J. W. McGarvey: On Scripture

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey’s Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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It is both ironic and unfortunate that J. W. McGarvey’s collection of sermons should begin with the address entitled “Inspiration of the Scriptures.” It is ironic because this opening salvo in his Sermons Delivered in Louisville, Kentucky was in fact given before the YMCA of the University of Missouri. It is unfortunate because, in spite of my admiration for McGarvey and the great deal of inspiration I draw from him, there could hardly be a subject on which we differ more completely or more profoundly than the inspiration of Scripture. With dry, scientific precision that has fallen out of favor in our contemporary culture of sensationalism, McGarvey seeks to demonstrate that Scripture is inspired, that this inspiration is self-evident, and that it grounds the authority of Scripture. I have no qualms, necessarily, with the first two purposes (though I imagine McGarvey and I would differ over precisely what all the relevant terms mean), but it has been my longstanding mission to correct the erroneous notion in American Christianity that scriptural authority is rooted in special inspiration. McGarvey specifically situates his claim in response to emerging documentary theories of Old Testament authorship and new historical assertions about the authors of the Gospels. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that many of the bloated claims of late nineteenth century scholars require extreme qualification if not outright rejection. For McGarvey, however, there can be only one reply: Scripture is the work of the traditional authors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. While I think there is value to the sermon outside this main (but misguided) theme, in historical fairness to McGarvey it seems necessary to at least outline his argument.

McGarvey has little trouble establishing from Scripture that the Bible is inspired and passes over that task without fanfare. The main body of his message is dedicated to establishing the self-evident nature of biblical inspiration, a fact which, for him, is manifest in the peculiar nature of the Scriptures. Making his focus specifically the historical books of the New Testament, McGarvey endeavors to show that—deviations in personal style not withstanding—there is a common character to the biblical text which is entirely unprecedented “almost from time immemorial.” He notes the brevity with which the authors write and their calmness in treating extraordinary events. He marvels at their candor about facts which one would expect to be glossed over and their silence about the events and topics the reader most wants to know. Consistent with the spirit of his times, McGarvey even appeals to the quasi-miraculous ability of Scripture to affect good in the world, more or less independently of human agency. With gusto, he exhorts his young listeners to seize hold of the foundational truth of biblical inspiration and to carry their infallible text into battle, into “the field of debate with the ablest of its enemies.” Many of McGarvey’s arguments about a common and unique character can be countered in modern times by discoveries of ancient documents with similar features. To his audience, however, McGarvey was almost certainly convincing.

There is no surprise there; as almost always the case, it is easiest to persuade those who already agree with your position. There is a more essential truth about the Gospel as it is presented in Scriptures that underlies McGarvey’s message and which, I would suggest, is fruitful for ongoing consideration. Regardless of our moment in history and regardless of the culture we inhabit, there is a strong sense when reading Scripture that it refuses to conform to our expectations. Of course, this sense would undoubtedly have been less pronounced to the original audience, but I suspect there are common features of the human condition which come to Scripture with a set of expectations to which the text refuses to conform. McGarvey hits on at least two which possibly have universal application: the reticence of Scripture and the absence of speculation.

With regard to the first, McGarvey marvels at the great omissions in Scripture, its refusal to answer the questions which seem naturally foremost in the mind. He offers, as one example, the extensive treatment given to the martyrdom of Stephen and the equally brief report of the martyrdom of James. Without in any way trying to diminish Stephen, McGarvey rightly observes that the death of James ought naturally to assume a higher priority in the Christian narrative. After all, James was not only one of the twelve but one of three members of Jesus’ “inner circle” (if it is meaningful to talk about such a thing). His death certainly meant more to the Jerusalem community and to the church at large than Stephen’s who is, in narrative terms, merely a flash in the pan. It could be that the original audience had already heard the story of James and needed to be told of the trials of Stephen. More likely, the martyrdom of Stephen functions in the Lukan scheme in important ways that the death of James does not. In either case, there is a longing on the part of any interested reader for a fairer treatment of the material. The lust is always for just a little more information where something is suspiciously lacking, in spite of the knowledge that a comprehensive story would fill the earth. Whether it is glaring omissions, such as the entire adolescence of Jesus, or more subtle silences, the Bible by design or by necessity firmly declares: “You will know this much and no more.”

