Everywhere in the history of revelation God embodies himself for us. His spirit came in the form of a dove and of the fiery tongues of Pentecost. And God still embodies himself for us. The Holy Spirit comes to us and brings Christ to us through the external, physical, sensible means of the word, of the human voice, and of the sacraments. All these words and sacraments are his veils and clothing, his masks and disguises with which he covers himself so that we may bear and comprehend him.

—Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther

Theology winds up with a God who thunders in his petty irritation against helpless, hapless mortals, reducing them to masochistic servitude if they hope to escape the ultimate doom of eternal torture.

—Robert M. Price, The Reason-Driven Life

For many centuries, Christians have been saying, “I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” But that brief summation is just the merest hint of all the myriad ways humans have described and characterized their vision of the Deity since they first started leaving records of him, or them.

As ancient Israelite religion matured and moved away from its polytheistic roots, the God of Israel became so exhalted that his holy name could not even be uttered. When he introduced himself to Moses in the burning bush, centuries after the events of Genesis, he did so with the enigmatic and all-encompassing statement, “I am that I am,” and commanded Moses to describe him to the children of Israel as “the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Exodus 3:14-15). Later still, it was understood that God knows and sees all, an idea that for the writer of Psalm 139:1-6 was “too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.”

Now we have a God who is unfathomable, beyond human comprehension. In the lofty (and late) words of John 4:24, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” But “we’re pretty sure He’s against birth control” (Price 2011), and we still seem quite certain about many other aspects of God’s views and personality. An article in the September 1998 Voice of Zion informs us that,

† “above all, God is a gracious, good, and loving God” (VOZ, 9/1998).

† “God is a spirit, who is eternal. He is the first and last. He is all-knowing, all-seeing, and everywhere. God is all-mighty, righteous, holy, and not to be ridiculed.”

As we will see, however, it is not possible for any creator of the “heaven and earth” we know about to have all of these attributes, any more than it is possible for a circle to have corners. Theologians often resort to the claim that such combinations–like an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God creating a world full of evil–are possible for God but beyond our understanding. But then what they are saying is likewise beyond understanding, their words having no useful content (Price 2011). Yet, as we will see in this section, there is little reluctance to offer such words, characterizing God in all sorts of all-too human ways.

Absolute omnipotence is absolute autonomy and completely self satisfied. It needs nothing and is mutually exclusive to the notion of adding anything to its existence. The notion of absolute omnipotence is mutually exclusive to terms such as “need,” “want” or “desire” and adjectives such as “offended” or “jealous,” which imply needs indicative of impotence, not omnipotence, and weakness, not power. [Taylor 2005, 33]

Taylor anticipates the argument that “an omnipotent God can perform as a weak God if he wants to,” but calls that “a tribute to man’s own mental inability to grasp what he at first proposes, i.e., the consequences of omnipotence and its mutual exclusions” (pp. 41-42). “Omnipotence can never be unsatisfied,” but “creation is the fulfillment of desire” (pp. 33-34). In addition, being omniscient about the future means that you are helpless to change it. If you did change it, you wouldn’t have correctly forseen the outcome! The omnipotent ability to choose whether to make a change in course defeats the omniscient ability to know whether it ultimately gets changed or not.

It would also be deceptive for a perfect creator to make himself look bad and then demand that people worship him as perfect. And the suffering produced by the universe’s imperfections make it impossible (not merely difficult to understand) for an omnipotent God to also be omnibenevolent.

These questions are not imposing human limits on an omnipotent God. Rather, they ask whether the very idea of an omnipotent God is supportable, as a basic logical premise or in combination with other postulated characteristics of the Deity.

† “Before the beginning of this world, God decided on a specific time when a savior would be born in the form of man, and when He would begin His ministry” (VOZ, 12/1999).

The whole drama of the Fall played out with nobody watching but the actors, and to no more purpose than an author reading his own book.

† “God tries our faith to see if we really love Him but does not tempt us as James writes, ‘Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God . . .’” (VOZ, 2/2002).

But, according to this next writer,

† “God sees into the heart of man and knows even the most secret deeds, even though no other person knows of them. God knows a person’s sins and requires that he answers for them before Him one day. In that hearing, one can neither cover his deeds, nor transfer the blame to someone else. Only those whose sins have been forgiven in the gospel of God’s kingdom will receive a sentence of freedom” (VOZ, 9/2002).

Guys, you need to do a better job of staying “on message” here. If God knows everything, it doesn’t take much contemplation or “wordly philosophy” to see that he does not need “to see if” anything is true. He certainly doesn’t need to inflict trials on man to see what happens, like a rat in some lab experiment, if he “sees into the heart of man and knows even the most secret deeds.”

