The Bible – Puzzle or Telescope? (Part 1)

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We need to read our bibles. God wants us to read our bibles—it is the story of Him revealing hidden things to us we would otherwise never know! Fair enough. But I first want to ask an important question—what is the best way to think of the Scriptures?

Different Christians answer in different ways; most often as the result of the different emphases of their theological traditions mediated from seminaries to pastors. How you answer the question above will determine what you think happens when you read your bibles. Only one of these answers is the best answer—which one is it?

We will first take a look at a passage from Psalm 119, then look at two possible frameworks for reading Scripture (a puzzle or a telescope?), then wrap up with what I feel is the best approach.

Words Which Give Light

Psalm 119 is a beautiful love song to God’s revelation. Today, on this side of the Cross, we often assume the psalmist is simply talking about the Bible (e.g. “I have hidden your word in my heart,” Psalm 119:11). But he was probably talking about revelation in a general sense.

“Revelation” is when God personally unveils Himself to His people to communicate things we would otherwise never know.1 God revealed Himself in many ways—through visions, prophecies, individual guidance, dreams, divine appearances, angels, direct speech, most definitively in Jesus Christ (God’s “Word” (Jn 1:1, et al), His revelation, message, and literal speech embodied in the incarnation) … but also in written records. Strictly speaking, the bible is more an inspired and truthful record of God’s revelations than “the” revelation all by itself.2 My point is that, while my comments here will focus on the Scriptures, all references in Psalm 119 to “the word” are probably about more than “the bible.”

Think about what the psalmist says in Psalm 119:129-136. He says God’s statutes are wonderful, and this loveliness drives him to loving obedience (Ps 119:129). This is not the rote obedience of a legalist, but the joyful response of a good child. He declares “the unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple,” (Ps 119:130). As God communicates to us (however He does it—“words” here means “speech”), His light shines into us, bringing understanding even to the most ordinary among us. God’s speech, His message, unspools and casts light into our hearts, minds, and souls—into our very being.

So, the psalmist wants more and more—“longing for your commands,” (Ps 119:131). He wants more light, more understanding, more relationship. He wants to be a better child. He knows relationship with God is not about rote doctrine. “[R]evelation is primarily a spiritual transaction rather than mere illumination of the intellect … [i]t is easy to see how far removed this is from the bare communication of truth to the mind.”3 It is “those who love your name” (Ps 119:132) who receive mercy, not “those who follow the checklist.”

So, when the psalmist asks God to “direct my footsteps according to your word” (Ps 119:133), he is asking for more than “help me not do that bad thing again.” There is that, but the reason why he asks “let no sin rule over me” is because he loves God and wants to be an obedient child (cp. Deut 6:4; Mk 12:28-32; Mt 9:13 (cf. Hos 6:6)). He even asks to be rescued from those who hinder him from obeying God’s precepts (Ps 119:134).

When he asks “make your face shine on your servant” (Ps 119:135), he is playing on God’s personal revelation as a luminescent cloud. Just as Moses came down from the mountain with his face all aglow from actual contact with Yahweh, so the psalmist figuratively asks for God to turn to him with blessing, with favor, with divine help—“teach me your decrees.” His love for God flows so deep that “streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed,” (Ps 119:136). This is not the fuming rage of a legalist (cf. Jn 9:19-34), but the sorrow of a child brokenhearted about externalism in the congregation.

As we consider the psalmist’s attitude about God’s revelation, His “word” (in any format), let us return to the question I asked at the beginning—what is the best way to think about the Scriptures?

  1. a puzzle piece we look at to categorize knowledge, or
  2. a telescope we look through to see, know, experience, and love God?

Which model does our passage best suggest? To answer this question, we will consider each model in turn.

