Why We will not be “God as God is God” – Part 1
Against the Armstrongist Doctrine of Becoming God
“God then purposed to reproduce himself, through humans, made in his image and likeness…” - Herbert W. Armstrong, Mystery of the Ages, p. 94, 1985.
“It cannot be repeated too often: We were born for the express purpose of literally becoming equal with the creator of the universe — members in the same eternally ruling God Family-Kingdom. But what will we be like? Like God! Exactly! Exactly like God!” - Robert L. Kuhn, “What it Means to be – Equal with God”, Tomorrow’s World Magazine, April 1971.
“Thus said the Lord, The King of Israel, their Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts, I am the first and the last, and there is no God but me…” - Isaiah 44:6, Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition.
To provide context, it is informative that Armstrongists are willing to assert human equality with God but describe Jesus, who is explicitly stated in scripture to be equal with God (Philippians 2:6), often in terms of being subordinate to God. This may be a leftover from the general Arianist view of 19th Century Adventism. Kuhn supports equality but qualifies it. Kuhn is careful to point out that though resurrected humans will become “qualitatively equal” to God, that is, they will have the same existential qualities as God such as being self-existent, resurrected humans will not be “quantitatively equal” to God, that is, God will always be greater in authority, power and intelligence. Qualitative equality, as Kuhn seems to define it, is arguably centered on ontology; whereas, quantitative equality centers on economy. Ontology refers to God’s unchanging existential nature while economy refers to roles, responsibilities, purposes and actions.
Note: This essay analyzes the doctrine of becoming God as presented in Classical Armstrongism. Kuhn published in the Seventies. I do not know how denominations derived from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) now state this doctrine. Also, the commonly used Christian terms “ontology” and “economy”, in the theological sense, are nowhere used in Armstrongist literature that I can find.
Section I: Ontological Differences between God and Resurrected Humans
God alone creates: HWA many times used the analogy of unfinished furniture to illustrate a possible way in which resurrected humans might be given the responsibility of putting the finishing touches on the Cosmos. Terraforming planets, however, is not creation but fabrication – using existing materials and sources. God creates ex nihilo (Hebrews 11:3). There is no support for the idea that resurrected humans might create ex nihilo in scripture.
God states in Isaiah 65:17-18, "But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create”. God creates and we rejoice. Forever. If resurrected humans were going to be "God as God is God", would resurrected humans not be rejoicing in those things that they themselves would create? And if resurrected humans are not creators, they are lacking a fundamental ontological quality that identifies God and Godhood.
God does not have a bodily existence: God is spirit and is not restricted by form. If God had a form as a part his eternal essence, the form would have extension into multi-dimensional space or some equivalent to space. Without this extension, the concept of form does not exist. If God’s form were eternal, so would be the dimensions that his form would occupy. This means that the containing dimensions, phenomena external to God, were not created by God but are uncreated. Then God would not be the creator of all things and John 1:3 would be violated.
And a more subtle point is that if there were eternal uncreated dimensions, they would themselves be Divine and represent a kind of deity in addition to God.The most extensive treatment of the concept of an embodied existence is given in 1 Corinthians 15. If God had a body, the concept could be nicely incorporated into this text. Instead, in 1 Corinthians 15:49, Christians are told that they will bear the image (eikon) of the man of heaven, from context (vv. 45-47) a reference to Jesus who acquired a body as an aspect of his ontology in the Incarnation. We will be similar to Jesus who has a body, being fully man and fully God, not like God the Father who does not.
Humans will experience a bodily resurrection. I Corinthians 15 can be interpreted in no other way. This means that resurrected humans will have locality in space and must travel distance to be at another location. And the traveling of the distance will require time. It may be that resurrected humans will have a much different relationship with time than flesh and blood humans. Perhaps, resurrected humans can transit the cosmos in an instant, but the travel still requires an instant of time. Near the time of the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples saw Jesus ascend in his resurrection body. The language of Acts 1:6-11 expresses visibility, time and distance. If resurrected humans have bodies in the spacetime context and God has no body, resurrected humans will be ontologically different from God.
