"He who wins souls is wise." Really?

פְּֽרִי־צַ֭דִּיק עֵ֣ץ חַיִּ֑ים וְלֹקֵ֖חַ נְפָשׂ֣וֹת חָכָֽם 

~ Proverbs 11:30

"The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life;
and he that winneth souls is wise."  (KJV)

ἐκ καρποῦ δικαιοσύνης φύεται δένδρον ζωῆς
ἀφαιροῦνται δὲ ἄωροι ψυχαὶ παρανόμων
"From the fruit of righteousness grows a tree of life,
but the lives of the lawless are cut short."
(LXX)

After hearing the proverb about 'winning souls' once again, my frustration with it led me to check how it should actually be translated and what it actually means.  There's no question that it does not teach anything about evangelism.  There are multiple possible meanings and more than one way of translating most of them.  A more accurate literal translation the MT would be as follows:

(A) "The fruit of justice/righteousness is a tree of life;
(B) and he who takes/acquires lives/people is wise."

 Before discussing the second clause (B), the awkwardness of the first clause (A) should be noted.  It is strange because it seems backwards: the tree should not come from the fruit but vice versa.  I think the best way of interpreting this is to take "a tree of life" as a metaphor for 'long life,' which is a prominent throughout Proverbs as what accompanies the way of wisdom and righteousness.

Clause (B) now seems very strange.  We can take it to mean: (i) "he who takes lives" as in 'he who kills people' [cf. Ps.31:14, where we read, "they scheme together against me to take my life" (Hb. לָקַ֖חַת נַפְשִׁ֣י)]; or (ii) "he who acquires people" as if to say 'a wise man has many children.'

There is a third possible meaning, not based on the Hebrew of the MT, but based on taking the LXX variant of the second clause and assuming an alternative word for the Hebrew "wisdom" (Hb.  חָכָֽם).  Assuming a Hebrew variant underlying the LXX, the word suggested by Roland Murphy (Word Biblical Commentary) is  חָמָֽס meaning "violence."  Morphologically we see that both words share the same first consonant, het, and both share the letter mem.  Also it is possible that the scribe expected the proverb to be an instance of antithetical parallelism instead of synthetic parallelism.  This makes sense of the LXX reading although it does not prove that the LXX is in this case more reliable.  It is also worth noting that the second clause of the LXX--"but the lives of the lawless are cut short"--interprets the Hebrew's "takes lives" to mean an 'untimely end' or a 'short life.'  This fits as an appropriate contrast with how I have interpreted (A) in the Hebrew (i.e. "a tree of life" = 'long life').  But I find this way of interpreting "takes lives" as implausible.  I think this is fairly obvious.  It suggests that the translator struggled in rendering the proverb in Greek as both accurate and understandable.  As I pointed out, the Hebrew is awkward so this would not be surprising.  One wonders whether the translator felt the freedom to alter the second clause so that it would be consistently contrastive.  At this point I do not think there is sufficient reason to abandon the MT for a hypothetical reconstruction through an ancient version.

Going back to the MT, I think it is best to read (B) in the second sense of (ii) "acquires people" meaning 'having many children.'  This also fits well with the first clause's teaching of 'long life' since children are meant to be a sign of prosperity and long life and prosperity are allied themes for the righteous and the wise man throughout Proverbs.

So here's a better translation:

"The fruit of justice is a tree of life;
and he who acquires people is wise."
~ Proverbs 11:30

Prime Matter: Is Richard Creel a Modern-Day Advocate?

The theist should say not, "In the beginning was God," but, "In the beginning was God and the plenum," because neither could exist without the other.[1]

"The plenum" is the name Richard Creel has given to the "absolutely formless" and immaterial thing, so to speak, that serves as the ground for all of God's creative potential.  It is, in his words, "the repository, so to say, of those possibilities [actualizable by God]" (p.68).  Creel's motivation for positing this plenum is due to his judgment of creation ex nihilo as incoherent, since it seems to violate the principle ex nihilo nihil fit ('from nothing nothing becomes').  Unwilling to trade creation ex nihilo for creation ex Deo ('out of God'), since the latter is pantheism, he sees no other solution than to God creating "out of something other than himself" (pp.66-7).

