Creational Monotheism is Polytheism in Disguise

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Monotheism. You know the idea well that there is one God, kind of the imagery of a mountain, right? God's at the top of the mountain and Jesus is how you get to God. And all the other gods in the major world religions and Islam and Hinduism and all that stuff are false gods and by that a majority of Western Europeans mean non, kind of non entities.

I would argue that worldview is actually not the worldview of Jesus.

That is John Mark Comer. He's lead pastor of Solid Rock Church in Portland, Oregon. He's advocating what he calls creational monotheism. Now the monotheism that he described there, there's only one God.

Jesus is the way to God. Jesus himself says this, no one comes to the Father except through me and that all other gods are false gods. I mean that is the classical understanding of monotheism. There is only one God.

He says that's not what Jesus taught. That's not what the Bible teaches. What is John Mark Comer teaching? Joining us to talk about the teachings of this megachurch pastor in Portland, Oregon, creational monotheism, Chris Rosebro.

He has a degree in religious studies from Concordia University, Irvine, California, and he hosts a daily internet talk show called Fighting for the Faith. Chris, welcome back. Thanks for having me back, Todd.

Well, he calls it creational monotheism. Is it monotheism?

No, it's not. In fact, I would argue that if you have to put a modifier in front of the word monotheism, that what you're doing is trying to not advocate for monotheism, but are trying to smuggle polytheism under the moniker of monotheism.

So what he's actually teaching is not monotheism in any stretch of the imagination. Instead, it is really a form of polytheism trying to be passed off as.

Christian monotheism, and it's not. All right. I got a wonder. I mean, we were going to get here eventually, weren't we, Chris? I mean, with the emergent church, with pastors trying to top one another or themselves, or looking for something new and exciting to teach to attract people, weren't we going to get to polytheism sooner or later?

Yeah, and it makes me worry about what's coming next, but there's a significant doctrinal decay going on in American evangelicalism. There is literally no doctrinal accountability. In fact, the way a lot of these secret-driven churches are structured, if you even question or challenge anything that the leader of the church says on the stage, you're going to find yourself literally thrown out of their communities.

And in some cases, if you really get under their skin, they might even slap a restraining order on you. And so, I mean, the one thing that secret-driven pastors are is completely intolerant of anybody who would disagree or challenge anything they say.

So it's just really kind of a matter of time before something like this would come along.

Now, what is the—if you could, in some sense, describe kind of the continuum upon which we get to a point where a pastor—and he's claiming to make his arguments from Hebrew and from the New Testament— can you explain to me, not so much his argument—we'll hear that from him in a minute—.

But how do you get to a point where a guy stands up there with a mini microphone and can wander the stage with a great slide presentation arguing to people who have come to hear a Christian message that there are many gods?

How do you get to that point?

Personally, I blame it on bad exegesis and bad hermeneutics. It's as if he hasn't actually been trained in or principles in practice. And so what happens is that he comes to this conclusion literally by reading particular passages while excluding and suppressing other passages and data that would contradict the idea that he's putting forward.

Reading of Scripture that also requires you to completely reanalyze or reinterpret the passages that disagree with your thesis. And so this is really basically an undisciplined hermeneutic run amok where he's basically doing whatever he feels is best and shows that he's not properly trained and engaging in sound biblical hermeneutical discipline.

Well, let's hear some of the argument from John Mark Comer, lead pastor of Solid Rock Church in Portland, Oregon, on creational monotheism.

There are different people all around the world worshiping different gods, which leads me to the worldview of Jesus and the Scriptures. And it's the idea that there's not one mountain, there's many, and Islam is the way to Allah, and Buddhism is the way to Nirvana, and Hinduism is the way to the Brahman, and Mormonism is the way to Elohim.

And you have Wicca, and you have spirituality, and that's a sample. I mean, you literally have however many dozens of mountains with dozens of gods and world religions and spirituality that is set up as the way to the gods.

