What Must You Believe?

I recently received a pamphlet outlining the meaning of the new birth.  Part of the material included a topic “Five things that must be believed in order for one to be born into the Kingdom of heaven by the Spirit of Yahuweh.”  Those five things included:

1.  The Scripture is the word of Almighty Elohim, written as set-apart people of old were moved by the Ruach ha Kodesh (the Holy Spirit) – to be studied, believed and obeyed.

2.  The Virgin Birth.  The pure, sinless blood of Yahushua came from the Father in heaven.

3.  Yahushua was, is and will ever-be the eternal, Almighty Elohim, who came in the flesh for our redemption.

4.  His substitutionary death on the stake paid the punishment required by the Father’s justice, thus justifying all who receive His payment for our sin.

5.  His resurrection gave us eternal life, sealing to us the “justification” purchased by His death.

While these statement incorporate language of the “Hebrew roots” movement, I am afraid that their substance still relies on doctrinal positions of classical Christian thought.  On closer examination, it seems to me that these typical assertions are not only not necessary, they are perhaps even not Scripturally supported.  Let’s examine these claims.

1.  Is it really necessary to believe that Scripture is the word of God?  This statement makes a lot of assumptions that are not articulated or defended.  First, we must ask what it means to “believe” this to be true.  Does this mean that I cognitively assent to the statement as a correct description of reality?  If that’s what I mean, how would I know this?  Am I in a position to assert that every statement (historical or theological) in the Bible is an accurate reflection of what it purports to say?  What do I do about the obvious redaction of many texts?  What do I do about just the examples in Matthew alone where the author deliberately manipulates references in the Tanakh to fit his agenda?  What about significant differences in the history record in Scripture itself?  Furthermore, if this statement is taken at face value, then I must ask “What Scripture?”  Is the statement about the Tanakh, the Catholic Bible, the Protestant abridged version of the Catholic Bible?  How could this statement have been true for Abraham?  Or even for Yeshua?  At the time of Yeshua’s ministry, even the canon of the Tanakh was not fixed.  What Scriptures are we really talking about?  Is canonization the equivalent of believing “Scripture is the word of God?”  If so, what do we say about all those faithful who lived before the Scriptures existed?  And finally, does this statement imply that unless I believe in the same canon that you hold as true, I cannot be in fellowship with God?

2.  The virgin birth is even more controversial.  As a doctrine of the Church, it may be essential (for reasons that hopefully are not merely theological).  But as a requirement for fellowship with YHWH, this seems entirely ridiculous.  Certainly Abraham had fellowship with YHWH, and certainly Abraham did not believe in the virgin birth.  Neither did Samuel, David, Solomon, Amos, Hosea or a host of others.  In fact, the idea does not become a part of the community of followers until after Matthew and Luke make a point of the prophecy from Isaiah.  So, if this statement means that today, since the writing of the gospels, it is necessary to believe in the virgin birth, this is merely a repetition of the first claim since the source of information concerning the virgin birth is found in Scripture.  If I am not required to believe the first claim, then I can hardly be expected to believe the second.  Now, if I want to be a faithful follower of the conservative Christian tradition, then I will have to confront this doctrinal statement.  But the point is that it certainly wasn’t necessary for fellowship with YHWH prior to Mary’s submission and so it cannot be held as essential to fellowship.  Furthermore, the claim that the “pure, sinless blood of Yahushua” comes from the virgin birth is a tangled nightmare to theological thinking.  It implies that there is something wrong with ordinary blood (that sin is transmitted by ordinary conception).  This is Augustine’s claim and is directly responsible for the idea of “sinful nature.”  Does Yeshua arrive with “sinless blood” or is His sinlessness a result of obedience?  If He enters the world with sinless blood, is He the same as us?  And does sinless blood guarantee He will be the acceptable sinless sacrifice?  Most of these ideas come right from the early Church fathers, via Plato, and lead to such interesting theological gyrations as Mary’s immaculate conception and the claim that sin is transmitted through sex.  I can find no Scriptural justification of any of this.

3.  The incarnation is clearly a central tenant of our faith.  But how precisely Yeshua is YHWH is an issue, especially for those who embrace an Hebraic worldview.  This leads us to the doctrine of the Trinity, formulated in Greek philosophical categories nearly 400 years after the last writings of the New Testament.  What is implied in this third requirement should not take us to a doctrine that would be unrecognizable by any Jew in the first century.  There is no doubt that hundreds of first century Jews believed that Yeshua was divine, but how that occurs is not clear – and the doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t make it any clearer.

4.  Substitutionary atonement is a clear concept in the Tanakh, but substitutionary atonement “on the stake” is nowhere to be found.  In fact, Leon Morris, a world-recognized Greek scholar of the New Testament, can say, “for a cross has no place in the sacrificial system, and stands only for a particularly unpleasant death.”[1]  Furthermore, even the New Testament recognizes that the substitutionary atonement took place “before the foundations of the world.”  The claim here is certainly typical of the Christian faith, but it hardly finds any justification in Hebrew thought.  In addition, we will have some difficulty with the claim that Yeshua’s death “paid the punishment required by the Father’s justice.”  I am not sure that “justice” is the right context for substitutionary atonement.  Mishpat (justice) is about the entire operation of the government of God.  Disobedience results in punishment and punishment can be meted out in many different ways.  Consequently, justice is served when restitution is made, when offerings are given, then rituals are performed, all according to the Tanakh.  Substitutionary atonement is only one of the many ways of securing restoration of fellowship.  There are clearly several other ways to deal with the broader category of sin.  Here what must be in mind is the fact that the Levitical system provides no sacrifice for deliberate sins.  Therefore, the claim is often made that Yeshua’s death covers deliberate sins.  But this leads to other problems with Scriptural claims, for example, Micah recounts God’s own words about what is required in order to restore fellowship, and there is no mention of a substitutionary death among the three things Micah reveals (cf. Micah 6:8).  Furthermore, Isaiah speaks on God’s behalf (Isaiah 40:2) claiming that iniquity is removed because the people have suffered twice over.  Again, there is no concept of substitutionary atonement present here.  The suffering of the people is the atonement.  Does the substitutionary death of Yeshua affect forgiveness?  Yes, but exactly how that is accomplished isn’t quite so clear.  The claim that it is the only way forgiveness is accomplished seems to ignore a significant portion of Scripture.

5.  Since we have raised some question about the claim above (number 4), this claim follows the same line of inquiry.  Are we really certain that His resurrection “gave us eternal life”?  Certainly the resurrection is the basis of the claim of authority given to the Son, and it is the guarantee of the “first fruits.”  But does the resurrection “give us” eternal life?  Is eternal life a possession that we have been given like a gift under the Christmas tree?  What does it mean for Yeshua to say “Life is in the Son” if His resurrection grants us some kind of spiritual possession?  There is no doubt that the resurrection is crucial.  Paul tells us that if it had not happened our faith is in vain.  But what exactly did it accomplish?  What is the purpose of the resurrection?  If forgiveness is accomplished in the death of the Messiah, then why would we claim eternal life requires the resurrection?

Questions, questions, questions.  Perhaps what we must learn is that simple declarations commonly held by Christian believers, even those who now find solace in the Messianic movements, are not quite so simple after all.  Far too often they are loaded with theological and philosophical implications that even the speaker may not recognize.  They are so much a part of our own paradigm that we don’t even question them.   But maybe we should, not because they are “wrong” but because we often don’t know why they are “right.”