Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 58
“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 |
However, this journey has also given me opportunity to share my favorite
thing to talk about, what God has written in his word. Over these 58 days (and
counting), my daily time with God in his word, combined with listening to God’s
word read to me while I exercise, and applying things shared within our home
church from other people’s time with God, has consistently shown the falsehood
BJ is promoting.
It
also shows why BJ needs people to believe there is something wrong with the
“plain reading” of Scripture. When we just read the Bible and take it to mean
what it says (all genres properly understood), it shows itself to be the
breathed-out words of God and authoritative in denouncing BJ for the falsehood
he is promoting.
I will
share two Scriptures that stood out with their indictment against BJ’s
falsehoods.
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)
First, there are five attributes of Yahweh
that Yahweh himself declared to Moses: merciful, gracious, slow to anger,
steadfast love, and faithfulness. These are not qualities that we would
consider not Christlike enough!
Second, the application of these five
attributes is that God keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgives
iniquity, transgression and sin, BUT will by no means clear the guilty, and
will instead visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the
children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.
This, of course, does not mean he won’t
forgive people who repent. It simply means that he will deal with guilty people
groups as long as they are guilty, and it denies that God’s mercy, grace,
patience, steadfast love, and faithfulness, would leave the guilty unpunished,
since that would not be faithful! To let the guilty get away with murder, so to
speak, means that the victims are never given justice. It is impossible to have
a good God who lets sinners sin with impunity when it means he has allowed something
bad for the victims of these sinners! Yes, it doesn’t add up to have a good God
who doesn’t condemn the guilty.
The next Scripture stood out for the way
Jesus used Scripture, the way he affirmed David in his place as a writer of
Scripture, and the way he affirmed Peter’s teaching that “no prophecy was ever
produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along
by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21). This is Jesus’ conversation with some
Pharisees in Matthew 22:44-46.
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
It is
so interesting to me that Jesus affirmed that David had been “in the Spirit”
when he wrote what was in the Scriptures. I keep finding these examples of
Jesus upholding the Scriptures, but we have zero places in the New Testament
where Jesus, the apostles, or any representatives of God, corrected anything
from the Old Testament Scriptures. And, when BJ tried to show that Jesus was
correcting the Jewish Scriptures, his examples were bogus, false, and deceptive,
since the context shows Jesus was correcting the “righteousness” of their
teachers in how they twisted Scripture to suit their public performances.
So, as
we head into whatever BJ is trying next, we have a scenario where he has been
constantly twisting Scripture just like the religious elite were, but he has
convinced the “many” to believe his “twists” to Scripture instead of the
Scriptures themselves!
Now,
back to our regular programming.
Under
the heading, “Patristic Literal Sense” (p. 119), I was shocked to find that I
agreed with everything BJ wrote about what this meant in his five bullet-points
because they were all describing the Historical-Grammatical plumbline! But we
already know BJ does NOT subscribe to that sense of Scripture. If you look at
those pages and read those five bullet points, those are actually affirming the
plumbline view, not the pendulum extreme BJ is promoting in his book!
However, it was only two paragraphs later that BJ’s slight of hand/mind
tricks were back at work.
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Further readings will require much more than that, since the
Scriptures claim the necessity of illumination by the Spirit and the gospel
of Jesus to remove veils over our hearts and eyes that would otherwise
obscure God’s message” (P. 120). |
Yes, we believe in the illumination of the Spirit guiding our
understanding of Scripture, but not as if that is what the Bible means by
“inspired by God”. The words of Scripture were breathed out by God (inspired)
when the writers wrote down what gave them. Now, when we read the Scriptures,
the Spirit illuminates our minds to understand what has been written as God
meant it. We have the illumination of the Spirit without changing anything
that is written, which is exactly what Jesus showed us he was doing all
through his ministry. No, it is not the “gospel of Jesus” outside the Scriptures that helps
us understand Scripture, but the breathed-out words of God in Scripture that
tell us what is the gospel of the kingdom. Because BJ has lied about what it
means for God to breathe out the words of Scripture so we are able to live by
every word that comes from the mouth of God, he is lying that there is some
gospel outside the Scriptures that tells us how to interpret the Scriptures.
It is the other way around. BJ is once again misrepresenting what Paul said about the veil over
our hearts since BJ wants it to mean that it happens when we read the Bible,
but Paul said it happened to every believer when we turned to the Lord. So, yes, we are back to the same old misrepresentations. But if you go
back to those bullet points from pp. 119-120, that list was describing the
Historical-Grammatical sense that he has left out of his book! It does not
support the “BJ’s literal sense” that is promoted in this book. |
From
pp. 120-121, BJ continued describing the Historical-Grammatical Sense, even
though it is not what he uses, but then he again twists everything into
something that is not part of the picture.