Similarly, there is a marked rejection on the part of the biblical authors to engage in the kind of speculation that has characterized most great religious thought since. McGarvey speaks of it as the infallibility of the biblical authors, but, when the baggage that term carries is removed, what he is really interested in highlighting is how more-than-human the biblical authors sound. “On all subjects and on all occasions they speak with a confidence which knows no hesitation, and which admits no possibility of a mistake.” With none of the characteristic tentativeness with which all authors subsequent (and many parabiblical authors previous) write, the biblical authors do not invite us to question whether they are right or wrong. They leave no space for disagreement (even in Paul’s insistence that Christians should have space for disagreement), no wiggle room where often times we would want it most. “Was this the result of stupidity and of overweening self-conciousness?” McGarvey thinks not, and I am inclined to agree. He suggests it was inspiration; I suppose it was confidence in the messiah being proclaimed. In either case, people in every time—and increasingly in our age of customization—have always demanded room to maneuver and, if they are wise, have always been proportionally qualified in their assertions as they become increasingly grandiose. (A statement, perhaps, on the wisdom or folly of American politicians.) The biblical authors never offer speculations, however; they offer declarations “on some themes which have baffled the powers of all thinkers, such as the nature of God, his eternal purposes, his present will, angels, disembodied human spirits…”

McGarvey’s list goes on, as could a list of the ways Scripture refuses to bow to our expectations of it. Like Pharisees bring questions to Christ, we find our own demands of Scripture paradoxically and simultaneously met and rebuffed. It answers us in riddles or on questions we had never thought to ask; it answers us with stories we cannot shake and commands we cannot meet (or help but meet because they are commanded of us). Given what it purports to be, the Bible is spectacularly troublesome book. It lacks the fluidity and vagueness of a loosely defined religious philosophy such as many found in the East or manifesting now in the West. It lacks the clarity and exhaustiveness of legal codes, past or present. It demands that we balance its spirit with its letter and recognize that the two are inseparable. Ultimately, it is an icon which directs us to a God who is at once fundamentally inaccessible and lovingly beckoning us to Himself. Of course, this was the not the message McGarvey primarily aimed at conveying, but I would like to think that his image of a Scripture which pointed to the Holy Spirit as its ultimate author would admit an understanding of the text whose unusual nature served as a vehicle for encountering an unusual Father.

Have Prophecies Ceased: Answering Tough Questions

An analysis of the primary text regarding cessationism and of the two main stances on its meaning–scriptural cessationism and eschatological cessationism–yielded a picture of spiritual gifts which were given to Christians in the interim until the final consummation of creation. Spiritual gifts roughly correspond, oddly enough, to the gift of the Spirit who was promised by Christ to come in his stead until the time of his triumphant return. Unless you are part of a small and largely disregarded minority that believes Christ has already “returned,” this means that the spiritual gifts which Paul subordinates to love in 1 Cor. 13 are very much alive and well in the present, or at least they ought to be. This leaves the thoughtful Christian with a number of important questions that warrant answering. The treatment here will necessarily be cursory but should serve at least as an introduction to what this author thinks is the best way to tackle the legitimate problems.

The first issue that arises is one of semantics and may seem trivial at first. It is important, however, because it is these small matters of translation that allow people to more easily perpetuate misunderstandings of the text. Years ago when I first raised this question to my spiritual and intellectual betters, I found their explanation that “the perfect” was the New Testament to be entirely satisfactory. It would not be until much later when I had studied Greek, hermeneutics, and theology that I could more fully evaluate their proposal. The sad truth of the matter was that if the text had been translated more appropriately, I may never have fallen into error at all. The question then is this: should το τελειον be translated “the perfect” or “the end?”

In the interest of fairness, I will make what I consider to be a reasonable demand of biblical translators. When translating the world, all that matters is that they translate the three parallel instances in 1 Corinthians the same way. If they want to change the other two references to το τελειον to “the perfect,” I suppose I can live with that (though I doubt that they could). Otherwise, its smacks of intellectual dishonesty to deliberately elect for a translation which runs against the standard usage in a given book, and that even before the obvious nature of the immediate context is considered. The more I reflect on it, the more audacious it is to me that any translator should opt for a divergent translation of το τελειον in 1 Cor. 13 when the typical translation not only maintains consistency but also accords better with the sense of the text.

In truth, however, I think that there is no truly appropriate translation of the term. I am of the opinion that Paul intends το τελειον as a double entendre. The first and obvious sense is “the end,” since Paul has been stressing temporal issues (i.e. the transience of spiritual gifts and the permanence of love). Yet, as the other passages clearly indicate, the expected end is one in which Christ comes. In this sense, “the perfect” is a very appropriate translation as it is the arrival of the perfect one which signifies the end. I would love to see a biblical translation which opts for “the end” in the text and comments on this richer meaning in a footnote.

