9 Concerning the prophets: My heart is broken within me all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord and because of his holy words. 10 For the land is full of adulterers; because of the curse the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is not right. 11 “Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their evil, declares the Lord. 12 Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness, into which they shall be driven and fall, for I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, declares the Lord. 13 In the prophets of Samaria I saw an unsavory thing: they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. 14 But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil; all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.” 15 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets: “Behold, I will feed them with bitter food and give them poisoned water to drink, for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land.” 16 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. 17 They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” 18 For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear his word, or who has paid attention to his word and listened? 19 Behold, the storm of the Lord! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. 20 The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly. 21 “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. 22 But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds.

23 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? 24 Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord. 25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ 26 How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, 27 who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal? 28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the Lord. 29 Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? 30 Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal my words from one another. 31 Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare, ‘declares the Lord.’ 32 Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the Lord.

33 “When one of this people, or a prophet or a priest asks you, ‘What is the burden of the Lord?’ you shall say to them, ‘You are the burden, and I will cast you off, declares the Lord.’ 34 And as for the prophet, priest, or one of the people who says, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ I will punish that man and his household. 35 Thus shall you say, every one to his neighbor and every one to his brother, ‘What has the Lord answered?’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ 36 But ‘the burden of the Lord’ you shall mention no more, for the burden is every man’s own word, and you pervert the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God. 37 Thus you shall say to the prophet, ‘What has the Lord answered you?’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ 38 But if you say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have said these words, “The burden of the Lord,” when I sent to you, saying, “You shall not say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’” 39 therefore, behold, I will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence, you and the city that I gave to you and your fathers. 40 And I will bring upon you everlasting reproach and perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.’” Jeremiah 23:9–40

I wrote the following on another social media platform with reference to the above passage (although I focused on verse 10): ““Both prophet and priest are ungodly; even in my house I have found their evil, declares the LORD.” –Jeremiah 23:11 It is as if Christians could never imagine this. What’s even stranger is that many Christian scholars cannot seemingly imagine this about experts in other fields. There is this pervasive hypermodernist notion that experts have achieved überman critical status. As if the “intellect” really wasn’t touched by the fall, thus allowing natural humanity to be reasonable and ethical in their daily praxis; and allowing them to be of pure intention in regard to their research in whatever fields they may be operating within. Most scholarship these days, whether it is Christian or other, operates off the premise furnished by an anthropological intellectualism. This keeps Christian scholars, pastors, and the laity in general operating with this notion that humanity can still be “good” in its intentions even though the cross of Christ reveals the exact opposite! Let me expand further on this below.

As we read Holy Scripture canonically what we see is that the above sentiment, voiced by Jeremiah as a mouthpiece for the living and triune God, is ubiquitous from the very beginning till now. As a Bible reader, whose spirituality has been formed by the contours of this canonical reality, it is hard to not be cynical about the sphere known as academia. Academia is where our postmodern day priests are cultivated. When they leave the monasteries of their training, they leave as experts in their field. Given the pervasive nature of scientism in our present (and evil) day, no matter what discipline said expert (or priest) inhabits they have been anointed with the imprimatur of the gods (their doktorvaters). In this immanentized world of holiness, the experts have been granted the authority to speak with ex cathedra pronouncements. By their demiurgical standing they can speak reality into existence as if ex nihilo. And all of this from the certitude they have achieved by simply operating from the intellectual capacity they have been born with, and cultivated into by the college of cardinals who hold the keys to the straight and crooked.

I mentioned ‘intellectualism’ in my original commentary. Theologically, particularly with reference to the Latin (Catholic and Protestant) tradition, Thomas Aquinas immediately comes to mind. He offered a theological anthropology, which Norman Fiering has identified as Thomist Intellectualism, wherein the fall of humanity suffered not from a noetic or intellectual impact. In other words:

So three things oppose virtue: sin (or misdeeds), evil (the opposite of goodness), and vice (disposition unbefitting to one’s nature). Whatever accords with reason is humanly good, whatever goes against reason is humanly bad. Human virtue that makes men and their deeds good befits human nature by befitting reason, whilst vice goes against man’s nature by going against reason. Man’s nature is twofold: he lives by his reason and he lives by his senses. It is through sensing that he learns to reason, but many men never mature beyond the level of sense. Vice and sin result from our following of sense-nature against our rational nature. And going against human rational nature is going against eternal law.[1]

This is only a sampling from Aquinas; this sentiment, in regard to the ‘rational nature’ can be enumerated at almost exponential levels. But this should suffice in illustrating the broader point being made: the intellect or ‘rational nature’ has held a primacy of place not only for the profane or pagan scholars among us, it is also primal in regard to the way Christian scholars think and operate. And it is this point of contact, based in natural law, and as a subsequent, a natural anthropology as understood, broadly, from within the Thomist intellectualist tradition (there are other intellectualist anthropologies that parse things from different angles, but typically end up with the same praxis), wherein intellectuals, and the experts in general find their common or ‘natural’ fellowship. But this is a dangerous ‘venture of faith.’

If God is to be trusted, along with His prophet Jeremiah, it is possible, more, it is likely that we all are susceptible to fancies of elevating our imaginations and ‘original and constructive thinking’ to the level of the Divine Word. The priests and prophets of Israel did it; what makes us any better or more ‘critical’ than them? But this doesn’t seem to stop the expert class, in particular, and in whatever field, to speak as if they are speaking for God (or the gods, as the case may be in our hypermodern times). There is this implicit belief that the intellect has the capaciousness to transcend the mundane ‘man,’ and reach into the heavenly certitudes thus transversing the antinomy between the altitudes and the vicissitudes of this fleshy and phenomenalistic world. It is by this transpositioning between the heights and depths vis-à-vis the critical component present within the expert class wherein they lose the capacity to see things as God does. This is the remainder of the serpentine seduction that elusively leads us all to the altar of an abstract human certitude to be slaughtered. It is here where the forbidden fruit continues to poison the gullets of the masses, whether it is the expert or ‘fleshy’ classes, and seduces us to think that we can think and speak as God does from our own intact intellectual capacities; all along under the beguilement that we are only bearing witness to God (or the gods as the case may be).

The cross of Jesus Christ indicts us and puts us to death every single minute of every single day. The resurrection of Christ justifies and makes us alive every single minute of every single day. This is the Christian’s ground, and anthropological basis for thinking the self. It is not to turn to the subject, but instead it is to turn to the new creation of God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. The scholar is either confounded by the foolishness and weakness of the wisdom of the cross, or they only continue on as if they have a natural divinity within and from themselves. It is advisable for all Christians to live a life of ‘repentant living’ (a riff on TF Torrance’s repentant thinking), and only show deference for God and no one else. Herein there is an order and fruit of the Spirit that can genuinely bear witness to the living God. May the Lord have mercy to keep us from seeking the glory of others rather than the glory of God in Jesus Christ.    

---

[1] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Concise Translation, 270-71.