God does not experience time as we do: God created time. Time is a property of the physical universe. It responds to gravity, for instance. As gravity increases, time slows down. If you were in a starship and you approached a black hole, time would slow down because of the increase in gravity. As the starship approached the Schwarzschild radius, time would nearly stop. Time back on planet earth would continue to flow at the same rate. Since God created time, God in his essence is, therefore, timeless. This is not just an imaginary condition. Photons do not experience time as they travel through the cosmos. Further, a photon will experience all the locations along its path of travel through the cosmos at the same time. (Of course, photons are not beings that can experience. Pretend that you are an infinitesimally small, bodyless nano-being, riding on the photon racing along at the speed of light. That is the experience the nano-being version of you would have.)
We can only conjecture on God’s timeless state. Some believe that he does not experience a sequence of moments. There is some traction to this view. If God experiences time as a sequence of moments and has a past, present and future, then he has had an eternal past. This means that it doesn’t make sense that he would ever reach the present that we are experiencing. He would be eternally imprisoned in the infinite time that forms his past and is still passing through that infinite span of time to try to get to the present. That is the paradoxical way that an infinite series of consecutive moments works. And that is the weakness of the sequence of time argument – it leads to Reductio ad Absurdum. Others believe that God does have logical but not physical sequencing in his thoughts and activities. The logical antecedent must precede the logical consequent, for instance. Further, for us time is an organizing principle. The most I can say about that is to state the apophatic principle that God is not chaotic or confused. How he organizes without time, I don’t know.
Humans, on the other hand, now experience and will experience, in the resurrected life, time as a sequence of moments. At the Ascension in Acts 1:6-11, Jesus in his resurrection body experienced motion, time and distance as the disciples watched him ascend. This is data that must be used in the formation of our conclusions. And the conclusion is that God experiences time differently than we will even in our resurrected state, therefore, resurrected humans are ontologically different from God with regard to the fundamental relationship to time.
We can only conjecture on God’s timeless state. Some believe that he does not experience a sequence of moments. There is some traction to this view. If God experiences time as a sequence of moments and has a past, present and future, then he has had an eternal past. This means that it doesn’t make sense that he would ever reach the present that we are experiencing. He would be eternally imprisoned in the infinite time that forms his past and is still passing through that infinite span of time to try to get to the present. That is the paradoxical way that an infinite series of consecutive moments works. And that is the weakness of the sequence of time argument – it leads to Reductio ad Absurdum. Others believe that God does have logical but not physical sequencing in his thoughts and activities. The logical antecedent must precede the logical consequent, for instance. Further, for us time is an organizing principle. The most I can say about that is to state the apophatic principle that God is not chaotic or confused. How he organizes without time, I don’t know.
Humans, on the other hand, now experience and will experience, in the resurrected life, time as a sequence of moments. At the Ascension in Acts 1:6-11, Jesus in his resurrection body experienced motion, time and distance as the disciples watched him ascend. This is data that must be used in the formation of our conclusions. And the conclusion is that God experiences time differently than we will even in our resurrected state, therefore, resurrected humans are ontologically different from God with regard to the fundamental relationship to time.
Fermilab, “Do Photons Really Experience Time?”:
Kuhn, Robert L. “What it Means to be – Equal with God”, Tomorrow’s World Magazine, April 1971.
Sproul, R.C. “What’s the Difference Between the Ontological and Economic Trinity?”
(To Be Continued)
28 comments:
Excellent article! I have always been captivated by Theosis. Becoming one in union with God always made more sense than what Armstrongism teaches.
This of course makes a number of assumptions, that are not Biblical.
1.The claim is made that God is static, and cannot learn any new thing, or have any new experiences.
2.The claim is made that God cannot have a form.
3.The claim is made that God had to create time, as against time being an attribute of God.
This is an attempt to limit the limitless God to a being that can never learn anything new, or experience anything new, which goes completely against the Biblical narrative.
