DUALITY WITHIN UNITY

A False Understanding of the Christian God

By James A. Fowler

© 2007 – All rights reserved

Let it be stated at the outset that this article is drafted in response to an aberrant teaching that I have encountered and heard articulated by several teachers over the past thirty years. The particular contextualized expression of this teaching that I am familiar with is likely not the only variation of this fallacious portrayal of the God of the Christian faith, given the wide range of modern (or should I say “postmodern”) attempts to homogenize eastern philosophical and religious concepts with Christian truth-tenets, so the exposure of the false premises of this perverse theology should serve to provide a caution and/or corrective to various forms of false teaching that misrepresent the God worshipped by Christians. As a student of Christian theology, I unashamedly seek to delineate and defend the historic, traditional, and orthodox understanding of the Christian God against the intrusion and infringement of false views that would misrepresent His essential Being and function.

The particular misrepresentation of God that is to be addressed in this article is the misguided attempt to explain God as “a duality within unity,” or more precisely as a “god-being who is a monistic ‘all in all,’ being the ‘one person in the universe,’ who could only become aware of his own being by facing the duality of the opposites within him, and by his own desired self-choice fixate himself as the sole and singular reality of all that exists and function as a good, kind, and loving god.” Most Christians who read such an explanation of God will be appalled at such a portrayal of God, for they know God to be eternally and essentially perfect, pure and holy in His actual Being, simple and indivisible without any necessity of existence or action that would make Him contingent upon such. But the subtle presuppositions of those who seek to explain God in their religious systems of “new thought” and “theosophy” and “Christian science,” using themes such as “oneness,” “unity” and “universalism,” have deceived many unsuspecting Christians who have failed to think through the implications of the God of the Christian faith.

Yin / Yang and the Tao

Let us begin our study of the concept of “duality within unity” by noting the age-old oriental principle of yin-yang. Most people are familiar with the symbol of a circle that is divided symmetrically into equal parts of black and white, with a smaller circle of the opposite color within each half. This symbol of the yin/yang philosophy illustrates the alleged monistic singularity of all things wherein the duality of opposites is equally divided within the universal whole. Neither of the opposites is larger or greater than the other, and each is equally indwelt by its opposite. Such a philosophy of duality in monistic oneness is a basic foundation to most Chinese philosophy (in particular Confucianism and Taoism) which has posited the primal principle of opposites known as yin and yang for almost two and a half millennia. Within the monistic oneness that comprises everything in the universe, the Tao, are the two opposite cosmic forces designated yin and yang. Yin represents the “shady place,” the dark, black, dull, passive, cold, feminine, evil, etc. Yang represents the “sunny place,” the light, white, bright, active, hot, masculine, good, etc. These contrasting opposites need each other, cannot exist without the other, and their interdependent interactivity is alleged to create the energy of chi that vitalizes the whole of the Tao, everything in the universe, manifested through the five material agents of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The oriental principle of yin-yang is an ancient theory that seeks to explain metaphysics, cosmology, and even the ethics of good and evil by the theory of duality within monistic oneness.

Kabbalah

In an entirely different cultural milieu of the world another philosophical system of thought developed within the context of the Hebrew religion, and subsequently spread into Western contexts as hermetic kabbalism. Kaballah (meaning “receptivity” or “acceptance”) is a mystical and metaphysical system of thought that explains that God has “two sides.” Evil is regarded as the Sitra Ahra (the “other side”) that resides in the Ein-Sof (hidden self) of God. Using elaborate diagrams linking metaphysical and cosmological concepts, the kaballists indicate that God originally filled the void of the cosmos with ten emanations of himself (illustrated in the “tree of life” diagram), and the purpose of man is to restore the divine opposites by the process of tikkun, the reunification of divinity and the union of everything in the universe. With definite Gnostic overtones, the kabbalistic intent is to restore and reintegrate duality into unity.

These brief summarizations of Yin-yang and Kabbalah set the stage for our continuing study of how some particular historical personages have adopted and adapted the concept of “duality within unity” in their concept of God and His intents for man and the world.

