What is a Miracle?

According to the dictionary, the word miracle is a term that is applied by some to certain events or experiences: “1. an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes, esp[ecially] to an act of God; 2. a remarkable event or thing; marvel; 3. a wonderful example [of something].”¹ To which a fourth definition must be added:  an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and the cause of which is unknown. This fourth definition is required because there are those who do not believe either in the supernatural or God. For such persons a miracle is a natural occurrence for which there is, as yet, no known explanation.

            What these observations mean is that a marvel or a wonder, or an out-of-the-ordinary experience is supernaturally caused (by God) only if you think it is. If you do not credit God with being the cause, it is not a miracle. In that case it becomes only an unexplained phenomenon. The situation is something similar to What Jesus experienced in Mark 6:5-6:

And he [Jesus] could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.

It is a believer’s faith that turns a remarkable thing into a miracle by giving God the credit. Otherwise, it remains a remarkable thing with an as yet unknown cause.

Today, miracles are generally regarded either as positive supernatural acts and deeds done by God, or simply unexplained positive phenomena; hence, a miracle is a wonder or marvel that produces wonderment, astonishment, and awe in those who experience or observe them, leading them to ponder what they have experienced or seen. A negative event or action that seems to defy explanation is generally regarded as a calamity, tragedy, catastrophe, or natural disaster. Yet, for believers, even these tragic calamities are regarded as miracles and attributed to supernatural causes on the grounds that the biblical writers represent God as using the considerable forces of nature to punish the enemies of Israel.² So, in the rhetoric of the religious believer, both gracious and also cruel acts are attributed to a supernatural God. In sum: to describe something as miraculous does not make it an act of God, it only means that one regards it as such.

The word “miracle” is from the Latin, miraculum. It is derived from the verb miror, which translates into English as “to wonder, marvel, be astonished, be amazed, admire.”³ The Latin Vulgate (dated around 400 C. E.), however, does not use the word miraculum to designate a marvelous thing as a supernatural act by God. Such supernatural agency is common in later patristic literature and theology. “In the Vulgate the Gr[eek] words rendered ‘miracle’ in the English Bible…are translated respectively by signum (sign), prodigium (prodigy), and virtus (power).”⁴ Furthermore, the Greek English Lexicon by Liddell, Scott, and Jones (LSJ) does not employ “miracle” as a translation of the Greek word thauma, even though LSJ covers the New Testament period. In the rhetoric of the LSJ, thauma is translated, with respect to things or events, as a wonder or marvel and, with respect to one’s reaction to a wonder or marvel, as wonder or astonishment.⁵ And neither does Bauer’s German Greek-Deutsch Lexicon use “mirakel (miracle)” as a translation of thauma.⁶ But in the English translations of Bauer’s lexicon, however, one does find the English word “miracle” added to Bauer’s translations of thauma.⁷ LSJ challenges the English translations of Bauer’s lexicon where translators have added “miracle” as a translation of thauma. Apparently, even in academia, a wonder can become a miracle by the stroke of a pen.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Michael Agnes, Ed. in Chief, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4^th ed; 2002), under miracle.

²For example, the author of Exodus portrays God using a plague to destroy the animals of the Egyptians (Exod (9:1-7), and hail to destroy their crops (Exod 9:13-32).

³C. T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary for Schools (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 634.

⁴James Murray, primary and founding ed., The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 486.

⁵Henry G. Liddell, Robert Scott, compilers, A Greek-English Lexicon (rev. and augmented by Henry S. Jones and Roderick McKenzie; 9^th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), 785.

⁶Griechich-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neues Testaments und der ϋbrigen urchristlichen Literature (4^th ed. 1952).

⁷W. Bauer, W. F Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (a translation of Bauer’s 4^th ed., 1957). The 2^nd edition of the English translation, 1979 by F. W. Gingrich and F. W. Danker (a translation of Bauer’s 5^th ed.). The 3^rd edition of the English translation, 2000 by F. W. Danker (a translation of Bauer’s 6^th ed.).

A Personal Complaint Against Celestial Wisdom

I have a personal complaint against Divine Wisdom (God, if God there be) who manages our tiny solar system on the outer edge of the great Milky Way Galaxy. We have been taught in our religious myths of origin that God created the Heavens and the Earth and everything in it (Gen 1:1–31): male and female, God created them from the same bone and flesh (Gen 2:21–23); and in their coupling they become one (Gen 2:1; cf. 1 Cor 6:16), a supportive, symbiotic relationship. After living together for 60 years or so, couples have so completely bonded that they consider themselves two halves of one whole (at least I did). Such is the case with many happy marriages: the two, now united as one, expect to continue enjoying long lives together, for they have been gifted by the creator with eternity in their minds (Eccl 3:11). Yet one day the union unexpectedly ends with the untimely death of one or the other, leaving the surviving half to cope with life’s issues apart from the whole.

My complaint is this: the breaking-up of long-time intimate unions is wasteful in the extreme. Divine Wisdom should have made a better plan.

As one might surmise, my angry charges against the considerable powers of the universe have gone unnoticed and unaddressed. Complaints about the mismanagement of the universe, however, are not presumptuous for even Jesus complained about the actions of God as he was dying: “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me.” (Mark 15:34/Matt 27:46)

In the Protestant Old Testament, biblical writers show no hesitation in complaining to the Almighty for perceived mistreatment at God’s hands (so to speak). The Psalter (Israel’s hymnbook), for example, has a type of psalm described as a complaint, or a lament, psalm. Here are few brief examples of complaints from the Psalms:

“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” (Ps 22:11 RSV)

“O Lord God of Hosts, how long wilt thou be angry with thy people’s prayers? Thou hast fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.” (Ps 80:4-5 RSV)

“Thou hast sold thy people for a trifle demanding no high price for them.” (Ps 44:12 RSV)

Job also complained bitterly of God’s mistreatment of himself and others (see, in particular, Job 9:20–24):

“God has cast me into the mire and I have become like dust and ashes. I cry to thee and thou dost not answer me. I stand and thou dost not heed me. Thou hast turned cruel to me; with the might of thy hand, thou dost persecute me.” (Job 30:19–21 RSV)

“If I sin, what do I do to thee, thou watcher of men? Why hast thou made me thy mark? Why have I become a burden to thee? Why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity.” (Job 7:20–21 RSV)

“I am innocent, but God denies me justice. Although I am right, I am considered a liar; although I am guiltless his arrow inflicts an incurable wound.” (Job 34:5–6 NIV)

God responds to Job’s criticisms (Job 38:1—40:2; 40:6—41:34), but God’s response never directly addresses Job’s specific criticisms of God’s behavior. God’s answer boils down to: I am bigger, better, and stronger than you, as Job’s responses seem to acknowledge (Job 49:3–5); so, Job acquiesces (Job 42:1–5).