These scriptures came to mind while glancing this article.
But I guess Anton can write another article pontificating some more.
John 10:34-36
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
2 Timothy 3:6-7
For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Good thoughts here in this post.
The idea that God is reproducing himself is one of HWA's biggest objections to the trinity doctrine -- because it portrays God as "closed off" and limited to three Persons.
Also interesting, I still come across COGers who balk at the biblical language of us becoming God's "adopted" children, because they think it waters down their idea that we will be God's children in the "God-as-God-is-God" sense, which is one of the restored truths of HWA.
I think Isaiah 43:10 puts the nail in the coffin of becoming God as God is:
“You are My witnesses,” says the Lord,
“And My servant whom I have chosen,
That you may know and believe Me,
And understand that I am He.
Before Me there was no God formed,
Nor shall there be after Me.
Its important to remember that Armstrongists are not monotheist. They are polytheist they believe in multiple individual Gods. If Armstrongists were monotheist they might find a plausible explanation to skirt Isaiah 43:10 by claiming their personhood absorbed into the Trinity isn't the action of a new God being formed... but remember they are polytheists, they believe new Gods will be formed at their resurrection.
I second the description of the article as "excellent"! God is without beginning or end. Although we will someday have no end, we will always have had a beginning. Scripture informs us that God inhabits past, present and future. We inhabit the present and are promised a future. God exists. We exist at "his" pleasure. Apparently, according to Scripture, God has imbued angels with the ability to exist forever, but God has ALWAYS EXISTED. Scripture says that God sustains ALL things - that seems to indicate ALL things! The clear implication being that everything else would cease to exist if "he" failed to sustain it!
@Questeruck
God is not limitless, He is limited to His perfect nature. This does not put a cap on His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. The idea of a limitless God is a human construct, it is never a claim God makes, nor has it ever been generally understood to be an aspect of God's nature within Judaism or Early Christianity, the Jewish/Christian consensus is understood to be that God is limited to Righteousness and Love.
Romans 8:29 "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.."
I guess by Anton's definition, Jesus Christ, with all those bodily restrictions, is now a second rate "God". Does that now make for a third rate " Trinity"?
Won't be interesting after Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) is retrained by some of you guys during the 100 year period, to see what kinds of worlds he creates when he is God as God is?
BP8
The fact that Jesus has a body is not a restriction because he is also fully God. It is like adding something that is finite to something infinite. The sum is infinite.
Anton
9:05
Romans 8:29 bespeaks and equality in a certain sense. Jesus had a pre-existence as God. Jesus is uncreated. Jesus is fully God and fully man. Jesus was begotten by God. You are none of these things. Implicitly, in your comment you are saying that you are equal to Jesus. I think not.
Anton
2:47
John 10:34-36 There is a difference between the Greek usage of the term Theos and Ho Theos.
Theos may refer to someone who is god-like or is seeking to be god-like. Ho Theos means The God. Ho Theos is reserved for God and is not applied to humans. Read about the term Elohm in Wikipedia. It's a good read.
2 Timothy 3:6-7 This is a good description of Armstrongism. Especially in the days when Armstrongist women were ga-ga about GTA.
Anton
Anton
This is 9:05. That "comment" is wholly scripture. My understanding is as Jesus was fully man we will be in spirit but only in the "man" sense. Certainly I will never be equal with Jesus "as fully God".
You should read your Bible beyond your own ideas & bias thinking .
1 John 3:1-3
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Revelation informs us that resurrected Christians will be "kings" and priests of God rather than being as God.. I believe most will be leaders in villages rather than like kings of old. That resurrected beings will be given design-engineering skills that in real life require decades of study and experience is ridiculous. There ain't no free lunch as the saying goes.
Likewise, HWAs analogy of unfinished furniture is way off. Having a back ground in engineering, to me it's one giant put down. I'll never forget the mental strain of some design projects that I worked on. Comparing this to finishing furniture is an insult.
