Last month I started following a woman on Twitter named Jo Luehmann. She is a pastor and runs a ministry that is aimed at decolonizing faith and spirituality. She has a large following on Twitter, thus she is an influential figure. Our theological views are radically different, which is why I wanted to follow her because I think it is important as a Christian to read and study those who differ theologically, so that one does not become myopic to the point of dismissing others without taking the time to understand their views. It is not charitable, and it can lead to theological hubris. All that to say, it doesn’t mean one has to accept all others’ views as valid; rather, it is so that one avoids misrepresenting others when one engages in discourse. We should care to know what others think. And it is extremely unhelpful to formulate arguments against one’s viewpoint when one doesn’t hold that viewpoint. However, even when being careful, misrepresentation can still happen, but we should strive to avoid it. And I hope that my post represents Jo’s ideas and not a straw-man version of Jo.
A few weeks back I had a brief discussion with her on Twitter regarding the Bible. At one point in the interaction, she stated, “I don’t read the Bible as the word of God.” We were talking about ethics and morality, and I asserted that her morality is a matter of opinion if she doesn’t hold the Bible as the Word of God. It is not that one can only be a moral person if they believe in the Bible and give it primal authority on such matters. Rather, one cannot make a moral “ought” statement unless there is a higher, governing authority to appeal to. And as a Christian, Christ is our Lord. So, what he says has authority over our lives, but also, because Jesus is the Creator and Lord over the cosmos, he is the authority over everyone and everything. A non-Christian only has what man says about morality to appeal to which is subjective, thus lacking as a governing foundation on which to make such claims. The non-Christian may have a religious view that he/she appeals to, but the central claim of the Christian faith is that there is only One, True God. And his view, as revealed in Holy Scripture, is the only correct one.
Our differing views on the nature of Scripture led to a discussion about the books of the Bible. And that is the reason for this post. I discovered Jo had written more on the subject, and I wanted to critically engage with a little more depth and space than allowed in the Twitter-verse. She wrote a seven-day devotional series on decolonizing traditional Christianity. Day 1 will be the main document under examination in this blog article.
Before moving forward, I want to express my purpose and goal. My intention is to engage in critical, yet charitable, discussion with one who holds an opposing view to mine. As linked above, the reader can refer to the original source that I am responding/interacting with. Let me say that I have no ill intentions against Jo. I have watched a few of her videos on YouTube, and she and her husband seem to be very kind and caring people. In fact, I could imagine our families hanging out and having in-depth (and probably very intense) theological discussions. My impression is that they toiled in a church context that did not provide solid answers to challenging issues they faced. Or, they were given intellectually vapid answers, leaving them dissatisfied with their faith and its ability to offer a coherent worldview. With that said, while I appreciate her convictions, I believe she is greatly mistaken on this issue.
What does decolonize mean (in this context)? I had no idea until I started to follow Jo. Jo defines decolonizing as “dismantling the formal and informal ways in which something has been molded to oppress and subjugate.” Jo claims that “most of us have been indoctrinated into a narrow, oppressive faith.” We have had “our own relationship to divinity colonized.” And therefore, the faith most of us have been subjugated to “strips people of power, removes agency, and separates us from ourselves.” If one is to “reclaim [one’s] spirituality and relationships with divinity,” one must “decolonize [one’s] own faith.” This model of faith must be dismantled from inside the system.
Day 1
Day one: decolonize the faith system’s view of the Bible. The caption for the post reads: I am a Christian, and I don’t believe the Bible is the word of God. That is a provocative statement. Her main argument to support this claim is that “the Bible doesn’t say anywhere that it is the word of God, but even if you did, you can’t prove the veracity of a statement with the statement itself; that’s a logical fallacy.”
She has two claims here; one is weak and the other has merit but is improperly nuanced. In the Bible, one will find the phrase, “The word of the LORD,” written about 7800 times. It was an introductory formula the prophets uttered to let the hearer/reader know that the message to follow is directly from the Lord. Her claim that the Bible nowhere says that it is the word of God is invalid. With that said, Jo makes this claim because of her views on what the Word of God is, which we will look at shortly.
