Progressive Revelation

February 15, 2021 - 2 Adar 5781

What Is Progressive Revelation?

According to Blue Letter Bible, "The things that God revealed to humanity were not all given at once. His revelation was given in stages." This essay addresses four issues with the concept of progressive revelation. The first is that there are no indications of progressive revelation occurring within the Torah. The second is that progressive relation prevents people from knowing the truth in the present. The third is that the Trinity, a product of progressive revelation, is too similar to polytheism for comfort. The fourth is that once such a claim is made, it is repeatedly claimed by subsequent religions.

Issue 1 - One Does Not Observe Progressive Revelation In The Tanakh

It's easy to believe that progressive relation occurs as one crosses over from the Jewish Scriptures to the Christian Scriptures; this is exactly the argument you would expect somebody to make to authenticate their own scriptures. But progressive revelation indicates that it occurred either gradually or at certain intervals, with the Christian Scriptures being the final stage. That would mean that one would be able to identify progressive revelation occurring within the Tanakh, of which there are no genuinely satisfying examples.

The Blue Letter Bible says that the Tanakh is incomplete because it contains prophecies that remain unfulfilled: "In addition, the Old Testament records predictions that were still to be fulfilled. For example, the Old Testament ends with the promise of the coming of Elijah who will prepare the way for the promised deliverer - the Messiah." The unfulfilled status of the Tanakh's prophecies does not mean that it is flawed, it just means that those events have not occurred yet, and that their occurrence will not be canonized in the Tanakh. This is like saying that a teenager isn't perfect because they haven't reached maturity yet.

Out of a genuine respect for the Jewish Scriptures, the Blue Letter Bible assures us that being incomplete is not synonymous with being less true: "Progressive revelation does not mean to say that the Old Testament is somehow less true than the New Testament. The progress was not from untruth to truth - it was from less information to more full information." While this is a gracious nod to the Tanakh, equating "more" with "more correct" is nevertheless not always true. Sometimes less is more: "Do not add to the word which I command you..." (Deuteronomy 4:2)

Back to Top.

Issue 2 - It Prevents People From Knowing God In The Present

If God seeks people to know Him, why would He keep His true nature from His people and from the entire human race until a relatively late point in history? One explanation provided by Catholic.com relates the advice given to the author by a college professor: "A college professor of mine once said to be leery of someone who tells you everything about himself in the first five minutes you know him. Jesus did not do this, and neither has the Father."

While this may be true of strangers that you meet on the street or in the doctor's office, it isn't true of people with which you have a serious and intimate relationship. Nominally speaking, it's critical to discover the most important aspects of a person before, say, getting married to them. Insofar as the relationship between God and the Jews is like a marriage, it would be critical to have an accurate conception of God's Nature before going to the chuppah, which was Mount Sinai. It would be highly unfortunate to discover ten years into the marriage that your spouse was schizophrenic. Isaiah 55:8 says, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' says the Lord." The way human beings do things is not necessarily the way that God does them.

Back to Top.

Issue 3 - The Trinity Is Too Similar to Polytheism

Perhaps God withheld the Trinity from the Jews due to the concern that they would confuse it with polytheism. This is another explanation advanced by Catholic.com: "In the Old Testament God needed to establish monotheism for the Jews to make them stand apart from all the polytheistic religions that abounded. Monotheism was almost unheard of, and if Yahweh had tried announcing that he is three Persons the people of the day might have misunderstood it as Tritheism, which is a heresy."

It does not evince much confidence in the Trinity to suggest that the Jews (or anybody else) would have mistaken it for polytheism. Surely the Jews had enough experience with said transgression, both from observing it all around them in a variety of forms, and from experiencing it first hand, to know the difference between polytheism and genuine monotheism. It is patronizing and insults peoples' intelligence to suggest that "God needed to establish monotheism for the Jews to make them stand apart from all the polytheistic religions" only to invite them into a relationship that was almost just as scandalous. If polytheism is prostitution, the Trinity is an escort service.

