John MacArthur's Church's Civil Disobedience Justifications Evaluated in Light of James Sire's Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways Cults Misread the Bible

Forty year ago, James Sire's book Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible provided me with my first lessons in hermeneutics and sound exegesis. The book shows not only how the cults misread Scripture, but how everyone does.

Yesterday while working through the statement put forward by the leadership of John MacArthur's Grace Community Church (henceforth, the "MacArthur Statement") that provided their biblical rational for refusing to comply with Covid 19 restrictions, I was reminded once again of Sire's book, and spent a considerable time digging though my three-book-deep bookshelves, book bins, and book piles trying to unearth a copy. Finally I did.

The reason I did is because the Church's statement provides several good examples of the kinds of misreadings Sire describes, including:

Misreading 4: Ignoring the Immediate Context
Misreading 10: Saying but not Citing
Misreading 11: Selective Citing
Misreading 12: Inadequate Evidence
Misreading 14 Ignoring Alternative Explanations.

and perhaps most conspicuously,

Misreading 6: Overspecification. 

In many cases the misreadings overlap, so that, for example, when the statement indulges in Overspecification (# 6), it might also involve as well Ignoring the Immediate Context (# 4) and Ignoring Alternative Explanations (# 14).

One of the things I suggested yesterday was that the Statement would provide a very helpful example for Seminary Students who are trying to evaluate its exegetical and hermeneutical approach. If I was still teaching I would have very much liked to have done that. It would also have provided a good example for Christian exegetes of trying to be faithful to Scripture even where doing so brought us into conflict with the assertions of Christian teachers we respect.

Naturally if the MacArthur Statement were put out by a heretical group it may have been scrutinized much more vigorously by Christians, but since it comes from the Church of a prominent radio preacher and Christian celebrity, more Christian, I think, are willing to treat the document with favoritism and give it a pass, indeed to not scrutinize it at all.

Let's begin.

The MacArthur Statement puts forward the claim that the Covid 19 restrictions put the church into a situation where it is no longer possible for them to obey both the Scriptures and the government. It claims they can do one, or the other, but not both. So, it claims, they have decided to defy the government and obey Scripture. Following is one of the key, as we might say, weight-bearing passages where they actually get down to particulars as to why they think the situation is as unworkable as they describe it.  Notice careful the six Scriptures they claim must be disobeyed in principle if they were to continue obeying the government:

"When officials restrict church attendance to a certain number, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible for the saints to gather as the church. When officials prohibit singing in worship services, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible for the people of God to obey the commands of Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16. When officials mandate distancing, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible to experience the close communion between believers that is commanded in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26. In all those spheres, we must submit to our Lord."

Before we look at the texts themselves we must consider one important implication of what is said here, namely that if the reasoning in the above paragraph is true, then every other Church in the county (and indeed in the world) that does not follow MacArthur's lead, are choosing to obey men rather than God. The reason I say the whole country/world here, rather than speak only of the region where MacArthur's Church happens to be, is because the MacArthur Statement is comprehensive in scope and not merely local. There is no mention of anything in the statement that would narrow the argument to his specific area.

This is one of the reasons MacArthur's defiance has a broader relevance beyond his church alone. The only way we can determine whether the argument of the MacArthur Statement is valid or not in the present case is to evaluate the biblical evidence it puts forward in the paragraph above.  We will start by look at the first two passages cited there: Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.

[I just received news that John MacArthur's Church has agreed to masks and social distancing until September. Does this make any ongoing evaluation of the Statement under discussion relevant? Perhaps not for long, but since we are dealing with issues of the validity of Scriptural interpretation it may be useful to at least follow through with the single paragraph, since whether MacArthur ultimately wins his case or not is in some sense secondary to whether his case was founded on sound Scriptural arguments.]

The other night my wife and I got out our copy of Great Hymn of the Faith and sang "A Mighty Fortress is our God" together. A night or so before that my wife played a song for me that was so lovely that we listened to it more than once: Zach Williams and Dolly Parton singing "There was Jesus." Some time ago when I was in South Carolina one of the really great times was riding down a long country road one evening with my daughter and grand kids, the windows rolled down, the Christian radio station cranked up, and all of us singing at the top of our lungs together. Friends of mine share Christian songs with each other on facebook. Isn't it wonderful, as Ephesians 5:19-20, says, to 'address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ"' or as Colossians 3:16 put it: "singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

Ah, but, wait a minute, says MacArthur's Statement, none of that counts for fulfilling those Scriptures, nor does corporate worship with any limits on the numbers count. This is a key contention of the MacArthur Statement. But it isn't true, the statement is indulging in Sire's Misreading # 6, Overspecification and # 14 Ignoring Alternative Explanations. According to the MacArthur statement those passages can only obeyed in a chuck-a-block full, non-distancing American Mega Church setting. According to the argument of the statement, anything less, anything other, than that inescapably represents a clear violation of Scripture. And yet the Ephesians passage itself refutes the supposition, since it indicates that what it commands is to be done "always."  Thus it explicitly rules out MacArthur's more narrow interpretation. Furthermore, the Colossians passage says nothing specific at all about a congregational setting as the context for what it has in view. In short these two passages do not provide the Scriptural warrant the MacArthur Statement claims they do.

