Bob's been busy

Not only in writing books, but now articles for examiner.com. Here's the bio:

Dr. Bob Thiel has studied theology and prophecy for decades, and possesses a Ph.D. (UIU) and a Th.D. (TCU). He has also traveled extensively, and has visited sites of religious interest in Rome, Greece, Central Europe, Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Constantinople (Istanbul), Africa, Asia, North America, and Latin America.

Bob has a ThD from Texas Christian University? When did that happen? Bob doesn't mention it in his COGwriter bio.

And here's the article, ostensibly on the celebration of Rosh Hoshanah, but note the sly promo for the local LCG at the end!

Bob's Ph.D

From Bob Thiel's latest upload:

While I normally do not post corrections here to what blog posters say about the Living Church of God or me, today I thought I would comment on two I noted yesterday from a particular ”author” at a site that seems to bash the COGs (and no, not Gavin Rumney’s site this time).

Well, there's another nail in my reputation. But more interesting is the fact that Bob doesn't name the site he's taken umbrage at. Curious.

Anyway, to be fair to Bob, he's entitled to set the record straight. Here's what he says (in part):

I do have a Ph.D. and it is from the Union Institute & University. And Union is regionally accredited (the highest accepted accrediting standard in the United States for universities and colleges). I also have a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California (which, of course, is also regionally accredited). I never was a student at Ambassador College. So to post that my academic credentials are from there is false.

And now it's my turn to set the record straight. I'm not "anti-COG" as such. A quick perusal of the recent posting on COG7 demonstrates that (or at least I'd have thought so). Or a check on what I've written about people like Pam Dewey. No Bob, not so much anti-COG as highly selective. Anti-hierarchic? Yes. Anti-manipulation? I hope so! Anti-junk theology? Guilty as charged. Anti-BI? Indubitably. I'd rather put it positively though: pro-critical thinking, pro-accountability...

It's just my opinion of course, but LCG appears to be hierarchic, manipulative and theologically challenged. But everything is relative, and compared to some other sects the Meredith faction is all sweetness and light.

Perhaps Bob himself might be construed as "anti-COG" for his bashing of all COG communities - other than LCG.

Caught by the camera is Bob in the company of the illustrious Dr Meredith (who, unlike Bob, has a shonky doctorate from you-know-where).

The best defense

I'm not sure who first coined the expression "the best defense is a good offense", but the lesson seems to have not been wasted on LCG's leading independent commentator, Dr Bob Thiel. In the midst of a series of appalling gaffes and unwelcome publicity surrounding the apostasy of Charles Bryce, Dr Bob responded by (1) saying the least possible on the subject, and (2) drawing the heat away by attacking UCG.

Gary Scott (XCG) links to another independent "COG writer" who has documented Bob's diversion. This guy, who goes under the pen name "Buckblog" (hereafter BB) is a UCG member, and he's definitely not amused.

It all begins with Bob inferring that UCG has gone soft on Halloween.

"...when I visited V. Kubik's web page today, I saw a picture that I at first thought was a Halloween party. So, I am really wondering if UCG is somewhat trying to see how close it can get to worldly practices--and while I do not believe that this is intentional on UCG's part, seeing that picture, combined with the Winter Festival, gave me pause for concern."

BB's response: "...he neglected to inform his readers that the costume party was December 9, nearly a month and a half after halloween so clearly there is no connection... One more cynical than myself might believe he unleashed his recent attack to take the focus away from other events."
Bob added on a little note shortly thereafter: "I am not trying to say that UCG endorses Christmas or Halloween (or that they ever will in the future). My basic point is that I have long had concerns that UCG has tended to be a bit more worldly-oriented than many other COGs, and thinking about these two events today did not lower those concerns."

You can read the full first posting by BB here.

But the story isn't over yet. Bob next cut out the offending comments without explanation or apology, and BB, far from satisfied, flew for the jugular.

"He first attempted to backtrack by saying that’s not what he was implying when it clearly was. Now he has removed all reference to it altogether treating his site like one would an Etch and Sketch, shake it and pretend what was there before wasn’t... He should also apologize and state he will be more careful about what is posted.