Here are the two primary problems with Creel's unorthodox belief.  Firstly, it renders God a dependent being.  Surprisingly, Creel explicitly admits this matter-of-factly.  He emphasizes this point: that God and the plenum are mutually dependent upon one another.  For apart from the existence of the plenum God would have nothing upon which to act, which would render God impotent--being unable to exercise his power.  So then if God were to exist apart from the plenum he would not be omnipotent, but in that case God would not be God.  It is hard to see how Creel's positing of the plenum does anything to remedy this problem since the existence of the plenum would in effect be the cause of God's having the attribute of omnipotence.  In other words, God is omnipotent but not essentially omnipotent.

The second important problem with Creel's belief is the incoherency of the concept of the plenum.  For he strongly emphasizes that the plenum is both immaterial and "absolutely formless."  But anything that lacks any form whatsoever is non-existent.  Not only is it an unactual object; it cannot possibly exist, since it has no essence to speak of and is fundamentally incoherent.  How positing an immaterial, formless entity could provide passive grounds for divine activity is beyond me.

This was a real disappointment in my reading of Creel's book on impassibility because he relied on this notion to make his case for his views in some other areas.  This in addition to his only-natural-knowledge view of omniscience, made it clear that Creel was not really attempting to articulate and defend a classical position of impassibility, which was what I was hoping to read.


1.  Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 69.

God in Check: The Problem with Geach's Grand Master

A parable I have found useful is this: a chess master, without looking at the board, plays a score of opponents simultaneously; his knowledge of chess is so vastly superior to theirs that he can deal with any moves they are going to make, and he has no need to improvise or deliberate.  There is no evident contradiction in supposing that God's changeless knowledge thus governs the whole course of the world, whatever men may choose to do.  [Peter Geach, "God in Relation to the World," in Logic Matters, (Berkeley: University of California, 1972), 325.]

God is the supreme Grand Master who has everything under his control.  Some of the players are consciously helping his plan, others are trying to hinder it; whatever the finite players do, God's plan will be executed; though various lines of God's play will answer to various moves of the finite players.  God cannot be surprised or thwarted or cheated or disappointed.  God, like some grand master of chess, can carry out his plan even if he has announced it beforehand.  "On that square," says the Grand Master, "I will promote my pawn to Queen and deliver checkmate to my adversary": and it is even so.  No line of play that finite players may think of can force God to improvise: his knowledge of the game already embraces all the possible variant lines of play, theirs does not.  [Peter Geach, Providence and Evil, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 58.]

Geach's Grand Master of chess analogy is meant to convey his point that God's providential ends can be established purely on God's exhaustive knowledge of all possibilities, his 'natural knowledge.'  My interpretation and critique of Geach's analogy is based on Richard Creel's discussion of it (cf. Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 17f.).  Creel explains: "[A]nyone who holds the classical position that God knows eternally all possibilities should also hold that God can be loving in nature yet impassible in will because he can know independently of all actual situations all that he needs to know in order to make appropriate decisions relevant to every possible situation.  Hence, there is never any good reason for God to wait until after an event (or even until it is occurring) in order to decide a response to it and to will accordingly... even if he does not know eternally the choices of free agents.  His will can be indexed to possibilities rather than actualities" (pp.20-21).

What should we make of this position?  To put it in different words, we might say that Creel's position tries to offer an alternative to Molinism by not requiring middle knowledge, to open theism by not subjecting God to surprise or learning from actualities, to ET(eternal-temporal)-simultaneity or the perceptualist model of divine cognition put forward by some divine atemporalists, and even to simple foreknowledge (SFK) which rejects the atemporalist view of God and simply asserts that God knows all absolute future contingents pre-volitionally (including God's own free choice).  Creel may not have had the last position in mind, but certainly the others.

However, the Grand Master view cannot support Creel's claims--in particular, his claim that "[God] can know independently of all actual situations all that he needs to know in order to make appropriate decisions relevant to every possible situation."  Let us suppose that God knows all the different possible strategies a player could conceive of for chess.  Does this entail that God would have sufficient information to know which would be "appropriate decisions" for "every possible situation"?  It seems not.  For suppose we conceive of an actual game in play 5 moves into the game.  At this point, God would have eliminated many of the possible strategies his opponent could have been employing and thereby is narrowing in on which specific strategy he is in fact using.  Suppose now based on the opponent's fifth move God has to decide how to respond 'appropriately.'  What should God do for his sixth move?  If there are multiple strategies left that he knows the opponent could be using based on his moves so far, then how would God know what he should do in response if he doesn't yet know which specific strategy (say of 5 possible remaining strategies) the opponent is using?  Based on possibilities alone there is no way for God to know what the appropriate response should be (or put differently, which strategy God should employ in the actual situation).  It then seems at least possible that God could make some wrong move(s) by not knowing which strategy his opponent is using and thereby find himself checkmated.