            In the New Testament, however, the writers are more pious, or cowed, and defend God’s perceived mistreatments of people (Rom 9:14–23; Heb 12:3–11). In the New Testament, there are only two specific complaints against God of which I know; one, the evangelist attributes to Jesus, quoting Psalm 22:11 (Mark 15:34/Matt 27:46), and the other, John attributes to slain martyrs, who complain that God has delayed judgment and not avenged them: “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth.” (Rev 6:10 RSV)

            Does God pay any attention to our complaints about his divine misbehavior, do you suppose? Clearly, in the Old Testament people believed their complaints could have an influence on divine behavior. In the New Testament, however, Paul’s answer to that question is: God does what he wants (Rom 9:14–18) and your perceived mistreatment at God’s hands (so to speak) depends on his mercy.

            That is not a very satisfying response! God’s inconsistent, erratic, or capricious behavior (as suggested by Paul) is a genuine handicap to trusting God to do the right thing.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

Greek Mythology in the New Testament: Tartarus

Here is an interesting question for my friends who regard the Bible as being literally the Word of God, Himself: Must I believe everything written in its pages to be truth revealed from God?* There may be the odd equivocation here and there, but my impression is that religious leaders, whose beliefs about the Bible correspond to what a majority of Southern Baptists are said to believe, would answer that question in the affirmative.¹

There are reports in the Bible, however, that will cause a twenty-first century human being, who has had a basic science course, to pause before answering. One incident that comes immediately to mind is God causing the sun to remain at its zenith in the heavens and not go down for an entire day. Practically, this means the earth pauses in its journey around the sun. The incident is reported in the book of Jashar, which is not in the Bible, but it is also found in Joshua 10:12-14, which is in the Bible. There are also many other things in the Bible that might even tax the incredulity of a generally credulous true believer.²

            There is one passage, however, in Second Peter that, if pondered, just might undermine how most Baptists (and others) view the Bible (well, except for true believers, who are generally disinclined to ponder what they read).

For if God did not spare the angels who had sinned, but delivered them down captive into Tartarus in chains of nether darkness in custody until judgment…(2 Pet 2:4a, my translation)³

The word translated Tartarus is tartarōsas. It does not signify a person, place, or thing; it is a participle from the verbal form tartaroō, describing an action. In this case, "being held captive in Tartarus."

            I don't know of a story in the Bible about angels, who having sinned, were cast into nether darkness into Tartarus, but the Book of Enoch has a report about sinful angels and their fate (1 Enoch 10:4, 11-12).⁴ In Greek mythology Tartarus is both an earth-God (one of the earliest primeval Gods of Greek tradition, Hesiod, Theogony,115-129) and it is also a place, the deepest location beneath the earth. It is

as far beneath the earth as heaven is above the earth; for so far is it from earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth; and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. (Hesiod, Theogony, 721–725)

Tartarus is lower even than Hades. The ancient Greek poet, Homer, describes the distance from Hades down to Tartarus being, "as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth" (Iliad 8. 16). Hades is the abode of the dead and Tartarus is reserved for the enemies of the Gods.

            Hadēs, is another bolt out of the Greek mythological blue: in Greek mythology Hades is also an ancient Greek God and a location beneath the earth, where people are punished for their sins.⁵

            How are believers in the Bible, as in some sense "the Word of God," supposed to handle what are standard features of Greek mythology appearing in the Bible? Are they mandated to take aspects of Greek mythology as God's Word?

            What they believe about these texts does not alter what they are, however: texts written by human beings whose inspiration by God could never be investigated; texts collected by human beings whose names are lost to memory; texts translated into numerous language, human beings choosing the modern language equivalent for the Greek and the Hebrew; texts whose Hebrew and Greek words that appear in the critical text are decided by human beings (text critics) and translators by judicious comparison of the ancient manuscripts that have survived.

            The truth is: the Bible is a collection of selected Hebrew and Greek texts that point toward a particular understanding of God.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Here, for example, is what Southern Baptists say that a majority of Southern Baptists believe about the Scriptures: "The Baptist Faith and Message Statement 2000," https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/#i

²See Charles W. Hedrick, "Superstition, faith, and the Marginal Relevance of the Bible" in Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith (Eugene, Or: Cascade, 2019), 1-12.

³Compare a similar translation in the Holman Christian Standard Bible, a translation that is associated with the Southern Baptists.

⁴See also Gen 5:1-4; Jude 6.

⁵And a regular word for the place of punishment in the New Testament. For example, Hadēs: Matt 11:23, 16:18, Acts 2:31, Rev 1:18. Gehenna (generally translated Hell) is another name for a place of punishment in the New Testament: Matt 10:28, Luke 12:5, Mark 9:47, Jas 3:6.

The Theological Implications of Bird Poop

Does everything happen for a reason? If I said that someone survived a car crash with barely a scratch, but four others in the car were killed outright, most people, religious or not, would likely observe, “stuff happens for a reason.” Behind that observation is the popular religious belief that God micromanages the world. But if I were to ask, was there some divine reason for a bird dropping poop on my forehead rather than on my shoulder this morning, many might think that my question was silly. Nevertheless, a serious issue lies behind both situations: is anyone completely in charge of the universe?

            One answer is that God is in charge and micromanages the universe. If so, everything happens for a reason. A micromanaging God would scarcely leave anything to chance. This way of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that even bad things (the recent pandemic, for example) are due to God’s deliberate management. Hence, since by popular definition God can do no wrong, whatever seems bad must really be good—and that includes the bird poop on my forehead. A micromanaging God would have had good reason for the bird poop—for under the theory of divine micromanagement, God makes everything happen for a benevolent reason

            Perhaps, however, God only generally manages the universe and is simply not responsible for everything that happens. Under “general” management some things are divinely manipulated but other things are simply allowed to happen for no reason at all. Under this theory the universe has been set up to work in a well-regulated way, and God only intrudes every so often for whatever reason strikes the divine fancy. For the most part things do seem to work fairly well in our world. The world turns with general regularity and only an occasional glitch or two (cancer and destructive tornadoes come to mind). This theory raises the question: how can we ever really be certain what is caused by God, what is part of the regular pulse of the universe, and what is a glitch in the system? The bird poop is well accommodated by this explanation: it is just one of those billions of little things that never register on the divine radarscope, or are just part of the regular pulse of the universe where things happen for no particular reason—like a leaf falling off a tree or bird droppings. I simply happened to look up at an opportune moment this morning at the precise time the bird pooped. Such occurrences are part of the regular design of things, for leaves fall from trees and birds poop all over the place. But under this theory one can never be sure of anything God does or does not do.