"I assume many people from different backgrounds check his site out. Those coming across yesterday’s original post who took what he said seriously could come away with a grossly distorted view of what is going on within UCG... he has a responsibility to not only remove it but to apologize for it on his site, not to pretend as if it never happened... I publicly call on him to do the honorable thing and post a mea culpa today."

You can read THAT full posting here.

And BB seems determined to see the issue through.

"This is day 3 of the Bob Thiel hostage crisis. His reputation and credibility remain captive to negligent error and gross misrepresentation. However this hostage crisis cannot be ended with hostage negotiators or a SWAT team but rather the truth.

"Yes, Mr Thiel the truth shall set you free. Just admit you messed up."

I'm ordering in the popcorn, as this could be a lengthy wait!

A plea to Rod

Dear Dr Meredith

It has come to my attention that there has been a grievous oversight in God's true church, and I know that you will be keen to correct it immediately once you have been made aware of the situation. Bob Thiel has still not been ordained!

As you know, Dr Meredith, Mr Thiel is actually DOCTOR Thiel. In fact he has TWO doctorates, one in Naturopathy. This is surely equivalent to a theological degree, as I recollect all those bylines in the 1960s Plain Truth by your uncle "Dr C. Paul Meredith" - and HE was just a vet!

Bob also has a legitimate PhD from an obscure but accredited university. This is a major accomplishment, especially for someone who demonstrates limited grammatical and proof reading skills. I mean, how many double doctors does God's Philadelphian Work have at its disposal? This man is a treasure!

Plus, Dr Thiel has labored as a church host for years, and gives learned sermonettes on subjects like Marcion. Again, Dr Meredith, I wonder how many of the leading evangelists in God's Work would even know who Marcion was? Yet here is Bob providing this high quality edification for the lucky brethren in southern San Luis Obispo County.

But wait, Dr Meredith, there is more! Dr Thiel has his own website which provided vital information to the world in the wake of the Wisconsin shootings. For example, Dr Thiel correctly pointed out that it was inappropriate for outsiders to put up crosses as a sign of respect for those slain because crosses are pagan. This brave, principled stand was widely commented on!

And now Bob Thiel has expanded his wonderful website to include historical information on the Church of God in New Testament times and the first centuries. Already the fine scholarship he demonstrates has left Papists like Jared Olar (who is also counted among the anti-COG demonaics at XCG) speechless (other than making relevant critiques and citing facts in rebuttal.) Just take a look at the superb article Bob provides on Polycarp: again - who else even knows who Polycarp was (apart from Jared Olar - and being a Catholic he clearly doesn't count!)

Dr Meredith, please bear with me just a little longer while I mention Dr Thiel's excellent articles which have appeared not only in the church members' magazine, but even in The Journal, where they witness against the Laodicean subscribers who would otherwise have only been exposed to Brian Knowles, Dave Havir and other highly questionable sources.

So it was with shock, SHOCK, that I read Bob's recent disclaimer on his website: "I have not been ordained as a deacon or an elder."

I would personally like to recommend Dr Thiel for ordination as he is so clearly qualified - overqualified even - to be a minister in your great End Time Work to restore Apostolic Christianity. His gift for tact and respect when commenting on other Churches of God especially qualifies him to develop fraternal ties with those separated brethren in the United Church of God. I know that you will act expeditiously to bring him into the highest levels of ministry in the LCG.

With deep sincerity
GR

Polybabble

Bob Thiel responded to the Heavy Canon Fire posting by protesting loudly: "As far as those "mythical COG leaders of the apostolic age"--these leaders were NOT mythical. There is more information about some of them than there are about most of the early leaders in the Apostolic Succession lists of the Romans and especially the Orthodox."

Clicking across to Bob's list of apostolic COG leaders was enlightening. He starts off with the usual suspects: Peter, Paul, James & John. Uh huh. Well, let's be clear, every Christian sect claims these figures as their own.

Then Bob pulls together a list of early church luminaries who, in his view, are authentic COG Christians. They include Papias, Polycarp, Melito of Sardis and some more obscure names.

