{"id":728,"date":"2006-02-06T15:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-06T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html"},"modified":"2006-02-06T15:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-06T15:16:00","slug":"the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html","title":{"rendered":"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>C.H. Dodd was one of the truly great NT scholars in the U.K. before, during and after WWII.  His commentary on the Johannine Epistles is a classic, and continues to offer fresh insight into the text and its relevance for evaluating Christian life today.  Here is a quote from that commentary that itself deserves both hearing and heeding:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In this passage [I John 2.1-6] our author is not only rebutting dangerous tendencies in the Church of his time, but discussing a problem of perennial importance, that of the validity of religious experience. We may have the feeling of awareness of God, of union with Him, but how shall we know that such experience corresponds to reality?  It is clear that no amount of clearness or strength in the experience itself can guarantee its validity, any more than the extreme vividness of a dream leads us to suppose that it is anything but a dream.  If, however, we accept the revelation of God in Christ, then we must believe that any experience of God which is valid has an ethical quality defined by what we know of Christ.  It will require with it a renewed fidelity to His teaching and example. The writer does not mean that only those who perfectly obey Christ and follow His example can be said to have the experience of God. That would be to affirm the sinlessness of Christians in a sense which he has repudiated [see 1 Jn. 1].  But unless the experience includes a setting of the affections and will in the direction of the moral principles of the Gospel, it is no true experience of God, in any Christian sense.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>C.H. Dodd was one of the truly great NT scholars in the U.K. before, during and after WWII. His commentary on the Johannine Epistles is a classic, and continues to offer fresh insight into the text and its relevance for evaluating Christian life today. Here is a quote from that commentary that itself deserves both&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"C.H. Dodd was one of the truly great NT scholars in the U.K. before, during and after WWII. His commentary on the Johannine Epistles is a classic, and continues to offer fresh insight into the text and its relevance for evaluating Christian life today. Here is a quote from that commentary that itself deserves both&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-06T15:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"C.H. Dodd was one of the truly great NT scholars in the U.K. before, during and after WWII. His commentary on the Johannine Epistles is a classic, and continues to offer fresh insight into the text and its relevance for evaluating Christian life today. Here is a quote from that commentary that itself deserves both&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2006-02-06T15:16:00+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html","name":"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-02-06T15:16:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-02-06T15:16:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/02\/the-litmus-test-of-genuine-christian-experience.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Litmus Test of Genuine Christian Experience"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}