Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 54
“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)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Inerrancy Versus Authority
(p. 112)
Let’s
pick up with BJ’s opening statement which we already evaluated in a previous
post:
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“If you haven’t picked up on it yet, the literal sense is
essential to my reading of the Bible” (p. 112). |
Yes, we have already picked up on the fact that BJ does NOT follow the
“literal sense” at all because none of what he describes is how you relate to
something in the literal sense! However, we have also picked up that what BJ describes as the “literal
sense” (where you do not take the Bible in its literal sense) is definitely
central to the way he mishandles the Scriptures. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“But I believe that literalism and its handmaid, inerrancy,
sprout from modernist ideology” (p. 112). |
First, we can write off “literalism” because it is simply BJ’s
misrepresentation of those who actually treat the Bible in the genuine literal sense! Second, true literal treatment of Scripture in the grammatical-historical
sense is not at all from the modernist camp and BJ’s deceptions about this
are nothing new under the sun as well. Third, inerrancy is not a new belief of some modernist camp. It is all
through the Scriptures to treat God’s words as without error. And, since Paul
puts “inspiration” (God breathing out his words) as what happened between God
and the writers, what we have in the Scriptures are the inerrant words of
God. And there's nothing new about that at all. |
Now,
since BJ has refused to give a plumbline focus of what it looks like to take
the Bible literally in the ways intended by God and the human writers, and he
has only given as the opposing view to his “literal sense” view the
“literalist” view what he has misrepresented, I am going to share again the three
views side-by-side in the summary form I presented on our last day’s journal
journey.
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BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
|
Claims “literal” but means “tropological” (moral of the story), his
“different gospel” (from outside of the Scriptures), and “typological”
(allegorical). |
The grammatical-historical method means reading the Bible in a plain
manner, respecting grammar, word meanings, and other factors with an emphasis
on context, Context, CONTEXT. |
BJ puts people here who ascribe to the plain meaning of Scripture as
if they are stifling the Holy Spirit and missing the point of the divine and
human authors.
|
For
the rest of his focus on “Inerrancy versus Authority”, I will treat his
comments as an attack on the Historical-Grammatical sense of Scripture, which
is the one that seeks to take God’s word to mean what it says, not explaining
it away in allegories and other symbolic imaginings.
In the
quote on p. 112-113 that begins with, “Claiming a high view of
Scripture…” BJ presents a list of things the “literalists” deny. That is all his fabrication of this group and too much for me to TYPE (I'm not so type-ological)! So, I will
summarize with his concluding statement:
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“In short, biblical literalism and inerrancy predetermine limits on
what the Bible cannot do or say before even reading the text or allowing it
to speak for itself” (p. 113). |
First, it should be obvious that BJ’s misrepresentation of the
“literal sense” is doing exactly this! By demanding the non-literal
hermeneutics of tropology, his “different gospel”, and his emphasis on allegory, he is
putting limits on what the Scriptures can teach us before even reading the
text or allowing it to speak for itself! Second, the Historical-Grammatical sense is not predetermining limits
on what the Scriptures can teach before allowing the Scriptures to speak for
themselves because it is aimed at reading the Scriptures to understand how
the history and grammar direct us to understand the breathed-out words of
God. Conclusion: what BJ says in this section is completely bogus and
applies to HIS view, not the one he is dissing. And that bogusness includes
the whole rest of his paragraph (p. 113). |
Perils
of Biblical Dissection (p. 113)
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
From p. 113-114, BJ uses a clever “imagining” (again) to misrepresent
what it looks like to meditate on God’s word to understand its true meaning.
He claims that the only thing this could mean is that we are dissecting God’s
words to the point that neither Jesus nor his Spirit can speak the true
meaning of God’s words into our hearts. |
All I can say is that he is lying. First, because there are three options, not two. We do not need to
choose between the overzealous seminarian who uses Scripture as proof-text to
win arguments and BJ’s moral-of-the-story and allegorical fairy tales that
are not the point of what God breathed out in his own words. We can reject
both extreme swings of the pendulum and seek the plumbline of wanting to know
what God said, what he meant, and what he means for us to do with his words
today. Second, we can’t escape that there is a box. God’s word says what it
says and means what it means. That puts a box around it. Even when extra
study is required to determine the most accurate expression in one language
of what God breathed out in the originals, the quest is still the same, to
know the limitations of what God said so we can also put outside the box what
he did not say and live by the words that come from the mouth of God. And third, if we treat God’s words as HIS limitations on what is true,
we will do as Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my
disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
(John 8:31-32). THAT is full of limitations put there by Jesus so that we
know if we are abiding in him or not abiding in him, we know if we know the
truth or believe lies, and we know if the truth has set us free in Christ or
the lies we believe have deceived us and led us astray. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“when our doctrinal biases are reified into a system that the text
must inerrantly affirm, our pet theology becomes our real final authority”
(p. 114). |
“Reified” means to consider an abstract concept to be real, or concrete. BJ is talking about people who take abstract doctrinal “biases” and force them into Scriptures that must affirm them because Scripture is inerrant so our reified beliefs must be true. Now, please pause and think about that before continuing. Where have we seen people doing this already? Again, this “reified” stuff is true of BJ’s system! He has determined
that his abstract moral-of-the-story tropologicalness must be the way we
understand what is in Scripture even though he is batting 0 at treating
Scripture with integrity. He has an abstract “different gospel” that he has
found outside of Scripture that can overpower the true gospel we find in
Scripture so that the concrete message of the real gospel is nullified by the abstract-but-treated-as-concrete demands of his different one. And the allegorical watering down of
Scriptures about Jesus become the pet of final authority that would enable a
man to write a book like this that has so far meant a 100% rate of dishonesty
regarding any Scripture he has used! On the other hand, this is not what the Historical-Grammatical sense
does, but quite the opposite. In the plumbline approach, it is what God
breathed out into the Scriptures in his own words that becomes the inerrant
authority that can teach, rebuke, correct and train however it is needed. And
those who live by this will all have testimonies of how the Scriptures have
done all four of those activities in our lives. |
Okay,
this next line is of the makes-me-feel-sick variety:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Thus, any Scripture that does not agree with my system must either be
ignored, twisted, or subordinated while other texts are privileged” (p.