Jo’s second claim is a logical objection on the grounds of circular reasoning. Granted, circular reasoning is a valid fallacy, but not all circular reasoning is fallacious. Circular reasoning is fallacious only when it is arbitrary. Every philosophy utilizes circular reasoning otherwise it will be inconsistent. For example, a rationalist assumes that reason is authoritative and thus makes his claims based on that presupposition. In fact, Jo’s appeal to logic is circular. She appealed to the laws of logic as an authority without arguing for them as the authority. She merely assumed it. So, we must agree that there are some things that can be proven that employ circular reasoning. As a Christian, I presuppose the existence of God who has revealed himself in creation and in Holy Scripture, thus his Word is authoritative. It is circular but not arbitrary.
Let’s look at her understanding of what the Word of God is. She examines Second Timothy 3:16a: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Jo writes, “With this verse, we have to differentiate what is ‘inspiration of God’ and what is ‘Scripture.’ There are plenty of verses that speak of the word of God, but none explicitly say it is the Bible as we know it.” We can see where the disparity lies; she is skeptical about the Bible, in its current form, being the authoritatively and divinely inspired word of God. Jo proceeds in her argument, explaining what “given by inspiration of God” means. Referring again to Second Timothy 3:16, she writes, “The phrase translated as ‘is given by inspiration of God’ in 2 Timothy 3:16 is one Greek word: θεόπνευστος (theopneustos). It is used exactly one time in the entire Bible — here. There is no mention of this exact word in any other ancient Greek writings. It appears as though the writer of 2 Timothy made up the word.” She then dissects the word θεόπνευστος, noting that θεός means “God” and πνευστό means “‘wind,’ ‘blown,’ ‘wind instrument.’”
Jo’s word study of this passage doesn’t add any weight to her argument. In fact, she overlooked an important fact, though acknowledging it, that this word is unique. It is a hapax legomena, which means it is a word used only once in Scripture. She notes that it seems the writer made up the word. I would agree with that. But it appears to me that Jo is attempting to dismantle a “colonized” view of the Bible, in our current form, as the Word of God because the word used to argue for it is made up and used only one time. I might be mistaken, but that is what I see when she writes,
What the author of 2 Timothy meant specifically by “Scripture” and which writings he included in that, we will never know. Honestly, I think it doesn’t matter, because what speaks to me is not what speaks to you. How inspired by divinity a writer was in their craft is only relevant if I am affected by what was written. Therefore, what the writer of 2 Timothy meant does not negate what I can recognize as inspired by God.
This paragraph is riddled with inconsistencies. Her statement that we can never know what the author of Second Timothy meant by Scripture is baseless (It interesting that she doesn’t acknowledge the Apostle Paul as its author). A serious study of the New Testament documents reveals a consistency and coherency between all of them that gives a Christian warrant to believe that the Scriptures we have are inspired by God [1].
Question of Canon
At this point, we are going to devote some space to the question of canon, since it is a major point of contention within the discussion. The literature on this subject is vast. But the controvertible point is that of authentication and to what extent, or what books of the Bible bear such authority [2]. Who or what authenticates that the Bible (the canon) we have is the Word of God? While historical critical studies apply certain criteria to determine the authenticity of a humanly produced document, what do you do with documents claiming to be divinely produced? Well, I don’t think you can ground the authority outside the canon; otherwise, something external to the authority is determining what makes the canon authoritative. If the canon is a divinely inspired set of documents and not a human artifact, then we cannot appeal to human criteria to determine that the canon is divinely authoritative. Where then does the Christian determine that the canon bears the very authority of God? From the documents themselves.
Yes, we are circling back (pun intended) to a circular approach to this appeal. As I mentioned earlier, as a Christian I presuppose the existence of God and his revelation in Scripture. And that presupposition means there is no external standard to which Holy Scripture can be judged. If man is the final arbiter in determining that Scripture is divinely authoritative, then man, not God is the authority.
I am persuaded by the model of canonization advanced by Michael J. Kruger in his erudite yet very accessible work, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. The argumentation to follow utilizes Kruger’s model to address Jo’s claims [3]. Kruger’s model of canon is that of self-authentication. Contrary to many assumptions, as within the Roman Catholic tradition, the universal Church nor any ecclesial body does not determine that Scripture is divinely inspired. The reason this is problematic is because human judgment becomes the final court of appeal. Rather, the canon to be the canon, it must appeal to itself; it must be self-authenticating (Kruger, 89). Hebrews 6:13 says, “[God] swore by himself.” And following that concept, since Scripture is the divine Word, it too swears by itself.