            It is also possible that God has chosen to be an observer of events in a universe designed to run itself, more or less—or worse God has gone missing. One may well ask, how is that possible? God created the world, so why would he abandon it? Good question! But since we cannot even prove that God exists, how could we possibly know whether God is missing? A missing God, however, does make a kind of perverted sense of our human situation, and could account for natural disasters and unconscionable human suffering (cancer, tsunamis, and hurricanes come to mind)—in short, no one is minding the store. Bird poop on the forehead makes excellent sense in such a world. A God absent for the big things could scarcely be expected to be around for the little things.

            Perhaps we have simply misunderstood God’s character. If God were a bit devious, it could explain the general regularity of the cosmos and its blessings when things work without the glitches, such as natural disasters, the tragedies of human disease, and fatal accidents. In short, God may be prone to be a bit “impish,” so to speak. Certain passages in the Bible seem to support such a theory, at least the early Israelites and Christians must have thought so by some of the ways they portrayed God (the Book of Job comes to mind). Bird poop on the forehead is precisely the kind of thing one might expect from a mischievous God.

            Of course, it is always possible there is no God. The only difference between this possibility and the last is that human tragedy and natural disaster could not be caused by a nonexistent God, but must be the result of randomness in the universe that never had a manager of any sort. We would be alone in a sort of well-regulated universe—except for the occasional glitch. Such a situation accommodates regularity, natural disasters, and bird poop on the forehead.

            The five possibilities for explaining bird poop and divine management of the universe boil down to this. Do you choose to believe in an uptight micromanager, a lax general manager, a God gone missing, a mischievous deity or in no God at all? I suppose one could choose to ignore human experience (which the Bible is), and fashion a God of one’s own imagination. I suspect that is what most of us do.*

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*This essay appeared originally in Hedrick, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest. American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Cascade: Eugene, OR, 2009), 13–15.

What Do Gods Do?

There is more than one God being worshipped around the world, so answering this question will depend on knowing which God one is referring-to and what is being said about that God, since all Gods do not behave alike. With those two caveats stated, this (it seems to me) is the rule: Gods do what they are thought to do—no more, no less! Basically, God is an idea that "exists" in most human minds. Hence, God has no "objectified existence"—that is, an "over-there-ness away from me" that can be pointed-to. God "is" (only in a sense) akin to an invisible immaterial spirit—and even that is too concrete. There is no spot in the entire universe where God can be located as a "material existing thing" as a person might be. Nor is God spread pervasively throughout the universe "in all things." To think in such a way is to objectify God by identifying God in some way with living creatures and plants (flora and fauna), and inanimate objects. A saying in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus, however, says precisely that: "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Take up a stone and you will find me there" (77b; cf. Colossians 1:17). All Gods (if Gods there be) do not inhabit a space time continuum in the universe as human beings do.

Primitive societies, however, did make one-to-one identifications between their idols (things representing God) and the spirit of mana thought to infuse their idols. The Greeks and Romans also objectified their Gods, representing them in statuary and even thinking that sometimes the God had taken human form. They even believed their statuary possessed some of the essential power of the God. For example, in the council chamber of the city of Stratonicea (West Coast of Asia Minor) there stood the statues of Zeus and Hecate, which were said in a formal city decree to "perform good deeds of great power." The citizenry celebrated their miracles daily by sacrifice, burning incense, praying, and giving thanks.

Christians, on the other hand, generally have not objectified God, with one noticeable exception. In the 5^th century Nicene Creed Jesus, the Jewish sage, is elevated to "true God of true God" and worshipped and glorified. This is apparently a dual movement consisting of God becoming man and man becoming God: it may be thought of as an instance of divine spirit "infused" into flesh and blood, or the materializing of immaterial divine spirit into human matter. He was not always the Son of God (Rom 1:3).

An easier answered historical question, however, is what is God represented as doing in the Bible? That question can at least be investigated. The Bible is divided into two divisions: Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Among other things these divisions are characterized by two completely different thought worlds: Semitic (Hebrew Bible) and Hellenistic (New Testament). Hebrew Bible describes what God does from the perspective of Old Testament faiths according to Hebrew tradition, and the New Testament, drawing on the Old Testament, describes what earlier followers of Jesus believed about God's behavior from the perspective of New Testament faiths.

"Christian" ideas about what God does come much later as expressed in the early Christian creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries and later, which are not part of the biblical tradition, although Christians argue that both the Hebrew tradition and the early Jesus tradition inform Christian beliefs.

Between the two divisions of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament lies Jesus of Nazareth. The thought world (how he expressed himself) of Jesus is indebted to the Hebrew/Jewish traditions. Christian theology is partly based on the sayings of Jesus, the Jewish sage, and partly on Graeco-Roman ideas of divinity. The question becomes: according to Jesus, the Jewish sage, what does God do? The most critical sifting of all sayings attributed to Jesus in early Christian literature of the first and second centuries by the Jesus Seminar suggests that there is only modest God-language to be found in the residue of Jesus sayings that survived the lapses of memory of his earliest followers, and what was attributed to him in the piety of the later church. What little there is suggests that God is not sectarian but cares for good people and bad people alike (Matt 5:45b), even to the extent of providing for their daily needs, like feeding and clothing them (Matt 5:25–30; 7:11; 10:29–31). Jesus prayed for the daily provision of the basic necessities of life, as though he himself were indigent (Matt 5:11), and he thought that God's watch-care over the world extended to "numbering the hair on peoples' heads" and micromanaging the deaths of sparrows (Matt 10:29-31). He knows how to give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:7–11). People of means, on the other hand, will have difficulty entering God's imperial rule (Mark 10:28; Matt 6:24).