This site also argues that today "we have enough trouble trying to get people to believe in the one true God, let alone many. Thus the New Testament was a better time for God to have revealed his true nature, now that the danger of a polytheistic misunderstanding had been eliminated." What this ignores is that while polytheism is arguably not in fashion today, it was abundant in the era in which the New Testament was written and in the places that the Roman Empire occupied. The Trinity found itself in good company during that era and region and didn't overtly conflict with polytheism as Judaism did.

Back to Top.

Issue 4 - When Does Progressive Revelation Stop?

How do we know that progressive revelation has stopped on the Christian Scriptures? While Jews contend with Christians over the impossibility and error of progressive revelation into Christianity, Christians contend with more than one group, namely Muslims and Mormons. While the Muslim claim precedes Mormonism, Mormonism claims to be the correct understanding of Christianity. Each of these groups advances the notion that progressive revelation continued after the Christian Scriptures into their own scriptures; the Book of Mormon or the Q'uran. There is an old joke that Jews like to tell; Why did God create Mormons? So Christians would know how Jews feel.

According to the Mormon site The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, "'The Book of Mormon is another witness of Jesus Christ and confirms the truths found in the Holy Bible. Far from undermining the Bible, the Book of Mormon supports its testimony of Jesus Christ. One passage says that the Book of Mormon “shall establish the truth” of the Bible “and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues, and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved' (1 Nephi 13:40)."

According to Islamweb.net, "Allah, The Almighty, revealed the Quran to be His last, all-embracing Scripture containing the final manifestation of the Divine Law. This necessitates that it has to be safeguarded from the mischievous hands of men and from all corruption. This protection has been a reality from the time the Quran was revealed until today and will remain so forever." It also says that the "'Islamic Law is lasting, remaining suitable for every place and time, and embracing the goodness of the previous manifestations of the Law. Allah Says (what means): “And We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it.' [Quran 5:48]"

The above explanations sound structurally similar to Christianity's description of the relationship between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. According to Christianity.com: "The religion of the Old Testament is the embryo of Christianity. The Old Testament is the gospel in the bud. The New Testament is the gospel in full flower. The saints in the Old Testament saw many things through a glass darkly. But they all looked by faith to the same Savior and were led by the same Spirit as ourselves." It also says, "The relation between our Lord's teaching and that of the Old Testament is cleared up by our Lord in one striking sentence. He says, 'Don't think that I came to destroy the law, or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill' (Matthew 5:17)."

What does the Torah say about this matter? Deuteronomy 4:2 says, "Do not add to the word which I command you, nor diminish from it, to observe the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you." While Christians, Muslims, and Mormons all understand this verse as a prohibition of adding to their own own scriptures, Jews see it in its original context of not adding anything to the Torah.

Back to Top.

Conclusion

A religion claiming to have received an updated vision will by definition reject all of its predecessor's objections. It rejects their objections on the grounds they were not the recipients of the new revelation. If they had received the new revelation then they would have no objections to it. This is a circular argument designed to prevent people from analyzing the contents of a prophecy critically.

There is therefore no good way to prevent new religions from forever claiming that they have received a new revelation, but there is a good way to prevent people from believing them. God explicitly inoculated the Jews against this form of deceit in two verses: Deuteronomy 13:1 through 6 and Deuteronomy 18:20: "Now if you say to yourself, 'How will we know the word that the Lord did not speak?' If the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not occur and does not come about, that is the thing the Lord did not speak. The prophet has spoken it wantonly; you shall not be afraid of him."

In the latter verse, God legitimizes the Jews' suspicion that a prophet may be lying. This is demonstrated by the fact that He provides them with the criteria for distinguishing between true and false prophets. Claiming to have received prophecy to substantiate prophecy is considered to be an illegitimate means of verification. The only legitimate means of verification is empirical. In contrast to the Jews' complaining and rebelling against God in the desert, He does not see this question as a sign of stubbornness or rebellion, but as a sign of their willingness to follow Him.

