The way of Jesus lies in the shadow of the cross

Considering the Inerrancy of Christian Scripture

In 2013 an appointed committee of the Church of the Nazarene called “The Scripture Study Committee” reported to the 28th General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene their recommendation with respect to a proposed change to the wording of Article IV of the Nazarene Articles of Faith. Here was the resolution they were considering:

Resolution JUD-805: regarding Article IV. The Holy Scriptures; to remove the phrase “inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation,” and replace it with the phrase, “inerrant throughout, and the supreme authority on everything the Scriptures teach.”
Report of the Scripture Study Committee to the 28th General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene, p 1.

The recommendation from this committee was to leave the current language of Article IV unchanged, thereby rejecting the resolution. The committee then included a lengthy report explaining the rationale for their recommendation. For those who are interested in reading the full report, you can download the file from the link below.

Report of the Scripture Study Committee Download

Though I, too, did not think the language of Resolution JUD-805 should have been accepted, I did not agree with the reasoning provided by the committee. I do believe the Christian Scriptures are inerrant in all that the authors and/or editors (who I take to be prophets and apostolic witnesses) intended to argue, explain, teach, or deny.

So, I provided a lengthy response to the Report of the Scripture Study Committee, which I will provide here, for those who are interested in exploring the issue with me. I will print out my response in long form in this blog, and then I will provide a downloadable PDF at the end. Thanks for engaging!

~ J. Thomas Johnson

Response to the Report of the Scripture Study Committee to the Twenty-Eighth General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene – June 19-28, 2013, Indianapolis, IN, USA

J. Thomas Johnson – September 19, 2013

I have been asked by several individuals to respond at length to the Report of the Scripture Study Committee (SSC) that was made to the 28^th General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in June of 2013. I offer this critical engagement with deepest respect to these committee members who gave of their time and their vast critical faculties to provide such a careful and nuanced report, not only of their concluding recommendations, but also of their reasoning. And, I want to begin by confessing agreement with the SSC’s final recommendation to reject the language proffered in JUD-805. I am in agreement with the members of the SSC that this language would have been problematic, at best.

In fact, I would go so far as to express my deep disappointment that the language under consideration in Resolution JUD-805 was approved for discussion, at all. First, ‘inerrant throughout’ is a standard that no evangelical inerrantist should ever suggest (see, e.g., the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy). There’s no nuance or qualification to that language, and it would have been a travesty if we had embraced it. But, I digress.

My interest in this response is not to question the SSC’s recommendation with respect to Article IV. I agree with them. Instead, my intention is two-fold: First, I will engage with their reasoning as it has been articulated in this lengthy report. My contention here will be that as careful and as thorough as the report may be, it fails to address the underlying concerns regarding the language of inerrancy raised by JUD-805. And second, I will engage myself with the language of Article IV. Here I will contend that the present language of Article IV is far too utilitarian and anthropocentric to be reflective of the role Scripture has played throughout church history or to guide the church in appreciating the full width and breadth and depth of the texts of Christian Scripture.

The report begins by identifying the ‘heart’ of Resolution JUD-805 to be a desire for the Church of the Nazarene to secure the Christian Bible’s “rightful place in our life and theology.” The SSC then proceeds to confess commonality with this concern generally, roots the concern in Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition, and then goes on to argue that the present language of Article IV achieves this end sufficiently without need of editing or amending.

They then proceed to break down Article IV phrase-by-phrase. This methodology, in my opinion, produces a largely convoluted result which, in the end, avoids discussion of the principle concerns in the inerrancy debate in evangelicalism. I’ll do my best to illustrate. I’ll begin by direct quotation at the onset, since the language is too exact and dense to summarize adequately.

(a) Plenary, divine inspiration
First, the article clearly states the inspiration of Holy Scripture as ‘divine’ and ‘plenary’: that means that the whole Bible is inspired and that it is inspired, not just in the sense that a work of art may be said to be ‘inspired’, but by God. To say that the Bible as a whole is inspired is to say that we cannot take texts out of context and quote them arbitrarily as ‘the word of God.’ We have to understand biblical theology as a whole.

There is no question that Article IV places the Christian Bible in a unique and singular category of literature in the church. And the SSC confesses their belief that all of Christian Scripture is rightly to be understood as divine and inspired. However, what is not mentioned here is the most critical issue addressed by the question of inerrancy and raised by JUD-805: Inspired to what end? To confess that Scripture is uniquely authoritative and completely inspired is a hollow statement without a comment on inspiration’s telos.

The SSC will eventually discuss the telos of inspiration, but to not discuss that here at the onset leaves an impression of greater teleological openness than is actually allowed by Article IV. For instance, one could argue that the United States Constitution is ‘inspired’ to instruct a people as to a certain form of representative democracy. However, to say that is not to say that the Constitution will be helpful for baking chocolate chip cookies.

In my opinion, it is misleading to confess commonality of terms where no commonality of meaning exists. This language of plenary inspiration as it is used in Article IV does not address the question being raised by the Resolution under consideration. I suppose I’m particularly sensitive to the rhetorical slight-of-hand in which uncommon ground is re-interpreted as common ground and then used as a staging area for foundational refutation of a contrary perspective. So, I might be over-reading.

With that said, I do appreciate the SSC’s insistence in the above quotation that ‘plenary inspiration’ does assume a commitment to contextual and canonical exegesis. Other than a philosophical jab at the presumed ‘fundamentalist’ penchant for proof-texting, I’m not sure if the comment serves the current argument, very well. But, I do appreciate the sentiment, in any case.

The explanation continues, thusly:

Nor do we believe that divine inspiration cancels out the human authorship. Each book has a distinct style, vocabulary, and idiom reflecting the quite different human authors and contexts, whether of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Luke, Paul, or even writers unknown. We do not believe in a mechanical idea of inspiration in which their minds were blotted out and they became mere puppets. Rather their mental powers were heightened and their free wills guided by the subtle and sensitive Spirit of God. Whether they were gathering information to write a narrative, or editing what had previously been written, or were putting into writing speech directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, the result was a collection of documents fit for the purpose of revealing God’s will and way, God’s acts, and supremely God’s revelation in his Incarnate Son.

This distancing of the SSC from what has sometimes been called the ‘dictation theory’ of inspiration seems somewhat unnecessary. Again, the discussion of inerrancy for evangelical inerrantists rejected this position quite some time ago (at least since the 1970s). To associate inerrancy and the concerns of inerrantists with this theory is a bit like a Calvinist explaining that she is not a Wesleyan because she disagrees with Pelagius. But, since I suppose there may be some individuals in the Church of the Nazarene who are not quite clear on inerrancy, perhaps this clarification was simply meant to educate. In any case, it seems to have little relevance to the issue at hand.

