A Theology of
Opportunity: Sola Scriptura and
the Great Commission
by John M. Frame
1. Principle,
Change, and Sola Scriptura
Introduction
I want to talk to you in these three
sessions about the theology of
opportunity. We have heard about many areas of present-day culture which
present opportunities for Gospel witness. If you are like me, you want to
reach out and grasp these opportunities. But how should we do this? Does
the Bible have anything to say about the business of
grasping opportunities?
As Reformed Christians, that should
be our first question: what does the Bible say? For us, God must have
the first and last word in our decisions, including the decision
to grasp an opportunity. Our opportunity now as then is to reach people
and their culture for Jesus Christ. But we know that historically attempts
to reach the culture have resulted in compromise of biblical teaching. In
the second century, Justin Martyr, a courageous, zealous, and intelligent
Christian, tried to reach the Jews and the Greek philosophers of his day.
But in doing so, he reinterpreted the Bible to make it teach
Greek philosophy, distorting the biblical doctrine of the Trinity
and of creation, among other things. In the thirteenth century,
again out of an evangelistic motive, Thomas Aquinas bent the
scriptural teachings to fit the philosophy of Aristotle. In the
nineteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher, trying to reach the intellectual despisers of Christianity, rejected biblical authority
entirely and replaced it with the authority of human subjectivity. Charles
Finney, trying to reach the lost, advocated an Arminian, almost Pelagian, version of human free-will. And so on it
goes. Evangelism is a central biblical idea, but it seems so dangerous.
One of the dangers is a reaction on
the other side. When Reformed people have taken note of the compromises
made by prominent evangelists, they have sometimes become suspicious
of evangelism itself. We all know that there are
Bible-believing Presbyterian churches that are very critical of Arminian evangelism, but have found nothing to replace
it with. They say much about what biblical evangelism is not, but they
scarcely practice evangelism at all. Since the eighteenth
century, American Presbyterians have fought many battles over
"revivalism" and "new measures," the results being
that those Presbyterians who have remained doctrinally Reformed have often
avoided any organized, disciplined, concerted emphasis upon evangelism
in their churches. This is a very serious problem; in essence
it amounts to a repudiation of our Lord's Great Commission.
What I've said about evangelism is
true to some extent of all Christian interactions with culture: social
action, involvement with the arts, conversations with scientists
and philosophers. On the one hand there is the tendency to compromise,
on the other, the tendency to withdraw into our own subculture, forsaking
both the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission.
But it's not enough to say that
there must be a happy medium here. We don't get any nearer our goal by
mixing a little compromise with a little withdrawal. Neither alternative
is pleasing to God, and no combination of them can please him either.
If the biblical picture of the
church tells us anything at all, there has got to be a way for us to reach
our culture dynamically, powerfully, not by compromising our doctrine, but
by being especially consistent with it; not playing it down,
but pressing it hard; not holding it only theoretically, but
living it out in the fullest way possible. That is God's way.
In Scripture and history, the church
has had the strongest, most lasting influence on society, not when it
has accommodated itself to the world, but when it has been most
true to its own confession against overwhelming odds. Consider Noah and
Abraham, believing God's promises against all the apparent evidence to the
contrary. Consider Moses, standing boldly before Pharaoh to proclaim God's
word, demonstrating God's power against the most powerful totalitarian
dictator of the time. Consider Elfin, challenging King Ahab
and the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah. Consider Peter, preaching to the murderers of
Jesus on the day of Pentecost; Paul, taking the gospel through the
world; the Christian martyrs of the first centuries; Athanasius
of Alexandria, standing against the world for the doctrine of
the Trinity; Luther and Calvin, protesting that salvation is
entirely by God's grace without human works; the Puritans, seeking
to bring all of human life and society under the rule of God's word.
All of these walked in the steps of
Jesus, who set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem, to lay down his
life in obedience to his Father and in submission to scriptural
prophecy. No accommodation there; no compromise; but what cultural
power! By his obedience to his Father's word, Jesus creates nothing
less than a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells
righteousness. By his sacrifice of himself to the Father's will, he
fulfills the cultural mandate, filling and conquering the earth. By
his sacrifice, he empowers the fulfillment of the Great
Commission, spreading his grace to every corner of the earth.
In Scripture, then, and in history,
we see that we are not forced into the dilemma of compromise on the one
hand and withdrawal on the other. There is a third way, to borrow
a phrase, that is attended by God's blessing and by great
spiritual power. But how can we define that third way? I have already
given you the answer in essence: we must become more scriptural.
A Testimony
Let me pause here to make a few
personal remarks, a kind of testimony, for I want to be honest with you
about where I am coming from. There are, unfortunately, all sorts of
parties in the church, and anyone who speaks on this kind of issue
may rightly be suspected of making a partisan pitch. I try to avoid fitting
neatly into clubs or cliques within the church, bearing in mind the
apostle Paul's condemnations of partisanship in 1 Cor.
1-4. And to tell you the truth, I haven't been in the PCA long enough to
really know much about its partisan structure, though perhaps I already
know more about it than I really want to. But if, after hearing me out,
you want to pin some kind of label on me, that is your decision. I just
want to be up front with you, so that if you do pin a label on me you can
do so on the basis of some informed thought.
