Left, an Ashkenazi Rabbi and, right, a Mizrahi Jew.
Which one does the Armstrongist God look like?
Which face would you worship?
The Great White Man in the Sky
By NeoTherm
“Adam was made by God. The God who made Adam was Jesus Christ. "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). This is speaking of Jesus Christ, the Word, or active Spokesman of the Father. Now notice how Christ made Adam: "And God said: Let us make man {Adam} in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). What is the meaning of "likeness?" The facial expression! So Adam looked like Jesus Christ. Adam also looked like God the Father. God said, "Let US make man after OUR image." Both Jesus Christ and God the Father look alike.
“When Jesus was on earth 4000 years later, He looked exactly like the Father. Jesus was "the express image of His {the Father's} person" (Heb. 1:3). But Jesus also looked like the average Jew! Judas had to kiss Jesus in order to point Him out among His disciples who were also Jews (Luke 22:48).
“Since Adam looked like Christ and Christ looked like the average Jew, then Adam — the first man — must have resembled the Jew. Adam therefore was a white man as are the Jews! Jews are not Negroes, as a few colored people contend. The Jews are Whites.”
“The Great White Man in the Sky” is a fanciful phrase that is rooted in serious Armstrongist theology. Armstrongists decidedly believe God is a White man – not a biological being but a spiritual paradigm or archetype. More aptly, God is a White superman. And, though it is difficult to find clear statements, God very probably abides somewhere in the Cosmos, if not in published Armstrongist theology then in demotic characterization. This opinion piece is focused on the views on this topic from Classical Armstrongism and uses early information resources. Denominations derived from the now-defunct Worldwide Church of God may have updated or modified some of these views. For instance, I recently and unexpectedly collided with the fact that the United Church of God now asserts that God is not bound by space and time. I have no access to the post-classical theologies of these denominations. It is expected that most will maintain an appreciable belief in Classical Armstrongism and this writing will be a midrashic response to them.
The Armstrongist Anthropology
The deductive path in Hoeh’s statement above is easy to follow. Jesus looks like God the Father. Adam looks like Jesus. Jesus was a White man. God the Father, Jesus, and Adam all then looked like White men. Further, Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) states in his book “Mystery of the Ages” (MOA), page 94, that God in creating Adam “purposed to reproduce himself.” While Adam was biologically a White man, God is the spiritual and archetypical White man on which Adam is based. Underpinning this argument is the assumption that God has a body and I have challenged that idea elsewhere.
Genesis speaks of both an image of God and a likeness. Hoeh identifies the likeness as God’s “facial expression” or his appearance in the quotation above. What the image of god actually is varies in Armstrongist publications. At one point it seems to equate to the bodily form of God (MOA, p. 46). At another place, HWA states that the image of God consists of two components: “…man, made to become in the character image of God and also in the likeness or form and shape of God (MOA, p. 102).” Similar variations can be found in archival sources, but nobody seems to have ever retracted the concept of God as a White man. So this means that, in classical Armstrongism, God is the White man archetype both in persona and soma.
But a separate question is, “Whom does Hoeh regard to be a White man?” The two photos at the top of this article are both pictures of Jews. The man on the left is an Ashkenazi Jew and the man on the right is a Mizrahi Jew. The Ashkenazi left the Middle East long ago and settled in various places in Europe. This is the Jewish type Americans are most familiar with. They are in fact of 30 to 70 percent European ancestry in contravention to the common but mistaken belief that Jews have preserved their racial purity in Diaspora. The Mizrahi are Jews that never left the Middle East, never went into Diaspora. They were there in the time of Jesus and they are there now. Jesus was a Mizrahi in today’s terminology. There is no reason to believe that Jesus did not look like the Jew on the right. I would expect that Hoeh did not have the Mizrahi in mind when he made his categorical statements about the appearance of God, Jesus, and Adam being like that of a “White” man.