What is most perplexing in this paragraph is actually my favorite clause: “. . . . the result was a collection of documents fit for the purpose of revealing God’s will and way, God’s acts, and supremely God’s revelation in his Incarnate Son.” I love this statement, but as soon as the SSC gives it, it takes it away. Why? Because in their later discussion of inerrancy, they will confine the inerrancy of Scripture, as the present language of Article IV does, to “inerrantly revealing the will of God in all things necessary to salvation.” At this point in the argument our view of inspiration looks quite broad, but it will soon be curtailed to such an extent that I am tempted to label the wonderful clause I just quoted as incompatible with the language of Article IV.

We continue…

We agree therefore with the Cape Town Commitment of the Third Lausanne Congress when they say in their confession of faith:
We receive the whole Bible as the Word of God, inspired by God’s Spirit, spoken and written through human authors. We submit to it as supremely and uniquely authoritative, governing our belief and behavior. We testify to the power of God’s Word to accomplish his purpose of salvation. We affirm that the whole Bible is the final written word of God, not surpassed by any further revelation, but we also rejoice that the Holy Spirit illumines the minds of God’s people so that the Bible continues to speak God’s truth in fresh ways to people in every culture.²
We strongly endorse the emphasis in this Cape Town Commitment that we love God’s Word because we love God, love his world, love the gospel, love the people of God, and love the mission of God.

I am a bit befuddled by the inclusion of this statement on Scripture. To my understanding the Third Lausanne Congress was a renewal of an older ecumenical evangelical ministry focused on world evangelism. Being ecumenical, the agenda seems to have been to write statements of faith that would be agreeable to a large cross-section of the evangelical landscape with the goal of articulating commonality for the purpose of working together to share the Gospel with unbelievers. Ecumenical statements of faith are intended to be less nuanced and more general, and it is no surprise that the SSC would agree with a statement meant to be agreeable to evangelicals generally.

The only rationale I can find myself for confessing agreement with this statement would be to say, “Hey, we’re in the mainstream. Our statement is consistent with an ecumenical statement written by an evangelical ministry associated with Billy Graham.” Maybe the assumption was that the supporters of this Resolution would be soothed by the SSCs sympathy with an international Graham-esque statement on Scripture? I don’t know. There’s no recommendation that the Church of the Nazarene adopt this statement in place of our own, nor does the SSC seem to be arguing that Article IV and this statement are interchangeable. Again, I’m confused. Perhaps there is a back-story here of which I am not aware. So, I will not continue to ruminate in ignorance.

The explanation continues… Oh, and let me opine at this point that the word inerrant should not have been considered separate from the qualifying clause ‘all things necessary to salvation’. The teasing apart of the two proves a bit misleading, to my reading.

(b) Inerrantly revealing the will of God
Secondly, Article IV clearly states that the Holy Scriptures reveal the will of God inerrantly. That means that what Holy Scripture tells us about God and his saving acts and purpose cannot be set aside by any merely human philosophy, metaphysics, or ethics. Human reason and culture are all fallen and therefore suspect when it comes to discerning the will of God, but we each may trust the word of God given to us in Holy Scripture as ‘a lamp to my feet and a light to my path’ (Psalm 119:105). Human reason and experience may guide us in many things, but when it comes to the things of God (which shapes all of life), they must bow to what he has revealed to us in the inspired Scriptures. This belief is what is usually known as the ‘infallibility’ of Scripture, that it ‘inerrantly reveals the will of God in all things necessary to salvation’ as distinct from absolute ‘inerrancy’ in every factual detail. This implies that, while the Holy Spirit guides us as we listen for the voice of God speaking to us through Scripture, no claims to private revelations of the truth of God which are additional to Scripture are acceptable.

Again, this paragraph explains the language, but the explanation given is historically problematic. Christian practice, even in the Church of the Nazarene, does not mesh with the confession that the language of inerrancy should simply be applied to God’s will. For instance, the creeds of the Church, to which the Church of the Nazarene confesses assent, articulate theological realities which are logically distinct from the ‘will of God’. What does the revelation of the Trinity, for instance, have to do specifically with the ‘will of God’? Does the Scripture then not inerrantly reveal God’s character or nature, only His will? Can or should God’s will even be logically isolated in a discussion of inspiration or inerrancy?

This language seems inconsistent with the shape, methodology, and assumptions involved in the practice of theology. The SSC had already confessed, “. . . . the result was a collection of documents fit for the purpose of revealing God’s will and way, God’s acts, and supremely God’s revelation in his Incarnate Son.” They have confessed there that the purpose of Scripture was more than the revelation of God’s will and way. They have also included God’s acts and God’s self-revelation in the Person of Jesus. But, the language of inerrancy, according to the committee here, only relates to the first (God’s will and way) and not to the second (God’s acts) or the third (God’s revelation in Jesus) necessarily.

Also, the insistence that the choice is between either “’inerrancy’ in every factual detail” or “inerrantly reveals the will of God in all things necessary to salvation” is a patently false claim. These are demonstrably not the only two options available with respect to inerrancy. Granted, the language of JUD-805 forced this juxtaposition, and, as I said at the onset, the fact that this was the language we were given to discuss is beyond frustrating. But still, integrity requires us to confess that the full conversation is much more nuanced. The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy offers another way of understanding the arena of inerrancy and the telos of inspiration, for instance. This way of arguing that says we either have to agree with a statement with which almost nobody of any biblical education agrees or we have to agree with the language of Article IV is quite misleading.

With that said, I do agree that even this way of construing inerrancy at least precludes private, new revelations of God’s will that would contradict or contravene the Scriptural witnesses. Again, this seems more like a comment meant to pacify an adversary than it does to address the issue at hand, but, again, I am ignorant of the deliberations which led to the inclusion of this observation. Whatever the reason, I appreciate it.

Continuing…

This does not imply however that we are infallible in our interpretation of the Bible. Some Christians think that they are merely stating what the Bible says, but that is naïve. Whether we like it or not, every Christian is actually engaged in interpreting the Bible. Accordingly, we must interpret each word in its sentence, each sentence in its paragraph, each paragraph within the argument of the book as a whole, and each biblical book within the Scriptures as a whole. We interpret the New Testament against the background of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament and particularly as progressive revelation leads up to the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ. We follow the guidance of the ancient creeds of the Church as we interpret the Scriptures together. All of this calls not only for careful scholarship, but also for dependence on the Holy Spirit. We expect all preachers and teachers particularly to be committed to the interpretation of the Scriptures given in the ancient creeds and the Articles of Faith, but on other matters we affirm freedom of interpretation provided it is in a spirit of loyalty to the Church. As we interpret Scripture together within the fellowship of the Church, we look to the Holy Spirit to guide us in the future into ‘the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect’ (Romans 12:2).

