A Fair Trade Book
Title: Knowing the Secrets of God
Author: John Hagee
Author's web site (memory hog alert!): https://www.jhm.org/
Date: 2000
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 0-7852-6589-9
Length: 295 pages
Quote: “In Genesis...God has included...His plan for the human race from creation to eternity.”
I think the vainglorious-sounding title of this book was very strategically chosen. If you're open to discussion of the idea that “the Secrets of God” can be known or understood by mortals, you're probably willing to agree that “the Secrets of God” could be better described as “the prophecies Jews and Christians have believed God chose to reveal to Abraham, Moses, and the writer-prophets,” which are pretty well open "secrets" by now. But if you're totally unwilling to believe that Bible prophecies can be understood or should be taken seriously today, the title Knowing the Secrets of God is a good warning not to waste your time with this book you won't like or understand.
In this book, also, people (like me) who aren't normally willing to sit through a televised sermon could find out what this popular whole-Bible Christian preacher says. A summary is found on pages xv-xvi at the front of the book. It's too long to quote, but mostly it accords with what other whole-Bible Christian preachers have been saying for hundreds of years.
Disagreement is possible.
Earlier this year, in a bitter little blog post, Chuck Wendig complained (I'm summarizing from memory, not quoting) that “just because I'm famous, obscure bloggers who are total strangers to me want to pick fights with me.” Since “picking fights with” other writers is never my intention, I wouldn't have thought this wail referred to my interaction with Wendig, on the subject of repealing Obamacare, last winter, if Wendig hadn't snowflaked out on me on Twitter...
Er um, first of all, Chucky-child has certainly exploded into publicity, but he's not as famous as he thinks. When I stumbled upon his blog about a year ago I instantly recognized him as a talented writer, but I didn't recognize his name from any book displays and didn't know what he writes. If I'd wanted to cite a post by a famous writer, as an example of how the opposition (to whom I am still loyal) reach the conclusions they do, I would have picked someone whose name baby-boomers recognize. In my mind Wendig was an example of “Bright Young Thing who deserves publicity,” not an example of “famous.”
Second, if I wanted to “pick a fight,” I wouldn't cite someone's work as a good example of anything. I might have selectively misquoted Wendig's words without a link, or I might just have posted the kind of sneery remark I usually don't bother to type, about, e.g., someone who claims to be a grown man but is still sharing the name of the cartoon rodent trademark of America's tackiest restaurant chain. If I'd been at the peak of fifth grade form I would have written a full-length story about how the cartoon rat was squealing that subsidized insurance had saved his life, and then a hawk swooped down and ate him. I could have been mean about this; I could have dissected Wendig's story, pulled out the lines that had really worked for me, and made fun of every one of them. Because I enjoyed doing this kind of thing, and was perceived as doing it very well, in middle school, I avoid doing it as an adult. But that's how writers pick fights, Gentle Readers. When we call attention to how well viewpoints opposite to ours have been expressed, that's an act of courtesy.
Third, the reason why so many people can write books is that we're all different people with different points of view and different stories to tell. Different experiences may put us on opposite sides of a question. Sometimes those disagreements actually highlight things we believe in common—which is often the case with Bible scholars, and often the case in disagreements about Obamacare—and by kicking the idea around a bit we may even reach agreement, a synthesis. I once participated in a pre-Internet discussion of the most acrimonious topic in U.S. history (abortion), the one debate on Earth that I was convinced has only ever generated heat and never light, and over two years I saw that discussion lead to enlightenment and to a clear consensus between people who had started out on opposite sides. Thesis + antithesis eventually = synthesis.
So...I have no desire whatsoever to “pick a fight” with Hagee when I say that the first thing the book of Genesis says about God is not, precisely, that “God is a trinity.” What it says is that God has a name that is plural. The Hebrew Scriptures treat the names of God as if they were masculine and singular, but of the ones used in Genesis, one looks as if it were originally a feminine form and one is definitely a plural form. Elohe is “the divine being”; Elohim is “the divine beings.” Herbert W. Armstrong used to express this message from the book of Genesis as “God is a family.” Since age thirty I've found it easiest to understand as “God is a Spirit, beyond the genders or numbers that apply to creatures limited to physical bodies.”