Jacob Boehme

Of particular importance in the history of those who have advocated a duality within the divine unity is the mystical German cobbler, Jacob Boehme (aka Bohme, Behmen). Though philosophically and theologically untrained, Boehme was greatly influenced by the Swiss alchemist and astrologer, Theophastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who conferred upon himself the title “Paracelsus” (“alongside Celsus” – Celsus was a second century Greek philosopher who was an antagonist of Christian thought.)

Repudiating much of his Lutheran upbringing, and claiming a vision that explained all reality from the reflection of the sunlight in a pewter dish, Boehme developed an elaborate theory (illustrated with many kabbalist-type diagrams) of the origination of God as the Ungrund, the universal principle of unfathomable and unknowable existence. This impersonal hidden principle is thought to contain everything within itself – Nichts and Alles (nothing and everything). But it (the “god” figure) needed to emerge out of its no-thingness of potentiated reality in order to be manifested in differentiated actuality. This, according to Boehme, required the confrontations and conflict of the contrariety of opposites wherein the emerging and evolving god could know himself in self-realization and self-consciousness, and thereby manifest himself.

Boehme’s premise was that the “one power of the universe” in which all else existed pan en theo (“all in god” - panentheism) experienced the disorder of inner suffering as he hungered, longed, and desired self-apprehension which would require self-limitation and self-separation (even self-alienation) in the disjunction and diremption of himself into the contrariety of opposites. But the yearning and craving of his will necessarily brought forth the intrinsic antitheses of all being in the dualities of unity, wherein god was alleged to exhibit both good and evil, love and wrath, yes and no, heaven and hell, etc. In this necessary and unavoidable “eternal contrarium” of god, the positive, good and loving side of god was a “being-for-others,” while the negative, evil and wrathful side of god was a “being-for-self.”

The interactive energy of the contrarieties of god allowed him to bring himself into the visibility of manifestation within the created order, for “the world is the essence of God made creaturely.” The created order, like god and as god, participated in the longing “desire” to assist god in the unification of the opposites, and human beings by their inherent volitional “free-will” can co-operate with god to co-create the union of “duality within unity” in order to make each other whole.

Boehme’s mystical and metaphysical fantasies were not well received by the Lutheran authorities and he was forced to leave his hometown of Gorlitz, only returning there to die. Subsequent evaluation by orthodox church history has always regarded his thought as heretical, but his counter-Christian ideology has influenced such authors as Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Schopenhaur, Blake, Swedenborg, and Carl Jung. Identified by many as “the father of theosophy,” Boehme is cited as authoritative by Theosophists, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and numerous occult groups, and is indirectly acknowledged as having contributed to “New Thought,” “New Age” thinking, and to the “Process Theology” that evolved from the writings of A. F. Whitehead. Without a doubt, Jacob Boehme is a pivotal figure in the advocacy of “duality within unity.”

Norman P. Grubb

Our study now brings us to the particular context of the teaching of “duality within unity” that was mentioned at the outset. In his autobiography, Once Caught, No Escape, Norman Percy Grubb, the British missionary and author, credited Jacob Boehme with being the source from whom he “got his answer” that provided him with the “last word” of “insights into the nature of God, the nature of being, and the interaction of opposites.”¹

Following Boehme’s thoughts closely, Grubb began many of his writings with the explanation that “there is only One Person in the universe,”² and “the whole universe is His myriad forms of Self-manifestation, ...for everything is a form by which He manifests Himself.”³ God is “All in all,”⁴ Grubb repetitively asserted (misusing I Corinthians 15:28 as his alleged scriptural documentation), explaining that “all that exists is a unity of which He is the Center;”⁵ “God is the All – Everything is God on a level of manifestation.”⁶ When charged with being a “pantheist,” he always claimed that he was not saying that “God is everything,” but that “God is in everything,” but such panentheism is but a semantically modified form of pantheism.