I’m in agreement with these statements. There’s not much to which to object in this paragraph. In some ways it is covering ground already covered earlier. However, there is a polemical sense here about which I hesitate to speculate. Perhaps what is being implied is that inerrancy is not a way to exclude readings or interpretations with which we don’t agree. True enough. It’s not a sufficient reason to leave the language of Article IV untouched, in my opinion, but perhaps it needed to be said.

The article continues.

(c) All things necessary to our salvation
Thirdly, that brings us to the point that Article IV makes clear the purpose of Holy Scripture: that it reveals the will of God “…in all things necessary to our salvation…” John Wesley was very clear that the purpose of being a person ‘of one book’ was to find ‘the way to heaven.’

I’m not sure that this sentence summary of Wesley’s view of Scripture is quite adequate. Did Wesley really make Scripture entirely about getting to heaven? This doesn’t seem consistent with his preaching, practice, or theological methodology. I can’t dispute whether he ever said this, I suppose. Perhaps he did. But, if he truly meant what this implies, I’d have to say that Wesley would seem to be inconsistent with the practice of theology in the church going back to the very beginning. Theological study of Scripture has demonstrably not always been interested primarily in getting to heaven. If this is faithful to Wesley, I’m not sure as Wesleyans we should be parading it about.

The Bible is not to be treated as an almanac or a magic book or a text book of history or science. Its truth is expressed in the thought forms of the ancient world, in their culture, context, geography, cosmology, and language. But on the other hand, God’s action in the history of Israel and supremely in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was ‘necessary to our salvation.’ Accordingly, it is part of our faith that the Bible is the God-given account of God’s action in space-time history and therefore an integral part of God’s revelation in history and uniquely in the Lord Jesus Christ. And while science progresses by studying ‘the book of nature’ rather than by biblical study, nonetheless modern science arose in a Christian culture out of Christian convictions, and ultimately we believe that everything we know through science will be seen to be more than compatible with all that has been revealed to us through Holy Scripture.

I’m pleased with the remainder of this paragraph. SSC has attempted, among other things, to insist that “inerrantly revealing the will of God in all things necessary to salvation” does not preclude a belief in the historicity of the Biblical narratives on principle. If an event is seen as ‘necessary to salvation’ then it follows that said event must have occurred, and therefore that Scripture must be inerrant in its revelation.

The principle may be somewhat sound, but I suspect that the originators of Resolution JUD-805 were speaking to pragmatics. Practically speaking, the language of Article IV does not require Nazarenes to believe that “it is part of our faith that the Bible is the God-given account of God’s action in space-time history and therefore an integral part of God’s revelation in history and uniquely in the Lord Jesus Christ.” This may be an adequate expression of the ‘interpretation’ of Article IV being proffered by the SSC, but it is not an interpretation necessitated by the Article.

In my opinion, the SSC should have been a bit more transparent and admitted that the language of Article IV does not preclude the belief in the historicity of the narratives of Scripture, nor does it preclude the belief that all of Scriptural revelation is necessary for salvation. But, Article IV does not necessitate these confessions either, and that’s the rub, I would imagine, for supporters of JUD-805. The issue is not whether one can believe that Abraham, for instance, was a real, historical person which Genesis sufficiently describes and be a Nazarene. The issue is whether one has to believe these things to be a Nazarene. The SSC has said, “We believe it,” and left the question of the necessity of such belief unaddressed.

In the end what is ‘necessary for salvation’ is a matter of interpretation, and so Article IV allows for some room to distance ourselves from the theological interpretations of Scripture. Of course, it doesn’t require us to do so, but it doesn’t prevent us from doing it either. I wish that issue had at least been addressed.

Alright, continuing…

Faith in the word of the gospel of salvation also implies obedience to the law of God. To live intentionally violating the law of God as interpreted by Jesus and the apostles is the antinomian denial of the faith. Christian ethics are formulated as the Church interprets Holy Scripture guided by the Holy Spirit and taking note of the wisdom of the Church through the ages.

I agree that Article IV safeguards the role of Scripture in soteriology and Christian ethics to a much greater degree than it does the role of Scripture in the development of theology or philosophy or metaphysics, etc. Christian soteriology and ethics seem securely rooted in the Scriptures by Article IV, particularly as they have been articulated in the Gospels. But, the issue being raised by Resolution JUD-805 was much larger than this. Perhaps meaningful engagement with the larger concerns was just impractical at this stage of the process.

And continuing…

(d) What is not from Holy Scripture cannot be a doctrine of the Church
Fourthly, the final compound clause of Article IV is perhaps the strongest of all. Its wording derives (via Wesley’s Twenty-five Articles) from Article VI of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man [sic], that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite necessary to salvation.
This asserts one of the cardinal principles of the Reformation, the sola scriptura, that Holy Scripture is the only source of Christian doctrine. It says that only what is read in Scripture or proved from Scripture is to be required as an article of faith or is necessary to salvation. Of course, as Wesleyans we know (as do the other major theological traditions in the one Church) that Scripture has to be interpreted. We interpret Scripture, guided by the traditions of the Church, in the light of our experience as the people of God, and using sanctified reason. But according to this sentence none of these can be in itself the source or basis for Christian doctrine, and as we look at the other Nazarene Articles of Faith, we see that this is in fact true. They are all derived from Scripture. Christian tradition helps us today to interpret Scripture, and human reason and experience are engaged in this interpretation and in articulating our doctrines. Reason and experience have shaped the way these Articles of Faith were formed and they still shape the way we express our doctrines and they may even corroborate them. But every doctrine we profess together as a denomination in our Articles of Faith is in fact based upon and derived from Holy Scripture.

Again, this phrase of Article IV is problematic, not in and of itself, but because of its context. In the quotation from the Articles of Religion, in contemporary usage anyway, the confession reads that a person cannot be required to believe a doctrine that cannot be rooted or demonstrated somehow in Scripture in order to be saved. Thankfully, the phraseology of Article IV for us is a bit less overt in that respect, but given the overall context of the statement, we arrive at virtually the same end.

I am pleased and agree with the inclusion of the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral and the reminder that interpreting Scripture is a multi-faceted discipline and involves much more than just ‘reading’ the words of Scripture uncritically. But again, the more fundamental aspects of the issue of ‘protections against heterodoxy’ being raised by JUD-805 have barely been addressed. It would appear that the only safeguards that Article IV provides Scripture relate specifically to its capacity to support personal (or corporate) salvation and practical Christian ethics. This seems to be precisely the difficulty that JUD-805 was written to correct (however poorly), and the ultimate response of the SSC is to refuse to engage with that concern in any meaningful way.