114-115). |
Yes, that is exactly what BJ has demonstrated this 42% of the way
through his book! He has ignored Scriptures in context because the context
says the opposite of what he claims of the half verses he used. He has
twisted things that are written to his own ends instead of explaining what
they were really talking about. He has subordinated teachings about the
justice and wrath of God to his “another Jesus” to such an extent that his
Jesus is correcting the Yahweh of the Scriptures! On the other hand, that plumbline of the grammatical-historical sense does not require ignoring anything. I enjoy listening to speakers who take the challenging differences in Scriptures and show how they work together where the peddlers demand they are in conflict. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Let’s face it, we all read the Bible that way” (p. 115). “That way” means: ·
With “preloaded theological systems” ·
With “assumptions” ·
With “doctrinal biases” that are “reified” (abstracts made concrete) ·
With “our pet theology” ·
With any Scripture that does not agree being “ignored, twisted,
subordinated” ·
With “other texts are privileged” |
And all God’s people said: “Says Who?!” First of all, BJ is taking on God-like status to claim that “we all”
read the Bible in any particular way. Who could know such a thing except
God?! Second, Some people do limit what they see in Scripture to what they
want to see. With the emphasis on “some”, and that no human being can count
either the number or the percentage of such people, we can simply put them on
the other pendulum swing from BJ’s side. We can then rule out both those who treat their opinionated theologies as if they are Scripture, and those who twist and
distort Scripture so it has no authority whatsoever. Third, the two pendulum extremes are not the only ways to read the
Bible. We can reject the “blinders” approach on one side (where people only
see what they want to see) and the “imaginative” approach on the other side
(where BJ imagines he sees things that are not there). Fourth, I grew up in my experience of God seeking to know what the
Bible said and what it meant. I learned what was in Scripture from reading it
myself, learning from pastors and teachers, having Bible studies with others,
and discovering that I loved doing something called “let the word of Christ dwell
in your richly”. As the first Psalm taught me, it was a blessing to be a man
who meditates on God’s word day and night, and that has only grown in me over
the decades. Fifth, I am not the only Christian who has learned over the years that
things we heard taught in Scripture weren’t actually there but were fabrications
made by people doing one of the pendulum extremes. I have had many occasions to
adjust my beliefs to something I discovered in God’s word, and I have heard
of many others who have done so as well. Conclusion: BJ’s statement is 100% BOGUS! Not everyone reads the Bible
in the slanted way he describes, and his Bible-dissing extreme is not
required! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Indeed, reading Scripture as Scripture actually requires a
predisposition, rooted not in our personal temperament or theological
structures, but in Christ and his gospel” (p. 115). |
As good as this sounds, the way BJ has twisted it in this book is
false. There is not a “Christ” and there is not “his gospel” that can be
found outside the Scriptures. We only know Christ through the Scriptures
(hence them being called “the word of Christ”), and we can only know “his
gospel” through the Scriptures. So, I continue to stand against this notion
that there is a ”Christ and his gospel” outside the Scriptures that… um… you
know… give us “another Jesus” with a “different spirit” and a “different gospel”
based on BJ’s “preloaded theological systems” and “reified” systems of texts
that “must inerrantly affirm” his “pet theology” as “our real final
authority”! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
From pp 115-116, BJ gives his focus on how inerrancy is used in the
negative way he has described. His point is that those who claim the Bible is
inerrant must accept contradictory statements and pick-and-choose which ones
to emphasize. |
A big part of this is BJ’s belief that it is not the Scriptures that
are “inspired” (breathed out by God), but the person’s experience in reading
the Scriptures that is somehow inspired. Because of that, he is unable to see
that we must come before the word of God with such humility and reverence so
that even when we do not understand how multiple things can all be true at
the same time, we can continue seeking the mind of Christ about these things
because we know his word is true. |
Beginning
on page 115, the author presents an example of his viewpoint. I will respond by
trying to show he is actually representing the two pendulum extremes against each other (both as he defines them) and will
try to clarify the plumbline that does not need to twist Scripture as he does,
and does not need to box Scripture into one’s own preconceived notions.