I would suggest Creel should admit middle knowledge.  If God had middle knowledge in addition to natural knowledge, he would always be able to defeat his opponent because God would know the specific strategy his opponent would use and so wouldn't need to narrow it down turn by turn.  Apart from admitting middle knowledge, Creel's use of Geach's Grand Master analogy reduces to the problem of the 'cosmic gambler' of open theism.

Choosing the Foolish, Discipling the Vicious

²⁶For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.  ³⁰And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹so that, as it is written: "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

~ 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

A few months ago, when I heard this passage referred to in a sermon, it occurred to me to ask a question:

Why does God tend to choose 'the ignoble, the foolish, the weak, the low, the despised, and the nobodies'?  

It seems that there should be some purpose or advantage to this pattern, especially given the intended end result spoken of in verse 30.  Let's consider things abstractly, since I think experience is likely to mislead us from drawing general conclusions.  Consider that, in accordance with natural theology and Scripture, there are certain truths about God and reality that are attainable to a person solely in virtue of natural reason apart from divine (or special) revelation (e.g. the existence of God, certain divine attributes, the sinful condition).  Given the identifiable limitations, we know that natural reason cannot attain to knowledge of a redemptive hope, which is requisite for salvation.  But more than that, as Aquinas points out, divine revelation is needed not only to render the knowledge of salvation epistemically accessible; it is also needed to be given in such a way as to bypass the time (and other) constraints of ordinary life.  For even the truths about God that are naturally attainable are only so hypothetically--if a person could find enough time for leisure in which he could devote himself to exploring philosophical issues.  And even the small number who would have a lot of time for leisure would also need to be disciplined and intentional about the search.  Yet even those few would still be prone to error.  Hence, as Aquinas explains, divine revelation doesn't only reveal naturally inaccessible truths, but many accessible truths that would otherwise be difficult to discover naturally.

With this in mind, I thought to ask:

Why would God choose to reveal these truths primarily to the common person?

From a "worldly" perspective (cf. v.26), it would seem to make more sense that God should choose to reveal truths about God, salvation, and the world to the intellectual elites of humanity.  They're already interested and searching for answers, so wouldn't they be the most apt to understand and reflect upon revelation?  And wouldn't giving it to them help the common person more, since they could interpret it and disseminate it to the ordinary person better than anyone else?

The problem with this perspective is the assumption that there is a disconnect between truth and morality--it is this point that I think is crucial to understanding why God would tend to choose to reveal himself to 'the ignoble, foolish, weak, low, despised, and the nobody.'  In biblical wisdom literature, the wise person is also the righteous person and so the fool is also wicked.  It's clear also that Paul assumes this connection later in 1 Corinthians when he writes: "[Love] does not rejoice in injustice, but rejoices with the truth" (13:6).  It seems to me that if God were to have given revelation primarily to the intellectual elite, they would tend toward arrogance.  This point fits well with Paul's message in the passage under discussion.  And since God intends for human beings to be both morally and intellectually virtuous, it would be prudent for God not to add knowledge to the knowledgeable but to give revelation to those of low estate.  Their lowliness would generally make them more apt to receive such revelation with humility and not with arrogance, as if it were the result of personal achievement or merit.  (Of course these are generalizations and are not to be taken to apply to every individual respective to their category.)  Therefore, it would appear that God chooses the lowly in order to conform them to his image both morally and intellectually.

Some Implications to Consider

Knowledge is not the same as intellectual virtue.  Take any of the plethora of examples of a non-intellectual or poorly educated Christian who encounters an intellectual non-believer in discussion or debate--say a Christian ungraduate student faces off with his atheist philosophy professor.  Generally speaking, in such cases I think the primary problem is not that the Christian student believes false things (though this can be a problem) and that the non-Christian professor believes true things, but that the Christian cannot think critically and the professor can.  In other words, the Christian tends to lack intellectual virtue whereas the non-Christian intellectual tends to possess intellectual virtue (at least comparatively speaking).

What will remedy this problem?  

While the Church must always emphasize teaching Christians the Bible and theological truths, this by itself will not solve the problem.  The Church also needs to help Christians to develop intellectual virtue.  In fact, I would argue that the Church ought to make this one of the primary emphases in discipling Christians.

Maimonides' 3rd Commandment: Evangelism?