Bible as a Puzzle

When you believe the bible is one big puzzle to be sorted into categories, with various passages filed under this heading or that (“the proper task of theology is to exposit and elucidate the content of Scripture in an orderly way”),4 then you may tend to read in a cold, analytical, and sterile fashion. It does not mean you will have this attitude—it just means you may lean in that direction, to greater or lesser extent.

  1. Faith can unwittingly become about intellectual knowledge. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe Jesus died on the Cross? Do you believe in the resurrection? And so it goes—intellect can unconsciously supplant trust, love, and commitment.
  2. And so, bible study can unconsciously degenerate into an autopsy—cold, dispassionate, clinical.
  3. We end up reading the bible for doctrine, for knowledge—not for love (notwithstanding the honest caveats).

This is often more an attitude or ethos than a conscious decision. Let me share one example from one very influential evangelical theologian from yesteryear. He is discussing the definition of “revelation.”

I have learned a lot from Carl Henry. I like Carl Henry. But, where is the love? Henry saw the Scriptures as a puzzle to be sorted, filed, indexed. A theologian was like a lawyer preparing a brief—“logical consistency is a negative test of truth and coherence a subordinate test.”5 He looked at Scripture to find truth. This mindset may produce something like the following, which is largely a precis of some of Henry’s system:

  1. God reveals Himself through the bible—all knowledge (even revelation about Christ6) flows from the Scriptures. It is the “basic epistemological axiom.”7
  2. God does not reveal Himself as personal presence. That would open the door to a subjective mysticism. Instead, He reveals Himself via propositions—“a rational declaration capable of being either believed, doubted, or denied.” Revelation must be cognitive, which means it must be propositional, which means the Scriptures are the ballgame,8 and the implication is the bible is a storehouse of data.
  3. Therefore, the Spirit’s job in this context is to help us interpret this data that is the bible. He has no meaningful role apart from this.9 Henry saw danger when the Spirit was “severed from the Word,” and by “Word” Henry meant the Scriptures, not Jesus.10 Representing this perspective downstream from Henry, John MacArthur did not misspeak when he wrote that the bible “is the only book that can totally transform someone from the inside out.”11 It is telling that MacArthur did not credit Jesus with granting life, but rather the bible (energized with “Spirit-generated power”).12
  4. So, the most important thing we can do is study the bible. “Only the Bible can effect that kind of change in people’s lives, because only the Bible is empowered by the Spirit of God.”13 The inevitable corollary is a strong defense of Scripture’s integrity, which explains the emphasis from these quarters on Scripture’s inerrancy.
  5. And so, our focus may subtly shift from relationship with the Messiah to whom the bible points, to “the bible” itself—to doctrine, knowledge, cold logic. Henry did not think rationalism was an error, so long as it was based on valid premises.14
  6. The bible becomes, de facto, the only channel for relationship with God. This is why many Christians who trend towards “knowledge” as their relationship paradigm for God are very uncomfortable with the “Jesus reveals Himself to Muslims via dreams” issue—because the bible is not in the driver’s seat. In a similar way, these Christians often speak about the Spirit to say what He does not do—it is frequently negative. I suspect these Christians are wary of something non-rational, something supernatural, something they cannot understand with the intellect.15

Here is an example. Sometime in years past, I was with a group of pastors, and we were discussing the “problem of evil.” One pastor brought up an example of someone who “walked away from the faith” after suffering sexual abuse as a teen. The woman told her pastor that, if her abuser ever became a Christian, “I could never share heaven with him!”

A man in the group stabbed the air with a forefinger. “Her attitude is that ‘I’m more righteous than God, and so I’m more qualified to make a decision about that person’s fate!’”

There was a moment of silence. I suggested, “Maybe she’s just really hurting? Maybe that’s all that was behind that comment.”

You see, to him, there is not a person here with feelings—there is only icy logic, a remorseless conclusion based on theology. He did not see people who hurt—he saw problems to be categorized into doctrinal cubbyholes, to be sorted, filed, tagged. In practical terms, he unwittingly acted as if the Bible were a cadaver, and the question at hand was an excuse to grab a scalpel, slice it open, and pick at it. This man read the bible for knowledge. It was cold. Clinical. There was no love.