We can begin where Jo did—Second Timothy 3:16 (cf. 2 Pet 1:21; Rev 22:18–19). However, self-authentication is more than a phrase. Rather, there are three components to this model (Kruger, 94).
1) Providential exposure. The church must be exposed to the books of the canon; otherwise, it cannot recognize a book that it doesn’t have.
2) Attributes of canonicity. The books bare the marks of divinity, distinguishing themselves from all other books. They have corporate recognition, being received by the church as a whole. And the books have apostolic origins, in that they are the result of the redemptive-historical activity of the apostles.
3) Internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. For corporate reception, the Holy Spirit must overcome the noetic effects of sin in a believer, producing the belief that these books are divine.
If we believe Christ’s words, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27), then we have every reason to affirm that God providentially preserved his books and exposed them to the church, so that, through the Holy Spirit, they would recognize them as canonical (Kruger, 95). The implications then are that there are no lost books. The church can only acknowledge as canon a book that it actually has. There is a difference between Scripture and canon. There are letters or writings referred to in the canon that we don’t have. And while those works would be considered inspired, theopneustos—thus Scripture—they are not canonical. Why is that? Because they were not exposed to the church, thus never corporately recognized.
So then, how do we know which books are canonical? The divine marks of the works and the role of the Holy Spirit. A book of the canon has a divine imprint as the authenticating mark of its divine origin. “It bears the divine qualities or divine character of a book from God” (Kruger, 97). Scripture evidences itself as the Word of God. All other models must appeal to criteria outside the canon to authenticate it, which means it must be adjudicated on other grounds (experience, historical, evidence, etc.) (Kruger, 99). But the question arises, if these books are really canonical, why do so many people not receive them or accept them as the Word of God?
This is where the role of the Holy Spirit comes in. The reason why man rejects the “objectively present” marks of divinity in the New Testament is “because of the noetic effects of sin, the effects of sin on the mind” (Rom. 3:10–18). This can only be overcome by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. A few paragraphs back, Jo wrote, “Honestly, I think it doesn’t matter [what the author of 2 Tim. meant by Scripture], because what speaks to me is not what speaks to you. How inspired by divinity a writer was in their craft is only relevant if I am affected by what was written. Therefore, what the writer of 2 Timothy meant does not negate what I can recognize as inspired by God.”
Jo’s statement reflects much of what we see in a postmodern culture, which is the idea that truth is relative. The problem is that such an ideology cannot be lived out and applied consistently. If Jo believes what she claims, what is her point in making a definitive argument regarding Scripture? Now, that is not to say she isn’t free to make arguments to support or express her opinions. However, her argument loses warrant if in the end she concludes that believing what you want is all that matters. What is true to me (i.e., my subjective experience) is not what is true for you (i.e., your subjective experience).
And therefore, bringing in the discussion of canon noted above, when it comes to determining what Scripture is (i.e., as Jo writes, “how inspired by divinity a writer is”), Jo appeals to herself, her experience in how Scripture affected her, as the final arbiter in determining if the book or books are divinely inspired. As it pertains to the process of determining what is canonical (i.e., to use Jo’s words, “what I can recognize as inspired by God,”) Jo, as an individual, authenticates what is divinely inspired, based upon how she was “affected by what was written.” Which is to say, something external to Scripture is being appealed to in order to authenticate Scripture as inspired. How is Jo’s approach different than what I have proposed? In the end, she authenticates what is inspired, not the writings themselves. Even then, Jo’s understanding of divinely inspired is different than traditional views of inspiration, which we need to examine as well. And that is part of her decolonization process of the historic Christian Faith. So, in the end, Jo is doing exactly what she rejects when it comes to determining which holy writings are canonical.
