What do you mean? It is explicit in the passage that the prophet intends to lead Israel astray from their faith, and the test is to know “whether you truly love the Lord,” or whether you will decide to follow his signs; the issue here is not a private test of how to verify that the prophet before you is indeed a prophet [for that the Torah addressed elsewhere].

The system is not saying not to examine itself; rather, it tells you that sometimes this comes for the sake of a test, and by this it neutralizes your certainty regarding whatever interpretation of the signs and wonders [and any other evidence] might be proposed.

There are two different passages about prophets in Deuteronomy. One is at the beginning of the portion of Re’eh as part of the sections fighting idolatry (one who entices, one who leads astray, the condemned city), and it deals with a prophet of idolatry. The second is in the portion of Shoftim and deals with a true prophet as part of the structures of authority in Israel (judge, king, priest, and prophet). The questioner asked about the first passage.

Just to expand on something I heard from Rabbi Sherlo about the order of the commandments speech in Deuteronomy, that it parallels the Ten Commandments:
End of Va’etchanan — “I am the Lord” (“Hear O Israel,” “Do not test”)
Ekev and beginning of Re’eh — “You shall have no other gods before Me” (up to the condemned city), and perhaps also “You shall not take My name in vain” (“but only to the place that the Lord will choose to cause His name to dwell there”)
Middle and end of Re’eh — “Observe the Sabbath day to sanctify it” — time-related commandments (remission of debts in the Sabbatical year, festivals)
Shoftim — “Honor your father and your mother” — authority (king, prophet, judge, and priest)
Middle of Shoftim until the beginning of Ki Tetze — “You shall not murder” — laws of murder and war (city of refuge, optional war, the heifer whose neck is broken, the beautiful captive woman)
Beginning of Ki Tetze — “You shall not commit adultery” — family and marriage order (mamzer, newlywed virginity claim, Ammonite and Moabite)
Middle of Ki Tetze — “You shall not steal” (interest, kidnapping, withholding wages)

The boundaries are not always clear, and there are various commandments that spill over into different areas (as in the Talmud), but thematically the structure is quite clear, and it convinced me מאוד.

Eliezer, I couldn’t understand your argument, or how it relates to what I explained above. I’m not sure you understood…

One of the more beautiful commandments, and embedded in it is a very radical epistemological claim: what rational judgment determines to be true or false about objective reality depends to a great extent on the degree of love of God possessed by the one making the judgment. If you do not love God enough, the data may cause you to conclude, in a way that is not clearly irrational, that certain claims are true, even though they are actually false.

Christians, for example, think it is unreasonable that so many messianic prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus by chance (which could certainly be considered a sign and wonder, as in Ezekiel 24: “Thus Ezekiel shall be a sign to you; according to all that he has done, you shall do; when it comes, then you shall know that I am the Lord God”), and from this they conclude that one may replace the trust a person is meant to place in God alone with trust in Jesus, or that he is “one” with the “Father” (and not in the metaphorical sense), and so on.

In themselves, these are not wholly irrational inferences, but the commandment implies that the weight a person gives to the special data as evidence for the problematic theological hypothesis depends on his degree of love of God. And the same applies to supposedly “Jewish” doctrines, such as the idea that every Jew contains “an actual part of God above” (with emphasis on “actual”), or the anti-biblical panentheism common in certain circles on the basis of the “wonder” that many supposed authorities advocated it.

I don’t have an argument, only a question: the Torah presents a test of faith that is supposed to be decided by love of God, and it is not clear how love of God is supposed to resolve a person’s doubt in such a case. Is this not an instruction that in a situation of doubt one should ignore the arguments, dig in one’s position, and say “test,” “test”?
If that is indeed the meaning, then I would be glad to receive an explanation of this puzzling matter [especially since such an argument seems intended to cause its believers never to be able to criticize the religion, because they can always say that this is the test being spoken of].

The Rabbi already answered here that this is not about testing the foundations of faith, because the commandment assumes that something is already known to us about the truth of revelation, and then adds that within that truth there is no significance whatsoever to evidence from which one concludes that it is good or permitted to worship other gods. But certainly, if there are serious doubts about the Torah itself, one must examine the doubt carefully until it is clarified; otherwise you will continue living with an internal falsehood, and the Torah surely would not command that.

What underlies the outlook of this commandment is that if a Chabadnik comes to you recommending consultation through the Igrot Kodesh, then the whole question is only whether there is reason to worry about something like “you shall not practice divination” or inquiring of the dead, and so on; it does not matter how many people were helped by it, whether they saw miracles and wonders, or how much psychological support it gives them. All of these are meaningless and provide no evidence that it is permitted or good to engage in it. The same goes for those who travel to Uman on Rosh Hashanah and those seeking matches in Amuka, who see miracles and wonders and salvations.

In this connection I saw some poor article by a philosopher named Richard Swinburne, in which he argues that God could not have allowed good evidence to arise pointing to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead unless He wanted human beings to believe the theological principles of the Church, since God is not a deceiver. But from the commandment here we see that even if it were an accomplished and unquestionable fact (say, a resurrection broadcast live on all television networks while Richard Dawkins and all his followers were at the scene making failed attempts at refutation), still, after the Torah was given and God warned in advance, this would not be deception, because we were already warned that He allows misleading evidence to exist in His world.