After finishing the two small booklets included in the PCG mailing, I began Mystery of the Ages. It’s been a truly enlightening experience. For one thing, I’ve learned a lot of Armstrongian theology that I wasn’t really aware of. For example, according to Armstrong, humanity was created to finish the job of “beautifying” the earth. (Of course, the ideal of this process are the Ambassador College campuses [140].)
God placed man here to restore the government of God on earth. Lucifer and his angels had been placed here originally. God put them here on an unfinished earth. Remember, God creates in dual stages. Like a woman baking a cake, she bakes first the body of the cake, but it is not finished until she puts on the icing. The substance and body of the earth had been created before the angels were placed here. But God intended for the angels to develop the surface of the earth, to beautify it and improve it. . . .
But Lucifer . . . rebelled. . . .
But still “the icing on the cake” had not been added. God placed man here to do that which the sinning angels had not done (137, 8).
This is a silly reason to create humans. It also seems to make humans little more than a backup plan. “What was God’s ultimate objective for the angels? Beyond question it is that which, now, because of angelic rebellion, has become the transcendent potential of humans” (70)! Armstrong’s angels screwed up, and so God had to create humans. This raises some questions. (One of these questions is a little silly, but I’ll point it out anyway: It makes me wonder about HWA’s materialism. Why? Because it seems a little stupid that he would consider an un-iced cake as unfinished. HWA was always fond of icing, whether the literal kind — I’m assmuing here based on this comment — or the figurative — in the form of all the gold leave and crystal in Ambassador auditorium. Another silly question is HWA’s view of women. He uses this analogy several times — to the point of sickening redundancy — and it’s always a woman baking a cake, as if that’s all she’s good for.) Armstrong often says that Christ’s sacrifice was planned from the “foundations of the earth” (142), but it’s unclear as to whether this was before or after the angelic rebellion. Was it all planned out beforehand, or did God have to alter plans when the angels rebelled? If the answer is the latter, then his criticism against mainstream Christianity can be leveled against him:
Much supposed “Christian” teaching has been that God created the first man a perfect immortal being, but that when God was not looking Satan stole in and wrecked this wonderful handiwork of God. Salvation is then pictured as God’s effort to repair the damage, and to restore mankind back to a condition as good as when God first created him (124).
Yet, since mankind was cut off from the possibility of access to God the Father because of Adam’s sin (128), it could be argued that Armstrong’s theology amounts to the same thing. Christ is to serve as the mediator between God the Father and humans, and this would have been the original state of humanity if indeed Jesus was the God of the Old Testament.
The angels, in turn, had been created to finish the job of creating. This is extremely anthropomorphic. Indeed, the whole second chapter, “The Mystery of Angels and Evil Spirits” abounds in this.
When God created the universe, the angels were supposed to be incredibly happy about this. The creation of the earth “was to provide a glorious opportunity for them. They were to work it, produce from it, and preserve and increase its beauty” (88). This begs the question of why spiritual angels would get any joy out of an eternity spent tending a physical earth. Yet it was more than this, for “whether or not it had been revealed to the angels, it was a supreme trail and test. It was to be the proving ground of obedience to God’s government and their fitness to develop into final finished creation the millions of other planets in the vast universe” (89). It seems that everything in Armstrongian theology is a test from God, despite the fact that God indicates that he does no such thing by saying he tempts no one.
The very reason for angel’s creation shows a weak God: Today, angels “continually walk through the earth to observe and report back to him the overall conditions on earth” (68). God in his omnipotence is not able to do this without the angels’ help, I suppose. He couldn’t even finish creation without them:
To aid them in the work of creating, governing and managing what was to be created, they first of all created other spirit beings on a lower plane than the God family. Angels were created to be ministers, agents, helpers in God’s creation. They were created as servants of the living God (61).
First, the “them” in the first line is God and Jesus, the “God family” which results in Armstrongian duotheism. And the whole passage makes me wonder about God’s omnipotence and omniscience. Couldn’t God handle these things alone? Indeed, why would God create angels? Even if we reject Armstrong’s theory, there seems to be little reason for it. It couldn’t be because he was lonely — that’s a human weakness. It couldn’t be out of boredom — again, a human characteristic. But we’re never really sure, I guess.