The Inadvertent Dehumanization of People of Color
God as archetypical White man is a problem. I would conjecture that this problem was unforeseen at the time that this combination of racial theory and the doctrine of God was developed by whomever and wherever in the Armstrongist movement. Adam was created in God’s image and Adam was a White man. This means that the White man is God-like – he possesses both the character and form of God by creation. What then of people of color? In line with the Armstrongist view, people of color are a departure in persona and soma from the White ideal and, therefore, from God’s nature. They are then neither in the image or likeness of God. And what of people with mixed ancestry? Might some be only partially in the image and likeness of God?
As a matter of praxis, are the various Armstrongist denominations now on the scene willing to tell people of color in their congregations that they are not in the image or likeness of God while the White congregants are God-like by creation?
Does this departure from God’s nature mean people of color are somehow inferior to the White race? The answer, in spite of some earnest advocacy of humanistic values in some of Hoeh’s articles, seems to be ‘Yes.’ This is apparent from Chapter 7 in the MOA. Here we find that the Gentiles, both White and people of color, will be ruled over in the wonderful world tomorrow by the greatest White people of all: the “Israelites” (as defined by the ideology of Anglo-Israelism). As HWA states (MOA, p. 341), “And, again, no gentile nation will be as great as one of the Israelite nations.” For eternity.
Some Biblical Issues and Christian Views in Brief
The idea that God is a racial type is, of course, wrong. God is Spirit. The idea that God even has a body as a part of his eternal essence is illogical. Belief in a corporeal God is just a failure to recognize figures of speech in the Old Testament for what they are. The image of god and the likeness of God are not a matter of personal proclivities of character and bodily form, respectively, but have to do with intellection, creativity, and the capacity for spiritual understanding. (Admittedly, precisely what Imago Dei is, is controversial among Christian theologians and preachers but what it is not is clear – it is not about bodily shape. It is about persona but not a particular racial persona. God would not be limited in such a way that he only knew what it was like to be White in persona and soma. Such limitation would place the valuable personal attributes of sub-Saharan Africans, for instance, outside God’s cognizance and creative purview.) And as for the Israelite nations (as defined in Anglo-Israelism) ruling over the Gentile nations, we have this statement in Isaiah:
“And the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering … they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them … Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:19-25)”
This shows Gentile nations (including a dark-skinned Hamitic nation) interacting directly with God without the priestly intervention of national Israel and occupying a status equivalent to Israel in the sight of God, in spite of what Dean Blackwell may have said decades ago.
Further, the separation of “image” and “likeness” into two different concepts, here reconstituted by HWA (MOA, p. 102), was abandoned by Christian churches in the Middle Ages. Neither term was thought to refer to God’s bodily shape. In Genesis 1:27 we find “image” used alone and in Genesis 5:1 we find “likeness” used alone yet both usages in similar contexts. They seem to be used as synonyms with Genesis 1:26 being a repetition of synonyms for emphasis.
And A Genetic Constraint
If one insists that the first man was a fleshly replica of God, it is important to establish who the first man was. The first modern men were haplogroup A and were sub-Saharan Africans of the Negroid racial type. Other racial types developed as mutations from this original type. I believe this proliferation of races was guided by God. This genetic history is imprinted on all human DNA. And using the logic of HWA’s exegesis, this would make God racially a sub-Saharan African. I believe that Adam was, rather, a haplogroup J Middle Easterner but that is a larger treatise.
Conclusion
This is not a diatribe against White people. I see no reason to believe that White people are in any way more or less important from a Christian perspective than any other race of people. But for those who accord White people a superior position in the plans of God, this essay may seem like an audacious act of lèse-majesté. Nobody should accord White people, or any other people, a role in the world as Übermenschen and certainly not based on a misconceived and underdeveloped version of the Doctrine of God. God is not a man with cellular biology, a genotype, and a phenotype. He is Spirit. He does not possess race as an attribute. There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. And God is not the great White man who lives in the sky.
Note: Armstrongist dogma is notoriously difficult to research because each topic is scattered in many publications. I would appreciate knowing about any published and official dogma that contravenes what I have written. Please provide the source. I would especially like to know if the idea that God is a White man archetype has ever been directly retracted.
