“The most accurately informed historian in the world”

 

Just when you think you have heard it all in Armstrongism along comes another dingy minister saying something stupid. But, this is the Philadelphia Church of God and we have come to accept that they will do things like this.

This is by Brad Macdonald in a sermon to singles in the PCG cult:

Talked about Herman Hoeh being really yoked to God in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and that meant “being yoked to Mr. Armstrong (HWA). Being “tightly bound” to HWA made Hoeh “incredibly successful and incredibly effective at doing God’s Work.” Kept talking about Hoeh and said he was “the most accurately informed historian in the world.” I couldn’t find anything like this when I searched on the internet. Told how Hoeh in the 70’s began to unyoke himself from HWA and yoked himself to intellectualism and by the 1970’s was yoked to the synagogue of Satan. Exit and Support Network

Even Herman Hoeh himself said that his Compendium of World History was riddled with errors. Nothing pissed off many of these splinter cult leaders when Hoeh refused to follow them when they started new churches in acts of rebellion.

What Did You Sign Up For? – Part 2

 

What Did You Sign Up For? – Part 2

A Review of Herman Hoeh’s  “Which Old Testament Laws Should We Keep Today?” 

By Neo

Part 1 of this article (link) was concerned with how Herman Hoeh’s Model of Biblical jurisprudence differed from the orthodox Christian model.   A case was built in Part 1, based on the historical Christian view, that the eternal, moral law of God, that reflects God’s essential nature, was the source for both the OT litigation and the NT litigation.  For this reason the OT and NT litigation share principles but not all implementation features.  But the theme in Herman Hoeh’s Model was that the NT was derived from the OT and much of the Mosaic Law is binding on Christians and in its original form.  As Hoeh wrote, “The purpose of Christ’s teachings in the “Sermon on the Mount” was to magnify the Old Testament law, not annul it.”

The Problem of Defining “The Law of Moses”

The Mosaic Law is the law mediated through Moses from Yahweh to Israel.  This uncomplicated definition notwithstanding, it is a myth that the OT litigation was written by Moses as if he sat down and churned out text.  The Torah may be in the spirit of Moses or it may originate in his experiences but it is not a monolithic body of text written by a single author.  The Documentary Hypothesis convincingly identifies, based on language, at least four different sources of contribution.  Somewhere in history, perhaps in Post-exilic times, these fragments were redacted into the Torah.  Further, in parts of the Torah, Moses is referred to in the third person.  This makes isolating a unit of text to which we can attach the moniker “Law of Moses” a great challenge.  What constitutes the law of Moses may be traditional rather than paleographic. 

The Torah encompasses the first five books of the OT and is referred to as Torat Moshe.  In Judaism and Christianity, it is common to see the Torah as a unit consisting of sometimes 613 laws, including 100 sacrifices. But in spite of its acknowledged unity in principle, the Torah is also a literary composite.  So Herman Hoeh’s interpretation, to be discussed in the next section, of the organization of the Torah as a particular kind of composite is based on his hermeneutics.  His interpretation is not something that is incontrovertible or the only possible interpretation.   In his article, he explains how he divides the Mosaic Law into its elements. 

How Herman Hoeh Deconstructed the Law of Moses

Hoeh, similar to most Christians, had a high view of the Ten Commandments. He states of the Decalogue, “The Ten Commandments constitute the basic spiritual law which regulates human life.”  He later draws a distinction between the Mosaic civil laws and the ritualistic law.  Of the civil law, he states, “These statutes and judgments magnify the Ten Commandments.”  The civil laws, in his view, have special status because they are derived from the Ten Commandments.  He concludes, “The civil law of Moses expounds the Ten Commandments by revealing how the ten basic principles are to be applied.  We are to keep this part of the law, not in the strictness of the letter, but according to its spirit and intent.”  For him, the civil laws comprise the component of the law of Moses that is still in force and binding on Christians under the New Covenant and Christians must observe these laws with a new and avid heart. 

Hoeh uncouples the ritualistic law, essentially the sacrifices, from the civil law of Moses.  He asserts that sacrifices were not originally part of the litigation but were added later (Gal 3:17).  This means that the rituals can be canceled without affecting the validity of the civil law of Moses.  There are a number of flaws in this view: 

1.     The existing format of the text does not support the putative historical addition of the sacrifices at a later date (430 years later).  Sacrifices are not segregated into a single text block appended to the already existing textual body of the Mosaic Law.  

