About Patrick Michael Murphy

I’ve previously posted a few citations by Patrick Michael Murphy’s book, “How the West Was Lost,” and will be posting more.  However, I want to have a caveat about his theology.

Murphy’s work on social and historical issues are right on the money, which is why I like to cite him, but his theology is a wee bit off, especially when it comes to Satan and the demonic realm.

First, he refers to Satan as “Lucifer,” which really bothers me.  Satan’s name was NEVER Lucifer, and yet people like Murphy claim that was the name he had prior to becoming Satan.  I prove otherwise in my article on my apologetics blog.

Murphy also teaches the false idea that Adam first owned the earth and then transferred the “title” to Satan when he sinned, and then Jesus had to get the title back.  Scripture says God owns the earth, and always has (Exod. 19:5; Lev. 25:23; Deut. 10:14; 2 Chron. 19:11-12; Ps.24:1; Ps 50:10-11; et al).  In his chapter, “Eternal Pathology,” he says that everything else we know about Satan and the demonic realm comes from experience, but experiences should NEVER be the source of our theology, because we easily deceive ourselves.

Part of Murphy’s misunderstanding is that he believes demons may not be the same thing as fallen angels, so he ends up with a whole new category of spiritual beings.  Then he thinks that God would cast such creatures into Hell, “given the opportunity” —  as if God needs an opportunity?!?! 

Murphy’s belief about the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 being fallen angels is fine as far as I’m concerned, but where he goes with it is bizarre.  Whether or not the Nephilim are the offspring or just “giants” and spoken of in the same text (the text does NOT say the Nephilim were the result of the mating, rather it just says they were there in those days), they were certainly human  or half-human and would die in the Flood, yet Murphy says that at the Flood they had no place to go at death and so went into the “air” as disembodied spirits which are now looking for bodies to inhabit!  This is so extra-biblical!

His other bizarre idea has to do with sex and God.  Now, all through Scripture God uses the analogy of marriage to describe His relationship with Israel or the Church, in that He is the husband and Israel/the Church is the wife, and to worship idols is analogous to adultery.  However, the analogy never implies that sexual intercourse is a type of our relationship with God, as Murphy claims. His whole chapter, “Sex & Eternity” runs in this fashion to where it becomes really creepy.

In this book Murphy also states that God took a risk creating man, but that makes God to be more human-like; God never took risks because He KNEW what would happen — He knows the end from the beginning.

Finally, some of his ideas seem to come from the Hebrew Roots Movement.

SO, while I cannot recommend Murphy as a teacher on any theological subject, his book does a really good job of explaining how the Christian worldview came to collapse and be replaced by the horrible humanist worldview our culture now lives (the book was written in 2005 before same-sex fake marriage was forced on this nation, and before the whole “transgender” movement brought in even more sexual corruption — it would be interesting to see an update to include these movements).  I will link his name to this article in all my citations from the book.