(15 votes, average: 4.73 out of 5)
Loading...Now that my book The Triumph of Christianity has come out, I’m thinking about my future books. The one I’m working on now is The Invention of the Afterlife, where I explore the origins of the idea that when you die, your soul goes to heaven or hell (it’s not in the Old Testament and it’s not what Jesus taught — so where did it come from??). But I always like to think two or three books in the future, and so I’m contemplating what I might do after this.
One idea is to deal with the belief that the world is soon to come to an end, a book that would, among other things, take on the book of Revelation. I’ve dealt with the issue before, of course, but not broadly. One of the things I’m interested in is how people interpret Revelation as referring to things about to happen in our own future. Here’s something I say about the topic in my textbook on the Bible.
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One of the most popular ways to interpret the book of Revelation today is to read its symbolic visions as literal descriptions of what is going to transpire in our own day and age. But there are problems with this kind of approach. On one hand, we should be suspicious of interpretations that are blatantly narcissistic; this way of understanding the book maintains that the entire course of human history has now culminated with us! An even larger problem, however, is that this approach inevitably has to ignore certain features of the text in order to make its interpretations fit.
Consider, as just one example, an interpretation sometimes given of the “locusts” that emerge from the smoke of the bottomless pit in order to wreak havoc on earth in chapter 9. The seer describes the appearance of these dread creatures as follows:
Does the Bible talk about what is soon to happen? To find out, you need to read the rest of this post, and to read the rest of his post you have to belong to the blog. Hey, isn’t it worth it? It won’t cost much, you’ll discover the secrets of the universe, and every dime you pay goes to charity!
Weren’t you considering a book on Christian appropriation of Jewish scripture?
Still am!
That would be very interesting, since early Christians twisted Jewish scripture to support the belief that Jesus was the messiah (a distortion which continues to this day). I never realized until I was in my 50s that Jewish people of Jesus’ time did not interpret their scripture in that way (and still do not).
I’m sure you will explain in your coming book. But if Jesus did not taught heaven and hell in the New Testament then why is he speaking numerous of times about ‘furnaces of fire’ and a place where will be ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’? Like in Matthew 13:40-42. I mean, he keeps coming with this type of language over and over again. Isn’t it obvious that he is warning about something? And isn’t that something a place of punishment?
Two points: 1) I’m talking about the historical Jesus, not the Jesus portrayed, for exmaple, by Matthew 50 years later and 2) If Jesus did hold to future punishment, it was after the resurrection of the body; it wasn’t a punishment of souls at the point of death.
So the historical Jesus (most probably) wasn’t teaching any of this, but the doctrine that evolved after him did?
‘Jesus misquoted’…. again 😉
Thanks for your clear answer Bart.
Yup, that’s my view.
Fire consumes and destroys, so why use that description if you actually mean eternal torment? Throw me in a fire and I’ll wail and gnash my teeth, but not for long.
No, they had read modern sadistic crime novels. Death would be too kind, so I’ll prolong the agony with torture. The good people really hated the bad people, the people who abused their power. That was half the fun of apocalyptic literature. Sure, the good people get rewarded. But the bad people are tortured and finally receive their just rewards.
Will your tentative book take the format of Now v. Then as you did in this excerpt from your textbook? I think such a format would add suspense if you layout the “Futuristic” interpretation first and then explain how it is lacking.
Haven’t decided how I’m going to approach it yet — or if I’ll even write it! But that would be a sensible way to do it.
Perhaps deal with prophecy in general, including treating non-biblical situations. My understanding tis that there has been, from time to time, a genre that writes “prophecy” about what has already happened, not really as forgery but as interpretation of the meaning of events (or political disguise for writer safety).
Broad survey leading to focus on Revelation.
A good and valuable point! Most prophetic literature was explanatory, not predictive.
It is an inherent trait in the human mind to seek patterns–and where they don’t exist, to imagine them. As children, with no religious training at all, will see patterns in clouds floating overhead. We can’t help it.
Put me down for the book about the afterlife. At present, the end of the world seems less like something we’re imagining than something we’re actively encouraging. Theists, atheists, agnostics. Everybody but men and women of good will, who can be any of the above.