2.     The sacrifices are scattered throughout the text of the Torah and some occur even in Genesis and Exodus, before Sinai and well before the 430-year milestone.

3.     The sacrifices are just as validly derived from the Ten Commandments as the civil law of Moses.  At a minimum, the sacrifices are part of the liturgical and ceremonial implementation of the First Commandment from the Decalogue.  

4.     The Jews considered the Torah a unity.  They did not separate out the sacrifices from the rest of the Torah.  The Jews would still be offering animal sacrifices but for the fact that there is no Temple - the only place where such sacrifices may be legitimately offered.  

5.     The idea that the sacrificial law was added because of “transgression” does not indisputably point to the Mosaic Law having already been in force 430 years earlier.  Hoeh himself supports the idea that the Ten Commandments were in force before Moses and wrote a booklet addressing this.  This early ethical code is likely what was transgressed not the later Mosaic Law. 

6.     Galatians 3:16-19 is referring to the Mosaic Law being added to the Abrahamic Covenant (3:16).  Nowhere does Paul equate the “added” law to the sacrifices. Hoeh asserts the equivalency with insufficient exegesis in this article.     

While each of the points above could launch a useful study, point 6 above will now be examined further.  Paul writes in Gal 3:17:

“And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.”

If Hoeh’s model is correct then the term “covenant” refers to the Mosaic Covenant and “the law” refers to the sacrifices in this verse.  This approach has irremediable inconsistencies.  How then could the sacrifices make the law of Moses of none effect?  The sacrifices were an integral part of the Mosaic covenant, were the means of reconciliation with God under the covenant, and foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ.  From the surrounding text, Paul’s “covenant” refers to the Abrahamic Covenant and the “law” refers to the Torah known as the Law of Moses.  It is the Mosaic Law that seems to challenge or “disannul” the Abrahamic Covenant because Israel could not keep the Mosaic Law.  The Mosaic Law became a failure point for Israel.  Paul is saying that Israel’s losses under the Mosaic Covenant will not disannul the promises under the Abrahamic covenant.   It is participation by Jew and Gentile in the faith of Abraham that makes Christianity to be salvation for all people and not obedience to the culturally and racially bound Mosaic Law.   And Galatians 3:19 should be read as follows. Notice the expiration condition assigned to the Mosaic litigation:

“Wherefore then serveth the law (the Mosaic litigation)? It was added because of transgressions (under the pre-Moses rendition of the 10 Commandments), till the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Jesus); and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator (Moses)”.

Herman Hoeh, by separating out and removing the sacrificial laws from the Torah deconstructed the holistic law of Moses.  Paul said the law was a unity – if you want to keep one part of it, you must keep all of it.  It may be a literary composite but it is an ideological whole.  The inevitable conclusion is that the sacrifices were abrogated because they were a part of the OT litigation and the OT litigation was abrogated and replaced with the New Covenant by Jesus bringing his sacrifice and better promises. 

Hoeh’s Disposition of the Non-Sacrificial Part of the Torah or What Did You Sign Up For?

According to Hoeh, we are to remember and keep the law of Moses comprised of the commandments, laws, statutes, and ordinances.  He also argues for the inclusion of the judgments. All of these are binding on New Covenant Christians because they are rooted in the Ten Commandments.  These are the laws that are written on the heart under the New Covenant.  In addition to this cataphatic statement, Hoeh also has an apophatic statement, “Any other laws not included in Hebrews 9:10 were not a part of the rituals added because of sin!”    Hebrews 9:10 mentions “only meats and drinks and diverse washings and carnal (flesh) ordinances, imposed until the time of reformation.”   All else is still binding. 

So how should this play in the average Twenty-first Century Armstrongist congregation?  A case to consider: If a woman is menstruating she becomes unclean and can transfer this uncleanness to other people and physical objects.  This is not an uncleanness that can be washed away.  Everything she touches incurs a ritual necessity to be cleansed.  Of this type of uncleanness, God states “Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.”  If somehow this uncleanness generated by female menstruation gets transmitted to the Tabernacle, people will die.  In some branches of Judaism, the easiest solution is to have the woman isolate herself in a menstruation hut for the period of time prescribed to become clean.  In the Hoehist model, this is an example of a requirement of the law that must be written on the hearts and minds of Christians under the New Covenant.  It is an extension of the Ten Commandments.  We could go into the fact that this same law states elsewhere that it is legitimate to purchase and keep Hebrew slaves.  But the point has been made.  Armstrongists do not keep the law that Herman Hoeh determined is binding on them.  My guess is that it is also not written on their hearts and their salvation is in grim jeopardy by Hoeh’s standards.  Did you really mean to sign up for this?

