Commentary on John 3:36

Commentary on John 3:36

Thomas Allen

    Illustrating the theological bias of translators is John 3:36. The King James version translates John 3:36 as follows:

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

In the American Standard Version, it is translated:

He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

    Most translations follow the American Standard Version and translate ho apeithōn as “disobey” or words to that effect. A minority translates it as “disbelieve” or words to that effect. These translations include:
    – the New Jerusalem Bible (refuses to believe),
    – the Anointed Standard Translation (without persuasion),
    – the St. Joseph New Catholic Edition (unbelieving),
    – the Phillips New Testament in Modern English (refuses to believe),
    – the Bible in Basic English (has not faith),
    – the New King James Version (does not believe),
    – Williams translation of the New Testament (refuses to trust),
    – the New Testament revision of the Challane-Rheims Version (is unbelieving),
    – 21st Century King James Version (believeth not),
    – BRG Bible (believeth not),
    – Common English Bible (doesn’t believe),
    – Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (believeth not),
    – Holman Christian Standard Bible (refuses to believe),
    – Modern English Version (does not believe),
    – New International Reader's Version (does not believe),
    – New Life Version (does not put his trust),
    – New Matthew Bible (does not believe),
    – New Testament for Everyone (doesn’t believe),
    – Worldwide English (New Testament) (does not believe),
    – Wycliffe Bible (is unbelieveful to),
    – Young's Literal Translation (is not believing), and
    – God’s New Covenant (refuses to put his faith)
    Both the American Standard Version and the World English Bible have a footnote stating that “disobeys” can be translated “disbelieves.”
    Robert Wilkin states that the literal translation of ho apeithōn is “he who does not obey.” He writes, “Failure to believe in Jesus was disobeying the Father who sent him.” Thus, “he who does not believe” paraphrases the intent of the word. Supporting Wilkin is a footnote in the Revised Standard Bible, which defines “disobedience” as “unbelief.” According to Wilkin, “To gain eternal life one must obey God’s command to believe in His Son.”
    In his note on John 3:36, John Wesley remarks that disobeying Jesus is a consequence of not believing in him. Apparently, a person proves his faith via his works.
    Floyd Filson states that John 3:36 is as basics as John 3:16. That is, anyone who believes in the Son as sent of God to give life to those dead in sin receives eternal life. Then, he adds that he who refuses to believe the gospel message will not believe and obey Christ and, consequently, will not have eternal life. Thus, according to Filson salivation is by faith and proven by works, i.e., faith plus works.
    “Disobey” gives a different impression than “disbelieve.” “Disbelieve” suggests that everlasting life in the Kingdom of God, which is established when Jesus returns, depends on faith and faith alone. “Disobey” suggests that everlasting life depends on faith plus works; that is, everlasting life depends not only on faith, but it also depends on works. Such works include:
    – baptism, although there is much disagreement about the proper form of baptism (immersion, pouring, or sprinkling) and the salvific effect of infant baptism;
    – absolute obedience to the teachings of Christ, i.e., doing everything that Jesus says to do; thus, how much work is enough for salvation and how many transgressions are enough to cause a loss of salvation;
    – never sinning once one is saved (which may explain why Constantine waited until he was on his deathbed before he was baptized into the Catholic Church), especially committing a sin named in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10;
    – austerity, mortification, self-whipping, not bathing, and other similar practices that were considered virtuous and pious in times past;
    – failure adequately to recruit, i.e., proselytize;
    – perseverance to death;
    – failure to keep faith in Jesus and the Kingdom of God until death;
    – membership in the correct church, sect, or denomination (as several sects claim that one cannot be saved unless he is a member of that sect, one must be a member of all of them to guarantee salvation);
    – etc.
    As for faith, what does one have to believe in, on, or about the Son to have everlasting life? Is it believing that Jesus is;
– the giver and guarantor of eternal life (if true, does this mean that the soul is not innately immortal; if the soul is innately immoral, then believing in Jesus does not give eternal life as one already has that; however, if the soul is not immortal and the unsaved are tormented in hell forever, then in whom or what does one believe to be condemned to hell):
– God incarnated (if true, almost no one, except perhaps some gnostics, were saved before the fourth century AD);
– God according to the Trinity Doctrine, i.e., Jesus is eternal God, is equal to God the Father, and is very God and very man (if true, almost no one, was saved before the middle of the fourth century AD because almost no Christians believed Trinity Doctrine of three coequal, coeternal Gods or Persons being one God or Person, which was not formulated until 381);
– a man, human, who was uniquely begotten by God the Father in the womb of the Virgin Mary and only his Father is God (if true, only a few “Christians” have been saved since 400 AD);
– the Messiah, Christ, and the only begotten Son of God;
– sent by God the Father and that only the Father is God;
– sent by God to take away man’s sins and to give life to those dead in sin with his sacrificial death and resurrection;
– going to return to earth and establish his kingdom and that he meant what he said and did when he was here;
– etc.?
    Obviously, those who believe in salvation by faith and faith alone prefer translating ho apeithōn  as “disbelieve.” On the other hand, those who believe that salvation depends not only on faith but also on some kind or level of works prefer it translated as “disobey.”
    If for no other reason than parallelism, “disbelieve” is a better translation than “disobey.” In the second part of the sentence, “disbelieve” parallels with “believe” in the first part. “Disobey” does not.

References
Filson, Floyd V. The Gospel According to John. Editor Balmer H. Kelly. The Layman’s Bible Commentary. Volume 19. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1970.

Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. Reprint, London, England: The Epworth Press, 1948.

Wilkin, Robert N. “John.” The Grace New Testament Commentary. Editor Robert N. Wilkin. Vol.  1. Denton, Texas: Grace Evangelical Society, 2010.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on religion.

A Letter: The War Has Not Finished

A Letter: The War Has Not Finished

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1989 responding to an article by Mr. Murray about an article that he wrote for Civil War Times Illustrated.]

