Getting Clear on Clarity...

Unclear on How Clear?

The vision of Wellington Presbyterian Church is driven by our conviction that we must “connect deeply with Christ.”  This is what molds us into a community of grace.  This is what will motivate and empower  us to connect authentically with one another.  This is what will fuel our love for the world so that we will move beyond fence posts and cubicles into the lives of our neighbors and community with the gospel of Christ.

This makes it crucial to understand how to connect deeply with Christ.  One of the keys is simply through personal reading and study of the Scriptures.  In a age of video on demand and iTunes and iPods, we must learn to still be people of The Book above all- though that doesn’t mean we don’t want to find ways to make these media avenues serve to make Christ better known through His Book…  Maybe we should look into on-demand Bible instruction to go with our podcasted sermons… 

When it comes to personal Bible reading, this is really a deeply-held Protestant and Reformed conviction that every Christian has a right and duty to do so.  We believe in the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture, and that’s why Protestants in the past and even into today have been willing to risk and give their lives in translating the Bible into the language of the people.  I wonder, could this also be the reason why we drive the proliferation of so many colors and bindings for our Bibles??  Hmmm, oh never mind… ☺.  Anyway, its clearly something we believe in and, at least, think we should be personally involved in doing.

But is this emphasis upon personal Bible reading such a good idea? Aren’t there signs all over the place that Evangelical and Reformed Christians are having a tough time figuring out how this Bible reading thing ought to work?  For instance, you don’t have to look very hard to see…

• That there is a lot that passes for truth in professed Christians’ lives today that clearly contradicts sections of Scripture…
• That many professing Christians seem to hold directly contradictory understandings of a given passage and don’t seem to be too concerned about it…
• That even if more of us had the desire to read God’s word more, we aren’t even sure how to begin…
• That people claiming a new “insight” into Scripture regularly end up teaching things that generations of Christians going back to the early church have nearly universally rejected?  And this doesn’t seem to phase us in the least…

So what do we do?  Ignore this reality?  Shrug our shoulders and leave it to others to figure out?  Do we give up this right and duty to individually understand the Scriptures?  Do we decide to reject as untrue the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture?

Anytime anyone seems to suggest that we’re not up to the task of understanding the Scriptures, we immediately get defensive.  But should we?  Perhaps instead of getting upset, we should first clarify just what we mean by the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture that leads us to place this emphasis upon personal Bible reading .  A great dead Dutch Reformed theologian guy named Herman Bavinck can help us gain some clarity here.  Bavinck points out what this doctrine of Scripture’s clarity does and does not mean:

It does not mean that the matters and subjects with which Scripture deals are not mysteries that far exceed the reach of the human intellect.  Nor does it assert that Scripture is clear in all its parts, so that no scientific exegesis is needed, or that, also in its doctrine of salvation, Scripture is plain and clear to every person without distinction.  It means only that the truth, the knowledge of which is necessary to everyone for salvation, though not spelled out with equal clarity on every page of Scripture, is nevertheless presented throughout all of Scripture in such a simple and intelligible form that a person concerned about the salvation of his or her soul can easily, by personal reading and study, learn to know that truth from Scripture without the assistance and guidance of the church and the priest.  (Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, Vol. I, p. 477.)

Unclear on How to Get Clear?

 Let’s suppose you really want to know God better and you realize that will involve spending more time in the Bible.  How should you do it?  Is it really just you and a passage of Scripture with the Holy Spirit leading you to the truth?  This is the common practice (if not also the common understanding) of how we should read the Scriptures.  But it is decidedly not the Bible’s understanding of how this process ought to work.  Hebrews 3:12-13 bring us an important, but often unheeded warning:

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

The Bible repeats similar warnings often: Jer. 17:9; 1 Cor. 6:9-10 & 15:33; Col 2:8; 2 Thess. 2:1-3; 2 Tim 3:12-13; 2 Tim. 4:1-5; 1 Jn. 3:7, etc.  God wants us to be clear- we will struggle with understanding the truth, and a key part of God’s plan to redeem our minds is by hearing and interacting with the Bible as part of the community of faith called the church. 

Jesus said that all who desire to understand His words can do so (John 8:31-32, Jesus’ statements to common folks expecting understanding- Matt 12:3, 5; 19:14; 21:42; 22:31, see also Ps 19:7; 119:30 on how even the simple can understand God’s word).  But He didn’t say nor does the rest of Scripture teach that this is something that we can achieve on our own apart from seeking that understanding together with the rest of the community of faith.  The clarity of Scripture means its clear enough for even “the simple” to understand the message of salvation in Christ from the whole of Scripture; but it does not mean that our private understanding of any given passage of Scripture should go untested and unchallenged by the Holy Spirit speaking through the community of faith called the church.

(in the next blog post, we’ll take a “fly-by” look at just how the process of reading our Bible’s in community with the church should really work- You can find that post by clicking here)