Famous graffiti in a Belfast slum–“Is there life before death?”
Dr. Ehrman, may I suggest broading the topic of your book to not just Revelation but how, in general, just about every generation interprets “prophecies” as being fulfilled in their own times, and the subsequent apocalyptic literature that results. This is a topic that I myself have considered writing about. There’s something in the human psyche that likes to believe that everything happens for a reason, and if everything happens for a reason that means everything is predestined. And if everything is predestined, that means it’s possible for human beings to “know” the future.
Now, for my own work, I tie this psychological need into my theories of power and control — i.e. the belief that the future is knowable gives us a sense of power and control over our destiny. For example, I distinguish between the “Priest,” the “Prophet,” the “God,” and the “King,” in both the literal and metaphorical senses, and their roles and relationships in the social power structure. (Indeed, the working title of my outline is “Priest, Prophet, God and King”.) Briefly, it works like this: The King is the person in power who needs to know the future, to guide his decisions and actions as king; the God, of course, directs and knows the future; the Priest appeases and coaxes the God so as to make the God amenable to giving up his secrets; the Prophet is the conduit through which the God informs the King as to the future. That’s why, in the Bible, God is always called a “counselor,” because the king saw God as a literal advisor, who would advise the king on the future consequences of his actions and decisions as king. We have analogous structures in our current society. The King has been replaced by democratically elected leaders. The God who knows the future has been replaced by “Nature,” as America’s founders liked to say. The people who appease and coax “Nature’s God” to reveal its secrets are the researchers, scientists, scholars, etc. The Prophets of today are the pundits, intellectuals and advisors who counsel, advise, admonish and strategize for those in power.
Anyway, not to get too deep into the weeds, what I’m suggesting is giving your readers a way to connect the dots between, say, Revelation and Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. The very same human psychology unlies both works — the need to feel like we have a handle on the immediate future. In fact, I would recommend you don’t even open your book with Revelation, but, rather, the Habakkuk Pesher, which I would argue was really the Dead Sea Scroll equivalent of Edgar Whisenant’s “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988”! Really draw the readers’ attention to how Revelation and Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth are similar specimens of what the late great Christopher Hitchens liked to call eschatological porn. If people really saw, red pill style, how this eschatological hamster wheel has lulled them into a false certainty about the immediate future — as it has done for every generation, for thousands of years — then you might do an important service to humanity.
Not to overstate the case, of course.
Yup, that would be the basic idea.
There is great interest in end times/ apocalyptic ideas, seen for example in popular movies situated in post apocalyptic world’s, and the left behind novels that sold something like 60 million copies?
Bart — I just finished reading your Triumph of Christianity book, and I think it’s your best to date. I can’t wait to see your next one on the afterlife, but it looks like I’ll just have to!
I always believed that heaven, hell and purgatory were Christian inventions, and that the promise (or threat) of an eternal hereafter is what made Christianity the world’s most dominant faith. You touch on this in “The Terrors of the Afterlife” heading of your book, but could you address the question a little more?
Yup, that’s one of the directions I would be taking.
What are your thoughts on the idea that the events depicted in Revelation are predictions about what will happen over the course of time? The seven seals, and the events associated with their breaking, are said to occur over the course of centuries or even millenia. I don’t believe this, but it is an interesting idea.
I think that line of interpretation originated when the events to happen “soon” didn’t in fact happen as planned….
Soon to God can be a 1,000 or 2000 years because from His perspective a 1000 years can be a day to how he sees it as “soon” but from humans perspective it seems like a long time.
Is “soon” according to YHWH’s
perspective of soon or according to man’s?
For 2 Peter it is God’s calendar. Which makes one wonder what the actual point is of telling people that it will be soon….
Nope. The very first verse of Revelation refutes that. “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.”
World peace talks coming soon, a sign that the great tribulation is near?
I think the very first verse of Revelation tells us it is not about some distant future, but these fanciful modern interpretations are much more fun, and profitable. Just ask Hal Lindsey.
Please don’t waste your talents on Revelations. It’s a tiny audience of people who believe the fundamentalist stuff and yet are willing to read anything you’ll ever write. And you have so much to offer in areas that matter.