        Mr. Murray’s article “The War We Never Finished” is interesting. However, I do disagree with some of his statements and his advocacy of genocide. There are also many omissions and errors in his article.
        He asserts that “the fundamental reason behind secession and the establishment of the Confederacy was the desire to keep the South a white man’s country through the perpetuation of Negro slavery.” If true, slavery was much better protected within the Union than without in spite of the Republican platform.
        With the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and, more important, the Dread Scott decision in 1857, Southerners had won their right to settle in the territories with their slaves. Outside the Union, Southerners would not have this right. The importation of slaves into the United States was illegal. If, as often claimed, slavery needed to expand into the territories to survive, then secession would have destroyed slavery without a war.
        If the Southern States remained in the Union, the United States government would have apprehended runaway slaves and returned them to their owners. The most efficient and effective fugitive slave laws in the history of the United States were enforced on the eve of secession. If the Southern States were an independent country, slaveholders would lack this guarantee. That the United States would enter into a treaty with the Confederacy to return runaway slaves was doubtful.
        Ulrich Phillips describes the fire-eaters, the advocates of Southern independence, as guided by “the conviction, false or true, that an overpowering North was going to use federal authority sooner or later to impose Northern will for the promotion of Northern advantage and the indulgence of Northern impulse, mulcting the South financially and destroying the Southern industrial and social order quite regardless of local consequences.” Hence, the avant-garde of secession were guided as much, if not more, by economic and political reasons as social reasons. This assertion is from a person who averred that the force keeping slavery alive in the South was a desire to protect white civilization and culture.
        The main threat of the Republican Party to slavery was its opposition to slavery in the territories, which was contrary to the Supreme Court's ruling. Anyway, Southerners gave up this right when they seceded. That platform (the platform of the Republican Party) acknowledged the right of each State to control its own domestic institutions.
        The Republican Party’s position had little to do with an abhorrence of slavery and nothing to do with egalitarianism. It had everything to do with the North’s version of white supremacy. Northerners, as well as many Southerners, who moved to the territories, were opposed to slavery in the territories because slavery meant blacks, and they did not want blacks around.
        I have some disagreement with Mr. Murray’s assertion that slavery was the South’s solution to the race problem and the protection of white civilization. He fails even to mention the North’s solution. The North’s solution was to segregate and ostracize blacks to the very lowest rung of society. Although blacks were ostensibly free, they were not much better off than the slaves of the South. Many were materially worse off. Mr. Sidney Fisher, a Philadelphia lawyer and Maryland planter, described the plight of the black man in the North as follows:

But though the negro in the North is not a slave, he is made an outcast and a pariah. . . . He may not lay a finger on one of those three wonderful boxes, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box, . . . by which freemen defend their rights. . . . The spirit of caste drives the negro out of the churches, theatres, hotels, rail-cars, steamboats, or assigns to him, in them, a place apart. It drives him into the cellars, dens and alleys of towns, into hovels in the country; and it does all this without laws. . . .

        The solution to the race problem and the preservation of white civilization often endorsed by many Northerners and by even more Southerners before the advent of the abolitionist was repatriation. Lincoln also supported this solution. If the Confederate’s principal motivation “was the desire to keep the South a white man’s country,” then repatriation would have certainly achieved that goal much more permanently and effectively than slavery.
        General Lee probably summed up the primary reason for secession when he stated, “All the South ever desired was that the Union would continue to be administered as it was originally constituted, in purity and truth.”
        President Davis offered to the Confederate Congress this explanation:

By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as majority to govern the minority. Without control, they learn to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will, and so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind that, in the inaugral address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts a maxim which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires, in all cases, that the majority shall govern. And in another memorable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between States and the United States to those which exist between the county and the State in which it is situated, and by which it was created. This is the lamentable and fundamental error in which rests the policy that has culminated in his declaration of war against these Confederate States.

        Thus, Confederates feared that Lincoln and the Republican Party were going to subvert the republican government of the United States into a democratic government and destroy the United States as a federation by corrupting them into a consolidated empire. These fears were not ill-founded because both of these evils came to pass when the South was conquered.
        While quoting an abolitionist’s vow to enforce the emancipation proclamation, Mr. Murray fails to comment on its illegality and hypocrisy. The President had no legal authority to issue such a proclamation. He proclaimed freedom to slaves in areas under the control of the Confederates while offering no freedom to slaves in the areas under the control of the Union.
        Mr. Murray also fails to inform the reader that these holy abolitionists were the founders of modern-day terrorism. Their paragon of sainthood, John Brown, is the father of modern-day terrorism.
        As for the Unionists, they exceeded all in duplicity and hypocrisy if they were fighting to preserve the Union. As soon as they fired the first shot — or historically more correct, made the firing of the first shot necessary — they destroyed the Union. As an editorial in The Daily Picayune so aptly put it:

The favorite form of expression in which these resolves are clothed is that, it is the first and highest duty “to maintain the Union.” But a Union upheld by a war, which is made necessary by the revolting of many large and powerful States from an unfriendly and oppressive Government[,] is condemned at once by the act. When armies and fleets are employed to keep a confederation of States together, it is a mockery to send them forth as messengers of union. It is for the subjugation of the minority section to the will of the majority, and every element which makes it a circle of consenting States in a harmonious Union disappears under the crushing process. To talk of war, therefore, as the means of perpetuating a Union is a mockery. It might perpetuate a Government, but that Government will cease to be a federative one, and will contain within itself essential traits of a military despotism — the retention, by superior force, of an unwilling people in political bondage, to a Government which they had unanimously risen to throw off. The Government so established, if such a monstrous thing could ever be established, would have no principles remaining in common with those which make the theory of the constitution of the present Government, a departure from which has brought on the present convulsion. A war to “maintain the Union” is simply, therefore, a war to extinguish the Union, and to maintain a Government such as was never contemplated by any of the States which compose it, and which would not be tolerated by any State now, if there were a question of creating or restoring a Government.

