Tag: Saul

Lost me at “finality”

Sinclair Ferguson has a very helpful article on inerrancy, that I agree with completely… until the last point.  Why do people insist on understanding the closing of the canon like this?  Taken this way, the closing of the canon must have had a more profound effect on the daily lives of saints than ever the Day of Pentecost did.

You can almost hear the shattering echo of a giant door being slammed as John penned the final “amen” of Revelation, and someone saying, “The passage is blocked behind us now, and there is only one way out – on the other side of the mountains.  I fear from the sound that boulders have been piled up, and the trees uprooted and thrown across the gate.  I am sorry; for the trees were beautiful, and had stood so long.”

It’s all so unnecessary, too, because scripture and prophecy were never the same thing.  Not all scripture is prophecy, and even in scripture, not every prophecy is recorded.  There is only one recorded prophecy from any of the sons of prophets that met with Elisha before Elijah had ascended. They told him that Elijah was going to be taken that day, which Elisha already knew. A whole school of them, and no significant prophecies recorded, neither from the sons, nor from the fathers.  Twice Saul got caught up with a school of prophets and prophesied with them till the next morning, and we have received not a word of what they said in scripture.  Philip the evangelist had four daughters who prophesied, and yet not one word that they said was ever scripture.

There’s simply no reason to think that all this prophesying that was not adding to scripture before the canon was closed should suddenly be understood as adding to scripture after the canon was closed. Prophecy and scripture are simply two separate things. So it is extremely unhelpful to take the testimony of scripture about what spirit-directed life must look like in the light of Pentecost and de-normalize it, especially in support of a doctrine like inerrancy.

Spirit of Prophecy

In my daily Bible reading, I’m coming up on Ezekiel, and he’s making me nervous.

Always in the back of my mind is a series of books that I want to write some day, about how people understand mystical experiences, the supernatural, prophecy, etc. I have in mind at least three books: The first one would cover the Old Testament and be titled, “Saul among the prophets,” referring to the two times that King Saul got distracted from whatever errand he was on because he ran into a group of prophets, had some kind of ecstatic experience, and ended up in a daze and naked. The second book would be called, “You may all prophesy,” from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and it would cover what the New Testament church thought about these things. The third book would be about the early Christian era, and I would call it, “With a loud voice,” which is a quote from Ignatius of Antioch. Around 100 AD, he wrote a letter to the church at Philadelphia, where he asserted that what he said during a church service had been a prophecy, because he said it, “with a loud voice, with God’s own voice.” (What grand aspirations he has for a soldier, you say. It’s all right. I know of a newspaper man who once wrote a tome on Biblical authority.)

Anyway, because I have this in the back of my head, I’m always asking the question, “What exactly was this experience like?” When God said to Samuel, Look not to his appearance, what exactly did Samuel experience? Was it an audible voice, a thought inside his head? How did he know it was God and not his own idea? Was there some sort of sense of dread?

Ezekiel is especially hard to answer these questions. He has these dramatic experiences, where he is taken to some place, shown some awesome thing, and it’s not always entirely clear if what happened was in some sort of trance, or if he physically saw it with his eyes. Did he go afterwards and see char marks on the ground along the paths of the four living creatures?

But more close to home is that Ezekiel, being one of the most dramatic of the prophets, sets the standard for people who want to prophesy today. I am not a cessationist, and I think cessationists make their job too easy when they simply say the canon is closed. People have always had experiences. In former times, some of these were from God and some were nonsense. What help is it to say that now we are confident that all of them are nonsense? It’s a great help to those who want to be materialists and Christians also. But it’s kind of a Tolkien view of the world: In a former age, the world was flat and boundless, but in our current age, God has bounded it by curving it in upon itself. The way to the land of the Valar is now closed to mortals. They don’t seem to notice that, in Tolkien, the new rounded earth is a smaller, dimmer world.

But as I say, slamming the door closed on spiritual experiences is a kindness to folks who don’t have those experiences, and wonder if they should. But it’s a great harshness to people who continue to dream dreams and see visions. Those people are forced to resign the brighter half of their lives to the stuff of mental institutions and illegal pharmaceuticals. Yet they keep on seeing things.

As I said, Ezekiel in a lot of ways sets the standard for people who want to see visions. I mean, boy did he see them. But how much did he see them, and how much was it merely a divinely blessed imagination? I suspect the Hebrew word would have been the same.