Not even close.

Indeed in what sense can we regard their use as anything other than window dressing, a mere pretext?  And if indeed it is mere pretext, then it is also an act of asserting themselves, their own will, their own desires, their own false narrative of having been put into an unworkable bind by the Covid 19 restrictions, under the guise of following Scripture.  In short they have dishonored Scripture in the name of upholding it.

Before we go further, I would like to say a word about arguments. When you make an assertion it is only that, an assertion. In order to be taken seriously you must provide warrant for the assertion in the form of some kind of evidence. If the evidence supports the assertion then that is good. But if it falls short we say that you did not have sufficient warrant for making your assertion.  Trying to compensate by making the assertion very forcefully, or with great confidence, is not a valid way to compensate for the lack of warranting.  Many of us will have heard the joke connected with this about the pastor who wrote in the margin of his sermon manuscript: "Point weak here:  Pound pulpit!"

The fact that the Macarthur Statement makes the kinds of exegetical missteps described as illegitimate in James Sire’s book Scripture Twisting means that the Statement falls short of providing sufficient warrants for the assertions it put forward. We have seen this already in the first to passages appealed to. The same is true of the statement's treatment of the last four passages, which present us with a strategy of misreading that is a bit more complex, but also a bit more interesting. Following is the assertion we will be discussing from the Macarthur statement along with the Scriptural appeal provided as warrant for the validity of the assertion.

“When officials mandate distancing, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible to experience the close communion between believers that is commanded in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26. In all those spheres, we must submit to our Lord.”

Notice first of all that the statement implies that obeying Covid 19 restrictions forces Christians into active disobedience with regard to the list of ‘commands’ presented in the four Scriptural passages listed. Is that true?

Okay, let's start by looking at what those four Scriptures actually say? Well, they all say basically the same thing. The first three the statements are identical in the Greek, which is translated: “Greet one another with a holy kiss (philēmati hagiō). The fourth differs only in replacing "one another" with “all the brothers.”

What the MacArthur statement seems to be saying then is that his church has to defy the Covid 19 restrictions because if they don’t they will not be able to fulfill the command to “give one another a holy kiss.” The implication is that if there were any way they could fulfill that command without violating the law, then of course they would willingly do so, as a way of keeping in mind those other commands in Romans 13:1-6 and 1 Peter 2:13. Okay so there we have the basis to actually begin asking some clarifying questions about the application of those Scriptures.

First clarifying question:

“So your telling me you must disobey the restrictions so that you can give one another a holy kiss. So please explain to me exactly what kind of ritual that involves? How does that work. Does everyone kiss each other, or are there restrictions on who kisses whom, on age, sex and so on? Do old men kiss teenage girls, or women other women’s husbands, or is everyone divided up according to age, sex and so on?

And the answer comes. “Well, it’s not like that.”

"What do you mean, it’s not like that? Are you telling me that you do not give each other kisses?"

“No. We don’t.”

“Now wait a minute, your whole point was that you absolutely have to disobey the law in order not to violate the Scripture's command to give one another a holy kiss, and yet the actions you say are commanded to do in those passages aren’t actually practiced by you at all. Is that right?”

“Well, we don’t take the command to involve literal kissing.”

“Okay, how do you interpret 'holy kiss' then, in a non-literal way, I mean?”

“Well it was a kind of greeting.”

“What kind of greeting?”

“Well one place in the Macarthur Study Bible likens it to shaking hands.”

“So you're saying that the command to greet one another with a holy kiss, is really a command in modern language to shake one another's hands. Okay, I can see that an order to social distance, could put a cramp into your style on that one.”

“Well, it’s more than that actually. The passage says it is 'impossible to experience the close communion between believers that is commanded' in those passages."

"Ah, so you're telling me the command your being forced to break by the Covid 19 restrictions has nothing directly to do with the command to give each other a holy kiss, but rather a command to 'experience the close communion' that is commanded in those passages."

"That's what the statement says."

"Okay, so where is your scriptural proof for that?"

"Well, like the statement says, in the four passages listed."

"Ah. but haven't you noticed? None of the passages in the list contains any sort of command, or even exhortation, to 'experience the close communion between believers,' They only command/exhort giving one another a holy kiss, which you already told me you don't do."

