This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 655: God Was Speaking to Himself in Genesis 1.26 with Sam Mansfield This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 655 Sam Mansfield - Genesis 1.26.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan and you are listening to Restitudio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan To whom was God speaking in Genesis 1.26 when he said, let us make humanity in our image. 00:19 Sean Finnegan My guest today, Sam Mansfield of Adelaide, South Australia, has found six different answers to this question. 00:27 Sean Finnegan In the following interview, I ask him about his recent presentation at the inaugural Australian Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference called Wrought with Wisdom, How Solomon Understood Genesis 1.26, 3.22, and 11-7. 00:42 Sean Finnegan Mansfield puts forward the deliberative position with A twist. 00:46 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 655, God spoke to himself in Genesis 126 with Sam Mansfield. 01:01 Sean Finnegan Today with me is Sam Mansfield of Adelaide in Australia. 01:07 Sean Finnegan Welcome, Sam. 01:08 Sean Finnegan Thanks for joining me today. 01:09 Sam Mansfield Thanks for having me on the podcast. 01:11 Sam Mansfield It's 01:12 Sam Mansfield nice to be on an episode of a podcast that I frequently listen to. 01:17 Sean Finnegan Awesome. 01:17 Sean Finnegan Well, I thought to start out, you could share a little bit about your background and your upbringing and your journey of faith. 01:25 Sean Finnegan So where would you like to start for that? 01:28 Sam Mansfield Well, it all started when I was born. 01:32 Sam Mansfield I was born in Sydney and I was brought up in the Christadelphian faith, which is a biblical Unitarian faith that also has a strong emphasis on the promises in the Old Testament and how they're realised in the man Jesus, including the promise of a kingdom on earth. 01:52 Sam Mansfield So those were the types of teachings that I was brought up in. 01:56 Sam Mansfield I attended 2 different Christadelphian churches or ecclesias. 02:01 Sam Mansfield in Sydney. 02:02 Sam Mansfield And then just before the global pandemic started, I moved down to Adelaide to be closer to my girlfriend, who is now my wife. 02:12 Sam Mansfield So we got married in 2021. 02:15 Sam Mansfield And I've been living in the faith since I was born, but I chose to take it on for myself when I was baptised in 2016. 02:24 Sam Mansfield So I committed my life to Christ and doing my best to serve him and to serve his God. 02:31 Sam Mansfield So I'm frequently involved in a Christadelphian church here in Adelaide in giving sermons because Christadelphians are a lay community. 02:41 Sam Mansfield Yeah, I frequently give sermons. 02:43 Sam Mansfield My wife and I teach Sunday school. 02:45 Sam Mansfield We teach sort of Bible basics to them. 02:48 Sam Mansfield That's the kind of lessons we're doing at the moment. 02:50 Sam Mansfield And they're around 17, 18 year olds and they're really switched on. 02:54 Sam Mansfield So it gives us a lot to think about and talk about. 02:58 Sam Mansfield That's sort of the general gist about me. 03:01 Sean Finnegan And tell us about your secular life. 03:05 Sean Finnegan You have a degree and a career, right? 03:08 Sean Finnegan What do you do for a living? 03:10 Sam Mansfield I got a degree while I was living in Sydney in audio, which is why I've got all of my equipment here and a little bit of audio conditioning to deaden the sound. 03:21 Sam Mansfield And also I really enjoy music, as you can probably see from the mandolin on my wall. 03:26 Sam Mansfield It took me two years to do my audio degree and then I kind of discovered that I couldn't really use it for anything unless I knew somebody really well in the industry who could get me a job. 03:37 Sam Mansfield So I ended up working for a company in Adelaide that was owned at the time by Christadelphians. 03:43 Sam Mansfield I became really good friends with them and then their company was recently purchased and I went across to the new company doing the same thing. 03:50 Sam Mansfield My job is a little bit strange. 03:53 Sam Mansfield I, for the most part, 03:56 Sam Mansfield look after the live streaming of funerals. 03:58 Sam Mansfield So I have the really unique position of constantly being at different people's services. 04:05 Sam Mansfield They could be atheists, they could be Buddhists, but I'm quite frequently in a lot of Catholic and Orthodox churches and Lutherans as well, occasionally a Baptist one. 04:17 Sam Mansfield I've even been to a Unitarian Universalist meeting hall, which was 04:23 Sam Mansfield an interesting experience. 04:25 Sam Mansfield So I get around. 04:28 Sean Finnegan That's fascinating. 04:30 Sean Finnegan So tell us about your name a little bit and the Mansfield lore of Australia within Christadelphian circles. 04:38 Sean Finnegan I didn't tell you this, but I actually was told about Mansfields in general by Leah Anderson, when she was talking with me about our event that happened a couple months ago. 04:50 Sean Finnegan And she's like, oh yeah, Sam Mansfield. 04:52 Sean Finnegan Yeah, he's 04:53 Sean Finnegan He's from the Mansfield. 04:54 Sean Finnegan I'm like, I don't know what that means. 04:56 Sean Finnegan So maybe you could just share a little bit about that. 04:59 Sam Mansfield Yeah, so the Mansfields are both a big and popular, maybe for good reasons, maybe for bad reasons, a big and popular family within the Christadelphian community. 05:12 Sam Mansfield The Mansfield name is kind of a staple. 05:15 Sam Mansfield for good reasons, because a lot of people would be familiar with a range of different written works called the Expositor series, which are a number of green books. 05:27 Sam Mansfield They're written by HP Mansfield, which would be my great uncle. 05:34 Sam Mansfield And the Mansfield name has been in the Christadelphian community, at least here in Australia, for a few generations. 05:42 Sam Mansfield So people kind of get familiar with the name. 05:46 Sam Mansfield So if we ever get in trouble, people sort of pick up on it pretty quickly and they'll remember that. 05:52 Sam Mansfield But hopefully I stand alone as an individual with the name Sam Mansfield and people can judge me on my merits and my demerits and hopefully there's not too many of those. 06:05 Sean Finnegan Okay, very good. 06:06 Sean Finnegan And as far as the UCA goes, when did you first hear about the UCA? 06:11 Sean Finnegan Do you remember? 06:12 Sam Mansfield Yeah, I do. 06:13 Sam Mansfield It was probably about three years ago and I was sort of getting into debates here and there with people online over questions of the Trinity and the incarnation. 06:23 Sam Mansfield And I was getting pressed by Catholic apologists saying, oh, you're coming in the 21st century and saying that you've got the correct Bible teaching when we've been looking after the correct Bible teaching since the time of Peter. 06:37 Sam Mansfield And I thought, 06:39 Sam Mansfield That's a really interesting claim. 06:40 Sam Mansfield I need to go research and see if that's actually the case because like you, I'm a truth seeker. 06:47 Sam Mansfield I love the slogan at the end of Restitudio, the truth has nothing to fear. 06:51 Sam Mansfield There it is. 06:51 Sam Mansfield So I thought if I go digging, then I should be able to find the truth and either I'll be happy that I've reaffirmed that what I already understood was true or I'll discover 07:04 Sam Mansfield what is actually true and I'll be happy that I discovered something new that was the truth. 07:09 Sam Mansfield And I ended up bumping into the Trinity's podcast by our friend Dale Tuggie and I binge listened to all of his episodes and then I struck gold. 07:19 Sam Mansfield That's the bottom of episodes. 07:22 Sam Mansfield Yeah, I remember chatting to him when I met him in Sydney. 07:25 Sam Mansfield Well, I met him in Melbourne, but I chatted to him after there was a Thursday night presentation that 07:31 Sam Mansfield he did a presentation with Stephen Dodson and I met Stephen Dodson for the first time as well. 07:36 Sam Mansfield And I mentioned to Dale quite sheepishly that in some of his more philosophically based episodes, my eyes kind of glazed over a little bit. 07:45 Sam Mansfield And he was totally fine with it. 07:49 Sam Mansfield But I sat through every single minute. 