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I
may shock some of my more staid readers with the thesis I now set
forth as to the identity of a false teacher. I do not believe, as I
was always taught in the sect in which I grew up, that
“denominational preachers” are necessarily false
teachers, which is the view still urged upon us by many within
Christian Churches-Churches of Christ. I have long since discarded
the notion that “our” men are the true teachers while
“their” men are the false teachers. If you still hold to
this view, I will love you just the same. I only ask that you hear
me out before writing
me
off
as a false teacher.
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On
the very face of it, it is a cruel doctrine that makes false
teachers of the likes of Adam Clarke and Albert Barnes, to mention
two old-line commentators long esteemed by our people. Clarke
labored upwards of a lifetime preparing his highly resourceful and
deeply spiritual commentary, doing the Old Testament after finishing
the New. It is said that he wrote his last lines about Malachi on
his knees, in grateful acknowledgment that God had given him the
strength to complete the task.
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Albert
Barnes revealed in a sermon in his latter years, recorded, by the
way, in Alexander Campbell’s
Millennial
Harbinger
of
1860, that he did all the writing on his commentaries between 4 and
9 a.m., when his mind was the freshest. When 9 a.m. came he stopped
on the second, even if it meant leaving a sentence incomplete. When
I read Barnes, as I often do since it is such good stuff even if
old, I find myself appreciating the fact that it was all carefully
searched out and prepared in early morning.
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Can
I
really
believe
that such men as these are false teachers? These commentaries grace
the libraries of many of our preachers, serving as mute witnesses to
what preachers of the word
can
learn
through such painstaking study as is evident in their works. I would
that Clarke and Barnes were as carefully studied as they are
preserved and shelved! But who of us can be serious in the view that
when our preachers soak up the riches of Clarke or Barnes that they
are being influenced by false teachers. It is an impossible
conclusion. Something has to be wrong. Indeed, most every worthwhile
book in the preachers library, whether Thayer or Hort, or Trueblood
or Barclay, is the work of a false teacher, since but a few of them
were authored by our own faithful band. It just doesn’t cut.
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Running
the risk of being branded a false teacher myself, I will venture to
liberate you from such an unnecessary and ungracious doctrine. It is
unnecessary in that you can cling tenaciously to all truth without
having to believe that all teachers are false beside your own. It is
ungracious because it is judgmental, setting at naught all those not
of us. Besides, it is grossly erroneous in that it presumes that one
is
false
when he is only wrong or mistaken. Surely Clarke and Barnes, along
with the thousands like them, are mistaken in some of their
interpretations. If that makes men false teachers, then we all are
false. One might even be seriously mistaken without being a false
teacher. Let us see.
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This
term,
pseudo-didaskalos,
appears
only the one time in the New Covenant scriptures, 2 Pet. 2:1.
But there are several other passages that refer to the same
character,
false
teacher,
though
not by that exact description. These references make it abundantly
clear who these false teachers are, for they were obviously a
weighty problem to the primitive community of believers.
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2
Pet. 2 gives us a strong indication of their character. They
secretly
bring
in destructive heresies (v. 1); they deny Jesus (v. 1); they bring
swift destruction upon themselves (v. 1); they are licentious, that
is, their behavior is shameful (v. 2); they exploit people (v. 3);
they are liars (v. 3); so wicked are they that their destruction was
predestined (v. 3). All of this hardly fits an Adam Clarke on his
knees before God, doing his best to explain the prophet Malachi.
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The
word
pseudo
(false)
means lie, and a
pseutes
is
a liar (as in Jn. 8:44, where the devil is “a liar and the
father of lies”). He is secretive, underhanded, malicious,
deceitful, unconscionable. The other references make this clear.
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Ro.
16:17-18 describe him as one; who serves his own appetite rather
than Jesus. He deceives the innocent through flattery. His aim is to
create problems and even dissension.
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2
Tim. 3:8-9 describes the false teachers as those “who oppose
the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith.”
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Tit.
3:11 judges them as perverted, sinful, and
self-condemned.
That
they are self-condemned shows that they know they are wrong, but
they do not care, being as perverted as they are.
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2
Tim. 4:3 shows that it is only those who themselves become
perverted, turning from the wholesome teaching of Jesus, having
“itching ears,” who heap to themselves teachers after
their own lusts. 2 Tim. 2:16 refers to their “godless
chatter,” and Jude 4 nails them as “ungodly persons who
pervert the grace of our God into ]icentiousness and deny our only
Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
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1
Tim. 1:19-20 names Hymenaeus and Alexander as being in this class.
