Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.2
was evidently standard 'good practice' in the earliest churches: 'Believe not every
spirit, but test the spirits . . .' (1 John 4.1). 97
Once this point has been grasped, it gives rise to an important corollary of
relevance for the present discussion. 98 The corollary is that wherever prophecy
was active in the earliest churches it is likely to have been accompanied by what
we might call a hermeneutic of suspicion. The prophetic utterance would not automatically
have been assumed to be inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, or the words
to be words of (the exalted) Christ. The awareness that such utterances must be
tested seems to have been continuous through Israel's prophetic experience and
into Christianity's prophetic experience. 99
The next step in the logic is the decisive one. What test would be applied to
such utterances? One of the consistent answers is in effect the test of already recognized
and established tradition. It was denial of or departure from foundational
tradition which most clearly attested a false prophecy, which should therefore not
be given any credence. The test is already articulated within the Torah: the
prophet who called Israel to go after other gods should not be listened to (Deut.
13.1-3). And the prophets prophesied essentially in support ofthat formative tradition.
100 In the NT the test of authoritative tradition is articulated most clearly
by Paul in 1 Cor. 12.3 (the test of the key kerygmatic confession, 'Jesus is
Lord'), 101 and by 1 John 4.2-3 (the test of the developed confession).
It could indeed be said that Paul's own claims to be an apostle, with a distinctive
new or different emphasis in his gospel, had to be put to the same test and
had to pass it if his apostleship and missionary work were not to be judged unacceptable
variations of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the clear implication
of Galatians 1-2, where Paul, having insisted on the independence of his apostolic
authority from the Jerusalem apostles, nevertheless found it necessary to go
97. Note how the need for and fact of testing prophecies are in effect assumed in a range
of NT passages (Matt. 7.15-23; 1 Cor. 2.12-14; 14.37-38; 2 Thess. 2.2-3; Heb. 13.7-9; Rev.
2.20).
98. This is the main point of my 'Prophetic 'T'-Sayings'.
99. Boring recognizes the importance of the subject (Sayings 64-69) but does not pursue
the issue of criteria (119-20).
100. 'In the Judaism from which early Christianity was born, the prophets were not
thought of as inspired innovators, who brought radically new revelation, but as strong links in
the chain of tradition, who only presented afresh what was already Israel's traditional lore'
(Boring, Sayings 71).
101. That 'Jesus is Lord' was one of the earliest Christian (baptismal) confessions is attested
in Rom. 10.9. Most would regard Rom. 12.6 as making the same point: prophecy had to
be 'in accordance with the analogy (analogia) of faith', 'in agreement with (or proportion to)
the faith' (BAGD, analogia); cf. 6.17 ('the pattern [typos] of teaching'); 12.3 ('the measure
[metron] of faith'). Aune points out that 'the test of congruence with kerygmatic tradition' was
applied also in Gal. 1.6-9 and 2 Thess. 2.2 (Prophecy 235).
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