07:52 Sam Mansfield So yeah, and then I hit the episode, which was about the first sort of board meeting of the UCA and I thought, this is interesting, let's check this out. 08:00 Sam Mansfield And I thought, as a Christian Delphian, I read the charter and I thought this is actually something I can get behind because it's only about this one single issue of believing that the one God is the Father and that Jesus is His Son, the Messiah. 08:14 Sam Mansfield And I thought, that's what I believe. 08:16 Sam Mansfield So let's see how I can support and chat to people and encourage them who have accepted this truth and go from there. 08:24 Sean Finnegan And why did you decide to submit a paper for the event? 08:29 Sean Finnegan Was it in March? 08:30 Sean Finnegan I think it was just a couple of months ago. 08:32 Sam Mansfield Yes, it was. 08:32 Sam Mansfield Yeah, in March. 08:34 Sam Mansfield I saw that a lot of the presentations going up on YouTube were pretty high quality. 08:39 Sam Mansfield And I was thinking to myself, is it possible that I could write a paper? 08:43 Sam Mansfield Maybe I could at least give it a go. 08:45 Sam Mansfield But I wouldn't even have thought of where to start. 08:50 Sam Mansfield myself and a lot of people in my community, the Christadelphians, are truth seekers, students of the Bible. 08:58 Sam Mansfield We love the Bible and we believe that it's God's word. 09:02 Sam Mansfield So we're always seeking to try and understand different things about it, different passages, different books. 09:08 Sam Mansfield And I've been thinking a lot about the use of plural pronouns by God in Genesis. 09:15 Sam Mansfield There's 3 instances of it, which is Genesis 1.26 09:20 Sam Mansfield 3.22 and 11.6. 09:22 Sam Mansfield But the one of greatest interest is probably the first one because that's about the creation of humanity. 09:28 Sam Mansfield And it's one of these really rare times that God speaks with plural pronouns when he says, let us create man in our image. 09:36 Sam Mansfield And for the longest time, ever since I was sort of brought up in Sunday school, I was taught that was the angels. 09:44 Sam Mansfield And so I just accepted that. 09:45 Sam Mansfield That's actually how God typically works throughout the rest of scriptures. 09:48 Sam Mansfield So the pattern you would expect kind of fit. 09:51 Sam Mansfield But what was missing was basically any evidence that the angels were involved in creation. 09:58 Sam Mansfield And whenever you bump into later passages in the Bible, like in Job and Isaiah, God just takes credit for it himself. 10:07 Sam Mansfield He doesn't say that anybody else helped him. 10:09 Sam Mansfield He said, I did this alone. 10:10 Sam Mansfield I did this by myself. 10:13 Sam Mansfield You don't see that for other major miracles that God works in the Bible, like the parting of the Red Sea. 10:20 Sam Mansfield God doesn't say I parted it by myself or I led the children of Israel out of Egypt by myself because he used an agent, Moses, to do that. 10:29 Sam Mansfield So whenever I tried other test cases to see if maybe when God says alone and by myself, maybe that was him referring to him doing that by his own power, his sole power. 10:42 Sam Mansfield it didn't seem to work. 10:43 Sam Mansfield So I was looking for answers to what's the correct way to try and interpret these plural pronouns. 10:51 Sean Finnegan Okay, so the paper is called Wrought with Wisdom, How Solomon Understood Genesis 1.26, 3.22, and 11.7. 11:01 Sean Finnegan And it's 27 pages long, 133 footnotes, 11:09 Sean Finnegan One, two, three, three page bibliography. 11:12 Sean Finnegan What'd you say? 11:12 Sean Finnegan 6,000 words. 11:14 Sam Mansfield Exactly. 11:15 Sean Finnegan Okay. 11:16 Sean Finnegan Yes, if you are interested in this, I don't know how people could get a hold of it, but maybe they can e-mail you or something, Sam. 11:23 Sam Mansfield Yeah, so they can contact me at, I've got a podcast that I've just started up, which is the In His Truth podcast, the one that would be most accessible to 11:35 Sam Mansfield Basically any Christian would be the one on YouTube, which is the extended one where you get to see my beautiful face. 11:42 Sam Mansfield Not very beautiful, but at least it gives you something to look at. 11:45 Sam Mansfield I give you plenty of slides so you don't have to look at my face all the time. 11:48 Sam Mansfield But you can contact me. 11:50 Sam Mansfield at inhistruthpodcast at gmail.com. 11:54 Sam Mansfield And I also hope, God willing, within the next few weeks to tidy up the bibliography a little bit more and pop that up on academia.edu. 12:04 Sam Mansfield So I'll probably leave a comment on the YouTube presentation version that the UCA has put up. 12:12 Sean Finnegan Yes, and the presentation is available on the UCA YouTube channel. 12:18 Sean Finnegan And it's been up for, I don't know, a few weeks at least. 12:22 Sean Finnegan I was thinking we could work through, obviously not all the details of your paper, but at least starting with the text itself. 12:32 Sean Finnegan And I know you've already mentioned it, but I'm just gonna bring it up here. 12:35 Sean Finnegan It says, then God said, let us make humans in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth. 12:48 Sean Finnegan and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. 12:51 Sean Finnegan And then in verse 27, so God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them, and male and female he created them. 13:00 Sean Finnegan So one of the things you talk about in the paper is how we have this plural here, let us, and then we also have it here, our image, our likeness. 13:13 Sean Finnegan And then down here in the next verse, 13:16 Sean Finnegan It just says His image. 13:18 Sean Finnegan And I suppose verse 26 is what God said. 13:22 Sean Finnegan This is God's speech here. 13:24 Sean Finnegan And then in verse 27, this is what God did. 13:28 Sean Finnegan He created in His image. 13:30 Sean Finnegan And one of the points that you kind of draw about all this is that we have a difference here. 13:38 Sean Finnegan We have the plural and then we have the singular. 13:41 Sean Finnegan And so you have all these different theories that you go through in the paper. 13:48 Sean Finnegan The plural of majesty, the plural of fullness, the plural of deliberation, mythological address, earthly address, heavenly address. 13:55 Sean Finnegan So you have six different positions that you work through. 14:00 Sean Finnegan So I was thinking you could start our time here of looking at this verse. 14:05 Sean Finnegan by just briefly telling us like, okay, what are each of these options? 14:10 Sean Finnegan So could you tell us what the plural of majesty is? 14:14 Sam Mansfield Yeah, so the plural of majesty is where a particular, it's often used of nouns in Hebrew and also other ancient languages where the referent is actually singular, but more majesty or intensity or honor is attributed to that singular referent by making the word a 14:35 Sam Mansfield grammatical plural. 14:37 Sam Mansfield Dustin Smith actually does a really excellent UCA presentation on this, which I would highly recommend. 14:44 Sam Mansfield Where I very meekly would depart from Dustin, however, is Dustin says that applies to other forms, including pronominal suffixes like we see in Genesis 1.26. 15:00 Sam Mansfield However, a lot of scholarship seems to agree with Dustin as much as it comes to nouns. 15:07 Sam Mansfield They would disagree when it comes to pronouns or other forms. 15:13 Sam Mansfield And I think the Septuagint is a bit helpful there because often the translators of the Greek edition of the Old Testament, they would translate 15:26 Sam Mansfield plural of majesties by making the reference singular. 15:29 Sam Mansfield So instead of, say for example, the Hebrew word for God is Elohim, that is a grammatical plural, but the referent is singular, which is why it's only translated as God rather than gods. 15:40 Sam Mansfield The Septuagint would translate it into the singular theos, which I think you could probably even see just for the word God in Genesis 1.26. 15:51 Sam Mansfield So the word God will be translated by the Greek translators into the singular, but for the pronouns such as let us make man in our image, the plural pronouns have been preserved in the Greek. 16:06 Sam Mansfield So it seems that the translators have not understood it as a plural of majesty. 16:12 Sean Finnegan Oh, yeah. 16:14 Sam Mansfield The late Michael Heizer. 