Hidden truths about God and evil
Reading: Gen.6.1-6
Sometimes, while saying something mundane, a little hidden nugget drops out
- perhaps a woman is listing their children and she ends with “and little Billy”
- Billy has called himself William ever since his 20’s but this little detail tells you how his mother really thinks about him
- or when talking about their childhood, how do they describe their home?
- they might say “I was born in a dreary village” if they were bored or sad
- the same place might be “… a beautiful village” if it was a happy childhood
- or it might be “… a lovely traditional village” if they are feeling nostalgic and lost
People give away so much in tiny details, but only Hercule Poirot notices them
- don’t worry: I don’t listen so carefully. If you doubt that, ask my wife.
- but this Bible passage is worth reading carefully
- all Bible passages are important, of course, but this one gives away a lot
- perhaps it gives away too much – things which shouldn’t have been let out
Jewish scholars in New Testament times were fascinated by this passage
- they realised that it was letting out some secrets which were normally hidden
- we have nuggets of insight into the origins of evil and evil spirits. Maybe.
- at Qumran we found a book all about this, and other ancient books refer to it
- but fortunately the NT authors weren’t caught up in their fascination
- this hasn’t stopped some Christians delving into it and speculating
- and, admittedly, I spent quite some time on it in my teenage years
- this is the realm of Christian conspiracy theories which may be true
- or they may not be.
I’ll briefly tell you what these are, but I won’t spend too much time on them
- because there is something else here, which stayed hidden even longer
- an aspect of God’s nature which we didn’t rediscover till this generation
- don’t worry – it isn’t heresy – you almost certainly already believe it
- but you probably don’t realise how new and also how ancient it is.
First, the conspiracy theories about the origin of evil.
Genesis 6:1-2 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
- who are the ‘sons of God’? There are two main theories:
1) They are the sons of Seth – so the ‘daughters of men’ are the daughters of Cain
- Seth and Cain are two sons of Adam. His first son, Abel, was murdered by Cain
- so the descendent of Cain can be regarded as the bad guys – the sons of ‘men’
- and the descendents of Seth must be the good guys – the sons of ‘God’
- So, this says the good guys married the bad galls. This is the boring interpretation
2) The other main interpretation is that the ‘sons of God’ are fallen angels
- they got fed up being neither male nor female, and not breeding, and went courting
- they caught, or perhaps wooed, some women, and ‘married’ them.
This, as you can imagine, is the start of all the conspiracy theories.
- you probably think I’m exaggerating, but try typing some of this into Google.
- here is a typical page: AlienResistance.org with the tagline: “Resistance is fertile”
“Sons of Seth Theory - The Early Catholic Church's suppression of the truth of angelic abduction… the Church itself is responsible for perpetrating the most enduring and damaging cover-up in regard to abductions…they invented a completely false doctrine about the "proper interpretation" of Genesis 6…. This rogue element of the early church… has left moderns at the mercy of a phenomenon they have no hope of understanding or defending themselves against.” etc.
Verse 4 is what gets everyone wondering and theorising:
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-- and also afterward-- when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
- who were the “Nephilim” and “Great ones” or “Heros” ?
- “Nephilim” means ‘fallen ones’ or possibly ‘miscarriages’ or ‘malformed birth’
- “heroes” are literally “great ones” or “large ones” or “powerful ones”
- when this was translated into Greek, a couple of centuries before Jesus, both words were translated as “giants”.
- Nephilim is only elsewhere in Num.13.33: Israelites spies snooping in Palestine felt as tiny as grasshoppers next to the Anakim who descended from Nephilim
- they (or their descendents) were also called Rephaim (Deut.2.10-11), who include large people like the 12’ King Og, and Goliath’s comrades (Dt.3.11; 2Sam.21.18f)
The ancient Jews were fascinated by all this.
- at Qumran we find the Book of the Giants, and Philo also wrote on the Giants.
- even cool-headed Josephus says: “many angels of God accompanied with women and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength; for the tradition is, that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians called giants. But Noah was very uneasy at what they did...”
- I love the understatement: “But Noah was very uneasy…”
- the Book of Enoch says these ‘giants’ were destroyed but became the evil spirits
- and these spirits were imprisoned in the chains of Hell, though some are at large
Some of this gets into the New Testament in an incidental way, in Jude and 2Peter
- Jude 6: “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgement on the great Day.”
2 Peter 2:4 “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, [Greek: ‘Tartarus’] putting them into gloomy dungeons [or chains of darkness] to be held for judgement.”
- perhaps this confirms some of the Jewish conclusions about this passage
Wonderful stuff, and completely absorbing.
- as a teenager I investigated parallels with Greek myths like the Titans, and demigod heros
- after all, the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, which 2Peter refers to
- have you seen the film “Clash of the Titans”? If you haven’t, don’t bother.
- there are no Titans in it, and the characters have flat undeveloped personalities
- they tried to rectify this by quickly remaking the film 3D, but this was a failure.
- the 3D effects sometimes separate a person’s hair from their head. Very distracting.
- sorry – I’m totally distracted now. But that’s what these speculations do for you.
I remember (shame, shame, shame) leading a Bible study on this at school
- and I asked someone to read and they accidentally read out the wrong verse
- instead of 2Peter 2.4 they read 1Tim.1.4, which said nothing about Tartarus.
