Two Powers in Heaven

TheLightWithin

TheLightWithin

...through a glass, darkly
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Conversation we were having in another thread made me want to address a pre-Christian idea from earlier Judaism about there being two powers in Heaven
The original thread is called - I converted to Jehovah's Witnesses (this is the thread)

The idea may later have been regarded as a "heresy" in Judaism but apparently had acceptance for a time
Dr Michael Heiser was a very good Bible scholar and a committed believer Two Powers in Heaven - Dr. Michael Heiser

Two powers in Heaven: meaning & 8 verses examined | CsV This page alludes to the concept. Elsewhere on the site they use it to explain Trinitarian theology

This Reddit thread and this Early Writings forum address the idea as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBibleScholars/comments/1fnmvrq/two_powers_in_heaven_what_is_it
 
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I guess I didn't pose this with a clear question -

Does anybody here, of any theological background, have any knowledge about the "Two Powers in Heaven" idea that was apparently within preChristian Judaism?

It's possible I should move this thread, I may have inadvertently buried it by placing it under the Abrahamic "general" area, but I thought since it was relevant to both early Judaism and early Christianity and heterodox in both cases, it didn't fit firmly in either one.
 
Hi @TheLightWithin –

Yes, it only became a heresy after the emergence of Christianity.

The Two Powers debate emerged in the 1970s with the publication of Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism by the rabbinical scholar Alan F Segal (Leiden, Brill, 1977).

In that work he offers Biblical evidence and comments on early rabbinical traditions. He also cites Philo of Alexandria on the issue:
"And the sacred word ever entertaining holier and more august conceptions of Him that is, yet at the same time longing to provide instruction and teaching for the life of those who lack wisdom, likened God to man, not however, to any particular man. For this reason it has ascribed to Him face, hands, feet, mouth, voice, wrath and indignation, and over and beyond these, weapons, entrances and exits, movements up and down and all ways, and in following this general principle in its language it is concerned not with truth, but with the profit accruing to its pupils. For some there are altogether dull in their natures, incapable of forming any conception whatever of God as without a body, people whom it is impossible to instruct otherwise than in this way, saying that as a man does so God arrives and departs, goes down and comes up, makes use of a voice, is displeased at wrongdoings, is inexorable in His anger, and in addition to all this has provided Himself with shafts and swords and all other instruments of vengeance against the unrighteous. For it is something to be thankful for if they can be taught self-control by the terror held over them by these means. Broadly speaking the lines taken throughout the Law are these two only, one that which keeps truth in view and so provides the thought "God is not as man" (Num. 23:19) the other that which keeps in view the ways of thinking of the duller folk, of whom it is said, "The Lord God will chasten thee, as a man should chasten his son" (Dt. 8:5). Why then do we wonder any longer at His assuming the likeness of angels, seeing that for the succour of those that are in need He assumes the likeness of man? Accordingly, when He says, "I am the God who was seen of thee in the place of God" (Gen. 31:13) understand that He occupied the place of an angel only so far as appeared, without changing with a view to the profit of him who was not yet capable of seeing the true God."
(Segal, Two Powers, p160, citing Philo, De Somniis, Loeb, V, p421-423, tr. Colson and Whitaker.)

Segal's commentary:
"An anthropomorphic divinity is thus one of the two basic ways in which God can be conceived by man. The other is through pure intellectual activity... Philo distinguishes the two understandings of God on the basis of two scriptural references ... Dt. 8:5, involves the description of God in terms appropriate to men, so that men may see him and the unsophisticated may learn of Him. The second, summarized in Nu. 23:19, is the conception of God available to those who have come to perceive Him truly, and is available only to those who are well enough trained by philosophical discipline to receive revelation. Philo takes these two contradictory ideas in scripture—figuring God as man, and knowing that He is not—as summaries both of man's knowledge of God and of the whole process of exegesis"
(ibid, p160-161 emphasis mine).

Heiser elsewhere says
"In my dissertation (UW-Madison, 2004) I argued that Segal’s instincts were correct. My own work bridges the gap between his book and the Hebrew Bible understood in its Canaanite religious context. I suggest that the “original model” for the two powers idea was the role of the vice-regent of the divine council. The paradigm of a high sovereign God (El) who rules heaven and earth through the agency of a second, appointed god (Baal) became part of Israelite religion, albeit with some modification. For the orthodox Israelite, Yahweh was both sovereign and vice regent—occupying both “slots” as it were at the head of the divine council. The binitarian portrayal of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible was motivated by this belief. The ancient Israelite knew two Yahwehs—one invisible, a spirit, the other visible, often in human form. The two Yahwehs at times appear together in the text, at times being distinguished, at other times not.

