God's Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church [Paperback]

Gerald R. McDermott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

In the providence of God, why are there other religions? Was the God of the Bible wise in allowing for them? Can they serve any purpose?

Gerald R. McDermott explores reflection on teaching from the Old and New Testaments and from a number of key teachers from the early church to suggest an answer to this perplexing but intriguing question. In the end McDermott provides considerable insight into the troubling clash of world religions and offers a helpful Christian response.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gerald McDermott's God's Rivals makes a substantive contribution toward a Christian theology of religions. His appeal to the patristic use of the New Testament's category of 'powers and principalities' is exemplary retrieval from our own tradition to address a contemporary issue. The result is a proposal that guards Christ's primacy while it espouses charity and sensitivity. I commend the book both for classes and for scholars in the field." (George Sumner, Principal, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada)

"God's Rivals brings vividly to life religions and divine providence at work in our world, as explored and debated in the Bible and early church. McDermott compellingly brings home to us the importance of taking gods and goddesses very seriously; we are engaged in a continuing drama of divine action in our midst, and must be on watch to avoid reducing it to vague concepts and placid words. Whether we agree or not with McDermott's conclusions on today's religions, we must be grateful to him for reminding us so clearly what is at stake." (Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School)

"While in recent years the theology of religions has risen to the center of theological reflection and there is a steady flow of publications on various aspects of the topic, McDermott is writing about an issue so crucial that it can be easily missed, namely, Why has God allowed religions? This is the first major work on the topic essential to all interested in the relation of Christian faith to other faiths. Building on a careful scrutiny of biblical and some patristic sources, McDermott has produced an intriguing book meant not only for specialists but for everyone wanting to know more about religion's role in a Christian perspective." (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Docent of Ecumenics, University of Helsinki)

"God's Rivals continues Gerry McDermott's fascinating exploration of the theology of religions in his characteristic style: erudition without ostentation, courage balanced with prudence, and faithfulness to tradition tethering an eagerness to explore. This is a significant book that will alter the conversation." (John G. Stackhouse Jr., Ph.D., Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada)

Product Details

• Paperback: 181 pages
• Publisher: IVP Academic (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780830825646
• ISBN-13: 978-0830825646
• ASIN: 0830825649
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves a wide reading. April 12, 2007

By Alan Pieratt

Format:Paperback

This is an important work that deserves a wide reading for two reasons. First, it does a good job treating the key issues that surround the question of the Christian understanding of salvation and world religions. The author condenses a lot of material on this subject and offers it up in an easily readable fashion. Secondly, and I think more importantly, this book deserves a reading because it re-examines the worldviews of both the Old and New Testaments for their understanding of the existence of a "middle realm" of gods and powers and spirits. There is in the Bible "a whole class of intermediate beings between the high God and his human creatures" (p. 45). For the biblical authors at least, such entities play an important role in the lives of men, cultures, nations and world religions. Can this be true? If it is, it demands a substantial rethinking of the world religions and our modern, Christian worldview. [Disclosure: This reviewer is a personal friend of the author.]

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A follow up to Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? September 10, 2007

By Rodney Wilson

Format:Paperback

This book presents an evangelical-Christian take on why religions flourish in light of the evangelical view that the only completely true religion is the one of the Christian's. God's Rivals is a follow up of sorts to McDermott's Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions, published seven years earlier. In God's Rivals, McDermott takes what was one chapter in Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions and writes an entire book on the attitudes of the church fathers concerning the world's religions. He expounds on the "scandal of particularity"; the biblical tradition of God among the nations (Gentiles); the Israelite understanding of the gods of its neighbors; the NT (particularly Pauline) understanding of the powers of darkness that some say may have manifest themselves in other gods; and finally the heart of the book -- a chapter each on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and their understanding of the other-than-Christian religions.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious, but leaves wanting May 12, 2009

By David C. Cramer

Format:Paperback

This book came highly recommended to me by a respected professor, so my expectations for it were high. Unfortunately, the book failed to live up to those expectations. Given my expectations, the following review will be a bit on the critical side, but I nonetheless think this book might be a worthwhile read for those interested in the question posed by the subtitle: "Why has God allowed different religions?" I also think that McDermott's approach to answering this questions is a good way to go. As the sub-subtitle describes, McDermott addresses this question with "Insights from the Bible and the early Church."