Back to Top.

Are We Hardwired For Polytheism?

July 10, 2020 - 18 Tammuz 5780

Why does polytheism seem to have been so prevalent throughout human history?

The answer to this may be that almost everything to which human beings attribute greatness is complex. The word “complex” refers to things “consisting of many different and connected parts.”

This applies to things found in nature such as trees and rivers, human endeavors such as architecture or engineering, and non-tangibles such as eco-systems, governments, and philosophies. The tendency, therefore, is to equate importance and sophistication with complexity. The structural cooperation required for a complex object or system to function translates to elegance and appreciation. With some exceptions, the greater the complexity, the greater something is, and the simpler, the more primitive.

Human beings’ anthropocentric tendencies applied to Divinity may have led us to produce complex theological systems that we believe are superior to simpler ones. In terms of God, a network of gods is more appealing, and may be more effective from a practical perspective. Complexity finds expression even within monotheistic theology in the form of, for example, the Trinity.

Polytheism- Theological Fragmentation

July 3, 2020 - 11 Tammuz 5780

Polytheism is a more extreme version of theological refraction, and is more accurate to refer to it as theological fragmentation. The metaphor of the mirror was useful in describing the process of theological refraction, so here will use a similar metaphor of a prism to explain polytheism.

Light itself can be used as a metaphor for explaining how both polytheism and idolatry began. The light that emanates from the sun is described as white light, and its wavelength is the only one that the human eye can detect. When this light passes through an object that refracts light, such as a prism, it is fragmented into its wavelengths. The human eye naturally recognizes seven wavelengths (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), but the total amount of wavelengths is much greater.

This process of the fragmentation of light is useful in understanding how polytheism works. In the Mishna Torah, the Rambam describes polytheism as having its roots in the universal recognition of the existence of the One True God. He in fact describes it as a process whereby individual, charismatic leaders first formulated a system of honoring God by venerating the elements of nature, such as the sun and the moon. This gradually devolved into systems that attributed divinity to the forces of nature and began worshiping them in-and-of themselves.

Theologically speaking, the fragmentation of light is similar to the process whereby the human mind fragments its concept of God into a host of deities and divine forms. One aspect of the majority of the idols and deities native to the disparate religions of the world is their often colorful and exotic nature. It is fitting, then, that the white light that in the metaphor represents God is broken down into a seemingly endless array of colorful gods and goddesses.

While on the subject of dispersed light, it is most fitting and almost uncanny that God chose the rainbow as the very sign by which He pledged to Noah (and humanity) never to destroy the earth again by Flood. Even more interesting is that the human eye detects seven colors in the rainbow, which seems to correlate with the Seven Laws of Noah that make up the universal laws designed for the entire human race. A rainbow is the product of the same light dispersion that we have discussed up until now, as if to say "You, humanity, dispersed Me into a host of deities as light is dispersed into a rainbow, and so I will use the rainbow as both a testament to this and a reminder to you that I will never destroy the earth again as I did in the Flood." The observance of these seven commandments ensures humanity's staying on the "straight and narrow." A rainbow road.

Eerily enough, in the past decade-or-so the rainbow has become a different sort of symbol, regressively reminiscent of one of the behaviors that led to the Flood. Foresight, anyone?

Another interesting aspect of this is that while fragmented light can apparently be re-merged into its original white form using two prisms, simply mixing the same colors that emerge as a result of fragmentation cannot. As any artist will tell you, the more colors you mix, the closer you get to black, not white. This means that the process cannot be reversed by combination, because attempting to do does not actually reunite the wavelengths. In line with our metaphor, we can thus say that combining all of the religions that emerged from this original fragmentation does not produce our original understanding of God, but instead leaves us with black. The color white is produced when an object refracts all light that hits it, and black is produced when it absorbs all of the colors. Therefore, white is produced by refracting light back to its source, while black is produced by absorbing and consuming everything into itself.