Commencing his theology with the monistic idea that “there is only One Person in the universe,” Grubb was obliged to attempt to explain what he meant by a “person.” With a broad brush of spiritualized psycho-babble, Grubb alternately explained that a “person” is one who “loves and knows and makes choices,” having “desire, knowledge, and will”⁷; “to be a person means conscious freedom ... conscious of endless variety;”⁸ “to be a person is to be confronted with alternatives, and having to make an independent choice;”⁹ “a person is a person because he has the capacity of decision;”¹⁰ to be a person is to have “moral consciousness;”¹¹ “a person is only a person by the endowment of self-consciousness, which is freedom;”¹² “to be a person is to be a spirit-person ... We are persons as God is the Person;”¹³ “at our centre we are spirits, even as He is Spirit, having the same basic selfhood as God;”¹⁴ “We are lifted to the level of deity, because we are created spirits who can totally identify with Him the Spirit;”¹⁵ “we have the same basic selfhood as God.”¹⁶ Misapplying the Psalmist’s statement, “ye are gods” (Psalm 82:6), Grubb explains that “we are the same kind of person that He is,”¹⁷ having an “innate autonomy” of “free choice,” “conscious of alternatives and compelled to choose.”¹⁸

The personal choice that God, Lucifer and man were necessarily compelled to make, according to Grubb’s presuppositions, was fueled by an innate “desire” within every personal self. “The fundamental instinct of all life is desire. All is desire. Desire in the primal energy of life. Desire is the foundation of God’s nature, ...the foundation of God’s own Being, ...the first quality of God’s nature is desire.”¹⁹ “Penetrate into God’s self, we find desire. A self desires to please itself, to express itself.”²⁰ “God is love. What does love do? It is desire. It must satisfy itself.”²¹ God and humans are both equivalent person-selves who have to choose among alternatives.²² “God is the First Self, and there is one fundamental choice a self makes. Should He be a self-lover or a self-giver? God is fixed by His choice to be a self-giver instead of a self-lover.”²³ “God chose the way of love, the way of His eternal nature,”²⁴ eternally fixed as the self-giving Self of the universe.”²⁵

Grubb’s premise of innate desire necessitating the person-self (God, angels, mankind) to make a volitional choice is predicated on a thesis that he labeled “the law of opposites,”²⁶ wherein the duality of good and evil are alleged to be alternatives that must be chosen by every personal choice-agent. “All life is the contrast, tension, and interaction of opposites,”²⁷ Grubb explained, and “the choice between opposites is the essential nature of a free intelligent self.”²⁸ “Everything in life is duoform. Direct opposites make life. The basic law of existence requires the opposites of life, good and evil.”²⁹ “Nothing can be known except by its opposite.”³⁰ “A thing is only a thing because it has its opposite.”³¹ “Life is only life by the interrelation of its opposites.”³² By choosing self-giving love over selfishness and good over evil, God became fixed in His nature, character, and Being as the God that He is. “The One Person in the Universe has made that eternal choice,”³³ and could therefore become manifest, comprehensible, and visible.³⁴

“Deep in the heart of the life of God,” stated Grubb, “in His very essence is the eternal reconciliation of opposites.”³⁵ Though God is reputed to have definitively chosen good over evil, sublimated evil still resides within God as “the back parts of God, the underlying form which vitalizes His love, joy and peace.”³⁶ According to Grubb’s Christology, God through the Son, Jesus Christ, “became the opposite to Himself, and tasted the duality of good and evil.”³⁷ Citing Jacob Boehme, Grubb concurred that “there is a cross in the heart of the Deity, ...whereby He has eternally ‘died’ to being a God for self,”³⁸ “a cross in the very heart of eternity, when the Eternal One ‘dies’ to Himself and ‘lives’ to His Son.”³⁹ Grubb’s redemptive soteriology is summed up in the explanation that the opposites of “good and evil are reunited by the alchemy of the cross and resurrection.”⁴⁰

Though Norman P. Grubb’s teaching and writings never became very popular, and were never given serious consideration by the Christian academic community, his importation of Jacob Boehme’s fanciful hypothesis of “duality within unity” comprising the very nature of God is being perpetuated by several groups of his followers to this day.

Author’s Note

I think it important to note that God used Norman P. Grubb as a vessel to minister to many persons the important truth of “union with Christ.” During several personal visits with Norman P. Grubb in the 1970s, my observation of his demeanor and behavior were that he was indeed a “godly man.” The observation of his behavior and the benefit of some of his teaching do not, however, mean that one should not be discerning about a particular area of his thought and teaching that deviates from that accepted and taught by the Christian faith throughout the centuries. The nature and character of the very Being of God is so central and seminal to the whole of Christian thought that any misrepresentation of God’s Being should be exposed and corrected.