I have always heard that when it comes to the question of evangelism in Judaism the answer is always: "No, we Jews do not evangelize or seek to convert Gentiles."  In fact, I attended a service at a main Conservative synagogue in Toronto and after the service it was explained to us (a group of Christian students) that such a notion was foreign to Judaism.  The rabbi explained that while they happily will receive Gentiles seeking to convert, it is nowhere commanded to 'go into the world' and seek to make converts.  Thus he explained that conversion comes as a result of Gentiles seeing the example set by Jews, not by Jews going out trying to persuade Gentiles to become Jewish.

After leaving from the service, I remember talking with friends trying to figure out if such a passive way of life is consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures.  I reasoned that the consistent position would support active evangelism along with passive evangelism simply based on the Torah's commands to love God holistically and to love one's neighbour.  It made sense to me on a historical  and traditional level why Judaism developed an anti-evangelistic approach to their religious life, but such reasons could not in my view make this position consistent with Torah.

So it was to my surprise when I came across Maimonides making basically the same point as me.  Interestingly, he makes this point in his famous work, Sefer HaMitzvot, wherein he lists and exposits the 613 laws of Torah and divides them into positive and negative commandments.  (The number 613 is based on Talmudic tradition that takes the numerical value of torah in Hebrew, 611, and adds 2.  Cf. b. Makkot 23b-24a.)  The third positive commandment listed by Maimonides is "to love God" (based on Deut. 6:5).

In explaining the commandment, Maimonides regards love for God as the emotive result of the study of Torah.  Here is the logical order he gives: 1) meditation, 2) understanding, 3) feelings of enjoyment and love.  Of course I think this analysis is wrong since the text of Deuteronomy 6:4-6 does not teach that love is the natural result of obedience, but is obedience itself.  I believe Maimonides has misunderstood this because he has attempted to read the text of the Schema in accordance with his faulty reading of verse 4, which he thinks teaches the unity and simplicity of God.  Maimonides' interpretation fits with the traditional Jewish reading of verse 4 as meaning: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one."  We know that this reading was employed as an apologetic against trinitarian doctrine.  But that theological reading defies the context of Deuteronomy 6, which is concerned with exclusive devotion to the God of Israel.  Verse 4 is best translated: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone."  Hence why the following verse commands total devotion with the whole person.

While I disagree with this aspect of Maimonides' teaching on love, afterward he adds the following:

Our Sages also said that this mitzvah includes calling out to all mankind to serve G‑d (exalted be He) and to believe in Him. This is because when you love a person, for example, you praise him and call out to others to draw close to him. So too, if you truly love G‑d — through your understanding and realization of His true existence — you will certainly spread this true knowledge that you know to the ignorant and the foolish.
[We see that this mitzvah includes spreading love for G‑d to others from] the Sifri: "'You shall love G‑d,' i.e. make Him beloved among the creatures as your father Avraham did, as it is written, 'The souls that he made in Charan' (Gn. 12:5)."

First Post: Where to Begin?

So here I am starting up my own blog, but oddly enough I don't feel like the type to be blogging.  While I've felt compelled to start this blog because there are many things I want to write about, I've also been stuck with not knowing where to begin.  Here's my rationale behind starting this up.  I suppose there are a number of reasons I'm doing it: (1) I'm moving to Israel for two years and it's a more efficient way of keeping people updated on what's going on with me and Caitlin; (2) every once in awhile I feel the urge the write about a biblical or theological issue; (3) because sometimes I want an outlet to write about something personal rather than academic; and (4) I often think about how the Church should be reformed and I see blogging as a good medium for writing about and discussing the practicalities of some of those proposed reforms.

Also, recently I have been feeling compelled to start writing online again because of a rather disturbing experience I have had with trying to engage in correcting a Christian friend of mine over Facebook.  Obviously Facebook is not the ideal place for someone to engage in biblical correction, but certain slanderous comments were made by this individual on Facebook that prompted me to reply in the same forum (as per the biblical disciplinary principle: to publicly correct a believer who has sinned in public).  This of course was not a pleasant experience since it was a friend of mine who has been acting so proudly and disgracefully.  Yet at the same time, in writing lengthy responses it reignited a passion to write about problems that plague the Church.

As a seminary student who has now completed 6 years of full-time study, I have come to see all sorts of problems that the Church needs to address.  However, I don't want to be just another 'heresy hunter' or someone who writes only to tear down church ministries and leaders or theologies.  While I will seek to engage issues with discernment, I do not only hope to undermine what is false; I also intend to build up what is good and to propose how existing ministries or traditions can be reformed for the better.

I pray that something good will come from this and that I'm not just wasting my time or other people's time.

Soli Deo Gloria
Greg