Of course, not everyone is like that pastor. But, some pastors (and some ordinary Christians) are not too far downstream from this. There is a better way! We will discuss it in the next installment.

Notes

1 See Edgar Mullins, The Christian Religion in its Doctrinal Expression (Philadelphia: Roger Williams Press, 1917), p. 141.

2 This need not be categorized as a neo-orthodox statement. Long before Barth or Brunner put pen to paper, Edgar Mullins repeatedly called the Scripture “the record of God’s revelation,” (Christian Religion, pp. 137, 140, 142), as did Alvah Hovey before him (Manual of Christian Theology (New York: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1900), pp. 42, 85.

3 Mullins, Christian Religion, p. 141.

4 Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 1 (Waco: Word, 1976), p. 238. See especially ch(s). 13-14.

5 Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:232.

6 To Henry, the Scripture is the reservoir or conduit of divine truth (Thesis No. 11, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4(Waco: Word, 1979), p.7). It is the end of the line. The Spirit’s role in this context is to illuminate the Scripture (see Thesis No. 12, God, Revelation, and Authority, p.4:129) by enlivening it so we understand what it says. He only helps us interpret but imparts no new information (God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 4:273, 275)—this is illumination, according to Henry. The Christian looks at the Bible as an end in and of itself.

7 Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 1:218f.

8 See Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 3:455-459.

9 To Henry, the Scriptures are the vehicle and the Spirit simply shines a light upon them. “God intends that Scripture should function in our lives as his Spirit-illumined Word. It is the Spirit who opens man’s being to a keen personal awareness of God’s revelation. The Spirit empowers us to receive and appropriate the Scriptures, and promotes in us a normative theological comprehension for a transformed life. The Spirit gives a vital current focus to historical revelation and makes it powerfully real,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 4:273).

10 Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, pp. 3:482f. “The Bible supplies no basis for the theory that the logos of God must be something other than an intelligible spoken or written word.”

11 John MacArthur (ed.), The Inerrant Word: Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspectives (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), p. 19.

12 This relentless focus on the Scriptures to the exclusion of anything else led Emil Brunner to intemperately accuse such adherents of idolatry. “The habit of regarding the written word, the Bible, as the ‘Word of God’ exclusively—as is the case in the traditional equation of the ‘word’ of the Bible with the ‘Word of God’—an error which is constantly on the verge of being repeated—is actually a breach of the Second Commandment: it is the deification of a creature, bibliolatry,” (Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946), p. 120).

13 MacArthur, Inerrant Word, p. 20.

14 “The Christian protest against rationalism in its eighteenth-century deistic emphasis on the sufficiency of human speculation unenlightened by divine revelation is legitimate enough. What is objectionable about rationalism is not reason, however, but human reasoning deployed into the service of premises that flow from arbitrary and mistaken postulations about reality and truth. Christian theology unreservedly champions reason as an instrument for organizing data and drawing inferences from it, and as a logical discriminating faculty competent to test religious claims,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:226). Emphasis added.

15 Carl Henry wrote, “There is but one system of truth, and that system involves the right axiom and its theorems and premises derived with complete logical consistency,” (God, Revelation, and Authority, p. 1:227).

Discussion

My view is that it’s not either-or, it’s both-and. Because all truth comes from God and He has given us a book to study, there’s study and puzzling out involved. Henry is correct. It’s rational communication. And, contra the neo-orthodox guys, it’s book that actually is revelation from God at the verbal level. This is why inerrancy is so vital.

At the same time, it’s not rational communication intended to give us disconnected data. It’s information for knowing our Creator—not just knowing about Him, though that’s a requirement—but knowing Him. And to know Him is to love Him.