        H. L. Mencken, who may be accused of being an iconoclast, but who can hardly be accused of being a fire-eating unreconstructed rebel, put it more succinctly when commenting on the battle of Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address:

Think of the argument in it [the Gettysburg Address]. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination —'that government of the people, by the people, for the people,' should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to image anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States: The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country — and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.

        Mr. Mencken answers Mr. Murray’s question about what rights were Southerners denied. They were denied the right of political self-determination. They were denied the ultimate States’ right — the right to secede peacefully. The right of political self-determination and the right to secede were the primary rights and reasons for which the Upper South fought. The States of the Upper South did not secede until President Lincoln made the suppression and denial of these rights perfectly clear by calling for troops with which to invade the States of the Lower South.
        The peoples of the States of the Upper South agreed with Alexander Stephens’ statement:

Under our system of government, as I view it, there is no rightful power in the General Government to coerce a State, in case any one of them should throw herself upon her reserved rights, and resume the full exercise of her Sovereign Powers. Force may perpetuate a Union. That depends upon the contingencies of war. But such a Union would not be the Union of the Constitution. It would be nothing short of a Consolidated Despotism.

        In 1863, a French writer appropriately and descriptively wrote, “Russia and the United States proclaim the liberty of the serf and the emancipation of the slave, but in return both seek to reduce the slavery all who defend liberty and independence.”
        As a result of the War, the Constitution was nullified — or at least its underlying principles were if not its words although the Fourteenth Amendment went a long way toward nullifying its words. The Union was changed from a federation of States to a consolidated empire of provinces.
        The actions of the Unionists just prove Abbot C. Martin’s observation: “A Nazi is simply a Yankee carried to the logical conclusion.”
        Mr. Murray fails to point out that the Black Codes were modeled after New England labor codes. If blacks comprised as large a percentage of the population in the North as they did in the South, undoubtedly most Northern States would have had black codes. Except perhaps for Indiana and Illinois, which made it illegal for Negroes to enter them.
        Mr. Murray notes that the Confederates discovered that “slavery was not necessary to safeguard white supremacy.” He then proceeds to describe discrimination in the South.
        He fails to say, although he hints at it, that the Confederates learned to treat blacks as they were treated in the North — institutionalization of segregation. The difference between the North and the South is that in the North blacks were such a small minority that there was little need to legalize segregation whereas in the South because of the large numbers of blacks, it was — hence the “Jim Crow” laws.
        Perhaps the South’s imitation of the North is why it took the North eighty years to become greedy enough and hypocritical enough to condemn the South for doing exactly what the North was doing. Besides, with mass migration of blacks northward, something had to be done to protect white supremacy in the North by keeping the Negro in his place, i.e., keeping him in the South. So along came minimum wage laws and other labor laws restricting the employment of labor to price the black man out of the Northern labor market. Along came a host of “civil rights” laws, which were intended to be enforced primarily in the South and for the most part have been. Appease the black man in the South, and he will stay there, away for the white Yankee.
        These civil rights laws were written to apply only where there was segregation by statute, hence the South, and not where there was segregation by custom, hence the North. However, the South was not allowed to imitate the North this time. The South was not allowed to replace statute with custom. If the South continued to discriminate against blacks, there would be little incentive for them to remain in their place. Thus, blacks were to be forced on white Southerners as equals while segregated, except for a token here and there, from white Northerners. The only problem the North has had with this strategy is the occasional renegade judge who forgets or ignores the purpose of these laws.
        This time the egalitarians found their allies in the Northern white supremacists and greedy Southern politicians and businessmen.
        Mr. Murray seems to accept and endorse the position of the egalitarians without any critical analysis. The solution offered by the egalitarians during the War and the First Reconstruction is the same solution that they offer now during the Second Reconstruction. Their solution, the solution the Mr. Murray seems to endorse, is genocide through integration. Genocide is hardly a viable solution.
        I am aware of no place or time when two or more races were allowed, or in our case forced, to integrate that the races involved did not proceed to breed themselves out of existence. I hardly believe that breeding the black man out of existence, which is nothing less than genocide, is a solution to any “white supremacy” problem, real or perceived. Is the destruction of the black man through the genocide of integration in the name of equal rights as the egalitarians want to do any better than his destruction through the genocide of mass execution in the name of white supremacy as the egalitarians claim that the Klan wants to do? In the long run, the future that the black man faces under the egalitarians is worse than any offered by any white supremacist. The egalitarians offer him extinction through genocidal integration. At least under the white supremacist he survives, for without the black man the white supremacist would become extinct for want of anyone to be superior to.
        The only really viable solution is the one offered by Lincoln, which is geographical separation. It is the only solution that destroys racial supremacy without genocide.
        That great North Carolinian, Chub Seawell, summarized the whole egalitarian movement of the Second Reconstruction when he said, “The Ku Klux Klan comes marching down the street with a big banner saying ‘white power,’ and the media has a sort of running fit and yells ‘racism.’ Then the NAACP comes marching down the street with a big banner saying ‘black power,’ and the media calls it ‘human rights.’”
        Those who condemn the Confederate flag as being a symbol of slavery, racism, white supremacy, etc. should with more vigor and vehement condemn the Unites States flag. The United States flag flew over slavery, segregation, and white supremacy in the North before the Confederate flag did, while the Confederate flag did, and after the Confederate flag cease to in the South.
        Blacks have shown no hesitation, concern, or sensitivity about imposing, nay forcing, their company on people who do not want to associate with them. They should not be surprised at the lack of sensitivity about their feelings towards the Confederate flag. Some of those who love that flag see black hostility towards it as just another attempt to impose the black man’s will on them to deprive them of one of their few remaining liberties in the black man’s attempt to establish black supremacy. If blacks find the Confederate flag offensive, then they should avoid associating with those who display and revere the flag. But, I guess, after spending a lifetime trying to outlaw freedom of association by forcing their company on others, such an obvious solution cannot be accepted. The Confederate flag must bow to their prejudices.
        We unreconstructed Southerners keep the War alive for a number of reasons. Among the most important are as Alexander Stephens wrote, “Time changes and men often change with them, but principles never!” and as T. S. Eliot wrote, “We fought for lost causes because we knew that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successor's victory . . . we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”

Copyright © 1989, 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More Southern issues articles.