A book I would really like to read from a critical scholar such as yourself is THE HOLY SPIRIT: HOW HE(?) BECAME THE THIRD MEMBER OF THE TRINITY.
But alas, you might want to think about doing the book on Anti-Semitism you discussed a while back.
https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents
“In its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, ADL found that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. rose 57 percent in 2017 – the largest single-year increase on record and the second highest number reported since ADL started tracking such data in 1979.”
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I worked by way through all, about a dozen, of the “Left Behind” novels. It’s enough to scare you to death. They do, however, give a glimpse of one view of what a literal interpretation of the book of “Revelation” seems to predict.
YEs, if I were to write the book the downside is I’d have to read them all!!
Ouch. Couldn’t you just read The Stand?
Used to assign it for one of my classes!
I agree its a mistake to interpret literally apocalyptic writings/sayings like those in book of Revelation (ch9) or book of Daniel (ch7) or words of Jesus (Mt ch24).
in ALL these cases it is obvious to me that the words are best understood as you say “as metaphorical statement[s] of the ultimate sovereignty of God over a world that is plagued by evil”
Some may think each of the above are literal, that is a view I disagree with, but I appreciate it as at least consistent. On the other hand, if you hold some of the above are to be best understood literally and others metaphorically then that is quite an inconsistent point of view, and hard for me to understand the reasoning for.
Something about the Gospels that people today don’t always realize is that Jesus was giving his message to people *of his own time*. So when Jesus told people in the 1st century that the Kingdom of God was coming soon, he was speaking of their time, not ours almost 2,000 years in the future. Nor did he write a book to pass down to us.
It was very revelatory (pun intended) to learn that the book of Revelation was not a blue print for the future but a book full of symbolism directed toward the people alive at the time it was written. I understand that the teaching of the Rapture began with John Nelson Darby, the father of modern Dispensationalism and Futurism, however, with many early Christians believing Christ’s return to be extremely imminent, did those early Christians believe in a type of rapture for a select few or did they simply believe that Christ was returning to establish God’s kingdom on Earth for all?
I imagine it depends on which early Christians you were to ask! But see 1 Thess. 4:13-18.
With the Book of Revelation, you almost have a built-in captive audience already. I think there is a lot of public interest in this topic (and even more crazy ideas about it), so any chance to throw the clear light of scholarship on it I believe performs a much needed public service. Other scholars have been here before (most notably Elaine Pagels in her 2012 book “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation”), but with your name recognition, I believe there would be a lot of interest in what you would have to say on it.
A book about how Jesus taught in the 1st century that the Kingdom of God on Earth was coming soon (not many years later) and how that was also a 1st century Christian belief would be very interesting to me. That was a central teaching of Jesus, yet few people today are aware of that. Jesus’ teaching on that subject has been terribly distorted. The early process of how that belief morphed from the imminent Earthly Kingdom into heaven or a personal relationship with God or an earthly Kingdom many years off would be very interesting, too.
Ah, I wrote that book already! It’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
As much as I admire Bart Ehrman, I don’t agree that Jesus was expecting and teaching the imminence of the last days and the final judgment. I believe the apocalypse Jesus feared was the rebellion of his people against the brutal Roman Empire and his belief the Romans would overwhelm and destroy them, which is what inevitably happened. The vast majority of scholars agree with Dr. Ehrman but I strongly believe otherwise. I’m referring to the historical Jesus, not the fantasy Jesus in the gospels.
Why do you think Jesus feared that? If you wanted to think of Jesus as a Zealot, you could find plenty in the gospels to identify with. The cost of following Jesus is described as the cost of being a Zealot. The synoptic authors say Jesus was accused of being a Zealot, but was acquitted by both Pilate and Herod. The early teaching of Jesus was the teaching of John the Baptist, himself an apocalyptic preacher.
A proper view of John’s Revelation consists of understanding a time before before this earth, a view of earth life, and an afterlife for residents of this earth. How anyone could read this book and come away with the idea that there is no judgement, separation, and eternal life is just bizarre.