16:16 Sam Mansfield and also the translators of our very own revised English version also thought that the plural of majesty wasn't what was going on here. 16:24 Sam Mansfield They actually agree with the angelic view, which is something that we'll get to. 16:28 Sam Mansfield Did you want to discuss the other plural views as well? 16:32 Sean Finnegan Yeah, let's go ahead right through them. 16:33 Sean Finnegan Plural of fullness, which you label as the probably the standard Trinitarian view. 16:39 Sam Mansfield Yeah. 16:40 Sean Finnegan What's that? 16:41 Sam Mansfield The plural of fullness is the belief that 16:45 Sam Mansfield it's presumably God the Father addressing the eternal God the Son and potentially even God the Spirit, but at a minimum it would be the Father addressing the eternal Son. 16:58 Sam Mansfield I made a brief comment, there's a footnote in the paper where I actually sort of nudge in the ribs this labeling title of the plural of fullness because you kind of think something's full, it's filled up, but if you've only got part of it, then 17:15 Sam Mansfield it's not full. 17:16 Sam Mansfield And so it almost implies that if the Father was to create by himself, then it's not full enough. 17:22 Sam Mansfield We need the Son and the Spirit as well to assist the Father with creation, which is, I don't know, it almost feels a bit sacrilegious to me to claim that the Father creating by himself is not full enough. 17:35 Sam Mansfield But I drew quite extensively from another paper that was written either 1975 or 1985 by Gerard Hazel. 17:45 Sam Mansfield which is a German scholar, and he put together a list of different definitions that people have provided throughout history for the use of these plural pronouns in Genesis 1.26. 17:57 Sam Mansfield And he obviously favors his view, which is the plural fullness, the Trinitarian version. 18:02 Sam Mansfield But it runs into all sorts of problems when you get high level Trinitarian scholars basically shaking their heads and going, no, don't listen to Hazel. 18:15 Sam Mansfield because the ancient author of Genesis would not have understood this in a Trinitarian light. 18:23 Sam Mansfield And the NET, which is a really great resource in its full notes edition, actually says it would be anachronistic to read those later ideas in, even though many Christian theologians have attempted to do that, the NET basically says, no, that's not a viable interpretive option. 18:41 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I totally agree. 18:43 Sean Finnegan I mean, 18:44 Sean Finnegan The Trinity idea comes in and even the concept of person, not until centuries after Christ. 18:50 Sean Finnegan So to posit that it's there in the time of Moses writing Genesis, I mean, it's just, come on. 18:58 Sam Mansfield We're talking millennia. 19:00 Sean Finnegan This is just straight up a classic eisegesis or anachronism where we're reading things in that are not in its original context. 19:10 Sean Finnegan So 19:11 Sean Finnegan I agree with you with the NET Bible. 19:13 Sean Finnegan Like it's weird how honest they are. 19:16 Sean Finnegan It's refreshing, I should say. 19:17 Sean Finnegan It's refreshing how honest they are. 19:20 Sean Finnegan So you don't find the plural of fullness very convincing. 19:23 Sean Finnegan Or even if you were a Trinitarian, you would say, well, you know, is it really fullness? 19:28 Sam Mansfield Yeah, exactly. 19:30 Sam Mansfield I mean, you sort of already mentioned it already, but Genesis 1.27, the very next verse, 19:37 Sam Mansfield almost as a complete backflip and all of the words are in the singular now and it's translated fairly well into English. 19:44 Sam Mansfield It says that, so God created man in his own image. 19:49 Sam Mansfield His is masculine singular. 19:52 Sam Mansfield So masculine singular is used for a single person, but that's actually a different view and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. 19:59 Sam Mansfield But verse 27, even if we could overcome the anachronism claim for the plural fullness, 20:07 Sam Mansfield it immediately falters the moment you hit the next verse. 20:10 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 20:11 Sean Finnegan Okay, and then next up we've got the plural of deliberation. 20:17 Sean Finnegan Talk to us about the plural of deliberation a little bit. 20:21 Sam Mansfield I like the plural of deliberation because this is actually the view that convinced me in the paper when I was writing it. 20:29 Sam Mansfield I was convinced that this was the correct view and I felt that Hazel didn't do a very good job of 20:37 Sam Mansfield presenting it in its strongest form. 20:38 Sam Mansfield He kind of took like a weak, nearly straw man version of it and just knocked that down. 20:45 Sam Mansfield And so I thought, what if I took a version of that was based on scripture, it was based on ancient Jewish views and also some rabbinical writings as well, because it is an ancient Jewish view. 20:58 Sam Mansfield The plural of deliberation basically teaches that it's just God doing it. 21:02 Sam Mansfield It's just God the Father by himself creating. 21:06 Sam Mansfield But then we kind of need to answer, sure, in verse 27, we can see that it's literally God by himself creating, but that still doesn't overcome the issue of why are the plural pronouns used. 21:19 Sam Mansfield And so later in the presentation, I say, well, let's try and stick with the Bible to start with. 21:26 Sam Mansfield Let's see if there's anything else, any other commentary on the creation account that can help us interpret this. 21:34 Sam Mansfield And we bump into Proverbs 8, which talks about the fact that God obviously created by himself. 21:40 Sam Mansfield Solomon is not disagreeing with that, but he's also helping us understand how can God create by himself as one single person and yet also be considered as creating with somebody else, not in a literal sense. 21:54 Sam Mansfield And that sense is Lady Wisdom, which is God's personified wisdom. 21:59 Sam Mansfield So that's the sort of more developed version of the plural of deliberation that I argue for in the paper. 22:05 Sean Finnegan All right, well, let's come back to that. 22:07 Sean Finnegan What about #4 here, the mythological address idea? 22:11 Sean Finnegan What is that talking about? 22:13 Sam Mansfield Yeah, so the mythological address is something that's more held by hypercritical scholars of the Bible. 22:22 Sam Mansfield who think that within the Genesis account there's evidence of Semitic polytheism essentially, but the continual claim of the Hebrew Bible is actually that there's only one God, Yahweh, and he's the one that's responsible for creating all things. 22:42 Sam Mansfield If anything, the Genesis account actually acts as a polemic against 22:47 Sam Mansfield belief in multiple gods, belief in a pantheon of gods who were involved with creating. 22:53 Sam Mansfield So it's essentially A non-starter. 22:55 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and then we have the earthly address idea. 22:59 Sean Finnegan Talk to us about that. 23:01 Sam Mansfield Yeah, I didn't put too much in my paper about this because this seemed to be defended even less than the plural of wisdom, the plural of deliberation slash wisdom view that I was arguing for. 23:15 Sam Mansfield But the earthly address is where God is essentially addressing the elements, the dust from which he's creating and saying, let us make man. 23:22 Sam Mansfield But there's just, there's not really any scriptural evidence for it. 23:25 Sam Mansfield is an ancient Jewish view. 23:27 Sean Finnegan I think I came across it in the Talmud somewhere. 23:30 Sam Mansfield Yeah, that wouldn't be surprising. 23:31 Sam Mansfield It's as early at least as the 2nd century because Justin Martyr thinks it's kind of ridiculous and he tells off Trifo the Jew and says, don't use that argument. 23:41 Sam Mansfield I don't like it. 23:43 Sean Finnegan I think it's delightful. 23:46 Sean Finnegan God's like, all right, Earth, let's make humans. 23:49 Sean Finnegan And when Genesis 2.7 happens, he makes the first man from the dust to the ground. 23:56 Sean Finnegan So, I think it's delightful. 23:59 Sean Finnegan I would say additionally to what you said, the added problem is the other texts of the other us texts, like 322 and 117. 24:09 Sean Finnegan which there's no way he's talking to the earth saying, let's go down there and confuse their languages. 24:16 Sam Mansfield Yeah, it breaks the pattern. 24:17 Sean Finnegan Right. 24:18 Sean Finnegan So I think if we didn't have the other two, and arguably a fourth one in Isaiah 6.8, which I don't think you really addressed in the paper, 24:27 Sean Finnegan who will go for us, and he's talking to Isaiah, but it's not Genesis, so I'll give you a pass on that. 24:35 Sam Mansfield There's a very brief footnote that I put in now. 24:37 Sean Finnegan Oh, did you? 24:37 Sean Finnegan Okay, good. 24:38 Sam Mansfield So I didn't forget about it, but for the sake of time, I just couldn't address it. 24:42 Sam Mansfield And there's a lot of angels that are actually present in that Isaiah 6 vision. 24:46 Sam Mansfield So I was kind of like, right, throw the dog a bone and just say, that's fine. 24:51 Sam Mansfield We can say that's the angels one and just focus on the Genesis account. 24:55 Sean Finnegan All right, now then we also have the heavenly address. 24:58 Sean Finnegan Can you explain that? 25:00 Sam Mansfield So the heavenly address is sometimes or maybe even often called the angelic address. 25:06 Sam Mansfield This is super popular in the scholarly literature. 25:10 Sam Mansfield This almost seemed like the most favored opinion. 25:14 Sam Mansfield It's actually the most favored opinion in my own community as well. 25:18 Sam Mansfield It's basically that God announces to the angels his creating intent. 25:24 Sam Mansfield you get a sort of split within this address view between people that say that the angels were involved in assisting God literally with creation and then other people who are saying, no, God is just announcing to the angels his creation intent. 25:40 Sam Mansfield But then in verse 27, he just does it by himself. 25:42 Sam Mansfield And that's consistent with the rest of scriptural testimony. 25:46 Sam Mansfield And in the paper, I actually argue against both views and say that neither of them can really be substantiated. 25:53 Sam Mansfield in light of the fact that angels are not mentioned as being involved at all. 25:58 Sam Mansfield And I also put together a syllogistic argument sort of breaking down how if we say that God is talking to the angels when he says, let us make, but then he is not including the angels when he says our image and our likeness, then we're actually sort of splitting up the verse and interpreting it in two different ways, all within a single sentence. 26:20 Sam Mansfield So it doesn't actually work. 26:22 Sam Mansfield And 26:23 Sam Mansfield we have to read it in light of verse 27 as well, where it's all explained as God doing it by himself. 26:29 Sam Mansfield And it's just a singular image. 26:30 Sam Mansfield So one person is not going to include a multitude of angels assisting God or humans being made in the image of angels, which is something that is never attested to in the scriptures. 26:44 Sean Finnegan Yeah, and I think you also make a point about the fact that angels are not 26:51 Sean Finnegan ever said to have authority? 26:53 Sean Finnegan Could you talk about that a little bit and this whole idea of the image of God as being dominion? 26:57 Sam Mansfield Yeah, so that was in a really brief section at the start of, I think it's section 2, where I talk about problematizing the angelic address. 27:08 Sam Mansfield In an earlier draft of the paper, I had a much bigger section developing that argument about dominion. 27:15 Sam Mansfield And I suppose I can share a bit more info with you here. 27:20 Sam Mansfield Essentially, I first came across the view that I did about the plural of deliberation when I was sort of checking to see if there were other options rather than the angelic view. 27:30 Sam Mansfield A number of listeners might be familiar with an individual who styled himself as Brother Kel. 27:37 Sam Mansfield The Trinity Delusion blog, which is put together by a gentleman named Kel, and he actually talked about the difficulties with 27:47 Sam Mansfield the angelic view when he was discussing things in Hebrews chapter 1, because a lot of Trinitarians will draw from Hebrews chapter 1 to build some of their arguments. 28:00 Sam Mansfield So I was just working away at my exegesis, making sure that I had everything figured out, that I understood the passage correctly. 28:08 Sam Mansfield And I ended up sort of doing a mini study on Hebrews 1 and 2 in and of itself and following the argument of the writer 28:16 Sam Mansfield and seeing these comparative arguments that were being made about how Jesus is better than the angels. 28:22 Sam Mansfield The third argument was a little bit weird because instead of comparing the Son with the angels, in Hebrews 1 verse 10, it actually compares Yahweh, which is the Father, with the angels. 28:35 Sam Mansfield So Yahweh is the one that creates everything, that's the work of his hands. 28:41 Sam Mansfield But then the angels 28:43 Sam Mansfield God doesn't say to the angels, sit at my right hand, which I'm like, how is that a comparison? 28:48 Sam Mansfield And the only way that comparison then works is that God is the one who has the sole authority over creation because he's the one who made it. 28:57 Sam Mansfield It's the work of his hands. 28:59 Sam Mansfield But then angels don't have that authority because the only conclusion could be that they weren't involved in creation. 29:06 Sam Mansfield And then that argument gets developed into chapter 2. 29:10 Sam Mansfield because it's all about proving how Jesus is better than the angels. 29:13 Sam Mansfield And Jesus is described as the ultimate fulfillment of Psalm 8, rose man that you were mindful of him. 29:19 Sam Mansfield So he is actually in the earliest manuscripts that we have of Hebrews, that man, that representative figure is given dominion and authority over the work of God's hands. 29:33 Sam Mansfield So it's included in the New American Standard 95 edition. 29:38 Sam Mansfield But in other translations, people can't think of a reason why later texts would remove that reference about the work of God's hands being given over to humans. 29:50 Sam Mansfield So they just don't include it in the text, but it's actually in the earliest text that we have. 29:55 Sean Finnegan Okay, that's interesting. 29:57 Sean Finnegan So the point of that is to say that God did not give them dominion, right? 30:05 Sean Finnegan And that relates to Genesis 1.26 because if God's talking to the angels, then there has to be a shared dominion or a shared image. 30:13 Sean Finnegan Yeah, that's right. 30:13 Sean Finnegan And which means dominion, right? 30:16 Sam Mansfield Yeah, I think image in its first initial instance in Genesis 1.26 is explained by the fact that God says, and let them have dominion over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and over all the cattle. 30:30 Sam Mansfield It's actually explained for us. 30:31 Sam Mansfield And I quote from Ian Hart, 30:33 Sam Mansfield in the paper because he argues that the Hebrew should actually be translated as, let them be made in our image and likeness so that they have dominion. 30:43 Sean Finnegan I like that. 30:44 Sean Finnegan Well, let's further develop the deliberation view, which is the view that you take. 30:49 Sean Finnegan And let's come back to Proverbs 8 for a minute. 30:53 Sean Finnegan I think an obvious criticism of even just like your title, how Solomon understood Genesis, is that Solomon is so much later 31:02 Sean Finnegan than Genesis. 31:03 Sean Finnegan And so I can imagine some people thinking, by what right, Sam, can we read Proverbs back into Genesis? 31:13 Sean Finnegan Because it was so much earlier. 31:14 Sean Finnegan How would you respond to that line of thinking? 31:17 Sam Mansfield If Christian listeners to 31:20 Sam Mansfield your podcast agree with me that Proverbs was written by Solomon. 31:23 Sam Mansfield That's probably not the scholarly critical opinion, but that's my presupposition. 31:29 Sam Mansfield And that the record of First Kings is historically reliable and that God exists and that he interacts with people who serve him, another presupposition. 31:40 Sam Mansfield Then we believe that God actually gave Solomon 31:44 Sam Mansfield some level of supernatural wisdom and that he was inspired. 31:47 Sam Mansfield So it's almost a double whammy that Solomon is both inspired and he has wisdom directly from God to talk about the wisdom that was in the beginning with God. 31:59 Sam Mansfield And actually other scholars I mentioned in the paper, they make an argument that Proverbs 8 is actually an inner biblical midrash on the Genesis account, that it's actually directly commenting on Genesis 1. 32:12 Sam Mansfield And I do actually also mention there's an argument local to the Genesis account itself, even without Solomon, because, and this is skipping ahead a little bit to Genesis 3, but the serpent says to Eve, if you eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it's going to be all good, you're not going to die, because the moment that you eat from the tree, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 32:39 Sam Mansfield And so Eve interprets that offer by the serpent, that temptation as being good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise. 32:51 Sam Mansfield And there's two other scholars that I quote draw the conclusion from them that if that is how Eve interpreted the serpent's temptation to her to take the fruit, and the serpent had said, you will be like God, 33:05 Sam Mansfield one of the scholars commentating on this section in Genesis 3 notices the irony of the serpent's temptation when he says that the serpent was offering something to Eve that she already had. 33:19 Sam Mansfield She was already like God. 33:21 Sam Mansfield Adam and Eve were made in God's image and likeness. 33:23 Sam Mansfield And so Eve interprets that image and likeness as in some sense reflecting God's wisdom. 33:29 Sam Mansfield And yet she desired wisdom from taking the fruit of the tree instead because 33:34 Sam Mansfield she was deceived by the serpent that God was holding out on her, that she wasn't made in God's image and likeness. 33:39 Sean Finnegan All right, so what I hear you saying is that there's a native, I don't know what you would call it, wisdom discourse in Genesis already. 33:47 Sam Mansfield I think so, yes. 33:48 Sam Mansfield Based on Genesis 3 verse 6. 33:50 Sean Finnegan Solomon comes along and says, okay, well, let's elaborate on that. 33:55 Sean Finnegan And I don't think it's controversial to say that Proverbs 8 is a midrash on Genesis 1. 34:02 Sean Finnegan It seems like a pretty obvious statement. 34:04 Sean Finnegan So I don't think there's any reason to push back on that. 34:07 Sean Finnegan Your other point that since Proverbs is in the Bible, it's inspired and therefore it's an authoritative commentary on Genesis 1. 34:17 Sean Finnegan I think that pretty much follows for anyone that recognizes the inspiration of scripture. 34:22 Sean Finnegan You've got enough there to work with. 34:25 Sean Finnegan I suppose you would have to say that there was some incipient or just sort of like the beginning stages of a concept of wisdom present in Genesis that was perhaps hidden or just not developed that Proverbs 8 really makes explicit and does develop. 34:42 Sean Finnegan Could you just run us through Proverbs 8 a little bit and just comment on it, just in case somebody's not familiar with that text off the top of their head? 34:51 Sam Mansfield Yes, certainly. 34:52 Sam Mansfield Just a very brief point before I do that about what Paul says. 34:57 Sam Mansfield So Paul writing in Ephesians in the 1st century. 35:02 Sam Mansfield Again, I take the view and there is scholarship to back it up that Paul did write Ephesians Colossians in the disputed letters. 35:09 Sam Mansfield But Paul talks about in Ephesians 3 verse 10 the hidden inner wisdom of God that has now been revealed through the church. 35:20 Sam Mansfield There we go. 35:21 Sam Mansfield So that through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 35:29 Sam Mansfield But right before verse 10, we've got this random mention of, in verse 9, to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery, so something that was hidden but now it's being revealed, the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. 35:45 Sam Mansfield why do we need to put that in the sentence? 35:47 Sam Mansfield It could have just read as the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God so that through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known. 35:56 Sam Mansfield But instead, we've got dropped right in the middle of that sentence a reference to God being the creator. 36:03 Sam Mansfield And then later in Ephesians, Paul talks about how the church 36:09 Sam Mansfield was actually prophesied by Eve, which is Ephesians 5 later in the chapter. 36:17 Sam Mansfield So Ephesians 5 verse 31, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh. 36:23 Sam Mansfield That's quoting Genesis 2 about Adam and Eve. 36:26 Sam Mansfield And we're talking about the creation of humanity. 36:29 Sam Mansfield That's the topic. 36:30 Sam Mansfield And verse 32 says, this is a great mystery. 36:32 Sam Mansfield So something that was hidden previously, but now it's been revealed. 36:36 Sam Mansfield But I'm speaking about Christ and the church. 36:39 Sam Mansfield So Adam and Eve in some sense reflected the relationship between Christ and his church. 36:46 Sam Mansfield And we were just told in chapter 3 that the church reveals the inner wisdom of God who created all things. 36:54 Sam Mansfield So it seems like Paul is sort of saying that relationship between man and woman reflects some kind of relationship between God and His wisdom, which we read about in Proverbs 8, which is actually the question that you asked me. 37:07 Sam Mansfield So Proverbs 8, for those who are not familiar with it, is a really highly poetic section where Lady Wisdom, which is a personification of God, Wisdom, not an actual literal person, but a personification, 37:23 Sam Mansfield So she's an attribute of God that has been given person-like qualities. 37:28 Sam Mansfield And she does all sorts of things. 37:30 Sam Mansfield Proverbs 8 verse 1, does not wisdom call and understanding raise her voice. 37:35 Sam Mansfield And later in the chapter, we start to have this commentary on the creation account. 37:42 Sam Mansfield She talks about how she was 37:44 Sam Mansfield there with God in the beginning. 37:46 Sam Mansfield So Proverbs 8 verse 22, Yahweh created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old long ago. 37:53 Sam Mansfield So I actually take offense at the translation of created. 37:58 Sam Mansfield I think that's a distortion that's been made by later Greek translators. 38:03 Sam Mansfield The original meaning in Hebrew is, I think the word is kana. 38:08 Sam Mansfield My pronunciation is probably terrible. 38:10 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it says possess. 38:12 Sam Mansfield Possessed. 38:13 Sam Mansfield And that is when it's used of a woman that is typically used in the context of marriage. 38:20 Sam Mansfield And that's particularly used in Ruth. 38:22 Sam Mansfield And in some Hebrew traditions, they would actually place Ruth 38:27 Sam Mansfield after Proverbs, which for those familiar with the descriptions of the worthy man or the worthy woman or the woman of valor or the man of valor, that's something that shows up in both Proverbs and in the book of Ruth. 38:39 Sam Mansfield So something worth investigating at another time. 38:43 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 38:44 Sean Finnegan I'm just curious what the Septuagint does there. 38:47 Sean Finnegan Yeah, so the Septuagint uses the word created and that's how it probably became common in English. 38:54 Sean Finnegan But this is not the typical word for create in Hebrew. 38:57 Sam Mansfield No. 38:58 Sean Finnegan Asah would be the word for create or make. 39:02 Sam Mansfield This verse in the early Christian. 39:04 Sam Mansfield Yeah, that's right. 39:06 Sam Mansfield So Barar is actually used in Genesis 2 of the creation of Eve. 39:10 Sam Mansfield No, sorry, I think Banar is used of Eve. 39:13 Sam Mansfield But this verse, Proverbs 8, verse 22, became a huge battleground for Christians in the 4th century. 39:22 Sam Mansfield because the Arians, they wanted to talk about how the Logos, the Son of God, was created. 39:30 Sam Mansfield And the Pro-Nicenes on the other side, they wanted to say, no, this is not what this means. 39:35 Sam Mansfield And then you get people like Athanasius who come along with really weird ideas. 39:40 Sam Mansfield And he's like, no, it's right. 39:42 Sam Mansfield It is about creation. 39:43 Sam Mansfield It's about the incarnation of the sun. 39:45 Sam Mansfield It's like. 39:46 Sean Finnegan In the beginning. 39:47 Sam Mansfield In the beginning, what? 39:50 Sam Mansfield It's a bit wacky. 39:51 Sam Mansfield Yeah, Proverbs 8 is, I think Proverbs 8 verse 22, there's a deliberate use of that word in a poetic sense, kana, because it's talking about God who is a masculine figure with this feminine figure and they're creating together and that's how we get humans in the Genesis 1 account reflecting, somehow they're reflecting 2 aspects of God because we've got Adam and Eve, we've got male and female, we've got two figures but we know 40:20 Sam Mansfield from the Hebrew scriptures that Yahweh is only one person. 40:24 Sam Mansfield So how do we get two persons from one person? 40:27 Sam Mansfield Well, Solomon, I think, provides us with the answer. 40:30 Sam Mansfield He gives a poetic discourse in Proverbs 8 about how there was this woman figure, a personification, not a literal lady. 40:37 Sam Mansfield God's wisdom in the beginning was there with him, assisting him to create. 40:41 Sam Mansfield Proverbs 8 verse 31 essentially in some ways gives us on a silver platter 40:46 Sam Mansfield that reading because she says she was there when humans were being created. 40:50 Sam Mansfield So then I was beside him like a master worker. 40:53 Sam Mansfield This is Lady Wisdom talking. 40:55 Sam Mansfield I was daily his delight playing before him always rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. 41:03 Sean Finnegan Okay. 41:04 Sam Mansfield In light of the rest of the discourse that's happening where she's talking about how she's there before the foundations of the world are marked out 41:12 Sam Mansfield before when he's drawing the circle of the earth so that the waters don't transgress his command. 41:19 Sam Mansfield This is all just before creation is happening and then boom, when we get the inhabited world, when we get Adam and Eve, she's there when those humans are being created. 41:29 Sam Mansfield So we've got somebody there for God to address who's not a literal person. 41:33 Sam Mansfield It's his personified wisdom, personified as a woman. 41:37 Sam Mansfield And that's how we can have God saying in Genesis 1.26, 41:41 Sam Mansfield Let us create man in our image and our likeness. 41:45 Sam Mansfield And yet in verse 27, you might think, okay, that's a poetic utterance that God says out loud to his personified wisdom. 41:52 Sam Mansfield I want to know what that looks like literally. 41:54 Sam Mansfield Well, you read the next verse and you see it's just God doing it all by himself. 41:58 Sam Mansfield It's just that he does it super wisely. 42:01 Sam Mansfield In the paper, I also footnote 42:05 Sam Mansfield a lady who's put together all the different lexical links between Genesis 1 to 2 and Proverbs 8, which makes it quite clear that the other scholarly gentleman that I quote who says that it's an inner biblical midrash, when you look at the tables that she puts together, it becomes quite obvious. 42:24 Sam Mansfield She's looking at the exact same Hebrew words appearing in both. 42:27 Sean Finnegan That's an interesting point too. 42:28 Sean Finnegan The word for wisdom is chokmah in Hebrew and then Sophia in Greek. 42:34 Sean Finnegan And in both cases, 42:35 Sean Finnegan they're feminine, which is great because then the personification translates quite nicely between the two languages. 42:43 Sean Finnegan That could have been problematic. 42:45 Sean Finnegan But since, just by accident of language, those two both identify wisdom as female. 42:51 Sean Finnegan That worked out really nicely. 42:54 Sean Finnegan But, you know, wisdom is not a female. 42:56 Sean Finnegan Wisdom is not a male. 42:57 Sean Finnegan Wisdom is a description of 43:01 Sean Finnegan of actions that go well. 43:04 Sean Finnegan Right? 43:04 Sean Finnegan Like paying your taxes is wise because if you don't pay your taxes, the government comes eventually and audits you and then you get arrested or fined or in your life, it doesn't go as well. 43:16 Sean Finnegan So we say, oh, paying your taxes is wise. 43:20 Sean Finnegan Well, it's just describing something that is good 43:24 Sean Finnegan and that works well and that's functional, that's ordered or future thinking. 43:29 Sean Finnegan So, wisdom is not a person at all, but in Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified. 43:35 Sean Finnegan And what you're saying is that this relates to Genesis 126 as God speaking really to himself. 43:44 Sean Finnegan That's what deliberation means. 43:46 Sean Finnegan If I say, hey, let's go to the store and buy some clothes. 43:49 Sean Finnegan And if I'm the only one in the room, 43:53 Sean Finnegan That's me. 43:54 Sean Finnegan That's Sean talking to Sean. 43:55 Sean Finnegan You know, I am the I and I am the me in that sense. 43:59 Sean Finnegan So that's the us together is deliberation. 44:02 Sean Finnegan And so God's really like having an internal conversation. 44:06 Sean Finnegan Hey, let's do this. 44:07 Sean Finnegan Let's do that. 44:08 Sean Finnegan People who talk to themselves like me are quite familiar with this. 44:14 Sean Finnegan You know, it's a way of like verbally processing, I guess. 44:17 Sean Finnegan Is that pretty much how you see it or did you want to add or correct what I said there? 44:21 Sam Mansfield I think that's a great place to start, but I wouldn't stop there because that's one of the criticisms that Hazel brings up in his paper on the Let Us reading in Genesis 1.26. 44:33 Sam Mansfield He says that this reading, the plural of deliberation, rests on the use of it in the modern languages, I might say. 44:42 Sam Mansfield I made pumpkin soup for my wife tonight because she wasn't feeling super well. 44:46 Sam Mansfield So I put in all the spices and I could have said something like, let us make this soup, but my wife is not going to be helping me because she's sick. 44:54 Sam Mansfield I'm cooking it by myself. 44:56 Sam Mansfield But is that really going to be enough evidence to say this is what God is doing in Genesis 1.26? 45:03 Sam Mansfield I would actually agree with Hazel on its own. 45:06 Sam Mansfield That's not enough to build an argument out of, which is why I think it's a good starting place. 45:11 Sam Mansfield But we married that with what we read later in the scriptures, especially in Proverbs 8, to fill out that plural of deliberation with the wisdom aspect. 45:20 Sam Mansfield But you're correct when we come back to it and we ask, what are we literally talking about here? 45:25 Sam Mansfield It's actually just God creating by himself and he's doing it wisely. 45:29 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 45:30 Sean Finnegan One may question how wise it was to create humans, considering all the problems we've caused. 45:36 Sean Finnegan But I have faith that in the end, this kingdom is going to come and that over time, his wisdom will be vindicated in bringing us into this situation. 45:47 Sean Finnegan So I would like to transition now to, obviously in the paper, there's a lot more that you discuss and a lot more content that we're not going to be able to get to in this conversation, kind of drawing to the end here. 46:03 Sean Finnegan I do have some other questions for you 46:05 Sean Finnegan though, you have this YouTube channel in his truth extended. 46:09 Sean Finnegan You've got one video on there. 46:11 Sean Finnegan Is this gonna happen or was this just something you started and it's, you know, tell us about it. 46:19 Sean Finnegan What is your dream? 46:20 Sam Mansfield I put together the first episode in an incredibly busy period because I wanted to make sure it was ready to release at the conference. 46:29 Sam Mansfield But I'm in the process of writing scripts for other episodes. 46:33 Sam Mansfield Dan Weatherill from Bible Feed was kind enough to leave me a comment on my Biblical Unitarianism episode, the first episode of Correct Christian Teaching. 46:43 Sam Mansfield And he said it would be great to hear about some of the arguments in regards to the worship of Jesus and how we're meant to sort of understand what's going on there. 46:53 Sean Finnegan Dan Weatherill is a great guy. 46:55 Sean Finnegan We had a lovely walk in the countryside when I was in England last year. 46:59 Sam Mansfield Oh, lovely. 47:00 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 47:01 Sam Mansfield That's very nice. 47:02 Sean Finnegan He's a real gentleman and done so much with technology too. 47:08 Sam Mansfield Yeah, he's a real. 47:10 Sam Mansfield I did an episode with him on Bible Feed about the Council of Nicaea or the Creed of Nicaea because they were celebrating 1700 years last year. 47:20 Sam Mansfield Yeah, 1700 years. 47:22 Sam Mansfield So we were just doing our best to help uncelebrate Nicaea on that episode. 47:27 Sam Mansfield So that's up there. 47:29 Sam Mansfield But I'm hoping on my YouTube channel to also put out a vlog on the UCA events that have been happening in Australia. 47:37 Sam Mansfield I took some footage of the debate that was held at the Canterbury, Christadelphia and Ecclesial Hall. 47:44 Sam Mansfield Also some of the presentations that happened the day after and also some footage from 47:49 Sam Mansfield the conference that was in Sydney a week later, which I gave my paper at. 47:53 Sam Mansfield So I'm hoping that the vlog will go up along with some other videos. 47:58 Sam Mansfield But any sort of videos that people think I should produce on there, I'm open to feedback and questions and I'm hoping to do a few different series on there. 48:06 Sam Mansfield So there's stuff coming. 48:08 Sam Mansfield It's not just the one episode. 48:09 Sean Finnegan All right. 48:10 Sean Finnegan So if people enjoy hearing you and your work, they should subscribe on YouTube to In His Truth Extended. 48:19 Sean Finnegan which is just at In His Truth Extended on YouTube. 48:22 Sean Finnegan What else is going on in the world of Sam Mansfield? 48:25 Sean Finnegan Do you have other projects you're working on or hopes or dreams for the future? 48:30 Sam Mansfield I'm hoping that the UCA will be something that generates a lot of conversations between particularly people in my community, the Christadelphians, and those who are coming to this understanding of the one God and his son Jesus. 48:46 Sam Mansfield and that we can support each other in whatever way is feasible, even if that's just cheering each other on this one aspect of God's truth. 48:56 Sean Finnegan Let me ask you on that. 48:57 Sean Finnegan Why do you think it's worth it? 48:58 Sean Finnegan Because I mean, obviously it's inherently risky to work together with other groups outside of your own. 49:03 Sean Finnegan Why do you believe in the cause? 49:06 Sam Mansfield Because I believe that truth matters and truth needs to get out there and people need to know that 49:13 Sam Mansfield bravery and courage to reject what is false in favor of what is truth, no matter the cost, is always going to be more important. 49:23 Sam Mansfield I think that's ultimately the reason why. 49:25 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 49:26 Sean Finnegan Would you say that we're stronger together? 49:28 Sam Mansfield I think so. 49:29 Sam Mansfield I have the benefit of being part of this community that's been ticking away for the past 150 years and there's been Christians that have held our belief for 49:39 Sam Mansfield earlier than that. 49:40 Sam Mansfield But as a community, we've been ticking along for 150 years. 49:45 Sam Mansfield We can kind of be there as the sort of older big brother to lend other restorationist groups and other individuals a hand to sort of strengthen them rather than let them perish by the wayside. 49:58 Sam Mansfield You know, we're here to offer our advice and what we've learned rather than people hiding in Trinitarian churches and not sharing their truth with the world. 50:09 Sam Mansfield they can feel emboldened to share with others and others can come to this understanding. 50:14 Sam Mansfield So yeah, I do think we're stronger together in whatever ways we can work together. 50:20 Sam Mansfield And I think that there are a few different ways that we can do that. 50:22 Sam Mansfield So we're definitely stronger together than apart. 50:24 Sean Finnegan Let's go back to your earlier remark you were about to make. 50:28 Sean Finnegan Who knows? 50:28 Sean Finnegan You were about to. 50:30 Sean Finnegan Tell us, you're about to drop something big. 50:32 Sean Finnegan I can feel it. 50:33 Sean Finnegan I'm just kidding. 50:33 Sean Finnegan Go ahead. 50:34 Sean Finnegan What were you going to say there? 50:35 Sam Mansfield Well, I'm also hoping to explore my paper a little bit more as an episode on the podcast. 50:44 Sam Mansfield A lot of people mentioned at the conference to me that it was a little bit technical. 50:47 Sam Mansfield So I want to kind of bring it back down to grassroots, make it really easy for the lay listener. 50:53 Sam Mansfield There's also for people who 50:55 Sam Mansfield through all of my content on YouTube. 50:57 Sam Mansfield There's an audio podcast version as well, which is mainly for people in my community, the Christadelphians, but it's all about searching for truth and reading the Bible and trying to understand it and how that practically affects our lives. 51:13 Sam Mansfield I was almost thinking I could go with the slogan like, 51:15 Sam Mansfield learning what authentic Christianity is and trying to live it out. 51:19 Sam Mansfield But I think that was already trademarked by somebody. 51:22 Sam Mansfield Doesn't come from. 51:23 Sean Finnegan Feel free to use it. 51:24 Sean Finnegan I don't care. 51:27 Sean Finnegan Oh man. 51:28 Sam Mansfield Yeah. 51:28 Sam Mansfield But I have a very similar outlook to you. 51:31 Sam Mansfield I want to know what Jesus and the apostles believed. 51:34 Sam Mansfield I want to make sure I'm believing the same thing and that practically affects our lives. 51:39 Sam Mansfield That changes us. 51:41 Sam Mansfield to be more like Christ while we wait for his coming. 51:45 Sam Mansfield Yeah, that's something that people can look at. 51:46 Sam Mansfield And the who knows comment was in reference to maybe, God willing, there's some plans that there might be another conference in Australia potentially. 51:57 Sam Mansfield And maybe if I write another paper and I really put my back into it, the blind reviewing committee might think it's okay and let me get up and speak again. 52:07 Sam Mansfield Who knows? 52:08 Sean Finnegan Who knows? 52:09 Sean Finnegan Hey, that would be great. 52:10 Sean Finnegan I think you did a great job. 52:12 Sam Mansfield Thank you. 52:12 Sean Finnegan Represented the Christadelphian community well at the event and we're so excited to have, just speaking as a board member of the UCA, we're so excited to have Christadelphian participation, especially presenting. 52:27 Sean Finnegan I appreciate that. 52:29 Sean Finnegan Of course, our New Zealand event, we had the year previous, we had Dave Burke speak and I think he's from your neck of the woods. 52:38 Sam Mansfield Yep, he's from Adelaide, just down the road from me. 52:41 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 52:42 Sean Finnegan And so that was great to have him as well. 52:45 Sean Finnegan So anything else you'd like to say before we close out here? 52:49 Sam Mansfield I just wanted to say thanks so much for having me on the Rest of Studio podcast. 52:53 Sam Mansfield I really appreciate your whole ethos and your approach to the scriptures. 52:58 Sam Mansfield I find 52:59 Sam Mansfield very, very little to disagree with. 53:02 Sam Mansfield I really encourage people to check out your work if this is the first episode that they're hearing of Restitudio. 53:08 Sam Mansfield Always keep searching for truth. 53:10 Sam Mansfield If you find that a theology that you hold in your life is sort of grading up against some scriptures that you've been reading, investigate it, check it out, have an open mind and really search for truth. 53:23 Sam Mansfield And I think it's actually Proverbs that also says that, find truth and wear it like a garland, a necklace around your neck. 53:31 Sam Mansfield I think that's a really beautiful image and I think that's what we should be doing as Christians. 53:34 Sam Mansfield We should be searching out God's truth and learning to live in it. 53:38 Sean Finnegan Awesome. 53:38 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks so much for talking with me today. 53:40 Sam Mansfield Thanks, Sean. 53:40 Sam Mansfield Appreciate it. 53:46 Sean Finnegan That brings our conversation to an end. 53:48 Sean Finnegan What did you think? 53:49 Sean Finnegan Come on over to restitudio.org and find episode 655, God Spoke to Himself in Genesis 126, and leave your questions and thoughts there. 54:00 Sean Finnegan On our previous episode, 654, The Plight of a Restorationist with Matt Lovegrove, Haas wrote in saying, thank you for presenting this. 54:08 Sean Finnegan Churchianity is quite an excrement expo. 54:12 Sean Finnegan I can relate to what Matt has to say. 54:17 Sean Finnegan that is certainly one way of putting it, Hoss. 54:20 Sean Finnegan Thanks for writing in. 54:22 Sean Finnegan The problem with church, and I'm talking as somebody who's been involved in church leadership in various capacities for 21 years, is that it's full of people. 