The rest of the treatise is a review and argument against what is presented as a Calvinist perspective on Scripture associated with the language ‘inerrant throughout’. This is, in many ways, a straw person argument, since I am unaware of any inerrantists with terminal degrees writing in mainstream evangelicalism who would subscribe to the concept of complete factual inerrancy as it has been described in this treatise. It’s easy to dismantle an untenable and grossly exaggerated position, and that has been done quite expertly in what follows.

Again, I recognize that the language of JUD-805 precipitated this trajectory because it did in fact include the language ‘inerrant throughout’. However, even that language could have been interpreted generously as inerrancy in all that Scripture contends, or intends, or something like that, and not simply as a synonym of complete factual inerrancy. This could have been an opportunity to bring nuance to the conversation in a public forum. The recommendation from the committee could have included a counter-proposal, or continued dialogue about the real and meaningful concerns implied by this resolution. Sadly, it simply did not turn out that way.

To the final resolution that these sorts of debates be referred to the Board of General Superintendents with a body of theologians in advance of a General Assembly and from which resolutions for changes would be made is reasonable, in my view. It should be noted, however, that according to the established procedures of Robert’s Rules of Order that we follow the real power in the shaping of the doctrinal stands of the Church of the Nazarene would be fundamentally shifted from the General Assembly to this advisory committee.

I want to conclude with my own principle concerns regarding Article IV, and it seems best to begin by quoting the Article here, in full.

4. We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith.
(Luke 24:44-47; John 10:35; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

My concerns with this language are these: (1) Article IV depicts the nearly 1,500 year history of Israel and the massive cultural and generational undertaking of the writing, editing, and re-working of the Tanakh, as it finds its final expression in the Apostolic testimony of the New Testament, to be little more than a long treatise intended only to tell later believers in Jesus how to escape death and how to live godly lives. (2) Article IV is excessively anthropocentric in that it relegates Scripture to speaking sufficiently only with respect to personal and corporate salvation. (3) Our deliberations regarding the language we want to use to confess our dependence on Scripture have traded nuance for utility, in my opinion. In my estimation, our confession of what Scripture is should have little to nothing to do with the kinds of debates it engenders or the details it forces us to consider. Whatever the difficulties it causes us, our confession with respect to Scripture should be reflective of the Scripture’s role in the history of the Church, with particular attention to the way it was utilized in the development of the early creeds, and it should be reflective of Scripture’s claims about itself. These confessions will be complicating, and sometimes impractical, but such is the theological history of the people of faith.

In our article on Scripture, the Church of the Nazarene has made the telos of inspiration and the long history of the Jewish people and the development of Biblical literature a means to a single end—i.e., my, or our, salvation. Really? Is that what we want to say? The utility of Scripture and the authority of Scripture relates only to eternal life? The Scriptures do not inerrantly reveal the character or nature of God? The Scriptures do not inerrantly give shape to a metaphysic? The Scriptures do not provide understandings of history and of the universe that, though not technically necessary for salvation, expand the scope and capacity of human reason and imagination? This is really a book only guaranteed to be effective in soteriology and ethics? I don’t think this language adequately reflects the nature of the sufficiency of Scripture in the Church.

In conclusion, I’ll provide an example that I think summarizes the core of the situation that we face as a denomination. And, in my opinion and with deepest respect for the members of the SSC, far from being an irrelevant diversion in the church, this issue that has been raised by the inerrantist debate is critical to the trajectory we set for upcoming generations. I was engaged in an online discussion of the story of Uzzah the priest in the books of Samuel. Many on the discussion thread were wrestling with the ‘interpretation’ offered by the prophetic tradition of Israel that God had struck Uzzah down in response to his attempt to steady the Ark of the Covenant with his hand. Here is a brief exchange I had with a retired Nazarene minister:

Minister:

This story makes me very glad that we believe that the scriptures are inerrant in things pertaining to salvation! At that time they attributed EVERYTHING to God’s direct hand. We don’t. At least I don’t. Jesus is the final revelation of God. He would never have struck the man dead for trying to help. Personally, I think the poor man probably had a heart attack, perhaps at the thought of touching The Sacred.

Me:

Are you saying that from your perspective the best approach to the story of Uzzah is to reject the prophet’s assumption that God struck him down, and chalk the story up to a misunderstanding based on faulty premises?

Minister:

Yes I do. It had too many problems in its portrayal of God. If we believe that God looks on the heart and also that He loves us without measure, I would rather leave this to a misinterpretation of a tragic incident.

Whatever we want to say about the language of inerrancy, however inadequate that language may be, however contemporary and recent much of this debate is, is this really the space we want to delineate for the practice of theology in the Church of the Nazarene? I am aware that some early hermeneutical models which appreciated the multi-faceted nature of Scripture and endorsed various levels or dimensions of a given text could be seen as endorsing a creative end-run around certain surface readings. But, it seems to me that flat out dismissal of the theological interpretation of the prophetic tradition of Israel is a very recent development in Scriptural hermeneutics.

I agree that ‘inerrancy throughout’ would have been a poor way to address this fundamental concern and inadequate to the task of expanding the scope and authority of Scripture beyond the telos of soteriology and ethics. But, I do believe we need to broaden the scope of our understanding of the authority of Scripture in the church before the Scriptures become nothing more to our younger generations than a ‘how to’ guide to salvation and ethical living. I think we all recognize with the church throughout history that the Scriptures, whatever they are, are more than that. Perhaps we should discuss how to articulate that appreciation in our article on Scripture.

It’s easy, of course, to criticize, and much more difficult to make a positive contribution. So, I will conclude by putting myself at risk and providing an articulation of the authority of Scripture in the church that I believe delineates a broader and more historically defensible space in which to explore theology as Christians:

The Christian faith is necessarily, intimately, and indelibly rooted in the God-authorized, God-breathed testimony of the prophetic tradition of the people of Israel and the apostolic witness of Jesus, the Messiah, as their testimonies have been preserved in the 66 canonical books of the Christian Bible.

Furthermore, all that can be known about the one, true God with certainty is to be discovered only through this testimony (e.g., God’s nature, intention, will, activity in history, purpose, etc.).

Consequently, though the presumptions of the writers and/or editors of Christian Scripture were culturally conditioned and may be demonstrated to be inadequate or even in error, the contentions of the writers and/or editors of Scripture are infallible and inerrant as they have been preserved by the believing community in their final canonical form.

Response to the Report of the Scripture Study Committee – 2013 – J T Johnson Download

The Fast That God Requires

If we wish to humble ourselves and pray and seek the face of the Lord in these days, the following is the fast that God would require of us.

To those with positions and power:

Return any money that you received to pervert justice or fairness. Do not take more than is due. Do your work with full diligence, earning your pay. And treat those under your care with fairness, full of mercy. Do not deprive a weak person of justice, and do not side with the powerful when they are in the wrong.

