Answering the Claim that Interpreting Genesis 1:2 as a Dependent Clause is too Cumbersome in Hebrew

  

. . . there is no question that the dependent clause translation is cumbersome. However, as astonishing as it may seem, far from being an argument against the dependent clause translation, I actually believe the rareness of its syntax is [a] powerful argument in its favor. How can that be? This wordy style conforms beautifully with Genesis’ original literary context—the style in which other surrounding cultures in Mesopotamia began their creation stories.

 

The Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish likely dates as far back as the second millennium BC. Since biblical scholars widely believe that Genesis 1 was edited during or after Judah’s Babylonian captivity, it is plausible that Genesis 1’s editor(s) were familiar with it. Interestingly, tablet I, lines 1-10 opens the Babylonian account with similar complex back-dropping following a dependent clause as we have observed in Genesis 1:

 

Dependent temporal clause	When on high heaven was not named, and the earth beneath a name did not bear--
Parenthetical information	primeval Apus [fresh water] was their progenitor, life-giving Tiamat [salt water], the bearer of all; their waters together they mingled, no canebrake, yet formed, no marsh discoverable-- when of the gods none had appeared, names were not borne, destines not decided.
Main clause	the gods were given shape within them, Lahmu and Lahamu made to appear, names they bore.

 

As the Assyriologist E.A. Speiser points out, like Genesis 1:1-3, this passage begins with a dependent temporal clause and follows with 6 lines of parenthetical clauses before arriving at the main clause in lines 9-10 (Genesis: Introduction, Translation and Notes [New York: Doubleday, 1964], 12, 19). Overly complex? Or literary style?

 

There is another Akkadian creation text that scholars widely recognize as having important similarities to the Genesis creation account—Atrahasis. Like Genesis, Atrahasis has humanity created from the earth to cultivate the ground and features a description of the Great Flood. Incredibly, it too opens with a dependent clause followed by a parenthetical clause before it arrives at its main clause:

 

Dependent temporal clause	When the gods like men Bore the work and suffered the toil--
Parenthetical information	The toil of the gods was great, The work was heavy, the distress was much--
Main clause	The Seven great Anunaki [gods] were making the Igigi [lower gods] suffer the work . . .

 

Another creation story discovered in the ruined capital of the Assyrian empire called KAR 4 dates to about 800 BC. Its opening lines also take the general literary style we have been observing. Again, those who allege that Genesis 1 should not be translated as a dependent clause because its resulting parenthetical lines are awkwardly long should observe where this same structure is several times longer in this creation text:

 

Dependent temporal clause	When heaven had been separated from the earth, the distant trusty twin,
Parenthetical information	(And) the mother of the goddesses had been brought into being; when the earth had been brought forth (and) the earth had been fashioned; When the destinies of heaven and earth had been fixed; (When) trench and canal had been given (their) right courses, (And) the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates had been established
Main clause	(Then) Anu, Enlil, šamaš, (and) Ea, the great gods, (And) the Anunnaki, the great gods, Seated themselves in the exalted sanctuary and recounted among themselves what had been created.

 

. . . You may have heard before that Genesis contains a so-called “second creation account” in Genesis 2:4b-7. Incredibly, even that passage follows the general format scholars are endorsing for translating Genesis 1:1-3. That is, like Genesis 1:1-3, it opens with a dependent temporal clause followed by an extended parenthetical insertion before it reaches the main clause:

 

Dependent temporal clause	4b When the Lord God made earth and heaven--
Parenthetical information	5 Now no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet to grow, since the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no man to work the ground 6 (but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground)--
Main clause	7 The Lord God formed man from dust of the ground . . .

 

Looking at this passage, the respected Hebraist Bill T. Arnold agrees in the New Cambridge Bible Commentary, “The syntax of 2:4b-7 is not unlike that of 1:1-3” (Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 56).

