Sabbath 9/4/27/120
Dear Friends,
In this section we will continue on with the concept of error in the Churches of God, and deal with some very serious theological and logical errors perpetrated by Herbert Armstrong in the Worldwide Church of God. To be fair, the work Mystery of the Ages was formally published when he was aged and was indeed industrially incompetent. It was distributed largely after his death. The Incredible Human Potential is an earlier work. Both of these works are held to be correct examples of the later theological position of Herbert Armstrong and the WCG. These works are held as correctly expressing the theological position of a number of the offshoots, including the major church groups.
The references and quotes from Armstrong in his The Incredible Human Potential
(TIHP) and Mystery of the Ages (MOTA) are examined for their theological implications.
The two works are referred to as TIHP and MOTA respectively.
Herbert Armstrong was not simply a Binitarian as found from the Council of Nicea
ca. 325 CE, where the doctrines of the god Attis had been adopted in a god that
was both father and son. They held that the element that was son came to earth
and was put to death on the stake (being staked or stauroo i.e. killed on the
stake), on a Friday and resurrected on the Sunday. This doctrine resulted in
the addition of the Holy Spirit as a third element of the Godhead, resulting
in the Triune God being reworked into Christianity from Constantinople in 381
CE. Herbert Armstrong went much further, and developed a truer Ditheist position,
which was not all that far from the Ditheism of the Zoroastrians and the later
Gnostics. The Zoroastrians had two gods. One was the “good” god, Ahura Mazda.
The other was the “bad” god, Ahriman. The universe was in a state of flux between
the two. The Gnostics developed the theory that the OT was the work of the evil
God, Jaldabaoth, and the Christ was the good God who came down to do away with
the Laws of the God of the OT.
Herbert Armstrong developed the theory that the OT God was in fact referring to Jesus Christ, and that the Father was not known until Christ, who came to reveal Him. That assertion is completely wrong. There were logically held to be in fact two true Gods who existed before any act of creation. Thus, Christ was not dependent upon God for the fact of his existence. Christ was a coeternal God who was in effect co-equal, but somehow agreed to become incarnate and become in some way the son of the other. In Mystery of the Ages (MOTA) he alleges, or his ghostwriters allege (on p.43, 5th paragraph):
“Long before anything else existed, there did exist two Supreme Beings, immortal, who ALWAYS had existed”.
Logically and theologically, if an entity always existed and was immortal, then it is a true God, being immortal and not dependent upon another for its existence. Thus, there are two True Gods in the Armstrong pantheon.
The First Commandment says: “Thou shall have no other Gods before me.” It does not say “before US” and it is speaking of the Father and not of Christ. The Angel of YHVH who was speaking for the One True God gave this Law to Moses. Christ refers to the Father as his Father and our Father, and his God and our God. The Armstrong position is also not the position of the NT, and in fact Paul explicitly says the opposite, as does Christ himself indirectly through John.
“And this is eternal life that they know thee the ONLY TRUE GOD and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (Jn. 17:3).
Thus, God has sent Christ to extend the knowledge of God to us so that we might inherit eternal life.
Paul says that we are to “take hold of the eternal life to which we were called when we made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses, In the presence of God who gave life to all things, and of Christ Jesus who made the good confession before Pontius Pilate.” Paul charged us to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ which will be made manifest at the proper time by the “Blessed and Only Sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honour and eternal dominion Amen” (1Tim. 6:11-16).
Paul writes also in Corinthians that God alone is the source of existence. For us there is one God the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist (1Cor. 8:6).
This matter of the oneness of God was examined in the Sabbath Message of 25/3/27/120.
The error of the Armstrong theology is being further examined here to see the
ramifications of this false and idolatrous theology of Ditheism.
The logical absurdity is taken another step in The Incredible Human Potential
(TIHP) (on p. 41, 4th Paragraph),
“Angels are immortal Spirit beings and cannot die”.
Thus, we progress from the two entities being immortal, to the angelic host being immortal, and they then are assumed to be unable to die. Yet, one of the two immortal Gods who existed before the angelic host could die. The logic is bizarre indeed. If God is immortal then there is only one thing He cannot do, and that is to die. If Christ died, he was not immortal.
The texts of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are fairly clear that the fallen host, including Satan, will be brought down and die like any man (see the paper The Judgment of the Demons (No. 80)).
The assertion here by Armstrong logically makes the claim that God is not in control of His creation, and cannot terminate the existence of a rebellious element of His creation. He goes on (in TIHP p. 51, para. 4) to develop the concept that the existence of the entire Host was the product of Christ. This claim is false and is dependent upon the Trinitarian forgeries in the Receptus and hence the KJV and their interpretations of John 1:1-5:
“Notice John 1:1-5. The “Word” who was “made flesh (verse 14) has existed always – for eternity – with the Father. God the Father has created all things – the entire universe – by Him who became Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16-17)”.
Yet, the explanation of the texts in John, by Paul, says that Christ is the Image of the Invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. It was the administrations and the thrones and powers that were ordered by Christ and not the other elements of the elohim or sons of God (cf. Col. 1:15-16). Armstrong makes the false assumption that the word elohim refers only to God and Christ, who were both true Gods, and that is false as we see from the Psalms at the very least. The council of the elohim refers to the host. Even the Jesuits understand that fact. (See also The Elect as Elohim (No. 1)).