To those with positions and no power:

Advocate to your overseers for the fair treatment and justice of those under your care or responsibility. Hold your overseers accountable to the laws and ethics of the land. Exercise your own responsibilities with full diligence and with honesty and integrity.

To those with power but no position:

If you have gained your power by wicked practices, repent and find the path of righteousness. If you have acquired wealth or influence by ways offensive to God, then return what you have seized, and seek God for a new heart and a new path in life. If you influence others by fear, intimidation, or violence, repent and humble yourself. For a contrite heart and humble spirit God will honor, but God stands opposed to the proud.

To those with no power and no position:

Honor your managers and overseers, and speak no evil of those for whom you work. Serve diligently and do all your work as though you were working for God Himself and not for human beings. Do your work with integrity, knowing that your God will see what is done in secret and will honor you when He comes in glory.

Do not defraud your neighbor or speak ill of your rival. For God will not hear the prayer of one who oppresses another for selfish gain.

To All Regardless of Position or Power:

Love your neighbors, even your enemies, and do not hate those who hate you.

Do not intentionally lust after one to whom you are not married, and keep the marriage bed pure. As God created Eve for Adam and Adam for Eve, so the marriage bed is for the reunification of male and female into one flesh. Do not forsake your covenant of love by divorcing your spouse.

Speak truthfully to one another at all times. Do not reserve the truth for special occasions, but speak with integrity in all your dealings.

Do not retaliate when you are disrespected, and go further in hospitality and generosity than any law requires. Be generous with your excess and share with those who are in want.

Forgive those who sin against you and pray for those who persecute you. Do not put yourself in the place of God by condemning another person. Hold each other accountable to what God has taught us, but do not condemn. For if you judge beyond the Law of God, God will increase the measure of your judgement. When a person is judged, do not throw him or her to the dogs, but treat them with dignity and compassion.

Do only to others that which you desire to be done to you. For God despises the hypocrite.

Extend no hand of fellowship to those who speak falsely in the Name of God, no matter the benefit they provide you.

If this fast is declared from the greatest to the least across the land, God will hear. If not, judgment is coming.

Reflecting on Justice

A few years ago I had the privilege of reading Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. To say that the book was challenging is to put the matter mildly. I felt as though I had been wrecked theologically, emotionally, and behaviorally in only the first third of the book.

For the purposes of this blog, I wanted to focus on a section from Chapter 3 of The Crucifixion, “The Question of Justice.”

The reign of Sin and Death over the kosmos is inseparable from the question we are asking in this book: Why did God in three persons agree on such a peculiarly gruesome manner of death for the second person? What does the method itself tell us about the meaning of the death? There is no quick and easy answer to that question. The biblical account offers hints and suggestions rather than worked-out solutions.
Pushing this train of thought to its most radical application, however, we arrive at a point that is all too rarely acknowledged. In the final analysis, the crucifixion of Christ for the sin of the world reveals that it is not only the victims of oppression and injustice who are in need of God’s deliverance, but also the victimizers. Each of us is capable, under certain circumstances, of being a victimizer. Václav Havel, president first of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic, was imprisoned several times for his dissident activities under the Communist regime, the longest stretch being from 1979 to 1983. He wrote extensively about life in the Stalinist galaxy. Here is one of his reflections: “The line [between good and evil] did not run clearly between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ but through each person. No one was simply a victim; everyone was in some measure co-responsible. . . .Many people were on both sides.”
Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

This is a challenging passage, and it is situated in a context in which Rutledge is contending for the idea that the cross is about more than forgiveness. For Rutledge the cross is also about justice, and it is a justice for and against all of us.

Recent events in our culture have reminded me again how easy it is to draw our enemies very flatly. As a Christian, I find the convictions of those who believe that one race or another is superior to any other to be a flat out rejection of the Gospel of Jesus. In the context of the Scriptures, the specially chosen people group were the Hebrew descendants of Abraham, and their election, as Romans 9 makes fairly clear, had nothing to do with them and everything to do with God’s purpose in election—that is, the deliverance of all nations of the earth from the tyranny of Sin and Death. For this reason, it is easy for me to paint those who judge others by superficialities like skin color as an uncomplicated and thoroughly corrupted enemy.

However, what Havel has suggested to the world is that at the root of the gravest of deceptions and at the foundation of the worst horrors of humanity’s cultural history is the conviction that some of us are thoroughly on the side of the angels, while others are entirely demonic. This de-humanizing of our adversaries and even our enemies is a useful tool of hate and of war because it paints those with whom we disagree as somehow non-human, as somehow less deserving of basic human considerations.

This very human tendency toward de-humanization was manipulated to devastating effect by the Nazi leadership in World War II Germany. In that context the Jewish people were cast as sub-human demons, devoid of any human complication. And ironically, in many of the responses to the systemic evils within our own culture we are witnessing, even among our own Christian brothers and sisters who rightly recognize the abominableness of the principalities and powers that permeate the world, the rush to flatten, to demonize, and to dehumanize those with whom we disagree seems at times as pernicious as the propagandizing of World War II Germany.

The line [between good and evil] did not run clearly between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ but through each person. No one was simply a victim; everyone was in some measure co-responsible. . . .Many were on both sides.
Václav Havel

Perhaps these sorts of realizations lie at the heart of Jesus’ instructions to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.” Of course we must speak and stand against evil, and our outrage against tyranny and poverty and racial superiority and corruption is godly and Christlike, in my view. But, evil is never as simple as the totality of an individual. Evil is a power in which each of us participates and which runs through the heart of each of us. Our moral outrage can become as much a tool of the tyrannical powers of Sin and Death as our hate and self-centeredness. In fact, there may be no more infectious type of evil than the evil done in the name of justice.

However criminals are prosecuted and unholy philosophies and ideas are countered and adjudicated, we must never lose sight of the fact that the knowledge of good and evil runs through every human heart, and our enemies are never any less human or deserving of human dignity than our friends and loved ones. Perhaps this is the hardest of the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles to accept. It is easier to oppose people than to oppose Sin and Death as powers that run through the middle of all of us. Individual people can be tortured, defamed, humiliated, and killed. But Sin and Death survive every human life, and continue to hold even those who oppose them in sway long after human justice is done.

For Rutledge, and increasingly for me, this is part of why Jesus not only died, but was crucified. In His manner of death He exposes what lies within even the righteous justice of humanity. Jesus was condemned by the religious leaders of His culture for blasphemy, and it was in how we executed this one blasphemer that who we really are has been revealed. Jesus on the cross is an indictment not only of human sin, but of the corrupting influence of justice; of the fear that causes us to torture and dehumanize those deemed too evil to be treated as human, as beings made in the image of God. The best of intentions crucified Jesus, and the deepest of zeal for right and rightness played out on His flesh and Person. Truly the line between good and evil does not run between us and them, but through each of us.