 

So, the dependent clause opening of Genesis is indeed odd and cumbersome when we compare it across the syntax of the Bible as a whole, but it is typical in a generic sense when we compare it to other creation narratives from Genesis 1’s ancient Mesopotamian literary context and the “second creation account” occurring in the immediately following chapter. (Ben Stanhope, (Mis)Interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible [Scarab Press, 2020], 76-80)

 

Excerpts from Yael Shemesh, “Lies by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible”

The following are some interesting excerpts from:

 

Yael Shemesh, “Lies by Prophets and Other Lies in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 29 (2002):81-95

 

. . . one finds biblical narratives in which the narrator's attitude to the falsehoold described is undoubtedly favorable . . . Included in this category are various instances of lies intended to save the liar's life (The text of the Torah, “You shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which man shall live: I am the Lord” (Lev. 18:5; cf. Ezek. 20:11, 13, 21), inspired the following comment by the Sages of the Talmud: “by . . . which man shall live—and not die,” on which they based the principle that danger to life overrides almost all the religious precepts (BT Yoma 85b).) or altruistic lies (mainly on the part of women).

 

Thus, for example, David lies to Ahimelech (1 Sam. 21:3) and misleads King Achish of Gath (1 Sam. 21:14) in order to save his own life. Saul’s daughter Michal lies to her father’s messengers in order to save her husband David’s life (1 Sam. 19:11–16), and then lies to her father in order to escape his rage (1 Sam. 19:17). Jonathan, too, lies to his father to save his friend David’s life (1 Sam. 20:28–29), and the woman from Bahurim lies to Absalom’s servants to save David’s spies Ahimaaz and Jonathan, hidden in the well in her courtyard (2 Sam. 17:18–20). Proof that God may actually approve of such lies may be derived from His rewarding of the midwives in Egypt, who lied to Pharaoh out of compassion for the lives of the male children born to the Hebrew women (Exod. 1:15–21). A further indication to that effect is the narrator’s comment concerning Hushai’s deception of Absalom by pretending to support him: “The Lord had decreed that Ahithophel’s sound advice be nullified, in order that the Lord might bring ruin upon Absalom” (2 Sam. 17:14). A forgiving view of deception may also be discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what belongs to them by right but has been unjustly withheld.

 

A forgiving view of deception may also be discerned in cases where persons lie to secure what belongs to them by right but has been unjustly withheld. Thus, the initiative

taken by Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar, who disguises herself as a prostitute in order to become pregnant by him after his failure to marry her to his son Shelah, is described in a favorable light, and indeed justified by Judah himself in the narrative (Gen. 38:26). Tamar is rewarded for her subterfuge by the birth of the twins Perez and Zerah, through whom the tribe of Judah is established (Gen. 38:27–30). (p. 84)

 

. . . God sometimes adopts deceptive measures (Gen. 2:17; 18:13; Exod. 3:22; 1 Kgs. 22:19-23), and also instructs a genuine prophet to lie (Exod. 3:18; 1 Sam 16:2). (p. 85)

 

[On the character of God and texts that speak of his fidelity] Perhaps a partial solution to the problem would be the following observation: if God gave advance warning that, under certain circumstances, God would mislead humanity, God’s falsehood would raise fewer difficulties. One might add that divine deception, by analogy with human deception, is justified by the theological maxim, “With the pure You act in purity, and with the perverse You are wily” (2 Sam. 22:27; Ps. 18:27). That is to say, God treats human beings in accord with their own actions. (p. 86)

 

“I was presenting my petition to the king” (Jer. 38:26)

 

The protagonist of my last example is Jeremiah—a representative of classical prophecy. Unlike Abraham and  Elisha, who resort to misleading at their own initiative, and unlike Moses and Samuel, who mislead a king (Pharaoh, Saul) upon God’s instructions, Jeremiah is forced to deceive the officials on orders from King Zedekiah. After Jeremiah’s secret encounter with Zedekiah, on which occasion he tells the king in God’s name of the calamity that will befall him and Judah in general if he does not surrender to the Babylonians, Zedekiah advises the prophet that, for both their sakes, (To my mind, Zedekiah, in his last words to Jeremiah, “that you may not die,” is not threatening to put the prophet to death if he disobeys, but warning him that if the officials discover the real content of the conversation they will kill him.) should he be interrogated by the officials about the content of their conversation, he should tell them, “I was presenting my petition to the king not to send me back to the house of Jonathan to die there” (Jer. 38:24–26). And Jeremiah does indeed do “just as the king had instructed him” (v. 27). Eva Osswald, in her study of false prophets, cites this episode to support her thesis that the distinction between true and false prophets cannot be based on an ethical criterion. Even the canonical prophets, she writes, resorted at times to unethical deeds, such as Hosea’s marriage to a whore (Hos. 1:2–3) and Jeremiah’s lie to the officials. Other scholars have defended Jeremiah, justifying the deceit in one way or another. On the other hand, in the view of scholars who believe Jer. 38:14–28 to be a parallel tradition to the text of Jer. 37:17–21, Jeremiah was telling the truth, for he did indeed entreat the king not to send him back to the house of the scribe Jonathan (37:20). As Jones writes, Jeremiah’s response to the officials “has the advantage of being both convincing and true.” As to those scholars who suggest some kind of textual error and believe 38:14b–27 to be the immediate chronological sequel to 37:17–20, continuing the king’s conversation with the prophet, Jeremiah did not tell a lie, only concealing the political portion of the encounter. However, even if we accept the biblical text as it is, considering ch. 38 to be the chronological sequel to ch. 37, recounting an event other than (and later than) that described in ch. 37, Jeremiah is not, formally speaking, telling an outright lie: he is simply telling the officials what he said to the king— albeit at a previous meeting.