In nature there's no waste. So if time always existed, the universe would be much older than its present 13.8 billion years. I believe time had a beginning, which explains the bible's "In the beginning was the word."
Many descriptions of God amount to magic thinking. Which is how splinter leaders justify seeing themselves in the bible and effectively claim that time machines exist. They cannot since they defy Aristotle's law of identity. Christ always honored reality rather than using "magic." Likewise Christ's warning to not tempt God affirms God's proclivity to let His created reality have the final say rather than "magic" solutions.
questeruk
If you are steeped in Armstrongism, what I have written will be admittedly difficult to understand. Christian theologians have been aware of these ideas since the earliest days of the church and would be comfortable with these concepts. So let me explain a little.
1.The claim is made that God is static, and cannot learn any new thing, or have any new experiences.
Herman Hoeh claimed that God did not know how to make man. So he had to create models that increase in complexity before he finally had a model hominid that would be acceptable. And the fossil record is littered with God's failed experiments. This is making God captive to the flawed capabilities and approaches of human beings.
God is absolute. I know that is hard for someone who sees God as nothing more than the big kid on the block. But God creates not just things to populate the space of the Cosmos, but God creates reality itself. He makes things exist. There is nothing for him to learn about an elephant because he made elephants. He doesn't have to learn physics because he made physics. Physics is just a human attempt to describe what God has already done. The NKJV translates Acts 15:18 as, "Known to God from eternity are all His works."
2.The claim is made that God cannot have a form.
HWA taught you that God is an anthropomorph based on the analogical language of the OT. God is not humaniform. He does not possess ears in his essence from eternity. Ears are for hearing sound which is a vibrational energy. God made all that stuff.
3.The claim is made that God had to create time, as against time being an attribute of God.
Time is an attribute of the created universe not an attribute of God. Time is subject to physical processes. God has never been and never will be subject to physical processes.
These things do not limit God. God has no limits. This is another way of saying that God is absolute. A being who is relative is limited. Such a relative being morphs over time. The Armstrongist rendition of God is of a limited God. God is what he is. What he is now is what he shall be and what he has been. You will never ever hear him say, "I'm glad you mentioned that. You know, I never thought about that."
Anton
Anonymous 8:45 wrote, "God is not limitless, He is limited to His perfect nature."
God is not limited. He is what he is because that is what he wants to be. He is the ultimate free being. You will never hear him say, "I am love but I don't know why. I just happened to be that way." If he made the decision to be what he is, then he is not being constrained by a limit. It was a free choice. He may seek to accomplish certain purposes and this may require that the integrity of intermediate and contributive causes be held inviolate. That may seem like a limit. But, once again, his choice.
Anton
Anonymous 5:31
The passage you quote from 1 John contains the proposition: "But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."
The operative word is "like". This is the Greek word "omoios" and means similar or resembling. This does not mean we will be God-as-God-is-God. It means what it says in the original Greek not in the booklet theology of the WCG. We will, in fact, be partkers of the divine nature. And we will resemble God in so far as that goes. We should not gratuitously presume to ourselves the very absolute perfection of God. That would be blasphemy except that I think HWA developed the God-as-God-is-God doctrine with no destructive intentions. He just didn't consult Christian theology on this issue and developed his own well-intentioned, but incorrect interpretation. As they would say in the South in cases like this, "Bless his heart".
Anton
This is a great article that outshines a few COG-odd comments!
The God-as-God-is-God doctrine is Herb being the salesman of his religion. It's the old carrot and stick ploy. Join my church and you will become exactly like God (and don't forget to bring your wallet) and join my church or else you will go through the tribulation (and don't forget to bring your your wallet). So step right up folks cause we are in the last hour of the last hour.
We will not be "equal with God". Those that teach such are perverting the gospel.
We will be the same type of being, but always subject to Him.
