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It’s one thing to believe in God based on philosophical proofs. But what about the claim that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the true God who has intervened in history? What justifies belief in this claim? Jimmy Akin explains.
Cy Kellett:
Why believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Jimmy Akin next.
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host.
Last time, we asked Jimmy about the Kalam argument. Does it prove God’s existence? There’s a whole area of philosophy and theology devoted to defending, explaining, debating the existence of God, but what about the particular God of the Jewish people, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Can we make a coherent argument about why to accept that God, that particular God, and some will put it this way, that one God out of all the possible gods of all the religions of the earth? Well, as a matter of fact, there’s very compelling reasons why you should accept that God, one being He is the true and living God. So we asked Jimmy Akin to come in and explain all of that.
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Here’s Jimmy on, not just God in general, but specifically the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Is He the real God?
Okay, so, Jimmy, before we start with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I want to ask you about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because the Bible presents some people as pretty clearly allegorical, like maybe the beloved in the Song of Songs or the prodigal son. Some people, it’s not clear, allegory or a real person, like I’m thinking Noah or Jonah or even Job. Other people, like Jesus, the Bible intends us to take this to be a real person who really lived. Which category do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob fit in?
Jimmy Akin:
For my money, I think they were real individuals. I think that the family traditions that were preserved among their descendants, the people of Israel, are such that we should take them as real historical individuals. I don’t see a reason to classify them as allegorical. I’d also say some of the other people you named are also historical, but I recognize that there are discussions about that.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah. Okay. All right, fair. Is it Jonah?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, I think Jonah is a real person. Now, that doesn’t mean everything in the Book of Jonah is literal history, but I think Jonah was a real person.
Cy Kellett:
I want to get at that because naming the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then we’re talking about a God who… Certain specific claims are made about Him intervening in history. So the question is, why should I believe all of this? That’s at the root of the question when we get to why believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
All right, so let’s say… Darren proposed this question for this episode, and so I will give it to you. I go back… I don’t even want to say I go back. I’ll just say it’s 10 BC, and you’re a Jewish-
Jimmy Akin:
Apologist.
Cy Kellett:
… apologist. Yeah. Okay, that’s right. You’re a Jewish apologist for Jewish Answers Live instead of Catholic Answers live. And somebody says to you, “Why should I believe in your God, the God of these men Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?”
Jimmy Akin:
Okay. It’s the 1st century BC, so Jesus hasn’t come yet. And I’m the Jewish apologist Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, which would have been my name because I’m a junior-
Cy Kellett:
I think I’m going to call you that all the time now. Jimmy Bar-Jimmy is awesome.
Jimmy Akin:
And on Jewish Answers Live, this is a talk show we’re probably having in an amphitheater somewhere, and people hearing it are up in the bleachers because radio hasn’t been invented yet. Yeah, no Marconi yet.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. All right, so we talk loudly then. There’s no microphones. So in loud tones this person says to you, “Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, why? I get it that you believe in this God. Why should I believe in this God among all the other options I have?”
Jimmy Akin:
If the person is Jewish, my answer is going to be different. If he’s of a Jewish heritage, my answer is going to be different than if he’s a Greco-Roman. If he’s Jewish, I’m going to say, “Because God made a covenant with our ancestors. You are a Jew. Your circumcision is a sign of that covenant in your flesh. Our God has looked out for us. He has delivered us from Egypt. He has done these mighty works. He’s punished us when we’ve sinned against Him. He’s rewarded us when we’ve obeyed Him. That’s why you need to worship the God of Israel, and Him alone, because it will go well for you if you do, and it will go poorly for you if you do not.”
Cy Kellett:
So the argument of a Jew to a Jew is really almost like a family history. It’s really a history. It’s deeply rooted in history. These things happened; therefore, you must believe.
Jimmy Akin:
Yes, because we have this binding covenant, and that creates obligations on us and on God. God chose to bind Himself with those obligations. He didn’t have to, but He chose to make those commitments to our people. Now we need to live up to our commitments in return for all the blessings He gives us.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so we’re in an amphitheater, so this might be a Greco-Roman that asked the question. How do you answer the Greco-Roman?
