Jude 8
Jude 8
8 In the same way these people—relying on their dreams—defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.
In the very same way” refers back to the previous verses (Jude 5–7) and indicates that what these folk do is of the same order as what Israel, the fallen angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah did.
1. It means that false teachers engage in the pleasures of the world: the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh. They do not struggle to keep their thoughts clean and pure. They dream and covet after the positions, possessions, and things of the world. They look at the opposite sex, perhaps pornographic books, films, and bodies not dressed as much as they should be. The result is thoughts and dreams of success, grandeur, personal recognition and honor, and sexual misbehavior. False teachers defile the flesh through such dreams.
2. It means that the false teachers sometimes claim to have visions and dreams from the Lord that are not from Him. They use their visions and dreams to secure the following and loyalty of people.
relying on their dreams
Their dreams may be those of prophecy; these false teachers being also false prophets (2 Pet. 2:1), who support their evil doctrines by pretended revelations; cf. Deut. 13:1, 3, 5.
Jude accuses these people of acting on the basis of their personal revelation and engaging in three sinful activities: (1) polluting their own bodies, (2) rejecting authority, and (3) slandering celestial beings. Two of these have already appeared in the examples previously cited. Both Israel in the wilderness and the fallen angels had rejected authority; both the fallen angels and the men of Sodom and Gomorrah had polluted their own bodies. It is the third charge that leads the discussion forward to the following verse. However, all three expressions are worthy of closer examination.
It is possible to apply kyriotēta to human authority, either the civil power, the church leaders, or authority in general. Any would make excellent sense here, but in view of what Jude has to say about their denial of the lordship of Jesus (v. 4), it seems best to take the word in the same sense here. The heretics, like the Israelites, the fallen angels, and the Sodomites, were essentially turning their back on (atheteō, reject, is a very deliberate word) the Lord, though this may have found expression in civil or ecclesiastical insubordination. These men were anti-law, a common state of affairs when people follow their own lusts and exult in their own knowledge.
This is the most likely meaning, especially since angels will be referred to in the next verse; it is also how Clement of Alexandria interpreted this passage.
The fact is that “slander” (blasphēmeō) does not mean “to deny the existence of” but rather “to shame” or “to speak insultingly about.” It was thus a form of shaming or dishonoring, and in a society like Jude’s that was based on honor and shame, this was appropriate for evil beings; indeed, to honor such beings would be wrong. Thus there is nothing in the verse itself that would make one think that the reference is to evil angels (on the following verse, see below).