 

Common to all these cases is that the prophet has not uttered an outright lie, but employed a technique of telling a half-truth (Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and Jeremiah) or using ambiguity (Elisha). Formally speaking, therefore, one might say that he has not told a lie, although his intention was undoubtedly to mislead another person. (pp. 92-93)

 

Andrew Hedges on Joseph Smith's Polygamy

 

 

“POLYANDROUS” SEALINGS

 

Several of the women who were evidently sealed to Joseph Smith were already married to other men at the time of their sealing to him. Why such sealings were performed is unclear, although several possibilities suggest themselves. Some of these sealings, and perhaps most, may have come about as a result of Smith’s well-documented hesitancy to marry specific women as plural wives when he was initially commanded to do so. Several years appear to have elapsed between the time of the commandment and his decision to obey it, during which time the women he had been told to marry—who had been single at the time of the commandment—married other men. Joseph Smith evidently believed that he was still required to marry these women as plural wives in spite of their having married someone else in the interim.

 

That some of the women were married to men who were not members of the Church may have been another consideration, for according to Doctrine and Covenants 132, only faithful men and women who were sealed to faithful spouses were eligible for exaltation in the kingdom of God (see vv. 7, 13-21). Similarly, that same revelation taught that if a righteous woman was married to a man who had committed adultery, Joseph Smith would “have power, by the power of [God’s] Holy Priesthood, to take her and give her unto him that hath not committed adultery but hath been faithful” (vv. 43-44). To what extent these or other considerations were behind these so-called polyandrous sealings is largely unknown, as even fewer reliable sources are extant for these complex relationships than are available for Smith’s marriages to unmarried women (Richard L. Bushman has suggested another possibility for these marriages—that is, that they provided Joseph Smith with a way to bind or seal other families to his for the eternal benefit of both. See Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005], 437-46). No reliable sources have been located indicating that any of these marriages included conjugal relations, although it should be noted that nothing in section 132 or any of Joseph Smith’s other revelations “provides any doctrinal reason for why any authorized plural marriage could not have included such relations.”

 

It should be noted, too, that the best available evidence does not support the charge of some have made that Joseph Smith was sealed to some men’s wives after having sent them on missions. The cases of Miranda Nancy Johnson Hyde, wife of Apostle Orson Hyde, and Sarah Pratt, wife of Apostle Orson Pratt, are frequently invoked as evidenced for this charge. Orson Hyde left on a mission in April 1840 and did not return to Nauvoo until December 1842. Thomas Bullock, one of Joseph Smith’s clerks, later recorded that Marinda was sealed to Joseph as a plural wife in April 1842 which would have been several months before Hyde’s return. Marinda herself, however, who was in a much better position to know the particulars of her sealing to Joseph than Bullock was—dated the event to May 1843, several months after Hyde’s return. In Sarah Pratt’s case, it was Nauvoo dissident John C. Bennett who initially made the charge that Joseph had made advances toward her while Pratt was on a mission. Testimony from a variety of other sources, however (including witnesses who were not members of the Church), indicate that it was Sarah and Bennett, rather than Sarah and Joseph, who had been involved in a relationship during Pratt’s absence (For an annotated discussion of the issues surrounding Marinda Hyde and Sarah Pratt, see JSP, JS2:xxvi, xxx).

