Are We Biblical Relativists? (Part 2 - Responding to Questions and Concerns)

After my last post "Are We Biblical Relativists?" I received a few questions and concerns and so I wanted to clarify a few things.

One question was that it sounds like I am removing the Holy Spirit's leading us by taking this view of the Bible. If you read the article, you will notice that I was very careful not to address the Holy Spirit's role in this issue (apart from His inspiring the writing of Scripture). My concern was/is how we approach reading our Bibles. What are our presuppositions, or what things are we taking for granted when we read our Bibles? Are we looking at it as a guide book, instruction manual, history book, etc?

I wrote, "In my first post I argued that the Bible is primarily a written account of God's plan of redemption. God's chief concern in giving us the Bible was to reveal Himself to us as the Creator come to be our Savior."

My point was and is that our view of the purpose of God's Word will shape how we use it. If the Bible is primarily God revealing Himself to us and revealing His plan of Salvation, then we need to approach the Bible first and foremost to see our need for a Savior. Then as believers we are to grow in loving God and loving others. Jesus said in John 14:15, "If you love me you will keep my commandments." which shows us that we also read our Bibles to learn what it means to live an obedient life. As we read our Bibles we will come to see how incredible our Salvation is, and this should lead us to fall more in love with Jesus and walk more closely with Him.

Out of our desire to love Him more and walk more closely with Him we will also desire to spend devotional time with God in prayer and in studying and reading the Word and seeking His will for our lives. The Holy Spirit causes us to understand the Word as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 - "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." Without the Holy Spirit we couldn't understand the Bible as God intends even if we wanted to. As the Holy Spirit makes us understand the Word He will also use the Bible to convict us of sin, lead us to repent, give us wisdom for living, etc.

In this approach to the Bible there is no hindering the Holy Spirit from applying the Scriptures to our lives because it is the Holy Spirit that causes us to understand the Scriptures in the first place. My point is that I see no Biblical evidence that the Holy Spirit makes the Word 'mean' something different to different people. By 'mean' I am referring to the literal interpretation of the Word. After interpreting the Word the Holy Spirit then leads us as to how to apply the Word to our lives, however, even the applications are not to be made completely void of the purpose of the text.

To illustrate practically how the Spirit applies the Word to our lives, I will use a response I posted in the comments section of the article:

"If ... we read our Bible and glean a principle clearly taught from the text then we absolutely must apply these things to our lives. For example: When Jess and I were praying about moving to New York, Stuart came and taught a session for the youth group and the passage that he taught on was (about) Discipleship from Luke 14 which talks about leaving father and mother for Him. Now this verse spoke to me right where I was at because one of our main concerns was moving so far away from family. But notice that there is a very clear principle being taught in the passage from Luke, that sometimes the call to discipleship means leaving everything to follow Jesus. Now I certainly felt that the Lord was using this to speak to me, but yes I went home and Jess and I continued to pray and allow the Lord to lead.

In the post I am more concerned with something like this: I am praying about where to plant a church, and I read Psalm 1 for my morning devotionals and read the verse, "He shall be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water and will yield his fruit in season..." Then I say, "OK, The Lord gave me Psalm 1 and told me that I need to plant my church near water. So I am going to look to plant a church in a city by a river, lake or ocean, and when I do it will yield fruit in it's season."

This is the use of Scripture that concerns me. Psalm 1 gives us a principle that the man that does not walk in wicked counsel, but delights in the law of the Lord will be Blessed. Instead of directions for where to plant a church, it tells me the principles for how to be firm in my faith."

In response to the example just mentioned some have argued that they feel this is too restrictive and that the Holy Spirit could use Psalm 1 to call us to plant a church in a city with a river, lake etc. To this my response is that if we are going to attempt to apply Scripture contrary to its plain meaning then I believe that we should have a Biblical reason for doing so. Other than the scenarios that I will mention below, I have been unable to find an example of anyone other than Satan twisting the plain meaning of Scriptures. If you know of other examples I would very much like to see them so that I can study them too.

