Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 51
“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 |
Now (begin sad violin here), because I can
no longer copy/paste from the book into my Journal Journey, I will see if I can
simply refer to some of his points without quoting them. I trust that whoever
is reading this is also reading the book, so I will keep giving page numbers
for easy reference. Others I will do the work of typing them out because the
points need to be absolutely clear.
BJ
begins his chapter with a quote from Origen of Alexandria referring to people
missing the “spiritual sense” of Scripture by getting hung up on “the bare
letter” (p. 111). Because there is no context, I could just as well take that
as a rebuke to the BJs who totally miss the spiritual sense of what they are
reading and get stuck on the “bare letter” appearances that they don’t like
because they don’t get what God is talking about. I will only say that I have
no idea what Origen was applying that to, so it is a moot point to me that it
is our introduction to the chapter. So what?
“The
Bible Clearly Says…”
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“The Bible clearly says.” Literalism in a nutshell (p. 111). |
I don’t buy this. I will wait for a definition of “literalism”.
However, because BJ has misrepresented every Scripture he has tried to use,
including what Paul was talking about regarding “the letter that kills”, I am
preparing to clarify what BJ’s “literalism” means against what I believe
about “taking God at his word”. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Used in that way, “The Bible clearly says” degrades Scripture to
blocks of words stripped of historical and canonical context (p. 111). |
Let’s clarify. With the two pendulum swings on either side of the
plumbline, someone saying “the Bible clearly says” could be from any of the
three groups. Two of them would be mistaken by leaving something out; the
plumbline group would mean something genuine and true. A legalistic person
who says “the Bible clearly says” is looking for a way to use only some Scriptures
to control people’s religious behavior. A cheap grace person who says “the
Bible clearly says” is also going to limit which Scriptures they refer to.
But a plumbline Christian who says “the Bible clearly says” may very well
have captured the “truth in love” and the “spirit and truth” essence of what
God is saying. If BJ is going to use examples from the two pendulum extremes
to try convincing us we can’t know what the Bible clearly says at the plumbline
he will, again, be sadly mistaken. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Used in that way, “the Bible clearly says” reads the Bible
literalistically, instead of according to its various genres, idioms, and rhetorical
devices, and apart from divine or authorial intent (p. 111). |
Says who? In all my decades in the church, when people have wanted to
know what the Bible really says about something they haven’t been trying to
bypass the genres, figures of speech, or anything in the context that would
help understand what God said and meant. On the other hand, BJ is already plenty guilty of missing the
understanding of Scripture where the divine intent was very clearly breathed
out by God. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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So-called “plain readings” fail to “accurately handle the word of
truth” (p. 111). |
Again, no examples are given so we don’t know if he means in every
instance that taking the plain meaning means missing the truth. Is he coming from
his cheap grace pendulum swing criticizing the legalistic position? Is it not
possible for someone to grow up reading God’s word and consistently finding
that the plain reading of the Scriptures uncovers the heart of God as
breathed out into his word? You know, with the Spirit of truth teaching us
and reminding us as we read along? |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Worse, “the Bible clearly says” generally strips our reading of the
illumination of the Spirit, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the heart of our
heavenly Abba. Thus, our life-giving message is reduced to a dead letter. |
On whose authority? BJ is working hard to support the “Did God
actually say…?” viewpoint, but is now presenting a fictitious “the Bible
clearly says” viewpoint he is defining however he pleases without any
examples. So, NO, looking for what the Bible really says at the plumbline of “truth
in love” does not strip our reading of the illumination of the Spirit but
sends us seeking it with all our hearts. It doesn’t strip our reading of the true
gospel of the kingdom, but leads us to understand it all the more. It doesn’t
hide our Father’s heart from us, but draws us all the more into it as the
