By Rick Barker
As a Christian, the answer to this question seems so obvious that one can hardly imagine even asking it seriously among fellow Christians. Of course, the answer is God—except when the answer isn’t really God, which is, all too commonly, the case.
There are a handful of teachings in the church that seem very benign but, in reality, can greatly challenge the foundational idea that it is God Who determines truths. Two of the most prominent of these teachings are the doctrines of progressive revelation and thought inspiration.
Progressive revelation can also be called by the name of one of its core derivatives, the concept of present truth. The underlying assumption in progressive revelation is that God continually reveals new truth to His creation. For example, the entire New Testament and corresponding New Covenant are progressive revelations of the promises of God given in the Old Testament.
A false dichotomy, or at times even a straw-man argument, is created in regard to progressive revelation. People are presented with two options. One position is that God never changes and therefore everything that comes after the books of Moses must be understood based on what God said to Moses (the most extreme example of that within Christian circles would probably be some groups of Messianic Jews). The false dichotomy argument presents the alternative that the New Covenant is proof that God is continually changing what is “true.” The false argument is that if God doesn’t change, then we have to obey everything exactly as it was laid out to Moses or that we must accept that God is continually changing and updating His instructions based on what people are ready to accept.
First, I want to address the idea of God changing His instructions based on what people are ready to accept, or based on what is important to God at any given point in time. If these ideas are the case, what is our basis for truth? Does the Bible provide the answers for what is true?
Sadly, the answer is “No!”. Within the framework of this line of reasoning, the Bible can only address what was important to God at the time the different books were written. The Bible, then, is nearly 2,000 years out of date when identifying “present” truth. If the Bible doesn’t provide the answers on what is “present truth”, however, how can we ever know truth?
Conversely, if truth is specific to the current time and culture, there are only a few ways that we can know present truth. We can have a current prophet or leader (such as the Pope) with a direct line to God to provide us with the answers regarding what currently matters to God. We can have leaders and teachers who apply the principles that they find in Scripture to conclude what is the new “present truth.” If we rely on a prophet or church leader to define current truth, we have determined that our source of truth is something other than just Scripture. Sure, we might revere Scripture, but we have effectively concluded that the prophet or leader providing this new insight into present truth carries more authority than the Bible.
Alternatively, we can each decide for ourselves, based on the promise of the indwelling Holy Spirit, what is truth in today’s world. If each of us decides what constitutes “present truth”, we have now each become our own gods. We are the ultimate arbiters of truth.
Thought inspiration
The doctrine of thought inspiration itself is likely to be less clear to many people. We rarely think about what it means for the Bible to be “inspired” and what implications the doctrine of inspiration has on every other aspect of Christian doctrine. There are multiple views of inspiration, and it is important to have a little understanding of each of these views in order to understand the implications of the doctrines surrounding inspiration:
- Dictation—God dictated the words of Scripture, and the writers of Scripture recorded those words verbatim. This view is often confused with the next approach. Oftentimes that confusion is intentionally sown by critics of the verbal plenary view.
- Verbal plenary—Human writers were guided by God to produce the words of Scripture. While the individual writing styles and experiences of the human writers were maintained, God’s direct guidance assured that the words chosen were completely accurate. The Word of God as a written document is a complete and perfect combination of God and man just like the Word made flesh is both fully man and fully God. This is the predominate evangelical Christian doctrine of inspiration and is my personal view.
- Thought or dynamic—Human writers received inspired understanding of God and were left to their own abilities to express that understanding. The underlying message of Scripture is inspired, but the specific words and statements are derived solely by humans.
- Inspirational—The Divine inspiration comes from the impact it has on the reader or listener. The inspiration of the Bible is similar to the inspiration of a good sermon, story, or any other book. God uses the message to individually touch a person. The inspired nature of the work isn’t the content of the work but rather its impact on you.
The middle two views are the most common, and both have relatively wide acceptance. But does it really matter which view of inspiration one chooses to embrace? I believe that there are at least three reasons why it does. First, can it really be called the word of God if He wasn’t directly involved in the choice of words? Second, the authors of the Bible treated other passages as if the specific words used mattered. For example, Paul bases his entire argument for the salvation of gentiles apart from becoming Jewish on whether the word seed is singular or plural in the promise to Abraham. This level of specificity is a strong argument in favor of the very words in Scripture mattering. Finally, in an applied setting, there is considerably more potential for deceitful interpretations if one is focusing attention on the perceived underlying thought rather than the words chosen.
To be fair, most proponents of thought inspiration are not attempting to deceive anyone and still assign considerable importance to the actual words used. For many theologians the question about thought inspiration is primarily a debate over the “why” that parallel accounts, such as those in the Gospels, have small variations, and these variations have very little, if any, impact on the overall understanding of doctrine. However, this view of thought inspiration isn’t universal.
The dark side of thought inspiration is very serious indeed. Thought inspiration introduces the concept that errors may have crept into Scripture because humans are imperfect at conveying the thoughts of God. In other words, the underlying thoughts are perfectly correct, but the way those thoughts are explained in words may have errors. It isn’t hard to see how the unscrupulous can manipulate that approach to deny plain statements of Scripture and replace them with an underlying “theme” of thought that supports any position that they want.