But there is one creator God.

Okay, what's he saying here? And what's your response, Chris?

Well, he's literally arguing that Shiva, Vishnu, Allah, that these are for real existing gods, and that that God himself, Yahweh, created them. And he argues in the same sermon that we're quoting from here, that God, that Yahweh, sits as the head of the council of the gods.

And he quotes Psalm 82 to kind of prove this. Basically arguing for the actual existence of other deities. In fact, you know, Osiris and Amun-Ra and Baal and Shemash and Ashtoreth, of all the all the different deities that are condemned in the Old Testament, that those are act deities.

And when he says gods, he, I mean, although he does elevate the Christian God to a different caliber or a different, he says, class by himself kind of a thing, he still says that these creatures are, in fact, gods.

They are deities. Not just called gods.

They are gods. Yes, that's what he says. He specifically even uses the Hebrew term Elohim, that these are for real Elohim. They are real created Elohim. He tries to punctuate this throughout his teaching by appealing to the Hebrew.

Now, here's the problem, okay, is that in Scripture, Yahweh does refer to the false gods as Elohim. But if you quote those passages without quoting the other passages of Scripture, without, basically by suppressing the rest of the data, that's the only way you can come to this conclusion that they are for real deities.

But what he's not doing is quoting the clear passages that completely disagree with his theory. For instance, Isaiah 43 chapter 10. Here's what Yahweh says. It says, you are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me, no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me. That is a clear passage, and that passage contradicts the doctrine that he's teaching. But he doesn't address that one. He ignores it, acts like it doesn't exist, and then runs away with these other passages, and basically is cherry-picking the passages that agree with his particular doctrine that he's calling creational monotheism.

And he actually argues that Yahweh, the reason why he's a jealous God, and he even argues the reason why Yahweh even has a name, is so that he can be distinguished as a God that's different than the other deities that exist that he created.

And he doesn't want you worshiping those other gods that he's created, because he also created humanity. So we're supposed to deal directly with God and not worship these other deities who are vying for our attention and our worship.

Let's see what Mark has to say. He's waiting on the line, calling on his cell. Hi, Mark.

Pastor Todd, I was wondering about Zeus by the earliest believers.

That's a great question. What would this creational monotheism do with Zeus and Mars and even men who claimed to be God?

Well, I don't know about the men who claimed to be God, but I can tell you that if he's consistent in his teaching with the other deities that he talks about from the Old Testament, that he would be consistent and argue that Zeus and Mars and Athena and all of those gods that were worshipped in the ancient world of the Mediterranean, the Greco-Roman world, that they were in fact for real existing deities.

Now, we heard him earlier say something like, and he's using the mountain analogy, that Islam is the way to Allah. Putting those two things together, that he believes Allah is in fact a real bonafide God who has an existence, albeit a created one, but he exists.

What would he say happens to the thoroughgoing Muslim who follows Allah and all of his precepts all his life? When that guy dies, does he go to Allah heaven? Does he get to the top of the mountain and commune with Allah?

No, in fact, he tries to be Christian in his responses here, and he would encourage Muslims to reject worship of Allah because Allah did not create us. Instead, Yahweh is the one who created us. And so he would encourage Muslims to reject worship of Allah, even though Allah exists, and worship the God who created them.

All right, I'm thoroughly confused. Chris Rosebrough will help us sort this out on the other side of the break. We're talking about the teachings of a megachurch pastor in Portland, Oregon called Creational Monotheism.

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Why does God need a name? Short answer is because there are many gods. There is one creator God who spoke the universe into existence, but that said, there are many Elohim. Not only is Yahweh the king over all the other gods, because he defeated Amnon-Ra and the plagues, but on top of that, he's in a class all by himself.

That's why he is the one and only Elohim deserving of worship.