Let the people of God beware.

~ J. Thomas

Creation and the Church

~ J. Thomas Johnson ~

Today I begin by reflecting on a section of the foreword to Dr. Jordan Peterson’s best-selling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The foreword was written by Dr. Norman Doidge.

Rules? More rules? Really? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all?
People don’t clamour for rules, even in the Bible…as when Moses comes down the mountain, after a long absence, bearing the tablets inscribed with ten commandments, and finds the children of Israel in revelry. They’d been Pharaoh’s slaves and subject to his tyrannical regulations for four hundred years, and after that Moses subjected them to the harsh desert wilderness for another forty years, to purify them of their slavishness. Now, free at last, they are unbridled, and have lost all control as they dance wildly around an idol, a golden calf, displaying all manner of corporeal corruption.
“I’ve got some good news…and I’ve got some bad news,” the lawgiver yells to them. “Which do you want first?”
“The good news!” the hedonists reply.
“I got Him from fifteen commandments down to ten!”
“Hallelujah!” cries the unruly crowd. “And the bad?”
“Adultery is still in.”
So, rules there will be—but, please, not too many. We are ambivalent about rules, even when we know they are good for us. If we are spiritual souls, if we have character, rules seem restrictive, an affront to our sense of agency and our pride in working out our own lives. Why should we be judged according to another’s rule?
And judged we are. After all, God didn’t give Moses “The Ten Suggestions,” he gave Commandments; and if I’m a free agent, my first reaction to a command might just be that nobody, not even God, tells me what to do, even if it’s good for me. But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there is nothing freeing about that.
Dr. Norman Doidge, foreword to 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Dr. Jordan Peterson (Random House Canada, January 23, 2018).

Individualism teaches us to take responsibility for our own lives, not to blame people or circumstances for our predicament, to evaluate the situation, to take decisive action, and then to take the long road of responsibility and hard work toward the ends on which we have set our eyes. And to go farther, individualism in the church encourages us to seek a personal relationship with God for which we are personally responsible, irrespective of our culture or our particular community or our particular circumstances. Each one must deny himself or herself, take up her or his cross, and follow Jesus.

This mentality has proven beneficial in many ways throughout history. And if you meet such a person, you likely have found a peace in being in his or her presence…at least initially. But there is a dark side to individualism, particularly when each person feels the responsibility to become a law unto themselves. When this occurs other people become subhuman, serving either as obstacles or as tools to them.

There is no doubt that law and structure inhibits freedom to a degree, but the Scriptures teach us that structure and law actually create life precisely by curtailing freedom. Unbridled freedom, in the Scriptures, is called tohu and bohu—formlessness and emptiness. It was the state of the universe when God began to create. No boundaries, no rules, no laws, no structures, no life. Everything was everything. Everything was nothing. This is natural and free, and it is, at the same time, darkness and death.

God interrupted this unbridled freedom by speaking—by imposing law and structure on the chaos. And as God speaks, creation takes shape. With each new command of God, new structures are created and new possibilities are unleashed. Light is created and separated from darkness. Imagine if God had not imposed that on us? The chaotic waters are separated and caged so that land and atmosphere can be separated out. Then living things are organized and unleashed, and cosmic entities are placed in proper balance. Finally, God commands humanity to rise from the dust of creation and breathes life into us after God’s own life.

Provided these structures are maintained, life will thrive. If these structures are eroded, the chaos will return. And yet, throughout history the people of the earth have pursued life on the other side of God’s boundaries.

That’s what happened to Israel. So, in due time God sent the prophet Jeremiah to them. Through Jeremiah, God evaluated the state of Israel. He gave them His verdict in Jeremiah 4:19-28:

¹⁹My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. ²⁰Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtain in a moment.
²¹How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? ²²For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.
²³I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. ²⁴I looked to the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. ²⁵I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. ²⁶I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
²⁷For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. ²⁸Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.
Jeremiah 4:19-28, NRSV.

How had this happened to Israel, to creation itself? Sin–the desire of humanity to become a law unto themselves, to seek life on the other side of God’s tents and curtains. And creation followed. Life depends on God’s order, on God’s structure, on God’s law. We see the necessity of this orderliness in nature, but we so often fail to see its utility in culture or in our individual choices.

It’s easy to curse the wind when it exceeds the speeds our structures can withstand, and it’s easy to wail against the waters when they go where we did not prepare for them to go. Chaos is held back by structure, and destruction ensues when chaos breaks its bonds.

The same is true in human life. In fact, the Scriptures indicate that the two are not to be separated from each other—creation and human life. And people of faith—true faith—recognize this truth. The church in Philippi began quite organically, which is to say, naturally. Paul spoke to some who were already following the God of Israel, and he told them about Jesus. One believed and followed. Then, a demon-possessed girl harassed Paul, so he set her free in the name of Jesus. This act landed him in prison. While he was in prison, there was an earthquake, but Paul did not take the opportunity afforded him to escape his bonds. This decision saved the life of his jailor, which then gave Paul another opportunity to share the story of Jesus. And the jailer, too, believed. Seems very spontaneous and free, doesn’t it? Very little planning or deliberateness.

Yet, once these folks followed Jesus and began to grow as a community of faith, they began to organize themselves. By the time Paul wrote the letter preserved in the Christian Bible, he addressed not only the believers generally, but also two sets of leaders. The first he called overseers (episkopoi), and the second he called deacons (deaconoi – servants). Already, the church in Philippi had begun to create an organizational structure.

During my time in vocational ministry, I have had quite a number of Christians tell me that structure, rules, policies, and such inhibit ministry—red tape, they often call it…sometimes hoops or rigamarole. That’s a belief of the worldly. Of course, things can get out of hand, as we saw with the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. Jesus called them blind guides who “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” That, of course, was a less a comment on structure and more a comment on the values that informed it. But, it’s an important reminder. The structure must be rooted in the Words God has spoken.

Even so, all of life depends on law, on structure, on order. Those who seek to be a law unto themselves, to be trusted to create and tear down boundaries unilaterally, are not following the God of Christian Scripture. Those impulses are of the flesh and of the devil. This is a spirit wishing to be free of law and oversight and accountability. At the bottom such an impulse wishes to be free of any authority outside of oneself—free even of God.

But, the Philippians demonstrated their faithfulness to Christ, not only by what they professed to believe, by in how those beliefs had begun to structure their life together. They had tasked some within their community with keeping watch over the people of God, and they had tasked others with serving the needs of the kingdom in an organized fashion. These are good impulses.