Edit to add: I think the problem in your example, Tyler, is not really a bibliology problem. Even if one leans toward seeing the Bible more as a collection of data, the data still has Matthew 22:37-39 and Prov 18:13 and John 4 in it. So the tendency to dehumanize/view people in categories might correlate a bit more with a more rational view of revelation, but I doubt it. It has more to do with tribalism and ordinary lazyness/convenience.

I do believe, though, that there are perils in both directions:

  • Looking at individuals and their problems in isolation from principles leads to sentimentalism and arbitrariness in what we teach and do
  • Looking at individuals as case studies rather than living, breathing humans leads to coldness

But does the Bible really place a high value on warmth, per se? What matters is what we believe, what we love, and what we do.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Erickson has a very helpful discussion in which he emphasizes both/and. I agree with that. In this piece, I’m more emphasizing the dangers of the rationalist pole. I am alarmed at a framework for faith that elevates doctrine at the expense of relationship. You need both, but especially relationship.

Erickson, p. 163:

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

During seminary, I often got annoyed with Erickson for making me work harder to figure out where I wanted to land on a question… “Millard! Stop making me think!!” There is a lot in the margins of my Millard.

I’ve come to appreciate him more as I mature.

Anyway, I think we don’t disagree on the relationships thing.

Where I feel some tension though, is that while some pieces of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism (probably liberalism, too—I wouldn’t know) tend to be excessively cold and cerebral and non-relational about Bible truth, culturally we’re too far the other way. That is, I think “we” (as in western culture in general) would really do well to move back toward rationalism and objectivity. Maybe just starting with the basics: like truth exists independently of anybody’s perception or opinion. We’re very feeling and relationship driven culturally… and it’s probably a post-modern overcorrection from Enlightenment and Modernism rationalism.

Humans love the ditches so much more than the road.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

[Aaron Blumer]

Where I feel some tension though, is that while some pieces of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism (probably liberalism, too—I wouldn’t know) tend to be excessively cold and cerebral and non-relational about Bible truth, culturally we’re too far the other way. That is, I think “we” (as in western culture in general) would really do well to move back toward rationalism and objectivity. Maybe just starting with the basics: like truth exists independently of anybody’s perception or opinion. We’re very feeling and relationship driven culturally… and it’s probably a post-modern overcorrection from Enlightenment and Modernism rationalism.

Humans love the ditches so much more than the road.

Agreed on rationalism and objectivity. Our culture tends to way *overvalue* feeling and relationship compared to truth. That’s why truth is so important.

As to why we love the ditches, I don’t want to completely overuse a metaphor, but it’s because a road is curved on top, particularly at the center, and is not flat. It takes no effort at all to roll off towards one of the ditches. It takes God directing us to stay in the center. We have to do the hard work to seek God to stay in the center of his will rather than just coast. Any long period of coasting will eventually put us in a ditch, no matter how well we are aligned when we start.

Dave Barnhart

Aaron wrote:

Where I feel some tension though, is that while some pieces of conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism (probably liberalism, too—I wouldn’t know) tend to be excessively cold and cerebral and non-relational about Bible truth, culturally we’re too far the other way.

Maybe. My main foil in this article (and the next) is Carl Henry, who was on a quest to frame Christianity as intellectually defensible—his theses from the six-volume God, Revelation and Authority were his attempt to organize Scripture into logically consistent axioms. He advocated a kind of Christian rationalism that, in my opinion, was quite cold. This is why his entire GRA can be seen in part as a running fight against neo-orthodoxy; he mentions Barth and Brunner incessently because they saw faith as a positive response to a truth encounter with God. Brunner, in particular, criticized a “credo” faith that was all doctrine without relationship. To some extent, I believe Henry and Brunner were talking past one another. Erickson is very interesting because he takes a mediating position on this, and Hordern (a neo-orthodox guy himself) was his doctoral supervisor.