All right, that is John Mark Comer of Solid Rock Church in Portland, Oregon, describing—and it's one of those kind of things where you're watching somebody with the shovel dig, and they're trying to dig themselves out of a hole, and the hole just keeps getting deeper.

That's the picture I get when I hear him talk about his creational monotheism. Chris Rosebro is our guest. He has a degree in religious studies from Concordia University in Irvine, California, and he hosts the daily internet talk show called Fighting for the Faith.

Chris, can you kind of explain what it was Comer was trying to say there?

Well, he's literally arguing, you know, for the existence of other gods, and that what the Bible—the message of the Bible really is, because the people of the ancient world, their worldview was polytheistic, and he argues this is Jesus's worldview, because they had a polytheistic worldview, that that's really the reality.

These are for real existing gods, and that our allegiance as Christians is to the chief God, the Creator God, and not to worship these other deities that exist, but we have to worship the one Creator God.

This is basically the premise of his entire argument, that other gods actually, truly have real existence.

Now he mentions this being the view of Jesus, the view of Scripture. Who is Jesus for John Mark Comer?

Well, from what I still gather about him, he still believes in the Trinity. So he believes that Jesus is Yahweh in human flesh, and that's how he talks and discusses Jesus. But the problem is, is that based upon this particular view, this sounds a lot more like Mormonism and their view of many gods than it does than what the Bible teaches.

You generally—when there's smoke, there's fire. And this is not only— there's actually corruption here. This is a corrupt theology regarding God, because Yahweh now is just one God among many, and he created the other gods.

But on top of it, what this is also is a corrupt demonology, and because categorically, we know from what the Holy Spirit revealed to the Apostle Paul, that there are no other gods except for the one God, and that those things that people in the ancient world worshipped as gods, they were actually worshipping and serving demons.

And demons are fallen angels. So the theology that he's cobbled together, or has been coached in, is just super corrupt. And if you really think about it and take it to its logical conclusion, he's literally arguing that these false gods—you know, we understand them to be demons, this is what they are, what Scripture says—if God is the chief God who created these other deities, which are actually demons, then his theology, as its logical conclusion, turns Yahweh into the head and chief of the demons.

No joke.

Okay, I'm trying to sort this out because—and I have two questions. One is, Scripture does refer to—Jesus will call, say, the devil—the God of this world. Okay? Scripture will refer to, even sometimes men—and Jesus pulls this one out to confound his his opponents at one point—refer to men as gods.

There are certainly St. Paul saying, well, you know, there are many so-called gods. What do we do with those passages? And I've looked at the clips, too, Chris, and I'll tell you what, Comer makes a lot of hay with those references to gods.

Here's the idea. When you do sound biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, okay, clear passages always govern unclear. So the question that needs to be on the table is, does—when the term God is used of other gods, is it what is meant by that passage, that those deities actually exist as deities?

They are gods that exist in and of themselves or were created to exist. Okay, that's the answer that has to be, you know, put out there. The only way we can determine that is by scanning the scriptures and bringing all of the data to bear.

Now, I've already quoted Isaiah 43, 10, "...before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me.". Now, this same concept is again taught in Deuteronomy chapter 4, for instance, verse 35, which says, "...to you, the children of Israel, it was shown that you might know that Yahweh is God, and there is no other besides him.".

King Solomon, when the temple was dedicated in Jerusalem, okay, in his great prayer that he has there in 1 Kings chapter 8, verse 6, "...all the peoples of the earth may know that Yahweh is God, and there is no other.".

Okay, so when you take clear passages like this that completely rule out the existence of other deities, "...no God was formed, nor will there be any after me.". There's no God—so when passages of scripture refer to pagan idols and deities and things like that as gods, it's not saying that they are gods, in the sense that real gods exist like that.

Instead, you can actually put it almost in, you know, almost all of these passages, you can say, "...so-called gods.". You could put God in quotes, because oftentimes, when those things come up, they're used derogatorily, or to just describe the fact that people are worshiping these deities—not that they exist, but they're worshiping him as God, but they don't exist as God, because they have no real existence.

