Page from the Gnostic Gospel of Judas
The Contingent God of Armstrongism
by Neo
I do not believe that the human mind, no matter how much it might be augmented, is capable of deeply understanding God. So when we try to conceive of God, we always conceive of him differently than he actually is. God is mysterious. But this is not in tension with the idea that we may know God “through a glass darkly.” And this knowledge, though falling short of the reality, has definition. In this op-ed I will observe that the Armstrongist god belongs to a different class of being than the Christian God and is much more limited than the Christian God. This is best understood through recognizing that the Armstrongist god is a contingent being and the Christian God is a necessary being.
Contingency
A contingent being is one that in essential some way depends on external conditions for its existence. A necessary being has no such dependencies but is self-existent. This latter statement is brief and apophatic but I will focus on ontological contingency in this op-ed rather than God as a necessary being. Armstrongism has no document titled “The Doctrine of God.” Its ruminations on God are scattered through booklets, magazine articles, and homiletic messages. So I will rely on my 30 years of experience as an Armstrongist and some internet research to describe the Armstrongist notion of god.
The Armstrongist god is a contingent being. Under this proposition, imagine how the universe started. There was nothing but an empty universe – space with no contents. God lived there but in a spirit realm or dimension. He resided somewhere in the “sides of the north” as viewed from the location of the yet-to-be-created earth. God, in this scenario, is so much a part of the physical universe that GTA stated that you could get into a rocket ship and fly to where god is, if you had enough time. To theologians and philosophers, this means that the Armstrongist god is immanent in the universe but not transcendent.
God as creator populated the empty container of space with celestial bodies. One, in particular, earth, he made habitable for biological creatures. But an issue is that the empty space in which god lived already had properties. It just did not have material objects. It was dimensional and was pre-made to accommodate the laws of nature that we know. Empty space is not the same as nothingness. God did not create spacetime – he had always lived in spacetime. The Armstrongist god is then dependent on eternally existing spacetime – as if it were a divine uncreated environment. But now we know that spacetime is not divine but physical. Spacetime reacts to gravity. This dependency on the spacetime environment means that the Armstrongist god is a contingent god.
A further example is that Armstrongists assert that their god always had a body (see the Mystery of the Ages, pp. 46-47). The human body is patterned after the body of god. So, bodily parts were an inherent part of his eternal essence. This means that god had teeth before ever envisioning the idea of eating. It was like he wondered what the hard, white things were in the unusual orifice we call a “mouth”. So, he started with teeth which had no purpose, they had just always been, and had to make something that they could be used for. So he invented this idea of nutrition and made this stuff called food so that these hard things in his mouth could have something to cut and grind up. The surfaces of these eternally existing hard, white things were already designed to cut and grind. So the engineering design of the teeth encouraged him in a certain direction in his creation. So the Armstrongist god is contingent on an eternally existing bodily construction with its already engineered mechanics.
A myriad of such examples could be constructed but two should be sufficient to arouse some reflection and questioning in the minds of those who accept the notion of the Armstrongist god. But in summary, the Armstrongist god did not create his environment or his body but he is dependent on these external elements. This dependency makes the Armstrongist god not necessary but contingent. Armstrongism does not account for where these external and eternal elements, both highly engineered, might have originated or what their status is in the divine realm. Given the Armstrongist model of a contingent god, one might speculate these elements were created by another superordinate being who is necessary.
There is in Gnosticism a kind of postulated being that matches the description of this kind of contingent god. This category of this created but powerful being is called a Demiurge. The definition below is from the Wikipedia article on the Demiurge:
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge . . . is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe.
The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.
Many human religions have adopted a demiurgic view of god. And this view is particularly popular among atheists like Dawkins and Dennett because it is a much easier target to attack. This is because their arguments are rooted in materialism and the demiurgic god is mostly involved with the material universe. But this contingent god is not God as understood in Christianity. Consequently, many atheists begin their pleadings with a category error.