Christian Understanding of God

Several elements of the traditional and orthodox Christian understanding of God are contradicted by the foregoing thesis of a divine duality within unity. These include, but are not limited to, the following tenets of Christian theology:

Trinitarian Monotheism

With deliberate emphasis Norman Grubb reiterated in his writings over a period of over forty years that “the one and only foundation of all truth (is) that there is only one Person in the universe – God, “The All in all” – and therefore the whole universe, things or people, is nothing but dependent, derivative forms of the “in all” of “God All in all.”⁴¹ Such emphasis on God as the “one Person in the universe,” with the entire created universe being the manifested forms of God, reveals both a deficient Trinitarian understanding of God as well as the monistic and pantheistic concepts of god that are at the core of much Eastern religion and were incorporated in the mystical speculations of Jacob Boehme.

The foremost distinctive of the Christian understanding of God is the unique recognition of Trinitarian monotheism. When Jesus declared, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), the Jewish leaders considered His statement as blasphemous, for they were quite aware that Jesus was not affirming a common oneness of goal, purpose, or teleological objective with God the Father; but they were convinced that Jesus was asserting an essential oneness with God the Father that challenged and denied their monadic monotheism of the singularity of God’s Person, founded as it was in the Shema statement of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” Early Christian understanding of God retained the monotheistic assertion of God’s essential oneness of Being, but based on God’s Self-revelation through His Son, Jesus Christ, explained that the singularly personal God was not comprised of “one Person,” but of three Persons in one Being (three hypostases in one ousia). The Christian concept of three Persons in Trinitarian monotheism is not that of three separate “individuals” functioning in concert, for that would comprise a tritheism of “three gods,” thus sacrificing the basic monotheistic realization of “one God,” but neither are the “three Persons” to be explained as three modes of expressing a “one Person” deity, as was evidenced in the various heretical forms of “modalism.” The Trinitarian understanding of God as “three Persons in one Being,” has always excluded the monadic and monistic concept of God as “the one Person in the universe.”

In the Christian denial that the “three Persons” of the Godhead are three distinct “individuals” is the necessity of additional explanation of what is implied in the affirmation that God is a singularly personal God, existing and functioning as “three Persons in one Being.” The triune personhood of God cannot be explicated in the contemporary anthropological and psychological categories that Norman Grubb attempts to utilize. The personhood of God is not to be defined by an intrinsic necessity of personal desire, consciousness of opposites, need for self-expression, decision-making choice, self-determined spiritual and/or moral nature, etc. Rather, from the earliest theological explanations of the Greek fathers of the Church, the Christian understanding of the personhood of God has been defined as relational personhood grounded in the eternal interpersonal relationship of the three Persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The loving interpersonal relations of the “three Persons” of the Godhead are foundational to understanding the personhood of God in the Trinitarian formulation of the Christian understanding of God, and this ontological interpersonal communion intrinsic to God’s Trinitarian Being is the underlying basis for God’s creation, redemption, and His intended restoration of interpersonal relationships in the created order by participation in His own interpersonal Trinitarian Being. It is this relational context of God’s Personhood that Norman Grubb violates in his repeated assertion that “there is only one Person in the universe.”

Aseity of God

Christian theology has long maintained that God exists in Himself, that God is a se, i.e. “of or by Himself.” The aseity of His Self-existence does not imply that He caused Himself to exist, for God is eternally uncaused. God is not Self-caused (causa sui), Self-generated, Self-potentialized, or Self-actualized, but is Uncaused. God did not cause Himself to exist, nor did He cause Himself to exist as a particular form of character or Being by a particular choice He is alleged to have made from multiple choices. No processes, either within (internal) or outside of (external) God were utilized or employed to cause God to be what/who He is. He is the eternal Self-existent “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) – eternally existent in and of Himself as the total, complete and absolute perfection and purity of divine Being – without beginning and without end. God IS, always has been, and always will be, the singular Self-existent reality underlying all that exists.