In the introduction, McDermott explains his primary thesis: "If there is one theme, or red thread, that runs through the following chapters, it is this: the biblical authors and early church theologians saw the religions not simply as human constructions but as spiritual projects as well" (11). Based on this insight, McDermott attempts to find the happy medium between the "fundamentalist extreme" that views all non-Christian religions as entirely demonic and "religious relativism" which views all religions as equally salvific ways to God.

After laying out the primary issues he wishes to address, McDermott takes a chapter each to discuss the Old Testament and New Testament views on other religions, followed by a chapter each discussing the views of church fathers Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Finally, in the last chapter, he ties together all the data from these various sources to address the questions: What are the religions? And why are they there?...

Based on his survey of the Old Testament passages dealing with other religions, McDermott discusses four views hinted at by the OT: (1) neighborly pluralism, the idea that each nation has its own god and as long as everyone keeps to themselves, everything's kosher; (2) competitive pluralism, similar to the above idea, only now the nation-gods are in competition; (3) vehement missionary exclusivism, the idea that there is truly only one God, Yahweh, and that all peoples of all nations should serve him; and finally, (4) the cosmic war view, in which the cosmos is populated by a multitude of beings, warring against each other for the world's destiny. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, McDermott rejects (3) and opts for a combination of (1), (2), and (4). He argues that according to a theory-neutral reading of the OT data, one finds that the other gods really do exist (as lesser gods created by Yahweh of course). As he describes, the cosmic war view "rejects the 'Yahweh alone' view that denies the existence of any other gods. It might refuse to call them 'gods,' but when it does that it is only quibbling with words" (63).

We might pause for a moment to ask whether this is really "quibbling with words" as McDermott suggests. For if we take his suggestion at face value, what he is proposing is polytheism: the existence of a multitude of gods. Sure, he acknowledges that these gods are created beings by the One Creator God, Yahweh, but he nonetheless maintains that they are gods. While we might be willing to concede with McDermott that there are other powerful beings in the cosmos, I think we should continue to quibble over the fact that they are not gods. It seems that McDermotthas made the mistake of reading the OT's description of people's real beliefs in other gods as the OT's endorsement of the view that there really are other gods. (For a hilarious and satirical critique of a similar mistake, see George Mavrodes, "Polytheism" in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, ed. Philip Quinn and Kevin Meeker [Oxford 2000], 139-60).

McDermott discusses how these gods are described in the New Testament as "principalities and powers." He then describes how the church fathers had interesting views on these spiritual forces and how they might help us understand the phenomenon of religious diversity. According to McDermott's account, God initially created these beings--we might call them arch-angels today--with the purpose of watching over the nations and directing the people of the earth to a worship God and obey the law. Instead, these beings distorted their role by directing worship to themselves and making people slaves to the law. Nevertheless, in God's providence, he uses these distorted representations to instill in people an understanding of their inability to follow the law and their need for a redeemer. Thus, despite the distortions in other religions, they contain elements of truth that can potentially lead people in the direction of Christ.

While McDermott's view might sound far-fetched to modern ears, I think we can appreciate his attempt to answer these difficult questions from a biblical and historical standpoint. We thus might view McDermott's work in the legacy of Francis Schaeffer: those Christian thinkers who are willing to ask the difficult questions that many Christians steer clear of, who have the daring to offer novel solutions, but who's views perhaps ultimately miss the mark. I would thus recommend this book for those who have wondered about the questions McDermott has raised, those who find themselves in either the fundamentalist extreme or the extreme of religious relativism, or those who would simply like to learn more about the views of some of the church fathers.