When it comes to Gods, the biggest mistake most people make is thinking that their personal beliefs control what God does. As Job said, in a sudden flash of understanding, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil" (Job 2:10, cf. 30:26). In short, the ways of the Gods (if Gods there be) are inscrutable.¹

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹This essay first appeared on this blog on June 13, 2013. It later appeared in print in Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (2019). It appears here again reedited and expanded.

Does God care about Baseball?

Judging from life among the thorns in the Vale of Tears we call earth, it is at least questionable that God is concerned with the minutiae of individual human lives, or for that matter even with the mega problems that plague whole nations on the globe. During the second world war the belt buckles of German soldiers were etched with the slogan, “Gott mit uns” (God is with us). Of course, the allied troops thought the same thing, because they too believed their cause was just. And this clash of claims for God’s concern and support in the enterprises of our lives naturally raises my question about the minutiae of individual lives. For example, the nation cares about baseball. It is referred to as our “national pastime,” part of the minutiae of our lives. But does God care about baseball, about who wins and loses?

            Are we to suppose that God follows baseball and the individual statistics of each athlete, perhaps has a favorite baseball team, and even decides the outcomes of games? I once saw a pitcher, who, after throwing the winning pitch in a baseball game, made the sign of the cross, kissed his fingers, and pointed upward, thanking God for the win. In American popular religion most of us believe God does get involved in the minutiae of human life, even numbering the hairs on certain human heads and deciding the deaths of sparrows (Matt 10:29-30). But with such a complicated universe to run, surely God has weightier concerns than sparrows, hairs in the drain—and the Cardinals/Royals game. In terms of universal importance, which team wins the pennant seems a rather insignificant event. Other events clearly have a more profound impact on human life than baseball games. True, the outcome of a Cardinals/Royals game is more significant than the number of hairs that showed up in my drain this morning, but totally insignificant when compared to the Israeli/Hamas war and the plight of families in the war zone. Some diehard fans may disagree, but in terms of significant impact on human life baseball games fall completely off the radar screen for everyone, except, perhaps, for those involved in the industry.

            It comforts us to think there is a master plan to life. Believing that life is “scripted” helps us cope with tragedy and loss. Life must make sense, and our individual tragedies must have some meaning in the grand scheme of things—or so we insist. Even the death of a butterfly must have a place in God’s “master plan” for the universe. The alternative—thinking that we live in an “unscripted” and arbitrary universe is a frightening concept. In an arbitrary universe no master plan exists. What happens, just happens! Under those conditions, life’s meaning is what each of us makes of the random events that constitute our lives. I personally do not like that alternative and hope, as everyone else, that affairs in my life are part of some grand benevolent design for the universe. Yet, I am a little dubious when someone tells me God spends time counting the hairs in my drain, marking the demise of individual sparrows, or following the progress of a favorite baseball team. Such micromanaging will not work for CEO’s in large organizations—and the universe, if anything, is large. Effective management gives priority to the more significant. In a global crisis, I don’t want to think of God worrying with minutiae, like the welfare of the one barren tomato plant in my garden. Micromanagement on God’s part may be why we have natural disasters, like floods, earthquakes, and epidemics—because God has taken his eyes off the big picture. Other disasters, like wars, are inevitably the result of human contrivance, although even God is given credit for starting wars in the Bible.¹

            One should not too quickly criticize the divine Administrator of the universe, however, since we have only the barest inkling of what’s involved in running the universe. The universe may be unlimited, and if so, that is a lot of turf to cover, even for God—or so God suggested to Job (Job 38–41) when Job bitterly complained that God had treated him unfairly. If God is weighing the outcomes of ballgames and neglecting the causes of war, he has likely fallen out of touch with what is really happening in the universe—or at least in this small corner of an out-of-the-way galaxy. Surely God can find better things to do with his time than ponder the pennant.²

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See, for example, Numbers 31:1–31, the war God began with the Midianites. Why did God begin the war? See Numbers 25:16–18.

²This essay first appeared sometime before 2006 as an editorial in the Springfield, Missouri Newsleader. It was published later, in 2009 in a collection of essays: Charles W. Hedrick, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest. American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), 7-9. It appears here edited, revised, and updated.

Is the Earth still Cursed?

In Gen 3:17 God tells Adam:

cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread…(RSV)

The "curse" on the ground is because of Adam's sin (his disobedience in eating the fruit of a particular tree in God's special Garden, Gen 2:17). The land is cursed and will bring forth "thorns and thistles," specifically for Adam and because of what he did. He must, as a consequence, laboriously work the land for its produce. In the Garden apparently the land did not require work; it simply produced (Gen 1:29-30; 3:23). There is a similar curse in Gen 4:11-12, as well: the land will not produce for Cain because he killed Abel. Apparently, God's curse of the ground for Adam was not a general curse for all humankind, since another curse was needed to register God's displeasure at Cain's egregious act. But this seems refuted by Gen 5:29, where Lamech claims that the birth of Noah "will bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands," which suggests that the cursing of the earth did apply to all flesh.

            Through a great flood God determines to destroy all flesh along with the earth, "for the earth is filled with violence through them" (Gen 6:11-13). Apparently, the earth is to be destroyed because it is corrupted by its association with all flesh (Gen 6:12). God is so delighted with Noah's sacrifice when the flood waters subsided, however, that he vowed never again to "curse the ground because of man" (Gen 8:21), but there is nothing said about the earlier curses being lifted, whether general or specific (Gen 8:20-22).

            The prophet Isaiah seems to share the idea that the earth is generally cursed (Isa 24:3-6). "Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt" (Isa 24:6). Why should the earth/ground/land suffer because of its association with "all flesh"? The reason seems to be that God formed Adam/humanity "from the ground" (Gen 2:7):

In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:19; cf. Job 34:15; Ps 103:14).

In biblical mythology Adam and the ground are the same kind of "stuff." The answer to my question seems to be that it is on the basis of the same principle (although in reverse) from which Paul argues in 1 Cor 15:21-22 (i.e., the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, Deut 5:9-10).¹ God appears to be holding the earth responsible for the sins of its progeny, for people are descended from "earth." In this case, the sins of the children are visited upon the father (earth).

