A Prophet by Any Other Name (Part Three)

     So far we have not offered our own definition of what a false prophet is. Now it would be appropriate to do so; doing so will furnish an additional argument that some Witness leaders are false prophets, one which is closely related to that which was just concluded. I think the definition provided in the Jehovah’s Witness book Reasoning From the Scriptures is a good definition. “Individuals and organizations proclaiming messages that they attribute to a superhuman source but that do not originate with the true God and are not in harmony with his revealed will.” (p. 132)

  Before using it, however, we need to clarify what is meant by “attribute”. Should we say that claiming that a certain passage in the Bible, X, means Y is to attribute something to God? If so and if what is claimed is false, is this to falsely attribute something to God? In a sense, perhaps. However, this by itself does not seem to make such an interpretation a false prophecy. Clearly, therefore, “attribute” must be meant in some sort of more robust sense. Consider another scenario. Suppose I claim that my biblical interpretation, Y, is God’s own interpretation of something in the Bible, X. Further, I claim that God revealed that X = Y to me through angels and/or the Holy Spirit because I am part of his sole channel of communication on earth and that otherwise no one, including myself, could have known it. (Incidentally, this interpretation bolsters my own authority as a religious leader whom you ought to, at least generally, believe and show deference to.) This sort of attribution seems to be the sort of thing that this definition of a false prophet means to include when it says that such a person “attribute[s a message] to a superhuman source”. In this scenario, the interpretation I teach is supposedly a revelation, not the product of my own conjecture. It purports to make what is, in fact, my own interpretation, come from God no less than did the original passage, to which it is supposedly equivalent in meaning.

  Importantly, claiming a specific mode of enlightenment or inspiration or infallibility is not part of the definition offered in this Witness publication. Admittedly, in the same chapter in which the above definition is given they write, “Jehovah’s Witnesses do not claim to be inspired prophets.” But they stop short of making such a claim part of their definition of a false prophet, presumably because they intend for this definition to cover a wide variety of cases, including those who may have little or no awareness of biblical prophets. And given that there are robust ways to attribute a message to a superhuman source without claiming to be inspired à la the biblical prophets or without claiming to be inerrant, it is reasonable to omit claiming either of these things from one’s definition of a false prophet. 

The definition offered by Witnesses in Reasoning From the Scriptures is sufficiently broad as to include both predictions and doctrine as well as those who attribute their message to God and those who attribute it to a false god. Yet it remains specific enough to exclude mere human conjecture that most people would not classify alongside ostensible prophetic utterances. It also fits well with the Biblical descriptions of false prophets.

Considering the evidence discussed above, I would suggest that at least some Witness leaders (e.g., those who claimed that they were not offering their own interpretations but God’s own, angelically or spirit-given interpretation) are false prophets by this Witness definition.