Jimmy Akin:
Well, for a Greco-Roman, I would say a few things. The first one is “You, as a Greco-Roman, are perfectly free to worship our God, even if you’re not a Jew. In fact, lots of Greco-Romans do.” We’re in the year 10 BC right now, you said, so the current Roman emperor is Augustus Caesar and his wife is Livia. Both of them worship our God. Augustus has given rich gifts to our temple in Jerusalem to support it, and his wife Livia has given golden libation bowls for the priests to use when pouring out the sacrificial things. And Augustus has underwritten the costs of having daily offerings given for his benefit and the benefit of the empire. Every single day in the temple, they sacrifice an ox and two sheep that Augustus has underwritten.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, and he’s not the only one. His whole family helps support the temple, basically. So you’re perfectly welcome to worship our God. You’re perfectly welcome to pray to Him. He’s the creator of the heavens and the earth. He’ll certainly bless you for that. You’re welcome to come and worship at the temple. We have the whole outer court of our temple called the Court of the Gentiles that’s devoted for people of Gentile origin to come and worship God at the temple. Regardless of whatever other things they may worship, they’re welcome to come here and worship God at the temple in the Court of the Gentiles. We may have to shoo out some money changers if there are too many of them, but you’re perfectly welcome to come here and do that, and that would be great if you did, because you will be genuinely honoring the God who made the heavens and the earth as opposed to the dead idols that you worshiped back home.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. This is a Greco-Roman, then, who has read the Scriptures. Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, I’ve read your Scriptures, and I’ve got to say, your God seems pretty exclusive. He doesn’t seem to want me… I get it that I can worship Him, but if I really believe in Him, I’ve got to abandon all these other gods.
Jimmy Akin:
Here, there would be a difference of opinion among different Jewish scholars. For example, there were people who in the ancient Near East who had an astral religion, meaning they worshiped stars. And there’s one point in the Old Testament where a prophet is speaking and he says, “God has not appointed it for you, the Israelites, to do that.” You’re not supposed to worship the stars, but God has appointed that for the pagans. You could look at that and say, “Okay, well, it’s God’s will that they have this astral religion, so that’s okay for them.” Others would say, ‘No, this is an accommodated form of speech. It doesn’t really mean God wants them to worship stars. It just means He allows them to worship stars.” It’s kind of a poetic way of saying, ‘Okay, that’s for them, not for you.” The real literal part is “not for you.”
You do have situations in the Old Testament where, for pagans, worshiping other gods is not automatically condemned. Part of the reason for that has to do with the Jewish understanding of how things worked up in heaven. The way the ancient Hebrews conceptualized it, God was a heavenly king, and they pictured heaven as like an earthly king’s court, but up in heaven, and so you had different officials. In fact, I just recently did an episode of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World on God and the gods, where I talk about this.
So you have different officials. You’ve got God as the monarch, and then under the monarch you have the royal family, who are called the sons of God in the Old Testament. They would be adoptive sons of God because He doesn’t have biological children. Then you have various commanders. In Hebrew, the word is sar. It’s sometimes translated prince, but it also just means commanders or leaders, like of the military forces.
You have watchers, watchmen, who go on patrol and watch for bad stuff happening. You have throne guardians to keep unauthorized persons from approaching God’s throne in heaven. That’s what the cherubim and seraphim are. They’re throne guardians in Ezekiel and Isaiah. You also have ordinary members of the army of the Lord. At the bottom of the heap, you’ve got the errand runners, the messengers, and the Hebrew word for messenger also gets translated in Greek as aggelos, from which we get angel. Because we lowly humans normally are interacting with the messengers, the errand runners, that name has come to be applied to all of God’s heavenly hierarchy.
For us today, in our language, they’re all angelic beings, but they have different ranks. Some of them are put in charge of nations, some of the higher-up ones, the Sarim, the princes or leaders. Michael is the name, we learn in Daniel, of the prince who’s in charge of protecting the Jewish people. But there are also princes put in charge of other nations. In Deuteronomy, we read that God apportioned the nations according to the number of the sons of God. Each one has an adoptive angelic son of God over it, over each nation. And in Daniel, we hear about the prince who’s over the Persians and the prince who’s over the Greeks.