wonders of his word become clear to us and we can even recognize how false
teachers distort it to their own ends. I know I don’t for one minute fit the BJ’s caricature of the “literalist”,
but decades of seeking God in his word and prayer every morning has made the
life-giving message of God’s breathed-out words as “living and active” as the
apostles described of the Scriptures. And, if BJ's reference to "a dead letter" is again misrepresenting what Paul said about "the letter that kills", well, watch out for the poison! |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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To be sure, the Bible does say some things very clearly. Oddly, those
very clear statements are frequently negated by the paper cuts of a thousand
caveats from, of all people, “the Bible clearly says” camp (p. 111). |
Yes, we have seen a whole number of examples of BJ missing things the
Bible has stated very clearly. But his clever word-picture says absolutely
nothing about which “the Bible clearly says” camp he is talking about. So,
without examples, and without clarifying which of the three positions he is
referring to, we’re back to a bunch of claims people are believing on BJ’s
authority without him having to prove anything he says. It would be nice to turn
the page and find some examples to deal with (I just checked, and nope). |
After wondering if he sounded grumpy with his
issues about people who take God at his word (I know that’s not what he’s
saying, but I don’t like the little box of his caricature/stereotype so I’m
just going with this for now as I wait to find out his definition of a
literalist), and how he finds literalists to be “upsetting”, BJ states another “did-you-look-in-the-mirror-when-you-wrote-that!”
statements:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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The edge comes from seeing Christ thrown under the bus again and again
through an agenda-laden, simplistic misuse of our sacred texts… with the
ironic claim that this constitutes faithfulness (p. 111). |
Okay, I find his use of “ironic” ironic! BJ has thrown the true Lord Jesus Christ under the bus as a Yahweh-corrector through his agenda-laden efforts to present “another Jesus” with a “different spirit” in a “different gospel” by his simplistic misuse of our sacred texts that he has 100% misrepresented so that it is ironic to hear him claiming the other guys are ironic about claiming faithfulness when he is claiming faithfulness even though dissing every Scripture he has used! |
BJ
then quotes someone who appears to be a big wig in the Eastern Orthodox Church,
David Bentley Hart. Since BJ quotes him, I will treat the quote as BJ’s claim:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“…Not to read the Bible in the proper manner is not to read it as the
Bible at all; scripture is inspired, that is, only when read ‘spiritually’” (quoting Hart, p. 111). |
First, BJ is no model of how to read the Bible “in the proper manner”
(correctly). Second, it does seem like BJ has not read the Bible at all (following
Hart’s logic). Third, it sounds like Hart has the same unbiblical view of “inspired”
as BJ, so I will simply remind us that the Bible teaches “inspired” to be
what happened between God and the writer when he breathed out his words
through the men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit so we have in the
Scriptures the very words of God. BJ claims (falsely) that “inspired” is what
happens between the Scriptures and the reader. So, when Hart claims that the
Bible is only inspired “when read ‘spiritually’” he is making the same false
claim. The Bible is inspired because God breathed out his words into the
Scriptures. It is understood by those who are born again and can read it
spiritually. It is misunderstood by those who have not been born again and
are still spiritually dead towards God. But how spiritual or unspiritual a reader
of the Bible is has no bearing whatsoever on its inspiration and authority as
the word of God. |
Just a
quick reminder of what Paul meant by “inspired” and what BJ teaches in his “different
gospel”:
The next ironic statement BJ makes right after this is:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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…but read on if you’re as concerned for biblical faithfulness as I am (p.
112). |
Yes, I will read on. No, I do not want the same type of concern for biblical faithfulness as the BJs have because it is not been proven faithful to the Bible at all! |
“Literal
Versus Literalist”
Okay,
this sounds hopeful, like we may actually get to a working definition!
Okay
again, I’m wading through too much poison-in-the-pudding here to feel safe
taking a bite! Let’s see if we can break down his opening contrasts on page
112.