As the Uncaused Self-existent divine Being, God functions as the Uncaused cause of all that exists (with the sole exception of His own Uncaused Being). He is the Uncreated Creator, who existed as He IS, prior to and independent of all else, and is the cause of all else (cf. Isa. 40:18-28; John 1:3; Col. 1:16,17; Rev. 4:11).

He has always existed as the God that He IS, and cannot cease to exist. God has no potentiality or possibility for not existing, or for existing other than He IS in His own essential Being. He IS who He IS a se, “of/by Himself,” inherently and intrinsically, from and unto eternity.

Independence of God

God exists and functions independent of everything that is not Himself. He is the sole and singular “Independent Self.” God is not contingent on anything from within or without to be the God that He IS. God is uncontingent upon any law or action within Himself or outside of Himself. God is unnecessitated – requiring no necessary actions (even Self-actions) to be or become the God that He IS. His Being, character and existence is unnecessitated by anything or anyone, even His own actions. He is not a God with any necessity to make a choice or to act on his intrinsic desires in order to become the God that He IS.

It is not possible that God could be affected by an alleged necessary imposition of a “law of opposites.” God is not required to operate on the basis of any law or principle. Since God is the sole, divine Independent Being it is impossible that His Being and character should be dependent upon a logical opposite that must be chosen against, or dependent upon a desire expressed in a particular choice. God ceases to be an Independent Being if He has to function in accord with some externally and logically applied necessary law or principle. To impose a philosophical principle of “opposites” upon God is not, and never has been, the Christian understanding of God. This makes the Being of God contingent/dependent on a philosophical principle of opposites, as well as the anthropomorphized choice wherein His psychologized “desire” allegedly prompted Him to choose His inherent good instead of His alleged inherent evil. To commence with a philosophical presupposition of a “law of opposites” that is imposed upon the Being of God is to deify a perceptual duality of human thought and to craft/create the idea of God in man’s thought and ways. This is a decidedly humanistic understanding of God.

God is a law unto Himself. All divine law is but the expectation of the expression of His own Being. There is no external law/principle that can be said to dictate to God what He must be or do, or else such a law is greater than God, and God is not the Absolute Being. A humanly envisioned and calculated “law of opposites” cannot be superimposed as a necessity upon God, and to attempt to impose any necessary law or principle upon God’s being or doing is to mentally reduce God from the God that He IS independently and absolutely.

God IS and does only by what is intrinsic to Himself – a se. God does what He does, because He IS who He IS, and He actuates the expression of His own Being ek theos – out of Himself.

Simplicity of God

The simplicity and singularity of God implies that He is “without dimensions” (Clement of Alexandria). Chrysostom explained, “God is simple, without composition and without configuration.” Basil of Seleucia added, “Deity has no parts.”

God is simply the God who He IS. He is not a compound, not a composite, not an admixture with anything. He is simply the singular perfection of all being. There are no contradictory opposites within God, and no potentiality of His being other than He IS. To allow such is to admit an imperfection in God.

God cannot be comprised or constituted of opposites requiring a choice to fix His character in one or the other. God is indivisible. He is not comprised or constituted of (or by) a Self-chosen “No” to an alleged negative side of His Being, and a Self-chosen “Yes” to an alleged positive side of His Being. God is indivisible by any potentiality to have become, to be, or to eventually become other than He IS in His own singularity.

The divine nature is of a single form, single character, single Spirit, indivisible. God is uncompounded in His nature and Being, but this does not impinge on the plurality of His personal Being as Trinity. God cannot be compounded of “opposites.” There are no counter-agencies in God; no counter-character within God. There cannot be a duality within the singular and simple unity of God’s Being.

The simplicity of God disallows the composite duality of chosen alternatives. God was not configured as essentially good at a particular time/event when He expressed His desire to choose the good within Himself, rather than the evil. It is impossible that God could, might, or did have diverse elements within Himself. God cannot be other than who He IS in the simple, singular purity of the essence of His Being.

Christian theology does not allow for a bipolar or dipolar view of God. Although there are observed opposites in God’s economic/operational function, there are no opposites in His ontological Being.

