A History Lesson
For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB
Accepted – This verse raises several important questions: 1) Why did the Thessalonians receive “the word of God” as the word of God, not simply the words of Paul and his companions? 2) What does Paul mean by the terms “word of God”? and 3) Why does it perform its work (whatever that is) only in those who believe? These questions cannot be answered without an understanding of the first century view of tradition and authority.
In the first century, religious ideas were validated by their source, that is, by the ultimate origin of the claims made. In Paul’s case, this ultimate origin is God Himself, declared by His prophets, particularly Moses. To accept these words as “the word of God” is to receive the words as divine. Religious belief was a personal validation based on a continual line of authority. This was the typical and accepted idea of history in the religious culture. But it has some disturbing consequences.
“This doctrine implies that historical truth, so far as it is at all accessible to the historian, is accessible to him only because it exists ready made in the ready-made statements of his authorities. These statements are to him sacred text, whose value depends wholly on the unbrokenness of the tradition they represent. He must therefore on no account tamper with them. He must not mutilate them; he must not add to them, and, above all, he must not contradict them. For if he takes it upon himself to pick and choose, to decide that some of this authority’s statements are important and other not, he is going behind his authority’s back and appealing to some other criterion; and this, on the theory, is exactly what he cannot do. . . For him, . . what his authorities tell him is the truth, the whole accessible truth, and nothing but the truth.”[1]
Does this sound familiar? It should. It expresses not only the Hebraic idea of the prophetic chain, but also the Christian idea of inspiration and inerrancy. It grows out of the need for certainty. And that is why, when we question the accuracy of some biblical text (e.g., Did David slaughter 700 or 7000 men? 1 Chronicles 19:18 and 2 Samuel 10:18), Christian scholars go to considerable lengths to prove that the texts can be reconciled. What is at issue here is not the text. It is the doctrine of authority.
The doctrine of authority was de rigueur in first century Middle Eastern thinking. In fact, religious claims that did not have a long lineage from past authority were considered suspect. You notice this in the challenges put to Yeshua. “On whose authority do you say these things” is a tacit admission that what matters is what has always mattered. “New” is not acceptable. And yet contemporary historical research cannot operate on the basis of accepted authority for the simple reason that men get things wrong, they have built-in bias, they misperceive.
It seems, then, that we must choose. We can follow the authority claims of tradition, as those who lived in the first century did, or we can ask for evidence. Of course, evidence includes the statements of authorities, but it goes beyond that. It questions, investigates, exhumes, explores and seeks to find not just the facts of the reported event but the motivation behind those who reported the event. It is not just what happened that matters. It is why it happened (if it happened). This, I suggest, is the meaning behind Heschel’s comment:
“The essence of Jewish religious thinking does not lie in entertaining a concept of God but in the ability to articulate a memory of moments of illumination by His presence. Israel is not a people of definers but a people of witnesses:”[2]
For Heschel, religion is not authority. Religion stands in the way of faith.
“Religious thinking is in perpetual danger of giving primacy to concepts and dogmas and to forfeit the immediacy of insights, to forget that the known is but a reminder of God, that the dogma is a token of His will, the expression the inexpressible at its minimum. Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.”[3]
When Paul commends the Thessalonians for accepting his words as the word of God, he may have been teaching them the words of the prophetic tradition, but that was not the end of the matter. It was not doctrine that concerned Paul. It was change in the life of the one who heard.
“Something sacred is at stake in every event.”[4]
What, then, is authority? Perhaps it is a choice to adopt a paradigm, not unconsciously through cultural drift, but by conscious choice—to decide what “history” matters to you and to live that history in your present experience.
Topical Index: déchomai, to receive, to accept, doctrine, inspiration, history, authority, 1 Thessalonians 2:13
[1] R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 235.
[2] Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 70.
[3] Ibid., p. 65.
[4] Ibid., p. 52.