Early Judaism understood this portrayal and its rationale. There was no sense of a violation of monotheism since either figure was indeed Yahweh. There was no second distinct god running the affairs of the cosmos. During the Second Temple period, Jewish theologians and writers speculated on an identity for the second Yahweh. Guesses ranged from divinized humans from the stories of the Hebrew Bible to exalted angels. These speculations were not considered unorthodox. That acceptance changed when certain Jews, the early Christians, connected Jesus with this orthodox Jewish idea. This explains why these Jews, the first converts to following Jesus the Christ, could simultaneously worship the God of Israel and Jesus, and yet refuse to acknowledge any other god. Jesus was the incarnate second Yahweh. In response, as Segal’s work demonstrated, Judaism pronounced the two powers teaching a heresy sometime in the second century A.D."
Heiser Two Powers in Heaven
 
Further to the above, here are some comments gleaned from a discussion at Eclectic Orthodox:

John Stamps, author of the essay, says:
Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was present with the GOD, and GOD was the Logos.

At one stroke even the most biblically illiterate reader can perceive that St John deliberately echoes Genesis 1:1. This Logos—Whatever or Whoever this deuteros logos is—is God’s associate and His agent in creation. If the rabbis didn’t think the Logos compromised or weakened “pure monotheism,” then we shouldn’t either.

Daniel Boyarin: "So any evidence for Jewish binitarianism does not constitute a ‘weakening’ of pure monotheism, any more than Christian trinitarianism does, except from the point of view of Modalists such as rabbinic Jews, who regard it as heresy, of course." Cited in The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John, Harvard Theological Review, 94 (July 2001): 261, n.64.

Daniel Boyarin is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, 'the most famous Talmudist alive.'

Stamps notes that John 'tips us off' just enough about the relationship of Jesus to the Father so that Thomas' declaration: "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28), 'we are suitably shocked. But we are not completely taken by surprise.'

Stamps goes on:
We don’t suffer theological whiplash when we jump from subordinationism in John 1:1 to the industrial-strength Christology in John 20:28. DBH argues that we can’t simply read Nicene Orthodoxy straight off the pages of the New Testament. By comparison, Daniel Boyarin suffers no such doubts about the deuteros logos of Philo: “If Philo is not on the road to Damascus here, he is surely on a way that leads to Nicaea and the controversies over the second person of the Trinity.” (Boyarin, The Gospel of the Memra, p.251.)

St John’s Gospel doesn’t give us the Trinity quite yet. At best we get a robust Binitarian faith. We need to fill in the details about the Holy Spirit from elsewhere. But we’re not left in doubt about the status of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the only-begotten GOD (John 1:18).

The added bonus is that our translation stands cogently within the realm of meaning of Second Temple Judaism. The Logos who is in the Father’s bosom is not the God—the God of course is the Father. In the parlance of Aramaic Judaism, Jesus of Nazareth is the Memra of the God who spoke creation into existence. ( The Aramaic word memra (מימרא) is related to the Hebrew verb amar (אָמַר) used in Genesis 1:3: “And God said …”) The Logos exegetes (ἐξηγήσατο) Him.

As Daniel Boyarin explains, John 1:1-5 is neither hymn nor poetry: it’s “midrash,” a very Jewish homily on Genesis 1:1-5 to readers who are already well familiar with the Bible. John 1:1 no longer is a weird anomaly. For readers with ears to hear, St John lets us overhear resounding echoes from a rich intratextual conversation within sacred scripture. We get a front-row seat to a biblical dialogue that eventually leads us to Nicea and Chalcedon, and even beyond, to Barth, Balthasar, Bulgakov, and DBH. The only “innovation” is the “incarnational Christology,” which to me sounds quite innovative indeed. As Boyarin goes on to explain, “John’s Prologue is a piece of perfectly unexceptional Jewish thought that has been seamlessly woven into the christological narrative of the Gospel.” The novelty in St John’s Gospel isn’t the Logos-Memra. That’s standard Second Temple Judaism. The novum is that the Logos-Memra became flesh and His name is Jesus.
(Bold emphasis mine)
 
Longfellow said:
I'm thinking that the gospel of John might be a response to some heresies, and triggered more specifically by Cerinthus.
Click to expand...
There's a strong tradition that supports that view, but it is subject to question and commentary.

For those who don't know, here's some notes on Cerinthus:
Born in Egypt, a Jew. Educated in the Judaeo-Philonic school of Alexandria. Cerinthus did not claim mystical powers, but rather spoke of angelic revelations.

What makes him (in)famous is the report in Irenaeus, received from Polycarp, that when he and St John were in the public baths, Cerintus entered and John is supposed to have said: "Let us flee, lest the bath fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there." (The value of this tradition is not great – the meeting with St. John in the bath is also told of "Ebion", as well as of Cerinthus.)

