“Beware when rhetoric becomes a substitute for substance. You always know that a person has a weak position when he tries to accomplish with clever use of words what argument alone cannot do.”
– Gregory Koukl
“One of the greatest troubles in religious discussions is how we define our words.”
– Nabeel Qureshi
With these quotes in mind, I must point out the semantics game Apostle Johnson Suleman played in his response with the use of the word “revelation”. When he claims that Paul’s letters are his revelations of Christ, he is most likely not implying that Paul’s words are inspired. That is my suspicion based on the evidence.
Revelation simply means what is revealed. God is known through revelation. It means God is known because He has revealed Himself to us through His Word and personally through Christ Jesus. This is not the idea of Revelation that Apostle Suleman is likely to be implying. Note that he said Paul’s letters are Paul’s revelations, not Christ’s revelation through Paul. You can go listen again.
According to the Bible, there are two ways God has revealed Himself unto the generality of humanity and/or specially to His people. Firstly, there is a notion of God in all mankind by which they should know that God exists. This notion is sufficient to incriminate all of us, because we have rejected it and claim we don’t know. God says, He is there and He has revealed Himself even through nature unto us. This is called General Revelation.
Then there is Special Revelation. Though we denied the notion of God in us, He went further to reveal Himself to us through His words and works. He inspired men to record these words and works, forming the Bible. The Bible is historically credible, thanks to God. Humans can reason and say, this is a book we can trust. The Book speaks and reveals God. So the Bible is God’s special revelation of Himself. Or as J.I. Parker prefers (and I love it), the Bible is God’s communication about Himself; it is “God preaching, God teaching, God speaking – saying in application to us what He said long ago to His people when the Bible was first inspired”.
The inspiration of the Bible implies that it is God’s sermon about Himself. It is God’s love letter to us. If you asked God to tell you about Himself, He would give you the Bible. That is what the word “revelation” entails. Special revelation also includes God, not just telling us about Himself, but giving us Himself through His Son Jesus Christ who is the Word personified. Jesus Christ is believed and received by the working of the Holy Spirit, producing salvation in us as a personal experience. The same Holy Spirit works in us to understand the Bible and relate personally with God who reveals Himself more intimately, not just as knowledge in our heads but in pleasurable and fruitful fellowship. This is the doctrine of revelation. This is what revelation actually means biblically. This is how God reveals Himself.
But this is not how most Charismatics understand and use the word “Revelation” and how Suleman might have used it. (I suspect this in the case of Suleman; based on irrefutable evidence. I call them suspicions but they may well be factual. You can check too.) The typical Charismatic preacher or believer when they say “revelation” in relation to Scripture imply an understanding drawn from it, usually or sometimes, the strange insight that seems invisible to others. That is what revelation means to many Charismatics. My sermons can contain deep “revelations”. When I share an unpopular insight (that may even be faulty), the typical charismatic of our time will nod, stand or even scream and say “deep”. What they mean is that I have located some “dimension” in the Word that is fresh, new and inspiring. This understanding of the word “revelation” is what Suleman ascribes to Paul, not the former.
This understanding does not always imply that God is doing the revealing in a manner consistent with history and biblical records. This understanding is not always the true revelation which is never a “private interpretation” although it includes personal application. This faulty and narrow understanding of revelation emphasizes the aspect where the Holy Spirit is revealing (or supposed to be revealing) from the Scriptures. However, oftentimes or sometimes this “revelation” veers into error through an insistence on new, strange and unheard-of insights. It is part of the problems with modern churches, and all denominations have caught it even if it is a charismatic fever.
In his treatise on the modern Faith Movement which Johnson Suleman appeared to be criticizing in part, Dan McConnell wrote a chapter on “The Doctrine of Revelation Knowledge” championed in recent years by E.W. Kenyon whom Johnson Suleman also condemned. (On that score, I agree with Suleman. But E.W. Kenyon is the “father” of Kenneth Hagin who is a “father” or “grandfather” of Ps. Chris Oyakhilome, a man Suleman says he dares not correct. So why is he correcting Kenyon?)