It’s not an academic question for folks like me, with highly… enhanced… imaginations. If I’m meditating on a thing, and a picture comes into my mind, and boy what a humdinger, and with it comes a sense of dread and awe, how do I report it? How did Ezekiel report his experiences? “And saw a picture in my mind of four living creatures; whether they were real and imagined, I do not know. But as I contemplated these creatures, my heart rate was highly accelerated, and my hair stood on end.” Therefore: the word of the Lord. The ancient saints didn’t have the advantage of writing off Ezekiel’s visions simply because they were visions. (Unless they were Sadducees, but then the Sadducees were no saints.) There wasn’t any value in waiting to see if Ezekiel’s vision of the four creatures “came true.” There was no predictive element. Like all scripture, there was a certain component of his experience that must be self-authenticating.

And yet, charismatic though I am, I see in Ezekiel not only the authoritative word of God, but also the imaginative foundation of every two-bit quack and self-assured heretic in church history. Here is George Fox interrupting formal public meetings to ask why church houses are called churches. Here is William Blake writing vaguely seditious poetry, calling his acid-etched engravings visions of fire. Here is the hook for all the people Jude warned us about.

As the angel said to John, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” As surely as there are antichrists, there are prophets who testify for them. Their visions must surely sound and feel quite a bit the same.

Here is scripture, both our model and our instructor. Let us handle and divide it carefully.

Prophecy

Bibliolatry:
When a person relies on the authority of scripture to undermine what the text actually teaches.

This definition pops up for me whenever I hear a cessationist argument. Here we have a summary by Nathan Busenitz of a debate between Wayne Grudem and Ian Hamilton over the idea of “fallible prophecy” in the New Testament.

For my purposes, we’ll leave aside the question of fallibility for a minute. Let’s just look at authority, or urgency. Does scripture portray any kind of prophecy, in the Old Testament or New, which has less authority than the full weight of Biblical law? Is Saul also among the prophets? If all true prophecy has the full weight of scripture behind it, how is it possible for Paul to instruct the Corinthians that “spirits of prophets are subject to prophets”? Can you imagine someone saying that the text of Jeremiah was subject to Jeremiah, that if someone had interrupted him, he would have done best to sit down and shut up? Of course not. “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”

Scripture itself presents prophecy as being a thing that has different levels of urgency and precariousness. Who then are you to argue that the nature of scripture requires prophecy to be sealed off like scripture? The implication then would be that all prophecy necessarily has the same weight as scripture, and therefore becomes scripture the minute it is written down and preserved. But that simply isn’t the case at all. There are references in scripture to literally thousands of prophetic events of various levels, that nobody thought even worth writing down. An entire school of prophets in Elijah’s time was able to come up with only a single message worth writing down – for dramatic effect. Most prophecy in ancient times never ascended to the level of being considered scripture, so why should it be disturbing to think that, though there may still be prophecy today, none of it reaches the same level of authority as scripture?

Brothers, we are not Platonists. Neither scripture nor prophecy come down like a mathematical proof, with all the edges carefully sealed. If we are to obey scripture, we must obey it as it is, both in what it says and in the characteristics that it models. What you mustn’t do is determine what it ought to model, based on what it necessary for the formula, and use that to determine what the text must mean.

Busenitz lists 5 dangers of prophecy. They strike me more as 5 inconveniences. The possibility of modern prophecy creates scenarios where people might be subject to influences that can’t be shot down with a cannonade from scripture. But scripture wasn’t given us so that we might have confidence in the teachers of the law. It was given us that we might have confidence in Christ. God forbid that we should build up a confidence in the text in such a way that we fail to perceive what the text actually says, about itself, and about how we relate to Christ and each other.

Prophesy

Reading my Bible, I’ve been stuck for 6 months in 1 Samuel, mostly because I haven’t been reading it. But I was struck by this passage today:

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” And Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” And the LORD said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ And invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you.” Samuel did what the LORD commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, “Do you come peaceably?” And he said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed is before him.” But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, “Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The LORD has not chosen these.” Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?”