So the Jewish people would recognize that there are celestial angelic beings that are created over these other pagan nations. The question is, well, what kind of respect can you show them? Well, should pagans show no respect for an angel that’s looking out for them? Well, they shouldn’t show divine worship to it. That would be wrong. But they might be able to show some form of respect, just the way we Christians may have respect for St. Michael, but we don’t worship him as God. That could be a legitimate option for somebody back then, given the way this all worked.
I would say what you should not do, as a Jewish apologist… Maybe you can show some respect for the angelic guardian of your nation if he’s good, to the extent that he’s good. And even then, we can show respect for bad emperors. So even if you’ve got a bad angel, maybe there’s some room for respect there, but do not worship him the way you worship God. Also, do not worship dead idols, because they are not gods at all. They have mouths, but they can’t breathe. They have eyes, but they can’t see. They have legs, but they can’t walk. You’re not going to get any help from that dead idol.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so it’s very welcoming, though. I have another question for you about believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s fascinating to me what you said about the emperor and Livia.
Jimmy Akin:
Livia.
Cy Kellett:
Were there many people, say, in 10 BC who took the Jews up on that offer, “I do want to worship your God. I’m convinced”?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, there were. Also, by the way, you reminded me of something else I wanted to mention. If I’m talking to a pagan who thinks you’re not really that welcoming in terms of worshiping our God, I would say, “Oh, you need to read more of our Scriptures. In particular, you want to read the Book of Jonah, where we have a whole book devoted to the fact that God loves Gentiles. When they repent, He spared them. He spared the whole city of Nineveh. He cared about the people of Nineveh. Jonah was mad. The prophet Jonah was mad when he did that, but that shows you God cares about everybody, even Gentiles.”
Also, you want to read the later chapters in the Book of Isaiah, where it makes the point that at the great ingathering, God is, in the Messianic Age that’s about to come since we’re in 10 BC… Who knows? The Messiah is going to be coming any moment now. In the Messianic Age, God is going to have many Gentile worshipers, and He will even take some of them as priests. Right now, only members of the line of Aaron and the Tribe of Levi can be priests, but coming in the Messianic Age, which is going to be here any moment now, God is going to start taking Gentiles as priests. So God is very welcoming of Gentiles. He’s even going to take eunuchs and so forth to be among His people and give them everlasting memorials, even though they don’t have offspring.
Cy Kellett:
This is wonderful because you get this sometimes caricature of the Romans as hateful towards Jews, and certainly towards Christians later, but that’s actually a later historical development. That’s not the case at this point, at 10 BC.
Jimmy Akin:
Right. Now, another point I would make as a Jewish apologist is, look at our law and what it reveals about God’s will. He’s very, very ethical compared to your Greek gods that are having affairs. Zeus has slept with basically every woman he’s ever encountered, whether a goddess or not. You have these horribly immoral things like the rites of Attis and some of the stuff that goes on in the mystery cults. It’s really degraded, inferior. You want the purer vision of morality that Judaism has to offer.
That actually was appealing to lots of people in the Greco-Roman world. They might not become Jews, but they would become what are known as God-fearers. Saying you fear God is another way of saying you worship God, that He inspires awe in you and so you reverence Him. There were lots of God-fearers in the early 1st century BC and AD and so forth. In fact, we encounter a number of them in the New Testament.
For example, the Roman centurion whose servant is sick is one of those. If you read Luke’s account, he doesn’t come to Jesus himself. He sends some emissaries who are Jewish elders, and the Jewish elders tell Jesus his request to have his servant healed. They say to Jesus, ‘He’s worthy that you do this for him because he loves our people and has built our synagogue.” He wasn’t a construction worker. What that means is he has donated money out of his own pocket, in an age when money is scarce, to help build our synagogue. He’s a donor building the synagogue. He’s contributed to our building fund. So he’s a God-fearer.
There were a variety of other God-fearers too. Some of them went so far as to become Jews. In the case of a male, that meant being circumcised. For both males and females, it meant living according to the law of Moses. So you even had some who became Jews, but you also had just people who were God-fearers and they were welcome in the outer court of the temple to worship God and have sacrifices offered on their behalf, the same way Jews would have sacrifices offered on their behalf. There was quite a good bit of that.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so now, Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, you’re in the same amphitheater, and it’s not a Jew of the time who approaches you, it’s not a Greco-Roman of the time who approaches you, but a time tunnel opens up and through the time tunnel with a spinning black-and-white background steps someone from the year 2020 and says, “Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, great Jewish mind of the time before the coming of Jesus the Messiah, I’m searching through history and time. Why should I believe in your God over any other God?”