There is a semantic issue that must be sorted out when evaluating the God-as-God-is-God theory. Without giving this semantic issue careful consideration, one may be led to believe that there is support for HWA’s viewpoint. This concerns the use of the term “Elohim”. This term in some contexts clearly refers to Yahweh. In other contexts, it does not. As an example, we have this scripture which was cited in this thread (from Psalm 82):
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment . . .
I say, “You are gods,
children of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals
and fall like any prince.”
The term for god in the first three lines above is Elohim. A part of the background is that the ancient Hebrews were monolatrists. They believed in a pantheon of gods but they held that there was only one true, great God. In their realm of understanding, there were lesser gods. Language that represents monolatry occurs through the early books of the Old Testament. The Jewish Study Bible states, “The notion that other divine beings exist is found elsewhere in the Bible, although they are never equal to God.” It was some time before the ancient Hebrews matured in viewpoint and monolatry was replaced by monotheism. It is in this semantic context that the ancient Hebrews would have received the scriptures above.
The statement “Ye are gods” (You are Elohim) in Psalm 82 is a reference to the divine beings who serve in the Great Assembly mentioned in verse 1. These lesser gods referred to as Elohim are angelic beings. It also seems to refer in the next lines to mortal humans. Hence, we have multiple usages of the term Elohim. We cannot, then, use this term to connect all these categories of beings in a common ontology. In particular, it does not create an equation between the great God and lesser gods or human beings. I think that Armstrongists would accept the fact that God, angels and humans are all separate categories although all are sentient, personal beings.
So, when Jesus stated “Ye are gods” to his critics in John 10:34, he is not making an unequivocal statement that human beings are God-as-God-is-God. The term Elohim seems to refer to a variety of sentient beings. His point is that there are other “sons of God” mentioned in the scripture so why should his critics become so upset at the mere use of the concept.
Anton
My understanding is that when we are born into the Kingdom of God, we are God beings and lesser than God but still a God being just as a baby born into the Human Family, he/she has joined the Human Beings but less than (junior) to his parents. He is just as human as human is human. Hence just as God-as-God-is God. Isaiah's "no other God beside me" means no other God being besides God just like there is no other human being besides human beings (human kingdom). So, there is the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom, the Human Kingdom, the Angel Kingdom and the God Kingdom. My understanding is as a babe in Christ.
7:50
You are wrong in this viewpoint for just the precise reasons I outlined in my essay. "My understanding" does not somehow credential or certify what you believe. The can only be done by careful consideration of the evidence. You will not find careful consideration of the evidence within the Armstrongist realm.
HWA placed and interpretation on scripture that categorized human beings as "after the God kind" as if God were a biological species. This is simply an incorrect interpretation. The fact that it is incorrect is born out in the essay I wrote - but that you may have read.
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Anton
I agree with 7.50.
7:50
(The first version I wrote had way too many typos.)
You are wrong in this viewpoint for just the precise reasons I outlined in my essay. To say this is "My understanding" does not somehow credential or certify what you believe. That can only be done by careful consideration of the evidence. You will not find careful consideration of the evidence within the Armstrongist realm.
HWA placed an interpretation on scripture that categorized human beings as "after the God kind" as if God were a biological species. This is simply an incorrect interpretation. The fact that it is incorrect is born out in the essay I wrote - but that you may not have read.
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Anton
Philosophers have been referring to humans as being animal-like creatures with the minds of gods.
God created man in His own image, in that man, like God, has dominion. In other words, man can change his surrounding circumstances and conditions. He can also change the circumstances of the animals, domesticate, breed, and control them.
There are several pronounced differences between Man and God. One obvious one is lifespan. Also, man is driven by human emotions and appetites which often counter his and others best interests. Man is limited by his five senses, and the three dimensions. Man is affected quite radically by time, and requires constant nourishment, (food, liquids, and oxygen) and sleep. Man is not omnipresent, and must transport himself for changes in placement. Man cannot read other human's thoughts. Man can cure disease and repair the human body, but is limited in his abilities to do so. Will all these change in the Kingdom? Who really knows what enhancements God has in mind for us?
Post a Comment