Korah’s Rebellion
I had an email debate with a protestant named Will Shurtlif back in 2005. We ended up writing quite a bit about Korah’s rebellion. It is mentioned in the book of Jude as part of a list. As Wil said “Jude lists Cain (murder), Balaam (idolatry and licentiousness) and Korah (rebellion)”. He compares it to some of the other lists in the epistles like Gal 5:19-21 “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” Most of the time there are things like discord, dissensions, factions, etc. that could easily be describing the protestant pattern of splitting the church every time there is a serious disagreement. Somehow those words don’t really hit home. People convince themselves Paul must have been referring to some other behaviour that is way different from what has become accepted for them. Jude doesn’t just use words but he uses stories. That is a lot more graphic. Jude picks up on the story of Korah’s rebellion against the authority of Moses in Numbers 16 and applies it to the New Testament church. Right away you have to wonder how that makes any sense with the notion that scripture is the final authority.
It gets even more problematic when you look at the details of the rebellion. Korah says to Moses, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD’s assembly?” That sounds so much like what protestants say in response to claims that the bishops and the pope are to have authority over us. Korah’s strategy is to frame his rebellion so that he is fighting for God against those who falsely claim to have authority from God. His reasons for believing the authority is not reall from God? Well, he does not agree. In fact, there is a whole group that disagrees with Moses. They believe Moses has fallen away from God’s will and they know better what God really wants. Of course, God emphatically side with Moses in the dispute causing the earth to open up and swallow Korah and his supporters.
So how is that different from what Luther did or any other protestant that has split a church? Will tried to argue that the dispute was not about doctrine and therefore it was not justified. But the nature of Godly authority is a matter of doctrine. That was their #1 issue. The second thing they raised was about the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’. That was a land promised by God so that part of it has to go into the doctrinal category as well.
I know as a protestant it seems obvious that sometimes leadship needs to be rebelled against. There really is no biblical justification for this. In fact, the biblical evidence leans quite strongly the other way. The trouble is they have rejected the idea of infalliblilty. That is they believe the church will from time to time expereince leaders that fall into serious error. What do they reject it? Because it is not biblical. But we are seeing that the biblical notion of authority only makes sense in conjunction with some form of limited infalliblity. So doesn’t that make infallibility biblical?. If not A implies B then not B implies A. So if no infallibility implies legitimate rebellion then a command to avoid rebellion implies some form of infallibility.