From a Christian perspective it is inconceivable that God could actually or theoretically be partitioned into any duality of both good and evil. God’s character is a simple unity. There is no duality of character within a monistic oneness. While it is true that God is a plurality of persons within a unity of Being, i.e., Trinitarian monotheism; it is a gross error to conclude that He is a duality of character within a oneness of identity with all manifested things.

Immutability of God

Within God there is an impossibility of change or movement in His essential Being. God is changeless and unalterable – immutable. There is no transcience in God. The psalmist exclaims, “From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God” (Ps. 90:2). The New Testament writer asserts He is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

God is eternally, absolutely, and singularly the God who He IS. Every characteristic of His Being is as it always has been and will be. There is no potentiality within God for any change of Being – to be other than who He IS.

God’s eternality and infinity preclude any possibility of time and/or space imposing any change to His Being. He is the Absolute IS – the ultimate Being.

God does not become Who He IS on the basis of an action on His part. He is not Who He IS because He does what He does, or because He has done what He has done. Rather, He does what He does, because He IS who He IS.

If God chose to become what/who He is, then He is a Self-created God. A god who becomes what He is is a god who is not immutable in His being. This would impinge on the eternality of God’s Being. God has always been and will always be the God that He IS, the “I AM,” never changing in His essential and absolute Being.

To attribute such a self-chosen, self-caused becoming to God is to affirm that there was a time when He was not what/who He IS. Was there a time when God was not who He IS? Was there a time when He had to choose to be Who He IS? Definitely not! God did not become Who He IS because He made a choice that dictated His Being. God’s Being is not predicated on His doing. God’s performance of doing did not constitute the development of His personal Being.

God is not a becoming God, or a God who has become. God is not an evolving God, or a God who has evolved. He is eternally Who He IS, without flux, without change.

God IS who He IS in eternal constancy and permanency. He is solidly and permanently fixed in His eternal Being. God is immutable and unchanging in Being. This is not to say that He cannot, has not, and does not choose to change His modus operandi of functional activity and doing, but always in accord with His unchanging character and ultimate intent. To “box” God into unchanging function would impinge upon His operation as a personal and determinative God, and shackle God in proceduralism, techniquism and formulaism.

The immutability of God disallows any change in God’s being in the past or in the future, for He is necessarily the singularly, eternal Perfect Being.

The contemporary “Process Theology” that advocates that God’s Being is becoming also posits a panentheistic god who is in everything.

Perfection of God

God is essentially and eternally pure and absolute perfection of Being and character. God’s perfection exists essentially from eternity. He did not become perfect by a choice made at some time (even a Self-choice). He is not a Self-created perfection or goodness.

To suggest that God was originally a “being in potency,” a god with the potential to be other than who He IS eternally, is to posit that there is imperfection within the Being of God, allegedly overcome by a chosen desire to express the positive. Such an idea is contrary to the traditional Christian understanding of the eternal Perfection of God’s character, wherein God is the eternal fullness (pleroma) of all His perfect character attributes.

A God comprised/composed of original dualistic good and evil is a god who is himself in need of redemptive perfection. God did not Self-redeem Himself by a choice to act on His desire to be good instead of evil, or a choice to suppress an alleged intrinsic evil character and project an alleged intrinsic good nature.

God’s Being is simple, uncompounded, indivisible, and Perfect.

Holiness of God

To attribute an original duality of character in the Being of God decimates, destroys and denies the holiness of God. The Hebrew words for “holy,” qodesh and qadosh, both have a root meaning of “set apart” or “separated.” The Greek word hagios conveys a similar meaning. God is set apart or separated from all that is not Himself. God is set apart and separated from all evil, impurity, sin, corruption, etc., for such is contrary to His eternally fixed character.

Since God is from eternity absolute goodness, justice righteousness, love, etc. – perfectly holy – this disallows any speculation that God was originally a duality of good and evil that required a choice to fix His character in holiness. Contrary to the thesis of Boehme and Grubb, duality of character is not intrinsic to being, to personhood, to being a “self,” and most certainly not intrinsic to the personhood or selfhood of God as one pole of a duality that must be chosen against in order to choose His character of goodness and love.

To insist upon an original duality of character within the Godhead is necessarily a denial of the eternal and absolute holiness of God.

