomical / astrological – i.e., speaking of constellations – since (1) the throne of God is elsewhere described as being in the heavens above the earth (and the earth is his footstool; Isa 66:1 e.g.), and (2) the four faces of the cherubim correspond to the four iconographic images of the four cardinal points of the Babylonian zodiac. So, this page needs more work, but here it is “as is”:
http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/ezekielnotes.htm
Debra (and Michael):
The question(s) — Is Jesus the Son of the Ineffable, Unknowable God or the Son of Yahweh — is neither couched in a Gnostic overlay nor meant as a tilt in that direction.
No one is sure what or who Jesus was — messiah, Son of Man, God, or a man deranged.
The Church (of Rome) settled the issue by debate at the Nicaean Council (325 AD) but other faiths have taken different views, and Jews and Muslims have discounted Jesus’ divinity altogether.
Michael’s views, like yours, Debra, are rooted in Faith (in the Bible and Church teachings to some extent).
I’m a believing Catholic, but open to questions that plagued Thomas Aquinas and other theologians.
So there’s no need to immerse yourselves in the Gnostic milieu in order to out forth your view:
Was or is Jesus the Son of Yahweh or the Son of the God above god (Yahweh)?
Rich (RRR)
Thanks Mike! I read the page that you linked up…those are some of the weirdest passages in the whole Bible…I can’t even imagine what they were thinking back then to come up with some of those images for their deities, were they all on acid? LOL
@RRRGroup: The objectionable part of the question was your own distinction of the ineffable and Yahweh, not Jesus.
My views are built on exegesis of the text, not faith. I care what the text says and what it can sustain (it’s really that simple for “figuring Heiser out”). It is incoherent to deny me that position when Gnostics base their own views on Gnostic texts that interpret the same texts as I refer to (the biblical texts). Why is it that they can base what you think on texts and I cannot (or should not – ?). You said in an earlier exchange that Paul was a Gnostic, and yet he has some VERY un (anti)-Gnostic ideas in the TEXT (I don’t make them up in faith). For example, Paul espouses a physical resurrection body for Jesus. He also espouses a substitutionary atonement as a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In dozens of places in his writings, Paul takes and OT passage that has Yahweh (not the ineffable) doing something or saying something, but when he quotes it he uses / inserts the word “kurios” which is a title he also uses of Jesus. Sometimes he just inserts “Jesus”! There are whole dissertations written on this Pauline strategy (I know, I have one).
Now there’s a question for Gnostics: How is it that Paul, the Gnostic, identified Jesus with the evil Demiurge?!
My point here is not to drift into a discussion of Gnosticism (on this blog anyway). It is to point out that my views are no more “ethereal faith based” than yours (or anyone else who is dealing with the text).
Michael:
My suggestion about faith (for you and Debra) is anout your faith in the text — that it is sacrosanct in some way.
I’m not so sure that the Bible, or Koran or Book of Mormon, were influenced by God (Yahweh or the real God).
In keeping with your theme at this blog, Bibles may have been concocted by UFO beings (aliens or extraterrestrials).
To ascribe divinity in the production of Bibles is a faith thing, no matter how much exegesis is used to fathom the essence of the good books.
Rich (RRR)
@RRRGroup: I don’t mean this unkindly (really). This response shows a real misunderstanding of what is meant by inspiration with respect to the Bible – but it is a misconception shared by many Christians. My views on inspiration would irritate many non-academic Christians, and even some academic ones. The best thing to look at in this regard is my discussion over on The Naked Bible blog. You’ll see I’m pushing some buttons over there. But let me try to explain briefly here as it relates to your immediate comments.
1. The biblical text in my view is not sacrosanct (to me). That is, I am of the opinion that it can have errors in it and still be a reliable source for spiritual truth. For those who are CHristians out there, I’d be in agreement with inerrancy defender BB Warfield here, of the old Princeton school. He defended inerrancy but said we didn’t need it (and everyone in the discussion is allowed to define for him/her-self and it MUST be defined or it’s a useless idea). I think there are real problems in the text for inerrancy, but I also think that we can’t rightly call things errors unless (a) we coherently define what an error would be, and (b) we know we have all the evidence. Both caveats are real and difficult. But to get a better idea you’d have to read the other blog.
2. No one ascribes divinity to the Bible who is thinking straight. That would be bibliolatry. To say a piece of writing was put together by PEOPLE under providence is hardly ascribing divinity to it. It means something much more simple: God works with people – through their lives, abilities, in short term or long term over the course of their lives, through oblique circumstance or more direct encounter -you name it. Providence (secularists would call it synchronicity) can be very under the radar and hardly spectacular. It’s a simple idea to think God could influence the production of something. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be much of a God. And so the idea stems from an imperfect but coherent set of ideas: There is a God; he’s bigger and smarter than me; and he can do things. The “imperfect” part comes in knowing or being able to guess well HOW God does things and what the extent of his activity is. That’s beyond us. So, I say God influenced people to produce the Bible. That doesn’t make the Bible divine. If God influenced you to love your wife when you didn’t feel like it, did that make your wife divine? Your act divine? If a Christian bricklayer believes God led him to build a building, does that make the building divine? If a Christian philanthropist feels led by God to build a hospital, is the hospital divine? No, No, No, etc. This is misconception – but it’s common.
