In fairness to John Mark Comer, whose sermon Yahweh Elohim caused much controversy two years ago, and which was the basis of my blog post Creational Monotheism = Polytheism = Henotheism, I wanted to say I was recently made aware that he posted the statement below (click it to enlarge) in light of the controversy:

It is somewhat hard to listen to his sermon, which seems to be teaching polytheism and which has many disconcerting particulars, and reconcile it with his post-sermon comments, which state he is a monotheist. If someone says contradictory things, which of the things that they say do you believe? I know for myself, I would want to listen to more of Comer’s sermons to determine whether he has a habit of truth obfuscation or whether he is, on average, a good teacher.

At the very least, his teaching on creational monotheism, if not a heretical discourse on polytheism, is extremely confusing and full of error. It warranted the controversy. The entire premise of the sermon is based on an equivocation of the term monotheism. Most people would assume monotheism means belief in one god. But Comer redefines contemporary monotheism as belief in one God with no belief in any other spiritual beings. And then he teaches creational monotheism in response to his audience’s lack of belief in spiritual beings other than God.

It should be obvious that if there is a deficient understanding in the existence of other spiritual beings, the answer is not to teach “creational monotheism”, but to simply teach from Scripture and demonstrate that there are other spiritual beings. The belief in spiritual beings is a basic tenet of Christianity – it is not advanced technical doctrine. Randy Alcorn, writing on the unnecessary controversies resulting from creational monotheism, says it well:

To all the monotheists who teach creational monotheism, please throw away the doctrine and quit causing strife.

¹ http://www.epm.org/resources/2014/Jun/25/ive-heard-some-pastors-say-they-believe-one-true-g/