Impassibility of God

Since God is absolutely and immutably Perfect in Being, character and action, there is no possibility or potentiality of progress in such perfection. God is not swayed or formed by the passion, desire or emotion of Himself or any other being. God is impassable. Desire, consciousness, or willing choice do not dictate the Being of God. God is not who He IS because He desired or willed His character into being. His personal desire and will are but expressions of His eternal Being.

If deity required a choice-expressed desire to become the character of deity that He IS, then the desire and choice are deified as realities and actions precedent and superior to the deity. Psychological passions and desires and determinations are elevated to ultimate concern in such a form of idolatrous misrepresentation of God.

God is not governed or determined by a desire of any kind. To posit such a desire as an impulse that makes God the God that He IS, is to elevate desire as a preceding ideological principle or psychologized passion that determines the Being of God, and therefore is an idolatrous posit that makes God contingent on such passion or action. God’s Being is not Self-determined by psychological desires and determinations. God is not moved, potentiated, or brought into Being by inward or outward determinations.

To indicate that God is not subject to changing passions does not deny that in His operational function He cannot express changing feelings within the context of His unchanging Being.

A volitionally-formed god or an epithumiologically/epiphateologically-formed god is a self-made God, a god of his own self-formation who is not eternal in essence.

God exists in His full identity and character throughout eternity. He does not require process or progress in determining Who He IS. God does not require a developing Self-awareness in order to Be and function as Who He IS. To anthropomorphically represent God as necessarily requiring a Self-choice of Self-chosen identity, character, and nature is to project upon God what is only true of man.

To posit “desire” as an overriding principle of personal “being” or personhood or “self” that precipitates and necessitates a free-will choice between opposing principles of character is to engage in an anthropomorphic psychologizing of God, imposing psychological premises and presuppositions upon God. This is a god of man’s making. It is not difficult to see why Carl Jung, the humanist psychologist, appreciated Boehme’s thought, as it employed a psychoanalytical construction of “god.”

The Heart of God

All reference to the “heart of God” is necessarily anthropomorphic and/or metaphorical for God does not have a physically pulsing kardias. It is certainly permissible to refer to the “heart of God” in reference to the essential core of His character and nature, even though that exact phrase is only used in Ezekiel 28:2,6 in reference to Lucifer’s desire to assume the “heart of God” – to be the center of his own frame of reference.

The only thing at the heart of God, at the essential core of His character and nature, is GOD! To suggest that there is a “cross in the heart of God,” as do both Boehme and Grubb is to engage in a grotesque misrepresentation.

The cross in Christian theology always represents death. Death is not “at the heart of God” – LIFE is at the heart of God. God is the “living God” who has “life in Himself” (John 5:26).

God is Love (I Jn. 4:8,16), and in His Self-giving Love, He permitted and purposed that the Son should be the sacrificial lamb who would be “made sin” (I Cor. 5:21), and submit to the death consequences of sin in order to redeem humanity and restore the divine life to indwell mankind.

The cross was a death instrument – a Roman execution instrument. God is not a death-dealing God, but a life-providing God. It is the devil who is the diabolic death-agent; “the one having the power of death, that is the devil” (Heb. 2:14). God purposed “the death of death in the death of Jesus,” as Jesus was “obedient unto death, even death on the cross” (Phil. 2:8). The cross was the execution instrument utilized by God as a remedial action of redemption and the expedient remedy to effect restoration!

There is no “cross at the heart of God.” There is an essential and eternal Self-giving which is intrinsic to God’s absolute and eternal love. God’s loving Self-giving utilized the horrendous death instrument of the Roman cross to overcome the death consequences of human sin – once and for all – allowing His only begotten Son to take the death consequences of man’s sin vicariously and substitutionally on our behalf, in order to make His divine life available to mankind once again, and to restore humanity to God’s intended function.

Martin Luther referred to “the theology of the cross” (theologia crucis), but carefully clarified that the suffering and sacrifice of the cross was experienced by the divine-human Son of God as He “suffered in the flesh,” and not by the Being of God. Luther was being careful to avoid the heretical notion of patripassionism (the idea that the Father suffered on the cross), for Christian theology has always held that God is impassible. To posit a “cross in the heart of God,” as Boehme and Grubb have done, is dangerously close to the patripassionism adjudged as heretical in the early centuries of the church.