And the clear passages bear this out, and John Mark Comer does a very, very artful job of never bringing those passages up when he teaches this doctrine.

What about the passages—and I think this is probably Isaiah again, perhaps elsewhere in the Old Testament—where not only the worshipper of idols, but the idol itself is mocked as having eyes, but not being able to see, having a mouth, but not being able to speak.

They don't hear you when you pray. I mean, it is so clear that whatever that idol represents is non-existent. I mean, the prophet could hardly be clearer on the subject.

Right, and Comer gets around that using a very clever argument. His argument is this. He says, listen, an idol that's created by the hands of men is to a god as a shadow is to a man. This is his argument in his sermons.

And so he's literally absolutely true that idols are not—they aren't truly the deity, but what they are are representations, sadly representation of the reality that truly exists. This is his argument.

So he would say when those passages talk about man creating idols and then bowing down and worshiping to the work of his hands, he would say that's because— the reason why God's mocking them—because that idol that is created isn't really the deity they're worshiping itself.

So there's almost kind of an argument that sounds similar to the way that people in the Eastern Orthodox pray through icons, where the icon is kind of a portal, you know, a shadowy portal that you can pray through to the saint that you're praying to.

Similar idea. And so that's how he gets around those clear passages, where God mocks the idols as not being able to see or to smell or to hear, and that, you know, and worships—and that those people who worship them become as dumb as they are.

He basically says, yeah, because the idol itself isn't the deity. It's the real deity itself that is represented by the idol. That's the thing that's real.

Before we hear again from Comer, one more time. So he's basically saying God there is prohibiting worship of the object, idols, but he is not saying that the idol, that the thing represented by the idol, doesn't exist.

That's correct.

All right. Well, let's hear a little bit more from John Mark Comer of Solid Rock Church in Portland, Oregon.

We think the gods are powerful spiritual beings with authority over kind of nations, and the demons are lower-level spiritual beings who work for the gods. We know for sure that the biblical authors are all making the same point.

There is one creator God, but there is a multiplicity of created gods or real spiritual beings. Think of them as lesser gods, and these gods have a measure of free will and autonomy just like human beings.

They can obey God and serve God, or they can rebel and fight God. Some love God. Others hate God. Some are good. Others are evil. The devil is a malicious God over all the other spiritual beings in the dark world.

Okay, I've got a lot of problems here, but let's start with the—. In this panoply of gods, he concedes that some are good and obey the true God and love the true God. Does the Bible teach that any spiritual being, and refer to it as a god, that obeys, serves, and loves the true God?

I am not familiar with a single passage of Scripture that even remotely hints at even a mysterious and shadowy way of such a reality. I mean, this is him literally concocting and creating his own theology on the fly without any biblical passages that say that.

I'm sure if I were standing in his presence, I'd basically hand him my Bible and say, show me where it says that in Scripture. In fact, I'll bet you a thousand bucks you won't be able to show me a single passage that says anything remotely approaching it.

And I know for a fact my thousand dollars would be very safe.

Well, okay, so how does Comer know that Allah, that he says has a real existence as a god, isn't good, doesn't love the true God, doesn't serve and obey the true God? How does he know that?

I don't know! I don't know. I mean, maybe he's had a direct revelation. Maybe he had a vision. I don't know. Maybe he was just suffering from low blood sugar and had some kind of beatific, you know, experience where he stepped out into the heavenlies and was able to figure this out.

The one thing I can tell you for sure is he didn't get this from God's Word.

Chris Rosebrough is our guest. Ten more minutes with him on the other side of this break. On this Wednesday afternoon, February the 6th, we're looking at the teachings of a megachurch pastor, John Mark Comer, in Portland, Oregon.

His church is called Solid Rock, and he teaches creational monotheism, where the true God, well, he's just one among many gods. We'll be right back.