 

AGE, CONSENT, AND EMMA

 

Several of Joseph Smith’s plural wives were in their teens when they were sealed t him, with the youngest, Helen Mar Kimball, being fourteen years old at the time. While marriage at such an age was not common in that period, it was legal, and other examples have been found of women marrying in their mid-teens in that era. Joseph also told at least some of his plural wives—and presumably all of them—that they had the right and ability to obtain their own testimony of plural marriage before they entered into such a relationship (See Lightner, Remarks, April 14, 1905; and Lucy Walker Smith Kimball, Affidavit, 1902, in Joseph F. Smith, Affidavits about Plural Marriage, 1869-1915, CHL). Lucy Walker, for example, who was sealed to Joseph as a plural wife on May 1, 1843, reported in a sworn statement in 1902 that “[w]hen the Prophet Joseph Smith first mentioned the principle of plural marriage to me I felt indignant and so expressed myself to him, because my feelings and education were averse to anything of that nature. But he assured me that this doctrine had been revealed to him of the Lord, and that I was entitled to receive a testimony of its divine origin for myself. He counselled me to pray to the Lord, which I did, and thereupon received from him a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truthfulness and divinity of plural marriage, which testimony has abided with me ever since” (Kimball Affidavit, 1902).

 

Similarly, section 132 seems to indicate that a man’s first wife must give her consent before he can take a second wife—a requirement evidently known as the “law of Sarah” (vv. 61, 65). Although Joseph’s first wife, Emma Hale Smith, “had a difficult time accepting plural marriage,” several sources indicate that she “agreed to and even attended at least some” of these marriages, and “several people close to her and Joseph later reported that she told them or others that she knew it was a true doctrine” (JSP, J3:xix and note 27). At the same time, it is clear that on at least some occasions, Emma’s opposition to the practice resulted in Joseph’s being sealed to other women without her knowledge. This may have been done in accordance with the Lord’s instructions as given in Doctrine and Covenants 132:64-65, which teaches that if the man who holds the keys of administering plural marriage teaches his wife about the practice and she rejects it, he is “exempt from the law of Sarah” and is to “receive al things whatsoever . . . the Lord . . . will give unto him.” Such may have been the case in March 1843 when Emily and Eliza Partridge were sealed to Joseph as plural wives. That Emma was unaware of the sealings is suggested by the fact that two months later, in May 1843, she told Joseph that she would allow to be sealed to the two women as plural wives and the ceremonies were then repeated (See Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman, Affidavit, July 1, 1869, Millard County, Utah Territory, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, CHL; Emily Dow Partridge Young, Affidavit, May 1, 1869, Salt Lake County, Utah Territory, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, CHL; and Emily Dow Partridge Young, Diary and Reminiscences, February 1874—November 1883, typescript, CHL).

 

JOSEPH SMITH’S DENIALS OF PLURAL MARRIAGE

 

Joseph did not publicly teach the doctrine of plural marriage during his lifetime, choosing rather to limit its practice to a relatively few trusted associates. Even as he and these other fulfilled the Lord’s command to take plural wives, he continued to emphasize the Lord’s usual standard that “no man shall have but one wife,” and he directed Church leaders to discipline “those who were preaching teaching . . . the doctrine[s] of plurality of wives” without his consent or direction (Joseph Smith, Journal, October 5, 1843, CHL). Joseph and others involved with plural marriage consistently denied the existence of the practice, although the language they employed in doing so was sometimes evasive. Their reasons for the denials are unclear but may include the need to present a message consistent with the public doctrine of monogamy, fear of reprisal, and the fact that rumors about the practice were often so inaccurate that admitting to it would be admitting to something that, in its details, was not true (As the editors of the Joseph Smith papers note, for example, the term John C. Bennett used for plural marriage, “spiritual wifery,” was not used by those practicing plural marriage in Nauvoo. Not is there any corroborating evidence for Bennett’s description of Joseph’s plural wives as a “seraglio . . . divided into three distinct orders or degrees,” JSP, J2:xixn23). (Andrew H. Hedges, “Eternal Marriage and Plural Marriage,” in Scott C. Esplin, ed., Raising the Standard of Truth: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Early Restoration [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020], 309-22, here, pp. 314-17)

 

Mark A. Wrathall on Alma and the "One God" Controversy

  

Alma and the “one God” controversy

 

The peculiarly worded question—“Should we believe in one God?”—has a bite that is easily missed. To appreciate what is going on here, we need to pay attention to Alma’s and Amulek’s history with the phrase one God. This phrase had been at the very centre of a high-stakes theological conflict that had embroiled Alma and Amulek during their mission to the land of Ammonihah (see Alma chapters 10-14).