This poor understanding or definition of “revelation knowledge” is the epistemology of the false Faith theology. Coming from that “Gospel of Grace”, “New Creation” or “Christocentric” background as he puts it, Johnson Suleman continues to use the word “revelation” in the same sense. Not just him, but many of us. And there MAY be nothing wrong with the usage if the distinction is made between “our revelations” from Scripture (the receiving end), and God’s self-revelation through Scripture (the source). Revelation entails the receiving of the revelation through proper exegesis of the source of divine doctrine which is the Bible. But that is the tail end of revelation, apart from the actual work of transformation it must produce. Revelation is what God really communicated, not what man extrapolates. I would propose a distinction in the terminologies. What’s wrong with the popular Charismatic or Word of Faith (WOF) view of “revelation” is its subjectivity and obsession over freshness. Suleman’s usage was based very much on subjectivity. He uses, “they don’t have revelation”, “my revelation” and “Paul’s revelation”.
The typical charismatic usage of “revelation” allows us to call it fresh, deep mysteries etc, referring to our sermons from the Bible. The problem however is that in many Word of Faith contexts (the background JS is preaching against), their understanding and use of “revelation” dissociates God’s revelation from what can be rationally discovered from the Bible (His revelation unto us). It is a revelation if it cannot very easily and rationally be gleaned from the face of Scriptures, so that the preacher is said to be doing the revealing, not God. That is the achievement we praise many false teachers for. It rather relies on modern-day prophetic and private twisting of the Bible to say what false preachers believe it must mean. So for instance, even though the words of the verse mean one thing contextually; the poor doctrine of revelation in modern-day Faith movements allows a preacher to reveal an exotic meaning, especially when they can bless it with “God told me”. This is the kind of “Revelation” Suleman supposes that Paul had.
Basically, when he says Paul’s letters contain “his revelations of Christ”, he compares Paul to Kenneth Hagin and E.W. Kenyon. He implies that the Epistles are Paul’s subjective view of Christ (without necessarily throwing them out). He means that Paul’s letters should be compared to Bible commentaries, opinions from today’s Pastors, books from any other Christian. One of his followers agreeing with his position made it so clear by telling me that a Nigerian lawyer with similar education as Paul could produce the content of his epistles with the help of God. That is a good way of showing you that Paul’s letters have been regarded as equal to my Facebook posts in matters of authority. This is what Suleman means by secondary. When Christians lift the Bible, we lift it as the primary source of doctrine while all our sermons become mere discussions of the true Word of God. What Suleman and those who agree with him do is to cut a part of the New Testament out as part of discussions of the true Scriptures (in their opinion), comparing our “inspiration” to that of Paul.
I want you to be sure that Suleman is not implying the same thing Paul says in Galatians 1:11-12.
“But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12, NKJV)
Our “revelations” must rather be receptions of God’s revelations through Scripture; no matter who we are, clergy or laity. Paul’s writings are not merely his understanding of God but God’s revelations unto us. That is the difference. What I write here is my understanding and deduction from Scripture. Paul’s writings are more than his deductions. They are God’s word, in a similar way that the Psalms reveal God. They may be called sermons, but they were specially documented through him by God as a credible source of information about Himself – similar to the book of Genesis in matters of inspiration (coming from God).
We believe this is in fulfillment of Christ’s promise to reveal more to the disciples that He did not say while He walked on earth (John 16:12-13). So Galatians 1:11-12 is instructive, and Peter’s confirmation of Paul’s letters as Scripture (not just scriptural) is indicative that Christ fulfilled the promise through a special revelation of Christian doctrine to and through the apostles. (2 Peter 3:16)
Again, early Christianity was based on the doctrine of the Apostles, some of which we may not easily hear from the mouth of Jesus in same detail. The good news is that these doctrines are shown to be consistent with Jesus’ words and the Old Testament. So that, the compilation of books we have as the Bible includes reliable records of early Church doctrine mostly communicated through Paul’s letters from prison (an act of God’s providence). This is what makes the Bible sufficient for doctrine.