Their structures weren’t perfect, of course, as the rest of the letter makes clear. But, this desire to organize is a reflection of the God they worshipped. As Paul reminded the Corinthians (a group of churches much less inclined to order and structure than the Philippians) in 1 Corinthians 14:26-33:

²⁶What should be done then my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation! Let all things be done for building up. ²⁷If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. ²⁸But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. ²⁹Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. ³⁰If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. ³¹For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged. ³²And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, ³³for God is not a God of disorder, but of peace.
1 Corinthians 14:26-33, NRSV.

We are living in a time in which the voice of chaos is gaining ascendance. Remember, always, people of God, that our God is a God of order. The people of God have always organized their communal life. Just as the life of creation depends on the laws of nature, so the life of Christian community depends on Christian structures. Of course, most churches today have taken their organizational cues from culture, which is a risky game to play. But, at its core organization is godly, both in nature and in community.

And, finally, this is true in our personal lives, as well. The Scriptures tell us that the very definition of sin is living as though there are no rules outside of ourselves—in other words, lawlessness. The Apostle John explains this in 1 John 3:4-10.

⁴Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. ⁵You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. ⁶No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. ⁷Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. ⁹Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. ¹⁰The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.
1 John 3:4-10, NRSV.

We don’t like rules, unless we make them. This is sin. It is what sin is. This is the way of the devil. “Did God really say that you couldn’t eat of that tree? Oh, come on, you won’t die. Make up your own mind. You’re smart; you’ve got the spirit of God breathed into you; you’re wise, wiser than these dummies anyway. You don’t need laws or leaders. You can lead yourself.” Satan…every time.

This spirit is being revealed in these days, both in the world and in the church. And some of us are being shamed because we follow rules, because we embrace structure, because we refuse to be a law unto ourselves. Of course, Paul reminded the Philippians in verse one of the letter he wrote to them that they were (and we are) first and foremost slaves of Jesus. So, we don’t submit to requirements that are disloyal to Him. But, short of that, let me encourage us: we are of God. Our accusers, in this instance, are not.

In fact, this desire to be a law unto oneself is explained by Paul as a sign that a society is nearing its end. This is what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:1-5:

¹You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. ²For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³inhuman, implacable, slanderous, profligates, brutes, haters of good, ⁴treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵holding to the outward form of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid them!
2 Timothy 3:1-5, NRSV.

Avoid those who tell you that they don’t need rules and regulations—that law and structure and organization and accountability and orderliness are inhibiting to life. That is the enemy talking. The opposite is true. Avoid those who want to be a law unto themselves and refuse to submit to anything but their own scruples and discernment. They are not of God.

The people of God seek accountability, community discernment, and laws and authority outside of themselves. The people of God seek to make it easy to govern us, so long as we are not led into disobedience to Jesus. The people of God are not kings, nor do we wish to be such. We are slaves of Jesus, servants of each other, and sent to the world.

We seek to respect others. We do not seek respect from others. We forgive those who sin against us. We do not demand forgiveness from others. We repent of our own sins. We do not demand that others repent. We seek to live within structures and boundaries in the world, in our communities, and in our lives. We recognize that life and freedom depends on law and boundaries.

To those who have ears to hear, let them hear. Do not become discouraged, people of God. Your labor in the Lord will be richly rewarded.

Reflecting on the Voice of God

~ J. Thomas Johnson ~

I am an academically-minded person who has been raised in a pietistic tradition. Oftentimes I have found these two aspects of my religious identity to be mutually complementary. However, at other times they have caused some conflict for me. Perhaps nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in my longing to hear God’s voice in my own life and experience.

Most of my training in exegesis and hermeneutics–that is, the tools, assumptions, and methods of biblical investigation and interpretation–came from two schools rooted firmly in what is often called the ‘theologically conservative evangelical tradition’—Gordon College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In those contexts I came to appreciate the distinction traditional Christianity has drawn between the way God spoke to and through the prophets and apostles who wrote and edited the canonical Christian Scriptures and the ways in which God speaks to us today. In these contexts, at least as I experienced them, it is deemed most appropriate to seek to hear God’s voice by a living engagement with Christian Scripture. In many ways I have found these exhortations persuasive.

However, my primary experience of Christian formation and community has been in the more pietistic tradition of the Church of the Nazarene, which has been shaped in fundamental ways by the American Holiness Movement of the 19^th century. Whereas my formal education encouraged me to seek God’s voice through a disciplined study of the canonical Christian Scriptures, my pietistic upbringing also encouraged me to be suspicious of the sterilizing of God and His contemporary accessibility and activity that I was warned often occurred in the ivory towers of academia. As a pietist, I am convinced that God still speaks, and I long to hear God’s personal voice speaking personally to me in the intimacy of a growing relationship with the Creator of all things. As I have come to understand my own upbringing, the pietist in me is inclined to believe that the canonical Scriptures create space for God to speak, but the voice of God is more immediate, more immanent, and more personal than the voices preserved in the written Word of God. In many ways I have found these commendations to be persuasive, as well.

So, I find myself bearing the strange, and sometimes lonely, conviction that the Scriptures are inerrant (without error) in all that the writers of Scripture intended to contend for or against while at the same time being convinced that God did not stop interacting personally with His people after the death of the last of the Apostolic witnesses–that is, the writers of the New Testament. Consequently, and perhaps paradoxically, I remain convinced that God speaks to us, and yet, I am also convinced that the only place we can be certain we have heard God’s voice is in living engagement with the canonical Christian Scriptures. These are the tensions out of which I read Scripture, and before I proceed to reflect on the ‘voice of God’ today, I thought it best to place these assumptions on the table, so to speak.

So with these preliminaries before us, I want to begin to reflect on a story preserved in chapter 13 of the First Testament book of 1 Kings that has long perplexed me. After the death of King Solomon, his son Rehoboam became king over Israel. However, because of Solomon’s idolatry in the latter years of his life, God had covenanted to take the larger part of the tribes of Israel and give them to another, hence dividing the one nation of Israel into two. The man God chose to govern the northern kingdom of Israel was Jeroboam, son of Nabat.

Upon his coronation, Jeroboam began to move away from the instructions of the Law of Moses (Torah) almost immediately, and his motivations seem to have been primarily political. Rehoboam had retained kingship over the tribe of Judah, and it was in the tribe of Judah that the Temple of the Lord was located. Therefore, every time Jeroboam’s subjects were to celebrate the most important festivals of the yearly calendar, every time they were to make sacrifices for sin, every time they were to gather together to praise and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a community, they would have had to enter into the jurisdiction of Rehoboam.

Jeroboam was a wise ruler. He realized that this reality could eventually destabilize his rule. So, his solution was to create alternative worship centers within his own borders. He placed one in the far south of his territory, in Bethel, and one in the far north, in Dan. He then instructed his subjects to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in these locations in place of Jerusalem.

