A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus - Day 17

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 17 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   I now come to the fightin’ words I was facing as I pitched my tent the previous day. The author writes,

Today, I see inspiration in this way: the authors of Scripture were carried along⁶ by the Holy Spirit so that, through their words, by the Spirit, God breathes (present tense) a testimony to us that reveals our redemption and destiny in God through Christ. Scripture is the witness (and not the only one), and Christ is the revelation. When we read the Bible in that s/Spirit, we see the grand narrative and where it’s all pointing: to Christ and his gospel. To miss this is to miss everything, just as most of the religious leaders of Jesus’s day had—just as I had. (p. 62).

   This is simple: does the Bible say “God-breathed” the Scriptures Paul was speaking about to Timothy? Or does it say that “God breathes a testimony to us” as we are reading the Scriptures (I think is what BJ meant)?

   The word in question means, “God-breathed adj. — produced by the Spirit of God; understood as the air that was physically expelled out of the lungs of God” (BSL). The ESV translates this “breathed out by God”. The NIV has “God-breathed”. The KJV and NKJV have “given by inspiration of God”. The NASB has “is inspired by God”.

   Since the meaning of the word “God breathed” is in reference to the Scriptures (what the Christians already had of the written word of God), I just don’t get where the “God breathes” fits the statement. That changes it from something God did already in giving us the Scriptures (the sense of the text), to something God does in some ongoing way as people read the Scriptures (which isn’t the sense of the text). I will see if anything makes sense as we continue along the path, but it already sounds like there is no room to change “God breathed” the Scriptures to “God breathes a testimony to us”.

   I agree with the author’s assessment that “It’s possible to spend a lifetime studying the Bible without once hearing the Father or knowing the Word” (p. 63). However, not so with what he says next, “Apparently, the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63). Again, that depends. Paul was talking about Scripture, which clearly would have included what we have in the Old Testament along with whatever the church had already recognized as the written word of God at the time Paul wrote those words. Since BJ’s argument about his ”another Jesus” requires us to believe he has found something wrong with the Scriptures Paul is talking about, Paul confronts this belief with the declaration that those very Scriptures are God-breathed.

   Think about what Jesus stated to Satan, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). It sounds fair to me that “every word that comes from the mouth of God” and “God-breathed” are synonymous. Both are talking about the Scriptures, the written words of God, and both picture those words coming from the mouth of God. Jesus is quoting Scripture to make his point. That Scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3 says, 

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

   Here is why I am taking a “that depends” approach to the point BJ is trying to make. Scripture is not only about Christ. Jesus is not “the One to whom it points”, but the Son of the One to whom it points. Scripture points to God, and Christ is his image. The Scriptures are “the word of God” so they point to God. Christ is the image of God making God known to us so we hear “the word of Christ”. There is no separation of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Even in Jesus’ words, we have Jesus declaring to Satan that everyone is to live by the words that come from the mouth of Yahweh, the very person BJ wants us to believe was represented poorly by the biblical writers while Jesus and Paul said that those words of Scripture came from the mouth of God, the mouth of Yahweh, and are God-breathed.

   So, I can’t agree at this point that “the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63) because it is uncertain whether BJ admits that Scripture points to “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3), or whether he claims it is his “another Jesus” that was being spoken about the whole time and is distinct from the Yahweh revealed in the Scriptures that both Jesus and Paul said were God-breathed.

   As I moved through BJ’s description of how “the complexity of the Scriptures only confirms their inspiration” (p. 63), and how the divine genius “transcends its distinctly human qualities”, I smacked into another loaded statement:

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Amid the polyphony of conflicting worldviews that I see among its authors, I’m always inspired to see God’s fingerprints everywhere across its pages” (pp. 63-64).	The God’s fingerprints analogy sounds good, but nothing has been stated anywhere that says the biblical writers had “conflicting worldviews”. I would say that is not true at all.