Armstrong then developed the scenario of eternal punishment for the fallen host, making God not only to be unable to control His creation, but also logically committed to concepts of eternal punishment, as a result of that inability to control their existence. He impugns God’s Omniscience, His Omnipotence, perfect love and perfect goodness with this conjecture. He says (in TIHP p. 56-57, para. 1)
“The penalty of sin by the angels was NOT death – for God had made them immortal spirit beings who cannot die”.
Armstrong went further in this blasphemy (TIHP, p.58, last paragraph)
“When Lucifer allowed thoughts of vanity, jealousy, envy, lust, and greed, then resentment and rebellion, to enter and occupy his mind SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HIS MIND! His mind became perverted, distorted, twisted! His thinking became warped. God gave his and the angels control over their own minds. They can never straighten them out – never again think rationally, honestly, rightly”.
So, God not only did not understand what they would do, He also would never be able to correct their thinking, and they themselves are forever unable to repent and correct that thinking process. What utter blasphemous drivel. The imputations against God’s Omniscience continued (ibid. p.59, para. 5):
“As God surveyed this tragic cataclysm, He must have realized it left HIMSELF as the ONLY BEING who will not and CANNOT SIN!”
This meant that God was not “all knowing” or Omniscient (c.f. Isaiah 46: 8-10). The error continues as we see in the following quotes. He says (in TIHP page 60 para. 1):
“Could not God have known in advance, what Lucifer and the angels under him would do? Doesn’t God know everything? The answer is NO. If God were to have known in advance what choice they would make, He would have had to FORCE them to make it - taken away from them power to think, to reason, to have a choice, to make decisions.”
This comment shows his, and his ministries’ fundamental inability to understand
the difference between freedom and determinism. He assumed incorrectly that
God’s knowledge of their actions meant God had to force them to those actions.
He did not understand the fact of the creation of freedom through the theoretical
relationships of causation based on the Law proceeding from God’s nature. This
philosophical issue is examined in the work Creation:
From Anthropomorphic Theology to Theomorphic Anthropology (B5).
He says (in TIHP page 61, para. 3)
“Could not God have known, in advance, what Lucifer would do? The answer was NO! But assuredly God did know Lucifer’s rebellion and the sin of the angels on earth was a possibility.”
When the WCG trained ministry, including the LCG and UCG officers, are confronted
on this point, their position is that “God chooses not to know certain things!”
The ministry is thus intellectually dependent upon Armstrong and this error
in logic. They are limiting God’s power, and making Him fallible. This error
impugns the nature of God and places God’s thinking on their low level of understanding.
It is a form of xenophobia. Xenophanes of Colophon supposed that if the animals
had gods, they would make them in their own image. Christ was the Lamb slain
before the foundation of the World, thus God knew what the host would do without
any doubt.
However, after all this, we enter the realms of doublethink and cognitive dissonance.
Herbert Armstrong then says (on TIHP, page 58, last paragraph) that: “Angels
have freedom of choice just as humans do because God is not a respecter of persons.”
Now, it is a simple matter of elementary logic that if humans can repent, then
so can angels, otherwise God breaks His own Law (Acts 10:34).
Armstrong then, in showman style, further undermines God’s Omniscience and Plan
where he says (in TIHP, page 60, para. 3):
“All that had happened ‘caused God’ to now undertake the most stupendous creation of all - that of REPRODUCING HIMSELF! The ultimate creation of God Beings in His God Family - superior to angels!”
Now this comment directly contradicts what Christ said in Luke 20: 34–36, that man would be equal to the angels, and the explanation of the City of God in Revelation shows what the plan of God is to anyone who bothers to read it (see also the paper The City of God (No. 180)).
Armstrong’s doublethink is evident also where he says (in TIHP, page 60,last paragraph)
“How could the great GOD – self-existent, before all else, reproduce HIMSELF into multiple millions of others JUST LIKE HIMSELF – Divine, supreme in power, perfect in character – each by his own choice perfectly like-minded with the Father, each having so set himself that he CANNOT SIN?
However, as we see, Armstrong had placed Christ there earlier on, but now it seems God was actually alone. This indicates cognitive dissonance, or multiple writers with conflicting theologies or limited understandings, based on Armstrong’s rambling schema.
The limitations attributed to the power and mind of God, at the very least, are indications of an imperfectly thought out system. Armstrong theology is logically incoherent. Those who follow it are themselves unable to see the errors, or are complacent because they live as a result of those errors.
God decided to create a family of elohim, and then through the physical creation, make each of us work by faith. God extends the capacity to become elohim to all of us by faith. The host is able to repent as we are. The Church knew and understood this in the early years, as they attributed repentance to the fallen host where they were able to enter cities, and form churches, and preach the gospel in those areas. The demons were understood to be in control of those areas.
The works The Incredible Human Potential and Mystery of the Ages are both flawed documents that contain significant blasphemy and should not be used to explain the faith without direct supervision. Far from introducing “new understanding”, Herbert Armstrong has the dubious distinction of being one of the most theologically incompetent and logically incoherent persons ever to hold high office in the Churches of God. Do not be deceived by such doctrine. His value was in the way he was able to sell the schema he devised. God used him for a purpose but destroyed what he created, so that the brethren might more correctly disseminate the truth.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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