1 Sam 16:1-11a ESV

There are so many things to look into here that my gut wants to look right past: Why were the people afraid of Samuel, when Samuel was afraid of Saul? How is it that God was concerned about Samuel’s dejection over Saul? How is it that Samuel was dejected, when so recently he was stony toward Saul? How could God tell Samuel to use misdirection to get to Bethlehem without arousing suspicion? Wasn’t that a little bit like lying?

I’m stuck on something a little more fundamental: what was it like for Samuel to speak with God like He was a man? How did he know it was the voice of God? Was it audible? Apparently it was enough like an audible voice, that he thought Eli was calling him from another room when he was a child, but not so audible that the people around him could hear it.

I picture Jesse standing there before Samuel, sweat dripping down his face, a little bit nervous and a bit concerned. There’s no indication from the text that Jesse knew why Samuel was there. Samuel says he’s here at Bethlehem to offer a sacrifice, though Bethlehem is not an official place for sacrifice. Then he picks out Jesse and has him consecrate himself and his family. No one knows what Samuel is doing. Again, when Jesse introduces his family, Samuel walks down the line like a judge at a beauty contest, saying nothing, having some kind of personal dialogue inside his head. His eyes light, and then he frowns, and frowning walks his way down the line, staring at each son like he’s weighing their souls. When he comes to the end of the line, he turns to Jesse: “The LORD has not chosen these.” he says, “Are all your sons here?”

What is anyone supposed to make of this? Ah, but Samuel is a prophet, and prophets do strange things. People, in turn, have strange ideas about prophets and what to do with them. Can you use a prophet as your personal tracking device – trade him a little produce and he’ll tell you where your goats have gone? Maybe. In a sense, it worked that way for Saul. At least, Samuel knew where the goats were, though for God, the goats were just an excuse. Can you ply them with gold to pronounce blessings and curses, to change the fate of history? Balak tried, and Balaam was plied, but with stunningly unintended results. How different was a Jewish seer, really, from the voice that moaned at Delphi?

The answer, is “very different.” But not because the prophets are a different kind of men. No, but God is a very different God. He is very hard to manipulate. “Our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases.”

But how did it happen, that Samuel heard the voice of God? Oh, don’t hide behind that mysticism. You’re only mystical when the lights are off. Yes, Samuel was God’s own prophet. He heard a voice that was somehow not quite inside his head, and knew that voice was God’s own word and not the frenzy of his own mind. Not a word of his fell to the ground. But how did he know?

It’s an urgent question precisely because it’s 3000 years later. Jesus Christ has come and brought God’s spirit with him. Peter preached at Pentecost that the very thing folks were laughing at – people proclaiming God’s grace, wildly, in every language they didn’t know, was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

Suddenly, in some way, and in some sense, what applies to Samuel applies to me. I can grant all kinds of exceptions – Samuel was called to a national stage for a specific purpose, and so on. But it remains that Samuel was a prophet of God, and as a Christian I must believe that God’s spirit has been poured out “on all flesh.” Is Samuel a prophet? Why am I not one?

I can hear the charismatics and Pentecostals cheering. But let me ask you, do you mock the word of God? Not one of Samuel’s words fell to the ground. If you prophesy, do you prophesy nonsense? Do you hear words in your head that sound godly, or even just amazing, and assume they came from God? How can you tell?

On the one hand, I’m constrained to believe that, if Joel is true, then it must not be true, because prophecy now would supersede the personal work of Jesus Christ (See Hebrews 1). On the other hand, I’m compelled to believe that I should be frivolous with the very oracles of God.

But Samuel walked with God, and not one word of his fell to the ground. He mourned for Saul, challenged God like a friend, calmed the people, and appointed kings. If God has sent his spirit, there should be more men like him. How could it be that the coming of the Spirit would usher us from a golden age to bronze?

Aw, Come on!

Reading in 1 Samuel today, and I come to the passage in chapter 15 where Samuel has to come to Saul and tell him that God has rejected him as king. Samuel says, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.” Then, six verses later, the text says, “And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.”

I mean, come on! Six verses between “God doesn’t regret” and “God regrets”? I don’t care what your theories are on how or by whom the bible was written. The guy who put that in there had to see that coming. I mean, really.

I’m reading the ESV, and I don’t really have the time to go looking to see what other translations put down, much less try to look up the Hebrew, so I’m stuck having to parse out all on my own in what sense God does regret and in what sense he doesn’t.