Much of Cohen's book is devoted to explaining seven psychological "devices" used by Evangelical Christianity to draw in the unwary. In a few cases we find that Cohen makes a good point: The first device, "The Benign Attractive Persona of the Bible" [171ff] refers to the "colossal bait-and-switch sales pitch" used by ministers who use the Bible in ways that do not fit the context -- here, Cohen hints at the "health and wealth" sort of preachers, but I am not sure what else he intends, and needless to say, he says nothing about critical-historical readings of the Biblical texts.

The second device, "Discrediting the World", is simply a case of an immensely begged question: Cohen condemns the "us vs. them" attitude inherent in Christian belief -- though of course, if Christianity is true, then the "attitude" has something genuine behind it! (In this section he also complains of potential converts being regarded as merely "objects of evangelism" -- totally ignoring commands and historical patterns that require discipleship. Cohen is perhaps reading too much of today's "get 'em out" pseudo-crusades into the Biblical text.)

It is with the third device, "Logocide", that things get into some detail. Here Cohen accuses Christians of misusing Biblical texts, and the Biblical authors of intentionally using "crossed meanings and contrived ambiguities" [185] to confuse and control their readers (the "psycho-conspiracy"). Surprisingly enough Cohen realizes that there are some genuine literary devices, like hyperbole and emphasizing paradox (twinged as they are with Eastern flavor) that fall into this category but are not of the nature of his "manipulations" at all; what is also surprising is that he fails to recognize many other similar instances and decrees them to be manipulations. He supposes rather that NT writers committed "logocide" by making sure that a new convert was "weaned away from the ordinary meaning" of a given term and switched to the newer, deeper, more "manipulative" meaning. This obviously requires that most Christians be particularly dense, and Cohen has no trouble asserting this, and calling upon his own experience (again!) as proof [184]:

Every deeply indoctrinated believer I have known has shared the experience of finding the Bible hard to read, with passages studied many times before seeming unfamiliar and surprising...The believer ascribes this quality, which distinguishes the Bible from other writings in ancient languages, to the process of understanding coming through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, qualitatively unlike the way earthly ideas are understood.

Well, perhaps that was Cohen's problem, and that of others. I find very, very few Bible passages hard to read, unfamiliar, etc. -- and what few I do find difficult (I have found none to be "unfamiliar"), I ascribe to simply not knowing enough about the social, literary, historical, etc. context: We have not yet discovered the Rosetta Stone for some passages, and may never do so. That's how it is often with a text out of time we men have failed to keep up with. Other than that, where does Cohen suppose he has found examples of "logocide"?

A chief and featured example relates to the use of the words "life" and "death" in the NT. In addition to the "normal" (physical) meanings of these words, Cohen accuses the NT writers of creating "new, alternate meanings" [198] related to the spiritual (which Cohen signifies in his text by adding a hash mark ['] after the "original word"). So, it is supposed, the missionaries preached about "life" and "death", and people converted on that basis; but: "Little did the believer know when he was first recruited that the Christians were talking about eternal life', not eternal life."

Of course Strong's already tells us that the word here for life, zoe, carries both a figurative and literal sense; but even so, I find this claim of conspiratorial term-switching rather puzzling. Cohen is apparently suggesting that Christian missionaries went around preaching "eternal life" without telling anyone that they did not mean physical, earthly immortality, and only later, after a convert had been "caught", was it explained that "eternal life" was spiritual in nature and involved immortality only in the sense that there was a hereafter. All right -- so where is the proof that the converts were not aware of the supposed difference in the term from the very beginning? Doesn't "life" today also have a dual meaning -- that both of physical "life" and of a more ethereal, perhaps spiritual "life"? If I walk up to you today and say, "Try Hare Krishna and learn how to live life!" does that imply that you were walking around physically dead like some sort of zombie prior to now? Cohen apparently fails to perceive that this dual meaning of "life" was in fact nothing new at all. It appears in Genesis 3 in regards to the way Adam and Eve "died" (Later [262], he cites this very passage, but explains it away by saying that "God already had [the alternate meaning] in mind."[!] Looks like the psycho-conspiracy was at work even in the Garden!), and there is no indication anywhere in the NT or in recorded history that the church purposely confused these terms to win converts. If they did, why is there no indication that some dropped out when they found out that "life" did not mean physical immortality, as some surely would have? This is an argument from silence, but it is a significant one, because such easily falsified claims would have been incredible fodder for the likes of Celsus. Not that it matters, since here Cohen offers the original silence argument in the first place. Perhaps he, the brilliant one, was confused by these terms, but there is no evidence that any of the early converts were -- and neither was I.