A contingent being is one that in essential some way depends on external conditions for its existence. A necessary being has no such dependencies but is self-existent. This latter statement is brief and apophatic but I will focus on ontological contingency in this op-ed rather than God as a necessary being. Armstrongism has no document titled “The Doctrine of God.” Its ruminations on God are scattered through booklets, magazine articles, and homiletic messages. So I will rely on my 30 years of experience as an Armstrongist and some internet research to describe the Armstrongist notion of god.
The Armstrongist god is a contingent being. Under this proposition, imagine how the universe started. There was nothing but an empty universe – space with no contents. God lived there but in a spirit realm or dimension. He resided somewhere in the “sides of the north” as viewed from the location of the yet-to-be-created earth. God, in this scenario, is so much a part of the physical universe that GTA stated that you could get into a rocket ship and fly to where god is, if you had enough time. To theologians and philosophers, this means that the Armstrongist god is immanent in the universe but not transcendent.
God as creator populated the empty container of space with celestial bodies. One, in particular, earth, he made habitable for biological creatures. But an issue is that the empty space in which god lived already had properties. It just did not have material objects. It was dimensional and was pre-made to accommodate the laws of nature that we know. Empty space is not the same as nothingness. God did not create spacetime – he had always lived in spacetime. The Armstrongist god is then dependent on eternally existing spacetime – as if it were a divine uncreated environment. But now we know that spacetime is not divine but physical. Spacetime reacts to gravity. This dependency on the spacetime environment means that the Armstrongist god is a contingent god.
A further example is that Armstrongists assert that their god always had a body (see the Mystery of the Ages, pp. 46-47). The human body is patterned after the body of god. So, bodily parts were an inherent part of his eternal essence. This means that god had teeth before ever envisioning the idea of eating. It was like he wondered what the hard, white things were in the unusual orifice we call a “mouth”. So, he started with teeth which had no purpose, they had just always been, and had to make something that they could be used for. So he invented this idea of nutrition and made this stuff called food so that these hard things in his mouth could have something to cut and grind up. The surfaces of these eternally existing hard, white things were already designed to cut and grind. So the engineering design of the teeth encouraged him in a certain direction in his creation. So the Armstrongist god is contingent on an eternally existing bodily construction with its already engineered mechanics.
A myriad of such examples could be constructed but two should be sufficient to arouse some reflection and questioning in the minds of those who accept the notion of the Armstrongist god. But in summary, the Armstrongist god did not create his environment or his body but he is dependent on these external elements. This dependency makes the Armstrongist god not necessary but contingent. Armstrongism does not account for where these external and eternal elements, both highly engineered, might have originated or what their status is in the divine realm. Given the Armstrongist model of a contingent god, one might speculate these elements were created by another superordinate being who is necessary.
There is in Gnosticism a kind of postulated being that matches the description of this kind of contingent god. This category of this created but powerful being is called a Demiurge. The definition below is from the Wikipedia article on the Demiurge:
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge . . . is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe.
The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.
Many human religions have adopted a demiurgic view of god. And this view is particularly popular among atheists like Dawkins and Dennett because it is a much easier target to attack. This is because their arguments are rooted in materialism and the demiurgic god is mostly involved with the material universe. But this contingent god is not God as understood in Christianity. Consequently, many atheists begin their pleadings with a category error.
Who Cares?
Humans have differing perceptions of god. Does this mean that how we conceive of the Christian God is a matter of choice? For instance, the God of Calvinists Christians is much different than the god of Arminian Christians. Also, sociologists Paul Froese and Christopher Bader (“America's Four Gods: What We Say About God--And What That Says About Us”, Oxford University Press, 2015) determined by a survey that Americans attribute one of four different personality profiles to god: The Authoritative God, Benevolent God, Critical God, and Distant God. Because the view of God, both theological and popular, is varied, this does not abnegate the fact that there is a revelation of God contained in scripture – a revelation that permits broad agreement in the Christian movement on important divine attributes. For example, Calvinists and Arminians both believe that God is not contingent but necessary.