In a discussion on Twitter, Jo challenged the claim, which I didn’t make, of the Protestant Bible as being the only inspired writings. She inquired about the Ethiopian church’s canon; it has 88 books, compared to the 66 books of Protestant canon. And what about the Catholic books? “How far does the word of God extend?” I will get into that aspect in another post. But my point in mentioning this here is because Jo is challenging, rather, she is attempting to decolonize, the doctrine of Scripture, as it relates to what books are canonical, historically speaking (i.e., the books “white Europeans” deemed as canonical)[4]. It is extremely important to see that deconstructing isn’t “dismantling the formal and informal ways in which something has been molded to oppress and subjugate,” rather, it is a process of dismantling an ideology in order to reconstruct it to fit another preferred ideology. And that is exactly what she is doing with the traditional understanding of canon. She is deconstructing the prevailing view and reconstructing it to suit her ideology.
Let’s unpack Jo’s understanding of divine inspiration. She writes,
It seems, to me, that 2 Timothy’s author was trying to say that divinity inspired the writers of Scripture. Which is true of a lot of books, not just the Bible. We acknowledge that truth when we say a book changed our lives, when we recognize authors for how their writings have shaped humanity.
When it comes to interpreting Scripture, a basic interpretive principle is that one must get into the context of the passage under examination and explain or exegete the text. Jo didn’t do that. She merely provided a parsing of the Greek word theopneustos. Jo didn’t do any exegetical work to understand what the author of Second Timothy [the Apostle Paul] understood; rather, she just said we will never know what the author meant by Scripture. But she is mistaken.
In the verse prior, Paul writes, “and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15). I don’t have the space to lay out a full-fledged doctrine of Scripture. But from this passage we can assume one thing: these Scriptures Paul spoke of provide wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And then he went on to explain that such sacred writings are “inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16a). Furthermore, these sacred writings “are profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16). And it is from these writings—Paul refers to as “the word”—that he charged Timothy to preach; he said, “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching” (4:2).
The author of Second Timothy wasn’t confused. He understood that these writings bore the marks of divine inspiration in the fact that they had unique qualities, namely they led one to faith in Christ, and they were to be used to correct false teaching and philosophies that didn’t conform to “sound doctrine” but rather “according to their own desires” (2 Tim 4:3). It was these specific authoritative qualities that gave these writings divine inspiration status, not if they were relevant to the one who was affected by them, as Jo claims. For Jo, divine inspiration is determined by how a book changes one’s life. Granted, Scripture is life-changing. But Jo’s reconstructive definition of divine inspiration didn’t take into consideration what the text at hand says about divine inspiration; rather, she had a preferred bias of what inspiration means (i.e., “We acknowledge that truth [of divine inspiration] when we say a book changed our lives.”).
Conclusion
There is more to engage with, but this post is way too long. And I have more to flesh out regarding the canonical model proposed in this article, which I will do in a later post. But it is important to understand that Jo’s deconstruction and decolonization isn’t a neutral methodology. It is quite arbitrary, selective, and subjectively grounded. And in what I have read so far, her arguments lack depth and rigor. She has a preferred understanding of religion, faith, and Holy Scripture that in many aspects cuts against the grain of the historic Christian Faith, which is fine. She is free to think that way. But I don’t think she is even-handed in her approach to the issues, which shows a lopsidedness in her thought, thus a strong bias toward a particular viewpoint without serious consideration of the arguments against her position. We all have bias, so I am not free from my own criticism. But seeking truth should be the goal, so we must be critical of ourselves and step out of our own camps to see what others have to say. Which, again, is why I chose to follow her on Twitter. The Christian Faith should always be refining its theology to address the moral and cultural issues endemic to the time at hand. But deconstruction, in the manner observed so far, will cause the Faith to collapse in on itself.
~ Romans 11:36
1. I will flesh this out in later blog posts.
2. This post will consider the NT documents, which normally is what is being contested in such discussions.
3. My preference of Kruger’s model doesn’t imply that his model is the only valid approach. One might claim that this model is acting like an external authenticator, just like the others. The model, however, doesn’t place external standards on the text; rather, it acknowledges what the text reveals, unique to man-made writings. In doing so, it has the greatest consistency in arguing for the canon as divinely inspired in a manner that mitigates an external authentication standard that the other prominent models at some point appeal to, which ultimately is subjective and inadequate to establish that a set of writings is divinely inspired.
4. https://twitter.com/JoLuehmann/status/1429120638325649423
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