Jimmy Akin:
Well, another time traveler happened to give me some arguments that haven’t yet been developed for the existence of God, and so I would point you to those. If you can bring in time travelers, so can I. In fact, I once was the companion of a time traveler who had this blue box, and we went all over the place to a bunch of libraries in the future. In fact, we went to the planet Library before there was silence in it, and I got the opportunity to study great works of philosophy from the future that have these arguments for the existence of God and I’d be happy to discuss those with you.
Now, in terms of how does that get us to the God of Abraham, well, there are a few things I can say. The first one is, just like I told my Jewish friend that we started out the show with, God has intervened in history, in our people’s history, and He’s done great things for our people. Some of those are recorded. We have some evidence of those things happening in our holy books, which are not yet canonized, but which we have. Also, because we’re living in the 1st century BC, there’s a lot more literature that would later be lost that you as a time traveler should be very interested in and all of the evidence it contains. I can appeal to that literature that we also have now that you won’t have in your future century. And since you’ve got a time machine, let’s go watch the Exodus.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, really, Jimmy?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. There may be some literary styling that’s going on, and there always is in history, so we have to account for that, but there is going to be an exodus event and God’s hand is going to be in it. We can, furthermore, go and watch other great interventions of God in history. So since you’ve got brought this time machine with you, let’s go look at all of those, and those will provide you with additional eyewitness evidence for the intervention of the creator of the universe in history.
Cy Kellett:
Jimmy Bar-Jimmy, thank you very, very much for going back in time with us. Touche for getting your own time traveler after my time traveler came, but-
Jimmy Akin:
Some people have even wondered if I’m a time traveler, but we’ll discuss what matters.
Cy Kellett:
In a certain sense, all that you’ve said, the ultimate proof of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really is the resurrection of Jesus because He Himself accepted the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-
Jimmy Akin:
Sure. If we are allowed to go forward in history a little bit, I would say, “Let’s go look at the Messianic Age and how it began.” That would take us straight to the resurrection of Jesus. I’ve been kind of partitioning New Testament evidence largely.
Cy Kellett:
Fair enough. Yeah.
Jimmy Akin:
But if that gets on the table, as a 1st century BC Jewish scholar, I would love to go watch the beginning of the Messianic Age.
Cy Kellett:
Well, Jimmy, thanks. I really appreciate it. It’s fascinating to travel through time with you. I have to say, the thing I’m never going to forget about this is that the Emperor Augustus and Livia were so open to the worship of the Jewish God and so supportive of the worship of the Jewish God. There was a lot of good stuff in there, but that’s just a fascinating little detail.
Jimmy Akin:
And they weren’t the only ones. That was the norm.
Cy Kellett:
Thanks again, Jimmy.
Jimmy Akin:
My pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
To me, it seems evident that nature proves God’s existence. The fact that we exist, the fact that all this exists, can be analyzed logically that makes it certain that God the Creator exists. But if we want to know about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we can’t look to nature. We can’t look to general philosophical arguments. We have to look to history, and what do we believe about history? Do we believe that God Himself intervened in history in the manner of His choosing, not in the manner of our choosing, this is not the way we would have done it if we were God, but in the manner of His choosing? Did He call individuals like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, like Moses, like the prophets? And did He send His own son, Jesus?
Well, those are all historical questions, not questions of nature or philosophy. And I think examining them closely, well, certainly I have come to accept that this is what happened in history. I hope that you have too, and if you haven’t, that you’ll give it continued consideration, because it really is good news that God operates in this way.
I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks for joining us here on Catholic Answers Focus. I want to ask you again to please give us that five-star review wherever you subscribe to your podcasts. That helps us to grow this podcast. Also, you can support us financially by going to givecatholic.com. Don’t forget, all you YouTube people, like and subscribe, like and subscribe. We really need you to do that.
Once again, I’m Cy Kellett, your host. This has been Catholic Answers Focus. We’ll see you again, God willing, right here when we do this again.