From these varied views, one might conclude that the idea of god is indeterminate for most people and that any notion of god will do. And for that reason, the Armstrongist god is just as valid as the Christian god. But this rejects the broad areas of agreement, based on Biblical exegesis, among denominations in the Christian movement. Given the state of knowledge in contemporary theology, there is no reason for a denomination to adopt the retrograde idea of a contingent god. And the boundary between a necessary god and a contingent god is, perhaps, the lowest threshold separating Christianity from non- Christian religions. That is why this issue is worth caring about.
Progressive Revelation and Contingency
I believe it is likely that the ancient Hebrews believed that God had a body. I also believe that they cast him in the role of an ancient Semitic Warrior God or Storm God. We can now see, with the New Testament available, that God’s characterization by Old Testament writers was anthropomorphic but to them it was realistic and they wielded the pen. As Dr. Peter Enns has stated, “God let his children tell the story.” The Logos resolved this problem by coming to earth himself and delivering a message about the nature of God. For this reason, a progressive revelation of God can be seen across the Old Testament and New Testament with the final revelation in Jesus himself.
In these opposing views, we have God as spirit (John 4:24) in the New Testament at one pole and God with a body in the Old Testament at the other pole. Armstrong used a hermeneutic of integration, rather than the hermeneutic of progressive revelation, to reconcile these two strongly divergent viewpoints. Armstrong innovated a novel non-Biblical concept that made God contingent, perhaps inadvertently. Armstrong asserted that god was of “spirit composition” which made it seem like god was composed of some kind of ethereal substance. (This also gave God locality which contradicts the Christian belief that God is omnipresent.) God is not made of spirit but God is, rather, a spirit. The concept of “spirit composition” does not occur in the Bible.
God as a theophany may appear to human eyes but that appearance does not imply he is made of some kind of visible “spirit substance.” Does God require eyes composed of some kind of spirit substance in order to be able to see? First, eyes would be a limitation to God. His sensory capabilities transcend anything we know as humans with our five senses. Second, if he requires eyes, then he is like a sighted created being, dependent on the functioning of internal organs to live. To assert that God is composed out of spirit substance with various organs is to assert that he is contingent and not necessary.
In the last analysis, Armstrong integrated the Old Testament characterization of God as having a body with the New Testament revelation of God in Jesus. He did this instead of simply accepting Jesus and his word as the ultimate and final revelation of the necessary God. My guess is that he did not use this hermeneutic simply to create the heretical concept of a contingent god. I believe he did it to achieve consistency between the Old and New Testaments concerning the nature of god and inadvertently cast god as contingent. We are now unable to ask him about his decisions.
(For the terms “spirit composition” and “spirit substance” see, for instance, Armstrong’s booklet “What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind”, 1978. In his “Mystery of the Ages,” Armstrong wrote that god is “composed of spirit.” The verb “compose” is transitive, requires a subject and object, and leads to the question “Who composed God of spirit?”)
Closing Remarks
Nobody knows the scope of God’s grace that he would extend to those who believe in a mischaracterization of him. Any judgment is above our pay grade and involves factors that I have not addressed. One could make the “Thief on the Cross” argument. The thief knew nothing about contingency and necessity yet Christ received him. But how many of us are really in that thief’s circumstances?
Even though God is unknowable in his fullness, there are some obvious errors that can be avoided. For instance, is it reasonable, based on the Bible, that the Christian god could be contingent in view of John 1:3 that states “All things (panta, Greek, meaning “all”) came into being through him?” It only takes a little reflection to understand that God created spacetime and is not captive to it.
There are enough relevant and incisive questions concerning contingency that I believe that the Armstrongist groups should review their beliefs about God, with consideration given to existing Christian dogma, and that their doctrine of god should be documented. And they should start by understanding that God is a necessary being, not a contingent being.
Humans have differing perceptions of god. Does this mean that how we conceive of the Christian God is a matter of choice? For instance, the God of Calvinists Christians is much different than the god of Arminian Christians. Also, sociologists Paul Froese and Christopher Bader (“America's Four Gods: What We Say About God--And What That Says About Us”, Oxford University Press, 2015) determined by a survey that Americans attribute one of four different personality profiles to god: The Authoritative God, Benevolent God, Critical God, and Distant God. Because the view of God, both theological and popular, is varied, this does not abnegate the fact that there is a revelation of God contained in scripture – a revelation that permits broad agreement in the Christian movement on important divine attributes. For example, Calvinists and Arminians both believe that God is not contingent but necessary.
