Well…CRI starts out quoting the same three non-representative sources…but then straightens up a bit and quotes Adin Steinstalz, I love the comparison of Bergs Kabbalah Centre to Orthodox Kabbalah as compared to Barney and a real dinosaur…or pornography and love.
Unfortunately the CRI article still doesn’t take the time to go to legitimate sources to understand what Kabballah really teaches. In the quotes below it lists “differences” between Christianity and Kabbalah…but misunderstands Kabbalah completely on most points.
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KABBALAH:
GETTING BACK TO THE GARDEN
by Marcia Montenegro
In order to respond to those who are studying or are interested in Kabbalah, Christians must understand and be able to explain how Kabbalah’s teachings differ from essential Christian doctrines. The first step should be to show that Ein Sof and the God of the Bible are not the same. Ein Sof is considered to be remote and unknowable, and the Tree of Life is believed to be a revelation of Ein Sof’s attributes. The biblical God, however, is not remote; He is intimately involved with His creatures and has revealed His attributes through nature (Rom. 1:20), His Word (Heb. 1:1), and Christ (John 14:9), not through mysterious puzzles.
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All well and good…but ein sof is not a separate being, rather it is merely a term used to refer to God as He truly exists…completely transcendant and beyond our ability to comprehend. Christians surely agree with this notion and do not try to put God into a nice little box we can grasp with a finite mind…we agree that in reality God is beyond us. This is not to say that He is not personal…it simply acknowledges that He is knowable because He chooses to make Himself known…not that He is actually limited by OUR nature.
The tree of life is an expression of the conduits or means by wich God reveals Himslef to creation…they are NOT attributes, since God is one and cannot be divided into “attributes”. Maimonides spends a great deal of time elucidating this in his “Guide for the Perplexed” and this is completely consistent with Kabbalistic thought.
The problem is that people unfamiliar with Kabbalah look at it briefly and mistake statements as being absolute expressions of doctrine rather than what they really are…attempts to express the limitlessness of God using limited human language…a difficult task to be sure, hence the apparently esoteric nature of Kabbalistic language, which is replete with metaphor and complex allusions.
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Kabbalah presents Ein Sof’s attributes more as abstract principles than as personal qualities. The God of the Bible, however, is revealed as having personal attributes; He can think (Ps. 147:5), feel (Ps. 116:15), and will (Rev. 4:11), and He relates to His creatures (humans) in whom He also placed those personal attributes (Gen. 1:26–27).
Ein Sof’s attributes are said to be dualistic (male and female), and opposites are in balance within Ein Sof. The biblical God is one (Deut. 6:4); He is a perfect unity of righteousness, justice, truth, mercy, and love, but these do not coexist in balance with their opposites within God. The Bible clearly states, for example, that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5 NASB), and that the God of truth “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2 NASB).
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This is a red herring in that Kabbalah is not discussing God as He reveals Himself to us on a personal level but the deeper aspects of His nature…this is like saying particle physics is invalid because it doesn’t talk about black holes and supernovae, Kabbalah is discussing God on a different level of perspective.
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Ein Sof is incomplete, since he needs man in order to complete his plan. An incomplete God, however, is an imperfect God, and cannot be God at all. If God is the standard for righteousness, He must be perfect and complete. The God of the Bible existed from all eternity (Gen. 1:1; Col. 1:17) in complete perfection in Himself (Exod. 3:14; Matt. 5:48; Acts 17:25). His creation of man was not out of necessity, but for His pleasure (Rev. 4:11).
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Kabbalah does NOT teach that God is incomplete…but that creation itself is incomplete because God wants to involve humanity in the process rather than just doing it all for us. Christianity does not deny our involvement, quite the opposite…it is simply a matter of whether we choose (via free will) to BE involved.
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The second step is to explain the difference between the two understandings of the Torah. Kabbalah teaches that the Torah is encoded with hidden meanings. In contrast, historic Christian interpretation assumes that God communicated the Torah to Moses in a normal fashion, and that the text says what it appears to say; there is no hidden meaning. Understanding ancient Hebrew grammar, history, culture, and literary style is a sufficient method of interpreting the text. Seeking hidden meanings is a hallmark of gnosticism and occultism. Such a method can lead to imposing any foreign meaning on a text that one wishes. Furthermore, this understanding implies that the Torah is insufficient revelation, since the Zohar is needed to uncover its meaning; thus, the additional revelation (the Zohar) is more complicated than the Torah. An esoteric text, however, does not clarify a plain text. The God who created humans is able to communicate sufficiently to them in the Torah; no special key to unlock its meaning is needed.
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Christian interpretation may well assume…but the text does not actually SAY how God communicated with Moses, only that He did…so this isn’t much of an argument.
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Kabbalah is essentially gnostic; that is, one must learn the spiritual secrets of the Torah through the cryptic and intricate Zohar, and then advance through knowledge and actions. This is in strong contrast to biblical Christianity, which is essentially relational and is based on a clear, direct revelation from a personal God and on the historical death and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. We do not need to delve into esoteric realms to find the truth; it is readily found in God’s Word, and was declared by the Messiah, Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Nor do we earn redemption by doing good works; rather, redemption is provided through Christ’s atonement. When one trusts Christ, one knows God and is adopted by Him as a child (Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5).
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It is quite understandable that a cursory examination of Kabbalah would lead one to make comparisons with Gnosticism…but the similarities are only apparent on a very simplistic level. The more one learns about what Kabbalah is really talking about the more those apparent correlations melt away. The key point I would make here is that Kabbalah does not assert that understanding the deeper interpretations are at all necessary…in fact it goes out of its way to discourage people from pursuing it if they are not properly prepared in knowledge, understanding and (most of all) character. We are neither forbidden nor encouraged to study Kabbalah…how close we wish to get to God is entirely up to us…but it is hardly appropriate for those who choose one degree to make judgments or assumptions about those who choose another.
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In Kabbalah, the Shekhinah is sometimes called Eden, and the Torah is the garden where the Creator hid the light. By becoming vessels of light, we can regain Eden. In contrast, the Bible teaches that it is God who will redeem all creation, making it a “new heaven” and a “new earth” (Isa. 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13). This redemption began with Christ’s death on the cross, the greatest tikkun of all. His work provided healing for all who trust Christ and ultimately for the whole physical creation (Rom. 8:21–23).98 In trusting Christ, we are reconciled with our Creator, delivered from His wrath on sin, and gain a relationship with God who loves us (John 3:16; Rom. 5:9; 2 Cor. 5:17–19). Light versus darkness is a theme in Kabbalah and in the Bible. The true light, however, is not in the Tree of Life, but in Christ, who proclaimed, “I am the Light of the world” (John
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I agree, but it bears remembering that the Jewish people have been “blinded for a time” by God Himself…and so some aspects of the actuall method of redemption and tikun are obviously going to be hidden from them until they come to recognize Jesus as the true Messiah. Unfortunately, it is Christian ignorance, arrogance and bigotry that most often deters the Jewish people form even entertaining such a notion. If we became better informed about the religion OF Jesus (Judaism) I suspect we would be far more proficient in expounding the religion ABOUT Jesus (Christianity). Jesus was, after all, a Jewish rabbi.