Prophet, Priest, Rabbi

“Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.” Jeremiah 3:15 NASB

Shepherds– Please don’t consider me a teacher. I’m not up to the task.  I’m just an investigator, someone who explores the connections between culture and Scripture.  I just am curious about things and I see all sorts of relationships between biblical ideas and biblical people and the world we live in today. I find history fascinating and important.  I recognize that our native language shapes how we see the world.  I am intrigued by the concept of paradigms.  But teacher (or worse, shepherd), no, please no. I’m inadequate for that role, personally and professionally.  Besides, it scares me to death.

Here’s why:

According to most Christian theology, pastors (preachers, teachers, and priests) have to take on “higher” responsibilities:

“Scripture should be our source of wisdom and discernment when it comes to the role of a pastor in the church. God places much responsibility on the man called to lead and care for his people! There is a much higher standard of personal conduct when you are called to lead, guide, and feed souls. Read these bible verses about pastors to better understand the leadership role within the church.”[1]

But this bothers me.  First, I agree with Ellul about the perversion of the “revealer,” the shepherd.  Remember this:?

“[The church] preached morality in the place of freedom. . . It became necessary to replace the outpouring of the Spirit for preaching, prayer, biblical study, and the celebration of the eucharist according to well-established rites. It became necessary to set up some kind of order in the confusion by introducing liturgical prayers and reducing the place of free exposition of the Bible in favor of liturgies.  The more ignorant the lower clergy were, the more necessary it was not to allow them to speak freely but to make them the officiants of a set cult created by others who had a better awareness of the faith and were trying to live in a stricter fashion.  Morality and ritual are the great means of defense against the perversion of all order that resulted from the new entry of the masses into the church with no authenticity of faith.”[2]

But that isn’t the end of this story.  The Hebrew in Jeremiah is ro’im.  It isn’t a noun.  It’s a participle.  This is not an office.  It is a person who functions in a role.  It is a verbal expression of God-given agency, and the authority does not reside in the person.  In fact, it might be proper to say that unless the action is present, the actor isn’t shepherding.

That seems clear enough.  But now reflect on Ellul’s insight.  The outpouring of the Spirit on any person God chooses has been regulated, codified, restrained by official ordination in order to—to what?—to control the outcome.  To establish rites, rituals, and rules.  To prevent the free hand of God in the world.

This, of course, is not simply the result of a quest for power.  It is a direct consequence of converting the Semitic Scriptures into Greco-Roman theology.

“As, then, our mode of thinking has prevailed and been put to work on the biblical text, from the second century A.D. we have begun to divide, to separate, to put in small intellectual compartments, to classify, and to order.  On the same pretext of resolving contradictions we have enclosed ourselves in impossibilities that the theological mind has sought to avoid with unparalleled subtlety.  Unconsciously but all the more seriously, in splitting the two aspects [truth and contradiction], we have rendered each part false and deceptive.”[3]

“. . . the result of a primordial obsession with unity: the reduction of the diversity of the world to the one.”[4]

“The unity at all costs that will supposedly lead to God is the ultimate subversion of revelation.”[5]

Ellul draws the inevitable conclusion:

“The only new energy that Christianity recognizes is the potential presence of God by the Holy Spirit.  But the Spirit, too, incomprehensible, inaccessible and unexploitable.”[6]

“Now at the same time and in a corresponding manner, reflection upon God, being led by Greek and Roman thought, radically transformed what the Bible said about God.  On the one side it analyzed the attributes of God—a God, of course, very different from the gods of polytheism, but still a God constructed by philosophy.  Thus the idea of creation underwent a radical change the moment omnipotence came to the fore.  The relation between God and the world now had nothing whatever to do with what the first Christian generations believed.  God was tied to his creation, and ultimately the world contained God.  On this basis, one could find the sacred everywhere.  This path led to the reappearance of persons typically connected with the sacred, such as mediators or priests.”[7]

Thus, we have religion, not faithfulness.  We no longer need the God who acts.  We just need a book about Him.  Our “faith” is in the theological explanations of His presence in order to limit our experience of Him and ban Him from His creation.  Man is in control of religion, whether preacher, priest or rabbi, and God is not allowed to interfere.

Topical Index:  shepherd, ro’im, preacher, prophet, priest, rabbi, religion, Jacques Ellul, Jeremiah 3:15

[1]https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-pastors/

[2]Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, pp. 37-38.

[3]Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 45.

[4]Ibid., p. 46.

[5]Ibid., p. 48.

[6]Ibid., p. 60.

[7]Ibid., p. 66.