direction_ further reflections on paul hiebert’s “the flaw of the excluded middle”

7/30/2019 Direction_ Further Reflections on Paul Hieberts The Flaw of the Excluded Middle

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Fa ll 2007 Vo l. 36 No . 2 206-18 Prev ious Nex t

Categor ies : Anthropology, Bible: Old Testament,Culture/Interculture, Mission/International Church, Spiritual Conflict,Theology: Biblical and Systematic, Theology: Practical

F u r t h e r R e fle c t io n s o n P a u l

H ieb er t s Th e F law of th e Exclu d ed

Midd le

Pierr e Gilber t

Paul Hiebert is best known for his ability to integrate

anthropology, theology, and missions. Perhaps no

article illustrates this better than The Flaw of the

Excluded Middle.1

The notion that m agical pow ers

could m ysteriously in fluence hum an

life w as one of the beliefs the au thor

of the Creation account w as

challeng ing. The text could not have

been m ore explicit.

About a year or two before he passed away,

Professor Hiebert called me to comment on an articleon spiritual warfare I had published in the Fall 2000

issue ofDir ection.2 The article, which offered a

critique of the Third Wave movement from a

worldview perspective, had caught his attention. His

comments were very encouraging and affirming, but


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,

article provided a possible way out of a profound

theological dilemma that engaged me. Many

Christian anthropologists, missiologists, missionaries,

and pastors experience a high degree of ambivalence

as they seek to reconcile their belief in rationality and

empirical science with the apparent reality andpredominance of magic and occult phenomena in

many non-Western societies, and with the rise of the

New Age in Europe and North America. It is in great

part in response to this conversation that I offer this

short reflection on the problem Hiebert outlines in

this important article.

The question that occupies Hiebert is linked tothe divergent interpretations that are offered to

explain and to deal with a variety of phenomena such

as illnesses and other afflictions in settings where

missionaries are in contact with cultures that have

not assimilated the Western worldview and the

scientific method. He offers the following example:

One day, while teaching in the Bibleschool in Shamshabad, I saw Yellayya

standing in the door at the back of the

class. He looked tired, for he had walked

many miles from Muchintala where he was

an elder in the church. . . . When I asked

why he had come, he said that smallpox

had come to the village a few weeks earlier

and had taken a number of children.

Doctors trained in Western medicine had

tried to halt the plague, but without

success. Finally, in desperation the village

elders had sent the diviner, who told them

that Maisamma, goddess of smallpox, was

angry with the village.


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To satisfy her and stop the plague the

village would have to perform the water

buffalo sacrifice. The village elders went

around to each household in the village to

raise money to purchase the buffalo. When

they came to the Christian homes, theChristians refused to give them anything,

saying that it was against their religious

beliefs. The leaders were angry, pointing

out that the goddess would not be satisfied

until every household gave something as a

token offeringeven onepaisa3 would do.

When the Christians refused, the elders

forbade them to draw water from the

village wells, and the merchants refused to

sell them food.

In the end some of the Christians had

wanted to stop the harassment by giving

thepaisa, telling God they did not mean it,

but Yellayya had refused to let them do so.Now, said Yellayya, one of the Christian

girls was sick with smallpox. He wanted me

to pray with him for Gods healing. As I

knelt, my mind was in turmoil. I had

learned to pray as a child, studied prayer in

seminary, and preached it as a pastor. But

now I was to pray for a sick child as all the

village watched to see if the Christian God

was able to heal.4

Hiebert then wonders why he felt so uneasy in

this situation and concludes that there was something

about his own worldview and assumptions that could

not adequately deal with the reality that confronted

him at that time.


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This incident is helpful for a number of reasons.

First, it highlights the extent to which humans strive

for coherence whenever they face phenomena that are

beyond their control. Second, it underscores the acute

cognitive dissonance and the lack of confidence

Christians often experience in these kinds of

situations. In this instance, the Christians refuse to

participate in the pagan exercise and justify their

decision by alluding to some vague scruples stemming

from their religious beliefs. According to Hieberts

account, the Christian villagers offered no cogent

rationale! Later, some of them eventually relented,

mostly to avoid being harassed, rationalizing theirchange of position by assimilating their participation

in the ritual to a folkloric expression. Reflecting on

this situation, Hiebert suggests that this kind of

embarrassing incident may be the result of

epistemological blind spots that are intrinsic to the

Western worldview.

