They Followed Their Dreams (i.e. Defying God and Ruining Everything)

Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.

Jude 8

IN LIKE MANNER. As interesting as the material to follow is, the reader must not forget that it is the apostasy of those in authoritative positions being described. In other words, the present trouble-makers from back in verse 4 are in a “like manner” relationship to those who have fallen and those he will continue to describe. In verse 8 Jude lists four distinguishing marks. Bauckham and Towner count three, excluding the expression about their dreams.1 It is true that the three follow that pattern of being the present active indicative, third person plural. The word that the ESV translates as “relying on their dreams” is the participle ἐνυπνιαζόμενοι which is “dreaming” or “ones who dream,” which is reinforced in a substantive form by the preceding pronoun “these” (οὗτοι). So it may be best to translate as “these dreamers.” On the other hand, since these are not just any ring-leaders, but teachers, such claims to private revelation is their primal sin. In other words, they are not simply being called “dreamers” as a cheap-shot, or to suggest that they are asleep, out of touch with reality. They are making a show of having received private revelation, as so many false teachers have. 

Dreaming Up Revelation 

Bauckham explains that “the medium of prophetic revelation … is used rather often in the OT of the dreams of false prophets.”2 The negative reference to dreams begins as warning in Deuteronomy 13,

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (vv. 1-3).

And it reaches its heightened expression of evil deception in conflict with Jeremiah’s ministry:

“I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ … Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully … For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD” (23:25, 28; 29:8-9). 

In our own day there is no shortage of claims to revelation from dreams and visions. Naturally most of these people who are in the church will reply that they do not elevate these to the level of the Scripture’s own authority. But then ask them how one should respond to the dream. In other words, why are they bringing it up? The answer is that they are demanding a consensus of affirmation for its meaning, which is only a soft, subjective way of demanding that one assent to its authority. 

Towner adds, “The three sins enumerated each follow from the reference to dreaming, which suggests that they claimed some sort of divine authority for their antinomian practices.”3 Davids takes the same view even more emphatically, “that these individuals were claiming divine revelation as the basis of their practices, either because their visions gave them a superior status in general (Neyrey) or because the content of their visions was a rival revelation (Bauckham).”4 And Kelly makes it most plain—against one of the older views that these were either erotic or fanciful dreams—that, “The false teachers are therefore ‘dreamers’, not in the sense that they indulge in wishful thinking, but because they have ecstatic visionary experiences, or claim to have them, and seek to justify their doctrines and practices on the strength of these.”5

Defiling the Flesh 

Here is where the example of the Sodomites is brought back in by the commentators. At the end of the day, Jude does not further elaborate whether or not the point is made because these false teachers were either practicing or else excusing that behavior. Verse 4 had introduced sensuality early as a defining characteristic. But the strength of the argument rests on the connective phrase, IN LIKE MANNER THESE PEOPLE ALSO. So the argument is that this is specific to the material in verse 7 rather than general to the overall flow of verse 5 through 7. Bauckham adds to this argument that, “All three sins, it should be noted, are attributable to the Sodomites.”6

Rejecting All Authority 

Rejecting all authority (κυριότητα δὲ ἀθετοῦσιν) in Scripture is used negatively when rejecting rightful authority—“For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God”(Rom. 13:1); yet to the beast “the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority” (Rev. 13:2). All sorts of modern Christians do not know how to juggle such pairings of Scripture and so they typically do not. Yet in Jude there is precisely a showdown of the highest spiritual “authorities,” so that one must still decide. If the teaching in view is antinomianism, then the most immediate authority that was being rejected was God’s law. 

Blaspheming the Glorious Ones 

Towner gives a helpful distinction here: “Despite the antagonistic juxtaposition of Michael and the devil in the next verse, the angelic beings described here with the language of ‘glory’ (doxa; see also vv. 24-25 of God) are best understood as those angels faithful to God, against whom the opponents have taken some kind of stand.”7 More specific views are offered: “It is possible that these people were insulting angels or denying their existence, but Jude is more probably referring to the tradition that God’s law was given at Sinai by angels.”8

If this whole focus seems odd to us, we must remember the intensification of interest in angels in later-ancient Judaism. The evidence of that in Colossians and Hebrews is well known. This would make sense of the three references in so small a space here in Jude’s letter. It is not difficult to image a more unified false teaching having to reimagine the angelic narrative at points in order to weave a different doctrine in other places. That was certainly the case with the Gnostics. 

In conclusion, we might consider whether or not there is an abiding connection between being this sort of a “dreamer” and the three sins which followed. And I do not mean the specifics of sexual perversion as a starting point. Rather, is it not the case that to crave revelation apart from God’s own means is to covet an alternative reality from root to branch? It stands to reason that the sort of person who is bored with God’s revealed truth would also be impatient with God’s moral designs. Would such a one hesitate to stand against God’s lesser servants, be they a human prophet or even an angel? 

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1. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 55; Towner, 2 Peter and Jude, 195.

2. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 55.

3. Towner, 2 Peter and Jude, 196.

4. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, 55.

5. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude, 261.

6. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 55.

7. Towner, 2 Peter and Jude, 197.

8. Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude, 189.