The following is a list of questions about who God called for a specific purpose or to accomplish a specific task. Most of these questions will be fairly easy for any student of the Bible to answer, save a few at the end. My intent on posing these questions is to draw attention to why the last few are so difficult to answer.
1. Who did God call to be the first humans? Adam and Eve
2. Who did God call to save mankind from the flood? Noah
3. Who did God call to be the father and mother of the covenant? Abraham and Sarah
4. Who did God call to save Jacob’s family and Egypt from a famine? Joseph
5. Who did God call to deliver the Israelites from bondage and give the law? Moses
6. Who did God call to have the priesthood? Aaron/ his sons, the Levites
7. Who did God call to lead the Israelites into the promised land? Joshua
8. Who did God call to be a prophet as a boy? Samuel
9. Who did God call to be king over Israel? David
10. Who did God call to rebuild Jerusalem? Nehemiah
11. Who did God call to save the Jews from Haman’s plot to kill them? Esther
12. Who did God call to allegorically prophecy about the Messiah and Israel? Isaiah
13. Who did God call to interpret king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream? Daniel
14. Who did God call to be the Mother of the Savior? Mary
15. Who did God call to baptize the Jesus? John
16. Who did God call to be special witness of Christ’s ministry? 12 Apostles/ Peter, James, John
17. Who did God call to lead the Church after Christ’s resurrection? Peter
18. Who did God call to replace Judas as an Apostle? Matthias
19. Who did God call to be an Apostle to the Gentiles? Paul
20. Who did God call to have a vision of the Apocalypse? John
21. Who did God call to canonize the Bible? …
22. Who did God call to declare the Christian faith through creeds? …
The first twenty questions are simple enough to answer; the last two however, were not. If God were to canonize His word, then why can’t we name who He called to do that task? The Bible is a critical element to understanding God’s work on earth, why can’t we point to a divinely commissioned person to perform this work for God? Why can’t we name who presided over the councils that made the creeds of Christianity? Who did God call to organize these councils, or preside over them so that His will would be done? The fact that we cannot easily name who God called to perform these two tasks should raise a few questions.
Perhaps not all the creeds are correct. Perhaps some of the councils made incorrect assumptions about what should go in the creeds. Perhaps there are inspired writings which belong in the Bible but were not included. Perhaps there are inspired copies of epistles and gospels that were not selected.
There is something to be said that we can clearly see who God called to perform a task that would benefit mankind, but these two tasks (what constitutes scripture and what the core beliefs of Christianity are) don’t have a divinely inspired person to accomplish them. So, if God didn’t call them, who did? This is a sincere question to all my Christian friends.
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