The situation described in Hieberts article is notunique. In fact, as he readily points out, such

ideological tensions regularly occur whenever native

Christians and Western missionaries face traditional

beliefs and practices. His observations on the

conceptual incongruity experienced by recent

Christian converts as they attempt to calibrate their

response to traditional healers are revealing:

What happens to villagers who become

Christians? Most of them take problems

they formerly took to the saints to the

Christian minister or missionary. Christ

replaces Krishna or Siva as the healer of

spiritual diseases. Many of them in time


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urn o es ern a opa c me c nes or

many of the illnesses they had taken to the

doctor and quack. But what of the plagues

that the magician cured? What about

spirit possession or curses or witchcraft or

black magic? What is the Christian answer

to these?5

The next lines highlight the core of the dilemma

and the issue that leaves so many Christian leaders

without a place to stand.

Often the missionary evangelist or doctor

has no answer. These do not really exist,

they say. But to people for whom these arevery real experiences in their lives, there

must be another answer. Therefore, many

of them return to the magician for cures.

This survival of magic among

Christians is not unique to India. In many

parts of the world, the picture is the same.

In the West, magic and witchcraftpersisted well into the seventeenth century,

more than a thousand years after the

gospel came to these lands.6

For Hiebert, structural differences in the

articulation of the one and the other worldview lie at

the heart of the issue. On the one hand, we have the

traditional religionists who view the physical world in

an organic fashion, in terms of living beings in

relationship to one another.7 Hiebert further

describes it as an animistic worldview, a world he

characterizes as relational rather than

deterministic. On the other hand, the Western

worldview is ortra ed as mechanistic.8

Western


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sciences see the world as made up of lifeless matter

that interacts on the basis of forces.9 This model he

further describes as deterministic.1 0

Although one could debate whether

organic/relational and mechanistic/deterministic arethe best terms to describe these plausibility

structures, Hieberts criticism of the Western

worldview is essentially correct. It offers no categories

to deal effectively with what he calls the middle-level

issues. This chasm between traditional religion and

Western science has often left missionaries empty-

handed in terms of dealing with the animistic aspects

of the cultures to which they were to bring the Gospel.Hiebert writes,

As a scientist I had been trained to deal

with the empirical world in naturalistic

terms. As a theologian I was taught to

answer ultimate questions in theistic

terms. For me the middle zone did not

exist. Unlike the Indian villagers, I had

given little thought to spirits of this world,

to local ancestors and ghosts, or to the

souls of animals. For me these belonged to

the realm of fairies, trolls, and other

mythical beings. Consequently I had no

answers to the questions they raised . . .1 1

In that respect Hieberts critique of missionary

activity is caustic:

It should be apparent why many

missionaries trained in the West had no

answers to the problems of the middle level

they often did not even see it. When


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,

they denied the existence of the spirits

rather than claim the power of Jesus Christ

over them. The result, Lesslie Newbigin has

argued, is that Western Christian missions

have been one of the greatest secularizing

forces in history.1 2

The consequences of this worldview deficiency

can be quite devastating for Christian outreach. If the

missionary has no answers to what constitute critical

issues in the culture, those he or she is trying to reach

will either view Christianity as a woefully inadequate

option or, if they have embraced the Christian faith,

they will eventually, as Hiebert points out, return to

the diviner who gives definite answers.1 3

Hiebert refuses to leave the question unanswered

and proposes an outline of a theological model that

comprehensively deals with all aspects of human

existence. His proposal is helpful and adequately

reflects the essential elements of what a Christian

worldview should seek to address.1 4 But above all

else, Hiebert cautions, this theological system must

avoid two pitfalls. The first is secularism, i.e., a denial

of the reality of the spiritual world. The second is an

inadvertent return to a Christianized form of animism

in which spirits and magic are used to explain

everything.1 5

AN ISS UE O F CLARI TY AND

CONFIDENCE

I could not agree more with Hieberts proposal

for a comprehensive theology. But I am not convinced

that the missionaries inability to deal effectively with

the supernatural dimension of traditional religions


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lies in their uncritical acceptance of modernist

assumptions. For one thing, thorough-going

modernists dont become missionaries! Most

missionaries believe in God, prayer, and the power of

the Holy Spirit. They believe in Gods ability to

perform miracles and to intervene in human history.

In this respect, Hieberts diagnosis needs further

calibration. I suspect the vast majority of

missionaries would be in full agreement with

Hieberts proposal.

