Jim West

I don’t know of anyone who is more convinced that authentic interpreters of biblical texts must be educationally and spiritually authorized than myself- which is, oddly enough- the very reason I like the story of Medad and Eldad (from Numbers 11, you git) so very much. And I like it because it reins in my inclination to a perfectly sealed system of authoritative exegetes. A poem by Charles Wesley (a good Methodist, a learned hymnologist, and a fine scholar in his own day) says it quite well:

Eldad, they said, and Medad there,
Irregularly bold,
By Moses uncommission’d, dare
A separate meeting hold!
And still whom none but heaven will own.
Men whom the world decry,
Men authorized by God alone,
Presume to prophesy!

How often have I blindly done
What zealous Joshua did,
Impatient to the rulers run,
And cried, “My lords, forbid!
Silence the schismatics, constrain
Their thoughts with ours t’ agree,
And sacrifice the souls of men
To idol unity!”

Moses, the minister of God,
Rebukes our partial love,
Who envy at the gifts bestow’d
On those we disapprove.
We do not our own spirit know,
Who wish to see suppress’d
The men that Jesu’s spirit show,
The men whom God hath bless’d.

Shall we the Spirit’s course restrain,
Or quench the heavenly fire?
Let God his messengers ordain,
And whom he will inspire.
Blow as he list, the Spirit’s choice
Of instruments we bless;
We will, if Christ be preached, rejoice,
And wish the word success.
Can all be prophets then? are all
Commission’d from above?
No; but whome’er the Lord shall call
We joyfully approve.
O that the Church might all receive
The spirit of prophecy,
And all in Christ accepted live,
And all in Jesus die!

It’s good to be restrained, you see, from one’s own inclinations from time to time.