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BJ’s Claims |
Mone’s Response |
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The literal sense reads Scripture carefully to discover the author’s
intent from the words they use and how they use them (including the use of
genre, rhetoric, figures of speech, symbols, poetics excess, hyperbole. |
My first response is that this is clearly NOT the sense BJ uses
because he has consistently tried to deceive people away from seeing the
author’s intent and God’s purpose in breathing out his words any particular
way. |
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But literalism is generally tied to believing that truth is reduced to
actuality, factuality, and historicity, whether or not the human or divine
author intended any such thing. |
So, it is also clear that BJ would NOT use this approach since his
question is not “What did God actually say?” but, “Did God actually say…?” He
has clearly not been concerned with facts. He has rejected even Jesus’ own
words about the historicity of the Hebrew Scriptures regarding creation and
the worldwide flood. And he has rejected both the human and divine author’s
intentions in communicating what and as they did. |
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The literal sense asks the text what it is doing. |
Again, this is NOT what BJ has demonstrated as his position. |
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Literalism, on the other hand, presupposes, assumes, and presumes to
tell you what the text must do and cannot do. |
This doesn’t sound true. He makes it sound like if you take Scripture to be authoritative (which he has failed to discredit) and conclude what it is telling believers to do or not to do, we could only have come to those conclusions by presupposing, assuming, and presuming things that are not revealed in the text of Scripture. That sounds like a bogus claim of what people are doing when they affirm what “the obedience of faith” requires of believers in Jesus Christ our Lord, or that Jesus expects us to understand his words clearly enough to put them into practice. |
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The literal sense is our launching pad on to the moral (tropological)
and spiritual (gospel, typological) reading of the Bible. |
I had to look up the words again because I have never come across them
in the Bible. Tropological means to read the Bible like the best we can find
is the moral of the story. Gospel in BJ’s mind is something that originates
outside the Scriptures that tells us how to interpret the Scriptures which is
exactly opposite to what we read in the Scriptures. Typological treats
connections between Jesus and the Old Testament as allegorical instead of the
way the Bible shows them, as real and historical events that are all woven
together in the mind and will and power of God. So I totally disagree with BJ’s claim that he represents the literal
sense of the Bible since both the tropological and typological approaches
inherently deny the literalness of Scripture, and his view of the gospel also
contradicts the literal reading of Scripture about the gospel of the kingdom. I also deny that “spiritual” reading of Scripture means believing BJ’s
view of the gospel, or his typological misreadings of the Old Testament. When
the Bible speaks about spiritual, as in Jesus telling us that the Father is
looking for worshippers who worship “in spirit and in truth” (John 4), the “in
spirit” part means spiritually, born again, made alive in Christ so that now
our spirits can comprehend the words of God. The “in truth” part requires us
to reject BJ’s teachings as falsehoods because he has 100% misrepresented
every Scripture he has used, and is now misrepresenting what it means to read
the Bible spiritually instead of naturally (as BJ is doing). |
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Literalism is often the terminus for what the text has to say and
derides further spiritual exploration as “spiritualizing”. |
I understand that there are church folk of the legalistic pendulum
swing who may deride exploring God’s word as “spiritualizing”. I’m not
dealing with them because they are one side of off-plumb that doesn’t
live by “the whole counsel of God”. However, I am suspicious that BJ has been rebuked, reproved, and
corrected by people who simply take God at his word and have sought to save
him from the judgment that is on him for misrepresenting Jesus and his word. It is more likely that what he is accused of is not “spiritualizing” as in the sense of
seeing the spiritual in what is written, but in the sense of what we have
seen in this book where everything has been fantasizing imaginary meanings
into texts that clearly do tell us what God said and in the contexts that
tell us what he meant. In other words, this is bogus to say that people who take God at his
word think they are the judges of what Scripture does or does not say, or
that they call people out when they have “gone beyond what is written” as Paul
warned. BJ is not even close to telling us how to worship God in both spirit
and in truth at the same time for he has done neither all through his book. |
Now,
since BJ makes a break to get back onto the topic of “Inerrancy Versus Authority”,
I will set up camp for tonight, prepare this for sharing, and get a good night’s
rest before continuing down the garden path.
© 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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