It was previously discussed that the view that the New Testament represented “the perfect” which would come arose as a defense of biblical authority against Pentecostalism. This raises two important questions that may be answered in turn. If authoritative prophecy continues, what is the grounds for biblical authority which all Christian bodies claim? If spiritual gifts persist, should we not all join Pentecostal movements? The questions and their answers are interrelated, but for organizational purposes they will be answered individually.

For Christians who have a view of biblical authority dependent on an idea of miraculous spiritual inspiration which has since ceased, the belief that miraculous spiritual gifts does present a serious, even unanswerable challenge. If the Bible is normative because the Spirit inspired it and the Spirit continues to inspire prophecies, then Scripture is put on the same level as whatever prophecy may be uttered by any would be prophet with a pulpit. Too readily when faced with this problem, Christians attack the latter premise and deny that inspired prophecies can continue. In truth, as we have seen, it is the former premise which is novel in the history of Christendom. The earliest Christians could not have understood Scripture to be authoritative merely by virtue of its origin in the Spirit because they quite clearly believed that they were still being inspired by the Spirit.

In contrast to the modern method of determining scriptural authority, the church from its earliest times until the “completion” of the canon used apostolicity not inspiration as the criterion for authority. In doing this, they were following Paul’s own example, who himself declared in the same letter to the Corinthians “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” It is important to recognize that he did not insist “Am I not inspired? Have I not been filled with the Holy Spirit?” How could he, since he admits that the audience to whom he writes are all inspired and full of the Holy Spirit. With this in mind, the early church used apostolicity as the sole rule for canon. This took the form of three general questions: was the text written by an apostle (or “apostolic man”), is the text accepted in the major Christian churches founded by the apostles, and does the text agree with the oral tradition that was transmitted to the church by the apostles (the pre-canonical creeds)?

The tendency among many modern interpreters is going to be to want to reduce those three criteria only to authorship. While I do not share that impulse, it certainly more closely approximates the early church’s understanding of authority (both during the process of canon and in the Christian world depicted by the New Testament) and is more easily defensible in the face of criticism from both non-Christians and charismatic Christian groups. In response to the secular critics, the authenticity of the canonical texts can be defended with no more or less uncertainty than the presumptuous theories which abound about their forgery. It certainly should be admitted by all that there are no texts of apostolic authorship yet discovered which are not in the canon. No non-canonical text even comes close to being able to make such a claim. In response to latter day prophets in the various charismatic movements, an appeal to apostolicity allows Scriptures authority to go on unquestioned without making a definitive statement about any particular prophet one way or another. Whatever the prophecy is, it is subordinate to Scripture and lacks any ultimate, a priori authority because it does not and cannot meet the single criteria for original normative teaching: apostolicity.

(None of this is in any way intended to reject the reality of biblical inspiration, only its ground as the sole or even primary criteria for Scripture’s authority. What inspiration is and how it relates to the normative nature of Scripture is far enough beyond the scope of this topic that I feel justified in not treating it here.)

This relocation of the locus of scriptural authority, or rather a correction of a dislocation of that locus, does not in any way automatically validate a Pentecostal understanding of spiritual gifts. The fact that the early church accepted the continuation of spiritual gifts but rejected early charismatics (like Montanus) should give pause to anyone who would immediately leap to Pentecostalism. I am of the very firm belief that both Pentecostals and reactionaries who feel the need to deny all ongoing spiritual gifts grossly misunderstand the nature of the gifts being debated.

The relationship between prophecy and Scripture was discussed at length in the refutation of scriptural cessationism, and so a total restatement of that position would be unnecessary here. It is important to remember the nature of biblical prophecy, however, and to recall that the prophets of Israel were not fortunetellers. Shockingly little time is spent in the Prophets making absolute predictions of the distant future. The work of the Prophets was more as inspired interpreters than as soothsayers. They reminded Israel of their forgotten heritage and their obligations to God, interpreting the authoritative text of the Torah and the instructive history of the Israelites for a contemporary audience. I recently visited a megachurch who had a troupe of prophets who divided the congregations into sections and prophesied over them. On the opposite side of the stadium (which is the most appropriate term for the venue), a prophetess announced to one section that their student loans were all soon to be forgiven. In addition to feeling deeply slighted that the usher hadn’t sat me in that section, it was appalling to me that people could even imagine a continuity between that sort of Miss Cleo nonsense and the work of Hosea or Amos.