Mencken on Lame Ducks

Mencken on Lame Ducks

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the lame ducks, pages 148-154. Below is an overview of his discussion on the lame ducks; my comments are in brackets.
    Mencken considers one of the “unpleasant by-products of democracy . . . [to be the] professional politicians who, in the eternal struggle for office and its rewards, have suffered crushing defeats, and are full of rage and bitterness.”
    Under democracy, all politics resolve “into a series of dynastic questions: the objective is always the job, not the principle.” Usually, the defeated candidate “takes his failure very badly, for it leaves him stripped bare. In most cases his fellow professionals take pity on him and put him into some more or less gaudy appointive office, to preserve his livelihood and save his face.” [Hillary Clinton illustrates excellently the abjection of the defeated candidate. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for the country, no one has pitied her enough to appoint her to some office. However, no appointive position will alleviate her pain.]
    However, for some defeat is so painful that an appointed position will not assuage the pain. “This majestic victim not infrequently seeks surcease by a sort of running amok. That is to say, he turns what remains of his influence with the mob into a weapon against the nation as a whole, and becomes a chronic maker of trouble.” He discusses six examples: Clay, Calhoun, Burr, Blaine, Theodore Roosevelt, and Bryan. [Hillary Clinton is a recent example.]
    Mencken remarks that countries under “despotism escape such lamentable exhibitions of human frailty” of the unsuccessful aspirants for office under democracy. “Unsuccessful aspirants for the crown are either butchered out of hand or exiled to Paris, where tertiary lues quickly disposes of them.” Continuing, he writes, “The Crown Prince, of course, has his secret thoughts, and no doubt they are sometimes homicidal, but he is forced by etiquette to keep them to himself, and so the people are not annoyed and injured by them. He cannot go about praying publicly that the King, his father, come down with endocarditis, nor can he denounce the old gentleman as an idiot and advocate his confinement in a maison de santi.” [Nevertheless, dictators of communist countries have ordered the extermination of millions of their countrymen.] Although everyone “knows what his hopes and yearnings are, but no one has to listen to them.” However, “[u]nder democracy, they are bellowed from every stump.”