From these varied views, one might conclude that the idea of god is indeterminate for most people and that any notion of god will do. And for that reason, the Armstrongist god is just as valid as the Christian god. But this rejects the broad areas of agreement, based on Biblical exegesis, among denominations in the Christian movement. Given the state of knowledge in contemporary theology, there is no reason for a denomination to adopt the retrograde idea of a contingent god. And the boundary between a necessary god and a contingent god is, perhaps, the lowest threshold separating Christianity from non- Christian religions. That is why this issue is worth caring about.
Progressive Revelation and Contingency
I believe it is likely that the ancient Hebrews believed that God had a body. I also believe that they cast him in the role of an ancient Semitic Warrior God or Storm God. We can now see, with the New Testament available, that God’s characterization by Old Testament writers was anthropomorphic but to them it was realistic and they wielded the pen. As Dr. Peter Enns has stated, “God let his children tell the story.” The Logos resolved this problem by coming to earth himself and delivering a message about the nature of God. For this reason, a progressive revelation of God can be seen across the Old Testament and New Testament with the final revelation in Jesus himself.
In these opposing views, we have God as spirit (John 4:24) in the New Testament at one pole and God with a body in the Old Testament at the other pole. Armstrong used a hermeneutic of integration, rather than the hermeneutic of progressive revelation, to reconcile these two strongly divergent viewpoints. Armstrong innovated a novel non-Biblical concept that made God contingent, perhaps inadvertently. Armstrong asserted that god was of “spirit composition” which made it seem like god was composed of some kind of ethereal substance. (This also gave God locality which contradicts the Christian belief that God is omnipresent.) God is not made of spirit but God is, rather, a spirit. The concept of “spirit composition” does not occur in the Bible.
God as a theophany may appear to human eyes but that appearance does not imply he is made of some kind of visible “spirit substance.” Does God require eyes composed of some kind of spirit substance in order to be able to see? First, eyes would be a limitation to God. His sensory capabilities transcend anything we know as humans with our five senses. Second, if he requires eyes, then he is like a sighted created being, dependent on the functioning of internal organs to live. To assert that God is composed out of spirit substance with various organs is to assert that he is contingent and not necessary.
In the last analysis, Armstrong integrated the Old Testament characterization of God as having a body with the New Testament revelation of God in Jesus. He did this instead of simply accepting Jesus and his word as the ultimate and final revelation of the necessary God. My guess is that he did not use this hermeneutic simply to create the heretical concept of a contingent god. I believe he did it to achieve consistency between the Old and New Testaments concerning the nature of god and inadvertently cast god as contingent. We are now unable to ask him about his decisions.
(For the terms “spirit composition” and “spirit substance” see, for instance, Armstrong’s booklet “What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind”, 1978. In his “Mystery of the Ages,” Armstrong wrote that god is “composed of spirit.” The verb “compose” is transitive, requires a subject and object, and leads to the question “Who composed God of spirit?”)
Closing Remarks
Nobody knows the scope of God’s grace that he would extend to those who believe in a mischaracterization of him. Any judgment is above our pay grade and involves factors that I have not addressed. One could make the “Thief on the Cross” argument. The thief knew nothing about contingency and necessity yet Christ received him. But how many of us are really in that thief’s circumstances?
Even though God is unknowable in his fullness, there are some obvious errors that can be avoided. For instance, is it reasonable, based on the Bible, that the Christian god could be contingent in view of John 1:3 that states “All things (panta, Greek, meaning “all”) came into being through him?” It only takes a little reflection to understand that God created spacetime and is not captive to it.
There are enough relevant and incisive questions concerning contingency that I believe that the Armstrongist groups should review their beliefs about God, with consideration given to existing Christian dogma, and that their doctrine of god should be documented. And they should start by understanding that God is a necessary being, not a contingent being.