   I keep noticing that BJ admits he is sharing what he thinks, what he sees, what he believes, not what is stated in the Scriptures. To believe there are “conflicting worldviews” when the Bible never makes that suggestion is not only an opinion, but an opinion contrary to revelation. It does continue to show that the “another Jesus” of the BJs is not the one revealed by God through his word.

   With that theme of the author suggesting his own ideas, he presents this challenge:

Let’s try this distinction: inspiration is not the same as exhalation. When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   “Let’s try this distinction,” is a BJ’s suggestion. It is his idea. For us to buy it, he would have to show that the Scriptures make this distinction (and they do not!).

   “Inspiration is not the same as exhalation.” That depends! The biblical word for “breathed-out” (which the author has replaced with “inspiration”) IS synonymous with “exhalation” (breathing out!). By replacing “breathed-out” with “inspiration”, it clouds the meaning of what the Scriptures say.

   This is a good time to expose a clever tactic called “bait and switch”. It means to bait someone with the idea you’re talking about one thing, but, while still using that label, they switch to a different thing. In this case, the bait is that we are talking about whether the Scriptures are “breathed out” by God. By then using the word “inspiration” he has switched what we are talking about. And applying this to the biblical writers instead of the Scriptures, readers will think they are agreeing with a point about Scripture when the topic has changed!

   So, “inspiration” is not what the biblical word says, although it is often used with the same meaning as “breathed out”. And it is not the men who were inspired but the Scriptures that were “breathed out”. BJ has switched “Scripture” to “men” and “breathed out” to “inspired” so that we are no longer discussing whether the Scriptures (what we have in the Bible) are breathed out by God and therefore authoritative over all matters of faith and practice in the church, but whether the men received “inspiration” from God, and what they “exhaled” as Scripture is no longer directly “breathed out” by God but "exhaled" by men. BIG difference!

   Now, I know that unraveling all these slight-of-hand word-tricks is quite time-consuming, but I hope it will prevent readers of BJ’s books to fall for these deceptive bait-and-switch schemes.

   “When we read that a biblical author is inspired,” is another bait-and-switch! Where did we read that the biblical authors were inspired? Didn’t the Scripture say that it was “all scripture” (the whole entire package) that was breathed out by God? I’m saying this because of what comes next. Let’s look at that, and then let’s consider how false it is because of all the baiting and switching that has taken place.

   When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   Um, how about “NO”!

   How do we know it is “NO!”?

1.     Because we haven’t read anywhere that the biblical authors were inspired but only that the Scriptures were breathed out by God.

2.    Because it couldn’t mean that God’s Spirit breathed “into” them when the text says that God “breathed out” the Scriptures.

3.    Because there is no mention in the Bible that men were free to add “their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments” or any “so forth” whatsoever!

4.    Because the fanciful suggestion that the Bible is “a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts” is the exact opposite of what the text says, that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”. The SCRIPTURE is breathed-out by God, NOT that the writers were inspired.

   I will conclude today’s journey with the last part of this paragraph: 

“A careful reading shows that God indeed inspired (breathed into) these men and women, who then exhaled a text that bears the aroma of both the Spirit’s divine genius and the authors’ truly human agency.” (p. 64).

   NO! A “careful reading” exposes that the text does NOT say “God indeed inspired… these men (and there is no mention of women being used as biblical writers)”. It says that God "breathed out" the Scriptures. And, it does not say that God “breathed into” the biblical writers, but that he “breathed out” the Scriptures. 

   There is absolutely no room for this theory that God breathed inspired thoughts into men who then exhaled a text that mixes divine and human thoughts. God’s word on his word is that “all Scripture (what we have of his word in written form) is breathed out by God”. And I hope you are seeing that if we let the BJs of the world switch words and thoughts to say whatever they please, we end up with that “another Jesus”, that “different spirit”, and that “different gospel” Paul warned us about long before we began this journey.

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems