PANTHEISM IN THE BIBLE?

Psalm 8:
1 To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of David. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

In my last article I presented Eugene Peterson’s sloppy rendering of Psalm 8 as an example of how the lack of literary skills has made a mockery of the English language, let alone of the Bible itself. Here I present that rendering again as a further example of how this New Age scoundrel has mocked God himself, and has helped to lead millions of naive church-goers to the worship of Lucifer and his Antichrist. I presented this con artists obscene prayer to a goddess, probably Kali, which he disguised as the Lord’s Prayer in an earlier article. In another I showed the New Age nature of his treatment of the beatitudes. Anyone who could examine either of these passages as presented by Peterson without being infuriated is probably of reprobate mind already, if they have a mind at all, but I will present a few more examples of his heresy just the same. Incidentally, very little of this mess can be supported by the Hebrew text, but I will only deal with Peterson’s heretical theology here, not his incompetence and dishonesty, which speak for themselves.

Psalm 8
“1 God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.”

Nowhere in the Hebrew text is God referred to as being brilliant. It is undoubtedly not God that is being addressed here. Peterson, like other modern Bible perverters, leaves the name of Lucifer out of his so-called Bible version so that readers of his text will be misled, but he appears throughout it. Lucifer means the “light bearer” literally, but could just as well be translated as “the brilliant one” or something similar. Who is Peterson’s brilliant Lord? One need only read his Lord’s Prayer rendering to determine that it is certainly not the God of the Bible. The Hindu term for gods, which would be better translated as daemons or demons, is deva, which means beings of light or brilliant ones. Light-bearers would be a perfectly good translation of the Sanskrit term.

The third and fourth verses outline Peterson’s metaphysics in a nutshell. “3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?”

This mention of micro-self and macro-skies, which is not expressed in the Hebrew in any way, shape or form, is an obvious expression of pantheism. According to most mystical religions, including most forms of philosophical Hinduism (as opposed to primitive village forms), we are one and the same with an all-encompassing force that may or may not be called God. Judging by the overall message of The Message, Peterson’s main influence is probably philosophical Hinduism, although it may be filtered through the lens of Blavatsky and other New Age gurus. The Upanishads formulated the idea and it was later elaborated upon by thinkers such as Shankara, whose famous dictum was “tat tvam asi.” This dictum means “thou art that,” which implies that we are God, or the force of the universe, but just do not realize it yet. This purport is obvious when we look at the next lines.

“5-8 Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light. You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, Made us lords of sheep and cattle,”

This is the New Age movements primary theology in a nutshell. The goal of these foolish rebels is the same as that of Lucifer, whom Blavatskians, Masons, Mormons, and other New Agers openly or clandestinely worship, and that is to become gods. Line 5 has been mistranslated by virtually every modern version, in contradiction to virtually all ancient versions,1 and in contradiction to its translation into Greek that is found in the book of Hebrews.2 Instead of being made a little lower than the angels, the new versions have us a little lower than God himself, divine beings (demons, devas, New Age masters, etc.), and gods, as Peterson has. If we have just narrowly missed being gods, perhaps, if we work a little harder, we might just make it. In other words our micro-selves may come to know that we are one and the same with the macro-world about us.

There was a time when I would have assumed such an obvious New Age hack job as The Message would have been ridiculed by churches, but I no longer expect to find sanity or even a modicum of common sense within the modern church. The fact that anyone who would push this wacky version could be successful as an evangelist is mind boggling and frightening, but both Billy Graham and Rick Warren have done so and have become quite wealthy and praised by men in spite of it. This inspires me to close with two relevant New Testament quotes.

Luke 18:25 “For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Mark 10:31 “But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.”

Footnotes
1 Will Kinney has included the following in his listing: The Latin Vulgate 425 A.D.; Clementine Vulgate, Wycliffe 1395, Coverdale 1535, Bishops’ Bible 1568, Webster’s 1833 translation. Darby 1870, Las Sagradas Escrituras 1569, the Spanish Reina Valera.
2 RBC # 8 deals specifically with this issue, so I will not discuss it in greater detail here.

John Hinton, Ph.D.
Bible Restoration Ministry
A ministry seeking the translating and reprinting of KJV equivalent
Bibles in all the languages of the world.