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Augustinian Trinitarianism

Augustinian Trinitarianism

Thomas Allen

    Following is a summary of Augustinian Trinitarianism as Levi Leonard Paine presents in A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism and its Outcome in the New Christology (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900). Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Paine’s book.
    Augustine significantly changed Athanasian Trinitarianism. Athanasius considered homoousios (same substance) synonymous with homoiousian (like substance). Augustine made a great distinction between the two. He also added filioque (from the Son).
    The addition of filioque to the Nicene Creed radically changed it. “It broke down its monotheism; it reduced generation and sonship to a metaphor; it turned three personal beings into one being revealing himself in tri-personal form; it changed the mediating Logos into absolute Deity” (p. 57).
    Before Augustine, homoousios “meant numerical unity in essences” (p. 62). Also, before Augustine, the Latin Fathers like the Greek Fathers, “held to a trinity of three personal beings united in a generic unity by community of essence. They held to the real subordination of the Son to the Father, distinguishing the Father, as self-existent and the first cause, from the Son as derived and dependent” (p. 62). Augustine changed this concept of the Trinity.
    The Trinitarianism that Augustine developed had little historical background. His Trinitarianism “was mostly a new creation from a new standpoint, which was drawn, not from either Greek or Latin Christian sources, but from the ideas which he had imbibed from his philosophical studies and which he applied in his own original way to the defense of what he wrongly understood to be trinitarian orthodoxy” (p. 62).
    Augustine’s philosophical views were based on New Platonism, which was Platonism heavily modified by Stoicism. New Platonism was essentially pantheistic (i.e., God is equated with the forces and laws of the universe) and monistic (i.e., only one kind of substance, a reality composed of one unitary organic whole with no independent parts). Although New Platonism was close to Stoicism in its materialism, it did retain the spiritualistic aspects of Platonism.
    During Augustine’s time, the great controversy was dualism versus monism; that is, did two substances and separate realms exist in the universe — spiritual and material — or were the two essentially the same. Holding to the ultimate differences between spiritual and matter, Platonism built “its dualistic and spiritualistic philosophy, making God the Supreme Spirit and the creator of the material world” (p. 66). On the other side, Stoicism “insisted on the ultimate unity of all existence, and thus identified God essentially with the world” (p. 66). In the controversy between dualism and monism, New Platonism fell on the monistic side. Consequently, it “substituted a doctrine of evolution from the Supreme One to the lowest forms of matter, in place of the Platonic theory of creation, thus reducing the dualism of Plato to unity, in harmony with Stoic ideas” (p. 66).
    In God’s relation to the material world universe, Platonists were transcendentalists (i.e., the spiritual and transcendent have primacy over the material and empirical). They “held that God is essentially separate from all created things, though explicitly accepting the doctrine of God’s providence and efficiency as active in the upholding and governing of the world He has made” (p. 66). Accordingly, “Platonism is theistic, regarding God as a personal Being whose substance is separated by an infinite chasm from all created or material substance” (pp. 66-67).
    On the other hand, Stoicism “made God immanent in the world” (p. 66). They reduced “Him philosophically to the central principle or force that gives life and activity to all things, thus confounding Him with all the forms of finite existence” (p. 66). Thus, Stoicism “is pantheistic, treating the universe as essentially of one essence evolved out of a spermatic principle which is its only Deity” (p. 67).
    While “Platonism holds to the supernatural, a world above nature, spiritual and eternal, . . . Stoicism is a pure doctrine of nature and natural development and knows nothing of a distinct spiritual kingdom” (p. 67). The Nicene Creed and Constantinopolitan Creed were based on Platonism.
    Augustine’s philosophical views were based on Stoicism and its kindred New Platonism. Therefore, his concept of the Trinity reflects the philosophy of the Stoicism and New Platonism.
    “Augustine’s whole philosophy starts with a monistic doctrine of unity. The world is but the expression of God. Augustine seems scarcely to admit what we call second causes or laws of nature. . . . He reduces the system of natural causation and law to a direct Divine operation” (p. 69). Under his system, miracles do not subvert the laws of nature because no such laws exist to subvert. “God’s own immediate will is the sole cause of all things” (p. 69).
    Augustine, as do most of his followers today, believed that he was a strict trinitarian and was opposing Sabellianism and Arianism. (Sabellianism claims that God is a trinity of attributes, names, functions, or manifestations instead of three coequal Gods or three independent beings; i.e., God is only one person, who reveals Himself in three manifestations, personalities, or functions. Christ is merely an attribute or function of almighty God. Arianism claims that the Logos who became Jesus was the first and noblest being created by God.)
    In explaining and expounding on the Trinity, Augustine seeks to show that “the Trinity is not three Gods but one God” (p. 70). Expressing the Trinity such that it appears to be one God, thus, retaining monotheism, instead of three Gods, tritheism, has always been an extremely difficult problem for Trinitarians. Athanasius attempted to overcome this problem with “the doctrines of generic unity of essence, and eternal generation of the Son, and procession of the Holy Spirit” (p. 71). Thus, “the Father is the alone eternal, self existent God, and that He eternally generated the Son and sent forth the Holy Spirit, so that while there are three divine beings in the Godhead, there are not three eternal self -existent Gods, since the Father is the source of being to the others who are thus dependent and subordinate, though receiving from the Father all divine attributes” (p. 71).
    Whereas Athanasius attempted to explain how three are one, Augustine attempted to explain how one is three. Beginning by treating the Trinity as a problem of faith, Augustine ended up developing it as a problem of reason. Starting with Scripture and revelation, he passed into the most speculative regions of philosophy.
    In developing his doctrine of the Trinity, he gave little attention “to previous theological systems or speculations” (p. 72). However, he thought that he was following his orthodox predecessors: Athanasius and the Nicene Fathers. Nevertheless, he left “traditional Trinitarianism and moved out along the line of his own philosophical ideas” (p. 72), which were monistic. What saved him from reaching absolute pantheism was the clear monotheism of the Bible.
    “Augustine starts from the assumption that there is but one eternal substance in the universe. This one substance is God. God then, as a being, is essentially one” (p. 72). He “held to the idea of a numerical rather than a generic unity of essence. . . . With him, essence, in the case of God, is not abstract but concrete. . . . If God is personal, his essence is personal, that is concrete” (pp. 72-73).
    “For Augustine, then, the trinitarian problem is how this one God, ‘unus Deus’ can be three or a ‘trinitas’” (p. 73), which he assumed to be a fact. Repeatedly, he declared “that one God and trinity are the same thing[,] . . . one divine Being, not three beings” (p. 73).
    Although the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three, they are not three beings. They are three “persons.” However, they are not “persons” in the normal sense of the word. They are “persons” in the sense of being three “distinctions.” They are three “modes or relations of the one essence or being of God” (p. 75). Augustine is presenting a Sabellian trinity. Unlike Sabellius, who started with the “premise of an evolution in God from unity to trinity” (p. 74), Augustine started from the premise of God being three and proceeded to one.
    The key difference between Sabellianism and Athanasianism is that Sabellianism declares that God is one Being, and Athanasianism declares that God is three Beings. “Hence Sabellianism is monistic, while Athanasianism is trinitarian” (p. 75). Thus, Augustine’s description of the Trinity is Sabellianism, a heresy that the Church had earlier condemned, and not Athanasianism.
    Augustine writes, “‘The Trinity is one God; three, but not three Gods. Three what, then? I reply: The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit’” (p. 75). He continues, “‘If you ask: “three what?” number ceases. When you have numbered, you cannot tell what you have numbered. Only in their relations to each other do they suggest number, not in their essential existence. I have no name to give the three, save the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, one Almighty, and so one beginning’” (p. 75). Thus, he exposes his monism. “The only numbering, he declares, that can apply to God is that of his essence, which is one” (p. 75). Therefore, he “did not regard the ‘three’ as real and distinct existences or individuals” (p. 75). With this, the Sabellians agree.
    “God, for Augustine, is one Being and so one Person, not three Persons. These three are unus Deus, that is, one Personal Being. The three persons so-called are merely three relative forms under which the one God is manifested in the revelation of himself to men” (p. 76). However, he did not “regarded these forms or relations as superficial or transitory” (p. 76), which separated him from the Sabellians. To him, the Trinity “is the essential mode of the Divine existence” (p. 76), with which the Athanasians agree.
