Chapter 9: Rationalization of Mankind

Page 8

I started pondering why God was supposed to have had a “crisis” in

His life. I flipped to the very back of the book for a summary statement. That is when I almost got knocked off of my feet in sheer amazement. Less than two weeks earlier I had concluded that if you believed in the trinity doctrine, and were intellectually honest, you would have to conclude that

God is talking to Himself. That is the only way to justify Mark 1:11 in which God says: “You are My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

Here inside of Jack Miles’ book on page 244 3 is written:

“At the start of his public ministry as a human being, God submitted to a rite of repentance in the waters of the Jordan and, speaking from Heaven, with his Holy Spirit hovering visibly over his human brow, he declared himself well pleased with

what he had done and who he had become. He had become a lamb, and he was pleased, as he had not been since the last day of creation.”

“Repentance in the Greek of the Gospels is metanoia, a changing of the mind. The changing of the mind of God is the great subject, the epic argument, of the Christian Bible.”

Get the picture? Jack Miles writes that God is talking to Himself and repenting while getting baptized via immersion by John the Baptist. If this author thinks God talks to Himself during baptism, I must conclude that he also believes it happened during the transfiguration.

After some further explanation, Miles writes: “So He [God] broke his promise.” Miles reasons that God failed to save the entire nation of Israel at the time He had promised. Therefore, the only thing God could do would be

to repent on the cross for His [God’s] sin.

What is right with this book is that is provides an honest intellectual rationalization of the trinity doctrine. What is wrong with this book is that it

ignores and contorts the simple and plain language of the Bible from God to accomplish its objective.