For
example, under the heading, “genre analysis”, he appears to use a bait and
switch once again to misrepresent the church fathers. I am sure he is right
that they took seriously all the genres of Scripture. That’s the bait. But then
he switches to a false conflict between taking the Bible literally and reading
“myth as myth, poetry as poetry, symbols as symbols, and fiction as fiction”
(p. 121). In my understanding of Christians who take the Bible “literally”, it
means with the understanding that each genre is understood as it is designed. I
do not believe there is the conflict BJ has presented, but he is still claiming
it is his experience, so perhaps there were really people who were that
literally literal that they couldn’t even understand the genres and figures of
speech in the Scriptures.
However, here is where it gets worse:
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“That’s right: the true literal sense even included distinguishing
which texts were non-fiction and which were fiction. And to read fiction
literally (not literalistically) is to identify and read it as fiction to
discern its meaning and affirm that meaning as true” (p. 121). |
Yes, exactly. The true literal sense is the Historical-Grammatical
sense, what BJ does NOT ascribe to. This sense always sought to understand
the genre in order to ascertain the meaning, the very thing BJ is totally
against in his “literal sense” falsehood. HOWEVER!!!!!!! BJ has NOT given us any indication of what the church fathers meant by
“fiction”! He’s claiming they could distinguish the fictional genre(s) from
the non-fiction, which makes sense, but we already know he claims historical
parts of the biblical narrative are fictional when they clearly are not. So,
where is any evidence for what it means that parts of the Bible are the genre
of fiction? Without showing us that the church fathers said something
specific, he is merely using a word they used (the bait) and switching it to
the examples of what HE believes is fiction even if the genre is history! |
I want
to ask you this: since BJ claims the church fathers refer to parts of the Bible
as fiction, but he doesn’t give any examples of what they mean by that, what do
you believe they would have meant by admitting there is fiction in the Bible?
When I
thought about it, I could see that all of Jesus’ parables would be the genre of
fiction since they were illustrations and not actual events. I wasn’t sure
where else there would be fictional stories within Scripture, so I did some
looking. Here is a quote from the Got Questions ministry in an article
entitled, “What does the Bible say about reading or writing fiction?”[1]
In fact, the Bible itself contains fiction. By that, we do not mean that the Bible is untrue. We mean that the Bible sometimes uses literature that would fall into the category of fiction to relate truth; stated otherwise, the Bible contains examples of storytelling. In 2 Samuel 12:1–4, Nathan the prophet tells David a fictional story of a man whose only lamb was stolen and killed. When the hypothetical crime incites David’s rage, Nathan reveals the story is an allegory for David’s affair with Bathsheba. Other notable fictitious stories in the Bible include Jotham’s fable (Judges 9:7–15) and Ezekiel’s allegory (Ezekiel 17:1–8). The greatest storyteller of all is Jesus. Every one of His parables in the Bible is a fictional story. Each one reveals a spiritual truth, but in form they are fiction.
What
this shows is that the fictional stories within the Scriptures are clearly
stories, not descriptions of history. They all illustrate some other point that
is in reference to something real going on in the lives of the people involved,
but the illustrations themselves are fictional stories. And, the context made
plain that one part was a fictional illustration while the other part was the
real-life situation the illustration was illustrating.
This is very serious business to make such
distinctions between what really is fiction and what really is history because
I already see where the garden path leads and the next bit is totally distorted
with truth and falsehood all twisted together as the real thing.
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Modernist literalism cannot seem to grasp this idea” (p. 121). |
My first thought is (ignoring the slanted and bigoted way BJ words
phrases to prejudice people's minds against his opponents), I seriously doubt
that the people he calls “modernist literalism” actually can’t grasp the
different genres of Scripture. It is far more likely that people have tried
to correct BJ’s horrible misrepresentations of Scripture because of the
warnings about tampering with the words of God. However, since the author is, unfortunately, using the
autobiographical form of writing in which he weaves his opinions into his testimonies
about what happened to him on his journey, I can’t dispute whether he
actually had people say what he claims. Instead, I will again point everyone
to the Historical-Grammatical plumbline where we absolutely do not have any
problem grasping the genres of Scripture. Even the Got Questions quote shows
that there indeed are fictional stories within the Scriptures. The problem is
not the Historical-Grammatical folks being unable to recognize when they are
reading a parable and understanding it as a fictional illustration of a
spiritual truth. The real problem is that the author doesn’t understand when
he is reading the genre of history and must accept as true something God said
really happened! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“It (BJ’s fabricated modernist literalism) constantly stumbles into
thinking that if a text (such as Genesis 2, Job, or Jonah) is not accepted as
factual history, then it isn’t true” (p. 121). |
Here is where BJ clearly does not understand when he is reading
history. This isn’t about the other extreme failing to know when a parable or
illustration is fictional. This is about BJ misrepresenting accounts of
history. This is where he switches from the bait of “fiction” to his personal
opinion about history. He does not want the history in the Bible to be our
history, so he has to twist Scripture to make everyone think it is fictional.