Bart, I would be happy to read a book you write on Revelation! I grew up in a fundamentalist church where all kinds of interpretations of Revelation were preached as facts. As a young teenager I could not resolve this in my mind. I read the books 666 and Your Last Goodbye by Salem Kirban with fascination at the time (early 70s). This whole emphasis on interpreting the Bible as if its prophecy of the near future is probably one reason I am not a Christian today, but I am still a bit fascinated by the imagery in that book.
Some (most?) Christians read the Hebrew bible as containing vast amount of prophecy about Jesus. I would like to hear your thoughts on how Christianity came to reinterper and continue to interper the Hebrew bible in sharp contrast to scholars and if that guides these futuristic readings of Revelations?
Yes, that would be a nice thread. But I don’t think it affected futuristic interpretations of Revelation.
In the Old Testament do the titles Son of Man and Messiah refer to the same person, please?
Nope.
Are you 100% certain of that?
I’m rarely 100% certain of *anything*….
In Isaiah, son of man is used to refer to (mortal) humans. In Ezekiel, it refers to the prophet himself (Ezekiel), over and over again. Same for Daniel 8:7. I can’t find a place in Tanakh where it ever applies to a messiah.
1. Will your Afterlife book examine the origin strictly from the western perspective, or will it fold in Eastern thoughts and traditions?
2. As you get further into your research, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the UVA School of Medicine’s Division of Perceptual Studies (not that the book — based on the working title — will necessarily take a stance on afterlife itself. Probably best to dodge that no-way-of-knowing subject.)
It will focus on the question of where the Christian views came from.
The late Jacob Milgrom, a prominent Conservative rabbi and commentator on the Torah, held that the monotheism of Leviticus is inconsistent with the notion of demonic forces behind the causes of impurity. I have other reasons for rejecting the idea of demons as conscious entities, but would you agree that Christians who believe demons are active in the world or individuals are not consistently monotheistic?
There’s not a right or wrong answer to that. It depends entirely on how you define “monotheistic.”
Some at the time made that accusation against Jews. You say you are monotheistic (by at least the first century), yet you believe in angels. We [polytheists] do too, but we have always called them gods.
When NASA engineer’s were designing suits for astronauts to wear in the emptiness of space, they didn’t do so in a vacuum: they modeled their appearance after the costumes of the science fiction films of their childhoods. If there is any relationship between biblical imagery and modern technology, I would guess the relationship is the same. A war machine to that calls up cultural memories of avenging angels or demonic figures are bound to increase the terror of one’s human targets.
One of the points you make in “Triumph” while discussing why pagans found the Christian religion compelling is this idea of eternal damnation if one didn’t believe in Jesus and live life according to his teachings. Am I correct in thinking that this idea of eternal damnation/reward was a new paradigm for many pagans? If so, this concept of afterlife must have developed early in Christianity, despite it being outside of Jesus’ teachings. Of course, I am anxious to read what you say about what Jesus DID think about an afterlife.
Thanks in advance.
Do you think that at any point, you might actually run out of ideas for new books?
Yeah, I suppose when I’m on my death bed. I have about five ideas now, and I’m not trying even to think very hard about it….
Your Teaching Company colleague Craig Koester has an excellent course on the book of Revelation called “The Apocalypse: Controversies and Meaning in Western History”. He also has a book by the same name. Many people on the blog would probably enjoy the class or the book.
Are you going to delve into the possibility that John, or whoever wrote it, might have been smoking something?
Even some sober people have visions!
Biblical prophecy makes a whole lot more sense once you understand the literary genres in which they were written, as well as the Jewish worldviews behind them.
Covenantal Worldview: If Israel obeyed Torah, they would be blessed (and the converse).
Prophetic Worldview: If anything bad happens to Israel, it must be because they disobeyed.
Apocalyptic Worldview: Sometimes the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, sometimes evil gets the upper hand. But in the end, evil will be punished and good rewarded.
Most prophetic literature was explanatory, not predictive. Written in the form of a prediction by a well-known prophet, it explained why events (like the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities) happened. Later prophetic literature incorporated apocalyptic elements. It’s not hard for scholars to find the dividing line. In the prophetic portion, they can recognize the historical event portrayed. When the language gets bizarre, and nothing historical can be recognized, you’re in the apocalyptic portion.
