ETS Report Part 2

Gods and Angels

Posted Saturday, November 26, 2005 by Charlie Trimm

There were two papers at ETS (the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society) that were especially thought provoking. They had to do with what an Elohim is, and the results were far-reaching. Besides that, the title was fun.

Elohim Have Fallen and Can't Get Up: How the Gods of the Old Testament Turned into the Angels of the Early Church - Ronn Johnson

Understanding Divine Plurality: Why the Earliest Church Applied the Title theos to both Jesus and Yahweh - Ronn Johnson

The main thesis of the papers is that elohim has three referances in the OT. Elohim can refer to a class of beings that we call spirit beings, or to the Creator God (the spirit being), or to angels (spirit beings). Or perhaps we can call the class divine beings. He sees the word used as opposed to adam (man) in Numbers 23:19, Job 33:12, Psalm 56:11, Proverbs 3:4, Ezekiel 28:9, Daniel 2:11, and Hosea 11:9. He says that the plural of Elohim does not hint at the Trinity, and as a matter of fact he sees no hint of the Trinity at all in the OT.
    The command in the Ten Commandments to not put other gods before YHWH is not an empty command. God himself speaks of other gods in Exodus 12:12, 20:3-4, 34:14, Judges 6:10, and Psalm 82:6, among other places.
    One of the ways he shows that angels are elohim is to take the texts that traditionally show a Christophany and say that they instead actually refer to an angel who is referred as an elohim, such as Genesis 32 (Jacob) and Judges 13 (Manoah). In the referance to the Jacob story in Hosea 12, the elohim is referred to as a mal'ak. Also there, when he returns, he names the place Bethel, but the verb appeared is in the plural, which means that it refers to the angels, not to God.
    But then in the time between OT and NT, people get hesitant about calling other spirit beings besides God elohim or theos, so theos is being reserved only for God. Psalm 8:6 in the LXX is a good example, which is quoted in Hebrews.
    He also gets unhappy with translating mal'akim in the OT with angel, a Greek loanword. He says that the concept of angel has not been invented yet, so we should translate the word not with angel, but with gods or spirit being or divine being.
    The second paper applies this thought to the NT and monotheism. He says that monotheism does not so much strictly refer to existence (YHWH is the only god in existence), but to who should be worshipped. "It would have been interesting, I suspect, to hear the taunt coming from one child to another on the ANE playground: 'My elohim can beat up your elohim.' The Israelite child would have been taught to say, 'But my elohim created your elohim!'" "If I were playing a round of golf with Tiger Woods, you could either say there were two golfers on the course or one golfer (and one hacker). It is a matter of comparison." "the doctrine should be stated in terms of comparison, not existence. We need to emphasize how Yahweh was presented in the OT as a unique elohim among other, real elohim." "I recommend that Trinitarian doctrine can survive without speaking of a 'oneness' between the traditional 'members of the godhead.' True, the phraseology of John 10:30 speaks of the special, unique relationship between Jesus and Yahweh. But Jesus also believed that the kind of oneness which he shared with the father was meant to be shared Christian-to-Christian.We would do better to emphasize, as Scripture does, the special relationship Jesus has with the Father, especially as prophesied in such texts as Daniel 7:13-14."
    The next topic is discussing theos and Jesus. Theos is often used with an appellative, which he says is not simply to add data but to describe which god they were talking about. Theos is also used to describe Satan (2 Cor 4:4). The result of this is that simply showing a verse that call Jesus a theos is not sufficient to prove his divinity: all it does is identify him as a divine being. In the Q & A time, he went so far as to say that God in John 1:1 should be a little g. He still defended the deity of Christ, but he found it in the rest of John 1:1-18, instead of just in John 1:1 by itself. "We are aiming too low - and not mirroring the emphasis in the NT - if we simply argue for Jesus being theos. He is, as John said, a unique theos.

So what do y'all think? I'm not convinced yet, but maybe someday I will be.

Saturday, December 03, 2005 2:04 PM

Brian wrote: Holy Ghost Hebrew?

Is he be saying that we still redefine elohim as a holy word, subject to its own linguistic rules? Some used to claim that the entire NT was written in a "holy language," allowing them freedom to interpret it as they saw fit.
Johnson's argument seems to have some weight. What other evidence should we bring to bear to determine the proper range of meaning of elohim?

Monday, December 05, 2005 10:47 PM

Charlie wrote: No, he doesn't regard it as a holy word. He brings in data from other ANE languages, like Ugaritic, and attempts to show a similar usage there. I don't have as much of a problem with his view of elohim as I do with theos. There, he does not examine any secular Greek usage, and the evidence seems a bit strained. Of course, this gets us into a debate about how much the NT language is influenced by the LXX, but it seems we should pay a little attention to secular usage.

I think that the jump between elohim and theos is a weak point and could be developed. Also, an examination of the various theophany passages in the OT could be examined in greater detail. This is the greatest proof he has, in my opinion, that an angel is called Elohim. But these are exactly the same places that traditionally we have called the angel of the LORD God, because he is called an elohim. He needs to interact with the traditional arguements for a theophany in these passage.