Some years ago, I wrote an article titled The Two Gods of the Bible. I found that some scholars had noticed the same dichotomy. However, it did not surprise me to find this observation in other thinkers, because when religion has not clouded reasoning and logic, it can be clearly seen. This dichotomy emerges from human doctrines or interpretations, not from the spiritual reality of God, who is ONE.
This spiritual existence was defined in the call to listen to the Voice of God in the book of Deuteronomy:
“Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad,” or “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” For me, one of the most beautiful spiritual statements in the Scriptures. However, over time, God came to be conceived as three and not one—a doctrine that emerges with the ideas of Tertullian.
The formulation of “one substance, three persons” does not come from the text or from the original Hebrew statement, but from a later stage in which philosophical concepts were used to understand the God of the Hebrews through the interpretation of emerging Christianity. Through that process, theology was systematized, transforming what came from a spiritual reality into a philosophical and human mental image. This changed the original spiritual understanding.
This is a very clear example of trying to explain a spiritual reality with the human mind. Everything we know about the spiritual world is blurred. It is like seeing a silhouette in the distance on a foggy day.
Philosophy is a human mental process, not a spiritual one. And through this human process, which cannot comprehend the spiritual by those means, what is believed or interpreted about spiritual reality was solidified. From the beginning, it is an incoherent process, because it attempts to understand the spiritual with the material mind, from the outside, rather than from the spirit, which flows from within.
The Scriptures are a conglomerate of voices that theological organization, about 200 years after the death of Jesus, placed under the label “Word of God.” Without making any distinction between human incoherence written in those texts and the coherence of the declarations of God that also exist within them. Placing that label as a divine seal created a consequential effect.
First, discernment was lost. By not distinguishing between voices, the reader stopped questioning and assumed that everything had the same origin. The ability to separate the wheat from the weeds was canceled.
Second, doctrinal confusion arose. Statements that are not coherent with one another began to be forcefully harmonized, giving rise to complex systems that attempt to sustain what did not originate from a single source. As a result, authority was misassigned. What is human received divine authority, and what truly comes from God became mixed and diluted among multiple human voices. Thus fulfilling the words of Jesus: “You nullify the Voice of God by your human beliefs.”
This also created a dependence on interpreters. The difficulty in understanding led people to no longer seek understanding on their own, but to depend on others to tell them what they should believe.
In this way, the Voice was replaced by the system. Instead of listening to God, people began to follow doctrines, repeating interpretations as if they were spiritual truth itself.
Doctrine, in religious matters, is a complex issue. In modern religion, doctrine carries the same weight as tradition. In ancient Israel, tradition was the ritual of sacrifices and burnt offerings, along with everything related to that religious system. After the death of Jesus, and with the influence of Greek and Latin philosophy—when the religious system that still exists today was developed—doctrine took the central place once occupied by ritual in ancient times, once again nullifying the Voice of God that had instructed us to listen to His Voice.
What happened is that labeling everything from Genesis to Revelation as the Word of God closed, for the Spirit, the door to thinking, questioning, and investigating spiritually using reason and logic.
For example, Tertullian, Luke, the writer of Hebrews, and Paul—none of them were afraid to think, to try to understand, and to examine whether what they received was correct or true for them. Tertullian was not conditioned by a doctrine that limited his thinking. He thought freely. That is why he arrived at the interpretation of substance and persons in God. That is what he conceived; that is how he understood it. The problem arose when some men sealed his interpretation as the truth of God. And if it is the Truth of God, then there is no need to search further. The door was definitively closed to our inner being—to ask questions and to practice respectful critical thinking.
It is not wrong to interpret or to have different points of view on a subject. It is healthy. Because through multiple perspectives, we might find the solution or the truth. The problem is failing to clarify that it is only one possible interpretation among others.
In the spiritual realm, there are also facts. The difference is that they are not demonstrated in the same way as human science. However, since our origin is spiritual and we live in a material environment, comparisons or analogies can be made using human science. Even so, they are not exact.
The spiritual is greater and prior to the material, even if it is denied, because the spiritual is the beginning and the end of everything. In this body, we have the obstacle of matter, which prevents us from openly seeing and understanding the spiritual. But we can distinguish and understand many things from the spiritual realm through the spirit.
