Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “By Scripture Alone – Sola Scriptura”. The quarterly has spent these last five lessons (plus a couple more to come) setting general guidelines for all of Scripture interpretation. In this week’s “thought”, I want to tie together several of the concepts that mean so much to me regarding Scripture. What makes Scripture meaningful and authoritative to me.
We all will admit that Christ was God coming to us as a man. We call this the “incarnation”. A blend of God and man. Christ, the “Living Word”, a blend of God and man. But we usually do not realize that this describes the “Written Word”, too. The “Written Word” is a blend of God and man. The Written Word is incarnational, too. Here is how our incarnational Bible came to be, using these concepts:
1. God reveals himself to a messenger.
2. God inspires that messenger to share orally or in writing, and to augment revelation with research when appropriate.
3. God guides the community of believers to accept the messenger as a legitimate prophet and his/her words as an authoritative message.
4. God guides the community of believers over time to select some (but by no means, all) of these authoritative messages as the canon of Scripture, a permanent standard and guide for the faith-community.
5. God guides the individual members of the faith-community to read and apply His Word in their lives.
The idea that our Scripture is this blend of God and man might be a little disturbing to some. That even the words of Scripture themselves are man’s words. Inspired by God to be sure. But still man’s words. AS EGW states in the introduction to “The Great Controversy” pg. vii, “The treasure was entrusted to earthen vessels, yet it is, nonetheless, from Heaven. The testimony is conveyed through the imperfect expression of human language, yet it is the testimony of God; and the obedient, believing child of God beholds in it the glory of a divine power, full of grace and truth”. Many conservative Christians find this to be unacceptable, even untrue. For such, the fact that God has shown Himself in this way undermines His authority. That there may be “imperfections” (as EGW states) in the Written Word is unacceptable to some. For them, God’s “authority” means that His “Word” must have no flaws and that those under that authority have no liberty to criticize, question, evaluate or ignore His mandates. So when God grants this level of freedom to us His sentient children, instead of demanding obedience from us, it is seen as a fatal weakness… so those who must have this as God’s authoritarian rule believe. That God’s authoritarian rule is absolute, arbitrary and even coercive.
As difficult as it may be, we must recognize that the heavenly treasure comes to us in earthen vessels. God’s Word mysteriously blends the divine and the human. We must not let our inclinations to one extreme or the other blind us to the vital significance of both.
This truth places a high level of responsibility on the individual. It raises the scary possibility of choosing wrong and rationalizing away our duty to the detriment of ourselves, our fellow-man and our God. But ultimately, you and I must be the ones to choose our responses, our actions… God will not do it for us. Because the greatest danger to us sinful human beings is for anyone, including God, to exercise absolute authority over you and me. A great number of the faithful are all too willing to let God do all their thinking for them… or some authority do their thinking for them… and just tell them what to do. But this is not God’s way. The Scriptures lay before us the many different ways that God has guided His people in the past… but He does not make our specific decisions in our specific circumstances for us. This is how God exercises His authority. Dare I say, the revealing of God in His Word and our own human reasoning must work together. The revealing of God in Scripture always deals with specific cases. Our reason, in dialogue with the Holy Spirit, determines which of those specific cases are most helpful in informing the myriad decisions we constantly make day-by-day.
Which underscores the ultimate point here. The Bible is based on the eternal principles of love. Leaving to you and me the decision of how to apply these eternal principles to each specific case. But we are sinful. So if totally left to ourselves, this decision-making is truly fraught with failure. Therefore, the eternal principles of love are only effective in helping us fulfill God’s will in our lives, when we are in active contact with the God of the eternal principles. To repeat, WE MUST KNOW GOD IF WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND AND APPLY SCRIPTURE PROPERLY. Bible study, prayer and obedience are essential to knowing God in order to properly apply the eternal principles of love. It is not enough to know the laws and requirements of Scripture, as important as that is. We must know God. And through the Scriptures, that curious blend of the divine and the human, is how we humans come to know God.
To conclude, the fact that our God of love does not exercise absolute authority over us, telling us what to do in every case, instead leaving it up to us to decide, is a demonstration of how valuable we are to God. He values us for our “individuality, (our) power to think and to do” (Education pg. 17). And He will not trample on that. For it is part of who He is, too. He made us like Himself. And He honors that in us. Initially as new Christians, we may need strict rules and laws to help and guide us. But these laws and rules are only an emergency measure in the early days of our rescue from the slavery to self. The ultimate goal for us is the elimination of all written law. External, written law is to become internalized and less and less necessary as the law is written on the heart, becoming part of our motivation in all things (see Jeremiah 31:34). External law becomes more necessary as the internal law disappears from the hard, human heart. God’s goal is for us to be internally actuated by the eternal principles of love more and more. Thereby making all the actions and interactions in our life part of our divine mission-in-life. But these principles are foreign to the selfish heart of man. Therefore, Scripture is God’s means of revealing Himself and His eternal principles of love to us. Revealed under varied circumstances over long periods of time. The Bible is more a book of cases/ examples, demonstrating to us our God of love and how love actually works in these varied circumstances. A small part of the Bible is a book of codes (you will do this and you will not do that). Instead, it is a book demonstrating the eternal principles of love. We humans, in relationship with the God of the principles, are to choose how best to apply the principle of love in our specific case. Thereby, you and I in our own lives become God’s “word” to those we touch. In vital, ongoing connection with our God, we are that blend of divine and human. And this blend of divine and human is an honor to our God and an honor to us… His creatures made in His image. Let us not disparage our God for this, for the way He exercises His authority. But honor and love Him all the more for it.
With brotherly love,
Jim