Theological Correctness

Are You not from time everlasting, Lord, my God, my Holy One?  We will not die.  Habakkuk 1:12a  NASB

We – What is a tiqun sofrim? As you might guess, it is a written restoration, a place where a scribe corrected the text because of the theological implication.  In this case, the Masoretic text reads “we,” but this has been corrected in order to avoid associating “God” with “death.”  The text should read, “You will not die,” but that was viewed as scandalous, so the scribes changed the text to read “we will not die.”  Unfortunately, that little change altered Habakkuk’s comparison.

Habakkuk contrasts the gods of the pagan Chaldeans with the God of Israel.  He points out that even if the Chaldeans are used by God to bring judgment on mankind, their attribution to their own gods is a grand mistake.  Their gods are idols, nothing more.  The real God, the true God of Israel, is behind their success because it fits His plan, not theirs.  So, Habakkuk reminds his audience that the true God is from everlasting (meqedem).  Unlike the pagan gods of Israel’s enemies, He does not die.

But the Masoretes didn’t like even the suggestion that God might die, so they altered the text.  As a result, it appears that Habakkuk is saying that his audience won’t die.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.  The result makes us think that Habakkuk made a false prediction.  Israel did fall to the Chaldeans.  Many died.  But not God.  Had the Masoretes left the text alone, we would have had a powerful statement of God’s eternal existence and His everlasting involvement.  As it is, we get a watered-down mistake.

But there’s something else we can learn from the hyper-religious consciousness of the Masoretes.  It’s this: God is not subject to the category of death.  The two ideas do not mix.  There is no possibility that death has anything to do with God.  And that has a somewhat serious implication for the Christian view of Yeshua’s sacrifice on the cross.  If Habakkuk is allowed to say what he intended to say, then the claim that Yeshua as the second person of the Trinity died on the cross is theological nonsense.  God does not die!  Yes, of course, the Trinitarian view is that the man Yeshua died but the God Yeshua didn’t, as if somehow just saying that erases the illogical and irrational assertion.  Fully God and fully man?  Okay, so how does the “fully man” die and the “fully God” not die and still be one person, not two?  And how does this doctrine find any correspondence in the Tanakh’s view of God?  The answer is frighteningly simple: rewrite the text, rewrite the history, rewrite the theology.  Make everything fit the doctrine instead of building the doctrine from the texts.  No one, Christian or Jewish, believes God can die (despite the ridiculous “Death of God” theology).  And no one, Christian or Jewish, imagines that Yeshua did not die.  The liberal theology opposing Yeshua’s claim isn’t about his death.  It’s about his resurrection.  But at this point, the ways parted.  The Trinitarian doctrine defines Christianity in opposition to Judaism.  If you give it up, you really can’t claim to be Christian in any sense of the way the Roman Latin Church defines the religion (you can be a Unitarian, however).  So, you can’t give it up if you want to stay in the Latin/Western Church.  You have to change the Bible to fit the doctrine.  You have to produce completely nonsensical “explanations” about a human being who dies while still being God who cannot die.  You have to embrace, as a fundamental element of your belief, statements that defy any sense of human rationality—and claim that the reason you believe them is because they are irrational (therefore, they must be from God).  Here’s my suggestion.  READ THE TEXT!  Stop trying to make it fit your theology.  Accept what it says.  God doesn’t die.  Human beings do.  God feels. God changes His mind.  God learns about reality because our choices change what will happen.  The Messiah acted, thought, taught, felt, and claimed to be an anointed agent of the most high God, not God Himself.

But who am I to try to convince you?  In the end, you’ll believe whatever you want to believe.  It’s a choice, not a commandment.

Topical Index:  die, tiqun sofrim, scribal rewriting, Trinity, Messiah, Habakkuk 1:12a