 

The “one God” controversy grew out of Zeezrom’s attempt (before his conversion) to trap Alma and Amulek in a theological contradiction. Zeezrom laid his snare with an apparently innocuous question:

 

Zeezrom said: “Thou sayest there is a true and living God?” And Amulek said: “Yea, there is a true and living God.” Now Zeezrom said: “Is there more than one God?” And he answered, “No.” (Alma 11;26-29)

 

As soon as Amulek confessed a monotheistic belief in one God, Zeezrom sprang his trap. He asked Amulek about the doctrine of the coming of Christ:

 

And Zeezrom said again: “Who is he that shall come? It is the Son of God?” And [Amulek] said unto him, “Yea.” . . . Now Zeezrom said unto the people: “See that ye remember these things; for he said there is but one God; yet he saith that the Son of God shall come.” (verses 32-33, 35)

 

This supposed contradiction provided the basis for charging Amulek with lying (which was a crime under Nephite law; see Alma 1:17).

 

The more part of [the people of Ammonihah] were desirous that they might destroy Alma and Amulek; . . . and they also said that Amulek had lied unto them; . . . And the people went forth and witnessed against them—testifying that [Amulek] had . . . testified that there was but one God, and that he should send his Son among the people. (Alma 14:2, 5)

 

It is obvious to the people of Ammonihah that you cannot consistently believe both that there is one God only and that God has a Son. In laying the trap, Zeezrom perhaps reasoned that Amulek’s contradiction would lead to an easy conviction for lying. After all, if someone makes two contradictory claims, at least one of them must be false. Thus, if a speaker knowingly asserts that a contradiction, that provides prima facie evidence that the speaker is lying. Of course, Amulek was not lying. For since the days of Nephi himself, the Nephite faithful had affirmed that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are “one God” (see 2 Ne. 31:21; Alma 11:44). Perhaps this doctrine was so familiar that they scarcely noticed its oxymoronic character. But it is not surprising that the people of Ammonihah saw in it a contradiction, and it is interesting to note that neither Alma nor Amulek make any effort to dispel the paradox. In any event, when the Zoramites ask whether they should believe in the “one God,” that precise phrase seems to be deliberately chosen to invoke the earlier controversy. By referring to Alma’s doctrine in this way, the Zoramites highlight the difficulties they experience in believing in one God who is three persons.

 

Once we recognize that the “one God” controversy lies behind the Zoramites’ question, we can see new depths in Alma’s response. When the Zoramites ask whether they should believe in “one God,” Alma’s immediate response is to invoke the scriptural authority of Zenos and Zenock, who both write about the Son of God. He completes the sermon by drawing an analogy between Moses’s brazen serpent and the doctrine of the coming of Christ. In the Book of Mormon tradition, a number of Israelites refused to look to Moses’s brazen serpent. Why? Well, perhaps it seemed incoherent to the Israelites that the God of the third commandment would now give them a “graven image,” let alone tell them to look to it for healing. “The reason [the Israelites] would not look,” Alma explains, “is because they did not believe that it would heal them” (Alma 31:20). But—and this is Alma’s point—whether the idea of the serpent made intellectual sense to them should have been inconsequential in the face of the fact of their healing. Similarly, the doctrine of the coming of Christ, the “one God” doctrine, may not make rational sense to the Zoramites. But worries about the incoherence will fade in importance if faith in Christ heals and redeems them. Alma’s proposed experiment is as simple as looking up at the brazen serpent: trust the doctrine of the coming of Christ and see what effects that has on your way of life. Alma’s “argument” in favor of the “one God” doctrine is: “Look and live”! (verse 19). (Mark A. Wrathall, Alma 30-63: A Brief Theological Introduction [Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University/Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2020], 75-77)

 

Further Reading

The Number of God in the Book of Abraham and Alma 11

The theology of Alma 11:44

Refuting Ron Den Boer

The Mesoamerican Theological Background of Alma 11:28-29 and other like-texts

Blake Ostler on the "oneness"/"one God" texts in the Book of Mormon

The Very "Mormon Sounding" Commentary on Tithing by R.T. Kendall

Many critics tend to bellyache over the Latter-day Saint practice of tithing. Consider the following thread from Simon Southerton (“Simon in Oz”) et al., “Tithing:  Blind obedience or mindless irresponsibility?” (they are moaning about the article by Nancy Kay Smith, “Could Tithing Ease My Worries?” which appeared in the July 2009 Ensign). On the other side of these (mainly secular) critics are Evangelical Protestants who claim that tithing is, at most, optional, and that it being a commandment within “Mormonism” is evidence of the “unbiblical” nature of Latter-day Saint practices.

