Christianity is Changing
Today I am commenting on a quote of Bill Johnson, founder of the Bethel Church in Redding, CA.
“The gospel is a gospel of power and must become manifest through supernatural demonstration. Miracles are not optional. They are so important that Jesus hung the entire weight of His identity and ministry upon them saying, “If I don’t do the works of the Father, don’t believe me” (John 10:37). That is an amazing statement when you consider all the witnesses throughout history sent to reveal and confirm the identity of Jesus Christ. Nature proclaimed who He was. Angels also declared His identity and purpose. The Old Testament prophets, and even the Law, spoke of Jesus as the Christ. But when He came, He put the credibility of all of their messages on the line by highlighting one remaining bit of evidence, without which the message of all the rest would be nullified–the works of the Father must be done through Him. A study of the Gospel of John leaves little doubt as to what was meant by “the works of the Father.” They are miracles, signs and wonders. I long for the day when the Church stands before this world and declares, “If we don’t do the works of the Father, don’t believe us. If miracles are not present, you’re off the hook.” The perspective of Jesus on the absolute need for miracles must affect the way we think and pray. If not, we will always sell the gospel short.”
Johnson’s claim is pretty simple: If there are no miracles then the gospel is not being preached and God is not acting in the life of the community. This is a bold statement and deserves to be examined for prior to the Latter Day Rain movement such an astonishing claim has never been made. Let the reader understand that I am not a proponent of cessationism which argues that miracles ceased with the apostolic church and were given to validate the gospel. Cessationists and Johnson both claim that miracles validate the gospel, the former arguing that miracles validated the apostolic missions and the latter arguing that miracles validate contemporary preaching of the gospel. In both cases miracles are used as apologetic tools. The question is not whether miracles have ceased but whether or not miracles are a form of divine validation as Johnson avers. My comments will focus on Paul with some hints from the Fourth Gospel and Jesus’ catechesis.
The first thing I would note is that apart from the Corinthian correspondence and the book of Acts, miracles do not play a prominent role in early Christian discourse. Other than the Corinthian correspondence, Paul does not mention the miraculous, nor does he use the miraculous as a means of validating his message. In the Corinthian correspondence Paul mentions the miraculous as a means of validating his apostolic authority, not as a means of validating the gospel itself. This is also the case in Romans 15:19 where the ‘signs and miracles’ are a validation of Paul’s apostleship. Romans 15:19 reads like a chiasmus: “He did it by what I’ve said and what I’ve done, by the power of signs and wonders, and by the power of God’s Spirit.” Thus λόγῳ = ἐν δυνάμει σημείων καὶ τεράτων and ἔργῳ, =, ἐν δυνάμει πνεύματος. If this is the case one can simply speak of the powerful preaching of the apostolic activity of Paul and the powerful Spirit at work in his ministry. This is significant for Paul eschews forms of external validation preferring the gospel of the Crucified Jesus to stand on its own. One searches the Pauline letters in vain for external validation of the gospel (“The Gospel is proven by…”). The Gospel message itself is its own validation as Paul notes to the Corinthians. In 2 Cor. 3 Paul says,
“Are we starting to commend ourselves again? We don’t need letters of introduction to you or from you like other people, do we? 2 You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us. You weren’t written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. You weren’t written on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 This is the confidence that we have through Christ in the presence of God. 5 It isn’t that we ourselves are qualified to claim that anything came from us. No, our qualification is from God.”
Here, the ‘proof’ that the Corinthians have been changed is that they are the ‘letter’ written on Paul’s heart. The entire ‘second’ letter to the Corinthians is a sustained apologetic of Paul for his apostleship (I understand our current 2nd Corinthians to be a compilation of at least two letters and one major interpolation in 6:14-7). In this sense the cesstionists are correct: Paul argues that miracles happened through him in order to validate his apostolic ministry. They are also correct to note that the entire tenor of 2 Corinthians is against the ‘supernatural’; in 2 Corinthians Paul is at great pains to speak of his ministry’s validation through the suffering he has undergone. In 2 Cor. 2:14 Paul compares himself to the vanquished leader being led in a military parade who will ultimately be executed (“But thank God, who is always leading us around through Christ as if we were in a parade. He releases the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere through us”) and again in 2 Cor. 4:7-10 (“But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us. We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out. We always carry Jesus’ death around in our bodies so that Jesus’ life can also be seen in our bodies”) and again in 2 Cor 11:16-33 in an extended passage:
“I repeat, no one should take me for a fool. But if you do, then allow me to be a fool so that I can brag like a fool for a bit. 17 I’m not saying what I’m saying because the Lord tells me to. I’m saying it like I’m a fool. I’m putting my confidence in this business of bragging. 18 Since so many people are bragging based on human standards, that is how I’m going to brag too. 19 Because you, who are so wise, are happy to put up with fools. 20 You put up with it if someone enslaves you, if someone exploits you, if someone takes advantage of you, if someone places themselves over you, or if someone hits you in the face. 21 I’m ashamed to say that we have been weak in comparison! But in whatever they challenge me, I challenge them (I’m speaking foolishly). 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they ministers of Christ? I’m speaking like a crazy person. What I’ve done goes well beyond what they’ve done. I’ve worked much harder. I’ve been imprisoned much more often. I’ve been beaten more times than I can count. I’ve faced death many times. 24 I received the “forty lashes minus one” from the Jews five times. 25 I was beaten with rods three times. I was stoned once. I was shipwrecked three times. I spent a day and a night on the open sea. 26 I’ve been on many journeys. I faced dangers from rivers, robbers, my people, and Gentiles. I faced dangers in the city, in the desert, on the sea, and from false brothers and sisters. 27 I faced these dangers with hard work and heavy labor, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, and in the cold without enough clothes. 28 Besides all the other things I could mention, there’s my daily stress because I’m concerned about all the churches. 29 Who is weak without me being weak? Who is led astray without me being furious about it? 30 If it’s necessary to brag, I’ll brag about my weaknesses. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, the one who is blessed forever, knows that I’m not lying. 32 At Damascus the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to capture me, 33 but I got away from him by being lowered in a basket through a window in the city wall.”
In 2 Cor 12 Paul could boast of the supernatural if he so wished but considers that such boasting would not benefit anyone. In this passage note that the use of ‘signs, wonders and miracles, does not necessarily refer to so-called miraculous events but to the way Paul was sustained throughout his trials
“So I’ll gladly spend my time bragging about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power can rest on me. 10 Therefore, I’m all right with weaknesses, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ, because when I’m weak, then I’m strong. 11 I’ve become a fool! You made me do it. Actually, I should have been commended by you. I’m not inferior to the super-apostles in any way, even though I’m a nonentity. 12 The signs of an apostle were performed among you with continuous endurance through signs, wonders, and miracles.”
What constitutes the ‘signs of an apostle?’ Apparently it has little to do with ‘supernatural manifestations’ and more to do with the grace of God sustaining Paul (and presumably ourselves) through hardships and difficulties. How easy it would have been for Paul to cite the miraculous at this point, to say “You know Billy Bob, how I healed him of his blindness, and Janice whom I healed, etc.” He does not do this. Instead over and over again in this letter it is the blistering trials and tribulations which he undergoes that form the back story to the way Paul experiences the grace of God in his apostolic journey., Paul advises the Corinthians to imitate him (I Cor. 4:17) and that imitation does not consist of the ‘supernatural’ but as Jason B. Hood argues in his book Imitating God in Christ (IVP, 2013) “a sacrificial cross shaped life.” This is important to note because Paul’s emphases in the Corinthian correspondence is not at all related to being a powerful miracle worker but instead of being a suffering servant who manages to get by on the grace of God. To sum up, the use of the term ‘signs, miracles, and wonders’ need not be understood to refer to supernatural events but rather to displays of God’s grace to Paul as he overcomes all obstacles put in his way, particularly those obstacles that are oriented toward turning him into a victim of sacred violence (persecution, arrest, etc). In this vein Scott Hafemann argues that Paul in 2 Cor 2-4 sees himself as the scapegoat in a military procession; his ministry leads to death. One might say death is the inevitable destination of Christian ministry (Suffering and Ministry in the Spirit: Paul’s Defense of His Ministry in 2 Cor 2:14-3:3 [Eerdmans, 1990, esp. pages 30ff]). As with his ‘theology of the cross’ so also Paul rehearses his marks of apostleship as persecutory, not supernatural.
Another important contribution the Corinthian correspondence makes is the demarcation of the pseudo-apostle. In 2 Cor 11 Paul avers,
“I want to contradict the claims of the people who want to be treated like they are the same as us because of what they brag about. 13 Such people are false apostles and dishonest workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 It is no great surprise then that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
Here, the pseudo apostles masquerade, they wear masks, they appear righteous. In reality they are preaching a false gospel. These go so far as to style themselves “super-apostles.” It would also appear that these false apostles were also miracle workers who used the miraculous to validate their ministry and denigrate Paul’s. Instead of going on the defensive and claiming his own miracles, Paul uses a rhetorical strategy ‘from below’ to argue that God’s power is best seen in weakness. In other words, Paul takes his hermeneutic of cross seriously in his own defense of his apostolic ministry.