Another instance involves the Christian keyword agape. Cohen tells us that this word is "unknown prior to New Testament times and was apparently invented for it." [205] It is not love at all, he says, but "a very strict and obsessive species of self-discipline." [206] The claim is a larger part of Cohen's overall argument (later made in Device 5) that Christian belief requires having "psychologically inauthentic, false and maladaptive" attitude [293] in which one, for example, denies one's true feelings (especially anger), so that the Christian is "full of bottled up tensions induced by the hobbling Christian constraints" [300] of keeping one's feelings in check. In this case, it is said, "Being out of touch with one's feelings and emotions will prove to be a prerequisite of agape."

The reader may wonder where and how Cohen reached these foolish conclusions. I cannot be certain, but perhaps they are derived from a very poor reading of Cohen's one useful source in the matter: William Barclay's New Testament Words. Cohen uses an extensive quote from page 21 of that book explaining that agape is an act of the will. Barclay also reports that agape is indeed not found -- in the form of a noun -- in any of the classical works of literature of the period [18]. It is found in a noun form in the LXX (where it is used 14 times, oddly enough, of sexual love in Jeremiah, and twice in Ecclesiastes as an antonym for "hatred"); in Jewish wisdom literature to refer to the love of God and the love of wisdom; in the Letter of Aristeas it is described as a gift of God; in Philo it is linked to the word "fear" (phobos) as a kindred feeling, both of which characterize one's attitude towards God.

The verb form of our word, agapan, is however found in classical literature. It is used to describe great affection, the love of money or jewels, affection towards a lap-dog -- and it clearly does not involve the type of "warmth" that another word, phileon, involves. It is, as Barclay describes it (but as Cohen apparently ignored for his purposes) a type of affectionate gratitude -- not an emotion, but an act of will, as Cohen does acknowledge. Here is a classical use of both words that Barclay cites:

You loved (phileon) him as a father, and you held him in regard (agapan) as a benefactor.

But in fact Cohen's incompetence goes further. He is, and has been, applying modern, Western psychological categories to the Bible, and he is quite far off to start because whereas our culture is centered on the individual, ancient Biblical society (and 70% of societies today) are group-centered. What is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape it refers to the "value of group attachment and group bonding" [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196] and can have nothing to do with self-discipline -- which is also a concept foreign to a group-oriented society, in which behavior was controlled by group relations and honor and shame rewards and sanctions -- not by individualized and internalized norms.

The bottom line here is that Cohen is far off base (and also reveals himself as a very poor reader and researcher) when he thinks that Christians "invented" the term agape and that he can apply modern psychological categories to the Bible. I want to stress this, because it seems to me to be a key point in his entire case. If the Christians did not invent the word, then he can hardly say that it is part of their whole-cloth conspiracy. Nor can he claim it to be merely a form of obsessive self-discipline: This may indeed be how Cohen understood the matter as an alleged believer, but it seems fairly clear that he is anachronistically applying modern psychological categories to the NT text -- as well as making an overall generalization that whatever we feel to express is good to do!

Even so: When the believer is told to "repress" (or "put off") things like anger, malfeasance, etc. there is no indication of the need for outright suppression and hypocrisy -- that could hardly be the case, first because no such psycho-categories existed at the time; second and mainly because that would amount to the sin of hypocrisy, which is condemned as well! Nor would such "suppression" eliminate sin in one's heart as Jesus advises. Rather -- to use anger as an example -- one is told (in this and other contexts) to recognize one's place and one's brother as one whom Christ died for. Those who do this cannot logically remain angry with their brother; if they do remain angry, they do sin, and they do not "answer the argument" -- they persist in being irrational, which is an act of the will. "Suppression" of ill will and "emotion" is done by logical extension, not by self-coercion, and I hardly think Cohen can find fault with that; or else most behavioral modification psychology is out the window! (In that sense, one might compare agape today to a form of respect.) Bottom line: Cohen has badly misunderstood what agape is and how it works -- and has probably foisted his own personal, confused experiences upon the interpretation.

The fourth of Cohen's devices, "Assaulting Integrity", involves "inducing the believer, for the sake of obedience, to affirm teachings that are inherently incredible, not germane to, and in discord with, the rest of the Bible" [240-1] thus forcing the believer to violate his conscience when he/she "stifles the still, soft inner apprehension he has that he is doing something shameful." [241]

A self-portrait by Cohen, perhaps, but due entirely to his own tendency to read into passages things that simply are not there. Thus, for example, what he calls the "most extreme integrity-assaulting passage" in the NT, Luke 18:1-8 --

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Here, we are told, "God is likened to a wicked judge, who is lazy or infirm, and tires easily. The believer is exhorted to pray for completely selfish reasons." [241] Let us reply in unison: "Huh??" Such an interpretation is completely off the beam. The point - made in typical rabbinic "how much more" fashion (v. 7 -- that is, if the lesser case is valid, then the greater one must be valid also) -- is that if this is what even the most wicked judge will do for the most annoying petitioner, how much more will God take care of His own whom he loves and who have trusted Him? But this escapes Cohen completely, and that is why he thinks that "the believer's critical mind must be shut off for him not to wonder why his general notions about the perfection and faithfulness of God, and the selflessness the believer is to strive for, are stood on their head." [241] Nay: One must turn the historical-critical mind on, Mr. Cohen, and recognize the parable in its context.

