The reformers disagreed.
In fact, it was the reformers who were also convinced of something called the Perspicuity of Scripture. That is, it's clarity. That's not to say that everything is perfectly clear, but that the Bible's main message is abundantly clear to those who read it or hear it. The Bible story is easy enough to be understood by young children, and deep and rich enough for the most thoughtful to mull over it their entire life. In fact, its enough to radically change your life.
The idea of the Scripture's clarity has been called into question many times and for many different reasons over the centuries. We've all seen people get into debates over one another's interpretation of Scripture and the doctrines upon which they're derived. But postmodernism's critique on the modern mind is among the most devastating of late. Essentially, postmodernism recognizes that everyone views the world from a certain perspective and it influences the way they interpret it. It's a legitimate critique, but followed to its logical end, it means that it's impossible for anyone to understand something in an absolute and objective sense.
And it's not just our inability to see things objectively, as modern man felt he could, but that language itself is unreliable. Words and their meanings are constantly fluid. They evolve. How could it possibly capture divine, absolute, objective, and unchanging Truth? At worst, truth is completely conceptual and subjective, and at best it's elusive and mysterious.
We've all seen this argument used as an excuse to explain why one's doctrine is wrong. Clearly, as they would say, so and so has been influenced by the presuppositions determined by the context in which they find themselves, and that makes their view less valid. Or rather, who's to say anyone's view is more accurate than the next?
And yet, it seems that God has faith in human words and man's ability to understand them. After all, it's clearly his preferred method for communicating to us. When God created mankind, He created them with the ability to understand Him in a meaningful, logical, and most importantly, reliable way. This is shown when he gives us the Bible. (Although, even the validity of the Bible as God's word is often questioned, but that's for another time.)
So what are we to make of the many discrepancies among theologians? We simply can't all be right. That's illogical. And for that matter, how do we understand what's orthodoxy and what's heresy? Rather than getting into theory of hermeneutics, I do want to talk about something that is universally true when reading Scripture: the need for humility.
As I mentioned earlier, the postmodern critique is a legitimate one, and yet God has still chosen to use words and human language to speak Truth. Our perspectives necessarily affect the way we read Scripture, not so much that we can't clearly understand it, but that we differ in the way we react to it. That is to say, our preconceived notions of reality, our worldview, and our emotional baggage, are confronted by what the Bible says. There are things in it in which some may find great joy, and others great sorrow. Some things we find are completely normal, and others we find appalling and offensive.
We need humility because if we take God's word seriously, and we take it as being True, then we are naturally going to find these very things that go against our sensibilities and notions of reality. Take, for example, the idea of guilt. According to much pop-psychology today, guilt is the antithesis of success and personal happiness. Guilt is synonymous with having a low self-esteem, and low self-esteem, they argue (albeit lacking any empirical evidence), leads to poor performance and bad interpersonal skills. Yet, it seems according to the Bible, guilt is a sign of sanity! Those who are most aware of their guilt are most aware of their need for God's grace.
The problem is, the more vested our interests in a particular idea, the more difficult it is for us to overturn them. We don't like being wrong. Its a natural tendency for us to rationalize our tightly held beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence. The same is true of Scripture. It confronts us whether we like it or not. But to rationalize, however naturally it may come to us, is nothing short of cowardice.
There is a pattern that occurs when we allow our worldview to be shaped by the things in the Bible that offend us most. In the example of guilt, had it not been for becoming aware of the degree of our sinfulness, we would never have seen the necessity of God's mercy. Furthermore, the concept of God's love would have been reduced to simple sentimentality. In order to see that guilt is important, we have to be willing to give up our prejudices first. We will never understand why certain things are necessary if we choose to ignore them simply because we don't like them. Otherwise the reverse happens, and we read our prejudices into the Scripture instead. Thus, the postmodern critique.
Obviously, there will always be things we find confusing and offensive, but just because they're confusing and offensive doesn't mean they're necessarily false. When Jesus came to earth, he was constantly offending the establishment. Eventually, it led to his death. As we read, we typically have little sympathy for them, but we're often guilty of the same sins. In our reading of Scripture, we often would rather crucify Jesus than take his word for it.
So what are we to make of the many discrepancies among theologians? We simply can't all be right. That's illogical. And for that matter, how do we understand what's orthodoxy and what's heresy? Rather than getting into theory of hermeneutics, I do want to talk about something that is universally true when reading Scripture: the need for humility.
As I mentioned earlier, the postmodern critique is a legitimate one, and yet God has still chosen to use words and human language to speak Truth. Our perspectives necessarily affect the way we read Scripture, not so much that we can't clearly understand it, but that we differ in the way we react to it. That is to say, our preconceived notions of reality, our worldview, and our emotional baggage, are confronted by what the Bible says. There are things in it in which some may find great joy, and others great sorrow. Some things we find are completely normal, and others we find appalling and offensive.
We need humility because if we take God's word seriously, and we take it as being True, then we are naturally going to find these very things that go against our sensibilities and notions of reality. Take, for example, the idea of guilt. According to much pop-psychology today, guilt is the antithesis of success and personal happiness. Guilt is synonymous with having a low self-esteem, and low self-esteem, they argue (albeit lacking any empirical evidence), leads to poor performance and bad interpersonal skills. Yet, it seems according to the Bible, guilt is a sign of sanity! Those who are most aware of their guilt are most aware of their need for God's grace.
The problem is, the more vested our interests in a particular idea, the more difficult it is for us to overturn them. We don't like being wrong. Its a natural tendency for us to rationalize our tightly held beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence. The same is true of Scripture. It confronts us whether we like it or not. But to rationalize, however naturally it may come to us, is nothing short of cowardice.
There is a pattern that occurs when we allow our worldview to be shaped by the things in the Bible that offend us most. In the example of guilt, had it not been for becoming aware of the degree of our sinfulness, we would never have seen the necessity of God's mercy. Furthermore, the concept of God's love would have been reduced to simple sentimentality. In order to see that guilt is important, we have to be willing to give up our prejudices first. We will never understand why certain things are necessary if we choose to ignore them simply because we don't like them. Otherwise the reverse happens, and we read our prejudices into the Scripture instead. Thus, the postmodern critique.
Obviously, there will always be things we find confusing and offensive, but just because they're confusing and offensive doesn't mean they're necessarily false. When Jesus came to earth, he was constantly offending the establishment. Eventually, it led to his death. As we read, we typically have little sympathy for them, but we're often guilty of the same sins. In our reading of Scripture, we often would rather crucify Jesus than take his word for it.
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