Scripture and False Teaching

II Peter 1:19-21

¹⁹ So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰ First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, ²¹ because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

 

II Peter 1:19-21 has the theme of protecting believers from false teaching through an inspired text, the Bible. If we go into the second chapter, the author makes it clear that a concern is for false teaching that has arisen. The author believes that Scripture properly read can preserve the community of followers of Jesus from such teaching. We find a similar concern in Romans 16:17-20 for false teaching that causes dissension within the church. Another primary passage in this regard is II Timothy 3:16-17. 

16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 

Scripture holds a special place for us today because God breathed life into it, and therefore, it becomes life to us, if we are open to receive it. Scripture is “useful” in that it teaches us positive matters we are to believe, as well as reprove and correct our belief and practice. It trains us in righteousness, so that we who belong to God may become proficient for good works.

In the II Peter passage, that “we” would do well to pay attention to the prophetic message of Scripture, just as “we” would pay attention to a lamp shining in a dark place. Barth is insightful at this point, stressing that the matter of the Word seems complicated by the fact that in comes in the form of the human word of prophets and apostles. Therefore, the divine Word meets us in the thick of the fog of our own intellectual life, taking on the same form as our ideas, thoughts, and convictions. Yet, for him, the Word is a light that shines in a dark place, but it needs no explanation because it simply shines.[1]

II Peter further stresses that his readers should pay attention until the day dawns and the morning star rises in their rises in their hearts. The most important thing to understand is that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. The reason is that no prophecy comes by human will. Rather, the Holy Spirit moved men and women to speak from God. Barth takes this to mean that we allow scripture to interpret itself. We allow it to control our exposition. What he finds decisive is the role of the Holy Spirit. He thinks that the Holy Spirit and the Bible have an intimate relation. The unity of the Spirit and the Word is a free act of the grace of God, and therefor for us its content is always a promise. He goes so far as to say that his view of inspiration is one the reader can judge in light of this passage, combined with II Timothy 3:16-17.[2]

Of course, we are not to read scripture in a casuistic way, as if it were simply a book of church law. The Pharisees tried that approach. Paul rarely appealed to a line of the Old Testament law, but he did appeal to Jesus, most famously in Philippians 2:5. Jesus provides an example of reading scripture through his elevation of the commandment to love God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love the neighbor as oneself. Thus, while the Old Testament and Judaism yet today take the purity and sacrificial laws seriously, the New Testament took the purity laws, the regulations concerning clean and unclean foods, and the entire festival and sacrificial system, and interpreted them as finding their fulfillment in an unexpected way in the suffering servant, Jesus of Nazareth. Another obvious example is that to conclude Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah required a new reading of the Old Testament. Here are some other examples. Jesus and Paul redefined the people of God, recognizing the overwhelming power of the Roman Empire, and therefore did not lead others to agitate in a military way against the Empire. Jesus encouraged a form of strategic pacifism in this regard. We have Romans 13 as an example of the view of Paul toward the Empire. Even when the Empire became beastly, as we see in the Book of Revelation, the author does not recommend a futile military battle between first century Christians and the Empire. The church in the first century took the practical approach they could not effect large political changes. Yet, recognizing that the people of God must reside within the Empire, both Jesus and Paul commented on how the people of God were to act. Another example is that we have his instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, including reflections on marriage. Matthew 5 is particularly instructive, in that Jesus could say, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you.” Thus, when Jesus says love your enemies, it should make the Christian look at certain Psalms and certain part of the Old Testament in a different way than the writer intended. With Paul, we have what scholars call the household rules, such as we find in Colossians and Ephesians, his statements on marriage and divorce in I Corinthians 7, his elevation of love in I Corinthians 13, his ethical directions in Romans 12-15, and his various lists of virtue and vice, notably in Galatians 5. From the Christian view, then, the reader of the Bible has no obligation to treat every word as if each word had the same value, for we read in light of Jesus and the New Testament. For those of us who value the Bible, it requires some discipline to learn to read the Old Testament in such a way that it finds genuine fulfillment in light of the further revelation Christians believe they have in Jesus Christ.