The Trinity - What's Under the Hood?

Judaism in the Ancient World

July 2, 2020 - 10 Tammuz 5780

In the ancient world, Judaism's pervasive conflict with other religions was centered on whether the One God existed alone or whether a number of other deities co-occupied the ephemeral strata of existence. In other words, how many gods were there? When Christians today are flummoxed by what seems like the stubborn obstinacy of (religious) Jews to accept or tolerate the Trinity, they fail to realize that Jews are acting out of the same motivations that moved their ancestors to resist polytheism in all of its forms in the past.

The Trinity is problematic even though it has associated itself in name with God. If we described the Trinity as a vehicle we could say that the body of car was designed to look, for example, American, but that the motor, the carburetor, and the valves were imported Japanese products. Now if a car that was designed to look American is full of Japanese parts it will operate like a Japanese car. Further, such a car cannot be accurately described as being an American car because the operational components belonging to any thing define what that thing is. It is very easy to see how this example applies to the Trinity.

How Does the Trinity Work?

But let us take a look under the hood and see what parts we find. The cornerstone of the Trinity is something called the Athanasian Creed, which states that “The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father, but each is God individually and yet they are together the one true God of the Bible.” This is the official description that both Catholics and Protestants accept and use regarding the Nature of God.

A Diagram of the Athanasian Creed

This explanation may be a bit confusing so we will try to break it down to its component parts. The idea behind this is that there is One God, but that He exists eternally as three Persons. Christians are familiar with the term "Persons," but most religious Jews are not so we will take a moment to describe it.

The term "Persons" does not mean "human beings." Jews are likely to recoil at this term because it sounds like a description of God as a person. The term "Persons" actually alludes to the three eternal expressions of God’s nature. These Persons are understood as being co-eternal, which means that all three of them existed forever. They are also described as being co-substantial, which means that they are all composed of the same "spiritual substance." The Trinity also avoids describing God as being composed of separate parts by explaining that these three elements exist in total harmony with each other in a state known as “hypostasis.”

Now that we have an accurate description of the Trinity we can take a deeper look.

What Are the Issues with the Trinity?

The issues with the Trinity begin when we consider that God is not only One in quantity, but that He is One in quality. This is the meaning of the verse in the Torah, "The Lord our God, the Lord is One," (Deuteronomy 6:4) and so it is essentially a theological statement. The idea that God is One in quality means that He is a simple entity; the word "simple" is the opposite of "complex" and refers to something that has no parts. With this description in mind it automatically becomes clear that the Trinity implies that God is not simple. In other words, even though the three elements are harmonized and synchronized, they can nevertheless be observed in distinction from each other. This is by definition complexity.

So for example, imagine that you looked down into a pool of water. There is no way to discern where "different regions" of water start and end. As far as you are concerned the water in the pool is one contiguous, undivided region of water. Now let use a different example. A phenomenon that is known to occur in large bodies of water, such as oceans, is the division of pockets of fresh water from salt water. Because salt water is denser than fresh water it sinks down while the fresh water floats upward. The result is a captivatingly beautiful image that looks like an ocean within an ocean, but I digress.

A Weird Jog on the Beach

The point is that while both pockets of water are composed of water, they are discernible from each other, i.e., an observer can tell the difference between them with his naked eye. The whole purpose of the idea that God is One is that He is completely simple; there is no way to observe any separation within Him.

However, a Christian may be quick to point out that in the example above, the water described is not pure water. In other words, the fresh water is pure, but the salt water contains salt, which is why it is denser, and this does not fit the definition of "co-substantial" (made of the same substance). If you were to extract the salt from the water they would be of equal density. This, a Christian may argue, is a more accurate description of the Trinity; imagine three pockets of fresh water in the same ocean. The division between them is unperceivable to the naked eye, so there is still no way to observe any separation within Him even though He is three Persons.