I am guessing that you believe the “real God” of Gnostic cosmology can do things, too – and so you and I share the same set of presuppositions, directed differently. If He can’t, it doesn’t seem very coherent to worship him in any way. Why bother? Why think highly of a deity who can’t or doesn’t act? What a waste of time.
3. Lastly, before we can say the Bible was influenced by an alien being or ET, we’d need proof there is such a thing. And while God cannot be proven empirically, the coherence of theism and the existence of a God required by theism has been demonstrated ad infinitum by a long list of great thinkers and philosophers. It’s only the materialists who resist the idea (all the while pretending that their own material world can solve its own problems of infinite regress and dependence upon mere equations – like equations have materiality!).
Michael:
I grant you that something or someone influenced the Biblical writers and prophets, even Jesus.
But it really takes a leap of faith to posit that influence to God.
The messengers of Yahweh (and/or El) and one or some of the so-called tribal gods seem to have made a connection with the Hebrews, a connection that is unique, surely.
But was it really God who directed the OT and NT texts? What about the non-canonicsl texts? Who instigated them?
For me, the Biblical texts are too human or humanized.
The Koran also, and Smith’s Book of Mormon.
Interesting all, with related themes, so something with a pattern was at work in them.
But does that pattern come from God?
Is there, perhaps, a mental quirk in some men, in mankind itself, that causes men (and women — Mary Baker Eddy for instance) to create moral tales and anecdotes about speaking with God or His angels?
It’s too simplistic….something else may be responsible for the mish-mash we call The Holy Bible.
What that is is open to scrutiny, beyond exegeses of the texts with the premise that God was at work.
Rich (RRR)
Dr. Heiser,
Does Ephesians 6:10-12 play any part in UFOs and abductions?
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
just wondering if thats related in anyway.
@RRRGroup: Yes, it is simple – simple presuppositions like there is a God and he can influence people. So, since when does simple mean “can’t be right” (or at least in the ballpark). Since when is complexity the pointer to truth? This isn’t logically coherent. But anyway, your comments prompt a few more presuppositions: (1) God – and you can put the ineffable here if you like – is an intelligent being / has intelligence; (2) human beings are created as God’s imagers – and again, you can use the spark of divinity idea of Gnosticism here if you like to break the link to the Demiurge; (3) our intelligence is a reflection of the creator’s (ditto the ineffable allowance above); (4) if our intelligence can detect dissonance in a set of ideas and – at least when we are right-minded – prefer coherence over incoherence, and rationality over irrationality, it stands to reason that the ineffable mind of God, which our minds reflect, “works” the same way.
So what’s the point? The point is that God (or the ineffable) isn’t going to influence material that is dissonant. This would be an intellectually schizophrenic act. An intelligent being who has and reflects coherence isn’t going to influence person 1 to write A and assert that it is truth about God, and then influence person 2 to write non-A and assert that it is truth about the same God. The Koran, the Mormon texts, the Bible, etc. have fundamental, irreconcilable differences. They can’t all be right, and anyone who thinks they all say the same thing or lead the same direction hasn’t read them.
As far as the “non-canonical” material. I’d have no problem if some of that stuff was really supposed to be in the canon. I’ve addressed this on the other blog. I’m basically apathetic to the subject of the canon. All I want is coherence and consistency. I’m not omniscient, so I don’t know *which* canon is right (there are several historically – and note that the Gnostic material isn’t in any of them – it apparently couldn’t win support anywhere; even in the east, which is the birthplace of the Gospel of Thomas, that work wasn’t considered canonical – it wasn’t just the western church that rejected the stuff).
It appears you do want a deity that doesn’t do anything, and that’s fine. Yes, it takes faith to believe that God is and can act, but both ideas are reasonable given the idea of God. Your idea of God runs counter to both, so I guess I’m missing where your idea is reasonable. The problem is that the Gnostic texts DO have the ineffable God acting, whereas you seem to think that’s naive. I’m wondering now where that puts you.
@rode: Only if any part of the UFO/abduction phenomenon is demonic. I don’t see spaceships in Ephesians 6.
Regarding the article and whether or not a non believer or a believer in a scripturally inaccurate version of Jesus can call upon his name for deliverance, I stumbled upon this verse in my reading and wanted to share.
Psalm 50:14-17(ESV)
(14)Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, (15) and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” (16) But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? (17) For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.
I don’t think that this verse gives a direct correlation to the above topic since I don’t think we are talking about the overtly wicked calling on Jesus name, but I think there is evidence that God looks to the heart of a person and responds to that rather than the words they are speaking. Just my continually inflating 2 cents, I should switch my opinions to Euro’s so they would stretch further.
@TruthSleuth: I more or less qualified my post with respect to this sort of thing.
A person must put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, for the forgiveness of their sins to be saved.
I forgot to add that being saved is the same thing as being a Christian. That is a person has to put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior to be a Christian.
I need to clarify/expand my last statement. A person needs to put their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, for the forgivness of their sins to be a Christian.
I can testify to the theory stated;
“I would suggest there is evidence for the idea that a non-Christian can pray a prayer that is not strictly the prayer of salvation/repentance…..”
I was in a time where I was open to meeting the God of Abraham, Moses, Job, Noah.
My prayer was short;
“I would like to meet this God and Jesus Christ they are all talking about.”
that changed my life, I know through that which I experienced after my prayer, that the God spoken about in both the old and new testament is the “uncaused cause” (to place it very blatant).
God our Father listens, if you are open to receive him. (Which I can state based on personal experience.)
The Lord be with you.