- it criticises those who “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work”
Anyway, all this stuff is all over the internet, if you want to look into it
- but something much more enlightening and helpful is also hidden here
- an important aspect of God which is hardly ever mentioned in the Bible
Hang on: this doesn’t sound as if it is going to be interesting, does it?
- when we talk about evil spirits and conspiracy theories, that’s interesting
- but when we list the attributes of God’s nature, it appears to be boring!
- how can that be? Evil spirits are merely part of the creation God made
- admittedly they are interesting in that they appear to go against God’s will
- but that doesn’t explain why we find them more fascinating than God
- I wonder if it has something to do with what C.S. Lewis conjectured
- ie the Devil either tries to make us disbelieve in him or be fascinated by him
- a double-pronged attack which works very effectively most of the time
- well, not today. We are refusing to be distracted by these verses. Read on!
Genesis 6:5-6 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
Now, I notice that you aren’t falling off your chair in surprise, but you should
- we read here that God cared greatly about the way humans were misled
- human sin increased, till it overwhelmed all human activity
- it got so bad that God exhibited some very human types of behaviour
- first he “was sorry” or “repented” or “relented” that he had made humans
- then “his heart was grieved” or “hurt” or “in pain”.
- in theological language, we find here that God is not “apathetic” ie “impassive”
“Apathy” is a traditional characteristic of God like “omnipotence” or “goodness”
- this does not mean that God is like a teenager or a customer complaint manager
- it means that God does not suffer “pathos” – ie nothing make him suffer or sad
- he is “without pathos” – hence “a-pathos” or “apathetic” or “impassive”
- the reasoning is this: if God is omnipotent, no-one can make him do anything
- and so nothing we do can make God feel sad, or make him suffer in any way
- God might feel sorry for us, or be disappointed, but it doesn’t affect him at all
- God remains the same, unchanged, unchangeable, unaffected by emotion
- he is apathetic, above humans, and not affected in his being by what humans do
Most of us don’t think like that any more. We regard God as saddened by our sin
- our sinfulness does affect God, and when we turn away from us, he does care
- God is totally above and separate from us, but he loves us so much that he cares
Jesus hinted at this, when he said how God is like a Father
- God is like the Father of the Prodigal, and the King who’s son is killed by tenants
- God is not only saddened by sin, but he is also angered by sin
- God cares about a sparrow which falls dead, and even about hair which falls out
- it is wonderful to think that God is concerned about how many hairs I have left!
- and yet traditional church doctrine says that God is apathetic.
I’m not surprised that most Christians have rebelled against this
- but I am surprised at the way in which this happened, and the speed of it
- there have often been mini-rebellions, but no theologian thought through all the issues till Moltmann – a German theologian of our generation.
- he has written on this and preached, and spoken throughout the world
- he speaks and writes in English as well as German. Perfect English.
His English is so good because he learned it in a concentration camp in England
- he was captured, as a German soldier, and held in a camp at near Nottingham
- he found Jesus while he was a prisoner, and he read his new-found Bible a lot
- then the prison authorities asked if anyone wanted to do a theology degree
- a few other degrees were on offer, but Moltmann liked the idea of theology
- the prisoners had lectures from the top British theologians of the day, who had little to do because most people of student ages were off being soldiers
- so, by the time he could return to Germany, he had a good theology education
Moltmann said about the Prisoner of War Camp: “That’s where I learned Hebrew and Greek, and had to pass another examination for school. We had plenty of time to listen and read; and we had a large, wonderful library. It was a wonderful time… A lot of us came to the Christian faith in the prison camps,”
What influenced his theology the most, was the destructiveness of war
- he was devastated when he heard about Auschwitz and the Jewish ‘solution’
- and equally devastated when he returned to his home town of Hamburg which was flattened during the war by the British Air Force operation “Gomorrah”
- my German mother, who was evacuated from Hamburg during the war, says visited the town once during the war and couldn’t find her house, and then went back after the war and couldn’t even work out where the street had been.
Moltmann saw good and evil during the war; destruction and intense suffering
- he couldn’t imagine that a good God would be impassive, apathetic, about this
- he wrote “The Crucified God”, where he says that God both was separated from Jesus and was in Jesus, when Jesus suffered on the cross.
- by abandoning one person, God never had to abandon anyone else in suffering
- and by suffering with humanity, as a human, God could experience suffering
- God is still omnipotent and unchangeable, but he also shares everything human
- including our suffering, and the pain we feel when everything is going wrong
Once we see this in Gen.6, and in the crucifixion, we start to see it elsewhere
- the word “relent” (Hebrew nachan) is used about God too often to ignore
- if we regard God as unchangeable, and unresponsive to what humans do, he shouldn’t change his mind in response to our repentance or our suffering
- and yet, throughout the Old Testament, we find this happening
- Jonah is particularly disturbed when God “relents” about destroying Nineveh
And, more strangely, the idea of God being “grieved” is also found elsewhere,
- it was not only before the Flood that we find God is “grieved” (Hebrew ‘atzav)
- also when Israel rebelled against him in the Wilderness (Ps.78.40)
- and when their sin resulted in the Exile, Isaiah describes God’s turmoil: