Wednesday, August 19, 2009

kenneth Copeland's view of God

Definitely not Orthodox (correct):  Link
Copeland's view of God fares no better biblically than his understanding of faith. He describes God as someone "very much like you and me....A being that stands somewhere around 6'2," 6'3," that weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple of hundred pounds, little better, [and] has a [hand]span nine inches across."22

Copeland's statement is based on his hyperliteral reading of Isaiah 40:12 ("Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, marked off the heavens with a [nine inch] span,..." [AV]). Yet following the same line of interpretation, one would also have to conclude that God literally held a basket full of dust and weighed mountains on a gigantic set of scales (v. 12b) — an absurd proposition ruled out by the context of the passage. The fact is that Isaiah 40 makes extensive use of figurative language to underscore the vast difference between the Creator and His creation.

Giving a literal spin on verses that figuratively describe God in humanlike (anthropomorphic) terms, Copeland makes God out to be a "spirit-being with a body, complete with eyes, and eyelids, ears, nostrils, a mouth, hands and fingers, and feet."23 However, the Bible never intended to convey the notion that God has physical features like His human creation. Anthropomorphic descriptions were simply meant to help us understand and relate to our Maker. Jesus declared, "God is spirit" (John 4:24), not a spirit-being with a body (cf. Deut. 4:12). The Creator is, after all, "God, and not man" (Hos. 11:9).

The idea of God possessing a body (physical or spirit) implies the unbiblical view that the Trinity is actually composed of three separate beings. Moreover, a God who has a body with definite, measurable dimensions cannot truly be omnipresent, unlike the God of Scripture who is present everywhere in all His fullness (Jer. 23:23-24). (It is true that in His human nature Christ has a body and is localized in space and time. But in His divine nature He remains nonphysical and omnipresent, sharing this immutable nature with the Father and Holy Spirit.) Copeland's deflation of God is best exemplified by his comment that "the biggest failure in the Bible...is God."24 In stark contrast, the biblical God is an all-powerful being (Dan. 4:35) whose plans cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2) and who considers nothing too difficult (Jer. 32:17; Luke 1:37).

Copeland's diminished view of God is further amplified by a correspondingly inflated view of the universe in general and man in particular. He claims that the earth is "a copy of the mother planet [i.e., heaven] where God lives."25 Exactly how Copeland could "squeeze" God on any planet is difficult to fathom, especially since Solomon pointed out that heaven itself cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27).



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