His view seems to be that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is not the Absolute and Transcendent God, the "unknown God", but a lesser quasi-angelic power which made heaven and earth, etc, and this he shares with Gnosticism. This second-order divinity was not necessarily opposed to the Unknown God, but rather was ignorant of Him.

He did not agree with the Gnostics that this creator-god – the "God of the Jews" – was inferior and evil. He preferred to identify him with the Angel who delivered the Law. Scholars have pointed out that these are legitimate deductions from the teaching of Philo. Cerinthus is a long way from the bolder and more hostile schools of later Gnosticism.

So we could see Cerintus as holding a particular view of the 'Two Powers in Heaven' idea, but the secondary power is not associated with the first in the same way that Philo argued. For Cerinthus the separation into two distinct entities is more pronounced.

His Christology is somewhat Ebionite, with his own colourful additions. Jesus was a man of Joseph and Mary, upon whom the Holy Spirit descends at his baptism – and teaches him about the Unknown God – but the Holy Spirit who departs at some point immediately prior to the crucifixion. According to some accounts, Jesus was subsequently raised from the dead. According to others, he is not yet risen, nor shall he rise, until the general resurrection. This general resurrection of Cerinthus was of an earthly kingdom in which the elect are to enjoy pleasures, feasts, marriages, and sacrifices. Its capital is Jerusalem and its duration 1000 years: thereafter shall ensue the restoration of all things. Cerinthus derived this notion from Jewish sources. His notions of eschatology are radically Jewish.

This and other accounts (reliability of sources aside) make it difficult to assign to Cerinthus any certain place in the history of heresy. He can only be regarded generally as a link connecting Judaism and Gnosticism.

+++

Whether John wrote his Gospel against Cerinthus is difficult to say. Irenaeus says as much:
"John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith, and seeks, by the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that knowledge falsely so called..."
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III, 11, 1)

Or whether the 1st and 2nd Epistles were so written, but not the Gospel, is a matter of scholarly debate.

It's notable that the Prologue asserts the Logos as eternal and divine, but does not thereby assert the Virgin Birth, which Cerinthus denies, and it is possible to harmonise the Prologue and Cerinthus to some degree, so if an option is allowed, I would say the Gospel was not necessarily against Cerinthus per se, and if Boyarin argues, is a midrash on Genesis 1.

A number of scholars argue a very early strata for the initial John, contemporary with Mark – and that Mark and John each had a version of the other's gospel, while the Prologue might be later, and even of another hand, in which case both Mark and John start with the baptism, without any reference to Jesus' birth, which, again, could be harmonised with Cerinthus.

Hmmm ...
 
I APOLOGIZE. THIS POST IS ACTUALLY IN THE WRONG THREAD (I HAD WRITTEN IT FOR A THREAD ON JOHN 1:1 BUT WILL LEAVE IT HERE AS IT RELATES TO QUOTES THOMAS USED FROM THIS THREAD.

Hi Thomas

Your quotes from Stamps and Boyarin, et al were quite insightful


1) GRAMMATICALLY JOHN 1:1C IS CLEAR. CONTEXTUALLY IT IS NOT. HOWEVER...WHICH CONTEXT DOES ONE THEN USE TO TRANSLATE IT?
I noticed John Stamps renders the inarticulated John 1:1c as though it was articulated and thus, he is also using his own context rather than grammar to translate.

As I pointed out, the grammar is clear, but it is uncomfortable for 3=1 trinitarians.

This is why the controversy originated and continues. Since the grammar is clear, (despite discomfort), the debate has to center on historical context instead of grammar. (at least for 3=1 trinitarians uncomfortable with the text)



2) DO WE USE THE ANCIENT POLYTHEISTIC CONTEXT (GENESIS) OR A LATER JUDEO-CHRISTIAN HENOTHEISTIC CONTEXT (JOHN 1:1); OR A LATER, MORE MODERN TRINITARIAN CONTEXT TO TRANSLATE AND INTERPRET ANCIENT TEXTS?

I like your insight when you say: “At one stroke even the most biblically illiterate reader can perceive that St John deliberately echoes Genesis 1:1." “

The problem is that any echo from the ancient text must remain in the ANCIENT context it was written in and this is a problem.
Since Judeo-Christian religion has evolved over centuries, does one interpret these echoes in the most ancient polytheistic context, or the later strict monotheistic context (after the Babylonian exile), or in the early Judeo-Christian Henotheistic context?