[I]n order for natural selection to bring about so many new species, an enormous period of time has to pass, indeed, many millions of years. Thus, at least according to human calendrical standards, by taking so much time, evolution looks inefficient and wasteful. Wouldn’t an infinite wisdom, if it exists, do a more efficient job of engineering life’s diversity? Furthermore, even with all the delay, death, and bloodshed that evolution entails, the varieties that survive are never impeccably engineered anyway. Adaptation is never perfect. So, isn’t evolution proof that ultimately nature rests not on divine providence, but on an abyss of absurdity? How can one expect to make any theological sense of it at all? [Haught 2010, 33]

† “God has always existed. He has neither beginning nor end, and time does not bind Him. Even the fourth dimension is freely in His use. He is also unchanging, for change belongs to time. God has His own time. It is not the same as man’s time. It cannot be measured with our clocks or calendars” (2000, 115).

exhibits immature rage when no one pays attention to him; he makes people suffer for what others have done; he has no regard for human life; and he tortures decent people for such reasons as winning bets with Satan. If we were to extract this behavior into human terms, we would most likely draw a comparison with that of a spoiled child. Because of an obvious state of fear and panic over similar reports heard by authors of the ancient Hebrew scriptures, they wrote and sang praises to this terrible creature thinking that such measures might assist in helping them escape his unconscionable wrath. [Long 2005, 106]

But God is not about to excuse anything as the inevitable consequence of evolutionary biology, at least not according to O.H. Jussila in a 1949 issue of Siionin Lähetyslehti. He has “condemned sin in the flesh” and punished his son “with sickness for the sake of our sins”:

† “The Lord of Heaven and Earth is a righteous judge. He condemned sin in the flesh, the sharp pricks of His holy law pierced the only begotten Son nailed on the cross, who had taken upon Himself to carry the sins of the world. Nowhere is the judgment of sin so terrifyingly revealed, than before the altar of that God who did not spare His only begotten son, but punished Him with sickness for the sake of our sins. How terrible to those, unto whose heart the knowledge of God’s judgment has not been impressed in the time of grace. They will meet judgment at the coming of that Righteous Judge when He comes to judge the quick and the dead. But then no more will be heard the voice of redeeming blood from the altar” (from Greetings of Peace, 1/1950).

† “God is a hidden God. The Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, does not fit into our comprehension, but remains hidden. However, He has revealed himself to us, so that we would come to know Him” (Uljas 2000, 19).

Are we supposed to believe that 5 seconds after Jesus rose from the dead, everyone on earth was responsible for that information? How is a guy living in . . . Outer Mongolia in 15 A.D. supposed to figure out that Jesus died on the cross for his sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day?

—Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town

My sample of quotes about Jesus begins with one by Laestadius in his 1857 Reading Examination Sermon:

† “May all the penitent who do not yet believe, now read that their debt is paid; read the receipt that has been confirmed at the place of the skull and sealed with a bloody seal on Good Friday, where the great reconciliation was fulfilled and the debt-book of the penitent torn asunder, which the Father nailed on the cross. And these tokens of love, the bloody wounds, testify that your debt is paid and the mouth of the accuser has been closed” (Fourth Postilla, 118).

† Jesus’ “bloody love has been revealed to us when He endured the death of the cross. When the iron nails were driven into His hands and feet, He did not become angry, but sighed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’” (Raattamaa, sermon given 1894, from Kulla 1985, 184).

† “The Lord Jesus calls the poor child of Adam as He crawls in the pit of hell where it is so hot that His head and His locks are wet with the drops of the night. He cannot stand, but falls to His knees. He cannot stay upon His knees, but falls upon His face on the ground. There He lies drenched with the stream of His blood which pours forth from His holy body to the accursed Earth. His every pore is opened as a fount of bloody tears” (Matti Suo, Siionin Lähetyslehti [1917], from Kulla 1985, 206).

† “If the Great Warrior would not be fighting in behalf of us we would have long ago become tired and weary under the cross. But we children of God have a great helper who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who still go as before his flock, smiting the enemy with the two-edged sword of his mouth” (Siionin Lähetyslehti, 1920).

† Paul “received Christ as a gift in the gospel. This Christ then was the center of his preaching. Not a cross, neither a nailing to the cross, but Christ as crucified and risen from the dead. The doctrine of redemption as a whole is: Christ has died and risen from the dead. It was the gospel that Paul himself had received, and the same he had delivered unto others. He assures that he and all Christians who are converted into faith by this gospel are saved. . . . They which have avoided the preaching of the victory of resurrection in fear that it leads to a light manner of Christianity, have gone astray from the biblical gospel” (from Greetings of Peace, 4/1971).

Nowadays one hears very little mention of gory crucifixion details. The events of Golgatha are mostly recounted in songs during the Communion service. But the shift in focus from suffering to redemption would take some time yet:

† “The disciples saw from afar off how He carried His cross, came to the place of the Skull, Golgotha. They heard the sound of the hammer that drove the nails into the precious hands. The cross was lifted up between two thieves. He was suspended between heaven and earth and there He hanged–He, who was so dear to their hearts. They heard His agonizing cry, heard Him call to the heart of God in heaven and then He died” (O.H. Jussila, notes taken from sermon given 1936, Greetings of Peace, 6/1949).

† “The Lamb of God of Golgotha’s middle cross took away your sins, and from His wounds flowed the blood of reconciliation to settle your heart’s confused account book. You may thus own a full forgiveness in the blood of the Son of God” (Havas [1940], 75-76).

† “it is for such miserable sinners that God, in His wonderful love, gave His beloved Son to make a perfect and complete sacrifice for us. When Jesus died upon the cross, He shouted, ‘It is finished!’ Our sin debt was completely paid. Jesus has become our righteousness before God. We have no other reason for being acceptable to God and Heaven than Jesus. Neither do we need any other reason. For He is sufficient reason, Who is our Righteousness at the right hand of God” (from Kulla 1993, 224).

In Mark's gospel . . . a man comes to Jesus saying, “Good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life,” and Jesus says to the man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (10:17-18). According to James Barr, “This only makes sense if Jesus is not claiming to be God,” because “it fits with the fact that Jesus fully accepted Jewish monotheism.” But by the time Matthew’s gospel was written, the church had developed a higher, more glorified view of Jesus, so this same conversation is amended to read, “‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he (Jesus) said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good’” (19:16). Gone is the description of Jesus as a “good teacher,” so that Jesus’ rhetorical question can be deleted and his statement revised. Jesus now merely asks him, “Why do you call me good?” Noticeably absent is where Jesus said, “No one is good but God alone.” By contrast, John’s gospel . . . reveals a very exalted view of Christ. [Loftus 2008, loc. 5637-44]

A disturbing number of eminent scholars agreed that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He had preached only to his fellow Jews, and there was nothing strikingly original about his teaching, which was in line with other strands of first-century Judaism. Jesus certainly never claimed to be God, but preferred the title “Son of Man,” which emphasized his humanity. After the scandal of his crucifixion, his traumatized disciples had had visions of him risen from the tomb and concluded that he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, who would shortly return to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. But the early Christians still regarded themselves as forming an exclusively Jewish sect. It was Saint Paul, who had never known the historical Jesus, who had first marketed the faith for the non-Jewish world of the Roman Empire. But even Paul had not seen Jesus as divine in any simplistic way. [2007, 231-32]

† Jesus “is lowly, and with the merit of His humbleness, He makes the daughter of Zion rich and the heir of Heaven. The King brings to the poor of His Kingdom His treasures. He Himself sits upon the back of a borrowed ass, when He goes out to draw the prisoners of Zion out of the waterless pit. He bears shackles and is bound, scourged and crowned with thorns. He opens the barred door, when the gates of Paradise are opened to the thief. The precious myrrh drips from His holy and blessing hands” (Heikki Jussila, Greetings of Peace, 3/1943).

† “[T]he Good Shepherd permitted all of our sins to be cast on His innocent shoulders. It was under their load that He groaned and wept in the garden of Gethsemane. Our sins were the nails that pierced His hands, our unbelief pierced His loving heart and caused His precious blood to be shed not to bring curse upon us, but to bring blessing and life eternal” (Paul Heideman, Greetings of Peace, 6/1954).

† “Raise your head and look in faith and spirit and count the wounds of the innocent Sacrifice lamb of God from which the blood of forgiveness was shed for the cleansing of your sins” (VOZ, 10/1974).

† “God gave his son to be nailed on the cross, shed his blood for the remission of sins. . . . This was a great moment when Jesus took the sins of the world upon himself to reconcile lost sinners unto God” (VOZ, 4/1974)

† “It is wonderful in our eyes that even such wretched ones as you and I are still permitted to raise our gaze to the Author and Finisher of our salvation, Jesus Christ, who is the Alpha and the Omega of our salvation. We do not need to be ashamed, our nakedness and shame has been taken away. We are clothed in the beautiful garment of righteousness which the Lord Jesus knitted on Golgatha’s cross” (Alajoki [1981], 235-36).