However, the idea that God is One is that He is One in every conceivable way. So for example, He is not only One insofar as observing Him is concerned, but He is One in terms of the operations that He carries out, or the functions that He affects. So for example, when God carries out His myriad responsibilities over the Creation, we as human beings cannot know "what element" of Him is responsible for each one. He surely knows, but as far as we are concerned all of His actions and interactions with the Creation emanate from one "place" within Him. For example, both life and death come from God. While life and death are (to human beings) different things we cannot say that within God there is a component, or an element, or a Person, that creates life and another that creates death. All things that God does emanate from one indivisible source, which is simply God Himself.

Looking at it this way we can now apply this idea to the Trinity. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these Persons has its own function within the Godhead.

This position is affirmed by the Crosswalk website, which explains that each Person has a specific eternal and fundamental role in Creation:

The way of redemption showcases these roles in a clear manner. The Father designed and organized how mankind would be redeemed (Galatians 4:4-5). He set into motion a complex set of events, actions, and prophecies which culminated in the life and death of a Savior. The Son carried out the plan (John 6:37-38). He followed the Father's instructions to come to earth, even though that meant He would have to die. The Holy Spirit sees to it that every person feels a call toward God's saving grace (John 14:26, John 16:8; Romans 1:19-20). Furthermore, He transforms the lives and hearts of those who receive salvation through Jesus Christ.

God's being omnipotent means that He has all power at His disposal and has no limitations. It also means that He can oversee all responsibilities without what seems to be internal delegation. If so, and He is not subject to external pressure from anybody to be as they will Him to be, then He can perform the functions of all three Persons in the type of unified state that we have been trying to describe. To say that He exists in a unified state even though He is three Persons defeats the purpose of believing in the Oneness of God in the first place. If true, it seems that the Trinity is a completely arbitrary understanding borne of necessity more than being borne out of God's self-description. Further, as long as this is true then there is no end to the number of elements or Persons that can be recognized within the Godhead. Indeed, this is a classical theological formulation used within Hinduism as well, which will be described at a later date.

As a caveat, note that God exercises not three, but an infinite number of functions while overseeing the world. So while the description of the Trinity above identifies three main functions belonging to the Father, Son, and Spirit each, these are in reality not functions, but function sets each conceivably including within them a number of other, more precise functions. This leads to the startling conclusion that there may be no way to stop this process, further leading us to divide them according to increasingly detailed levels of granularity, coming close to what seems like infinite granularity.

This is perhaps the process by which a system such as Hinduism can declare that there is One God while believing in billions of deities and avatars. According to hinduwebsite.com, "Hinduism is unique because it is essentially a monotheistic faith which acknowledges polytheism as reflective of the diversity in God's creation." According to an article about Brahman on the same site, "When God wakes up from His sleep He becomes Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities... As the creator, sustainer and destroyer of the worlds, He is also the Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa. They are but one though they appear differently to the mortal world."

Where is God in the Trinity?

This next point is easier to understand if we are able to look at the diagram of the Athanasian Creed, shown below.

A Diagram of the Athanasian Creed

Notice that the Father, Son, and Spirit occupy the corners of diagram. This represents the formulation that the Trinity includes three Persons. Notice also that "God" is the center of the diagram. This represents the formulation that the entire Trinity is God.

Now, suppose that I wanted to relate to God without relating to either of the three Persons. Do I really feel that I am experiencing a face-to-face relationship with God when I am aware of three different personas that He possesses? For example, pretend that you were trying to have a discussion with a person while he was wearing a three-sided mask, or a person with a Siamese twin. This interaction would lack a certain indescribable sense of privacy and intimacy that can only exist between two parties.

Now even though the Trinity is described as God, the finite human mind finds difficulty in having a one-way relationship with a Being that possesses three different forms of consciousness. The very fact that each Person has its own role means that my relationship with God forces me to engage each of them in a fundamentally different way. For example, pretend that my brother was a married man that practiced Law. In other words, he was a husband and a lawyer. Now let's say that the following dialogue occurred when I visited him at his house while sitting at the table:

---

Me: Hi Tim.