3) THE ANCIENT JUDEO-CHRISTIAN LITERATURES CONTEXT WHERE A 3=3 TRINITY WAS MOST ORTHODOX

The early Judeo-Christian literature is written mostly in the Henotheistic (i.e. there may be other Gods, but ONLY one that is “God of Gods and Lord of Lords” and the only one worthy of worship).

For example, Jewish Enoch of 300 b.c. describes the prophet Enochs ascension into heaven where he sees God the Father walking together with his son, the Messiah. The narrative describes seeing the Father thusly: “At that place, I saw “he who is of primordial days,” and his head was white like wool, and there was with him another individual whose face was like that of a human being. His countenance was full of grace like that of one among the holy angels.”

In this early model, Enoch sees both the Father and Son in his vision and he then asks the angel with him regarding who the person was who accompanied the Father and why he was with the Father saying:

“And he answered me and said to me, “This is the Son of Man, to whom belongs righteousness, and with whom righteousness dwells. And he will open all the hidden storerooms; for the Lord of the Spirits has chosen him, and he is destined to be victorious before the Lord of the Spirits in eternal uprightness. This Son of Man whom you have seen is the One who would remove the Kings and the mighty ones from their comfortable seats, and the strong ones from their thrones. He shall loosen the reins of the strong and crush the teeth of the sinners. He shall depose the kings from their thrones and kingdoms. For they do not extol and glorify him, and neither do they obey him, the source of their kingship.” (1st Enoch 46:1-6)

Such Jewish ancient narratives mirror the early 3=3 trinitarian models of early Christian literature (i.e. before the 3=1 trinity became the most popular). Keep in mind that the Talmud of orthodox rabbinic Judaism has prohibited their members of study of, discussions and questions regarding, the reading of, etc. of any theme that occurred before the creation of the earth and so modern, rabbinic Judaism is different than ancient Judaism in this respect.

For example, the Christian Abbaton narrative (40 day literature) describes the creation of man and the different roles of the Father and the Son. The narrative begins with Jesus, teaching his disciples about certain events surrounding the creation of Adam as a mortal, thusly:

"And He (the Father) took the clay from the hand of the angel, and made Adam according to Our image and likeness, and He left him lying for forty days and forty nights without putting breath into him. And he heaved sighs over him daily, saying, 'If I put breath into this [man], he must suffer many pains.'

And I said unto My Father, 'Put breath into him; I will be an advocate for him.' And My Father said unto Me, 'If I put breath into him, My beloved son, Thou wilt be obliged to go down into the world, and to suffer many pains for him before Thou shalt have redeemed him, and made him to come back to primal state.' And I said unto My Father, 'Put breath into him; I will be his advocate, and I will go down into the world, and will fulfil Thy command.”

Such examples clarify the modern controversy concerning John 1:1.

Does one translate it according to Judeo-Christian doctrines at the time it was written (i.e. a more henotheistic context), or should it be translated according to the later and more modern context when a 3=1 trinity became popular?

This is what I mean when I say the problem is not grammatical (which is clear, but uncomfortable to 3=1 trinitarians), but it is contextual (which is not clear but can be manipulated and made comfortable to a later, and different, orthodoxy).



4) BOYARIN IS CORRECT THAT MONOTHEISTIC HENOTHEISM DOES NOT WEAKEN MONOTHEISM

This may be part of Boyarins assumption where you quote him saying: ”So any evidence for Jewish binitarianism does not constitute a ‘weakening’ of pure monotheism, any more than Christian trinitarianism does, except from the point of view of Modalists such as rabbinic Jews, who regard it as heresy, of course."…”St John’s Gospel doesn’t give us the Trinity quite yet. At best we get a robust Binitarian faith. He is the only-begotten GOD (John 1:18).

The added bonus is that our translation stands cogently within the realm of meaning of Second Temple Judaism. The Logos who is in the Father’s bosom is not the God—the God of course is the Father. “

I think Boyarin is absolutely correct in his statements here.

Binitarianism (two main Gods) does not weaken strict monotheism since it remains in a henotheistic model. Henotheism remains a type of monotheism since, regardless of other Gods, only ONE is to be worshipped.

Thus the grammatically correct translation of John 1:1c, “And the Word was A God” remains within the realm of meaning of Second Temple Judaism. It also allows historical coherency with John 1:18 where the Greek text reads : “No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten GOD who is in the bosom of the Father has explained him.”

While the Father is “unbegotten”, the dilemma of a text speaking of an “unbegotten God” is uncomfortable to 3=1 trinitarians but not the binarians and not the henotheistic early Judeo-Christians, and not the restorationists.

This discomfort with the text as it stands underlies the desire to place the text into non-historical contexts in order to explain why the text doesn’t say what 3=1 trinitarians want it to say.
 
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