The anthropomorphic thought continues when he discusses Satan’s rebellion. Armstrong believes there really was a battle in heaven, as described in Revelation (92). Once he rebelled, Satan “used his subtile [sic] wiles of deception to lead the angels under him into disloyalty, rebellion and revolt against the Creator and finally into a war of aggression and violence to attempt to depose God and seize the throne of the universe” (91). How can spirits wage a violent war with each other? How can a spirit try to overthrow another? The whole imagry requires human form, but of course this is no problem for Armstrong, since God has a spiritual “body” (46, 7).
Finally, after the angels’ rebellion, “God saw that no beling less than God, in the God family, could be certainly relied on never to sin — to be like God — who cannot sin” (94). It seems that the whole angelic rebellion caught God unawares, and the fact that there was actually a “war” (according to Armstrong) backs this up. One can imagine a Milton-esque surprise attack, with the forces of good almost defeated by the initial surprise.
There’s an interesting discrepancy in the chapter entitled, “The Mystery of Civilization.” He writes, “Physically this perfectly created pair [Adam and Eve] had no chronic ailments or tendencies toward diseases or illnesses. This is testified in part by the fac thtat Adam lived to be 930 years old. And for nearly 2,000 year the human life span from Adam to Noah averaged close to 900 years. Think on it! The first man lived nearly one sixth of all the time from human creation until now” (145)! It’s not surprising that Armstrong holds to a literal interpretation of this passage, but it’s fairly interesting that he doesn’t notice the anomalies of such conjecture. If, indeed, Adam lived for such a long time, wouldn’t he probably have been a celebrity after a while? Wouldn’t everyone have thought, “Hey, let’s go see the first human ever!” Indeed, if the average life span was 900 years, there should be archeological evidence of this, references to people living for such a ridiculously long time.
This ridiculousness continues: “Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. When they were grown, perhaps till in their teens, Cain became envious and hostile against his brother Abel.” Cain of course murdered his brother and “God sentenced him to become a vagabond and a fugitive” (145). Continuing with the account in Genesis:
Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him (4.13-15).
Now, Cain and Abel were the first born humans, and if this happened when they were only in their teens, where did these other people come from? I can imagine someone putting forth the argument that this dispute took place when Cain and Abel were a few hundred years old, allowing plenty of time for others to be born. Yet Armstrong’s conjecture that this happened when they were in their teens precludes this.
Another interesting outcome of taking it literally that people lived 900 years comes on the next page: “The Bible tells us little of human development prior to Noah, but after 1,500 to 1,600 years human civilization had become so evil that only one man, Noah, remained righteous” (146). This means that all this happened in two generations!
The last topic I’ll deal with is developed directly from the passage about Noah: racism. Armstrong writes that “There was rampant and universal interracial marriage — so exceedingly universal that Noah, only, was unblemished or perfect in his generations — his ancestry. He was of the original white strain” (147). Armstrong provides no Biblical documentation for this conjecture, but why does he have to? He’s the unquestioned leader, God’s called out apostle — no one would ever question this. He continues, “God does not reveal in the Bible the precise origin of the different races. It is evident that Adam and Eve were created white. God’s chosen nation Israel was white. Jesus was white” (148). Once again, no Biblical evidence — probably because it doesn’t exist, and I’m not sure he could twist any scriptures to indicate this.
It seems futile to deny that this is racism. Armstrong contends that “all [Noah’s] ancestry back to Adam was of the one strain, and undoubtedly that happened to be white — not that white is in any sense superior” (148). This seems a half-hearted attempt to avoid the label “racist,” but only an Armstrong apologist would fall for this, I fear.
It is, however, impossible, to deny that Armstrong would have been an advocate of segregation. He says as much in Mystery. “God originally set the bounds of national borders, intending nations to be separated to prevent interracial marriage” (148). He doesn’t use the word here, but he is speaking of segregation plainly. Later, he’s a little more explicit: “God intended to prevent interracial marriages. . . . God had set the bounds of the races, providing for geographical segregation, in peace and harmony but without discrimination” (151). One can only wonder what Armstrong must have thought of the attempts at integration and the civil rights movement in general. Not to disappoint us, Armstrong provides the answer himself: “God had intended geographical segregation, not integration of races” (154). I’ll bet one can find anti-civil rights articles in old issues of the Plain Truth. And I can’t help but wonder what people like the Cowards thought of this?