Coda – Hoeh’s Sabbatarian Hermeneutic

First, let me say that I am not suggesting that the Ten Commandments be done away with.  That seems to be the false alarmist statement that Armstrongists resort to first.  I believe in the Ten although I hold to a spiritual form of the fourth.   I also still follow a modern version of the Levitical dietary laws though not for theological reasons.  So, I am also not suggesting antinomianism – that anybody can do anything they want to.  If you come away with these ideas you have not read this article thoughtfully.  

In researching this topic, I came to have a feeling about why Hoeh struggled so fiercely to include parts of the OT litigation in the NT.   I believe he was strategically trying to build a protective wall around the seventh day. If he could claim that parts of the OT litigation survived the change in covenants intact, Sabbatarianism could be preserved and, in consequence, Armstrongism could be legitimized.  I developed this feeling from observing the many times that the arguments made by Hoeh seemed artificial or teleological. 

Another idea I became aware of was the derision that Armstrongists have for Christians.  Hoeh stated in this article, “Few religionists recognize the eternal binding authority of the Ten Commandments.”  It is a calumny against Christian denominations to claim that they do not recognize the Ten Commandments when all of mainstream and evangelical Christianity does.  But Armstrongists no doubt would claim that Christians do not recognize the Decalogue because they leave out the seventh-day sabbath.   So once again the seventh day becomes pivotal in the Armstrongist dissension from Christianity.

The answer to the question “Which Old Testament LAWS Should We Keep Today?” is “Only those that Jesus and the NT writings approve.”  Not the ones that Herman Hoeh supported through special pleading. 

Note:  Herman Hoeh, now deceased, became a Christian late in life as I understand.  The reviewed article is a version that was distributed in 1971.  My guess is that Herman Hoeh would not support the substance of his article after becoming a Christian.  I take Hoeh’s becoming a Christian all the renunciation of the article that is needed. 

In Christo Solo!

What Did You Sign Up For? – Part 1

 

What Did You Sign Up For? – Part 1

A Review of Herman Hoeh’s “Which Old Testament Laws Should We Keep Today?” 

By Neo

This is a review of an article written by Herman Hoeh titled “Which Old Testament Laws Should We Keep Today.”   The copy of the article that I will be reviewing is dated 1971.  I have found no subsequent revisions.  This document represents the vetted Armstrongist statement on this topic.  It was written by Herman Hoeh under the aegis of Herbert W. Armstrong, regarded as an Apostle by the dispersed Armstrongist organizations.  Followers of Apostle Herbert W. Armstrong cannot abrogate or revise his words or words he approved just as they cannot abrogate or revise the words of the Apostle Paul.  So there is no need to review the writings of organizations derived from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) on this topic.  Any writing with standing in the Armstrongist theological and Apostolic tradition will be compatible with Hoeh’s article. Any article published by a denomination derived from the WCG that conflicts with this article will be a renunciation of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Apostleship.

Two Models of Biblical Jurisprudence

Hoeh emphasized the importance of this topic.  He stated in the article “Everyone needs to understand in detail the answer to this question.  Christian growth – ones very character – depends on understanding the answer to this question.”  This analysis will begin by defining two models that provide a means of comparing the Hoehist view of the law with the Christian view.  

Model 1:  The Hoehist Model

1.     The Old Testament litigation (OT) contains God’s spiritual law from the beginning.  

Hoeh’s statement: “First, remember that God’s basic spiritual laws existed from the beginning. . . God will not alter his spiritual laws. The spiritual laws describe the very character of God.  They enable us to know what God is like.”  

2.     Parts of the litigation in the Old Testament are still in force.  

Hoeh wrote: “’Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel (Mal 4:4).’ This law we are not to forget.  We are to keep it.”

3.     The New Testament (NT) is a spiritual enhancement of the Old Testament.  

Hoeh wrote: “The purpose of Christ’s teachings in the “Sermon on the Mount” was to magnify the Old Testament law, not annul it.”