Tim: Hi, how's it going?

Me: Fine, thanks. Can I ask you a legal question?

Tim: [Silence...]

Me: Tim?

Tim: Yeah, what's up?

Me: I just asked you a question.

Tim: No you didn't.

Me: Yes, I did.

Tim: No, you asked the lawyer a question. I am not your lawyer, I am your brother. Do you want me to get the lawyer for you?

---

The point of this dialogue is to illustrate that the Father cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Son or the Spirit, the Son cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Father or the Son. Because I have to send my messages to three different addresses, it cannot be fully clear in my mind that I am speaking with one individual. And even if he really is one individual, that makes very little difference to me if I cannot relate to him as one. We all know how annoying it is when you go to some place, like the Post Office, and the clerk won't help you because it's not her department. Something about the itemized roles of the Persons in the Trinity comes off like a Divine bureaucracy.

Conclusion

The description of the Trinity that we have been considering is not like Judaism's description of all actions performed by God as coming from one indistinguishable place. Each action or function is assigned strictly to only of the Persons in the Trinity and not to any of the other Persons. This means that we can recognize a difference between them, and as long as we can recognize a difference between different elements of God, we have not fully come to appreciate the concept that God is One. That God has chosen three different Persons to achieve three different goals indicates that the Trinity is a misunderstanding of God's True Nature.

For more information on how the Trinity operates, see The Trinity - Theological Refraction.

He Has Seen No Perversity in Israel

He does not look at evil in Jacob, and has seen no perversity in Israel; the Lord, his God, is with him, and he has the King's friendship. (Numbers 23:21)

לֹֽא־הִבִּ֥יט אָ֨וֶן֙ בְּיַֽעֲקֹ֔ב וְלֹֽא־רָאָ֥ה עָמָ֖ל בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהָיו֙ עִמּ֔וֹ וּתְרוּעַ֥ת מֶ֖לֶךְ בּֽוֹ (במדבר כג כא)

A very strange thing for God to say right after the Jews fell into the disgusting sin of worshiping Ba'al Pe'or en mass, and with such gusto among some of them!

The Nesivos Shalom notes this peculiarity, and even sharpens the point by quoting the Talmud:

Rabbi Ḥanina says: Anyone who states that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is forgiving [vateran] of transgressions, his life will be relinquished [yivatru], as it is stated: “The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

אמר ר' חנינא כל האומר הקב"ה ותרן הוא יותרו חייו שנאמר (דברים לב, ד) הצור תמים פעלו כי כל דרכיו משפט

According to the Sefaria website, "In other words, God does not waive heavenly justice."

It certainly seems that God is waiving some serious heavenly justice right about now.

The Nesivos Shalom explains how God could have, can, and does look away from, grotesque behavior:

Even though an individual's evil inclination may overpower him and render him incapable of resisting, his heart is nevertheless broken within him and fills him with remorse. [This happens] because he knows that this transgression will push him away from God. Even while in the midst of committing the transgression, Hashem, his God, is with him and his heart is ripped to pieces. This is the type of sin from which The Holy, Blessed Be He looks away, for He knows all secrets; He knows that his heart is broken and defeated.

שגם זה שיצרא בישא מתגבר עליו ואינו יכול לעמוד בפניו במעשה, הרי גם אז לבו שבור בקרבו ומלא יסורי מצפון שיודע כי ע״י עבירה זו מתרחק מהקב״ה, וגם בעת המעשה העבירה ה׳ אלוקיו עמו ולבו נקרע לגזרים על זה, ועל חטא כזה לא הביט השי״ת, שיודע תעלומות יודע לבבו הנשבר הנדכא.

Even though many Jews (24,000) succumbed to the heinous sin of worshiping Ba'al Pe'or and all that it entailed, God still included the verse "He does not look at evil in Jacob, and has seen no perversity in Israel" in the Torah. Were it not for this explanation it would be hard to understand how this verse could possibly have been included here.