There are a couple scenarios where the New Testament authors quote and apply the Old Testament Scriptures in what seems to be a way that is void of context. An example of this is in Acts 1:20 where Peter quotes from the Psalms to say that it was prophesied that Judas would betray Jesus, that Judas' land would be desolate, and that another man would take his office as an apostle. At first glance it would seem that Peter's quote of Psalm 69:25 is drastically out of context. How is this reconciled? John MacArthur says,

"Peter indicates, Judas's treachery in betrayal, his death, and his replacement were foretold by David in the Psalms. Ps 55:12-15 clearly predicts the betrayal. Ps 69:25 is the source of the prediction of his removal from office: Let his homestead be made desolate, and let no man dwell in it. Ps 109:8 promises his replacement: His office let another man take. All those quotes are in contexts that point to the time of Messiah's death, and the Holy Spirit clearly affirms that they speak of Judas."

Though Peter's quote may seem out of context at first glance, when we consider that context includes all of Scripture with Jesus being the key to unlock Scripture we see how Peter was able to make this application of the text. On this side of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, Peter recognized these as Messianic Psalms that David wrote speaking of his own situation, but that the Holy Spirit divinely inspired to point to the Messiah.

The other very interesting use of the Old Testament is found in Galatians 4 where the Apostle Paul uses Sarah and Hagar as an allegorical illustration of the two covenants. We must recognize two key things to understand this passage: 1) The Apostle Paul was Divinely inspired. I know of no orthodox view that holds that people today are inspired in the sense that the Apostles were inspired to write Scripture. I think we would all agree that the Canon is closed and so there are no Divine inspirations today that would rival that of the Apostles. 2) Notice that the allegory was used to point to Christ! Paul was not attempting to point us to a spurious conclusion, but instead he used it as an illustration to teach us something that is also taught repeatedly throughout all of Scripture.

While Divinely inspired, Paul uses a passage of Scripture to illustrate for us the two covenants, one was according to works of the flesh and the other was according to the promise of God. Again it is important to note that Paul specifically says that this is an allegory, and this truth is verified over and over again in Scripture - there literally were two covenants: law and grace.

If we approach the Bible with different presuppositions (that it is not primarily about pointing us to Jesus) then we run the risk of using it to 'prove' something that God had no intention of proving. This is not to say that we would always do this, but simply that it may happen. As one helpfully said, "A wrench was never intended to be used as a hammer." Sure you might get the nail in with the wrench, but you might damage something else in the process because that is not the purpose that the designer made it for.

Another example might be helpful, "Are there Bible verses that can confirm who you should get married to?" In the sense that the Bible teaches us principles and truths for how to choose a mate, then YES it absolutely does. We are not to be unevenly yoked with a non-believer etc. However, the Bible absolutely does not have verses that we can rip from their context to give ourselves a 100% confirmation that this is the person that we are supposed to marry. While God is deeply concerned with who we marry that was not the purpose for Him writing the Bible. His Word gives us the principles or truths that we apply to our lives by the Divine guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the day I hope that we would all agree that God's Word is what He says it is, not what we think or want it to be. We must submit to what He tells us about His purpose for His Word. And most importantly, we need to be able to support the position we hold from Scripture ALONE!

I have spoken to a few people regarding this use of the Bible, but as of yet none have been able to support this approach from the Scriptures (though some are still searching and I applaud them for their search). My intention in writing these posts is simply to say that we should never take things for granted. The Berean's of Acts 16 were more noble minded because they searched the Scriptures for themselves to see if what Paul was telling them about Jesus being the Messiah was the truth. I commend us all to do the same. PLEASE DO NOT take my word for it, go study the Bible and see for yourself.

I opened the last post with the disclaimer that I am not writing this to attack or offend people who hold this view, instead I ask that we all will be willing to discuss this as brothers and sisters in Christ while looking to His Word to lead us.

Finally, if I am missing something please bring it to my attention. If you would prefer to send me a private message my email address is trevorjbinkley@gmail.com

Grace and Peace!