Here we are presented with an example of Sire's “Misreading No. 3: The Biblical Hook.” As Sire notes: "The preacher wants to say something to his congregation, so he looks for a verse or two of Scripture on which to hang his preconceived message." (Scripture Twisting, p. 42). One sign that the Biblical Hook is being used is that the one presenting it does so in a way that shows he is “not concerned for the original meaning of the text.” And in this case the underlying rhetorical bait and switch is especially interesting. And it's a little subtle, but watch.

Superficially the passage in the MacArthur Statement seems to refer to the straightforward call for obedience to a specific command in four different biblical passages, namely giving one another a holy kiss. But when we look at the MacArthur Statement more closely, i.e.,  at its actual we discover that it is not talking about that at all, it is talking rather about following the command to get the blessing that people used to supposedly get by giving one another a holy kiss, but now by doing something else, namely stuffing ourselves cheek to jowl into an American style mega-church. So let's look again at the passage from the statement: 

"When officials mandate distancing, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible to experience the close communion between believers that is commanded in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26. In all those spheres, we must submit to our Lord.”

So again, we now see clearly that it is not the holy kiss that is commanded but something else that is supposedly implied in the passaged that is not the holy kiss, namely, "the close communion between believers that is commanded." So then an imperative, that is to say a command is illegitimately invented and hustled in using the flexibility of language. It is indeed a rather fine example of James Sire's “Misreading No. 3: The Biblical Hook.”

Next up, question two: What is a 'holy kiss' anyway?

 

Since I began it has been on again and off again in term of whether MacArthur is in trouble or not. It appears that a very good Roman Catholic organization has taken up his cause and gained some ground. I expect the process we can look forward to there, is that if MacArthur succeeds in the court he will obey and if he does not he will defy. The standard of judgment he is appealing to there is American legal procedure, not biblical exegesis. It is quite possible to win as an organization operating on American soil and yet to lose as the church as a result of pursuing unbiblical approaches. So the question of whether MacArthur ultimately succeeds in court or not is not something we are concerned with here. So let's continue:

We just got finished showing how the MacArthur Statement used Paul’s exhortation to believers to “greet one another with a holy kiss in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26, as a hook for asserting something else.

We need to ask what the “holy kiss” was. The answer you give will vary according to whether you go to a historic liturgical church or to one that purports to follow the Bible alone. The same distinction can also be stated by asking whether you gain your understanding of the holy kiss by what it became in the developing Christian tradition and liturgy, or by how it was used in the New Testament itself. In both cases MacArthur’s church would present itself as following in the latter category, a non-traditional, Bible only church.

Those who attend traditional Churches, will recognize the holy kiss as what is now often also called the Sign of Peace or Kiss of Peace. As the formal liturgy evolved this element entered it quite early, as early as Justin Martyr in the second century (1 Apology 65) when it found its place in the liturgy prior to the Lord’s Supper, generally speaking at the end of what came to be called the "mass of the catechumens." Quite early the reception of Baptism involved an extended period of learning and preparation beforehand, and those undergoing it were called Catechumens. The mass of the catechumens was that part of the mass the catechumens were allowed to attend. They were dismissed however before the liturgy of the Eucharist, that is to say, of the Lord’s Supper.

Part of the reason the holy kiss found its place where it did was because the catechumens were barred from it, because, as Hippolytus stated in the Apostolic Tradition 18, the kiss of the catechumens was “not yet pure,” in other words they had not yet been purified by Baptism. The Baptized however did give one another the kiss of peace, although there were a number of warnings early on about the potential dangers of carnal motives associated with it. When catechumens finally came to be baptized part of the celebration of their entry into the Church was their participation in the kiss of peace. Newly ordained Bishops were also given the kiss of peace.

Because of its position in the mass, namely soon before the Lord’s Supper, it could be used as a sign of unity and reconciliation that paralleled quite closely the exhortation to self-examination that precedes the reception of the Lord’s Supper in may Protestant and Evangelical churches today. This is the case in my own fellowship where we are exhorted not to partake if we know of anything that is hindering our fellowship with another Christian (following Matthew 4:23-24: “if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”) We see an example of this in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lecture 23:3. It is very likely that John MacArthur’s church does something similar to this prior to the Lord’s Supper, but it seems highly unlikely that they would link it to Paul’s teaching on the holy kiss. Okay, so that is the traditional understanding of the holy kiss.

The next question is, what is the Biblical understanding of the holy kiss, according to the four passages in Paul quoted in the MacArthur statement? Well the first thing that should be said is that the Scriptures do not speak of the holy kiss in connection with discussing norms of liturgical practice, or of the need to attend church at all. Rather it always appears in the context of the greetings Paul includes at the end of his letters. First Peter 5:14 follows this same convention only calling it there the “kiss of love.”