Anyway … what about today? I do want to emphasize doctrine (we do a monthly theology class at church!), but never at the expense of “love for God” as the foundation. That is the key. I find Henry both helpful and exasperating. He said the two fundamental axioms for life were that (1) God exists (the ontological axiom), and that (2) He has spoken in the Scriptures (the epistimological axiom). I believe that. It’s very, very helpful. But, Henry’s framework for relationship is all about doctrine, knowledge, propositions. It’s so cold.

I included JMac’s remarks as an example of how far this can go. I am astonished JMac actually wrote that the bible transforms our lives. It isn’t the bible; it’s Jesus. The bible is a tool, but it isn’t “the thing.” That’s inappropriate, in my opinion. I see JMac and certain other conservative guys as trending towards latter day scholasticism, in some respects. Doctrine above relationship, etc. I just think that is dangerous—even more so because those who do it will almost always deny it, because they may not see it.

My burden in these two articles (which grew from a sermon) is to emphasize we ought to read our bibles with an attitude of love for God, rather than as an exercise in sorting doctrine. It’s true that our culture emphasizes feelings, but we can unwittingly overcorrect into a cold orthodoxy.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

I am astonished JMac actually wrote that the bible transforms our lives. It isn’t the bible; it’s Jesus

“Sanctify them through your truth. Your word is truth.” “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy word.”

We could multiply these kinds of verses many times over.

When Jesus confronts people, it often isn’t because they don’t believe him, but because they don’t believe the Word (John 5; Luke 24). In Psalm 19, it is the word that restores, makes the simple wise, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures and is righteous. I read Psalm 119 yesterday and was again struck by the centrality of the word in life—in affliction, in sorrow, in need, in joy, in direction, etc. It is the Word. To describe it as “a tool” rather than “the thing” isn’t a distinction that I find in the Bible, as of yet anyway.

The Bible doesn’t seem to make this dichotomy between Jesus and the Word when it comes to sanctification. The Bible’s picture of transformation is much more than A or B. It is Jesus. It is the renewing of the mind. It is the Word. It is the Spirit. It is the church. It is relationships. All of these, and more, play a role in transformation. We wouldn’t know anything about Jesus without the Word. When Jesus sent out his disciples, it was to teach what Jesus had commanded them. In others words, the Word. And the purpose was “to obey” the word. And the result of that commission is the NT.

If the point is that the Word alone, absent the Spirit and Christ, doesn’t transform, then that is relatively uncontroversial I imagine.

It seems to me that this is essentially the argument of “red-letter Christians.” That what really matters isn’t the Bible as revelation from God, but Jesus. I am quite sure Tyler doesn’t intend that. But I think this is an almost inevitable end of it. To say that it is Jesus that transforms, not the word, will eventually lead to the diminishing of the Word in favor of Jesus, a sort of mysticism that says we can know and love Jesus without the Word.

Here are some quick replies:

  1. I think we’re making a mistake if, when we read “word” in the Scriptures (particularly in Psalm 119, etc.) we only think of the bible. It’s typically a more generic reference to God’s speech or self-communication—this is why Jesus is “the Word.”
  2. I see the Scripture as a tool or conveyance which brings us to God—like a telescope. The passage from Ps 119 which I sketched seems to suggest that metaphor. God’s word (broadly defined—it’s more than the Scriptures in Ps 119:130) gives light to the simple. To what end? For greater love, relationship, obedience, etc. The “word” is not the end in and of itself—it’s the means that helps us love God more.
  3. Here is one more brief attempt to explain. I’m preaching on the Presentation of the Lord, tomorrow. Simeon took Jesus into his arms, and said “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation …” (Lk 2:29-30). Simeon says that Jesus literally is salvation. True, he only knows about Jesus because of the promises, but his focus is not the written promises but the salvation to which they point. I’m saying that getting this subtle shift in focus right has practical ramifications. Yes, there are ditches on both sides (as I admit in the article), but we must not slide into the ditch of a cold rationalism.
  4. So, my burden here was to ask us to step back from a looking at the bible and to begin looking thru it to see God. I see JMac’s remarks as representative of a more rationalistic approach, downstream from Carl Henry.
  5. I can’t speak to what “red-letter Christians” believe or why they believe it! My conversation partners for this piece were Carl Henry, Emil Brunner, and William Hordern. I can say I believe that ethos is silly, if that helps any!
  6. I don’t believe we can know Jesus, the faith, or the Gospel apart from His revelation.