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I'm Todd Wilkin. We're talking about the teachings of a megachurch pastor in Portland, Oregon, who has decided that Scripture teaches, well, I would call it polytheism. He calls it creational monotheism.

Chris Rosebro is our guest. The Issues Etc. Book of the Month for February is called Restore the Roar. It's a devotional resource for Lent and into Easter by Dr. Reed Lessing, a regular guest here on the program, and it's based upon the prophet Amos.

You know what Amos would make of all of this? He'd say, that's polytheism. It would look so familiar to him. He would say, that's what the pagans believe. That's what the heathens believe. That's what the foreign nations believe.

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Chris, we heard that piece from John Mark Comer before the break where he was talking about how it is all these gods relate to one another, and some of them love him, some of them don't, some of them obey him, some of them don't, some of them serve him, some of them don't, some of them are good, some of them are evil, and then he comes to Satan, and he seems pretty sure that Satan is a god who kind of rules over the dark side in that universe.

What are your thoughts there?

Well, Scripture couldn't be clearer that Satan himself is not a god. Satan is a fallen angel. This is just good angelology and good demonology. Satan is a fallen angel, and we are led to believe from Scripture that there was some type of rebellion that he led as a result of his arrogance and conceit against the real God, that would be Yahweh, the God who created him, and that it resulted in probably about a third of the angels, you know, the host of the angels, being judged by God, and they constitute the unclean spirits, as the gospel writers refer to them, or demons, as the other more common term.

These are not gods. They're no more a deity than you or I are. They are creatures. They are created things, created beings. Yes, they have an existence, and God will deal with them quite severely on the Day of Judgment when he casts them into the lake of fire.

But by no stretch of the imagination are they gods in any sense that has to do with their being or essence or what God created them to be.

Chris in Michigan has this question. Could he be teaching syncretism or possibly post-modernism or both? Can you explain those terms and answer Chris's question?

Okay, yeah. Syncretism would be the idea. What you're trying to do is take two different religions and try to get them to kind of dovetail together, syncretize them. I'm not sure if that's really what's going on here.

In fact, I would argue against it, because what I know from what he said publicly about this teaching, that the genesis of this in his mind was a book written back in the late 90s by Greg Boyd, who is the notorious open theist entitled, God at War.

And in that book, Greg Boyd basically argues that monotheism is a philosophical speculative concept that was created during the time of the modernist Enlightenment. So he basically argues that way and and then puts the seed of thought in for the whole concept of creational monotheism.

Now, is this something that's brought about as a result of post-modernity? I would say that yes, this has a lot to do with a post-modern, anti-rational, non-grounded worldview that basically allows your mind to speculate and experience things, and as a result of it, it's like pouring acid on the clear words of God.

So I do think that post-modernity is a factor in this particular false teaching.

This is what I'm watching these extended clips of John Mark Comer. I'm hearing him make his arguments, try and mount an argument from Scripture for a multiplicity of gods, as he says. He always wants to keep the one God, kind of the the head honcho God, and the only one worthy of worship.

And I'm thinking to myself, why? Why do you want to teach this? Why is the classical teaching of monotheism, Christian monotheism, that there is but one God and all others all of the claimants to Godhood, all other claims about deities, are false?

Why do you want to say, hey Christians, a couple thousand sitting there in front of me every weekend, guess what? There are more than one God.

Well, there's two ways to kind of attack that question. One would be, we can talk about the seduction that there is for young men in ministry, especially ones who are actually kind of smart. Comer, you know, from what I've watched of him, he seems like a fairly intelligent guy.

And there's something very seductive about the idea of, oh, wow, I've figured out single-handedly something that nobody has ever discovered before. Everybody else in all of church history was wrong, and I'm the one who finally was able to crack the code and really figure what was really going out on in this biblical text.