I have a few other minor quibbles with this book, however, which may be distracting for the reader. First, McDermott is forthright with the concession that "my treatment of these texts and issues reflects my Reformed theology. In other words, I believe in a big God who works in ways that burst all of our conceptual boxes--with contrasting approaches which sometimes seem paradoxical or even contradictory to us but which for him are no problem" (18). While his Reformed theology shouldn't necessarily be a distraction for non-Calvinist readers like myself, the way he details it is at points problematic. For example, at one pointMcDermott discusses God's purpose for Satan and other arch-demons:
"Satan is a creation of God enforcing God's law through a "ministry" of accusation. His job is to defend justice according to God's law. But, as we have seen before, he treats law, which is secondary in God's final order, as primary. Satan's role is like that of other law-enforcers, such as the angel of death or the angel of punishment... As Paul's Jewish contemporary Philo put it, God rules through intermediate powers, who are servants to do things not appropriate to God himself" (79, italics mine).

It appears, according to his description here, that one of "our conceptual boxes" that God is not limited to is his self-revealed moral character. God has revealed himself to us as a perfectly holy and righteous God, but according to McDermott's suggestion here, God works in ways contradictory to his revealed character by delegating dirty work to his servants, apparently including Satan. If this understanding truly reflects his Reformed theology, then I think this is yet another reason to reject that theology. For those readers not yet willing to do so, I think they will at least need to wrestle with the implications of McDermott's Reformed understanding of a "big God."

Secondly, and perhaps more trivially, McDermott seems to offer a rather naive understanding of the development of the discipline of philosophy. He states,

"Remember, the ancient world's conception of philosophy was very different from our own. We typically think, with some good reason, that philosophy is for those who have given up on religion. So if you want to find God, you would not go first to the philosophers. But in the second century, most religious seekers pursued Greek philosophy with the intent of finding God..." (88).

One might think that this paragraph was written in the 1930s. Certainly the legacy of Marx, Nietzsche, Russell, Ayer, etc is still felt in philosophy today, but given the renaissance of Christian philosophy in the last half-century, McDermott's comments unfortunately only serve to propagatethat lingering fundamentalist stereotype of philosophy as the devil's discipline.

Lastly, McDermott finds it difficult to strike a balance between lay-accessibility and academic rigor. While we should applaud him for even attempting this balance, it still makes the reading a bit annoying at times. For example, when citing words from the original Hebrew or Greek, he can't seem to make up his mind between transliteration or the original language font. Sometimes he gives one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. He also at times seems to be overdependent on a limited number of sources or in the beginning chapters on sources that are simply outdated. One might leave this book wondering, for example, what Old Testament scholars from the last decade would have to say about some of his interpretive decisions.

Again, I should acknowledge that I had very high expectations for this book, so my take on it here is probably a bit heavy-handed. All critiques aside, I think this book might still be quite helpful for those wrestling with these difficult questions. It might leave the reader with even more questions than when she began, but with these issues that is usually a good thing. Far too many Christians think their understanding of other religions and the people who adhere to them is the absolute Christian view, and I think this book does a good job at taking those people down a notch. For that accomplishment alone, McDermott should be applauded.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A fair stab at a difficult question... September 22, 2007

By D. P. Schmitz

Format:Paperback

A few weeks ago my wife and I visited a Buddhist temple in Busan, South Korea. After witnessing about thirty Buddhists practice various meditation exercises, my wife asked me why God would allow false religion to exist. This is a very interesting theological question. I purchased this book to help her explore this issue and I ended up reading it too.

I am glad that IVP published a book on this topic. This is the first Christian book that I have seen that attempts to grapple with the issue of non-Christian religions in a lengthy manner. So I appreciate its uniqueness and originality. I also appreciate the author's emphasis upon supernatural influences in the world religions. Often times we Bible believers can succumb unknowingly to the influences of naturalism. McDermott's treatment of evil supernatural powers was in my opinion the most helpful and informative portion of the book.

However, I have a few minor criticisms of this work. First, it seems like McDermott could have explained and summarized his main points in about one hundred pages rather than 170 or so. He spent way too much time talking about Origen's wild speculative theology. His analysis of Origen's theology was an unnecessary diversion from the main goals of the book. Although this author claims to be an evangelical Christian, his writing style almost seems to put the authority of the early Church Fathers on par with Sacred Scripture. I am sure this is unintentional but I wish he would have been more careful in that regard.