The doctrine of God as a Trinity has traditionally been important in Irish Catholic lore. St. Patrick explained that God was “Three in One, and One in Three” in some way analogous to the shamrock leaf, which thus became the symbol of Ireland. And in a miracle or shared vision described in the book of Matthew, people recognized the presence of God in three things at one time: the man Jesus, a bird or “spirit descending like a dove” that alighted on Him, and the supernatural voice saying “This is My beloved Son.”
But one reason for emphasizing the Trinity is that alternative readings are possible, and some of them were distrusted by medieval priests, sometimes for unworthy reasons. The book of Proverbs tells us that when Elohim, the divine beings, created the Earth He said-in-a-masculine-singular-way “Let Us make man in Our image,” and then “in the image of God created-in-a-masculine-singular-way He him; male and female created-in-a-masculine-singular-way He them,” the aspect of God being addressed by the aspect of God speaking was God's Wisdom. Hebrew does not have, as some languages have, a balanced proportion of masculine and feminine nouns. Words that don't clearly mean a female person or animal are nearly always masculine. But Hokmah, Wisdom, is a feminine noun. Women as well as men were created in the image of God. I don't know that we mortals know enough about God to be able to debate how much that implies for us, but there were some obviously selfish and venal reasons for suppressing any mention of Wisdom as a fourth aspect or “person” of God.
And, depending on how scholars parse some texts, there may be others besides Wisdom...we don't know what it all means. God is not limited. Christians celebrate the occasion on which God seemed to manifest in three forms with the notion of God as a Trinity, but it behooves us to remember that what the Bible does tell us about God is that God can do anything. God could have manifested in three hundred forms if God had so chosen. And if those forms could include a silly pigeon, or (as in the book of Exodus) a cloud, they could include any number of other things that might not even be recognizable by human eyes.
This is the first of several details on which other whole-Bible Christians differ with Hagee. How important are the details?
What the Bible writers predict happening before the Second Coming is an apostasis, an “away-from-standing.” If apostasis in this context means that Christians will be “raptured” all the way out of the physical world, then the meaning of this word changed a great deal in the Middle Ages. What apostasy means in English is, and has always been, that Christians will separate themselves—from the church, or from the faith. “Julian the Apostate” does not mean “Julian, who was carried up to Heaven,” but “Julian, who renounced Christianity and went back to ancestor-worship.”
So what are we being told will happen? I'm not sure that we are being told. Sometimes, the Bible tells us, even those given “the gift of prophecy” have been led (like Jonah) to predict some disaster as “punishment” for sins; those warned have repented of their sins, and the prophesied punishment has been cancelled. Then again, someone (like David) may show himself unworthy of a promised blessing, and the reward promised him may be reduced. It may be that what happens before the Second Coming will depend on the choices of individuals who, for that reason, have been given only general moral guidance and no specifics like “If you choose A, then B will happen; if you choose C, then D.”
Even a hundred years ago people seem to have believed that it was possible to have all the right answers to this kind of unanswerable questions, and that it was important to have them. Christians could say, sincerely and not selfishly, “Don't listen to Hagee or read his book; we understand words like Elohim and apostasis in a better way, and Hagee will only confuse you.”
I say, “I have my understanding of Elohim, of apostasis, of sheol, and of some other points subject to differing interpretations, and Hagee has his, and if you study these things you may have your own. If, however, you need to be reminded that 'by God's grace we have the power to overcome temptation' (page 42), that 'Love doesn't keep score, nor does it try to manipulate the ones it cares for' (page 53), that 'God is not looking for politically correct followers' (page 122), that 'by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified' (page 155), and that 'if you're not ready to die, you're not ready to live' (page 271), then you'll find solid truth as well as debatable interpretations in Knowing the Secrets of God.”
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