How do you complete a close study of the Book of Acts, and conclude that it teaches that miracles are to be expected routinely (though they “sometimes” don’t occur) without noticing that the book specifically attributes miracles only to “the apostles,” and overwhelmingly to Peter and Paul?
The two exceptions to this apostolic status are Stephen, the first martyr and one of the seven “deacons,” and Philip, evangelist and prophet extraordinaire, both of whom may well have been amongst the seventy sent out by Jesus during his ministry. Both are noted as frequent miracle-workers, but nobody else in the entire early Church of Acts is attributed even one wonder.
Readers of 2 Corinthians (12:12) likewise fail to note that Paul bases his apostolic credentials partly on the “signs, wonders and miracles” that mark an apostle (as opposed to anyone else), and consequently that this verse qualifies the list of spiritual gifts given to the Church in 1 Corinthians. Why, I ask, are these clear and repeated points in the Bible not even noticed, let alone mentioned or discussed?
The answer is, of course, that people don’t want to notice them, because they habitually read the text according to their own theology, rather than forming their theology according to the text. Their theology is actually created by osmosis from those around them, who have imbibed Pentecostalism – as no doubt mediaeval Catholics took it for granted that indulgences and Mariolatry were core apostolic doctrines, because it was common knowledge. They had the excuse that the Bible was in Latin. We don’t.
This is a very different phenomenon from our common experience of knowing what the Bible teaches, and failing to live up to it. Sin deceives in a particular way. This, however, is the blindness of social contagion, which is closely allied to social exclusion, as writers from Rene Girard to Douglas Murray have documented for those who missed the lessons of COVID. It is not even so much the elevation of experience over Scripture, for the experience of actual miracles is rare indeed.
A similar conclusion is reached in this video by Greg Koukl on the non-biblical belief that Christians should regularly hear the “small, still voice” of God directing their everyday affairs and life choices. Koukl’s host considers that this belief is actually a majority one amongst Christians (for which read “Evangelicals”). I’m inclined to agree this is true today (though it wasn’t a generation ago) given the trouble I’ve experienced personally by daring to suggest it is false teaching.
Koukl goes through most of the main proof texts for this teaching, showing how every one of them is wrenched from its scriptural context. He even describes how, despite the evidence of Scripture, many of those to whom he’s explained the matter react with anger, even claiming he’s trying to “rob them of God.” In fact, he predicts, pretty accurately, that many or most of the commenters on the video will have the same reaction, outnumbering those who instead experience liberation from the fear that, because God doesn’t whisper to them daily, they probably aren’t proper Christians.
Koukl is, indeed, right in his prediction, and the nature of the negative responses is significant. Not one replies to a single one of the texts he’s explained with a better interpretation, nor suggests passages he hasn’t covered to refute him. Instead, the pattern is “He’s wrong, because God speaks to me every day and he’s trying to deny my Christian experience.” Once more, they ignore what the Bible actually teaches because the theology they already have takes precedence, even though they claim to follow the Bible.
The most important thing Koukl says, which every Christian ought to reflect upon soberly, is that if the Bible doesn’t teach that we should expect to hear God audibly (but with difficulty, as if God had chronic laryngitis), then they’re not being robbed of God, but of a false experience of God. And whether the voice you hear is your own internal dialogue, or something worse, your are still being deceived by the Deceiver, not edified by the Spirit.
You could spend years listening out for God’s voice, and being continually convinced that the Lord’s voice isdirecting you to a specific ministry – a conviction only increased the longer you spend in “listening prayer.” But if God has never promised to whisper directions in our ears (and he hasn’t, unless you can find me the passage), then you may well experience disillusion, instead of gratitude, when he calls you to something else.
As Greg Koukl rightly says, any slave can obey instructions without a shred of common sense, but God’s intention is that we should grow in godly wisdom through his word empowered by the Spirit, so that we know the right kind of actions to take, freely, in our decisions day by day. It is what Paul calls “having the mind of Christ.”
My title today brings Christian belief together with the Jason Arday debacle. My alma mater Cambridge University has become a pathetic excuse for an intellectual establishment because dons preferred their bizarre ideology over the truths of plagiarism, fantasy and cunning exploitation of fashionable sins. Norman Fenton’s new book reveals how this self-delusion is as ubiquitous in our institutions as belief in “conversational Christianity” is in Evangelicalism today.
In fact even that DEI delusion has even crept into the churches with the call for “gender neutral” toilets, quite apart from any Critical Theory in the pulpit. Accept the self-diagnosis as valid, and you have accepted the whole ideology. If you were to hesitate to baptize Jason Arday because of his pathological lying, would you be guilty of the same “white privilege” of which he accused his unfortunate students? Or does not the Bible show the whole concept to be from the Father of Lies, and therefore to warrant repentance?
Whether the truth is factual, academic or biblical, the refusal to accept it stems from the same root in Cambridge University or Anytown Church – preferring ones own beliefs to reality. And the response to evidence is likewise similar – denial and accusing the messenger of lovelessness.
Intellectuals have always been vulnerable to human delusions, whether they be Hermetic Magic, Phrenology, Freudian psychotherapy or Marxism. Christians, by contrast, have always had one final, divine, source of authority, which is God’s word. They ought to know better.