C.K. Barrett in his book The Signs of an Apostle (Fortress, 1972) observes that the marks of an apostle were “not the kind of mark that could automatically vindicate them in the eyes of an impartial and uncommitted observer” and further that “a church that is exclusive is not an apostolic church” nor is one which” fails to care for the needy.” This scholarly study does not once mention supernatural signs as being the mark of an apostle. Why? Because as already noted, the phrase “signs, miracles and wonders” were all to be understood as the way the grace of God carried Paul through his tribulations and trials.
Johnson claims that “nature proclaimed who he [Jesus] was.” I will not engage here with the problem this natural theology raises. I will simply note that this is important inasmuch as it reveals Johnson’s commitment to a way of thinking that led the German Christian churches straight into the Holocaust or America on its path of manifest destiny. Natural theology is a contradiction in terms. I will ask the reader to go explore the Barth-Brunner debate of 1933-34 for further enlightenment on this issue. Anthony Thiselton notes that “The created order, as it presently exists and as it is presently conceived, incorporates within it a deep-rooted dimension of disorder, with the potential to skew and confuse out interpretation of its identity and signification (Scientific Theology Vol 1 [T&T Clark, 2001]). Suffice it to say that we cannot simply read ‘God’ from nature; we tend to read into the natural world what our hermeneutic dictates.
Johnson claims that the phrase “works of the Father” in the Fourth Gospel refers to Pauline ‘signs, miracles and wonders’ which are interpreted as supernatural ‘manifestations.’ Proper exegesis would ask how the author of the Fourth Gospel understood the terms rather than automatically assume a definitional resemblance to Paul. However, if Johnson is correct to make such a hermeneutical leap, I have already argued that for Paul, ‘signs, miracles and wonders’ need not have the supernatural as its signified.
How the writer of the Fourth Gospel understands the phrase ‘works of the Father’ would need to be exegeted from within the interpretive framework of the theology of the Fourth Gospel. In this case one would especially note that the ‘miracles’ (dynamai) of the Synoptics are replaced by ‘semeia’ in the Fourth Gospel of which there are seven beginning with the wedding at Cana and ending with the Cross. These ‘semeia’ (signs) all point to that ultimate sign, the crucified Christ as the place of God greatest work of glory which is manifested in utter degradation and the humiliation of crucifixion. I refer readers here to The Jesus Driven Life chapter 8 on the Gospel of John and the discussion there on Johannine double-meaning words, all of which have a cruciform character. Indeed, the Johannine Pentecost is the Cross, for it is there that the Spirit, the water and blood all witness together. In other words, like Paul, signs are not for apologetic purposes but are cruciform witnesses.
This brings me to my last point. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), Jesus says,
“”Not everybody who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will get into the kingdom of heaven. Only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 On the Judgment Day, many people will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name and expel demons in your name and do lots of miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I’ll tell them, ‘I’ve never known you. Get away from me, you people who do wrong.’ 24 “Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. 26 But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. 27 The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.”
Note here that it is miracle workers who will be disowned by the Risen Christ. Why? Because while they may have ‘manifested’ power they were not models of the catechesis found in the sermon. They chose to live other than the pacifistic lifestyle enjoined by Jesus who eschewed all violence, both in theology and in social relationships. Those charismatic miracle workers who would raise national flags, join national political movement, justify torture or war, would engage in self-defense, these will be the ones Jesus disowns. In other words power or the manifestation of ‘supernatural power’ is not a sine qua non of the Christian life, but the path of nonviolent discipleship is. Johnson’s argument that “[T]he perspective of Jesus on the absolute need for miracles must affect the way we think and pray. If not, we will always sell the gospel short” is thus falsified on the arguments above, viz, Johnson’s misreading of Paul’s understanding of the relationship between power and the cross, the Johannine use of semeia as cruciform witnesses and Jesus’ injunctions in Matthew’s gospel that it is not powerful displays but a cruciform life that is sine qua non for Christian existence.
The fact is that the church in Redding, CA of which Johnson is the lead pastor is completely compromised by its positions that are contrary to the gospel itself. It has sold out to empire, power, money and other ‘principalities and powers.’ Bethel Church is not a model to be looked up to but one that must be critiqued for it is seductive with its triumphalist claims, narcissistic orientation and gnostic speculations. I have sought to argue that Johnson has managed to buy into all three of these categories through mis-exegesis, poor hermeneutics and a virtual reversal of what Paul, John and ultimately Jesus sought to teach and live. The real miracle is that so many former followers of this institution have seen the light and have left this kind of gnostic hermeneutic behind.
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