10 July 2023
Yesterday I tried to summarize Heiser's core claims about the Hebrew outlook behind the Scripture. If you can absorb the basic thesis, then the implications are quite large. For example, what is our part?
Heiser contends that our primary mission was to use the Creator's authority to make the rest of the Earth more like Eden. That is, God made Eden His earthly HQ. Once Adam and Eve figured out how it all worked, they were supposed to replicate that to some degree in the rest of the world. Of course, there are a whole raft of details we cannot grasp from our current fallen perspective, but this is a summary of what Heiser claims.
The Devil asserted his free will choice to appear in the Garden and seduce Eve and Adam into making a choice that would support his argument with Jehovah. Heiser believes humans were humans from the start, just not fallen. I've already said I believe we were something else entirely, at least in physical form. The difference between us is not germane at this point. What matters is that the Devil succeeded, and we were kicked out of the Garden without the authority we once held from God.
The Lord didn't give up on us, but we had placed ourselves under the Devil's lesser authority. The task for us is to somehow reclaim our former position, to get back to Eden. The Bible doesn't seem to lay down a concrete set of steps and conditions, though western Christians try to read it that way. That there is so much bitter dispute should indicate that the question is not so simple.
The theological disputes turn at least in part on the question of how much choice we have. What are the limits of our free will?
The Old Testament implies a certain range of volition. We can choose to leave the Devil and submit to Jehovah as our Lord and Master, and that is what He requires. When we get to the New Testament, there is a very distinct emphasis on submission to Christ being a matter of God's initiative. We run into the language of God granting men's souls to His family, and Paul boldly asserts that faith itself comes as a gift of grace and talks about "election".
Nowhere in Scripture do we see the language of "inviting Jesus into your heart".
What's more difficult for western minds to swallow is that the Hebrew people never thought much about it either way. For them, being born Israeli dropped them into the middle of a lot choices already made. It required climbing over significant barriers to blatantly reject the God to whom they belonged. There was plenty of room for not claiming the full heritage of faith in Him, but simply walking away was hardly plausible without a very concerted rebellion.
In their minds, there were certain basic assumptions. Jehovah had a claim on them; there was no easy way to challenge that, any more than they could change their DNA. Wandering off into idolatry was adultery, but it didn't change their basic identity. They were His property until He divorced them.
Gentiles were already granted as property to some other "deity", having chosen to be slaves of some member of the divine council. They had to be reclaimed – redeemed in some fashion – from their captive situation. It was more like slavery and less like the marriage situation of the Hebrew nation with their God. That is what's behind the Exodus story, that God didn't buy them out of slavery so much as vanquishing the Egyptian deities and taking Israel as plunder. But Israel was His by rights, so this was simply asserting His divine rights. This is part of what Paul says in Romans 9.
The issue of election is therefore more like Jehovah claiming some Gentiles as a part of His greater nation chosen before the world was made. He served more than adequate notice on such claims, so the other members of the divine council cannot object. Nobody bothers to explain whether this is some kind of individual election or whether it is aggregate in some sense beyond our grasp, but it works out that He knew you as His eternal family before you existed in reality. Thus, Gentiles coming to Christ is nothing more than coming home.
What about all those people He didn't elect? Don't they get a choice? The question makes no sense to a Hebrew mind. How would you even be aware of serving Jehovah unless He chose you first? How could you generate a desire for it? Nobody had an individual choice about such things since at least as early as the Tower of Babel. This whole issue is outside the realm of human reckoning. The only question left is whether you will be faithful to the one who claims you.
As near as I can tell, it's a human trait to feel insulted that God didn't ask you first. And perhaps that reflects something of the Devil's complaint against the Creator. How dare God not give everyone a fair shot at being His privileged children? It doesn't occur to the human mind that there is an awful lot going on that we cannot comprehend. We have an instinct to call God to account for discrimination, when we are told we cannot do that.
Except, we aren't told that. Nowhere in Scripture does it condemn discrimination and prejudice, at least regarding certain things. It wasn't considered prejudice for Israelis to kill on sight people from certain other tribes. God said in so many words that those people were unacceptable in proximity to His nation, and in the case of the Anakim, unacceptable anywhere on the earth. We want to ignore whatever it is God objected to regarding them.
Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." That refers to your fellow "tribe" in Christ. It does not refer to random folks out there in the pagan world. Your identity as a follower of Christ trumps any previous identity you had as a human. Otherwise, you still belong to some collection of competing claims from lesser beings in God's court.
The eternal end for all those children of lesser gods is never answered to the satisfaction of our human curiosity. We'll just have to wait until we come to Eternity to find out. The situation we have now is treated like a simulation, and our only consideration is how to please the One who claims us.
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