" Why do people have such a fit about God calling his creation, His men, little gods? What is He going to call them but the God kind? If you as a human being have a baby you all it a human kind, if cattle (sic) has another cattle they call it cattle kind. What is God supposed to call us? Doesn't the Bible say we are created in His image?"
Joyce Meyer, from the youtube video linked below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y4eVu2oxP8
It is a deeply disturbing, even terrifying, commentary on the state of the modern church that such preachers are even granted a hearing let alone a following who hang off every word they utter.
The teaching here is of course dire blasphemy.
Separate and distinct from the motivation for such a thing, about which we can only speculate, there is the matter of twisted texts, and they are indeed twisted, which can and must be dealt with as a simple matter of scholarship
Firstly a word about "kinds." Her argument is based on this biblical category and is incomprehensible without it. In the creation account of Genesis animals are not divided into species as we do so but in a broader category of kind
(add more)
No one would dispute that if a human has a baby the product is of the human kind, nor that if a cattle breeds the results is of the cattle kind.
But did God "have us" such that we are of the God kind?
It maybe safely assumed that instead of the word have as in have a baby, the old KJV beget and its tenses, of course, may be substituted, thus Abraham begat Isaac, who begat Jacob etc
How many children did God beget?
It should come as no surprise that the answer, given that scripture interprets itself as a logical system, is itself spelled out in scripture, in no less than the most famous bible verse of all, the one the reference of which we all memorized in Sunday school as children: John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave it ONLY begotten son"
How many begotten sons?
That is right. There was only one.
Jesus Christ may be described, with extremely careful qualification, as of the God kind but he was the Only one who ever was begotten as being of the God kind
As for the rest of us if we are in his family, what are we?
The Bible speaks of the spirit of adoption. Romans 8:15, a verse the believers in little godhood have either ignored or missed, is most explicit.: "You have not received the spirit of bondage back to fear. You have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba (ie Daddy)." We are adopted children of God, not begotten, thus we are not of the god kind for there is only one God, big or little, and that is not us. Moreover being a child of God does not require being begotten such that we would be of the God kind. Adoption is all that suffices for us, the fallen sons of Adam
Meyer's case falls apart for its fails to distinguish between being on one hand a begotten son of God, of which there was only ever One, and on the other hand being an adopted child of God, which is what all christian believers are. Thus her talk of God having children of the God kind is ignorant and dangerous nonsense, based in part on a cavalier disregard for context that we come to expect from preachers of this kind
But we are made in His image are we not? Indeed we are, but this does not imply that we are of the God kind. I can draw a stick man and say that it is made by me in my image, and that because I made it and I said it was in my image. But what could it do that I can do? Well, very little. It has shape and existence, and that is all. So it is with us in the image of God. Indeed how much more is it with the image of God compared to God Himself, for though I can do somewhat more than any stick image drawn in my likeness, compared to the infinity of the Almighty that margin of difference is not much at all. We cannot do all that God does and neither is this a requirement for us to be in His image. In time past Calvinist theologians distinguished between those attributes of God that are communicable, that is to say which we share though being in his image, such as personality, mind, will; and those which are God's alone, namely all the attributes which have been prefixed "omni" - omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience.
The doctrine that we are gods seeks to fudge this distinction then tries to hide its deceit by adding a word that in fact never appears in scripture as related to god, namely "little".
No denial, and even a watering down thereof is a denial, no denial of the fact that He an He alone is infinite and transcendent can be justified by our saying as Meyer tries to say, that we are only "little" gods. We are no gods at all.
where did the doctrine come from then? What scriptures said something that the ignorant and unstable would be likely to misconstrue and twist into arrogating godhood to themselves, as indeed thy have?
Psalm 82:6 : "You are gods and all of you are children of the most high"
Notes to self follow. To be completed . . .