Jeroboam faced another dilemma. The only family authorized to serve as priests were the descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron, and the only tribe authorized to serve at the temple was the tribe of Levi. It would seem that Levi was remaining faithful to the Law of Moses and serving in the temple in Jerusalem (or, at least, Jeroboam believed they would remain faithful). So, Jeroboam moved even further from the Torah of Moses by ‘ordaining’ folks to be priests in his new worship centers who were neither Levites nor descendants of the Levitical family of Aaron.

In response to these quite politically pragmatic decisions, which went on to plague the northern kingdom of Israel throughout its ensuing history, the Lord sent a prophet from the tribe of Judah to prophesy against the worship center in Bethel. 1 Kings 13 preserves his encounter with Jeroboam.

While Jeroboam was standing by the altar to offer incense, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel ²and proclaimed against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: ‘A son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who offer incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’ ” ³He gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign that the Lord has spoken: ‘The altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out.’ ” ⁴When the king heard what the man of God cried out against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, “Seize him!” But the hand that he stretched out against him withered so that he could not draw it back to himself. ⁵The altar also was torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 1 Ki 13:1–5.

In response to this, Jeroboam entreated the prophet to pray for his healing, which the prophet proceeded to do. And, after being healed, Jeroboam asked the prophet to stay and eat with him. Then the prophet revealed another message he had received from the Lord:

⁸But the man of God said to the king, “If you give me half your kingdom, I will not go in with you; nor will I eat food or drink water in this place. ⁹For thus I was commanded by the word of the Lord: You shall not eat food, or drink water, or return by the way that you came.”
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 1 Ki 13:8–9.

Then the prophet began his journey home, and this is where the story has gotten perplexing for me. On his way home, the prophet ran into what the text calls ‘an old prophet’, who would prove to be a false prophet. He told the prophet from Judah that he received a word from the Lord instructing them to eat together. The prophet from Judah believed him, ate with him, and, as a consequence of his disobedience to the actual word of the Lord, got mauled and killed by a lion. Yeah, that’s right.

At least three questions arise from this narrative for me: (1) How did the prophet from Judah receive the word of the Lord that led him to Bethel? (2) How was the prophet from Judah so easily deceived by a false prophet? (3) Why was the consequence for his gullibility so severe? I’m sure there are more questions that might be asked, but I want to think a bit about these three queries in the context of what it meant then and what it means now to hear the voice of the Lord.

I listened to a message this week by Nazarene evangelist Dan Bohi entitled “The Voice of the Lord.” Bohi addressed this passage specifically, and one of the things he seems to have assumed is that the prophet from Judah discerned the voice of the Lord in roughly the same way any of us would, perhaps as a sense or a feeling or a voice or an impression that comes to us personally in some way.

However, I think the details of the text suggest that prophets in these days might have been receiving a more direct kind of communication. When the false prophet reported the means by which he received his message from God, he claimed in 13:18 that an angel spoke to him. Angels (or messengers) from God are commonly referenced in the First Testament, and in every instance of direct communication with humans of which I am aware, the messenger always appeared to be a person and spoke real words into the real world. This experience is so common in the First Testament that both the writer of Hebrews (Heb. 2:2) and the Apostle Paul could maintain that the old covenant was given by angels.

¹⁹Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained through angels by a mediator.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Ga 3:19.

In fact, in every instance of the First Testament that I can recall, when God spoke to a person, He spoke either through a real, tangible messenger, by direct encounter with God, or by a repeated dream confirmed by a specified, alternate interpreter. What I’m saying essentially is that the First Testament seems to assume that the voice of the Lord was not a deeply subjective type of communication that was to be personally and individually discerned.

And it would seem that this is what tripped up the prophet from Judah in this story. The older prophet claimed to have had such an encounter, and the text implies, to my reading, that his son served as witness. Two witnesses were sufficient under the Law of Moses to verify such a claim, and so, the prophet from Judah assumed God had changed His mind. What he did not realize is that the older prophet was a false prophet intent on deceiving him. Was there any way he might have known to be wary?

The young prophet from Judah seemed quite clear on what God wanted him to declare in his confrontation with Jeroboam, which was confirmed by two signs (as required by the Law of the Moses)—the splitting of the altar and the shriveling of Jeroboam’s hand. He should have trusted the word entrusted to him. However, he did not allow God’s certain word to help him to discern the false word of the older prophet. He allowed the two claims to compete, and he paid the penalty for his gullibility. In fact, in Deuteronomy 13:1-4 the Law of Moses had already prepared him for this sort of a dilemma.

13 If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, ²and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, “Let us follow other gods” (whom you have not known) “and let us serve them,” ³you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. ⁴The Lord your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Dt 13.

The Torah had warned that God would allow false prophets to live and to thrive among the people of Israel as a means of testing the faithfulness of the Israelites. No matter how persuasive a speech, how miraculous a demonstration of power, or how truthful a teaching might appear to be, there was a sure test of its truthfulness built into the Torah. If the prophet who performed the miracle or spoke the word encouraged disobedience to the instructions of God, that alone was proof of falseness. The prophet of Judah might have known that the second instruction to disregard the first could not have been from God. Perhaps the consequence was so dire because the stakes of failing to discern are so very high for the people of God.

Jesus, too, it would appear was cognizant of this teaching of Torah. He affirmed as much in Matthew 5:17-19:

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.^{^[5]}
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Mt 5:17–19.

Jesus, too, insisted that however His teachings might be interpreted, they should not be understood as nullifying the Torah given to Israel. Paul’s use of Torah to mediate ethical disputes in the early church seems to flow out of this assumption, as well, as do the ethical instructions of the rest of the New Testament. Even the book that draws the sharpest distinction between the Old and New Covenants, the book of Hebrews, still exhorts believers to submit to the moral and ethical requirements of Sinai. For the writer of Hebrews, only those requirements of the Law completed by the ministry of Jesus both as sacrifice and as High Priest—sacrifices, purification rituals, separation rituals, etc.—need not be repeated any longer. My inclination is to believe that Jesus intended to clarify and perhaps even to expand Torah, but not to alter or diminish what had already been given.

False teachers and prophets proved to be as much of a challenge in the New Testament writings as they had been throughout the history of Israel to that point, and I suspect that their presence will remain with us as long as the Lord tarries. Further, my inclination is to be believe that the criteria by which falseness might be discerned today remains much the same as it was for Israel. To quote the Apostle Paul in Galatians 1, speaking on behalf, I believe, of the prophets of Israel and the Apostles of Jesus:

⁸But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! ⁹As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Ga 1:8–9.

Does God still speak today? I think He does. Will He speak a word today that invalidates the words He has delivered to us through the prophets of Israel and the Apostles of Jesus? I think the answer is no. May those who have ears to hear, listen.