So see this clearly we need to read the larger passage in which the holy-kiss language appears in Romans 16:

"Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia. Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys. Greet Apelles, whose fidelity to Christ has stood the test. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew. Greet those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the other brothers and sisters with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the Lord’s people who are with them. GREET ONE ANOTHER WITH A HOLY KISS."

There is nothing here to signify a settled practice involving a church service. It extends beyond any particular congregation in Rome. Indeed a single congregation is included among those Paul greets (“Greet also the church that meets at their [Priscilla and Aquila’s] house"). But it also  includes a much broader vision of what the Church of Rome consists of, namely all the Christians in all the congregations there.

One of the most remarkable things about the MacArthur Statement is that it insists that it is impossible to obey these passages except in a format that would have been totally foreign to Paul, namely an American-style mega church and then only when, as we said before, it is stuffed cheek-to-jowl to capacity).

At its most basic level, then, the holy kiss was a greeting. That kisses commonly accompanied greetings is seen when Jesus faults Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7:45 for not giving him a kiss when he came onto his house. And of course Judas Iscariot uses the convention of a greeting with a kiss as sign to those who arrested Jesus.

A very obvious question that naturally arises from Paul’s uses of the expression “holy kiss” is whether we may speak of it, in any sense, as a command of the sort that can bind the consciences of modern believers. And the answer is, of course it is not that. When one reads the various references to these passages in the MacArthur Study Bible, it becomes clear that he does not himself have a clear idea as to what the holy kiss consisted of. Consequently he assigns different, even contradictory, meanings to it in different places.

There is no implication that modern believers need to obey it literally. As we noted earlier, even John MacArthur's church does not obey it literally. It is indeed very unlikely that even in Paul’s case that one could understand those passages as having to do with anything more than a general exhortation. Clearly we are not dealing with an expectation on Paul’s part of the sort that he might, say, follow up upon later by exercising Church discipline against those who failed to carry it out. It is not, strictly speaking, a 'command.' Much less did he likely have in mind in those contexts laying down a hard and fast rule as to the form of greeting to be obeyed in the church down through the ages. There is nothing in the context to suggest Paul in mind such a reading of the passages at all. It is simply part of his more general greeting to the churches.

In the process of developing the liturgy much of the Church lost site of New Testament usage quite early, although Athanasius still uses it that way in the 4th century. Today we do not usually greet groups of people by telling them to greet one another. Rather we say something like "tell everyone hello," or "give my greetings to everyone". On occasion we might say something like “Give grandma a kiss for me.”

Only once in my lifetime have I ever been exhorted to give everyone a holy kiss, and that was when I was leaving Boulder, Colorado, to return to Moscow, Idaho, and the most remarkable, blessed brother Gene Thomas charged me to “Greet the bothers there with a holy kiss.” The solemnity with which Gene delivered this charge, his utter seriousness in doing so, rattled me, and I remember awkwardly muttering: “I’m not sure they would put up with it.”

To conclude, I have heard John MacArthur assert in my presence that he never disobeys scripture. I believed then as I do now that the statement said more about John MacArthur’s natural self-assurance than it did about the truth or untruth of the assertion. An old colleague of mine, though a fan of MacArthur, nevertheless describes  him as "often in error, never in doubt." And yet, what I have tried to show here, is that in the present case that assertion is proved untrue in connection with at least one passage of Scripture, namely 1 Corinthians 4:6:

‘Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other.”

To the extent that MacArthur is connected with his church’s statement, which he certainly is in that he is engaging in the actions is seeks to justify, he is also connected with its illegitimate use of scripture. MacArthur likes to call himself a “Pastor-Teacher.’ His actions in this case, however, casts a shadow of doubt over the applicability of both titles.

MacArthur's action of placing his flock at risk, both legally and in terms of their health, without sufficient scriptural warrant for doing so, certainly places him, in this case anyway, beyond the realm of having a legitimate claim to either title.  Furthermore, it moves his church leadership into the realm of against sinning against the flock under their charge.

When MacArthur’s church decided to defy the Covid restrictions, it’s service (I believe the very next Sunday) included a classically trained singer very grandly performing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, including the line “let good and kindred go, this mortal life also.” Probably the song was chosen to reinforce the impression that the Church was following God’s Word, which, at least in the passages we have discussed here, is certainly was not.

Being aware of this there was some irony for me in the fact that they sung as well the line from that hymn “Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing,’ which, lacking sufficient biblical warrant for their actions, is what they were actually doing. One is only left to wonder whether the second part of that line will prove to be predictive of the outcome of MacArthur’s actions. Earlier examples of such actions taken by Church leaders during the Covid 19 crisis have not ended happily. I only hope that in this case outcomes will be different. Still, if they are different, it can scarcely be appealed to by the producer's of the MacArthur Statement as a sign of God's blessing on their misuse of the Word, but rather of God's great faithfulness and mercy toward those who trust in Him.