    Augustine “regards trinity as an ultimate fact in God” (p. 76). So essential is this notion of the trinity that he saw “the whole universe as, in some sense, trinitarian” (p. 76). Such shows “the essentially Sabellian character of Augustine’s view” (p. 76).
    Whereas “Athanasius describes the relations which exist between three divine Beings. Augustine describes the relations or modes of existence of one Being, manifesting himself under different forms and names” (p. 77). Again, Augustine’s description is Sabellian. For Augustine, the “personal forms are three, but the personal centre, the personality itself, is one” (p. 77), which Athanasius declared to be Sabellianism.
    Furthermore, “Augustine declares that ‘when the Trinity is spoken of number fails.’ ‘Three’ is but a metaphor. Number only applies strictly to God as one. Athanasius reverses this. His position is that number applies properly rather to the Trinity. He insists on the numbering of the persons as essential to the truth against Sabellius” (p. 77). Thus, Augustine and Athanasius sharply disagree on the Trinity.
    According to Augustine, “Jehovah of the Old Testament is at the same time the one God and the Trinity” (p. 78). Moreover, “whenever God appears as a single person (Father, Son, or Holy Spirit), or when any act is performed in the person of either, the whole Trinity is concerned. Thus though the Son only was incarnate, the whole Trinity wrought the incarnation, so that the Son is made to bear a part in his own incarnation. In the same way it was the Son as Christ that died, but the Father also was actively concerned in it, — a view that is perilously close to the old Patripassianism. Everything that Christ did in the flesh, the Father did also” (pp. 78-79). (According to Patripassianism, God the Father also suffered in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.)
    Whereas Athanasius never confounded the Father or the Son with the Trinity, Augustine frequently did. Furthermore, for Athanasius,  the Trinity was always plural; for Augustine, it was singular.
    Unlike the Athanasian Trinity in which the Son is subordinated to the Father, the Augustinian Trinity has no such subordination. The elimination of subordination is a significant and great difference between the two Trinities.
    Augustine’s Trinitarianism eliminates the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit as Athanasius conceived them. “For Augustine generation did not involve any real derivation or dependence. The Son is as truly and absolutely God as the Father. God is as self-existent and eternal in the Son and Holy Spirit as in the Father. Each form or mode of the Divine Being involves the whole Divine Being. Subordination, therefore, is impossible” (p. 82) The three persons, or relations as Augustine called them, “can have no essential significance. They are not beings or essences, but only qualities of beings” (p. 82).
    According to Augustine’s doctrine, “Jesus Christ is absolute Deity, the whole of God. He is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, nay, he is in fact the whole Trinity, for God is trinity; one is three and three is one, and so absolutely that the Trinity is properly addressed as a singular being” (p. 82).
    An outcome of Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity was that it “tended to break down the Christian Athanasian doctrine of mediatorship.” An essential part of the Athanasian argument against Arius was that the redemption of man was “by a mediating being who partakes of divine as well as human nature” (p. 83). However, in “Augustine’s day the Atonement was not discussed. The doctrine of a Divine Redeemer was thrown into the background” (p. 83). Moreover, “Augustine’s view of him as essentially the absolute God led inevitably to a confusion of his mediatorial function with the other functions of the Godhead. The one God in Trinity was made the agent in the atonement as in all other divine activities” (p. 83).
    Following Augustine’s lead, Mediaeval Theology so confused Christ with God the Father that Christ ceased representing Divine mercy and intercession and came to represent Divine justice and punishment. In art, Christ’s face changed from benignant and compassionate to harsh and severe. Augustine’s Trinitarianism led to “a thinly-disguised Patripassianism and Monophysitism” (p. 84). — Christ became the God-man.  (Monophysitism claims that Christ has a single inseparable nature that is at once divine and human rather than having two distinct but unified natures.) God Himself was the Redeemer, not another mediating being. Thus, the mediator and God were confounded together. God descended to Mary’s womb; He endured weariness, hunger, and death. The Creator of man redeemed man with His own blood. Such a description is Patripassians and monistic. Consequently, the whole notion of a mediator, the Messiah, between God and man vanished “into the crude materialism of the early heretics” (p. 85).
    Also, out of the Augustinian Trinity comes the notion that “God is made to send himself, to be born, to suffer and die, and this to save men from the effects of his own wrath” (p. 85). The “God-man is both the Being to be propitiated and the Being that propitiates” (p. 85).
    Another effect of Augustine’s Trinitarianism “was to break down the monotheistic view of God. . . . [M]onotheism lies at the basis of Athanasianism. . . .  Monotheism, or theism, in the philosophical sense, holds that God is a single personal being. It emphasizes personality as the true centre and test of all spiritual substance. . . . Theism holds that God, in whose moral image we are, is such a self-conscious Being. Pantheism, on the contrary, makes self-consciousness, or personality, only a quality or accident of substance, so that there may be only one spiritual substance and yet many persons” (pp. 86-87).
    Augustine relied on the philosophy of the New Platonists to develop his Trinity. The three hypostases are “placed at the head of the New Platonic pantheon, and united by a pantheistic evolution in one eternal substance” (p. 88).
    Although Augustinian Trinitarianism retains the terminology of Athanasian Trinitarianism, the terms are given new meaning. They are “cast in pantheistic form” (p. 88). Thus, “Deity, though one essence, exists by a process of evolution in three hypostases, which have indeed a shadowy sort of personality,” (p. 88) but they are not regarded as distinct personal beings.
    However, Augustine does not “say that the one God exists in three real hypostases, which, in Christian trinitarian language, meant three individual persons” (p. 90). In any event, “his Trinitarianism is monistic. . . . His Trinity is not tripersonal, and hence must be, in spite of himself, unipersonal, unless he drops into the open pit of extreme pantheism and makes God . . . unconscious of himself or of the world that is evolved from Him” (p 91). His pantheistic philosophy makes “the one only true God and the Trinity . . . absolutely the same. This is not monotheism; it is a pantheistic monism” (p. 92).
    Augustine’s great difficulty “was that he did not know what to do with the problem of personality” (p. 92). He bounced between theism and pantheism. This led to the amazing assumption “that in God essence and person are not coincident, so that God may be and is one Being and yet three real persons” (p. 92).
    Another effect of Augustinian Trinitarianism is that it changed “the Athanasian homoousianism from generic to numerical unity of essence” (p. 92).  Augustine changed the Nicene Creed from “three personal beings metaphysically united in a Platonic universal into one being manifested under three modes of personal existence” (p. 92). As a result, he inverted the Trinity. “Its apex became its base. Trinity became unity. Trinitarianism became tri-unitarianism” (p. 92). By that, he changed God into one Being of three persons. Although Augustine refused to come to this logical conclusion, his followers did. Thus, God became “numerically one in essence, yet is three in personal agency; therefore essence and person in God are not coincident” (p. 93).
    The Athanasian Creed was derived from Augustinian Trinitarianism. One clause reads, “We worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.” “This language assumes that the substance or Being is one, while the persons are three” (p. 93). However, like Augustine, it plays on the term “person.” It declares that God is one personal being. Also, it states, “There are not three Gods, but one God.” Thus, the Athanasian Creed is nothing more than concealed Sabellianism. “[I]ts Sabellianism is veiled under the assumption that God may be one Being and yet be three persons, but its real position is that God is one Being, whatever explanation be given of the three persons. Thus its Trinitarianism is only a disguise” (p. 93). Accordingly, Augustinian Trinitarianism gave “a monistic and pantheistic direction to trinitarian dogma” (p. 94).
    Besides his doctrine of the Trinity, “his doctrines of original sin, irresistible grace, the sacraments, and the physical punishments and sufferings of lost souls” (p. 69) also grew from his materialistic philosophy. Free will is simply voluntariness, “which itself is the result of a gracious Divine efficiency” (p. 69). His doctrine of human dependency approaches Stoic fatalism. Furthermore, man’s will has the power to do evil, but it cannot do good except with God’s aid.
    In summary, Augustinian Trinitarianism is based on Stoic, New Platonic immanence. According to the Augustinian Trinitarianism, God “is essentially one; yet He is a trinity, but not a trinity of real personal beings; the personal centre is one. The three persons, so-called, are not subsistences or individuals; they are modes of the one divine existence” (p. 81). Consequently, it is just a form of Modal Trinitarianism that is closely related to the heresy Sabellianism.
    When Trinitarians attempt to explain or expound upon the Trinity, they are at high risk of crashing into the Scylla of Sabellianism or of being swept away in the Charybdis of tritheism. Augustine crashed into the rock of Sabellianism.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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To the Front