The fact that people can easily mis-apply and re-interpret Scripture is not sufficient reason to reject this understanding as a doctrine. However, I will contend that the Bible teaches that examining the fruit is one of the valid means of evaluation. The bad fruit of thought inspiration is that this doctrine is easily applied to negate the clear statements of Scripture in favor of personal interpretations.
An example of how this would play out can be found in how one might interpret 1 Tim 3:1-7:
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
If the very words of Scripture are inspired, any elder must be a married, heterosexual, monogamous man. However, if only the thoughts of Scripture matter, then perhaps an elder only needs to be someone who is currently in a monogamous relationship. This is the basis (or at least a significant element) for the large variation in church doctrines regarding the ordination of women and homosexuals as pastors. No group is ignoring the Bible, they just have very different views on the nature of biblical inspiration.
Please indulge me in another example. Hopefully all Christians would agree that God is love. But, depending on how we view the inspiration of Scripture, this agreed upon truth can result in very different understandings. For those who accept a verbal-plenary inspiration along with the “conservative” applications of thought inspiration, the Bible describes God’s actions, and His followers must reconcile their ideas of love with those descriptions. We accept that God’s actions, however strange they might seem to us, define what it means to be loving, just, righteous and merciful (to name a few of God’s characteristics that are equally and fully true). In the Bible, God being loving didn’t mean that God never confronted anyone. God being loving didn’t mean that God didn’t call someone out about their sin. God being loving didn’t mean that God didn’t destroy those who opposed Him.
However, there are those who also take the truth that is love and reach very different conclusions about how God reacts to current social issues. The error begins by applying their own definition to what love must mean. This is often justified by concluding that “if even sinful humans can know that a particular action is loving, then clearly God must act in accordance with our understanding.” This logic allows us to both define love and define the character of God based on the values of sinful man. Having defined love in a way that makes us feel good, we can proceed to determine what actions are, or are not, acceptable to God, regardless of what Scripture might say on any of those subjects because we aren’t actually concerned about what Scripture specifically says, only about the thoughts that underlie Scripture—like the thought that God is love, for example.
Do the words of Scripture matter? Can we discount what Scripture actually says because it doesn’t match our modern sensibilities of what it true? Can we decide for ourselves that what Scripture really intended was vastly different from what was actually stated because we perceived an underlying principle or thought that gives us a different answer than what the Bible states?
I believe that when we place our understanding above the plain words of Scripture, we are choosing to place ourselves above God. We are worshipping another god. Whether that god is modernism, human reasoning or just ourselves, we have selected a different higher authority.
When the statements in Scripture can no longer be believed and accepted at face value, we can’t claim to be people of the book. We can’t claim to be followers of God. We have become followers of ourselves and of our “superior” understanding. There is, however, a simple solution. Submit ourselves daily to what the Word teaches. Instead of trying to manipulate that Word into teaching what we want, believe what is written in the Word and allow it to transform us.
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I unreservedly agree with your last paragraph, Rick. Unfortunately, I see that all too often even those who claim to have been freed from the bondage of religion in general, and Seventh-Day Adventism in particular, nevertheless refuse to accept and believe Scripture at face value.
One example — Isaiah 45:7. Almost no one accepts that verse at face value. God creates evil? The mere suggestion of this is heretical to Christian, and yet the Scripture is unequivocal on this point; from the Garden to Golgotha and beyond God creates and uses evil over and over again to carry out His divine purpose. I have heard all manner of rationalizations from Christians desperate to explain away this truth. They manipulate, distort, add to, and take away from the Word, in order to make it fit their beliefs, rather than simply “believe what is written in the Word and allow it to transform” them.
As sad and frustrating as it is for me to see this happen, especially among those dear friends and family whom I love so much, yet I know that God is “operating all things in accord with the counsel of His will,” and that “all things” means ALL things — at least it does to those few who are not willing to manipulate that word in order to diminish its scope.
I unreservedly agree with your last paragraph, Rick. Unfortunately, I see that all too often even those who claim to have been freed from the bondage of religion in general, and Seventh-Day Adventism in particular, nevertheless refuse to accept and believe Scripture at face value.
One example — Isaiah 45:7. Almost no one accepts that verse at face value. God creates evil? The mere suggestion of this is heretical to Christians, and yet the Scripture is unequivocal on this point; from the Garden to Golgotha and beyond God creates and uses evil over and over again to carry out His divine purpose. I have heard all manner of rationalizations from Christians desperate to explain away this truth. They manipulate, distort, add to, and take away from the Word, in order to make it fit their beliefs, rather than simply “believe what is written in the Word and allow it to transform” them.
As sad and frustrating as it is for me to see this happen, especially among those dear friends and family whom I love so much, yet I know that God is “operating all things in accord with the counsel of His will,” and that “all things” means ALL things — at least it does to those few who are not willing to manipulate that word in order to diminish its scope.
Sorry for the duplicate comment.