My own assessment of the problem is slightly

different. The difficulty does not derive as much from

an undiscriminating concession to Western

assumptions as from a lack of clarity about how the

biblical worldview addresses the supernatural and,

consequently, a chronic lack of confidence in it. This

theological ambivalence has led missionaries to deal

with animism and spiritism in one of two ways. Some

simply refuse to take a firm position in regard to the

more explicitly animistic elements of the culture.

These people, contra Hiebert, are not necessarilyparsing the assumptions of a scientific model that

characterizes the universe in mechanistic terms. They

are simply unsure as to their own premises and

cannot decisively deal with the cultures expressions

of magic. Others have chosen to deal with magic and

superstition by adopting wholesale the assumptions of

the spiritual warfare paradigm popularized by the so-

called Third Wave movement.1 6

Either one of these approaches entails severe

difficulties. The first fails to address serious cultural

and spiritual realities. The second may result in

legitimizing beliefs that do not adequately reflect a

biblical theology framework and may contribute to


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degrees of syncretism or, as Hiebert puts it, a

Christianized form of animism.1 7 How can we

intelligently avoid one extreme or another? While

Hieberts article spells out the problem, and though

he hints at a possible way out of the dilemma, his

proposal remains perhaps somewhat too tentative tobe of concrete assistance for missionaries who are

facing urgent problems that need to be addressed

with a clear strategy.

A BLUEP RIN T OF ULTIMATE RE ALITY

At this point, I would like to offer the basic

blueprint of an approach that may provide some

direction in dealing with supernaturalism. First,

missionaries must address the worldview issue in a

more focused manner. They need to determine more

precisely what constitutes a biblical worldview and be

in a position to parse its implications for an animistic

culture. I cannot overemphasize the importance of

this first step and the need to engage in this exercise

independently of the issue of cultural sensitivity.Analytical work and cultural respect are both

essential aspects of missionary activity, but they must

not be indiscriminately intermingled. While

missionaries are well advised to avoid unnecessary

cause for offense, it is paramount to distinguish

between critical analysis and outreach strategy. The

first step is an academic exercise where one

articulates the basic structure of the biblical

worldview, analyzes the plausibility structure of the

target culture, and compares the two in order to

highlight those elements that need to be critiqued.

Then and only then can missionaries be in a position

to develop the best strategy to confront their audience

with the biblical claims.


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I too frequently observe the reverse. We allow

matters of cultural sensitivity to cloud our analytical

work and dictate our conclusions. The more political

freight is attached to an issue or a particular people

group, the greater this threat becomes. In other

words, we should never let the potential for offensedictate our search for truth. As a colleague wisely said

to me the other day, . . . but what is society missing

in its search for truth and what are we missing when

we let society dictate our [the Christian academic

communitys] priorities? The first and foremost

concern of the Christian thinker is to discern truth

and confront the world with its claims. If we

consciously or unconsciously fail to fulfill this task,

there is no longer any compelling purpose for us. We

become just one more meaningless voice in the

cacophony of post-modernity. We need to take to

heart Gods warning to Ezekiel:

If I say to the wicked, O wicked ones, you

shall surely die, and you do not speak to

warn the wicked to turn from their ways,

the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but

their blood I will require at your hand. But

if you warn the wicked to turn from their

ways, and they do not turn from their ways,

the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but

you will have saved your life (Ezekiel 33:8-9

NRSV).

Second, missionaries must consciously and very

intentionally choose to trust in the most basic

assertions of the biblical worldview. The relationship

between exegesis and biblical theology, on the one

hand, and practice,1 8 on the other, needs to be


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. ,

field such as engineering, where the relationship

between theory and application is indeed linear, is an

approach that may prove helpful for missionaries and

theorists. When an engineer builds a bridge, there is

absolute certainty as to the load such a structure can

bear. There is in fact nothing haphazard about bridgebuilding; the process is based on scientific principles

that are implicitly trusted.

I realize that some of my readers will dismiss me

as unbearably nave and impossibly unsophisticated

epistemologically speaking. In this post-modern era,

it is no longer fashionable to think in terms of a body

of truth that functions as an absolute point ofreference. But, as with any other things, post-

modernism will eventually prove to be another fad

that will collapse under its own epistemological inner

contradictions. If more Christian academics could

exhibit a little more resolve in this area, perhaps we

could hope to have a significant influence on the

ideological devolution of the Western world. I for one

refuse to get on that sinking ship.1 9 Once we have

ascertained with a reasonable measure of certitude

the outline of a biblical worldview, we should move

with confidence.