There are passages in Revelation that are clearly symbolic–I don’t think anyone thinks that John was watching a literal seven-headed beast come out of the sea in chapter 13, as if beeomsast is actually going to come out of the Mediterranean Sea at some point. Futuristic interpreters must admit that passages like this are not literal. Is it then inconsistent to take some visions like this as figurative, and then to say that passages like the locusts in chapter 9 are visions of literal events?
‘beeomsast’ is a typo–should say ‘some beast’
Whew! I was Googling “Beeomsast” and coming up with nothing. It would be a great name for some lurid monster, wouldn’t it?
Yes, that’s always the challenge: what is metaphor and what is literal?
Frankly, I hate to see you wasting your oh-so-valuable time on a pile of dreck like the Book of Revelation.
I’m curious if you’ve read N.T. Wright’s summary of Jewish and pagan beliefs about the afterlife which he outlines in the first part of “The Resurrection of the Son of God,” and whether you think his assessments are accurate.
It’s perfectly fine a summary. Not very nuanced, but basic and to the point.
Did the Pharisees believe in resurrection and eternal life while the Sadducees Did not?
If true, Then believing in Jesus’resurrection would have been consistent with his training Since Paul was a devoted pharisee.
Yes, Paul interpreted his vision precisely in line with the views he already had that at the end of time there would be a resurrection of the dead.
I wouldn’t call Paul a devoted Pharisee. He never expresses any of their ideas, even when they support his positions. No Pharisee would have persecuted Christians as the stories said he did. Jewish apocalypticism was extremely popular there and then, and I think not just with Jews. We know Christians later synchretized the ideas into their worldview, but I don’t know how popular the view was among polytheists.
“No Pharisee would have persecuted Christians as the stories said he did.”
Can’t disagree more. The majority of Pharisees would have almost certainly thought the claim that the Messiah was ignominiously crucified to be a thoroughly repugnant idea. Of course, this didn’t go for all Pharisees, because it seems some Pharisees, such as Paul, were drawn to the novel idea of a martyred Messiah. Think of it this way. Pharisees had been used to being martyred (i.e. persecuted and tortured for their beliefs) for at least a century up to that point. Therefore, the only mental leap necessary for a Pharisee to make was to combine the martyred Jewish saint with the sanctified Messiah, and, voila, you have a sanctified martyred Messiah. A handful of Pharisees, including Paul, appeared to have connected those dots and not only stopped criticizing the Christians, but ended up joining them. And, for my money, I think that Jesus and his disciples had themselves been influenced by Pharisaic ideas, which allowed them to speak the Pharisees’ language, if you know what I mean.
Pharisees were passionate about Judaism but didn’t care about any other religions or the people who practiced them. They were about teaching Torah, not about persecuting anyone. They weren’t persecuted or martyred.
Per the synoptic gospels, the teachings of Jesus were the teachings of Pharisees, notably Hillel. So yes, he was definitely influenced by Pharisees, and is portrayed as participating in typical rabbinic debate. Except for his claim, we have little or no evidence that Paul was ever a Pharisee.
The idea that Paul persecuted early proto-christians is pure invention. There is no evidence of it whatsoever except Paul’s claims, and the story he tells is simply preposterous. The Washington Post would have given him 5 Pinocchios
The Pharisees hound Jesus and his followers in all the gospels. In Acts 5:34-, the Pharisee Gamaliel refers to two other revolutionaries who were put to death, presumably with the blessing of the Pharisees. Surely, Paul and others, being on the receiving end, would have emphasized it, but it strikes me as a little strong to say the hostility and persecution of the Pharisees was pure invention.
Bart, what are your thoughts on the way many evangelist in fundamental circles combine revelations and New world order conspiracy theories? They also try to make the mark of the beast a computer code. I believe it is a dishonest way of getting people to join their church!
Every generation of Christians has had “experts” claiming that the signs of the book of Revelation were coming true in their own day. And so it will be, world without end.
In the book of Joel the locusts are described as God’s army sent to purge or dry up the land. This land is eventually promised to be restored. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the gospel writers state the John both ate locusts and wild honey. One the purge and the other the promise.