To the Front

Thomas Allen

To the front I must go,
In the realm of death, I must live;
To the outer rim of time’s most lethal battle, I must cling;
In Flanders, I must fight and die.
To the front I go,
To be lacerated and punctured,
To bleed and die,
To hear shells roaring up into the sky,
And the agonizing crying of the dying.
I become one of the countless human moles;
I become one of the living dead with corpse-white face.
In the fields of Flanders, I am bathed with slime and mud,
With the stench of dead and dying.
Here pass I my last days in a crazy-quilt of thunder and blood,
Waiting with indifference for death of deliverance.
And when in the mud I lie dying,
My comrades, good and true,
Pass me by, saying,
“I can’t give you a hand,
You’re for the Promise Land.”
After the rats have glutted themselves with my flesh and blood,
And my remains are absorbed in the blood and mud of Flanders,
Another nameless being shall take my place,
As before him did I take another’s,
But that’s all that ever changes.
In the fields of Flanders shall I push up poppies forevermore.


From the Glory of War by Thomas Coley Allen (Franklinton, NC: TC Allen Co., 2006)
Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Coley Allen

Mencken on News Editors and Public Servants

Mencken on News Editors and Public Servants

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes news editors and public servants, pages 145-148. Below is an overview of his discussion on news editors and public servants; my comments are in brackets.
    About newspaper editors, Mencken writes, “Their very lack of sound knowledge and genuine intelligence gives them a special fitness for influencing the mob, and it is augmented by their happy obtuseness to notions of honour. Their daily toil consists in part of praising men and ideas that are obviously fraudulent, and in part of denouncing men and ideas that are respected by their betters.” The typical American editor “is, like the politician, an adept trimmer and flatterer. His job is far more to him than his self-respect.” Furthermore, “the influence of such men upon public affairs is generally evil that their weight is almost always thrown against the public man of dignity and courage — that such a public man cannot hope to be understood by them, or to get any useful support from them.” [Does this explain the old media’s opposition to President Trump?] “Thus they give their aid to the sublime democratic process of eliminating all sense and decency from public life.” [What Mencken writes about newspaper editors is true about editors in other media — especially, television.]
    Mencken continues, “Coming out of the mob, they [editors] voice the ideas of the mob. The first of those ideas is that a fraud is somehow charming and reassuring. . . . The second is that an honest and candid man is dangerous — or, perhaps more accurately, that there is no such animal.” [Again, does this explain the old media’s opposition to President Trump?]
    Then Mencken adds, “The newspaper editor who rises above this level encounters the same incredulous hostility from his fellows and his public that is encountered by the superior politician, cast into public life by accident. If he is not dismissed at once as . . . a Bolshevik, [today, he would be called a racist, homophobe, sexist, fascist, islamophobe, or all these] i.e., one harbouring an occult and unintelligible yearning to put down the Republic and pull God off His throne, he is assumed to be engaged in some nefarious scheme of personal aggrandisement.”
    Mencken remarks, “The democratic process, indeed, is furiously inimical to all honourable motives. It favours the man who is without them, and it puts heavy burdens upon the man who has them. Going further, it is even opposed to mere competence.”
    He concludes with some comments on the competent public servant. “The public servant who masters his job gains nothing thereby. His natural impatience with the incapacity and slacking of his fellows makes them his implacable enemies, and he is viewed with suspicion by the great mass of democrats.” Then he paraphrases Emile Faguet of the French Academy: “Under democracy, . . . the business of law-making becomes a series of panics — government by orgy and orgasm. And the public service becomes a mere refuge for prehensile morons — get yours, and run.”
    [Governments are criticized for waiting for a problem to occur and then reacting. However, when they try to prevent a problem before it occurs, they are also criticized. Recently, people saw this criticism in North Carolina. After adopting a law requiring people to use the restroom, locker room, and the like of their biological birth sex, one would have thought that the General Assembly had ordered a first-strike nuclear attack from the way that liberals and their lackeys in the old media reacted. The law made illegal for a man to say that he felt like a woman and then being allowed to use the women’s locker room so that he could see naked women. {Liberals preferred the General Assembly forcing business to allow men to use the women’s locker room if they claimed that they felt like a woman.} Oddly, some of the most vocal opponents of this law were those who holler rape if a man looks at a woman. Like all good politicians, the legislators succumbed to the boisterous mob led by the lowest of inferior men, i.e., entertainers and leaders of sports teams and sports associations {they must have wanted their male players to be entertained by naked women} and heavily diluted the law.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Some Christologies