54:35 Sean Finnegan And whether we're talking about the leaders or the just regular attenders, 54:40 Sean Finnegan We're all people, we all have flaws and blind spots, and sometimes we are too forceful, and many times we are not confrontational enough. 54:50 Sean Finnegan And sometimes we hold to 1 principle when we should really hold to another principle. 54:54 Sean Finnegan And there are these tensions between truth and love, honesty and compassion, and it is hard to get it right. 55:03 Sean Finnegan Now having said that, I don't want to excuse 55:05 Sean Finnegan the incredibly poor treatment of Matt by the various churches that he has attended for non-sinful, non-excommunicable offenses. 55:15 Sean Finnegan The fact is that churches need to allow space for people to believe different things so long as that person is not disrupting the faith of others. 55:27 Sean Finnegan Ideally, churches would also allow space for debate or discussion and honest inquiry, which is nowhere in Matt's story. 55:36 Sean Finnegan Go ahead and listen to it last week if you aren't sure what I'm talking about. 55:40 Sean Finnegan On that same episode, Lloyd Scott writes in saying, maybe in a neutral setting, but the adversary is the god of this cosmos and not in a neutral playing field for it is tilted against. 55:52 Sean Finnegan So if Yah does not save me, then will not be saved. 55:57 Sean Finnegan All right, just to give a little context here for Lloyd's comment, and of course, Lloyd, you'd have to correct me if I get you wrong here, but that was a bit condensed and a bit esoteric, but what I think he's talking about is Matt's change of heart with respect to monergism, the idea that 56:18 Sean Finnegan God alone saves and that someone does not actually have faith or participate in his or her salvation whatsoever. 56:28 Sean Finnegan And what Lloyd is saying is that our world is so fallen, so not neutral that we have no ability whatsoever to choose God. 56:42 Sean Finnegan And 56:43 Sean Finnegan And this is precisely the idea that Matt's dad, if you remember the interview last week, Matt's dad has ceased to believe in that got him kicked out of a church that he even started and preached the first sermon in. 56:55 Sean Finnegan It's incredible to get kicked out of your own church. 56:58 Sean Finnegan But there is a small club of these noble people that have the guts to continue learning and continue seeking truth, even though other people are really uncomfortable with that. 57:11 Sean Finnegan Anyhow, 57:12 Sean Finnegan the text that got Matt's dad's attention was the one in Romans 4, which is a repetition of the one in Genesis 16, I believe, or maybe was it 15, 6, where it says Abraham believed and God credited to him as righteousness. 57:30 Sean Finnegan And the point was, well, the Bible says Abraham believed, ergo Abraham believed. 57:36 Sean Finnegan So to use some sort of slick move and 57:41 Sean Finnegan say, that belief that Abraham had really came from God. 57:46 Sean Finnegan It was a gift from God. 57:48 Sean Finnegan That is a sleight of hand. 57:49 Sean Finnegan I'm sorry. 57:50 Sean Finnegan Like, we have no hope if we are forced to interpret the Bible in such a 57:56 Sean Finnegan strange and non-face value way when such plain statements occur and then get repeated in the New Testament as the basis for the whole system that everyone bases monergism on. 58:09 Sean Finnegan Romans 4, Romans 3, 4, and 5 is a go-to section to talk about justification by faith, right? 58:16 Sean Finnegan So I don't think monergism stands. 58:19 Sean Finnegan I'm A synergist, proud to be one. 58:21 Sean Finnegan I think we do work together with God. 58:24 Sean Finnegan God is seeking those who want 58:26 Sean Finnegan And those who choose him, he saves. 58:29 Sean Finnegan The metaphor I use to think about this is that we are stuck in the quicksand and we cannot get out on our own. 58:36 Sean Finnegan The harder we fight, the deeper we sink. 58:39 Sean Finnegan But we can do one thing, which is reach our hands up. 58:42 Sean Finnegan We can reach our hands up and God can reach his hand down and then pull us out. 58:48 Sean Finnegan And I don't think having 58:51 Sean Finnegan experienced deliverance in such a fashion, we should say, oh, well, look what we did. 58:55 Sean Finnegan No, all we did was reach up in faith. 58:57 Sean Finnegan God reached down in grace and pulled us out. 59:00 Sean Finnegan God saved us, but we did have participation in the process. 59:05 Sean Finnegan God is not saving everyone. 59:07 Sean Finnegan God wishes everyone would be saved, but not everyone repents. 59:11 Sean Finnegan That's fascinating, isn't it? 59:12 Sean Finnegan It's almost as if God honors our free will or something. 59:16 Sean Finnegan Stay young, my friends, wrote in also on this episode saying, this is a great validation of the work the UCA is doing. 59:21 Sean Finnegan I totally hear Matt grappling with the fear that you are alone on questioning the Trinity doctrine. 59:27 Sean Finnegan The internet has been a major blessing for Christian truth seekers around the world. 59:32 Sean Finnegan Paul writes in, you are my people. 59:34 Sean Finnegan I resonate with so much of this. 59:38 Sean Finnegan I also wanted to let you know that we are planning to have a UCA conference in October 59:46 Sean Finnegan That will be October 22nd to the 24th in Tempe, Arizona. 59:50 Sean Finnegan It's going to be hosted at Lakeshore Bible Church. 59:53 Sean Finnegan And this is going to be a time for a lot of people to gather, especially those who are West Coast or anyone really who can fly in and be part of it. 1:00:04 Sean Finnegan But these conferences are a great time to learn a lot about scholarship in the field of biblical Unitarianism. 1:00:12 Sean Finnegan And if you are somebody in the US that 1:00:16 Sean Finnegan has been listening to this podcast and would like to meet others, this is really a great rallying point for all of us to get together. 1:00:23 Sean Finnegan We'll have a number of presentations. 1:00:25 Sean Finnegan I'm planning to be there and hopefully I'll be able to have my wife Ruth with me as she has been coming with me in recent years. 1:00:32 Sean Finnegan And we would love to meet you. 1:00:35 Sean Finnegan So if you are in the US or Canada, Mexico, somewhere within reasonable travel time of Arizona, 1:00:44 Sean Finnegan Hey, put it on your calendars. 1:00:45 Sean Finnegan October 22nd to the 24th. 1:00:46 Sean Finnegan Registration is not yet up. 1:00:49 Sean Finnegan Also, if you are someone who has something to say, if you are somebody who would like to present a topic at the UCA conference, I know that there are slots available for people to present. 1:01:03 Sean Finnegan The system that we have set up for this event is that people submit a paper 1:01:09 Sean Finnegan And then there is a blind review process. 1:01:12 Sean Finnegan So you don't have to be part of the inside group or anything like that. 1:01:17 Sean Finnegan It is totally blind. 1:01:19 Sean Finnegan The people who are doing the paper review don't know who the submitters are. 1:01:25 Sean Finnegan And those who are submitting don't know who the reviewers are. 1:01:28 Sean Finnegan And they rate the papers based on merit. 1:01:31 Sean Finnegan And then those are some of the folks who get to present at the conference. 1:01:35 Sean Finnegan So if you have an idea brewing, do the research now. 1:01:38 Sean Finnegan I mean, 1:01:38 Sean Finnegan June. 1:01:39 Sean Finnegan So the deadline for this is probably going to be August, if I had to guess. 1:01:44 Sean Finnegan And I'm sure we'll see more information on the Unitarian Christian Alliance website for this. 1:01:50 Sean Finnegan That's UnitarianChristianAlliance.org. 1:01:52 Sean Finnegan And it would be great to meet any of you at that event in October. 1:01:57 Sean Finnegan Well, that's going to be it for today. 1:01:59 Sean Finnegan Thanks everybody for listening here to the end. 1:02:02 Sean Finnegan If you'd like to support Restitudio, the number one way you can do that is to share this episode with your friends. 1:02:09 Sean Finnegan It's absolutely free and it is the number one way that people hear about the show is through word of mouth. 1:02:15 Sean Finnegan Also, if you'd like to support us financially, that's a huge help. 1:02:18 Sean Finnegan Thanks to all of you who are doing that, especially on a monthly recurring basis. 1:02:23 Sean Finnegan You can do that at restitudio.org, O-R-G, and there's a donate button there. 1:02:29 Sean Finnegan I'll catch you next week and remember the truth. 1:02:32 Sean Finnegan nothing to fear.