If anyone is interested in reading more along this line, I recommend Emil Brunner’s Revelation and Reason, along with William Hordern’s A New Reformation Theology. Both of these men were neo-orthodox, which may scare some folks away. All I can say is that you can chew the meat and spit out the bones. I find this perspective very interesting, and even a broken clock is right twice a day. If anyone is interested in hearing from some theologians more closer to home, I especially appreciate Erickson (Christian Theology, 3rd., pp. 157-163). I would also say James Garrett’s discussion (Systematic, vol. 1, ch(s). 11-12) on biblical authority is really good, and I agree with it.

My second article (this Monday) will have more discussion, obviously!

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

Briefly, the idea that “word” in Scripture is somehow less than or different from the Bible seems tenuous at best. While again I am confident Tyler doesn’t intend this, it seems awfully close to the neo-orthodox view of Scripture. It lends itself very easily to the idea that the Bible isn’t revelation, but rather the Bible is merely a record of revelation. Citing two neo-orthodox theologians for support doesn’t help dispel that. It’s not a matter of being scared. It is recognizing that orthodox theology rejected these views for a reason, namely, that it was considered incompatible with historic orthodoxy. Resurrecting the idea seems a bad tack, even if we might learn some things from someone.

In Psalm 119 particularly it is hard to see how words like Law, precepts, commandments, statutes, word, etc. are somehow not the Bible as they knew it at that time, or somehow different than or in addition to the Bible. Those are not just “God’s speech or self-communication,” but actual commands in writing and books. In 2 Tim 3, it is the Scripture that is God-breathed and profitable—the writings—not just “God’s speech or self-communication” or even the knowledge that comes from it. In 1 Peter 1, a standard passage on bibliology, it is the Word that we do well to pay attention to. The word is not simply pointing us to something else as if the Word is merely incidental. In John 5, Jesus standing right before them points them to the Bible. In Luke 24, the risen Lord does not point the two men first to himself but rather points out their lack of belief in the Bible.

That seems particularly instructive. If the Bible is merely to point us to Jesus, or primarily to point us to Jesus, why didn’t Jesus simply point the men to himself? The Word was no longer needed at that point. On the Emmaus Road, with the ability to hold out his nail-scarred hands and open their eyes (as he later did), he refused. He instead rebuked them for not believing the Bible. That seems contrary to the approach of many today. Perhaps as with the red-letter Christians, the Neo-orthodox, and some surely well-meaning people, we are in danger of undermining the authority of Scripture.

Again, I am quite sure Tyler doesn’t intend this, but we have to caution against making the Bible a mere prop to a higher goal. The Bible seems to give a higher priority and place to the Word.

The metaphors (telescope, puzzle, etc) don’t seem to be categories that Scripture uses, at least in this way. Similarly, looking at vs. looking through does not seem to be a biblical burden. The dichotomy between love and knowledge does not seem a biblical dichotomy.

I think this is a place where we might be overthinking the issue. To borrow a line from a book, I don’t think the biblical authors would have much patience for these kinds of distinctions. I don’t see the helpfulness but I do see many dangers.

To quote Tyler, “I’m saying that getting this subtle shift in focus right has practical ramifications.” But I fear they are not good.

[Larry] I am confident Tyler doesn’t intend this, it seems awfully close to the neo-orthodox view of Scripture.
Given Tyler’s many posts praising the Neo-Orthodox over the last few years, what do you base this confidence on?

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3