AW Guest Commentary: John D. Schroeder

Every now and then something of special importance is referenced on this site, and this is one of those times. It is linked under UCG study papers to: The Nature of God and Christ. Please see page 6, published and copyrighted by the UCG and stamped with the imprimatur of their Council of Elders, August 2005. I’m using just two points as examples of many seriously erroneous assumptions that could just as easily have been critiqued -- to bring attention to the kind of false authority that has too long found safe haven, innocently or not, in the Armstrong Churches of God. Innocent mistakes on the part of elders are too-often held sacrosanct, and there is no excuse for that.

Referencing Exodus 3:14 in their early section on The Tetragrammaton, the author states that, “The I AM THAT I AM (YHWH) became the personal name of Israel’s God.” This is misleading and flatly not true.

“I AM THAT I AM” is not the personal Name of God, nor did it become the personal name of God – nor is it spelled Y-H-V-H, which though related, is quite different from “I AM THAT I AM.”. This kind of glaring error shows up in chat rooms frequently, with its perpetrators holding forth their mistake with vehemence. Did they get it from an officially sanctioned Church of God publication?

In Exodus 3:14 God begins to explain Himself to Moses with the phrase, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh. “I will be what I will be;” or “I am who I am … the God of your forefathers.” To say “I am that I am” is God’s name contradicts his emphatic statement in verse 15 that His name would forever be Y-H-V-H. And this is not the only faux pas here; the book is loaded with them – serious, misleading errors. In the case of “I AM THAT I AM,” it would only have taken a simple examination of the Hebrew text – or a better English translation -- to understand what it means and how it relates to God’s ineffable Name.

Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh is punny, like so much of the Hebrew Bible, and indeed is built upon the verb, “to be,” as is the Name of God. But one is not the other. The wordplay will help to prepare Israel to understand God’s name in terms of traits they’ll soon be forced to trust. God will be whatever they need to get them safely out of Egypt. He is “I am; I will be” in an active, getting-the-job-done sense. And Moses will have to make sense of all this to the people.

In verse 12 the NKJV has God saying "I will certainly be...,” with “certainly” inferred. Literally, God says, “because I will be…”, or “ki ehyeh” in Hebrew. The point is that ehyeh is the first person singular of the imperfect, used here for the future tense. It literally means “I will be.” In verse 14, the “I am” that we’re so familiar with is an interpretive rendering of ehyeh, or “I will be.” Adam Clarke is good here.

Shouldn’t a true church of God at least be able to get God’s Name right?

Y-H-V-H is the third person, masculine singular, future form of the verb “to be.” Technically speaking, it means “He will be.” It can also be considered a contraction of three forms of “to be,” these being haya, hoveh, and yiyeh -- meaning “was, is, and will be,” respectively. Those three words use the letters, yod, heh and vav that spell Y-H-V-H. From this well-known phenomenon Moffatt derived Eternal, rather than “Lord” for his translation. This etymology is common knowledge in communities that teach their children the Hebrew Pentateuch from infancy forward, and is sung at the beginning of daily prayers and the end of Sabbath services every week, worldwide, in places where names of God are better known.

The United Church of God presents itself as a uniquely chosen witness of God’s Truth to the world, the most substantial of Worldwide Church of God spinoffs. Shouldn’t a true church of God at least be able to get God’s Name right? This is not a small thing, considering the priority the Name is given on the stone tablets written by God Himself.

Seemingly innocent mistakes relating to the Name of God have caused extreme grief to many who knew better than more powerful church leaders of the past. According to Neil Douglas-Klotz, in his The Hidden Gospel, page 14, “…in the years following the council at Nicaea [325CE] and the two subsequent councils at Ephesus and Chalcedon, at least one million … early ‘unitarian’ Jewish Christians were killed because of their beliefs [that God is an indivisible Unity, as His Aramaic name, Alaha, by which they knew Him, indicated].”

I am completely convinced, down to the marrow of my bones, that no one in history is more deliberately and consistently ignored than Jesus of Nazareth. And those who ignore him the most vehemently are those who do so in his name

As the Study Paper shows, indivisible Unity isn’t an absolute function of the word, echad. But taking Maimonides to task on his substitution of yachid for echad in his list of principles is a cheap shot, based upon Church of God ignorance rather than an error of Maimonides. Maimonides wasn’t Biblically illiterate, to grossly understate his genius. Nor was he a liar. He did not change or even think to change the Sh’ma. With yachid he simply provided context for echad as it is meant in the Sh’ma. There is only one God. God is neither a three-headed turtle nor a two-headed turtle. When husband and wife are one flesh, echad is used in the sense of two individuals uniting physically. Echad isn’t a word with just one meaning. When God is echad, He is an indivisible Unity. This conflicts with the Armstrong definition of God as a growing Family, but that is a matter of definitions. God, as Maimonides meant God, is the One indivisible Being who alone created and therefore preceded all subsequent things.

In eleven places in the Hebrew Scriptures God says, “I am God, and there is none else.” Now how is one to read that, if not the obvious way? Most Christians say it means a Trinity; Armstrong churches of God say it means a duality. God says it means an indivisible unity – and Jesus agreed with God and Maimonides -- who said echad is synonymous with yachid in the Sh’ma. How thick must be the skulls of people who can’t understand that? Jesus said that our Father in heaven is the ONLY true God. How does one believe Jesus if that can’t mean what it seems to mean? I am completely convinced, down to the marrow of my bones, that no one in history is more deliberately and consistently ignored than Jesus of Nazareth. And those who ignore him the most vehemently are those who do so in his name.

Today’s Christians aren’t often murdered for understanding God better than powers that be, but they should not have to be made fools for parroting the errors of their teachers – nor should they be threatened by their elders for knowing better than they – which is a far-too-often typical scenario in the Armstrong churches of God. If church members find questionable statements in their two new workbooks, please allow that they might be right.

All too well do I know that members of an august and dignified Council of Elders can fall back on an imaginary “authority of Jesus Christ” when their own authority is clearly lacking. Jesus took a different route. He stood on his own two feet and never roared on the authority of some elusive superstition that right or wrong he was somehow always right. When he caused his parents to worry unnecessarily, he went home and was subject to them. He wasn’t too proud to straighten up when called for. In his adult years his authority rested on the sure and solid ground of his personal and intimate knowledge of Torah. It wouldn’t hurt at all for elders who so quickly use his name to also follow his example – even if that requires a courageous rethinking of many cherished but wrong teachings.

Gentlemen of the UCG Council of Elders, you deserve some heat when you’re off course and pretending to know the way – which is the condition abundantly manifest in your latest approved “Study Paper.” We can only learn from people whom we consider greater than ourselves – so it behooves us to consider all human beings better than ourselves, or we cannot learn from them. Come on now. Pull up your socks. Get out of your ivory towers. Quit you like men, be strong.

John D. Schroeder