Clarifying the Clarity of Scripture
Or why biblical scholars can have job security!
The Clarity of Scripture … Once More
Sorry if I’m being repetitive, but here’s a bit more on the clarity of Scripture based on my lecture in Singapore.
The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture sets forth the notion that God’s word is comprehensible to anyone who takes time to read it. God’s Word has been revealed to us in such a way that everyone who wants to know what the Bible means can make sense of what the Bible says for themselves!
This was a very important claim for Protestant theologians who rejected the idea that the Bible was coded, confusing, opaque, or obscure. Protestants rejected the idea that nobody should read the Bible for themselves and should instead defer to the interpretation of the Pope, the church councils, ancient theologians, and the tradition of the Catholic Church.
This is why Charles Hodge said:
“The Bible is a plain book. It is intelligible by the people. And they have the right, and are bound to read and interpret it for themselves; so that their faith may rest on the testimony of the Scriptures, and not on that of the Church. Such is the doctrine of Protestants on this subject.”
Wayne Grudem is similar:
“Scripture repeatedly affirms that it is able to be understood – not only certain verses or statements, but the meaning of the whole of Scripture on many topics is able to be understood by God’s people. These affirmations are not limited to understanding the basic way of salvation, understanding only major themes, or understanding certain topics or certain parts. These are affirmations about the nature of Scripture in any part, apparently grounded in a deep assumption that the Scriptures are communication from a God who is able to communicate clearly to his people.”
Protestant Perpiscuity Explained Simply
On the popular Protestant view, if you pick up the Bible and read from Genesis to Revelation, you can get a pretty good grasp of the basic storyline of God. If you read the Bible attentively you can figure out the main seams of the narrative about creation, the fall, the patriarchs, Israel, Jesus, the church, and the end of all things. You can get a basic grip on the Bible without learning ancient Aramaic, without doing a PhD in Egyptology, and without going on a summer excavation of Pergamum in modern Turkey. You could also attain a working familiarity with who God is, who Jesus is, what the church is about, what the gospel is, and grasp the fundamentals of discipleship.
A rudimentary understanding of the Bible can be attained through a close and careful reading of it, attentive to how the Bible’s storyline progresses, and noting how the Bible effectively interprets itself. Besides, we have the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, through whom God brings understanding to our minds so we can grasp and apply all that God says to us in Scripture. Thus, a basic and sufficient understanding of the Bible can be attained without an authoritative teacher telling you what it means and what it does not mean.
Jesus could repeatedly challenge the scribes and Pharisees by saying, “Have you never read …” precisely because Scripture was clear and comprehensible so it made their ignorance culpable.
Paul told the Romans, “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14) because he thought they could reason from Scripture and self-teach each other as a community at large.
In which case, for Protestants, the clarity or the perspicuity of Scripture means you need neither a Pope nor a Professor to understand the Holy Word of God.
Right?
Well, sort of … but there’s a catch!
How “Clear” is this “Clarity”?
The thing is, if you read the Bible from scratch, and if you are a bit of a novice at reading it, the fact is that you are going to have huge questions that you will not be able to answer. What is the difference between “Israel” and “Judea” during the period of the divided monarchy (1 Kings 12:20–21), what happened in between Malachi and Matthew (some 400 years!), who were the “Pharisees” (Mark 3:6), and just which presidential nominee am I supposed to identify as the “Mother of Prostitutes” (Revelation 17:5)? That is precisely why Study Bibles are so popular and so important because they have notes that explain all that technical stuff that you have no idea where to even begin looking up.
Also, there are some difficult parts of the Bible to understand:
1 Cor 11:10: “It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels.”
1 Tim 2:15: “But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”
2 Pet 3:16: “Paul’s letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
I don’t know about you, but those texts perplex me!
In addition, scholars disagree on things like …
How to reconcile Synoptic and Johannine chronology on the date of Jesus’s death?
The meaning of the “kingdom of God” in the Gospels.
What is the “righteousness of God” in Paul’s letters?
Can you lose your salvation according to Hebrews?
Some Baptists believe in soul competency, that every soul is competent enough to interpret the Bible or themselves. But as a Bible professor, I must tell you, I have marked the essays and papers of Baptist students, and some Baptist souls are more competent than others.
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The Proper Protestant View of Scripture’s Perpiscuity
This is why the Westminster Confession of Faith states that: “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all (2 Pet. 3:16); yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them” (WCF 1.10).
For the WCF and 1689 London Baptist Confession, the clarity of scripture only applies to the things necessary for salvation.
Otherwise, to understand scripture, we need …
A Philip to run beside our chariot and to explain to us what we are reading.
The Holy Spirit to open our minds to understand the word as happened to the disciples when they met the risen Jesus.
The clarity of Scripture applies to understanding the storyline of Scripture and the substance of the gospel. After that, Scripture is not clear!
If Scripture was utterly clear, then we would not need teachers, pastors, professors, and scholars.
We need people to study ancient languages to translate the Bible.
We need people to understand ancient history and ancient cultures.
We need people to pour time and effort into the Pentateuch, Psalms, Gospels, and Paul and write commentaries and reflections.
We need people to study the history of interpretation.
We need to learn from the people who have learned much from the Bible!
But someone might retort that we don’t need any Study Bible, no Bible College, No Pope, or Professor, but only the Holy Spirit to lead us into the truth!
Yes, the Holy Spirit gives you illumination, but if you do more work in Bible study, you give the Holy Spirit more to work with!
Who dares to teach without themselves being taught? Heretics and Hucksters! People with bad interpretations and bad intentions!
But you might say, but I cannot study the Bible, I don’t have time to go to Bible college, I am a mother, I am a student, I am retired, I worked too much.
The only place success becomes before work is the dictionary.
Success in Bible reading takes work, so put in the work.
There are many things you can do to understand the Bible better.
Listen to the sermons in church.
Read the Bible alone, with family, with friends, in a group.
Use a study Bible, many good ones.
Listen to podcasts about the Bible.
Use one of many Bible apps like Logos or Bible Gateway.
Read books about the Bible.
How much time do you spend staring into your phone? Watching TV? Playing games? Just take a little bit of that time and apply it to your studies.
The Psalmist said, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps 119:9). Ezra, we are told, “had set his heart to the study the law of the Lod, and to do it and to teach his statues and laws in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). The Bereans are praised because “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). Paul said, “Let the word of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.”
God’s word can be understood, because God engages in communicative acts, in Scripture, in his Son, through the Spirit to make himself known. God does not speak in code that only a spiritual or academic elite can understand. God’s word is for us to know God and to be known by God.
To help us know God better, God gives us Pastors, Teachers, Books, and endless resources today.
Scripture is clear when it comes to the gospel and gist of the storyline of Scripture.
But to delve deeper into it, we need a community of faith, we need wise teachers who know it and live it, and we need training, discipline, and hunger for God’s word to take root in us.
Then, as Anglicans say, God’s word is
“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”
Thanks for writing such an excellent and clear explanation of what reading the Bible is about. In my years of experience as pastor and teacher most of us fall afoul of proper understanding when we want to apply are reading directly to our current context. And then there are the false prophets and Pharisees of our time.
This is so well done and brings clarity to a very important question!!