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
As the author begins his argument, he claims, “I inherited an
eschatology (end times system) that presupposed an end to history when Christ
would divide all people into two groups – the sheep… and the goats…” (p.
115). |
This is a mix of personal testimony and bogus opinion. He grew up in a
church that had an eschatological position. Fine. I’m sure we all did if we
went to church as we were growing up. However, the moment he describes this position as speaking of two groups
of people, the sheep who represent the elect, and the goats that represent
the damned, he is NOT speaking of a presupposition! Those are Jesus’ own
words! Jesus clearly describes in Matthew 25 the Great White Throne judgment,
and it is there that we find out how he divides people, and that comes “out
of” the text (exegesis), not presupposed “into” the text (eisegesis). So,
from the beginning of this line of reasoning, BJ is already misrepresenting
the position he is speaking about. Whatever else it says, to view people the
way he describes (sheep and goats) is coming “out of” what Jesus said, so we can believe it as
the “breathed out” words of God himself. We must begin with the understanding
that the two groups are clearly revealed in the Bible. The rest is whether BJ
agrees with what Jesus said there and how this is described elsewhere, or
whether he is reading in his own presuppositions in order to explain away
something our Savior said about the judgment. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
That if we believe that the elect are sheep and the damned are goats (as
Jesus and Revelation talk about), “the truth is that our real authority – our
own assumptions – were carved in stone before we cracked open the leather
cover” (p. 115). |
Bogus. I first believed that the sheep represented God’s elect and the goats
the lost when I read them as Jesus’ own words, you know, “the Word” breathed
out “the word” so we could live by “every word” that comes from the mouth of
God! And we must take it seriously that BJ is attempting to disparage Jesus' own words in the Scriptures because his "another Jesus" is NOT in the Scriptures! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“We established a set of proof texts that affirmed our theology and
claimed they were inerrant, infallible, and to be read literally” (p. 115). |
Again, I cannot comment on whether this is what BJ’s earlier groups
did. However, I will address it as a claim he is making about “all” of us
since that is what he has already stated. BJ is fabricating a strawman that would only represent the other
pendulum swing opposite his own, not the people who seek to live at the plumbline. If people did that, shame on them. The way
BJ is going to the other extreme, shame on him. The plumbline offers truth in love. So, when the Bible says that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”, we immediately know that it is Scripture, the written word of God, that is “inerrant, infallible, and to be read literally”. I have never heard a plumbline pastor or teacher claim that his theology was inerrant or infallible. But neither have I heard them say that the Scriptures were NOT inerrant or infallible. The extremes are on BJ’s side. Also, let’s clarify that “inerrant” means that the original Scriptures were
without error. “Infallible” means they are incapable of error. Both of these
are true of the original documents because they contained the “breathed out”
words of God. However, when someone says that Scripture needs to be “read literally”,
we must clarify whether that means the pendulum extreme of the BJs, the pendulum
extreme of the “literalists”, or the plumbline “literal” that takes the Bible
to mean what it says. |
For
reminder, here are the three views again.
|
BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
|
Claims “literal” but means “tropological” (moral of the story), his
“different gospel” (from outside of the Scriptures), and “typological”
(allegorical). |
The grammatical-historical method means reading the Bible in a plain
manner, respecting grammar, word meanings, and other factors with an emphasis
on context, Context, CONTEXT. |
BJ puts people here who ascribe to the plain meaning of Scripture as
if they are stifling the Holy Spirit and missing the point of the divine and
human authors.
|
So,
as we continue, let’s keep this in mind, BJ is now dissing the people-group he
once belonged to (which I would call a pendulum extreme) that, according to
him, treated their theological positions as “inerrant, infallible, and to be
read literally”, and now he has swung to the opposite extreme where it is his “another
Jesus”, “different spirit”, and “different gospel” that are “inerrant,
infallible, and to be read literally” in correcting anything in Scripture the
BJ’s don’t agree with.
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“I know this for a fact by the way we treated passages that didn’t
fit: we willfully ignored or spun them, or found ways to demote them” (p.
115). |
Because this is presented as a testimony of what BJ and his people
once did (as BJ understood it), I can’t argue whether they did that, or
whether anyone in his life ever did what he describes. I wasn’t there. However, BJ is using his personal experience of ignoring certain parts
of the “whole counsel of God” to now explain why we should ignore certain
parts of the whole counsel of God! How surprising is that?! |
Because of how long we have travelled on today’s journal journey, and because BJ is now going to enter into a "proof" of conflict between theological positions (which is really just him putting his opinions about various Scriptures in opposition to each other), we will set up camp at the end of another day and have a rest. The question around the bend will have something to do with choosing between Jesus’ words about the sheep and goats, and Paul’s words about “all people”. However, the real choice will be between believing the BJs' words, or God's.
Now, while BJ has set the stage, props, smoke, mirrors, and lighting to force our unsuspecting brains into being horrified at the contradiction, I hope to see BJ again exposed as the false teacher he really is, and the glory of the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ glorified as the “good news of great joy” it really is.
© 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
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