False gods and theologians

They were really just worshipping Yahweh.

Back in August, this blog argued that it was not possible to believe in false gods, and that if it were, it would be silly for God to be jealous, as that is a tacit acknowledgement that these “false” gods actually exist. An American Old Testament professor by the name of Dr Claude Mariottini stumbled across the piece, and duly produced a response on his blog. For someone who has a doctorate in the area, his piece is stunningly lacking in rigour, apparently ignorant of many basic facts about the Bible, and exemplifies the dismissive attitude of many theologians to those who question their faiths.

He says that I had “introduced so many incorrect statements that I believe some clarification is in order”—which must whet the intellectual appetite, given that my piece was only 196 words long. Then, tautologically, he says, “In my response to his statements, I will be brief, otherwise, this post would be very long.”

In my post I called God “Yahweh/Allah” as a mere shorthand for a vengeful God who is envious of all the false gods that His people wrongly worship. But Dr Mariottini claims that I am compounding the two:

When one compares what the Bible has to say about the nature and the character of the God of Abraham with what the Quran says about the nature and character of Allah, it becomes clear that the two are not the same God.

It is difficult to know where to begin with such fuzzy thinking. Both Judaeo-Christianity and Islam believe that there is only one God, therefore Mariottini can only claim that one of the holy books describes God incorrectly, not that it refers to a different God entirely. After all, some parts of the Bible speak of God as a vengeful, angry, and even (implicitly) childish deity, while others speak of Him in distant, hushed tones, barely granting Him any anthropomorphic qualities at all—and Mariottini would presumably not cherry-pick the God most to his taste?

To Mariottini, the name of God is all-important. “The name of the God of the Bible,” he says, “is Yahweh”, and in one fell swoop he obliterates the name “Elohim”. He implicitly argues that because God’s name is Yahweh, one must not worship a golden calf, which, as I argued, can be thought of as just another name for God. Clearly, then, if Mariottini had priestly jurisdiction over all Judaism and Christianity, it would be the highest blasphemy to worship Elohim.

Another example of fuzzy thinking:

Fourth, David wrote: “If God expects his followers to worship him on the basis of the correct name and appearance, surely it is only courteous to introduce himself to them personally” But he did.

He may have done so in the brilliant work of literary fiction that is Exodus, but he didn’t do so to Dr Mariottini, nor, indeed, to anybody else in civilized history. If God found it so difficult to coerce the Israelites into worshipping Him that He was forced to make a personal appearance, how then should we, three thousand years later, be trusted not to have false idols when all we have is a document composed by a fallible man, later redacted by a series of yet more fallible men?

The main thrust of his argument, then, is that the Bible says it is possible to believe in false gods, ergo it must indeed be possible. It is this sort of facileness that puts Christianity in a position of exponentially diminishing authority. Christian theology needs someone of the calibre of an Augustine or an Aquinas, who is perfectly capable of defending Christianity outside of the confines of the Bible. Until then, we’ll have to make do with Mariottini, who says:

So, now I come back to David’s question: “Is it possible to believe in false gods?” As I said above, the answer is obvious: Of course it is.

The idolatrous practices of the people of ancient Israel is a vivid reminder that people can worship false gods, but those who worship those worthless things become worthless themselves. If anyone wants to worship a god, why worship false gods? People should worship the true and living God, and serve only him (Deuteronomy 10:20).

Which is, of course, perfectly logical, utterly irrefutable proof.