 

In light of such criticisms, it was refreshing to see the following from R.T. Kendall, himself a Calvinist (and no friend to LDS theology!) write the following about tithing which sounded very “Mormon”:

 

Some Christians do not tithe because they refuse to do so. Some are convinced, others don’t want to be convinced; but at bottom is a refusal to part with what we regard as ‘ours’ . . . I know what it is to be in a temporary state of indifference to the matter of tithing. I know what it Is to be a non-tithing Christian. I know what it is to be so deep in debt that tithing seemed an utter impossibility. Shortly after my wife and I married we found ourselves plunged deep into debt. The reader would find it hard to believe how much money we owed during the first year of our marriage. I blush when I think about it. Some of the bills could not be helped, others were the consequence of imprudence on my part. At any rate, tithing was not on the agenda. I was enraged in secular work, for I was in no financial position to allow a Church to call me as a minister.

 

I came in one day from work very, very discouraged. I fell to my knees in a sense of desperation, hoping that God would give me a way of light that He would help me through. I walked into our dining room and there lay on the table a large white Bible my grandmother had given me. I picked it up and opened it. I didn’t like what I found. Not a bit. ‘Will a man rob God?’ (Mal. 3:8). I just closed the Bible and sat down to watch the TV (which I still owed for).

 

But I was perfectly miserable. I knew that eventually I would have to go back to tithing. But I postponed this for a while longer. In the meantime things went from bad to worse. Although my wife and I were both working it seemed that paying our bills was like dipping a cup into the ocean of debt. One day I made the turn. I started tithing—despite my debts. Here is how we did it. We took 10% of our gross income right off the top—making tithing the Number One Priority. (If you don’t pay your tithes that way, you will never do it!) I paid the bills with the remaining 90%. We were not out of debt in weeks but we were complexly out of debt in less than two years, and those days became among the happiest we have known.

 

I had not been tithing because I did not want to do so. One of my deacons in a former church used to say, ’If you don’t tithe, God will get it anyway.’ Not that God will get is for His work but He most certainly has a way of keeping us from enjoying the entire 100%.

 

I fear that many do not want to be convinced. They haven’t really thought it through, nor do they want to think it through. They retreat into blissful ignorance. But they are not enriched. They are impoverished. (R.T. Kendall, Tithing: A Call to Serious, Biblical Giving [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982], 22-23)

 

What if one cannot tithe? The answer is, we cannot afford not to tithe. Who can afford to rob God? Those who rob God are impoverished and they perpetuate the melancholy state of the Church in the world today. J. Wilbur Chapman cited the only case he know of in which a regular tither felt cheated in the end. A woman shared publicly with her church in a prayer meeting that God had failed her: ‘Tomorrow I am to be discharged from the job I have held for many years. I do not have money saved up. I do not know what will become of me. For many years I have given to the Lord’s cause; now, when I am old and not able to work, I face direct poverty and the shameful support of public charity. I feel that when I am laid off my job permanently tomorrow, I must tell God that He has not cared for me as He promised.’

 

Dr Chapman was invited to lunch the next day by a Christian businessman. This man told Dr Chapman how thrilled he was that his company was installing a pension plan for employees. ‘Today we put this pension plan into effect, and the first person to go on retirement pay is a member of your church, Dr Chapman.’ The church member was the woman who had complained the night before. (Ibid., 82)

 

It is not a sin to tithe when you are in debt? Shouldn’t we pay our honest debts first, then begin tithing? No, to both questions. It is a sin, a high crime, not to pay your ‘debt’ to God—the tithe. It is His. On the second question, how much money do you really think God would end up getting if every Christian waited until he or she was out of debt before they began tithing? Most Christians I know are in debt, and many are likely to be paying for a house or a car or a TV or whatever for a long time.