It says they rejected their own conscience and made shipwreck of
their faith, and the apostle turned them over to Satan “that
they may learn not to blaspheme.”
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Surely
that is enough. In the light of all this, some of our folk will
quote 2 Pet. 2:1 — “There will be false teachers among
you” — and browbeat those who would venture to a stadium
to hear Billy Graham. That Graham errs in some things he includes or
excludes may be argued, but to say he is a false teacher after the
order of 2 Pet. 2 is horrendously wrong. He who would so contend, to
the confusion of well-meaning people who would like to help in what
they believe to be a constructive effort, would come nearer fitting
the scriptural description of the false teacher than does Graham.
Campbell once observed that those who cry
heretic’
are
usually more heretical than those they are castigating. It seems to
be so.
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This
term
pseudo
is
the key to our understanding the true character of the false
teacher, and its meaning becomes evident when we see it used as a
prefix to numerous other words. 2 Cor. 11:13 refers to the
pseudo-apostles and Mt. 24:24 mentions both pseudo-Christs and
pseudo-prophets. Mt. 26:60 tells how pseudo-witnesses testified
against Jesus before Caiaphas.
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In
each of these cases you have a bad egg, an unscrupulous person who
acts deceptively and maliciously so as to satisfy his perverted ego.
So Paul described the false apostles as “deceitful workmen,
disguising themselves.” Those who testified falsely against
Jesus were malicious liars. That is our word,
pseudo
is
a lie. A false teacher is a liar, and he knows he’s a liar; or
he is so corrupt of mind and heart that he no longer distinguishes
between right and wrong. He has “rejected his own conscience,”
as the apostle describes him.
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It
is unthinkable that such a characterization as this should be laid
upon any sincere, well-meaning, God-loving person, however misled he
may be on some ideas. One may even be caught up in the clutches of
an insidious system and still not be a
pseudodidaskalos.
The
nun that marches her girls in front of you as you wait at the light
does not necessarily deserve the epithet of
false,
whatever
judgment you make of Romanism. She may well be more devoted to God
than yourself, even if wrong about some things, and she may be a
kalos-didaskalos
(teacher
of good), as in Tit. 2:3, in that she is teaching those girls “to
be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their
husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited.” No
false teacher so behaves as to give credit to the word of God!
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That
is the point. Kittel, in his great
Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament,
describes
the false teachers as those who “reject the claim of Jesus to
dominion over their whole lives.” Not out of weakness do they
reject him, but out of a corrupt mind and perverted soul. They are
in the class with “lying wonders” in 2 Thess. 2:9 and
“the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared”
in 1 Tim. 4:2.
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Some
will insist that I identify the false teachers of our day, if 1 am
so brazen as to exclude “denominational preachers,” for,
after all, Peter says, “There will be false teachers among
you.” I have no interest in excluding anyone as a false
teacher if he fits the description set forth here, whether he be of
“us” or of “them.” And
we
may
be closer to the description than we realize when we bask in our own
self-righteousness and set all others at naught. We have those among
us who are willing to bruise and batter innocent lives in order to
safeguard the party and preserve what they call sound doctrine. That
too gets close.
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The
early church had it Gnostics and its Judaizers, its legalists and
its antinomians, all false teachers. We certainly have our
Christ-denying systems as much as they had. We too have our
pseudo-knowledge (philosophy or science “falsely so called”)
in various systems. I know brethren who have been led astray by the
astral false teachers, professors of theosophy and the “spirit”
cult. They now attend seances and commune with departed spirits
rather than assemble with the saints and commune with the Holy
Spirit.
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We
have those in the universities that are perverted by their godless
“knowledge,” drunk on their own ego, and corrupted by
their lewdness. One of my students was advised by her psychiatrist
that she would “mature” if she slept with a few of the
boys around. One of my colleagues poked fun at “this Jesus
stuff” as he proceeded to educate young people as if there
were no God. Some theological radicals wrench from the gospel its
redemptive character, making it only a means of social reform. And
some so legalize it as to strip it of God’s grace. Men build
systems around such perversions and lead the unwary astray. The “God
is dead” thing was another such lying theological wonder,
perpetuated by the high and mighty.
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No
one is a false teacher who is
honestly
mistaken
or in error. It is gracious of us to distinguish between
unintentional wrong and deliberate and malicious falsehood. One may
be misled without being a liar. We would do well to judge others
with that same mercy by which we prefer to be judged. —
the
Editor