† “Jesus hung for six hours on the cross and the final three hours he hung in total darkness as all of God’s creation bowed to the death of the Savior, God’s Son” (VOZ, 6/2001).

† “The sermon of the gospel always takes us to behold Golgatha’s cross and the morning of resurrection. From Christ’s cross shines the love of God, and in the Resurrection is the power of God, which crushed the power of sin, death, and God’s adversaries” (Päivämies, 2006).

† “By God’s grace, the gospel is preached in the name of Jesus and through the same drops of blood He shed on Golgatha’s cross” (VOZ, 6/2008).

[I]f we want to know about the life of the historical Jesus, we are more or less restricted to using the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are not disinterested accounts by eyewitnesses, however. They are books written decades after the fact by authors who had heard stories about Jesus from the oral tradition, stories that had been altered and even made up over time. There were lots of discrepancies in these stories, and the Gospel writers themselves changed them as they saw fit. [p. 151]

Francis Potter writes about a friend who confronted those discrepancies at Newton Theological Seminary and labored for many weeks over a “huge cardboard chart on which he was trying to reconcile Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” He finally became “exhausted and disgusted” by the effort and quit the ministry. He said to Potter

rather ruefully and with a sigh that night as we stood looking at the tangled lines of the chart: “Well, Pottie, if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn’t know what Jesus said and did, well enough to agree on it, I’m sure I don’t, and I’m not going to fake it, not to please anybody.” [1951, 391]

Those miracles include raising a girl from the dead, and the fame of that act “went abroad into all that land” (Mt 9:25-26). The “multitudes marvelled” about Jesus casting out a devil and restoring speech to a man (Mt 9:32-33). “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people” (Mt 9:35). He fed nine thousand people from a mere armful of food (Mt 16:9-10). On Good Friday afternoon, there “was darkness over the whole land” for three hours (Mk 15:33). Upon Jesus’ death, “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (Mt 27:51-53).

Yet none of the authors and observers of the day–Paul, Pliny the Elder, Josephus, the hundreds of anonymous writers whose personal letters and mundane records have been preserved–had any of these events brought to their attention and thought them worth recording?

Try the man who has the Divine Spirit by his life. First, he who has the Divine Spirit proceeding from above is meek, and peaceable, and humble, and refrains from all iniquity and the vain desire of this world, and contents himself with fewer wants than those of other men, and when asked he makes no reply; nor does he speak privately, nor when man wishes the spirit to speak does the Holy Spirit speak, but it speaks only when God wishes it to speak. When, then, a man having the Divine Spirit comes into an assembly of righteous men who have faith in the Divine Spirit, and this assembly of men offers up prayer to God, then the angel of the prophetic Spirit, who is destined for him, fills the man; and the man being filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks to the multitude as the Lord wishes. Thus, then, will the Spirit of Divinity become manifest.

—The Shephard of Hermas [c. 140 A.D.]

† “The love of God then is the miracle-power, through which the Holy Ghost creates new life in the soul of man. Love has its home in heaven, for God is love. From heaven the Holy Ghost brings love down into this loveless world and directs its power streams of new life into the heart of man. . . . The Holy Ghost is the gift of the heavenly Father. And so also the new life which the Holy Ghost creates and its fruit are the gift of God. A gift is given, it is not forcibly taken. In receiving it there is not the slightest amount of compulsion. But God-given salvation with all its blessings is a grace gift” (from Greetings of Peace, 10/1961).

It was a sad and disillusioning lesson to learn. Why wasn’t he told that in the first grade? Or the first day at the university? That all institutions, every last one of them–no matter the claim, no matter the purpose, no matter the stated goals–exist sooner or later for their own selves, are self-loving, self-concerned, self-regarding, self-preserving, and are lusting for the soul of all who come near them.

—Will Campbell

An early quote shows a reasonable reference to the “heavenly Jerusalem” without any anthropromorphizing (i.e., making it into a human-like entity):

† In the mutual congregation, not “one is left in his wounds to languish or die, but the ‘Mother’ cares for her children. The congregation could not even be a Mother, unless it experiences sorrow and concern especially for those who have soiled and hurt themselves. All the children are dear to the ‘Mother,’ even the soiled and those literally covered with filth! Have we not seen how many times even the natural Mothers scold and exhort the children who have soiled themselves, but immediately begin to wash and cleanse them! . . . The kingdom of God attempts to the last possible moment to care for the one who has come to fault” (Päivämies, 1973).