The Christian position is that God wrote unto us through the hands of Moses as well as those of Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter and any other biblical writer. It is a complete book, not lacking in coherence and consistency, except for the unenlightened. Remember, we said God’s revelation unto us includes the Spirit’s opening of our eyes to the message and beauty of the Bible. It also requires rational studies, since God speaks to and through our minds. The divine inspiration of the Bible promises consistency when compared to external facts, but also internally between its books. More importantly, the Bible is consistent in its thematic message when read holistically with the help of God. Simply put, Paul’s doctrine will not contradict Jesus’. And although it seems so, the Old Testament will not contradict the New Testament.
When Suleman says Paul’s words are Paul’s revelation of Christ, his congregation will understand it as Paul’s sermons, understanding and insights, comparable to Suleman’s own sermons. In Ps. Gideon Boateng’s rebuttal, he plays a video of one Dr. Claudio who spews the fallacy better and more arrogantly. I advise that you check it out. Some discerning followers may understand him differently, but that is the intent of deceivers who use this tactic. They use watered-down or flexible words, and hide behind the possible multiplicity of meanings to different audiences. That is, the reformed believer hears him as saying, “Paul was inspired”; while the unlearned hear him as saying, “Paul’s letters are just like my sermons.” I know I am alleging strong things, but I will be daring in this regard; counting on God’s grace and mercy, and aiming for His glory. This is my opinion, if not a conviction.
The Bible teaches that false teachers will have “unhealthy interest in controversies and semantics” (1 Timothy 1:4, BSB). When a teacher prefers to play around words instead of carefully cut out what they mean, that is a red flag. “Is he saying Paul’s letters are from God or they are not? If they are from God, why must they contradict Jesus’ words? Why would he have to choose Jesus’ words over Paul’s if they are both from God? Okay, then Paul’s words are not from God.” By the time that woman settles on this understanding, Mr. Preacher says, “Paul’s letters are his revelations of Christ.” Then she continues thinking right there, “Okay. So he received them from Christ?” While she’s processing that, the same preacher in the same sermon (who has now moved from where he was standing) says, “Paul actually reported what he was told.” The member continues to process in his mind, “By who? So can Paul’s revelations be trusted?” The preacher concludes, “I will choose Jesus over Paul any day.” The question remains unanswered. “Were Paul’s letters inspired just like the rest of Scripture?” He hasn’t answered. It remains a mystery, and that means Mr. Preacher has preached from a higher realm. That is semantics.
Christian philosopher, Francis Schaeffer calls the tactic “semantic mysticism” where “Words are often used to mask reality, to transform ideas about it to palatable form”, according to James W. Sire. It seems to be the smart thing to play around with words and get away with blunders or crimes. We will be tempted to use this style because of our sinful nature. In fact, the more intelligent you are, the easier it is to deceive people using this style. We use it daily in our conversations.
Last Friday, a colleague tried to move to a lady in front of me by saying that she bears his girlfriend’s name. When the lady said she was married, he played around it and said he actually meant that his wife has the same name as her. She questioned him whether it was a wife or a girlfriend. He used semantic mysticism and said “my wife is my girlfriend too, I call my wife my girlfriend”. Plain lies and vibes! But he didn’t do it well. A more intelligent person could do it better. Even though we can easily begin to use these tactics in the face of doctrinal error, we must remember the words in James 3:1;
“My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.” (NKJV)
We will be judged for how we handle the Word of God. We will be judged for how we teach God’s people. The integrity of our hearts will be judged. Our consciences will be witnesses against us in the face of God. Men may not always see these tactics. But God sees them all. I may be wrong about Suleman. But God knows the exact thoughts and feelings in his conscious and subconscious mind, and mine too. This is just for all of us to learn.
The semantic tactic may deceive men, but God will judge it. It is also not a very loving thing to do. It distorts the meaning of words and makes communication difficult when the same words are used another time. It frustrates the significance of words and exalts subjectivism over the pursuit and preaching of significantly cut-out truths.
With love,
PDS.
For a background to this post, kindly watch a summary of the issues in this video.
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