Other than this, Cohen furthers his conspiratorial speculations by supposing that such "integrity assaulting" passages were used "as a test of candidates for inner circle membership, on whom one would have to depend not to betray those circles to the persecuting authorities." [ibid.] Of another passage into which he reads "defensiveness" about the lack of a Second Coming, he says: "If the novice receiving instruction in the passage showed no sign of caviling at its incongruency but instead dropped unhesitatingly to his knees and went into fervent, wailing prayer, then the church father knew he could be trusted." [242] This scenario and others like, Cohen admits to be "conveniently nondisprovable." And let it be said again that this also "conveniently nondisprovable" point: What we have here is less likely a sound historical theorem, and more likely a reflection of Cohen's own walk.

Device #5, "Dissociation Induction", offers us Cohen's most long-winded and tedious explanation of all. This device, which he says is "at the core" and the key to "explaining the Bible's power over people" [259], reads at first as very difficult to discern in nature. After several pages of stale and rehashed objections, reading things into texts and out of their social contexts, and venomous bile, we finally get to an exposition on Matthew 14:22-33, which we are told provides "the central psychological paradigm of the Bible." [284] To set the background first:

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd...During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

Of this passage, Cohen writes [285]:

The biblical moral of the story is that failing to have one's mind obsessively on Jesus will rapidly and disastrously result in the deterioration of "faith", in the letting down of the "shield" that "faith" represents.

The practical moral of this exotic exegesis is that Cohen, during his "Christian" tenure, had one too many snootfuls of the health-and-wealth homiletic. I suppose one can legitimately draw from this story that if we are looking to do things normally impossible (like walking on water) that it is a very good idea to have one's mind "obsessively" on Jesus (and then, note well, only with direct permission -- and one might as well then say that a rock climber has his mind "obsessively" on rope), but to draw any further specific conclusions is simply ridiculous -- Cohen's temptational, Lloyd Grahamish claim of the "incomparably artful camouflage job that has so long kept the true meaning" of this story "suppressed" notwithstanding. It's frankly just too bad that Cohen apparently fell for a line of this sort once, but that's hardly any reason to universalize his experience and make it the rule of law.

Cohen's sixth device, "Bridge Burning", is like the second an immensely begged question: Assuming Christianity to be untrue, Cohen criticizes the separation from the past it commands.

The final device, "Holy Terror", is little more than the old rehash about the Bible using hell to scare people, with the implicit assumption that it is so horrible that this proves it must have been invented. What happens here, however, is that Cohen ends up revealing far more about himself than he does about the Bible. Basically, we see here another example of the complex of the mind-rebel working out his problem with Sister Mary whacking him on the knuckles with a ruler in Catholic school, and now taking revenge by being obnoxious towards all things religious. To wit: "I formed the opinion that the bluff that God's mighty rewards and punishments ought to terrify me into compliance with the pedagogues' stupid little rules" [347]; "The bottom line is that getting people to dance to its tune of fear is what Christianity is all about. All else is evasion and obfuscation. Every other issue turns from what is first expected into arcane, abstruse dizzying stuff as the believer's indoctrination progresses." [349] "I can almost imagine (the NT writers) sitting together in the shade of a fig tree, asking themselves what would be the most horrible outcome imaginable, with which to threaten people." [354] Finally: "The believer prays more, turns Family Radio up louder to drown out the doubts, goes to a church service to get peer reassurance, reads the Bible to reinforce the allegorical suggestions of separation of the realms, etc." [359] As one who prays minimally and only for the sake of thanks; as one whose exposure to Family Radio has been limited to 10 minutes of static-filled air time while on a trip to California and who finds almost all radio preachers boring and irrelevant (R. C. Sproul and Ravi Zacharias are major exceptions); as one who does not go to peers for counsel, and as one who never reads the Bible without serious study, I find Cohen's interpretation ridiculous at best and totally inapplicable to my own life. I say this in conclusion: Edmund Cohen's paranoia is nothing more than the blind, foaming-at-the-mouth hatred typical of apostates carrying wounded pride. When Cohen commends Christianity for "its intricately contradictory nondisprovability" [360] he describes nothing less than his schizophrenic conspiracy theory of the NT writers gathering together and plotting a new world religion that would serve as an opiate to control the masses in their favor. There was a conspiracy, he says, but it leaves no historical record; and if you try to prove that Christianity is true, you are simply fostering the delusion further (for example, Cohen puts of the study of Biblical languages as "an additional layer of irrelevancy to keep the conscious minds of the seminarians busy, lest unwanted insight intrude." [377n]). How much faster can you chase your own tail in a circle?