There is a very interesting story, actually the first human story, in which Adam and Eve doubted the Word of God. Satan planted this doubt by creating uncertainty concerning what God had said in Genesis 3:1-5. “Was God really shooting straight with you or was He hiding the truth from you?” Here is the first attack on the clarity of God’s Word. The resulting doubt was planted, and unbelief sprang up as its fruit which resulted in the fall.
Is it possible or even probable that the dire need of man, fallen in the death grip and judgment of sin, that God through the written Word would hide from plain view the remedy for sin found in the crucified Jesus Christ?
On June 17th, 1843, Daniel Webster, one of America’s greatest statesmen, and weightier thinkers, delivered a stirring speech at the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument said;
“They (the Pilgrims) brought with them a full portion of the riches of the past, in science, art, and morals, religion an literature. The Bible came with them. The Bible is a book of faith and a book of doctrine; it teaches man his own responsibility, his own dignity, and his own equality with his fellow man… I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain obvious meaning of its pages, since I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can understand it.”[1] (emphasis added)
Luther writing to the Roman Catholic humanist, Erasmus, editor of a Greek New Testament published in 1516, said,
“But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from [our] own blindness or want [i.e., lack] of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of truth…. Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear Scriptures of God…. If you speak of the internal clearness, no man sees one iota in the Scriptures but he that hath the Spirit of God…. If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.”[2]
But the doubts on the clarity of the Bible persist even in our day. Brian McLaren, a once-influential leader in the dying Emergent Movement said;
“When we talk about the word ‘faith’ and the word ‘certainty,’ we’ve got a whole lot of problems there. What do we mean by ‘certainty’? . . . Certainty can be dangerous. What we need is a proper confidence that’s always seeking the truth and that’s seeking to live in the way God wants us to live, but that also has the proper degree of self-critical and self-questioning passion.”[3]
In “A Generous Orthodoxy,” McLaren doubles down;
“A warning: as in most of my other books, there are places here where I have gone out of my way to be provocative, mischievous, and unclear, reflecting my belief that clarity is sometimes overrated, and that shock, obscurity, playfulness, and intrigue (carefully articulated) often stimulate more thought than clarity.”[4]
So McLaren has, become playful, mischievous, unclear, and obscure with his handling of Biblical truth in order to “stimulate thought.” He has placed greater value in the faux humility of “always seeking truth”, but never really declaring truth. Just how does he see himself as well as those he teaches really “living the way God wants them to live,” if there is no final, objective, clear truth? And on such an all-important, and the eternally consequential truth as is the Gospel, how can he so cavalierly play around with the souls he influences? Does he really believe that the Gospel is a hidden mysterious truth that we are constantly seeking but never finding?
So, what do we mean when we say that the Bible is clear or plain with the truth? Just what is perspicuity and what is not perspicuity? Well, Larry D. Pettegrew, Professor of Theology, at Master’s Seminary, has an outstanding contribution that was published in the Master’s Seminary Journal in 2004. I highly encourage you to read the whole document. In his paper, he lists what perspicuity does not mean and what it does mean. Below are the basic reasons listed.
What Perspicuity Does Not Mean:
- Perspicuity does not mean that all of Scripture is equally clear as to its precise meaning.
- The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture does not mean that the teaching of Scripture is everywhere equally simple.
- Perspicuity does not mean that interpretation, explanation, and exposition by a Bible teacher are never necessary.
- The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture does not mean that even essential biblical doctrines are everywhere stated with equal clarity.
What Perspicuity Does Mean:
- It means that Scripture is clear enough for the simplest person to live by.
- On the other hand, perspicuity also means that Scripture is deep enough for readers of the highest intellectual ability.
- Perspicuity means that Scripture is clear in its essential matters.
- The perspicuity of Scripture means that the obscurity that a reader of the Bible may find in some parts of Scripture is the fault of finite and sinful mankind.
- Perspicuity means that interpreters of Scripture must use ordinary means.
- The perspicuity of Scripture means that even an unsaved person can understand the plain teachings of Scripture on an external level.
- Perspicuity means that the Holy Spirit must illumine the mind of the reader or hearer of Scripture if he is to understand the significance of Scripture.
- The perspicuity of Scripture means that in accordance with the priesthood of the believer, every Christian has the right and is bound to read and interpret it for himself, so that his “faith may rest on the testimony of the Scriptures, and not on that of the Church.” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology 183)
Let me leave you with a couple of final thoughts from the prophet Ezra in the Psalms.
Psalm 119:105 (ESV) 105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Psalm 119:97 (ESV) 97 Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.
-Michael Holtzinger
[1]J. Sidlow Baxter, The Strategic Grasp of the Bible, Zondervan Publishing House, 1974, pg.14
[2] Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will, trans. Cole, Grand Henry Rapids: Baker, 1976, pg.25-29
[3] “Religion and Ethics,” Newsweekly Episode no. 846 (PBS television, July 15, 2005), Online at: pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week846/interview.html , accessed August 8, 2006.
[4] Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004 pg. 22-23
Some helpful resources:
Understanding English Bible Translation The Case for an Essentially Literal Approach by Leland Ryken
Fundamentalism and the Word Of God By J.I.Packer
Thy Word is Truth, Essential Writings on the Doctrine of Scripture from the Reformation to Today Edited by Peter A. Lillback and Richard B. Gaffin Jr.