            Is the cursing of the earth in Genesis the background for understanding Paul's "restoration" (Rom 8:21) of creation (ē ktsis) in Rom 8:19-22? Possibly. I know of one scholar (there are no doubt many others) who thought that to be the case: James Denny finds the need for the "restoration" of creation in Romans 8:19-22 to be the cursing of Adam in Gen 3:17, "where the ground is cursed for man's sake; he [Paul] conceives all creation as involved in the fortunes of humanity."² Paul never clearly says that in so many words, so far as I know. Only in the rather obscure phrase at the beginning of Romans 8:20 is it possible to infer it when he writes, "the creation is subjected to futility (mataitēti, i.e., meaning its lack of value, or usefulness), which is the condition to which God's curse rendered it for Adam, requiring it to be laboriously worked.

            Colossians 1:19-20 seems to include "all creation" in its "all things on earth or in heaven" (note: Col 1:16, ta panta is everything). If this expression can be said to include all creation, then a Pauline disciple (the author of Colossians) includes even the insentient "stuff" of the universe of God's created works in the economy of redemption.

            The difficulty, however, is that the Bible doesn't speak generally of the restoration of an original creation. By far the more dramatic image in the Bible is the dissolution of the old creation, and the birthing of a new heavens and earth (Isa 65:17, 66:22; 2 Pet 3:7-13; Rev 21:1). Will there eventually be an old creation restored, as Paul seems to think, or the destruction of the original creation and the birth of a new heavens and earth, as "Peter" believes will happen? Who is right Peter or Paul?

How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For the Idea of blaming the children for their father's sins, see also Exod 20:5-6; 34:6-7. For a rejection of this idea, see Jer 31:29-30; Ezek 18:2-4.

²James Denny, "St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans" in W. R. Nicoll, The Expositor's Greek Testament (5 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 2.649.

The Privative Life of God

Can it be true that God has a private life? Folks at my church seem to assume that God is always on duty, 24/7—particularly to receive all prayers. People seem to think God is even available to make spiritual house calls and hospital visits on a moment’s notice. Imagine; going to God in prayer and sensing a message glimmering in your mind: “call back in a week; on vacation!” Yet there are hints in the Bible that God does have something like a private life—moments when he is away from being hands-on (so to speak) running the world. The ancient Graeco-Roman Gods, on the other hand, are regularly depicted as having private lives.¹ I grant you that Yahweh’s free moments are all depicted in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (OT). The New Testament (NT) writers are not much-given to reflecting on God anthropomorphically (i.e., depicting God as being human).² Nevertheless these hints are there in OT.

            One indisputable attestation of God’s private life is revealed at the creation when God “finished his work and rested on the seventh day from all his work” and immediately “hallowed the seventh day” of the week (Gen 2:2-3), presumably as a day of rest (Exodus 20:8-11). What do you do when you are resting? The answer is, anything but work!³

The depiction of God as “walking in the garden [of Eden] in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8) and making innocuous chit-chat (before the conversation got serious, Gen 3:9-13) with Adam and Eve sounds as if God’s refreshing pause in the heat of the day was spoiled by the coming of age of Adam and Eve.

            For some reason, God attempts to kill Moses as Moses is on his way to Egypt. God meets Moses at a lodging place on the way and tries to kill him (Exodus 4:24). It does not appear that God is acting in the performance of his official duties, however. Apparently, this act is “off the books” (not an official act) but a clandestine act, if you will, for God fails to kill him—Is this kind of thing something God does in his spare time, do you suppose? Perhaps! God’s all too casual “back-room bargain” with Satan (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6) to allow a testing of Job’s piety appears similar to the incident with Moses. No wonder Jesus followers prayed that they not be put to the test (Matt 6:13=Luke 11:4). God’s bargain with Satan to prove Job’s piety to Satan appears pointless and hence a waste of God’s time.

            There is one kind of thing that God is represented as doing quite frequently in the Bible. One finds repeated references to God “changing his mind,” or “repenting” about things he has done or things he intended to do.⁴ For example, God “was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:6-7). He later changed his mind again, even about his previous change of mind to destroy everything he had created, because Noah subsequently found favor in his eyes (Gen 6:8). God must have spent a great deal of time mulling over his deeds and pondering what his next course of action should be in the circumstances. One mulls and ponders in the spare moments that one has available—not in the busy moments of life. The frequency with which God ponders certain of his actions suggests that he spent a lot of time reflecting, pondering, and being inactive while in self-recriminating thought.

            There is also “evidence” from sherds, pottery, and the Bible that God may have had a wife (or significant other) at some point in the dim past. It has been suggested by an Oxford scholar, who now teaches at Exeter, that at one time the goddess Asherah (Deut 16:21; I Kgs 14:23) was considered a consort (wife, significant other) of the Hebrew God, Yahweh.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to [Francesca] Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th-century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."⁵

This is an interesting development that, if true, certainly support the idea that God at one time was thought to have a private life.

            I think, however, I can hear someone thinking quietly: “But you haven’t proven God has a private life. All you have shown is that an ancient semitic tribe at one time suspected the God they worshipped had odd moments when he might have been doing something other than ‘God-like’ things.” And that someone would be correct! When talk of God commences, we are always at the mercy of human imagination. For all God-talk has little to do with factuality. All words about God, like grass in its season, pass with each generation that coined them, like the dissonance between old and new covenants (Heb 8:1-13). Unless members of the tribe get together and canonize their words about God as an iconic object.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See, for example, Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (2 vols.; George Braziller, 1959), vol. 1. 53-55. This section describes Zeus’ philandering ways, and his home life with Hera, his wife.

²This gap between the OT and NT in God-thought happens between the more primitive anthropomorphic thinking of the OT authors and the slightly-more “philosophically” oriented NT authors. Even one ancient Hebrew prophet recognized the wrong headedness of thinking of God in human terms (1 Sam 15:29).

³Some of the kinds of things God did in his “creation work” are reflected in God’s answer to Job (38-41). Today, God is generally thought-of as doing “religious” work, like answering prayer (or not), rewarding the faithful, and punishing the wicked.

⁴Repent, means to change one’s mind; sometimes translated as “relented”: Exod 32:14; I Sam 15:11, 35; 2 Sam 24:15-16; 1 Chron 21:15; Jer 8:8; 15:6; 18:10; 26:3, 13, 19; 42:10; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9-10.