Returning to Tertullian’s interpretation, in my opinion, he was trying to resolve a problem of incoherence: the Hebrew belief that God is One, alongside what he had been taught—that Jesus was God. To me, it is clear that he did not consider either belief false. But when he weighed them, he found an imbalance—something did not fit. If it is one… it cannot be two or three, because in both the material and spiritual world, one is one.
At the same time, this process of hasty generalization and simplification—by labeling all the books of Scripture as the Word of God—created an appearance of unity where there is actually tension. This comes from simplifying the complex formation of the Bible.
What is presented as coherent contains internal contradictions, avoiding the underlying problem. The Scriptures are composed of different books, written by people unrelated in time, place, or beliefs, each with their own interests. For example, the ancient Hebrew priesthood had its own interests, and their scribes wrote both what came from God and what protected their own well-being.
During the time of Jeremiah, the priests controlled the temple, managed rituals, sacrifices, and offerings. In short, they held authority and power over the sacred. And Jeremiah, speaking in the Name of God, told them that the ritual was not part of the Covenant. This created great tension and confrontation between their voices—the voice of man—and the Voice of God.
The book of Leviticus states clearly that God commanded the rituals to be offered perpetually. What occurred in Jeremiah’s generation was an open clash of power between the Voice of God and the voice of man. According to the prophet, the people chose to follow the voice of man. God called that the product of their imagination, not the Voice of God. The prophets spoke the Voice of God, which collided with the voice and interests of the priesthood.
Therefore, placing everything written in the Bible under the label “Word of God” is not only a hasty generalization—it is also irresponsibility with consequences.
Consider modern thinkers who were born within this religious framework—that the entire Bible is the perfect Word of God—such as Descartes, Spinoza, and others, up to more contemporary figures like Jung. They undoubtedly saw inconsistencies or beliefs that their minds told them were not credible, not logical, and could not come from a perfect God. The result is that they convinced themselves that such a god was a human invention. That is why I believe Nietzsche, in his poem The Madman, revealed something remarkable: that religion itself was also responsible for modern atheism.
The final result of all this is spiritual stagnation for the believer, and for the non-believer, further evidence that God is human or at least invented by humans. When one feeds on a mixture of wheat and weeds, there is no real growth—only religious beliefs that do not transform the person. The wheat, the true Voice of God, makes us grow and transform spiritually. The weeds, the word of man presented as the Voice of God, stagnate and weaken us spiritually.
This mixture is used to confuse and prevent a clear vision of the path forward. It is the classic strategy from the beginning: mixing truth with illusion so that we miss the target. Our goal is high. It is power—a power that was taken from us through deception and that we can recover ourselves in the simple way God indicated: to restore a harmonious relationship with the Creator, to commit through a Covenant to follow His Voice, and to live in integrity. It means letting go of resentment, apologizing, and forgiving.
Finally, labeling everything in Scripture as the “Word of God” produced blind trust instead of search. It is accepted without examination, and in doing so, the search for truth stops.
By not distinguishing the voices, the ability to hear the Voice of God was lost.
One of the characteristics of religion is fanaticism. This can also be found in sports or politics. Fanatical people are also stubborn, showing extreme cognitive rigidity, believing blindly that they possess unquestionable truth. They lack the ability to change their minds or learn from errors when those errors become obvious. Believing themselves to own absolute truth, they attempt to impose their ideas intolerantly. They are so tied to their beliefs and doctrines that changing their mind is perceived as a personal threat.
Stubbornness in religion was one of the characteristics mentioned by God in the Scriptures. Jeremiah expresses it clearly. This book is crucial in clarifying the terms of the Covenant, where God separates ritual sacrifices and burnt offerings from the Covenant. He also spoke of their stubbornness, saying: “But they did not listen or incline their ear, but each one walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart.”
And what was that stubbornness? Fundamentally, not listening to His Voice and following where their human imagination led them in spiritual matters—the voices of men. In spiritual matters, human voices cannot teach unless they come from the Source itself. Their stubbornness was refusing to change and continuing to consume weeds instead of the wheat God offered.
