Weaponizing the Clarity of Scripture
A while back I wrote a post on The Clarity of Scripture? There I argued that this is a misunderstood doctrine:
If you look at the Protestant confessions, whether the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession, the clarity of Scripture only applies to the things necessary for salvation. So yeah, reading the Gospel of Mark and Epistle to the Romans, you can figure out “What must I do to be saved?” without doing a Master of Divinity. But after that, all bets are off, not everything is clear, some stuff is disputed and debatable, and some things are downright baffling!
Yet what I find interesting is the way that the clarity of Scripture gets applied not to the things necessary for salvation, but to tribal shibboleths that divide Christians.
In other words, sometimes the clarity of Scripture is applied to someone’s confidence on contested topics.
This can be as diverse as the recipients of baptism, types of eschatology, models of church governance, but usually and lamentably to gender issues.
Some people argue in effect, “Scripture is clear, therefore, the matter is concluded … with you being wrong.”