⁵Jennifer Viegas, NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42154769

Once upon a time, a Man Became God

How in the world did that happen, do you suppose? Well, as with all good stories, there are several different accounts in the New Testament. The best known appears in two different versions (Matt 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-2:20).¹ These narratives are blended and celebrated annually every December in Christian church and family settings. The narrative leads the reader to think that the God-Man (or man-God) was born naturally like all human children, as a flesh and blood child through the vaginal canal of his birth mother. The conception of the child by the birth-mother, however, is most unusual. Matthew says that the child’s mother conceived by a holy spirit (Matt 1:20) in fulfilment of Scripture. The child was to be called Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14), which Matthew interprets as “God with us” (Matt 1:23). Luke also describes the child’s conception through a holy spirit that “comes upon” the mother and a “power of the Most-High overshadowing her,” suggesting that conception occurs in fashion similar to human conceiving, by a spiritual sperm.² This child, Luke opines, shall be holy and called a son of God (Luke 1:35).

            In John’s Gospel, there is a third version of the story in the prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) for how a divine figure came to be man. The fragmentary narrative (John 1:1-2, 14) lacks in clarity. A figure, described as logos,³ who was from the primordial beginning alongside God and “what God was, the logos was.”⁴ Hence, the logos shared God’s essence, while being distinguishable from God (cf. Phil 2:6). In John 1:14 this spiritual figure “was made flesh” (cf. John 1:3).⁵ I take this to mean an incarnating or “enfleshing” of the logos in the sense of Phil 2:7: “taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in form as man…” How ever the author of the introductory poem to John may have conceived the event, it seems clear that conception and birth in the Matthaean and Lukan sense is not the process being described.

            A fourth version of the story appears in Rom 1:3-4 where God’s son is “born (genomenou) from the sperm (spermatos) of David according to the flesh,” and “appointed (oristhentos) son of God with power according to a spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.” Jesus was a human being, a descendent of David, born of fleshly sperm, and was appointed, or declared, son of God by the spirit at his resurrection. His historical life was therefore not lived as the son of God. He was only advanced to that status at the end of his life at his resurrection.

            The early period of the Jesus movements was one of speculation about the identity and nature of Jesus. The historical matrix providing the spark that led toward the regarding of Jesus as son of God was plausibly the influx of gentiles into the gatherings of the Jesus followers.⁶ The cessation of early speculation about the nature of Jesus, which effectively weeded out other views and resulted in the dominance of the stories of Matthew/Luke, was occasioned by the early confessions of the church in the fourth century and at the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth,⁷ where Jesus was acclaimed as “very God and very man.” That declaration by the council is an uneasy solution, since it is challenged by other views reflected in the early Jesus gatherings and preserved in biblical texts. So, What is your thinking was Jesus a God-man or a man-God?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹They are not contradictory narratives but just completely different, but they both agree in the birthing process.

²See Charles W. Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions and the Language of Faith,” The Fourth R 52.1 (January-February 2019): 15-20; idem, “How Do Divine Beings Procreate,” The Fourth R 36.6 (November-December 2023): 18-19.

³Logos is a central term in classical Greek culture. Its range of meaning in English is generally covered by two different ideas: speech and reason. See the entry logos in Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed. Oxford: University Press, 1999), 882. And the discussion by Ernst Haenchen, John 1. A Commentary on the Gospel of John Chapters 1-6 (Robert W. Funk, trans. and ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 135-40.

⁴Here is the translation of John 1:1-2 in the Revised English Bible: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God’s presence, and what God was the Word was.” It is at once as much an interpretation as a translation.

⁵See Bauer-Danker, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3^rd ed. revised; Chicago: University, 2000), 196-99, taking ginomai in the sense of Bauer-Danker’s second entry rather than the fifth.

⁶Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions,” 13-20.

⁷Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions,” 17, 20.

Sidelined at the Far End

Many at the far end of things¹ likely feel much like Moses must have felt looking over into Canaan and knowing that he would not be part of the conquest of the “promised land” (Gen 32:48-52). God had effectively sidelined him from the next great adventure of his people. In our case, time has caught-up with us in the form of aging’s numerous aches and pains, or serious illnesses and, in any case, retirement many years ago from our former positions of active engagement in the world has made us no longer players but turned us into observers of the world and the momentous events of recent days (wars in the Mideast and Ukraine and Mr. Trump’s positive numbers in the recent polls), and local crises, too many to chronicle in a two-page blog.

            To the credit of the cable news networks they have enlisted as “consultants” a few of our number who are recently retired political, governmental, military, and academic figures whose opinions they consider still current in order to cast light on the events of the day. These once influential figures from the recent past are once again players in our national drama. Too many current occupants of influential positions in government and academia are reluctant to speak candidly about events that eventually affect all of us.

            Most of those who observe the passing of days from the far end are sidelined and feel powerless to influence the course of few things in their individual lives, much less matters of the state and international affairs. What is left to us is volunteering our services locally, if physically able, contributing financially what we can to causes we believe in, and responsibly voting our conscience. Many are like the proverbial figure in John 21:18, dependent on the help of care-givers. Once we ran gazelle-like through life, shared wisdom as we knew it, loved and were loved in return, wept through the years at too many funerals, and saw our homes depleted as children assumed their own places and activities in life. Some of us observe and ponder our reduced worlds from the far end, while others suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia are no longer capable of such introspective reflection, and still others because of physical anomalies and other handicaps look on from beds and wheelchairs. If you run into one of the far-end tribe, recognize that once they were movers and community shakers; and many in spite of their advanced age and infirmities still have much to contribute, which they will willingly and candidly share. At the far end duplicity is not valued.

            The Judeo-Christian tradition has left us a few cogent appreciative comments about our aged brothers and sisters.

Job 12:12: Wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days.

Psalm 92:14: [The righteous] still bring forth fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and green.

Sirach 8:9: Do not disregard the discourse of the aged, for they themselves learned from their fathers; because from them you will gain understanding.

Sirach 25:4: What an attractive thing is judgment in grey-haired men, and for the aged to possess good counsel.

Sirach 25:6: Rich experience is the crown of the aged, and their boast is the fear of the Lord.

Lev 19:32: You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man.

Of course, the biblical tradition does not give blanket approval to the aged just because they are old. Yet these comments show the tendency of the tradition to appreciate the experience of those at the far end.

Alas, there are also other observations as well:

Job 32:9: It is not the old that are wise, nor the aged that understand what is right.

Eccl 4:13: Better is a poor and wise youth, than an old and foolish king, who will no longer take advice.