Model 2: A Common Christian Model

1.     God has an eternal law by which he lives.  He is not subject to an external law but he is a law unto himself (sibi ipse ex). 

2.     The Old Testament litigation is an instantiation of the eternal law adapted for use by the ancient nation of Israel.  The Old Testament is derived from 1 above and, therefore, in part resembles 3 below. 

3.     The New Testament litigation is an instantiation of the eternal law adapted for use by all of mankind under Christianity.   The New Testament is derived from 1 above and, therefore, in part resembles 2 above.

The Eternal Law

During the Middle Ages there was a controversy in the church about God’s relationship to law.  This was known as the Ex Lex Debate.  Some concluded that God was subject (sub legi) to some kind of law.  But this seemed to make this law superior to God.  This debate was resolved with the conclusion that God is sibi ipse ex, a law unto himself.  This eternal law was defined by Thomas Aquinas as follows:

“By “Eternal Law’” Aquinas means God’s rational purpose and plan for all things. And because the Eternal Law is part of God’s mind then it has always, and will always, exist. The Eternal Law is not simply something that God decided at some point to write (“Ethics for A-level”, Max Dimmock, Andrew Fisher).”

It is not clear what Hoeh meant in the term “from the beginning” in his description of the essential spiritual law in point 1 of his model.  One might conclude from this that he is referring to the creation of the universe or the creation of Adam.  But his statement, “The spiritual laws describe the very character of God” places this law in the category of the eternal law in the Christian model because God’s character is eternal.  And in this Hoeh departs from orthodoxy.  

The Old Testament Litigation was Implemented for Humans

Strategically, Hoeh has positioned the Old Testament litigation as the Eternal Law in his model.   This seems to lock the Old Testament litigation into place and would prevent it from ever being superseded.   Note that he states explicitly, “God will not alter his spiritual laws.”  This sets up his later argument that the New Testament does not replace the Old Testament but extends it spiritually.   But the Old Testament litigation is clearly an adaptation for human beings.  It speaks of the seventh day, stealing, coveting, lying and adultery.  These are human, earth bound activities and concepts. In the depths of timelessness, why would God have, as a part of his essence, a law against adultery when human sexuality had not yet been created?  Why would we think that any temporary human concerns and attributes would be a part of his essential eternal law?  

The OT and NT are both adaptations of the eternal law to human conditions as the Christian model indicates. The OT and NT are based on the eternal law but they are not the eternal law itself.  The eternal law is intelligible to us in some of its features because we are made in the image of God.  God can instantiate other laws as needed.  Perhaps, there are laws that pertain to angels that we would not even understand.  God can also modify or revoke this litigation.  That the OT is based on human circumstances and is not in the category of the eternal law is so self-evident that it cannot be denied by the rational mind. 

The Ten Commandments will always exist as long as humans exist.  They are meant for humans.  When humans cease to exist as humans through resurrection, we cannot really expect these laws to continue.  This clearly marks them as a special implementation of the eternal law not the law itself which will never go away.  But there will be other laws for resurrected human beings.  No doubt this litigation will have points in common with both the NT and OT because they are derived from a common source, God’s Eternal Law that reflects God himself.  

Did God Have a Foreskin?

Did you sign up to observe the OT litigation?  You are responsible for keeping the statutes, judgments, ordinances and laws in the OT according to Herman Hoeh.   These are a part of God’s spiritual law which God will not alter.  Although circumcision was implemented through an Abrahamic Covenant, it was later incorporated into the OT litigation and conveyed by Moses to Israel (Leviticus 12: 1-2).  (A question to pose here is if circumcision is a part of God’s unalterable spiritual law, why did God alter it by making it spiritual in the NT?  Apparently OT laws can be altered contrary to Hoeh’s assertion.)

Why would God make circumcision a part of his spiritual law that describes the very character of God from eternity as Hoeh claimed?    Does God, in his essence, have a foreskin?  The inclusion of circumcision in the Mosaic Law would suggest so.  Hoeh states, “They (spiritual laws) enable us to know what God is like.”  Here we collide with another troublesome area in Armstrongist theology concerning the Doctrine of God.  The idea that God’s eternal law would include circumcision comports with the mistaken Armstrongist idea that God in his essence has a body.  This means he would have always had a body, was always male and always had a foreskin in his essential being and circumcision would then have some kind of meaning.   And the claim that the OT litigation is God’s eternal spiritual law exalts the OT to eternal, essential divine status and at the same to demotes God to a human-like bodily state.  We understand circumcision to have been transformed into a spiritual condition under the NT but its inclusion in the part of the Mosaic Law to be kept leads one to a review of other eternal laws that one may have signed up to keep without being aware of it. 