† “We show obedience to God when we listen to that voice, what the Spirit saith unto the congregation (Rev 2:29). We have the Mother who instructs. Let us listen to the Mother, the living congregation of God. Through Her the Spirit of God speaks. Thus even then when we are defeated in battle. The Mother instructs to put the sin defeats away as they have happened. Oh, how good the Mother’s instruction is. Here in Zion are open fountains against sin and defilement. We have a God to whom ungodliness is not acceptable, but who still loves the penitent faulty child of man” (Päivämies, 1975).

† “It is a very significant fact, that no matter which kind of spiritual error or carnal religion men may err into, this spiritual ‘Mother’ becomes a dimmed doctrine. Her holiness and office in the matters of faith is questioned, doubted, and disputed with undisguised arrogance. The one in the ‘leaven of hypocrisy,’ the Laestadian Pharisee, sees the kingdom as a fault infested, scruffy lot who walk in undisciplined slackness who rant of grace and forgiveness so tiresomely. On the other hand, the humble hypocrite whose faith is so staunch and durable he cannot rid himself of it even by denying it, sees the kingdom, the ‘Mother,’ as a demanding but fallible teacher, whose instructions ‘one lone defender’ can dispute and ignore! The disobedient, who is hidden under the guise of ‘self-chosen worship and humility’ defends all manner of doctrinal and carnal error with the argument that the ‘Mother’ is erring” (VOZ, 1/1975).

In an effort to explain how “individual members, even member congregations can err in all manner of things,” the quoted writer defines the infallible Mother as “the church universal, the total fellowship of all believers present in the entire world.” It is distinct from “[i]ndividual Christians, the local congregations, [who] are members of the ‘body’ the ‘Mother,’ and are not the ‘Mother.’” He makes a reasonable point when he concludes, “There is only one body (1 Cor 12:12). But the body is not one member but many! (1 Cor 12:14). How can such clear words be twisted? The body is not one member, it is the total of the members.”

The Watchtower Society wants its members to stay as children in relation to its authority, referring to the organization as “Mother”; thus, Jehovah’s Witnesses spend most of their time in the “child” mode, looking to the organization as their “parent.” When a Witness voices any disagreement with this “parent,” the organization disrespectfully views that disagreement as tantamount to a child throwing a tantrum. [Wilson 2002, 226]

It is the same kind of thing that was being said about the relationship of the “Child of God” to the “Mother”:

† “Sometimes when a child gets older he can be more disobedient and not listen to his temporal mother and what sorrow that causes her. How the congregation of God sorrows when spiritually a child is disobedient and does not heed its admonitions, because he has grown too big in himself. How happy a Christian mother is when the blood of Christ can flow between her and her child, because she herself can err by going into the flesh when her child is disobedient. The spiritual mother rejoices when a wayward child repents, but differs from the natural mother in this way–the spiritual mother cannot err even though her child does” (VOZ, 11/1980).

† “The mother feeds and cares for her children. So also does the Kingdom of God, the spiritual Mother, which Rebekah-mother in the Old Testament portrays” (By Faith, 31).

Then, in 2008, as some dissident voices began to be heard in the SRK, the “congregation mother” got some fresh attention, along with warnings about the 1970s, her last heyday:

† “People of our time see faith as a personal matter, with which no one should interfere. But through the example of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught that we are to care for those wounded by sin and wearied in their faith. God’s congregation is like a mother who wants to hold her child in her arms. Discussions about doctrine and soul care especially rise in importance during times of battle in Christianity. This was also experienced in the 1970s, when a schism separated from Conservative Laestadianism. Even during difficult times, God does His work in the Holy Spirit through His children who, in themselves, are lacking. It is important that through all times our trust in the grace-care of God’s kingdom would be preserved” (Päivämies No. 2, 2008).

† “The believer in God’s kingdom has a Father in heaven and a spiritual mother here on this Earth. Our mother cares for us and guides us on his way to heaven. . . . There is reason for concern if one has a different understanding of spiritual matters than the congregation mother.” In the schism of the 1970s, the “people who went astray had lost the correct doctrine of the congregation mother. They no longer kept it as an unerring kingdom” (VOZ, 8/2008).

Now it seems that the mother is enjoying something of a comeback. Obedience to her will was mentioned frequently during a 2010 youth discussion in Minneapolis, and Ray Waaraniemi’s 2011 presentation says, “It is vital to personal faith that we understand the role of the congregation mother. We always want to be obedient to the congregation of God. It is a beautiful matter that we can entrust our endeavor into the care of the congregation of God, our spiritual mother.”