Can one interpret the book of Revelation as an Essenic (Spiritual Jew) form of transformation or overcoming? All seven churches are going through some sort of a trial or overcoming that leads to a reward. John is also a companion in both the tribulation (purging) and the kingdom (promise) of Jesus Christ.
The epistle of John, if written by a similar author, does breakdown the levels of maturity as little children, young men and fathers.
1 John 2:18 “Little CHILDREN, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”
Thus the directive or teaching is not some futuristic event but an experience or understanding pertaining to the level of maturity. Which is, which was and which is to come.
I am one of those who learned that the inherent immoral soul doctrine is false.
If it were true than why would Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 say “the dead are conscious of nothing at all.”
Why would Psalms 146:4 say: “His spirit goes out, in that day his thoughts do perish.”
Why would Job say if a man dies can he live again? Job 14:14.
Why did Jesus and Paul and other apostles compare death to sleep as in the case of Lazarus, Dorcas, Stephen and others in Scripture?
Why did Lazarus sister
say he would rise in the resurrection on the “last day” , meaning during the 1, 000 year reign
A day can be a 1,000 years in scripture, can’t it?
Sometimes in Scripture “soul” can refer to the life of the person.
There are two resurrections one is during our time for those who go to heaven and the other is in the future in the “new earth” during the 1,000 year reign of Christ after Armageddon.
In the Hebrew/Aramaic Scriptures do you agree that some prophecies have multiple fulfillments for both their time that foreshadows a later Scriptural
ante-type for our time?
Is Origen-s systematic theology and systematic
hermeneutics similar?
No, I don’t think so.
If the beasts in Daniel symbolize political powers then why can’t the Book of Revelation have the same symbolic scriptural meaning
the beast emerging from the sea ‘of wicked mankind’
One of the Scriptural meanings for ‘sea’ is found in Isaiah 57:20
Have you commented about the guy Faithful and True who rides on a white horse and from his mouth issues a sword by which he shall smite the nations in Revelations 19? The guy with a name on his thigh that only he knows? In the context of scholarly thought, who is this person or persons supposed to be? Jesus? Triumpant Judaism which somehow overthrows or outlasts the Romans? Please consider doing a blog post on this question and generally a book on Revelations if you can.
Yes, it’s definitely Christ. I’m debating whether to make my next trade book (after the one on the afterlife) about the book of Revelation.
If you’ve addressed these questions in other blog entries or books, please point my nose in the right direction. It would seem that parts of Revelation are maybe predictive of future events: What about the 1000 years of peace? Was there a big Armageddon battle at Megiddo? What about the jeweled/gold New City? Did any of these things sort of happen allegorically before or around the time that Revelation was written? Or do they represent wacky symbolism of a hoped-for future which has not yet happened?
They were things that the author was anticipating would happen. Since they never did, many readers started assuming that he didn’t mean it all literally.
I had a class by James Blevins at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His book, Revelation as Drama said each of the 7 churches were in cities possessing Greek amphitheaters. The Greek plays form would have suited the script of the Revelation well, with the chorus, masks, and architecture. As I recall, he described how architecture shaped the vision, with 7 entrances, and 7 stages. What Dr. Blevins stressed was how his crazy encoded message would have passed from his guards to the audiences. I have come to see the futuristic interpretation as irrelevant to the obvious messages to the churches. Check out the video:
http://digital.library.sbts.edu/handle/10392/4834
Interesting!
It seems prima facie to be highly speculative. There are dozens, if not scores of unanswered questions about the performance of drama even in the most well documented setting in all of antiquity : the theater of Dionysus in Athens. The setting and performance of theater outside of Athens, even during the classical/Hellenistic period, is nearly a complete blank.
Bart: A book that would interest many Christians would be a book about ‘why Yeshua was not a Christian’. Yeshua appears to have been an Aramaic Jew, circumcised, baptised, follower of John the Baptist, and finally a promoter of the Government/Kingdom of Yahweh (his God). Yeshua desired that his spiritual Father (Yahweh) rule (not the elites of the Temple or the Romans). A book on this issue could be significant as it reveals the problems with Trinitarian Christian dogma’s. Thomas Jefferson (if alive) would want to read this type of book. He viewed Yeshua as human, not divine, and the Trinity as gobblygok. D