Coda - Part 1

The OT litigation, including the Ten Commandments, started within the created human sphere and will end within that sphere.  Hoeh missed the boat.  He did not understand that the OT was an instantiation of a higher divine law that reflects the nature of God himself.  He mistakenly set up the human-oriented OT litigation as this Eternal Law and then proclaimed it inviolate and slid chunks of it into his formulation of the New Testament.  If Hoeh made this kind of mistake, what are you really signed up for?  But that is a topic that I will continue to examine in Part 2.  

An Historic Adam?

Towards a Theological Anthropology Supporting an Historic Adam

A Speculative Counterpoint to the Hoehist View

In many systematic theologies there is a section devoted to anthropology. This addresses the origin of mankind in which a discussion of Adam is generally prominent. This traditional theological anthropology has been historically in conflict with the science of anthropology. There is a need for an anthropology that resides harmoniously within both Biblical and scientific boundaries. There are now many such anthropologies and one particular version in contrast to the Hoehist view will be described here. Adam will be presented as a historical figure but not as the progenitor of all of mankind. The goal will be to provide a theory of human origins that is compatible with both the Biblical record and the recent findings of archaeology and genetics. 

The Hoehist View

Herman Hoeh, now deceased former history professor at Ambassador College in Pasadena, advocated a traditional view of the origins of mankind. This is the view commonly ascribed to the first chapters of Genesis by the Christian Movement. In this view, Adam was a historical figure and the progenitor of all mankind. Pre-Adamic humans or near humans are not always postulated. Hoeh added the following non-traditional points:

1. The earth was populated with hominids prior to Adam. These hominids were sentient to a degree but were not as advanced as Adam and Adam’s descendants. They were racially disconnected from Adam. Hoeh referred to these hominids as “Pre-Adamic” men and included such types as Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus. Other Worldwide Church of God ministers described these early hominids as not having the potential for salvation. (Source: From a lecture given by Herman Hoeh at Ambassador College, Big Sandy)

2. God was unable to create Adam by fiat. It was instead necessary for God to experiment with various hominid forms prior to creating Adam. The bones of these prototypes populate the fossil record. Hoeh compared this to how an engineer creates models in order to arrive at the final design. (It is apparent that this view makes a statement about the limitations on God’s capabilities and proposes a form of evolution not based on natural selection but on God’s progressive and iterative engineering activities. See Note.) (Source: From a presentation given by Herman Hoeh at a ministerial conference in Pasadena.)

A Speculative Counterpoint

A plausible alternative to the traditional view and its Hoehist modifications will be presented in this in this section. This will be a narrative that describes a theory without detailed support or references. At this time, this description is only intended to expose the concepts to interested readers.

In this proposal, Adam was a historical figure. He was a hominid living sometime in the Neolithic. He was created not in a single act occurring at a point in time but by a process involving hominid evolution. The act of creating Adam in Genesis might involve the bestowing of an advanced sentience, one that could deal with spiritual concepts, on a hominid of appropriate neurological development. It was more an act of component assembly rather than whole creation at a moment in time. This type of creation scenario is compatible with the fact that Adam and his descendants, by circumstantial evidence, were of a common Y chromosome haplogroup found in the Middle East. The Jews, Canaanites, and Arabs are all of that Y chromosome haplogroup. This haplogroup is in no way an outlier and fits logically into the scientifically established hierarchy of human haplogroups and, therefore, into the genetic history of mankind.

Moreover, if Adam were created sometime around the traditional date of 4,000 BCE, the earth was already populated at that time by other humans bearing other Y chromosome haplogroups. These same haplogroups comprise the human genome today. This diversity of haplogroups prior to Adam means that Adam was not the progenitor of all branches of mankind but gave rise to a single branch of mankind (the Clans of Noah, all contemporaneous and of the same genetic haplogroup widespread in the region) then resident in the Middle East. 