While it is not possible in the context of this

article to examine the entire spectrum of a

comprehensive biblical worldview, I would like to

address one point that is critical for our discussion.2 0

As Hiebert has shown, the issue of magic and

occult practices is a source of much vexation for

missionaries who, for the most part, tend to have a

very equivocal stance towards those practices and


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.

needs to be clarified, however, is remarkably simple:

Is there real magic in the world and is there any

physical reality to the powers behind occult practices?

Judging from the near-consensus found in the

spiritual warfare literature, the vastly popular appeal

of theLeft Beh indseries, and the fascination for theoccult and the New Age in popular culture, a majority

of lay people, missionaries, and other practitioners

would probably answer in the affirmative.2 1

How do we address such a question? We can

collect stories and various reports purporting to

document supernatural incidents.22 We can submit

supernatural claims to scientific testing.2 3 As

Christians, we should first seek to answer the question

from the perspective of biblical theology. But what

should be the starting point of such an exploration?

From a form critical standpoint, such an investigation

should begin with the Creation account found in

Genesis 1-3.

The Creation narrative represents an ideal

starting point, for it represents the theological

foundation of the entire Bible. The first chapters of

Genesis contain the basic theological DNA of biblical

revelation and must therefore be given precedence in

the development of a biblical worldview. The reason

behind this audacious statement is linked first and

foremost to the kind of literature Genesis 1-3

embodied. The Creation account, by virtue of its

literary genre, was designed to provide the blueprint

of a new worldview. Its primary function was to

propose an alternative to the

Canaanite/Mesopotamian2 4 plausibility structure the

Israelites had absorbed in 00 ears of ca tivit in


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Egypt. The notion of constructing something as

ambitious as a worldview from such a narrow range

of texts will no doubt come as a surprise to some. I

would, however, argue for the legitimacy of the

approach by appealing to the specific nature and

function of the text as a Creation narrative.

As for the reality of magic and occult powers, the

key passage is found in Genesis 1:1, In the beginning

God created the heavens and the earth (NIV). This

deceptively simple sentence can best be described as a

cosmic vacuum cleaner. It is a thundering

declaration that rids the universe of the multitude of

gods and demons that populated the ancient world.

For ancient Mesopotamians who lived under the

constant threat of hostile deities and who sought to

immunize themselves against these powers and gain

some control over their destiny through the use of

magical formulas and rituals, the opening sentence of

the Creation account is earth shattering. By draining

the physical universe of its divine essence, this textperforms an extremely important task. It annihilates

the conceptual framework that made belief in magic

possible. In the ancient world, the power of magic

derived from the willingness of the gods to act upon

wishes expressed through the performance of magical

acts: fertility, protection from ones enemies, etc.

Although scholars have long held that ancient men

believed that curses, blessings, and magical rituals

were contingent on the inherent power of the word,

there is no evidence to that effect.2 5 Ancient Near

Eastern documents consistently link the effectiveness

of magical incantations, curses, and blessings to the

intervention of the gods, not some mysterious power

of the spoken word. Magical formulas had no power


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n an o emse ves.

The notion that magical powers could

mysteriously influence human life was one of the

beliefs the author of the Creation account was

challenging. The text could not have been more

explicit. By emptying the physical universe of itsdeities, the author was in fact destroying the

theoretical foundation for the existence of magical

power and, by extension, the possibility of

manipulating it. It was a way of stating: A piece of

wood is just a piece of wood!2 6 No gods . . . no

magic!

But the old text does not simply dissolve theunderlying structure needed to support the belief in

magic in the ancient world. As importantly, it fulfills a

similar function in our culture. It effectively leaves no

room for the kind of underlying psychic energy grid

that is presumed to give real effectiveness to magical

and occult practices or any other kind of supernatural

phenomena.

I am not suggesting we live in a world where

miraculous acts never occur. The biblical witness

certainly records many instances of such, not the least

of which is the resurrection of Christ. But these

supernatural acts are exclusively within the purview

of Gods intervention in history.

CONCLUSION: THE POW ER OF BELIEF

If Genesis 1:1 provides an accurate portrait of

ultimate reality, how should missionaries then

address the issue of superstition and occult practices

in the culture?

First, the missionary must understand what the

Creation account teaches about the nature of the


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.

grasp of the authors portrait of the universe and its

implications for magic and the occult. The Creation

account effectively portrays a universe where there is

no effective space to permit the objective expression

of magical phenomena. Before anything else is done,

the missionary must have crystal clear premises inrespect to the fundamental nature of the universe.