On balance, it seems that the biblical tradition is realistic. Not all those at the far end have gained wisdom through their experience, but some have, and deserve to be recognized for what they still have to offer.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The “far end of things” is my expression for what I consider advanced old age. Gerontologists disagree as to when advanced old age begins. For some it is 85+, in my thinking it is 90+. Currently this percentage of the population is estimated by the Census Bureau at 4.7 percent of the U.S. population aged 65 and older. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_age#:~:text=One%20study%20distinguishes%20the%20young,old%2Dold%20(85%2B).

Separate Yourselves from Unclean things

The title of this essay is drawn from 2 Cor 6:17, where Paul encourages the Corinthian gathering to separate themselves from the “unclean things” of the world (2 Cor 6:14-18). The statement is from a quote from the Greek translation of Isaiah (52:11). One also runs across a similar idea of separation from the world in the Gospel of John attributed to Jesus. In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father:

They¹ do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world (John 17:14, 16, NRSV).

Earlier (John 8:23) in a debate with “the Judahites,” contrasting himself with them, Jesus asserts: “you are of this world; I am not of this world.”²

Paul’s statement effectively calls his followers out of the world and sets them apart from “the world.” The idea that Jesus and his followers do not belong to the world, i.e., that they are separate from the world leads them into a kind of world denial, found in ancient Cynicism³ Such an attitude has encouraged many sorts of separations from the “world” through history, from religious hermits⁴ to asceticism.⁵ It has also encouraged other forms of religious withdrawal from the world that some choose as a vocation in the modern world, such as coenobitic monasticism.⁶

            The truth of the matter, however, is that Paul, Jesus, and their disciples do belong to the world. They were “made” for the world, as all human beings are: they breathed oxygen, and their bodies required sustenance for energy and life. Their hearts circulated blood and their bodies were comprised of the same star-stuff of which our species is made (dust thou art and to dust you shall return, Gen 3:19). They voided like the other animals of the planet. They had the ability to sense objects tactically and visually. They used their brains and experienced emotions, as we all do. They even participated in the “world” to a point: attended social functions (like weddings, dinner parties, feasts, synagogues, the Judean Temple, etc.), enjoyed libations, engaged religious leaders in debate, aided the suffering, etc. Thus, to say that they were not “of the world” did not mean there was no involvement in society; it rather suggests an attitude they held about themselves and everyone else, although there is no denying the mystical implications of the statement attributed to Jesus about himself.

            The author of John uses the term “world” in different ways. For example, world can refer to the physical creation (John 1:10; 17:24; 21:25; compare 3:31). World can refer to other people who are a part of the world order (3:16), while in John 17:14, 16 world appears to comprise an oppositional spiritual realm that has a ruler (14:30; 12:31), referred to as “the evil one” (17:15). This evil empire is alien to Jesus who came “from above” (6:38; 8:23) in order to pass judgment on the ruler and his empire (9:39; 12:31) and to cast out its ruler, the prince of this world (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). In the world Jesus’ disciples are exposed to evil (17:15), but Jesus prays that they may be made holy (17:16-19).

            This kind of mythical complex seems quite different from the potentially ethical lapses that many contemporary Christians associate with negative aspects of living in the world: gambling, bar hopping, “houses of ill repute,” etc. For example, in my teen age years I was reared in the church, where I was encouraged to be “in the world,” but not to be “of the world.” What this meant practically was that I should avoid certain kinds of activities that were deemed religiously unacceptable for Christian folk, like smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages, dancing, and watching movies, etc. There are sound health reasons for avoiding some of these activities and no good reason for avoiding others. The neighborhood of the average teenager is much more dangerous today.

            The bottom line of this essay is that if one is to be a positive influence in the world, one must be part of the world. Religious people in my view should not separate themselves for religious reasons from aspects of the world to which they object. I know a man, for example, who practiced what he called a “bar ministry.” Although he himself was not a drinker of alcoholic beverages, he was there in the bar to provide a positive influence within a setting generally frowned upon by the church. According to Mark, Jesus also attended dinner parties, and was accused of being a heavy drinker.⁷

If one thinks of oneself as a follower of Jesus, one must ask oneself should there be parts of the world that are left devoid of the comforting ministry of presence in the form of followers of Jesus. Military chaplains of all faiths, for example, join the army to render spiritual comfort to soldiers in garrison, and to wounded and dying soldiers on the battlefield. To do that they must be part of the soldiers’ world.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹That is to say: those the Father gave Jesus “from the world,” i.e., his disciples (John 17:6, 12).

²John is highly suspect as a historical source; see Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 151-63. Thus, this statement attributed to Jesus may simply be a case of the author of John’s Gospel overriding history with his own brand of religious faith.

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism

⁶https://www.britannica.com/summary/monasticism

⁷One finds the accusation that Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard in the early hypothetical source Q, Luke 7:33-34 = Matt11:18-19. And there is also to consider the infamous incident in John, where the host at a wedding ran out of wine and Jesus turned water into wine for the guests, whom the chief steward accused of being drunk (John 2:1-11).

Pondering Jesus as “Fully God and Fully Human”

This statement is not from the New Testament, and as best I can tell, it is not a quotation from an early creed or council of the Christian church. It appears to be a modern adaptation of what was stated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451: that Jesus was "truly God and truly man."¹ This statement stands somewhat in tension with the early Nicene Creed (325), where it appears that Jesus was "true God of true God…of one substance with the Father." He had no beginning since "he was begotten by the Father before all the ages" and "for us men came down from the heavens, and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man."²

The Nicene creed affirms that he was originally God and later "became a person." It does not claim that he was human (in Greek, man/person is anthrōpos; human is anthrōpinos). His entry into human flesh, as described by the creed, is vastly different from human procreation or generation. If the creeds accurately describe Jesus, the only conclusion one can reach is that Jesus was not like us; that is, he was not human, at least not as we are. How many other people do you know who originated in heaven and whose birth was claimed to have been occasioned by insemination from a Holy Spirit (Matt 1:18//Luke 1:35)?