However, each of the references he included are referred to throughout the
rest of the Bible and are treated as real history, and this includes
statements by Jesus himself. It is very strange that BJ claims to want a
“more Christlike word”, and yet denies what the Christ has to say about his
bogus claims (feels like I have had to say this before!)! |
Let me
simply impose a PLEASE here. Please note that BJ has not given one shred of
evidence that the church fathers thought that the creation of Adam and Eve, the
fall into sin, the worldwide flood, and the life of Job or Jonah, were the
“fiction” they were referring to when it is so obvious which stories and
illustrations were fiction. Jesus referred to the historical parts of the Bible
as history, and I’m quite sure the church fathers did as well. BJ has a
notorious reputation for taking bits and pieces of things and twisting them to
say things that were never intended. In this case, he has used something the
church fathers would have stated, that some parts of the Bible are fictional
stories used for illustrative purposes, and then imposed that onto his own
false teachings about historical parts of the Bible! It is reprehensible to be
that dishonest!
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“But consider this: is the parable of the prodigal son not profoundly
true?” (p. 121). |
That is such a loaded question! The parable of the prodigal son is FICTION! The meaning of the illustration is profoundly true, of course it is.
But it is clearly fiction, not history like Genesis 2, Job, and Jonah. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Is Christ’s story of the good Samaritan not supremely true?” (p.
121). |
NO! The STORY is FICTION. The meaning is supremely true. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Or must it pass the literalist ‘camera’ test?” (p. 121). |
That is a horrible comparison. No, a parable does not need to pass a camera test. It didn’t happen.
There would be no picture of it even it was given today. It’s a PARABLE!
Remember, we’re making sure we’re being true to the genre! Would the application of the parable be seen in ways a camera could
capture? Yes, absolutely. If we put into practice what Jesus taught with his
parables, there would be visible and tangible expressions of putting Jesus’
words into practice. However, it would defeat the purpose of doing our good
deeds unto the Lord to make sure our good deeds are captured for social media
attention! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Do we really believe that if you couldn’t take a photograph of a
seven-day creation, global flood, or man-eating fish, then the stories mean
nothing, and God is not our Creator?” (p. 121). |
What a deceptive (loaded) question! The question assumes facts that have still not been put into evidence.
So, let’s clarify. BJ is wrong that we “couldn’t take a photograph” of historical events.
I mean, he isn’t literally meaning using a camera, right? This is an
illustration, right? He means that a fictional story could not be
photographed because it didn’t really happen. It doesn’t matter whether
cameras existed, it’s just an illustration. So, he is LYING that we “couldn’t” have taken photos of the events of
creation because those were all real-life events. If we were there, and
cameras existed, it would have been on social media! He is also lying that we “couldn’t” have captured the flood with a
camera. Of course we could have if we had one. It happened. In other words,
his “camera” illustration is to make the point that if an event was real it
could be photographed, if it was fiction, it could not. But then he gives
historical examples as if we “couldn’t” photograph them (aside from not
having a camera at the time) when yes, they did happen, they were witnessed,
God’s breathed-out words tell us what happened, and Jesus’ breathed-out words
affirm those events. The same is true of what happened with Jonah. It was history. Jesus
treated it like history. It passes the camera test. BJ is wrong. So, his point in that sentence is bogus. The idea that there is no
need to defend God as Creator when all the stories of creation and the flood
were just fiction is bogusness to the core! Instead, the history in God’s
word clearly reveals God as Creator. It also reveals Jesus as “the Word” by
whom and through whom all things were created, and we do not need to distort
one aspect of any of the references to creation to honor him and his Son for
all the work of creation that is so clearly described in their Book. And we most certainly do not have one shred of operational science
that contradicts the evidence for creation and a worldwide flood. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“And worse, if we were to discover that these stories were mythical,
poetic, or fictional, need we leap to the counterfactual corollary that Jesus
never existed or that his resurrection itself is doubtful? Seriously?” (p.
121). |
On one side, yes, if we treat the real history of God’s word as if it
was mythical, and write off real history as nothing more than poetic license,
or treat the historical descriptions of God’s creative genius as fictional,
then we have undermined the very foundation of the Bible’s claims about God,
sin, redemption, the resurrection, and forgiveness of sins. If the BJs are
the authority on which parts of the Bible are not literal history but just
fictional descriptions that reveal the warm fuzzies about God, then they are
also the authority on whether Jesus saves anyone at all. So, for the “few” who are listening… Seriously?! So many people are
believing this falsehood when he did not give even ONE piece of evidence?! |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“Well, it wasn’t so for the fathers, and it isn’t for me anymore” (p.