 

My own experience (as I related earlier) was that I was going deeper and deeper into debt until my wife and I started tithing. At that stage the 90% began to go so much further (don’t ask me to explain it—I can’t) toward paying my debts than I had been able to do with the entire 100% at the start.

 

By the way, notice that I said ‘my wife and I’. Carl Bates once said: ‘My wife and I are Storehouse Tithers.’ It is a wonderful thing when both husband and wife feel the same way about this matter. It draws them closer to each other, they even work as a team. (Ibid., 84)

 

Insights on Soteriology from Gaius Marius Victorinus’s (290-364) Commentary on Galatians

The following are taken from Stephen Andrew Cooper, Marius Victorinus' Commentary on Galatians (Oxford Early Christian Studies; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005):

Gal 3:27 and Baptismal Regeneration

 

For whosoever of you has been baptized in Christ has put on Christ (3: 27). This means you are sons of God in Christ. What is the sense of the phrase in Christ? That whosoever is baptized in Christ is now a son of God. For whosoever is baptized, is baptized into Christ; and one who has been baptized in Christ has put on Christ. For whosoever is baptized has Christ and is now in Christ, in so far as he has Christ. In so far as he has Christ, he is a son of God, because Christ is Son of God. (p. 299)

 

Gal 5:4 and True Believers Losing their Salvation

 

 

You have been evicted from Christ, you who are justified in the Law; you have been cut off from grace (5:4). For the whole power of anyone believing in Christ rests in the grace of God. Grace, however, is based not on one’s merits, but on God’s mercy. Therefore, you are not cut off from grace, if you set your justification in the Law, as seems to be the case, since you are labouring at works, since you are observing the sabbath and getting circumcised. If you believe yourselves to be justified from that, you have been cut off from grace, and you have been evicted from Christ. For if you believe that justification comes from the Law, you no longer have any hope from Christ; you are not hoping there would be grace for you in accordance with his passion and resurrection. (p. 329)

 

Evacuati estis a Christo, qui in lege iustificamini; a gratia excidistis. Omnis enim cirtus in Christum credentis in gratia est dei. Gratia autem non ex meritis, sed ex dei pietate est. Ergo iam a gratia excidistis, si in lege iustificationem vestram ponitis, ut quia operibus servitis, quia sabbatum observatis, quoniam circumcisi estis. Si exinde iustificari vos creditis, excidistis a gratia et evacuati estis a Christo. Iam enim non a Christo spem habetis neque secundum eius passionem et resurrectionem speratis gratiam vobis, si a lege iustificationem creditis advenire. (Marii Victorini Opera, Pars II: Opera Exegetica [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Editum Consilio Et Impensis Academiae Scientiarum Austricae LXXXIII, Pars 2; Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986], 159)

On ex dei pietas, Cooper noted the following:

 

ex dei pietas. Whereas pietas in classical Latin bespeaks the reverential attitude and actions of a son toward a father, of a people toward the gods, of citizens toward the state, in Christian Latin the term came to be used for God’s loving kindness toward humanity. See Cyprian’s reference to the story of the prodigal son in Ep. 35, 23: ‘how much more is that one true father good, compassionate, and merciful (pius)—or rather, is himself goodness, compassion, and mercy (pietas).’ Augustine notes in the City of God that one encounters this improper use of the word among the common people: (more . . . vulgi) to refer to works of mercy, and that this usage is to be traced to the fact that God has commanded such works (10. 1; CCSL 47, 273, 77-82). Victorinus used such language on Eph. 1:18, speaking of the pietas dei, the ‘mercy of God’ which ‘receives us in adoption’ (Gori, 22, 57). His remarks on Phil. 4:6 contain a similar usage: ‘what we would give thinks because we have obtained so great a gift by God’s mercy’ (tantum donum dei pietate; Gori, 220, 17). (Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, 329 n. 131) (cf. Can a Believer Ever Fall from the (Salvific) Love of God?)