At least he didn’t capitalize her name.

An angel is a spiritual creature created by God without a body, for the service of Christendom and of the church.

—Martin Luther

There is little mention of angels in the last century of writings and sermons. The topic is mostly for children, and the presence of angels in the everyday life of an adult believer does not seem to be taken too seriously.

† “It feels so secure to be in faith, when each of us has a guardian angel, even for such a weak one who thinks that God hardly looks down so low. Let us not even then tremble in the waves of doubt, or when the anger and envy of Babylon beat over us. God sends His Angels to protect us, like he did to the den of lions to rescue Daniel, and to the furnace to save Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” (Saari 1968, 32).

† “There are so many of these [spiritual] angels [Heb 1:14], that there are enough for each child of God to have his very own. Remember, children, that angels accompany you, and they see the face of the heavenly father. When the time comes for us to leave the world, these angels will come and carry a child of God to his rest” (Lasten Siioni [1978], from VOZ, 12/1979).

† “Jesus indicates that His children have angels in heaven. The Arch-angel Michael and his angels cast the devil and his angels from heaven (Rev 12:7-9). In this, we see a picture of how Jesus Christ is the victor over the enemy of souls [Rev 12:10 cited]. There are angels on earth also; the Bible refers to servants of the word as angels. The servants of the seven churches in Asia were called angels (Rev 1:20). A child of God often feels that the other children of God are angels sent to minister in time of need” (VOZ, 10/2000).

† “Scriptures relate of angels many times. Angels were created by God to protect us, to be messengers, and to guide us on the road to heaven. Some angels in the Bible even have names” (VOZ, 10/2009).

† “One can only imagine what it would be like to be visited by an Angel. God has created Angels to serve Him, although they belong to the invisible world. The Bible, however, relates of several occasions when Angels have visited man. Sometimes they have come as messengers from God, and other times they have come to protect and deliver God’s children from danger” (VOZ, 3/2010).

When Luther wants to designate the power to which every man is subject in his sinfulness, he speaks of “flesh,” of “the world,” and of “the devil.” He repeatedly places these three concepts together. Each of the three powers seduces men to sin and holds them captive in it; all three are opposed to God, to his word, and to faith.

—Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther

† “When the Holy Spirit which speaks through the mouth of the Christians makes the devil that lives in the hearts of the unbelievers restless he becomes fierce. Now he comes out of their mouth with hide and hair. He puts them to gnash their teeth because of hate. He becomes so wroth that he thirsts after the blood of Christians” (Laestadius, Pentecost Morning sermon [1852]; Fourth Postilla, 121).

† “But now the devil of unbelief has launched an attack against us, for he knows that the blood of the Lamb of God is falling upon the hearts of the believers, and that is a deadly poison to him. So the devil strengthens the unrepentant and the enemies of the cross of Christ in the faith that God is merciful if they are penitent. But the devil prevents the awakened who should believe, from believing” (Raattamaa, letter written 1854, from Kulla 1985, 179).

† “We have often heard the enemy whisper: ‘It is better that you give up your faith. If you in this state cling to what the Savior has done, you will fall into the sin of hypocrisy.’ Thus we have become involved in the very marrow of the matter. We have come to see that if we now relinquish Jesus Christ we are lost. We have been compelled to answer the enemy: ‘Everything else you may take, but do not estrange me from Jesus Christ’” (Havas [1940], 73).

† “[L]et us not leave this Kingdom, although the enemy entices us through the world and the love of sin. At another time he oppresses [us] through our own corruption. And if he does not succeed with this, he comes to entice us through self-righteousness or through a preacher of false doctrine to lead us astray from God’s Kingdom” (Kalle Timonen, Greetings of Peace, 8/1961).

† “The indwelling sin and corruption, which is the inheritance of our forefathers, together with the unbelieving world with its friends, and the sly enemy of the soul, work to steal all that which is heavenly from the hearts of children. With sorrow, many Christian parents see how powerfully the triune enemy attacks against their sons and daughters. The world is evil. If ever before, now in our day the enemy of the soul invents new snares with which to entangle the souls of the young people” (Paul Heideman, from Greetings of Peace, 5/1963).

† “The enemy of souls seeks to lead one astray in many ways. Also the young children of God feel how the enemy goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour” (Alajoki [1966], 125).

† “Once in eternity God made plans to create a visible heaven and earth with all its hosts. But before His plans were carried out, a sad thing happened in the glory of heaven: one of the chief angels began to envy the omnipotence of God and together with some other angels made a secret plot against God to overthrow Him from His throne. But the works of darkness came to light then, even though they were done by glorious creatures. God cast out this chief angel from heaven, he who is called the devil and Satan, with all his multitudes, into outer darkness without any promise of redemption, without any grace and forgiveness. This angel became the satanic majesty of darkness who resolved to destroy the very crowning work of God’s creation, man.”