Isaiah 41:23
John 10:34
the verb to be as ontic identity
as protestants we do hold that some uses of the verb to be in the bible are metaphoric, do we not? This is my body after all does not justifiy the repugnant practice of cannibalism
little gods, jesus; quote and the original OT source
Joyce Meyer, from the youtube video linked below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y4eVu2oxP8
It is a deeply disturbing, even terrifying, commentary on the state of the modern church that such preachers are even granted a hearing let alone a following who hang off every word they utter.
The teaching here is of course dire blasphemy.
Separate and distinct from the motivation for such a thing, about which we can only speculate, there is the matter of twisted texts, and they are indeed twisted, which can and must be dealt with as a simple matter of scholarship
Firstly a word about "kinds." Her argument is based on this biblical category and is incomprehensible without it. In the creation account of Genesis animals are not divided into species as we do so but in a broader category of kind
(add more)
No one would dispute that if a human has a baby the product is of the human kind, nor that if a cattle breeds the results is of the cattle kind.
But did God "have us" such that we are of the God kind?
It maybe safely assumed that instead of the word have as in have a baby, the old KJV beget and its tenses, of course, may be substituted, thus Abraham begat Isaac, who begat Jacob etc
How many children did God beget?
It should come as no surprise that the answer, given that scripture interprets itself as a logical system, is itself spelled out in scripture, in no less than the most famous bible verse of all, the one the reference of which we all memorized in Sunday school as children: John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave it ONLY begotten son"
How many begotten sons?
That is right. There was only one.
Jesus Christ may be described, with extremely careful qualification, as of the God kind but he was the Only one who ever was begotten as being of the God kind
As for the rest of us if we are in his family, what are we?
The Bible speaks of the spirit of adoption. Romans 8:15, a verse the believers in little godhood have either ignored or missed, is most explicit.: "You have not received the spirit of bondage back to fear. You have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba (ie Daddy)." We are adopted children of God, not begotten, thus we are not of the god kind for there is only one God, big or little, and that is not us. Moreover being a child of God does not require being begotten such that we would be of the God kind. Adoption is all that suffices for us, the fallen sons of Adam
Meyer's case falls apart for its fails to distinguish between being on one hand a begotten son of God, of which there was only ever One, and on the other hand being an adopted child of God, which is what all christian believers are. Thus her talk of God having children of the God kind is ignorant and dangerous nonsense, based in part on a cavalier disregard for context that we come to expect from preachers of this kind
But we are made in His image are we not? Indeed we are, but this does not imply that we are of the God kind. I can draw a stick man and say that it is made by me in my image, and that because I made it and I said it was in my image. But what could it do that I can do? Well, very little. It has shape and existence, and that is all. So it is with us in the image of God. Indeed how much more is it with the image of God compared to God Himself, for though I can do somewhat more than any stick image drawn in my likeness, compared to the infinity of the Almighty that margin of difference is not much at all. We cannot do all that God does and neither is this a requirement for us to be in His image. In time past Calvinist theologians distinguished between those attributes of God that are communicable, that is to say which we share though being in his image, such as personality, mind, will; and those which are God's alone, namely all the attributes which have been prefixed "omni" - omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience.
The doctrine that we are gods seeks to fudge this distinction then tries to hide its deceit by adding a word that in fact never appears in scripture as related to god, namely "little".
No denial, and even a watering down thereof is a denial, no denial of the fact that He an He alone is infinite and transcendent can be justified by our saying as Meyer tries to say, that we are only "little" gods. We are no gods at all.
where did the doctrine come from then? What scriptures said something that the ignorant and unstable would be likely to misconstrue and twist into arrogating godhood to themselves, as indeed thy have?
Psalm 82:6 : "You are gods and all of you are children of the most high"
Notes to self follow. To be completed . . .
Isaiah 41:23
John 10:34
the verb to be as ontic identity
as protestants we do hold that some uses of the verb to be in the bible are metaphoric, do we not? This is my body after all does not justifiy the repugnant practice of cannibalism
little gods, jesus; quote and the original OT source
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