121). |
FALSE. If this book was supposed to show me how reasonable it is to believe
that the real history of God’s word can be written off as whatever genre the
BJs choose without even a fight to ask, “Where did the fathers say any of
this?” then something IS seriously wrong. I have personally processed this
section waiting to see what surprises BJ would pull out of the church fathers
that I didn’t know about. I was waiting to read what quote he would present
that showed that the church fathers did not believe in the Historical-Grammatical
description of creation, the creation of man and woman, the fall into sin,
the flood, the life of Job, the history of Abraham and Moses, the prophets (including
Jonah and his big fish). And here BJ is claiming that the “fathers” are on
his side when he hasn’t even presented one word that THEY said, but only more
of what HE said that he believes is more authoritative than the words God breathed
out through the writers of Scripture, including the words of his own Son on
these matters. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“They could read genres for what they were” (p. 121). |
No doubt. I’m quite sure that if we were to read the fathers, we would
find that they had discernment about the genres that BJ doesn’t even come
close to understanding. However, BJ CANNOT read genres for what they are and is trying to
convince everyone that the genre of historical description is not valid. Again, no quotes from the fathers, but he still claims that they used
the same deceptive concepts the BJs are promoting. Bogus. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“They were able to say, ‘No, serpents don’t actually talk, tress won’t
actually clap their hands, rocks won’t actually sing, the sun doesn’t
actually rise, and God doesn’t actually have temper tantrums” (p. 121). |
First, there is not one piece of evidence supporting BJ’s claim about
ANYTHING he says the church fathers believed or taught. Second, this is such a mix of history and metaphor that it is simply
so much poison in the pudding that it is totally unredeemable. Third, yes, the description of a serpent talking (as well as a donkey
talking), is history. Just because it included supernatural components of
both the evil one and of God does not mean these things did not happen. And
as long as BJ doesn’t quote the fathers, I say he is lying that they would
ever make such a mistake as treating history as fiction just because it
invaded the natural world with something from the spiritual realm. I would
also say that the voice speaking through BJ’s book is doing the same thing as
the voice speaking through the serpent in the garden, and we can even take a
photo of it happening right before our eyes! Fourth, yes, the metaphors of trees clapping and rocks singing are
fiction, but the events they describe will be all that and more! However, this
is beyond “mixed metaphors” since the metaphors are mixed in with historical descriptions
and treated as if they are all fiction. Which makes BJ’s claims… FICTION! Fifth, right, the sun does not technically rise. It is a figure of
speech. However, it isn’t the same fiction as trees clapping their hands
because it is describing what is a real appearance of things from the viewer’s
perspective. So we can say that scientifically it is not the sun rising but
the earth revolving. However, the appearance of a sunrise and sunset is also
describing what things truly do look like when they are happening. Sixth, and it is absolutely true and real that God does not have
temper tantrums. That is BJ’s bogus wording to engender a response of belief
in what he is saying when he is lying through and through. We can take God’s
judgment against criminal nations as totally historical and real, and totally
consistent with his real attributes of holiness, righteousness, wrath, and
justice, things BJ has 100% failed to disprove with his dishonest arguments. Conclusion: BJ has not presented 1 shred of evidence that the church
fathers believed the garbage he is presenting here. So I neither believe it
is true that the fathers treated history as fiction, nor that BJ has any
validity to his claims when they are so deliberately deceptive. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“But, of course Christ rose from the dead! The resurrection is not
presented as Homeric myth or poetic embellishment” (p. 121). |
Yes, Jesus rose from the dead. Yes, it is not myth or poetry. No, none of BJ’s claims that the history of creation, the fall, the
flood, or any other historical events in the Scriptures are true, but all the
historical events are true just as God breathed out their descriptions. |
|
BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
|
“The resurrection accounts present four theological perspectives
reflecting on the eyewitness testimonies of first-century people. That’s the
genre we call the Gospels” (p. 121). |
All the accounts of historical events in the Scriptures of the Old
Testament are just as real history as the four gospels, and the message of
the four gospels is built on the foundation of what was already written. I know we have already covered this, but when Jesus said, “These are
my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything
written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be
fulfilled” (Luke 24:44), he was affirming all Scripture as the breathed-out
words of God, and the historical descriptions he was referring to cannot be
written off as fiction no matter how many people the BJs deceive trying to do
so. |
This
day’s journal journey was exceptionally lengthy, but the fallout for people
believing such lies, twisting of Scriptures, and claims without evidence is too
great. People are turning away from the Scriptures as the breathed-out words of
God. That means they are doing what Paul said would happen, “Now the Spirit
expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting
themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (I Timothy 4:1). This
is fulfilled in this book as the devil continues to speak the same thing he
spoke through the serpent, “Did God actually say…?”
And my
answer is, “No, he did not!”
© 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
No comments:
Post a Comment