Second, the missionary must be willing to follow

to their logical conclusion the assumptions set out in

the Creation account. While a voodoo curse may have

a devastating impact on a villager, the missionary

must always remember that this apparent effect is

brought about, not by the use of some real underlyinggrid of psychic (or demonic) energy, but through the

overwhelming power of suggestion, which can be as

lethal as a loaded gun for people who embrace the

assumptions of the plausibility structure of that

culture. For those who are prisoners of such a

worldview, the occult powers of the voodoo priest are

as real as the ground on which they walk. The

missionary should entertain no such fears. Any

uncertainty should immediately trigger a

reexamination of the biblical data.

Third, once the missionary has articulated a

clear theoretical foundation, he or she must develop a

strategic plan that incorporates a thorough

knowledge of the people group with whom he or she

works in order to address the issue of superstition in

the culture. There are no easy formulas to determine

the best approach to adopt. But at the very least,

when a person becomes a Christian, he or she should

be introduced to the Creation account and be given

the opportunity to integrate the basic elements of the


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POSTSCRIPT

The astute reader may have concluded that I

have myself fallen prey to the flaw of the excluded

middle by failing to take explicitly into account the

reality of the demonic world. Not so. While the NewTestament leaves no doubt as to the ontological

reality of Satan and demons, it carefully, particularly

so in the Gospel of Mark and 1 Corinthians, delineates

the parameters of the powers they wield. In and of

themselves, demons have no effective power over the

physical universe, for real power and substance can

only be derived from God. Since demons are

separated from God, the only power they can possiblyhave is the power human beings mistakenly and

naively attribute to them.

The power of demons ultimately hinges on the

belief system of the culture in which they navigate.

This factor accounts for the variations in the

frequency and intensity of overt demonic

manifestations between cultures. The prevalence of

demonic manifestations in Africa, Haiti, or India, and

their relative and apparent scarcity in the Western

world, are linked to a worldview that cultivates belief

and interaction with spirits in the former but

generally ignores their existence in the latter.

Demons can only terrorize those who attribute tothem the power to do so. In that respect, the Third

Wave model tends to perpetuate a common and

dangerous misperception of the demonic world. By

structurally reproducing a non-biblical model,2 7 it

inadvertently and ironically reinforces a worldview

that offers a false representation of the physical


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of demonic forces.

The New Testament does not, however, portray

demons as inoffensive and harmless. The most basic

inclination of these entities consists in opposing God

and generating chaos in the world. But their power to

do so is ultimately contingent on the willingness of

human beings to consciously embrace these spirits

and/or espouse the ideologies of death and chaos

upon which they feed.

NOTES

1. This article was first published inMissiology: An

Internat ional Rev iew 10, (January 1982): 35-47

and reprinted inAnthropological Reflect ions on

Missiological Issues (Baker Books, 1994), 189-201.

Citations will refer to the latter.

2. Pierre Gilbert, The Third Wave Worldview: A

Biblical Critique,Direct ion 29 (2000): 153-68. It

should be noted that professor Hiebert had also

published, in the same issue, an important article on

a related topic entitled Spiritual Warfare and

Worldviews.

3. Thepaisa is the smallest coin in India, now worthabout .03 of one penny.

4. Hiebert, 189-90.

5. Ibid., 191.

6. Ibid., 191-93.

7. Ibid., 195.

8. Ibid., 195-96.

9. Ibid., 195.

10. Ibid.11. Ibid., 196.

12. Ibid., 197.

13. Ibid., 198.

14. Hiebert views the development of an adequate

theological model on three levels. On the highest

level, it should include a theology of God in cosmic

history: creation, redemption, purpose, and destiny.

On the middle level, it includes a theology of God in


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, , ,

pain, and suffering. On the lowest level, it includes

an awareness of God in natural history in sustaining

the natural order of things (ibid., 199).