The actual passage on which this story is based merely states that there was war in heaven and Satan “was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Remember, the book of Revelation also testifies “unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book” (22:18).

† “The enemy of the soul does everything possible to corrupt the work of God” (VOZ, 5/1974).

† “In these last times there are so many evil forces afoot with which we must do battle and the author of them all is Satan,” who wants “confusion and doubts” among the believers (VOZ, 10/1978).

† “We know that the enemy of our souls always tries to break the love of the brothers and sisters and lead us into wrong watchings. We experience this warfare and have felt the wounds of sin. There isn’t a single traveler on the way of faith that has not experienced the power and cunning of the threefold enemy–our flesh, the world, and Satan. The enemy surrounds us with temptations” (Alajoki [1989], 220).

† “We all feel the weakness of our flesh and the lusts which arise from within. However, there is no better place to be, when faced with such evil and temptations, than in the household of the living God as His child. Here we find comfort, support and encouragement in fighting ‘the good fight of faith.’ Our ability to battle against the evils of the world, Satan and our own flesh comes not of ourselves, but through faith” (Lawrence Byman, presentation given 1997).

† “Our ever present three-fold enemy is forever trying to get us to fall into sin. Satan is at the forefront of this endeavor and wants us to serve him and his evil kingdom. He is a master of a thousand lies and is very subtle, persuasive, and crafty at his full-time occupation of trying to turn man away from God” (VOZ, 2/2002).

It all paints quite an impressive portrait of the enemy. And I wonder if those who are writing this stuff are really aware of what they are doing. As Price notes,

Theologically, to posit such attendance of Satan upon every detail of every Christian life in the world today is to make Satan into an evil God with an all-embracing negative providence. It is to say, virtually, that not a hair of your head will perish without his consent. In short, fundamentalism has, apparently without realizing it, gone the whole way with Zoroastrianism, making Satan into the opposite-but-equal God. Do you really mean to ascribe such all-embracing knowledge and activity to Satan? [2006b, 254]

Apparently so, because the fervor with which the topic is treated continues unabated to the present day:

† “There is a daily battle between the Spirit of God within us and our sin-corrupt flesh. We also must deal with the influences of the world, which is in continuous turmoil around us. Satan is so close to us. He knows he does not have much time and is ‘seeking whom he may devour.’ . . . Satan desires to devour the believer. That is his work. He tries to sow confusion in our midst around various matters” (George Koivukangas, presentation given 2004).

† “There has always been a division in this world between God’s kingdom and those outside of its walls. Throughout history, this division has been apparent. A continual warfare between Satan and God’s children has been taking place. Today Satan is combining the forces of various faiths into one ecumenical group” (VOZ, 11/2004).

† “Wearing the helmet of the hope of salvation helps to ward off the enemy’s attacks. It helps fight against this world’s vain philosophies and wisdom. It reminds us to keep the wisdom of this world from mixing with the wisdom of the Spirit” (VOZ, 9/2006).

† “[T]he things of this world may entice and tempt the child of God. The enemy of souls will whisper that a little fun and enjoyment with sinful life is acceptable. We remember that the enemy of souls is a liar and that those things that tempt a believer can be dangerous and lead one away from God’s precious kingdom” (VOZ, 10/2007).

† “We battle an enemy that does not show himself as easily as the army of Amelek did on the battlefield [Exodus 17:9-13]. There are many temptations that face God’s children today. The enemy is always devising clever schemes to trick God’s children into sin and break the love between brothers and sisters” (VOZ, 5/2008).

† “Satan would want us to forget that there is power over sin. He is the master of lies and has practiced them from the beginning of time” (VOZ, 9/2009).

† “When we put sin away, we‘re given the strength to battle against the three-fold enemy–the devil, the world, and our own flesh” (VOZ, 10/2009).

† “We are in a battle against an enemy coming from three directions. The enemy of souls tries to entice us to live by our corrupt flesh and blood and according to its desires. The enemy also tempts us with the enticements of the sins of the world. The enemy of souls continues to preach a sermon of lies, trying to thwart the counsel and instructions of God’s Word and deny the consequences of disobeying God’s Word” (Christmas in Zion, 2009).