Conclusion

The philosophy of duality encompassed within an all-encompassing monistic unity, as espoused by Boehme and Grubb, is antithetical to the Christian understanding of God and the worldview that issues forth from legitimate Christian thought.

Those who continue to perpetuate this idea of “duality within unity” and God’s evolving into what He IS through a self-caused, self-chosen determination of opposites within Himself set themselves up for charges of being idolatrous in their elevation of philosophical and psychological premises of ideology imposed upon their image of God, and of being heretical in their variances from the scriptural explanation of God and their deviation from the orthodox theology maintained in the historic tradition of the Christian Church. This is not the traditional, orthodox understanding of God within Christian theology. This teaching incorporates premises found in Eastern philosophies and perpetuates a disastrous humanistic psychologizing of the understanding of God.

Christians must eschew this construct of a god made in the image of man: a god dependent upon and subject to psychological “desire”; a god dependent upon and subject to an alleged “law of opposites;” a god dependent upon and subject to a fabricated “law of faith.” Such a god, subjected to and dependent upon these techniques, principles, laws, and desires is but a man-made ideological idol – not the God of Christian faith.

Those who propagate such a convoluted and confounded amalgamation of premises unworthy of the God of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who Self-revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ, should be confronted with their idolatrous pseudo-constructs of God, as well as with their heretical divergence from the Christian understanding of God that has been faithfully preserved for two millennium in the universal Church of Jesus Christ.

Endnotes

1 Grubb, Norman P., Once Caught, No Escape, Pg. 170.

2 Grubb, Norman P., The Deep Things of God, Pg. 9; God Unlimited, Pgs. 11,12,19; Who Am I? Pgs 16,18,31; Yes I Am, Pgs 16,23; Once Caught, No Escape, Pgs 171,172,173.

3 Grubb, Norman P., Once Caught, No Escape, Pg. 171.

4 Grubb, Norman P., Deep Things of God. Pg. 98; Yes I Am. Pg. 13.

5 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 13.

6 Grubb, Norman P., God Unlimited. Pg. 13.

7 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pgs. 21,22.

8 Grubb, Norman P., Once Caught, No Escape. Pg. 173

9 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 26.

10 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 21.

11 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 21.

12 Grubb, Norman P., God Unlimited. Pg. 15.

13 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 25.

14 Grubb, Norman P., God Unlimited. Pg. 16; Yes I Am. Pg. 15.

15 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 19

16 Grubb, Norman P., God Unlimited. Pg. 16.

17 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 23.

18 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 27

19 Grubb, Norman P., The Law of Faith. Pgs 203-206.

20 Grubb, Norman P., God Unlimited. Pg. 15.

21 Grubb, Norman P., The Liberating Secret. Pg. 23.

22 Grubb, Norman P., The Deep Things of God. Pg. 40.

23 Grubb, Norman P., Once Caught, No Escape. Pg. 174.

24 Grubb, Norman P., The Law of Faith. Pg. 208.

25 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 23.

26 Grubb, Norman P., The Liberating Secret. Pg. 23.

27 Grubb, Norman P., The Law of Faith. Pg. 204.

28 Grubb, Norman P., The Liberating Secret. Pg. 30.

29 Grubb, Norman P., The Liberating Secret. Pg. 24.

30 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 21.

31 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 33.

32 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 22.

33 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 23.

34 Grubb, Norman P., Who Am I? Pg. 20

35 Grubb, Norman P., The Liberating Secret. Pg. 29

36 Grubb, Norman P., The Law of Faith. Pg. 209.

37 Grubb, Norman P., The Deep Things of God. Pg. 88.

38 Grubb, Norman P., Yes I Am. Pg. 23.

39 Grubb, Norman P., The Law of Faith. Pg.206; God Unlimited. Pg. 16.

40 Grubb, Norman P., The Deep Things of God. Pg. 92.

41 Grubb, Norman P., “The Sole Purpose of Creation” in the Union Life Magazine. c. 1985. (Cf. Endnote #2)