It is highly likely that Paul believed Adam was the progenitor of all mankind. He did not have the advantage of modern genetics to inform his writing. He wrote from the perspective of traditional belief. This in no way impeded Paul’s development of the spiritual meaning of Adam in salvation events. One may then regard the spiritual content of Paul’s writing as fixed and the biological part as varying with progressing scientific understanding and discovery.

“Adam” in Paul’s NT scenarios could be seen in many different ways, for instance, as a metaphor for mankind or as an actual historical figure. How Adam is understood influences how much “scientific” information we can extract of Paul’s accounts. In this theory, Adam should be seen in Paul’s NT scenarios as a historical figure who is the “father“ in spirit or in attitude of all mankind – with everyone down through the generations of man suffering from the same spiritual alienation from God as Adam did. Adam’s conjectured historicity is compatible with some of Paul’s language in the New Testament. He is then a genetic Middle Easterner who is the spiritual father or archetype of all mankind whose fatherhood was not biological.

This proposed model disagrees not only with the traditional model but also with the Hoehist modifications. Regarding point 1 in the previous section, while one might term men without the advanced sentience conferred on Adam as Pre-Adamic, they had the same genomic history as modern humans. They were not racially disconnected from Adam - they were our ancestors. Regarding point 2, the diversity of hominids contained in the fossil record are not an indication of God’s trial and error approach but represents Darwinian evolution, a tool used by God and likely guided by God.

 
Gobekli Tepe

This model envisions that at some threshold in past time, God enhanced the sentience of mankind and made mankind able to comprehend advanced spiritual and physical concepts. I am inclined to believe that this happened at the time of the events of the Garden of Eden in early Genesis. God dealt directly with Adam but this was accompanied by a miraculous, God generated watershed in intellectual development for all mankind.

There is an interesting support for this view. The archaeological site in Turkey known as Gobekli Tepe is a site with a circle of large upright t-shaped stone pillars decorated with skilled artistic renderings of animals. The mysterious feature of this site is that it was built at the end of the Epipaleolithic, just after the last ice age, in a period called the Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) at about 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. At this time people were in the hunter-gatherer stage of development and had been for millennia. This is comparable to a group of archaeologists rooting around in a 15thCentury AD midden somewhere in Western Europe and unearthing a 1957 Chevrolet.

There is no explanation for why a group of hunter-gatherers with limited technology would suddenly construct a massive megalithic site with impressive artistic renderings that required advanced planning, engineering, management, logistics, and artwork. So far no other place like it has been discovered in that time frame. The site is believed to be a temple which may indicate a sudden awareness of religion far beyond that seen among ancient hunter-gatherers. These nomadic people had not even yet developed pottery. My conjecture is that these people suddenly experienced a radical shift in their intellection and this created the anomaly of people undertaking a complex engineering project while having only the primitive culture of hunter-gatherers. This could place the creative assembly of Adam at about 12,000 years ago. Further work on this site will reveal more but at this point, it is a sign of the type of change in humanity that would fit this anthropological model. 

Conclusion

This model supports the following implications:

1. Adam was used by Paul in the New Testament for spiritual understanding and not for scientific inquiry.

2. Adam, as a historical figure, is a spiritual father archetype and not the physical progenitor of mankind.

3. Adam fits into the genetic hierarchy of haplogroups that defines the human genome.

4. Most people now living are not descended from Adam physically but are his children ideologically.

5. At some point in time in the past the intellection of humankind was miraculously elevated to make spiritual understanding, salvation, advanced cultural development, and advanced technical development possible. The archaeological site Gobekli Tepe may point to this change.

This model may ultimately prove to be somehow flawed. But for now, it does reconcile science with a plausible Biblical scenario for the rise of Adamic humans at a given point in time. The traditional model of anthropology held by many in the Christian and Armstrongist communities is in conflict with scientific fact. This cannot be dismissed by mere assertion of opinion and must be addressed. This proposal illustrates the type of work based in theology and anthropology that must be done to create the next generation of ideas that support a harmony between science and Christianity.

Note: I do not know how long Hoeh held this view of God as a kind of Demiurge. The Doctrine of God changed substantially in the Worldwide Church of God (later to become Grace Communion International) during the post-1995 period, though not in the splinter groups maintaining traditional Armstrongism. Since Herman Hoeh was affiliated with Grace Communion International, I would expect that his view of God changed over time from the demiurgic view of god expressed in point 2 above to the orthodox Christian view of God.

 

Non_Ecliptic_Orbit