That's a very seductive thing, and oftentimes theologians become heretics as a result of really falling in love with their own concepts and theories. But the other thing I would point to is what Francis Pieper warns about in his dogmatic text, and that is that these types of temptations truly come from the devil.

And as a result of it, when a pastor is led away to teach this kind of false doctrine, what he doesn't really realize, even though he thinks he's the one who concocted all of this, really what has happened is he's been seduced and tempted by the devil, and has been ensnared by the devil, and is teaching demonic doctrines, all under the guise of thinking that he's actually doing the church a service and freeing them from error.

It's a very, very terrible spot to be in, and we ought to be praying for John Mark Comer, because he's not really doing Christ's work and preaching the truth about God. He's actually, in fact, teaching a false doctrine regarding God that is, at its core, demonic.

This is a general problem. You addressed it early in our conversation, with only about a minute here. There is a complete lack of accountability in much of Pop American Christianity, especially in the avant-garde edge of it, the emergent church that kind of melds with the megachurch movement.

No accountability for any teacher whatsoever, unless the congregation wants to give him the boot. How big a problem is that in American Christianity today, with about a minute, Chris?

It's such a prevalent problem that we have false teachers who are going from bad to worse, and there's no accountability whatsoever, except within their own circles, that what we're seeing now is the fruit of that lack of accountability.

It's, think of it like cancer that has metastasized. What we're seeing right now is literally doctrinal cancer eating out the insides of the megachurch movement as a result of their literally cavalier mishandling of God's Word and refusal to listen to those who are trained in sound theology and doctrine to repent and to teach the truth.

Instead, they see critics, you know, the arrival of critics telling them what they're teaching is wrong as a sign that actually what they're doing is right and from God. It's really backwards, and it's terrible.

It's cancerous, and it's eating out evangelicalism from the inside.

What is your biggest concern about John Mark Comer's creational monotheism teaching? One minute, Chris.

He's got 7 ,000 people who attend his church, and it's multi-site in the Portland, Oregon area, and he is an up-and-comer in the seeker-driven movement. He's already a published author and one who is being sought out for important conference and speaking engagements.

My biggest concern is that he's going to take this false theology and spread it to the masses, and it's going to take root and literally destroy the faith and keep people from hearing the biblical message about the one true God, and as a result of it, it's going to send people to hell.

That's my biggest concern.

Yes or no, will we see John Mark Comer on the big seeker-driven conference circuit within the next five years or so?

Absolutely. In fact, I would argue he has the potential to be the next Rob Bell. That's how gifted of a speaker he is and how smart he is. What's on docket for Fighting for the Faith today? Today we're looking at the incarnation of Christ and looking at his humanity.

Folks, you can listen to Fighting for the Faith right after the conclusion of Issues Etc. at piratechristianradio .com. Chris Rosebrough has a degree in religious studies from Concordia University in Irvine, California, and he hosts a daily internet talk show called Fighting for the Faith.

Chris, thank you.

Thank you.

Maybe I'm getting old. And yes, I knew that polytheism was coming. There is nothing new under the sun. Sooner or later with the combination, the deadly, the poisonous, I think Chris is quite right, the cancerous combination of always seeking something new, cherry-picking the Bible because it supports your latest notion, your latest bright idea, and a complete lack of accountability for these teachers.

Couple that and pour into that noxious mess the fact that we tend to think, well, if he's got 7 ,000 people in his church every week, he must be doing something right. God must be speaking through him.

That's the perfect storm, isn't it? So that a pastor can stand up and with a straight face tell people who have come seeking Christian truth, biblical truth, the message of the gospel one would hope. There are more than just one God.

There are many gods. Oh, still just worship the one, but there are many gods. And no one says, at least no one in the group says, wait a minute. And because he's successful and because he can publish a book and because he can draw a crowd, no one stops to say, isn't this error?

Isn't this wrong? The perfect storm. I'm Todd Wilkin. I'll talk with you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to Issues Etc.

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