Augustine of Hippo, the champion defender against the Pelagian heresy, wrote one of the most important books of all time, which book, The City of God, remains the most necessary theological tome by a Church Father. How much space is given to numerology in this momentous, massive work? Almost no space is given to the subject; I know this because I have just finished reading The City of God for the second time. So, for example, after saying almost nothing on the number seven, he begins to wrap up: “Much more might be said about the perfection of the number seven, but this book is already too long, and I fear lest I should seem to catch at an opportunity of airing my little smattering of science more childishly than profitably. I must speak, therefore, in moderation and with dignity, lest, in too keenly following ‘number,’ I be accused of forgetting ‘weight’ and ‘measure’” (Augustine, The City of God, 11.31.) He saw that it was his duty to focus on the weight and measure of doctrine. Some study of numbers is good; but the exposition of words is better. Gematria, however, is good for nothing except counting.
Gematria is an unchristian subculture of superstition, notwithstanding the fact that some Christians are taken up with it. It is no more Christian than Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and the miracles at Lourdes. Christians who are excited about numerology as a means to convince people that the Bible is the word of God are either misinformed or uninformed. If ignorance is the mother of superstition, credulity must be its father. If it is better to obey God than to perform a miracle, is it not also better to seek a word of God to obey than to divine its numerological value? It is what the word of God says, not the numerological value of its words, that Jesus recommends. Novel marvels and modern miracles, much less numbers, are of little value compared to what the Bible says. What did Jesus say about hardcore unbelievers that numerologists think one more wonder would convert? “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16.31.) We shouldn’t want to know the numerical value of any of the words in that sentence, or of what all of the words in the verse together amount to, or whether any of the words or their letters add up to a value that may be divided into a mysterious or positive number. We should want to know what the message in the verse can teach us. It teaches us that even the sight of a miracle will not persuade hardened sinners to turn from their sins and believe in the Lord in order to avoid the judgment to come and be admitted into God’s kingdom. If sinners will not believe on account of a miracle, will they believe on account of numerology? Might the people who believe that numerology will persuade sinners of something spiritual be as lost as the sinners they are attempting to persuade? Are they not like the adulterous generation in Jesus’ day? “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” (Matthew 12.39.) To say the least, it is no mark of true religion to be seeking after a sign when this verse unreservedly directs the focus, through Jonah’s type of death, on the saving death of Jesus Christ instead. The number 666 is ‘the number of a man,’ says the Bible (Revelation 13.18.) If numerology is to be assigned a value, I submit the number 666 for consideration, for it is the work of man, not the revelation of God.
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