I realize that this won't be the most riveting subject for most readers, so to cut to the quick, there is absolutely no evidence that any of these characters championed COG distinctives such as the Sabbath (though Bob tries to prove otherwise.) The best he can do is demonstrate that they were 'Quartodecimans', keeping Easter on the Passover dates. Big deal, so did the entire Eastern Church at that time. Bob spins this by writing: Easter was not observed by the second century Christians in Asia Minor, such as Polycarp. He and others observed Passover.

No Bob. They kept Easter on the Passover dates.

Let's have a quick look at Polycarp. He was a bishop in Turkey. Bob desperately wants to COGgize him because he was, according to tradition, a disciple of John. That tradition is preserved by a bloke called Tertullian who was anything but a model of COG Christianity, and Irenaeus, another very unCOG-like character. Why would these Catholic apologists lend credibility to Polycarp if he was, in their view, a heretical COG leader?

Polycarp trekked his way to Rome to discuss the aforementioned dating of Easter with the Pope, and they parted amicably as brothers, agreeing to disagree. Bob concedes as much when he quotes Irenaeus: And in this state of affairs they held fellowship with each other; and Anicetus (the Pope) conceded to Polycarp in the Church the celebration of the Eucharist, by way of showing him respect.

Does this sound like a COG leader? Notice that Polycarp celebrated the Lord's Supper (eucharist) in Rome with the Pope's blessing. That'd be like Rod Meredith celebrating the mass in Saint Peters with Ratzinger looking on.

Apart from a letter addressed to the Philippian church, a few nice little anecdotes and a heroic tale of martyrdom, that's it! That's what we know about Polycarp.

So, how does Bob manage to shoe-horn him into the fictive pre-history of COGism? Beats me, and I've read his rather long treatise on the subject. According to Bob he even kept the Sabbath; here's his third proof:

His church reported about the him and the Sabbath.
Huh?

And now a little more from that treatise. You can judge its lucidity for yourself.

Polycarp is unique among any claimed to be a direct successor to any of the apostles. He is the only possible second century direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that there was a letter written to him while he was alive. He is the only possible direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that to have written any document that we still possess to this day (there is a letter claimed to have been written by Clement of Rome, however, it does not say that he wrote it, nor is Clement considered to be the direct successor of any apostle--the Roman Catholic Church claims that Linus was Peter's direct successor; there are also letters written by Ignatius of Antioch, but the two Antiochian Churches I am aware of claim that Evodius, not Ignatius, was Peter's direct successor). Polycarp is the only possible direct apostolic successor considered by any church I am aware that to have any document written about him within a few weeks of his death.

Anyone who can make sense of that paragraph deserves an advanced diploma in reading comprehension.

Heavy canon fire

LCG web commentator and church history buff Bob Thiel writes: "one of the reasons that the COGs are NOT Protestant is that we believe the Bible and do not believe that anyone... is entitled to change it."

Which led me to think again about the whole canon issue.

To provide a bit of an introduction, Bob regards the Bible - his non-Protestant canon (which actually is the Protestant canon) - as a given. It kinda dropped out of the sky one day, intact, fully formed and fluttering gaily down beneath a Holy Spirit parachute. Those nasty Church Fathers and proto-Catholics had nothing to do with it. If I understand Bob correctly, he champions a reconstruction where the Eastern church created the current canon before it invented ikons, pillar saints and liturgical chants, and was still under the influence of those mysterious and mythical COG leaders of the apostolic age.

Yeah, right.

I disagree with Bob, though I don't doubt his sincerity (as the old refrain goes, folk can be "sincerely wrong.") For me, this was a real "trunk of the tree" issue several years ago, as it affects the whole underpinning of fundamentalist and evangelical belief. I even wrote a short article on the subject which attracted a bit of attention. It sorely needs a rewrite, which I'm hoping to get done later this year (then it'll appear as a PDF file on otagosh.) Currently the New Testament paper that I'm doing touches on this issue, and there's more to add. But despite the fact that it's a little dated, I stand behind what I said then.