15. Ibid., 200.

16. C. Peter Wagner, of Fuller Theological Seminarys

School of World Mission, Tom White, founder of

Mantle of Praise Ministries (now Frontline

Ministries), John Dawson, Southwest U.S. director

of Youth with a Mission, and Frank Peretti, author

of the popular novels T his Present Darkness (1986)

and Piercing the Dark ness (1989) have been among

the most influential leaders in this movement. The

phenomenal popularity of Frank Perettis novels

and the publication of a multitude of guides on

spiritual warfare have contributed to shaping a very

sophisticated understanding of the demonic world

and an elaborate methodology to deal with demonpossession. While the issue of spiritual warfare, as

such, is not as prominent as it used to be, the reality

is that there is now a near-consensus on the nature

of demonic activity , the relationship between the

human and the demonic spheres, and the strategies

to be implemented when dealing with the demonic

or the occult. There is presently a residual

theology of spiritual warfare that remains and which

is broadcast in popular theology and Christian

fictional books such as theLeft Behindseries. Thistheology is often unquestioningly implemented

whenever an issue related to the demonic arises.

17. Hiebert, 200.

18. I never feel completely comfortable using the term

practical to denote praxis, since whether it is

explicitly formulated or not, ministry practices and

skills always assume, require, and express a

theoretical framework.19. Those who wish to pursue this issue further will

want to read Alvin Plantinga, Christian Philosophy

at the End of the Twentieth Century, in Christian

Philosophy at t he Close of the T w ent ieth Century ,

ed. Sander Griffioen and Bert Balk (Kampen,

Netherlands: Kok, 1995), 329-53.

20. This issue is examined in detail in my forthcoming

book,Dem ons, Lies and I llusions. A Plea for a

Ret urn to Text and Reason (Kindred Productions,


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2007).

21. See Richard Kyle, T he Religious Fringe: A History

of Alternat ive Religions in Am erica (InterVarsity,

1993) and The New Age Movem ent in American

Culture (University Press of America, 1995).

Stanley J. Grenz is atypical of where many

Christians stand on the issue of magic and the

occult. While he acknowledges the reality of demonsand the absolute necessity to abstain from engaging

in superstitious activities, he also believes that these

powers are non-realities. Though the rationale

proposed is not as clear as one might wish, Grenz is

nevertheless among the few who attempt to

distinguish between the ontological reality of

demonic beings and the actual efficacy of their

powers (see Stanley J. Grenz, Superstition: A

Christian Perspective, T he Asia Journal of

Theology 8 [1994], 365-78).22. There is no lack of such stories in the spiritual

warfare literature, but the objective verifiability of

these claims is exceedingly difficult to establish.

23. For instance, the James Randi Educational

Foundation has for years been investigating

supernatural claims, and the organization offers a $1

million prize to anyone who can show, under proper

observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal,

supernatural, or occult power or event such asmoving objects through the power of the mind,

predict the future, read thoughts, levitate, etc. Not

only has its founder, James Randi, successfully

debunked various occult claims over the years, but

the million-dollar prize has been sitting in the bank

since 1996, and is still there as I write these lines! In

spite of the widespread reports of real supernatural

powers or events, when tested these claims

consistently appear to be a case of the man who sawthe man who saw the bear!

24. I use the terms Canaanite and Mesopotamian

somewhat interchangeably, since Mesopotamian

culture was widely diffused in the West. See Gordon

J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical

Commentary (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987),

xliv.

25. This thesis, at least as it pertains to Israel and its

environment was first ro osed b J. Pedersen


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(I srael. Its Life and Culture , vol. 1 [London: Oxford

Univ. Press; Copenhagen: Branner OG Korch: 1926

[1920]) and is nearly universally accepted by the

scholarly community. As attractive as that thesis

might be, there is simply not a shred of evidence to

support it. In a comprehensive study of the curse in

the Ancient Near East, I have demonstrated that

the effectiveness of the curse is always contingenton the intervention of the gods (seeLe m otif

im prcat oire chez les prophtes bibliques du 8

sicle A.C. la lum ire du Proche-orient ancien,

unpublished doctoral dissertation [Universit de

Montral, 1993], 25-133). T. G. Crawford

independently reached the same conclusion as

regards the Syro-Palestinian region in the Iron Age,

inBlessing and Curse in S yro-Palest inian

Inscript ions o f t he Iron Age, AUS, series 7, TR, vol.

120 (New York: Peter Lang Pub., 1992).26. Isaiah makes a similar observ ation about idols made

out of wood in 44:13-19.

27. See Gilbert, The Third Wave Worldview, 164.

Pierre Gilbert holds a Ph.D. from the Universit de Montral. He is anassociate Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at CanadianMennonite University (Winnipeg, Manitoba) and Mennonite BrethrenBiblical Seminary (Fresno, California).

20 07 Di rec t ion ( Winn ipeg, MB)

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direction_ further reflections on paul hiebert’s “the flaw of the excluded middle”

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