Similarly, the way tongues is presently being practiced is quite contrary to what is seen in Scripture. Most importantly, speaking in tongues throughout the New Testament is exclusively the phenomenon through which someone spoke a human language that he or she did not previously know for the benefit of those in the audience who understood that language. Paul, moreover, insists that any time tongues-speaking occurs in a service that an interpreter be present to explain what is being said to the remainder of the church. Every instance of tongues-speaking I have been present for has been a speaking in “angelic tongues” (a behavior which Paul references rhetorically and somewhat pejoratively in 1 Cor. 13 but that no one is ever reported in Scripture to have actually done) in which the speaker enters a trance-like state, screams some gibberish, and then goes on as if nothing had happened. While amusing, the behavior in no way imitates what is described in Scripture and in truth serves no discernible purpose whatsoever.

The misunderstanding and misappropriation of the spiritual gifts described in Scripture by charismatic churches (throughout history, not merely Pentecostalism) is lamentable. These movements do nevertheless challenge us with another important question: if spiritual gifts do continue and they are not being experienced in charismatic churches, then where are they? There are two options that I can devise for explaining this and both seem to me to be at least helpful in understanding the present state of affairs. For my part, I believe that the answer is likely a synthesis of the two.

The first is an appeal to utility. The purpose of most of the spiritual gifts are no longer pragmatic in modern Western society. In a world with advanced medical care and abundant interpreters for every language commonly spoken, miraculous healings and tongues-speaking are not only out of place but unnecessary. We have an abundance of ministers, teachers, and, in my opinion, prophets if anyone would listen to them. It seems that healers and tongues-speakers flourish elsewhere, particularly in Africa and southeast Asia. Some would like to attribute this to cultural primitiveness (which stinks of ethnic hubris) or the prevalence of charismatic movements there (which displays a profound ignorance of the state even of the Churches of Christ in Africa). I prefer to think that God continues to poor out His Spirit on behalf of the poorest and neediest of His children.

The second explanation is an appeal to spiritual atrophy. It should come as a surprise to no one that the Spirit is not poured out into denominations that want to confine it to the inspiration of Scripture. We do not invite the Spirit to move in our movements and therefore we find ourselves spiritually stagnant. This may sound like a very limited critique of Churches of Christ and other similar movements, but in fact the same accusation is made by other groups about churches which are historically much more in tune to the work of God in the Spirit. Consider these quotes from Seraphim of Sarov, a Russian Orthodox monk and mystic of the not too distant past:

In our time because of the almost universal coldness toward the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and because of our inattentiveness with regard to the acts of His Divine Providence concerning us, as well as to the communion of man with God — because of all this — we have reached a state in which we may be said to have withdrawn almost entirely from the true Christian life.

Now some people say: ‘…Is it possible that men could see God thus clearly?’ Yet there is nothing obscure here. The lack of understanding is attributable to the fact that we have strayed from the simple vision of the early Christians and, under the pretext of enlightenment, have entered such a darkness of ignorance that we consider inconceivable what the ancients grasped so clearly; even in their common talk, the idea of God appearing to men had nothing strange in it.

The simple fact is that if we make a war cry of dampening the Spirit we should not be at all shocked when our experience confirms our beliefs. The Spirit will not force an apathetic, sickly church to be gifted. We have become “too good” for the Spirit: too smart, to civilized, to orderly. However the Spirit moves, we should be unsurprised that we do not experience.

There are undoubtedly more questions to answer as well as more questions raised by the above answers. This is, however, not the place for an exhaustive study of spiritual gifts, if such a thing were even possible. My position is that the Spirit will not be withheld from Christians and neither will the gifts attendant to its presence. What this translates into practically is an openness to the exercise of gifts, even miraculous gifts, which are consistent with their biblical descriptions. I have never seen anyone healed or raised from the dead, never seen anyone speak in tongues, and been convinced that these acts were miracles. I must, however, as a Christian allow myself to be open to the possibility that I serve a God powerful enough to achieve all this and more and Who has promised His church that the Spirit will abide with them in power until Christ returns finally and triumphantly.

Sources consulted in writing this series:

Collins, Raymond F. 1 Corinthians. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999.

Conzelmann, Hans. 1 Corinthians : A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.

Fee, Gordon. First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

Grudem, Wayne A. Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians. Washington: University Press of America, 1982.

Oster, Rick. 1 Corinthians. Joplin: College Press, 1995.

Witherington, Ben. Conflict and Community in Corinth : A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Ancient Christian Commentary, New Testament, Vol. 7: 1-2 Corinthians.