In fundamentalist groups . . . the movement, organisation, and group nested social identity is usually so strong that deviants . . . are likely to be treated as being in error. One of the several reasons for this intolerance of deviants is that any example of deviance decreases the group’s homogeneity, and hence its distinctiveness from its out-groups. We all need to be absolutely clear where we stand, particularly where the deviant “heresy” is actually a part of the out-group’s social identity. Moreover, we will all feel much purer and more virtuous if we have rooted out sinful error from our midst. Alternatively, if the deviant repents and requests re-acceptance, we will feel better for our act of forgiveness.

—Peter Herriot, Religious Fundamentalism

† The issue of the so-called Kosonenism and my involvement in it, which was taken up at the Joensuu meeting of preachers and elders, came as a great surprise to me, and so I couldn’t even immediately recall all the points involved in the matter though I understood that repentance from Kosonenism was expected of me. I couldn’t directly repent because, in my opinion, I have never approved of false doctrine. Therefore, my repentance turned out as clumsy as it did. . . . Now I indeed recall that in some ‘discussions’ I found myself defending Kosonenians because I have considered them believers. I haven’t understood this matter previously as I do now since they have been confronted. And since I have thus found myself implicated in Kosonenism, I ask forgiveness for it from God’s congregation. [from Hepokoski 2002b, 74]

In the 1980s, I was encouraged, along with many of my young peers, to repent of the “spirit of the freedom of the flesh” as a root cause of wayward behavior. My mother repented of the “Kososlainen spirit” without ever figuring out what it was. The spirits had been amply described in their fascinating variety:

† “One of the first fruits of false spirit is that it immediately begins to undermine the authority of” the Christian church, as represented in Mt 18:23. “All who have fallen into bondage, whether of the spirit of self righteousness, or the spirit of leniency, or of ecumenism, or whatever, immediately begin to admire like Hagar their own fruitfulness and despise the unfruitful Sarah” (VOZ, 3/1974).

† The birth of the “dry spirit” is often concealed, “and when it begins to come we do not often notice this. But its signs are very clear. When one repents of dryness, it does not take long when one is in the same dryness, in the same matters, in the same circles, in the same fault-findings as concerns other Christians. Then when the congregation of God counsels repentance for this and repentance is made, yet it is not long when one is back in the same dryness. Thus, little by little, as if unnoticed, false spirit has come into the heart” (VOZ, 5/1975).

† “The same scriptural Word which effects life in the Christian by the Holy Spirit, works death when used by those who are governed by a foreign spirit. This spirit may be any of several kinds: lawful, lenient, dry, or any other, which if unchecked by the caretaking of the kingdom, will surely result in a final separation from the love of the good Shepherd” (VOZ, 8/1975).

† “When a false spirit has taken the place of the Holy Spirit one begins to feed oneself with the faults of others and sees the instructions of God’s kingdom as the sermon of the law. Those in the wrong can also join and feel strong unity of spirit–unity of a false spirit” (Päivämies No. 33, 1978).

A Päivämies article about “The Battle of Spirits” describes symptoms of the “dry spirit” and “lenient spirit” and states that one

† must receive grace to repentance of false spirit, so that one can be delivered from under the power of the spirit of darkness to subjection of the Holy Spirit. In other words, “the tree has to be made good.” It does not help at all, however diligently one would amend or correct the fruits, for this does not change the spirit. [from VOZ, 6/1978]

A “false spirit” seeks “support and comfort” from like-minded individuals, which just sounds like simple human nature to me:

† “The simplest formula for discerning the false spirit from the true and Holy Spirit is given by John: ‘we are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.’ . . . Whenever a false spirit of carnality or self-righteousness attacks and confuses a Christian, he begins to seek support and comfort from and among those who are in the same condition of error. Thus are the seeds and foundations of heresy established” (VOZ, 10/1978).

Einari Lepistö provided a detailed description of the “Kososlainen spirit” in a 1979 issue of Päivämies (from VOZ, 9/1979). Although the “manifestations and fruits of the Kososlainen spirit are varied,” a common feature is that it, “in one way or another, quarrels against the Holy Spirit of God. . . . It speaks of the preciousness of God’s congregation, but at the same time criticizing in a fault-finding way, sometimes an individual Christian, speaker-brothers, or persons who are in positions of trust in the activities of Christianity.” Rather than depart as a heresy, the “Kososlainen false spirit hangs on with Christianity.“

† “Throughout time, believers have battled false doctrines and heretical spirits. Apostle Paul spoke openly to the Corinthians saying, there must be heresies among you so that those who are tried in your midst shall be made known (1 Cor 11:19). Recognizing this evil time, we need to be watchful on our journey of faith” (VOZ, 7/1999).