All of this is simply way of recognizing that the Word of God comes to us today in human words and cultural settings. It means every word of the Bible, understood in its context, may require interpretation from further revelation. Every word does not carry the same weight. It requires a careful reading, a discerning reading, and a humble reading. When we read things we do not like in the Bible, our human inclination is to say the Bible is wrong. However, it just might be that is where God is speaking to us in a challenging way. We might need to listen even more carefully.

Pastors are teachers of the Word. Of course, the words of the Bible are to lead us to the Word, that is, Jesus Christ. We rightly give priority to the Scripture. II Peter and II Timothy give me great pause to consider that the responsibility of the pastor is to go somewhere with the Word. Every Sunday, the pastor is to help people take that journey as well. Every service of worship is an attempt to go somewhere with the Word, recognizing that the Word is not simply open to my private interpretation, but rather, open to the interpretation through a community. The community began in the around 2000 years of the period covered by Scripture itself. It continues in the 2000 years since the formation of the canon of the New Testament. We go somewhere with the Word in order to receive teaching, reproof, correction, and training, all for the purpose of leading to a good life. The Bible holds a privileged place in the communication of the church. I do not go rummaging around in other texts, as much as I may value them. I learn much from psychology, sociology, philosophy, and theology. I learn much from the newspaper. The music, prayers, and message are accountable to the Bible. I value my reading of other religious texts. However, as Bishop Willimon has said somewhere, the Christian and the Buddhist differ largely because we have listened to different stories, differing visions of the world.

Pastors will often read authors who point to a quite different approach to the text than I am suggesting here. Some authors begin with the view that the Bible is violent, narrow, primitive, incomprehensible, disordered, and even weird. Dare I say it? So are you, as a reader of the text. As post-modern people, we adopt a superior attitude toward the Bible. We call the Bible sexist and patriarchal, as if we are not. We think we have risen above the Bible. We think the culture of the Bible conditions it so much that it has nothing to say to us. We do not see how our culture has conditioned us, especially as we read the Bible. Yes, part of my job as a preacher and teacher of the Bible is to make the Bible comprehensible to us as post-modern people. However, an even more important task is to help us be worthy listeners of the Word.

The Bible is about God. Most of us are scrambling around for a few crumbs that we can summarize on a bumper sticker. The Bible is about large matters, as we often hear today, things that matter most. We often come to the Bible thinking of ourselves. The Bible is first about God, and secondarily a disclosure that concerns us.

The Bible is about us. The Bible is messy, just like our lives. In fact, the Bible keeps on going with no conclusion. Like some episodes on television, “to be continued” is at the end of every story. In fact, one reason many of us love the Bible, and have spent much of our lives studying it and teaching it, is that we have a hunch that the Bible is our story as well. It keeps disclosing to us deeper levels of our lives that need the healing, liberating, and guiding presence of God.

Having said all of this about the Bible, the reader of the Bible that the primary issue is not a defense of the Bible, but finding ways of letting the Bible live in our lives in ways that challenge us as well as those around us. The Word trains us in righteousness and good works.

The great missionary doctor, Albert Schweitzer, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, making him world-famous. Soon after winning the prize, Dr. Schweitzer was visiting Chicago. A whole contingent of reporters and politicians had gathered at the train station to meet him.

As Dr. Schweitzer stepped off the train -- 6 feet 4 inches in height, bushy hair, large moustache, decked out in his trademark white suit -- news cameras flashed, and city officials lined up to be photographed beside the renowned humanitarian.

 Just then, the doctor seemed to see something far off that attracted his attention. He asked the reporters if they would excuse him for a moment.

Dr. Schweitzer walked right through the crowd, which parted to make room for him, until he reached an elderly African-American woman who was struggling under the weight of two large suitcases. Smiling, he picked the bags up in his big hands, and escorted her to the steps of her bus. After helping her aboard, he wished her a safe journey.

As all this was going on, the doctor's entourage had tagged along behind him. Turning around and seeing them, he said simply: "Sorry to have kept you waiting."

A member of the reception committee turned and said to one of the reporters: "That's the first time I ever saw a sermon walking."

 

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[1] Church Dogmatics I.2 [21.2] 716.

[2] Church Dogmatics I.2 [19.2]  504-17.