Some Christologies

Thomas Allen

    Over the centuries, several explanations have been presented about the relationship of Jesus, Christ, and the Son of God. Some of these views follow.
    1. Adoptionism. According to the Adoptionists, Jesus was a full flesh and blood human, but at some point in his life, usually at his baptism, but also at his conception or resurrection, God the Father adopted Jesus as his Christ and Son. Jesus was not divine by nature. Paulianists are an example of Adoptionists.
    2. Separationism. According to the Separationists, Jesus was born as a man. However, at some point, usually at his baptism, God the Son, Christ, entered Jesus and empowered him. Thus, Christ was the God nature, and Jesus was the human nature. Just before the crucifixion, the God nature, Christ, left the human nature, Jesus. Valentinians are an example of Separationists.
    3. Docetism. According to the Docetists, Jesus was completely divine; he was God himself. Thus, Jesus was not really human; he only seemed human. Moreover, he did not really die or suffer on the cross; he only appeared to have suffered. Marcionites are an example of Docetists.
    4. Patripassianism or Modalistic Monarchianism. According to the Patripassianists, Jesus was one of the three manifestations or modes of God; the other two manifestations were the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Jesus was God himself because God is unipersonal. Jesus was the incarnation of God. For Patripassianists, God himself came to earth as Jesus Christ and suffered on the cross. Sabellians are an example of Patripassianists. Today, Oneness Pentecostals represent Patripassianism.
    5. Creationism. According to Creationists, Jesus was specially created as the Son of God and Christ before his conception — usually God’s first creation. Jesus was this preexisting being incarnated, and this preexisting being is usually thought of being to Jesus what the soul is to other men. In any event, he is not eternal and is subordinated to the Father. The Christ of the Creationists is neither deity nor human; he is a super-angelic being. Arians are an example of preexisting Creationists. Today, Jehovah’s Witnesses represent Creationism.
    6. Begottenism (for want of a better term). According to Begottenism, Jesus had only one nature: human; he was never divine or had a divine nature. He was born a man, lived as a man but without sin, died as a man, and was resurrected a man. Jesus is literally the Son of God, i.e., God is his father, who is miraculously endowed and exceedingly divinely inspired far beyond any prophet with an extremely close relationship with God. Jesus came into being when God begot him in the womb of Mary to be his Messiah. The divinity of the Son is that of the Father residing in him and acting by him. Although Jesus only has a human nature and never has a divine nature, some Begottenists believe that he was deified whereas other reject this notion. A major difference between Begottenism and Adoptionism is that Begottenists maintain that Jesus was begotten as the Messiah; he was the Messiah from conception. Most Adoptionists believe that God adopted Jesus as the Messiah after he was born. Photinians and  Socinians are examples of Begottenists. Today, Christadelphians represent Begottenism.
    7. Humanism. Jesus is just a man, a “mere” man, the son of Joseph, albeit an extraordinary man. He lived an righteous life, whose example and teachings should be followed. Apparently, he has no more of a special relationship with God that any other man. He was just another holy man like Zoroaster, Buddha, and Mohammed. Naturally, he is void of any divinity. Today, Unitarian-Universalists represent Humanism.
    Note: Both Monophysites and Dyophysites, which follow, are Nicaean Trinitarians. They believe in three Gods, yet not three Gods, but one God. As stated in the Athanasian Creed, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.”
    7. Monophysitism. According to the Monophysites, Christ, the Incarnate Word, had only one nature: either divine or a composite nature of the human and divine, i.e., Miaphysitism. Related to Monophysitism was Apollinarianism, which maintained that the divine Logos functioned as the mind of Christ, who possessed a real, imperfect human body. Today, Monophysitism as Miaphysitism survives in the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Also, Monophysitism is found in liberation theology.
    8. Dyophysitism. According to the Dyophysites, Jesus is fully human and fully God. He possesses two natures, human and divine, in one person, without confusion of substance. That is, Jesus is 100 percent human and 100 percent God united in one person without any confusion of the two natures. Dyophysitism is the doctrine of Orthodox Christianity. It is expressed in the Athanasian Creed as follows: “Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.” Closely related to the Trinitarians are the Nestorians, who also believe the Nicaean Trinitarian Creed; however, they rejected the doctrine of “Mary the Mother of God” and were thus declared heretics. Nestorians were also condemned for declaring that Jesus had two natures: divine and human. Nestorianism survives today in the Assyrian Church.
    Except for Monophysitism, Patripassianism, and some interpretations of Dyophysitism and most followers of Humanism, all of the above Christologies maintain a supreme God who is eternal, immortal, immutable, and impassible. Because Monophysites, Patripassianists, and some Dyophysites have God suffering and even dying on the cross, their God is not eternal (the eternal cannot die), immortal (although he comes back to life), immutable, or impassible (an impassible being cannot suffer). Obviously, two different Gods are being worshiped. One God is eternal, immortal, immutable, and impassible; the other is mortal, mutable, and passible.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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