 

Gal 5:6 and “faith working through love”

 

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but faith which works through love counts (5: 6). Everywhere Paul states that when it comes to faith, all else ceases to count. This means social status, gender, or anything done that concerns the body, whether about, on, or for the sake of the body: circumcision, works, and other practices of this sort. None of these, he says, counts as anything in Christ. Therefore, circumcision is useless, although it is not as if we count as anything in Christ on the basis of our uncircumcision. Because we have taken up faith in him, because we believe his promises, and because we ourselves rise up on the basis of his resurrection, and as we have suffered all things with him, we also rise with him—though through him—to life, our faith is sure. Through this faith comes our working for salvation; and it behooves us to take it on through the love which we have for Christ, for God, and hence toward every person. For these two have the greatest corrective effect on every life, fulfil the whole force of the Law, and contain all those things which are precepts in the Decalogue—if it follows of necessity that those who keep faith would uphold love. These two fulfil all that the law of Christ teaches. I have dealt very often with these matters: that faith liberates and love builds up. (pp. 330-31)

 

On the phrase, "Through this faith comes our working for salvation; and it behooves us to take it on," we have the following footnote:

 

per quam fidem operatio fit ad salutem et per caritatem accipere nos oportere. The object of the verb accipere (‘to take [it] on’) is unspecified. Gori (CorPat, 287) judges it to be the ‘salvation’ just mentioned, with the sense that we ‘receive salvation’ (at the judgement) through our works of love but not because of them. (This would fit Victorinus’ insistence in his comment on the previous verse that the eternal life attained is not based on works or merit, which at any rate must be understood as the presupposition behind the whole discussion.) However, the unspecified object of accipere could also be ‘our working’ (operatio), which I think renders a better sense along the lines clarified in his discussion of Phil. 2: 12–13 (KJV: ‘Therefore, he says, work out your salvation, but this very working is none the less from God. For God works in you, and works that you would will thus [sc. as in the lemma, pro bona voluntate]; and the will is ours, as it were (et velle quasi nostrum est), whence we work out salvation for ourselves. None the less, because this very will from God works in us, it happens that we have both working and will on the basis of God’s activity (fit ut ex deo et operationem et voluntatem habeamus)’ (Gori, 195, 26–31). In line with this, his point on Gal. 5: 6 is that the faith inspired by God produces love for God, Christ, and the neighbour. Thus faith and love fulfil the law of Christ, as he states in the conclusion of this comment. (Ibid., 330 n. 155; on Phil 2:12-13, see Another Refutation of Mike Thomas on Soteriology)

 

Gaius Marius Victorinus (290-364) vs. the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Commenting on Gal 1:19, Marius Victorinus wrote the following, showing he is an early Christian witness against the perpetual virginity of Mary:

 

But I saw no one else of the apostles. Because when he said he saw no one else of the apostles except James, the reason was also included why he saw James: the Lord’s brother, the one regarded as his brother according to the flesh. (Stephen Andrew Cooper, Marius Victorinus' Commentary on Galatians [Oxford Early Christian Studies; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], 266, emphasis in bold added)

 

In a footnote to the above, Stephen Andrew Cooper noted:

 

Like modern scholars, Victorinus maintains that James was Jesus’ blood brother (his comment on 2: 12 states this without ambiguity). The later Latin commentators—Ambrosiaster (CSEL 81/3, 16, 3–16), Jerome (PL 26, 330A–331A [354–55C]), Augustine (Exp. ad Gal. 8. 5; CSEL 84, 63, 5–7), Pelagius (Souter, 311, 5–8)—all deny that James could have been Mary’s son. This fits with the fact that, as David Hunter has noted, ‘the doctrines of Mary’s virginity post partum and in partu have only a fragile basis in the tradition of the first three centuries’ (‘Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late-Fourth Century Rome’, JECS 1 (1993), 47–71, 69). (Ibid. 266 n. 76)

 

This is a faithful translation of the Latin original ("fratrem domini, qui frater est habitus secundum carnem."):

(the above is taken from Marii Victorini Opera, Pars II: Opera Exegetica [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Editum Consilio Et Impensis Academiae Scientiarum Austricae LXXXIII, Pars 2; Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986], 110)

The perpetual virginity of Mary cannot be preserved if one holds to the Eastern Orthodox view (the Epiphanian view) of the brothers/sisters of Jesus, wherein they are adopted brothers/sisters from a previous marriage of Joseph, as James is said to be a biological brother of Jesus.

 

Other witnesses against the perpetual virginity of Mary include Irenaeus of Lyons, Hegesippus, and Tertullian. On this, and the biblical evidence against the perpetual virginity, see pp. 83-138 of Behold the Mother of My Lord: Towards a Mormon Mariology.