Good Enough Most of the Time

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:4 ESV

Perfect – Perhaps the most insidious mistranslation of a Torah concept is the idea of perfection.  Theology is filled with this thoroughly Greek idea.  So is rabbinic Judaism.  Thanks to the disease of Hellenism, the Parmenidean virus has permanently infected most religious thinking.  Finally established as a necessary characteristic of God Himself, perfection has become of goal of religion, a completely impossible goal that condemns every human being to ontological failure.  Take, for example, this homage to Parmenides disguised as Christian doctrine in the words of R. C. Sproul:

CLICK HERE

Frankly, there is no excuse for this bastardized image of God.  Changeless?  Not if you read your Bible.  But, of course, according to the theologians, all those verses that talk about God’s changing actions, attitudes, and emotions are not really true.  They are accommodations for us because we can’t handle the truth.  Basically, theology assumes God is Greek (philosophically) and both Christian and Jewish theology is built around Greek/Hellenist ideas.  In order for this to happen, the actual text of Scripture must be ignored, reworked, or dismissed.

There is a basic confusion here, created by a pre-commitment to the Greek idea of essence.  All the evidence we have from experience and Scripture portrays God as an interactive, dynamic, changing being.  It would be hard to imagine interaction with Him if He weren’t.  But this does not mean that His character changes.  He is, in that respect, the same—yesterday, today and tomorrow.  But character isn’t the same as personal action.  A person can change in many ways and still maintain a basic character.  God’s changing actions do not impugn His consistent character.  This is the mistake of confusing, as Aquinas did, character with actions.  Without distinguishing these two, I will have to ignore all the evidence about God’s changing actions.

Anthropomorphism is a way to dismiss what the text says by claiming that what the text says isn’t really true.  So Sproul can claim that God is “perfect,” which, following Parmenides, means unchanging—logically unchanging.  It’s not that God decides not to change.  That would still be a contingent act.  It’s that God, in order to be God, cannot change.  That’s what we mean when we say something is perfect.  And, of course, the consequent statement is that anything that changes cannot be perfect.  That includes us.  We are ontologically imperfect.  It’s just what it means to be alive, to be human, to be created.  And that means we can never actually live up to God’s expectations.  He made it that way.  Parmenides wins.  Humanity loses.

If you thought this was only a Christian mistake, then you didn’t account for the impact of Hellenism on Jewish thinking.  Here’s a citation about the Qumran community in the first century.  You should note that this community attempted to remove itself from the corruption of the Greco-Roman world, but, as we can see, they took Hellenism with them in their thoughts.

One may observe that these documents have one compelling theme, perfectionism. Since the keeping of the Law is the central concept of this perfectionism, it may also be seen that the Torah is central to the concerns of the Qumran community; . .

Alex Deasley argues that perfectionism is the key goal of the Qumranites.   It may also be asserted that the ritual perfectionism that is advocated in the sectarian documents is equivalent to “salvation” for the community.  Therefore, a member of Qumran would strive to achieve perfection so as to be presentable to God on two levels: “There was a perfection which was attainable in the present; nonetheless, a fullness of perfection lay ahead which would be the work of God at the end of days.”[1]

Be perfect!  The clarion call of religion.  The impossible demand from a God who made sure you could never achieve His requirement, namely, “Be like Me!”  And we bought it.  For thousands of years, we have struggled under the impossible demand.  We have decried our situation, inevitably concluding that being born was a sin, a punishment designed to keep us in our place, fractured and flawed until God Himself decides (but of course He really doesn’t decide, does He?  I mean it’s all determined in advance so that nothing ever changes for Him) who will be chosen and who won’t.

Amazingly, when we actually read the Bible and stop thinking like Parmenides we discover that God is involved in all kinds of changes.  So are we.  We do the best we can most of the time—and it’s enough!  It’s not enough for the Greek thinkers.  They need a reason to tell us we are a mistake, that we aren’t perfect.  But it seems to be enough for God.  That makes me wonder what kind of god religion actually worships.

Fortunately, the practice of religious beliefs (not the theology) isn’t so stupid.  God changes and so do we.  How else could we possibly be interested in Him or He in us?  As the prophets constantly remind us, idols are those human constructions that never change.

Topical Index:  perfection, change, Parmenides, R. C. Sproul,  James 1:4

[1] Neal Cushman, “Canonicity and Qumran: Evidence from the Damascus Document,” pp. 6-7., citing Alex Deasley,  The Shape of Qumran Theology (Carlisle, Cumbria, Great Britain: Paternoster, 2000), p. 214.