            The predecessors of the later church that created the creeds, however, were not unified in describing the origin or nature of Jesus in the late first and early second centuries.³ During this earlier period the religious marketplace brimmed with competing ideas about Jesus. One could understand Jesus simply as a human being "who was descended from David according to the flesh and appointed Son of God…" (Rom 1:3-4). In other words, he did not originate in heaven but was commonly human like us. God chose to elevate him to divinity like the Roman Senate did for the Roman Emperor:⁴ declaring that the genius (an indwelling guiding force or spirit) of the emperor deserved to be worshipped.⁵

Before the creeds in the earlier period, the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) described his career basically as a Jewish thaumaturge (worker of miracles), faith healer, and Galilean wise man. That is something very different from being God from the beginning and later becoming flesh as the Gospel of John has it. While John is similar to the synoptics, its prologue (John 1:1-18) prompts the reader to see Jesus as having a divine origin before he became enfleshed.⁶

John presents the reader with the other end of the spectrum: the belief that Jesus, as the Word was, "from the beginning," with God and "was God" (John 1:1-2). He only later "came to be in flesh" (John 1:14).  A slightly earlier description declared that although he was equal to God (Phil 2:6), he came into being in human likeness and was found in human form (Phil 2:7). He was exalted by God for his death on the cross (Phil 2:8-9). One strange idea, reflected in Paul's letters, suggests that some thought he had a special kind of flesh that was only similar to sinful flesh (Rom 8:3), such as we human beings have. His flesh would not see corruption (Acts 2:25-31/Ps 15:8-11 Septuagint, not the Hebrew).

The point I wish to make is that after the third century the view that emerged from the debates became the standard. No longer was there an opportunity to ponder Jesus with impunity. The issue was settled. If you did not share the view of the group that called themselves "orthodox," you were a "heretic" (which only means that you do not share the orthodox view).

If the pondering of the earliest followers of Jesus (as recorded in the New Testament) is your standard for determining who Jesus was, there are several options available for you to consider. A number of ideas were in the air. Here is another that I recently stumbled across: Jesus was a human being, descended from David. He became the pioneer of a certain kind of faith in God, and established that Way of faith for others to follow by being perfected through his own sufferings (Heb 2:10, 12:2).⁷ So what do you say about Jesus, and how do you explain all the other views?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/council-of-chalcedon

²The italics are mine; the source is Bettenson and Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church (3^rd ed.; Oxford, 1999), 28.

³For a survey of the diversity of views in the pre-creedal gatherings of Jesus followers, see C. W. Hedrick, "Is Belief in the Divinity of Jesus Essential to Being Christian," Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade: 2019), 221-33 and "Early Confessions and the Language of Faith," The Fourth R 32.1 (2019), 15-20.

⁴Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 223-24.

⁵E. Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (3^rd ed.; Eerdmans, 2003), 209.

⁶Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 221-24.

⁷Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 221-33 and "Early Confessions and the Language of Faith," 15-20.

Is Prayer a Conversation with God?

In 2022 I published a Blog in which I said that I had discovered that while praying:

I was aware of no audible, or inaudible, “voice” in any language in my head, other than my own; I detected no indications of a presence other than me…Prayer was a one-sided conversation, and all efforts to communicate came from my end.¹

This likely accounts for my reluctance to sign up for a 30-minute slot at a churchwide day of prayer at my local church recently. Later, I did agree to fill one of the slots and for 40-minutes I found I was still alone in my head. So, on the basis of personal experience, I must conclude that prayer is not a conversation with God; at least I have never been aware of voices responding to the thoughts in my head.

            Do conversations with God ever take place? That is to say: do any of those among us who spend time praying ever “hear” voices in their heads other than their own? Julian Jaynes, a psychologist at Princeton University, argued that the minds of our ancient ancestors worked differently than do our own today.² Before we humans developed a subjective consciousness, ancient human beings had a bicameral mind (i.e., two compartments). In their left brain they received from their right brain auditory hallucinations from their gods. Jaynes exhaustively tracked the literary evidence for the shift from bicameral mind into human consciousness to near the end of the second millennium B.C.³ The interaction, however, in the bicameral mind between the right brain and the left was not a conversation but the hallucinated divine voices from their right brain directed their subjects to certain actions.⁴ The biblical prophets of the ancient Hebrews are near the end of the shift, Jaynes argued and reflect the gradual loss of the bicameral mind, and its replacement by subjectivity over the first millennium B.C.⁵

            A conversation is defined as a talking together, a casual or informal exchange of ideas or opinions between at least two persons. In Hebrew Bible I find few instances of a conversation between God and anyone. God is always the dominant party and the exchange is anything but casual or informal. For example, in Gen 2-3 compare the “verbal” exchange between Adam and God, and that between Adam/Eve and the serpent. The exchange with God is rather formal with God as the dominant party. The exchange between Adam and Eve and the serpent is more casual, more like a conversation. This assessment holds true for the exchanges between God and Cain (Gen 4:9-15), Noah (Gen 6-8; 9:1-17) and Abraham and Sarah (Gen 18). The dominance of God in any exchange is most pronounced in the exchange between God and Job (Job 38:1-42:6). My takeaway from these passages is that God (if God there be) doesn’t casually converse but during “verbal” exchanges, God dominates and directs, similar to Jaynes’ description of the bicameral mind.

            In the New Testament literature, the situation is more complicated because there are at least four divine figures whose “spoken” words are narrated: God (Mark 1:10-11; Mark 9:17), Jesus (Acts 9:3-11), the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2), an angel (Acts10:1-7). Again, similar to Jaynes’ description of the bicameral mind.

On the other hand, in places where people are formally portrayed as praying, God (or another divine figure) is not depicted as responding verbally (for example, John 17:1-18:1; Mark 14:32-42).⁶ I would describe none of these examples of prayer as casual conversations in which an exchange of ideas and opinions takes place. The divine figure is dominant in every exchange I cited.

            The biblical examples, cited above, suggest that by definition one does not have a casual conversation with God, or any other divine figure. Divine figures are not given to casual conversation. They don’t do a lot of listening, but they are always directing, and human beings do a lot of listening, to judge from Job’s experience.

            So, what is prayer, if one were wanting to describe it from biblical models? To judge from the model prayer Jesus taught his disciples (Matt 6:9-13=Luke 11:1-4), prayer consists of several elements all cast as petitions from the human side: hallow your name; bring in your rule; grant each of us our bread for the day; forgive us our sins; do not test us. Not much casual conversation or small talk in the prayer.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, “Why Doesn’t God Speak English?” Saturday April 16, 2022. http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2022/04/why-doesnt-god-speak-english.html

²Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Break-down of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).

³Jaynes, Origin of Consciousness, 84-125. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality

⁴Jaynes, Origins of Consciousness, 75.

⁵Jaynes, Origin of Consciousness, 294.

⁶The situation in 2 Cor 12:7-10 is not a portrayal of Paul in the act of praying with God’s “voice” depicted as responding. Paul is described as relating a prior experience of prayer, but in either case God was directing.