Bottom line: for centuries the canon was subject to change after change as Christians of all hues and stripes debated what to include. And in some cases they got it terribly wrong in the final cut. The article explains this in some detail. I'll expand on this theme in later postings.

Dr. Bob Bites Back

It was only a matter of hours before Bob Thiel responded to my previous entry. Courtesy of Gary Scott at XCG, the "Doctor Bob" posting attracted more attention than it otherwise might.

Bob points out that at least one of his articles is indeed extensively referenced, and I thank him for providing the link. What can we learn from Bob's selection of sources?

First, both Dugger & Dodd and the Catholic Encyclopedia were used, as predicted. The first dates back to the 1930s, while the second goes back nearly ninety five years. In fact, the bulk of Bob's references seem to be seriously dated. The earliest I noted was 1885! Most seem to be out-of-copyright material that is now available free online.

Then there are the "in-house" references: LCG booklets, Tomorrow's World magazine, one of Alan Knight's books (a hyper-fundamentalist COG7 lay member with, as far as I know, no qualifications whatsoever in this area), Samuele Bacchiocchi (who does) and the 1950s Radio Church of God Correspondence Course.

Remove the outdated stuff and the sectarian material and there's not a lot left. Even then, I wonder about some. For example Bob cites (approvingly) a passage from the Gospel of Thomas in The Complete Gospels, a volume published by the Jesus Seminar. Did he realize that?

Bob states: "My articles, as any who read them can tell, are highly documented." One article, especially with these kinds of references, is hardly convincing. Bob then switches tack and lambasts his critics: "it really does not matter much what the anti-COGers choose to believe about what I write. They have never appeared to me to be like the Bereans—they do not seem to have “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11)."

The question however is not whether his critics have read the Bible (I'm sure most of us have as good a track record as Bob) but how they read the Bible. Is it just a fundamentalist's treasure trove of proof texts (the way LCG seems to treat it) or something that requires a bit more thought and care.

Bob seems to have sidestepped my suggestion of providing a bibliography on the early church, but I'm happy to provide a brief one of my own. I've listed just 5, all of which concentrate on the first centuries. They come from a variety of perspectives, all the writers are qualified in their field, all are informed by the best current scholarship, and all (with the possible exception of Koester) are written for the non-specialist. Immerse yourself in any one of these, and I think you'll agree that Bob's apologetic approach leaves something to be desired.

Henry Chadwick. The Early Church. London, Penguin Books, Revised 1993. (A little staid, but quite comprehensive)

W.H.C. Frend. The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1984. (Very comprehensive, widely regarded as one of the best)

Laurie Guy. Introducing Early Christianity. Downers Grove, Ill. InterVarsity Press, 2004. (An informed Evangelical perspective)

Helmut Koester. History and Literature of Early Christianity. Berlin & New York, Walter de Gruyter, 2000 ed. (More radical and densely argued than most)

L. Michael White. From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 2004. (Brilliant overview)

Doctor Bob

According to the latest Journal, Bob Thiel (PhD) has expanded his website to include a section on the Early Church in an effort "to portray Church of God history in a more documented and detailed light." Intrigued, as this is a particular interest I share with Bob, I clicked across to see what he had on offer.

What I found were scores of articles of - and this is my personal and somewhat biased assessment - dubious value and apologetic intent. But what really amazed me was that Doctor Bob was unable to provide a credible bibliography for any of it. No references (except for copious links to his other pages.) I don't claim to have seen everything he's written, so maybe there's an occasional mention of Dugger & Dodd or an online edition of the Catholic Enyclopedia somewhere, but overwhelmingly this is the sole work of one enthusiastic amateur with no specialist training in the field and little evidence of genuine research. But you can judge for yourself

Of course, I'm all for enthusiastic amateurs. Home gardeners for example, and an army of bloggers. But if you're going to set yourself up as an authority on early Christianity, let alone a prolific one, then you need to establish some basic credibility first. At a bare minimum you need to be well read on the subject; at least familiar with the state of the play. Simply regurgitating your own sectarian sources just doesn't cut it.

My challenge to Bob is to provide a bibliography for his site. Books he has actually read and consulted. Then we'll all be in a better position to discuss his ideas.