Stubbornness is a human characteristic. That is why I said at the beginning that when religion does not cloud reasoning and logic, we can think freely, discern, and see what the Scriptures truly say.
When Jesus said that their beliefs nullified the Voice of God, He was describing a completely logical mental pattern in human beings. Even if the listener or reader does not agree with my observations, I believe they would agree that the books of the Bible are the writings of many different voices, from different places, times, and beliefs. Higher criticism has already demonstrated the existence of different sources. I call them voices.
There are inconsistencies in the Scriptures for these reasons and because they come from human beings. I can be inconsistent, contradictory, and ambiguous in expressing an idea because I am human—but not God. Human languages have those characteristics inherently. That is a scientific description. Therefore, when there are contradictions or inconsistencies in the Scriptures, we are witnessing human additions that our discernment—if active—would allow us to identify.
I will give you an example from the book of Ezekiel. This prophet is known for the declaration of God through what we call spiritual rebirth.
Continuing the reading and reaching the final chapters (40–48), we encounter a significant inconsistency related to ritual and the cleansing of wrongdoing. There, under his name, a restoration of temple sacrifices in a future time is presented.
However, in chapter 18, the message is completely clear: if a person turns away from wrongdoing and practices justice, their past is not held against them. In other words, a clean slate.
The ritual, on the other hand, was a system of atonement through the sacrifice of an animal as a substitute.
So the question arises: if forgiveness depends on real transformation, what purpose does a system of sacrifices serve?
Both ideas do not operate under the same logic. One removes wrongdoing through transformation; the other covers it through ritual. These voices—or sources—are the prophetic and the priestly. The fact that both appear within the same book reveals that we are not dealing with a uniform message, but with distinct voices that contradict each other, even though they are gathered under the same name.
To better understand this, I have simplified all biblical voices into two: the Voice of God and the voice of man. No human being can listen to two voices at the same time speaking to them—they will hear one and discard the other. The human brain cannot consciously process two complex verbal messages simultaneously. That is science. This is why I said that when Jesus said they nullified the Voice of God with their beliefs, He was actually speaking about a physical human limitation.
Science says that when two voices speak simultaneously, the brain does not process both equally; it uses attentional switching to alternate between them or focuses on one while partially ignoring the other. The auditory cortex processes sounds separately, and the brain synchronizes with one voice to understand the message, prioritizing attention.
When two voices speak at the same time, the brain uses areas like the auditory cortex to separate sounds and prioritize one—the attended voice—while ignoring the masked one. It does not process both messages simultaneously but shifts attention between them. The consequences include cognitive fatigue, mental overload, and difficulty understanding the content.
There is something called the cocktail party effect, which is the ability to focus on one voice amid noise. The brain filters sounds in the thalamus and prioritizes a signal in the auditory cortex. It uses the prefrontal cortex to decide which to attend to. But it cannot understand two different speeches simultaneously. It either rapidly switches attention or blocks one out.
This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews did. He nullified the Voice of the Prophets—which said from God: “I did not command any ritual as part of the Covenant”—and followed the priestly voice, which said that ritual should be practiced perpetually. However, to maintain his argument, he ignored the command of perpetuity.
Why did the anonymous writer of Hebrews do this? To preserve his mental coherence and maintain consistency in his belief.
If you try to actively listen to two conversations at once, confusion, loss of information, and rapid mental fatigue occur.
Another example: I once knew a Baptist woman who did not believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit as described in the book of Acts. I asked her what she thought when she read that passage. She told me: nothing. To maintain the coherence of her belief, she ignored the passage.
So what science tells us about hearing multiple voices is what happens when we read the Scriptures. We hear the Voice of God and the voice of man as if they were one—but we cannot do that. It is physically impossible. That is why we select what supports our belief and ignore what creates confusion, as a form of mental protection.
That is why God told us:
“Come to me with open ears.
Listen… and you will find life.”
And even more:
“Then you will hear a voice behind you saying:
This is the way… walk in it.”
The Voice has always been there.
The question is… which one are we listening to?