First, let me say that theologically speaking,
I don't have a liberal bone in my body. In college I read J. Gresham Machen's great book, Christianity
and Liberalism, and saw liberalism up close and at its worst, in the
university and in the church. That was my vaccination; since my sophomore
year in college, I have never since had the slightest temptation to be
a liberal. The whole idea of adjusting or rewriting the gospel
to make it acceptable to modern man is an idea which I view
with supreme contempt. I have always insisted that Christianity is
entirely pointless unless it is a revelation from the true God; and if God
has revealed it, then we are emphatically not free to pick and choose, or
to make adjustments to suit our tastes.
Equally, I despise the idea, not
uncommon in evangelical circles, that Christians have to follow all the
intellectual, ethical, and political fashions: egalitarianism,
pluralism, liberal divorce, abortion, gay rights, evolution, secular psychology,
or whatever.
You know, we have it so easy in this
country. There is so little persecution, really, compared with other
historical and geographical settings. Cannot we even muster the small
amount of courage it takes to oppose cultural fashions from time to
time, when these are clearly contrary to the Word of God? God asks
so little of us; the weakness of the church is shown in that it is so
often unwilling to do even that little bit. To be a bit unpopular, a bit
unfashionable...
Well, to continue my testimony, I
also read Cornelius Van Til
in college and studied with him at Westminster Seminary, and I can say
that I am to this day a Van Til disciple, but not
a slavish one. And over the years, my closest friends have been
in those groups that are usually seen as the most highly
principled: Van Tillians, Machenites
(I was in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for twenty-two years, and I am
still a Machenite), theonomists
(I wouldn't call myself a theonomist, but some of
my best friends are theonomists), neo-Puritans, old schoolers,
the "truly reformed" or "T. R.'s"
as we say in the PCA. For all my disagreements with these friends, and
there are some, I've always felt that these are people I can talk with.
For these are people who want above all to be scriptural, to make
decisions on principle. With these people, you can disagree, but you
always know where you stand, and you always know in general how to
move from point A to point B.
I don't relate easily to
"barely reformed" types-- the "B. R.'s,"
as we say -- even when I do agree with their ideas. I'm sure nobody here
admits to being "B.R." "B. R." is
what Van Til used to call a "limiting
concept;" there really aren't any, but it's convenient to measure
yourself against them. But there are people, you know-- again, certainly
nobody here-- who are kind of fuzzy thinkers when they talk about
theological matters. They are not solidly grounded. As I say, I have a
hard time relating to people like that. For when people are not
solidly anchored doctrinally, you never know quite how to talk to
them. You don't know how to persuade them of anything, and you
never know how you can learn from them. They're always grabbing
for ideas in the mists of their subjectivity, trying to be
what? Up-to-date? User-friendly? whatever. That mentality, at any
rate, is not going to produce the powerful witness that God expects
of us today.
Most of us are combinations of the
two mentalities to some degree, but some of us are weighted more on the T.
R. side, others to the B. R. side, hence the party
names. Methodologically, I am very much on the T. R. side.
Nevertheless, I confess that on many
matters I find myself agreeing with people who are sometimes called
"B. R.'s" over against the T. R.'s. The main reason is that in my estimation the T. R.'s are often so eager to be historical, to maintain
traditional ways of doing things, that they don't always listen closely to
Scripture, as they know they are supposed to. The so-called B. R.'s, being less well anchored in historical models,
are sometimes able to see things that the T. R.'s
can't see. Although they aren't always terribly clear on the
exegetical basis of their ideas, they sometimes see intuitively
that Scripture is directing the church to take new steps,
steps different from those taken in the past.
Repentance, Change,
and Sola Scriptura
My suggestion is that we combine the
T. R.s' concern for exegetical rigor with the B.
R.s' openness to learning something new. The
Bible, after all, is good news,
something new. It is the living word of God. God didn't give it to us to
reinforce our prejudices, but to challenge us, to prod us to repentance
and change. Remember: repentance always means change.
Over and over again, God's prophets
challenge the people to rethink their traditions. A while ago I listed
some of the heroes of the faith in Scripture and in church history, as
people who stood up for principle, for the word of God, against overwhelming
odds. What I want to add now is that these heroes of the faith always
stood for something new, because the word of God imposed upon them
something new. It knocked them out of their routines, routines both of
thinking and of living. From them we learn the lesson that when people
think they have God figured out, reduced to a routine, God comes with his
powerful word and shakes them to the roots.
Think of Noah and Abraham: how God
shook up their routines. The flood had no historical precedent at all;
God called Noah to do something entirely new. And God
specifically called Abraham to tear up his historical roots and to start
over in a new country, to become the father of a new people. He
did not break all ties with his brothers and their families, but
his move was a decided break with the past, and a commitment to a divine
promise for the future that seemed from every human point of view quite
incredible.
Think of Moses delivering God's word
to Israel in Egypt. Leave Egypt? Promised land? When Pharaoh hears this,
he will only make us work harder! We have a routine here; let's stick with
it! And even after God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty
arm, they remembered that routine: Didn't we have great food in
Egypt? Why, Moses, did you bring us out here to die in the desert?
All through the history of the Old
Testament, people were tempted to mistake their routines, their
traditions, for God's word. The Lord says through Isaiah, “The people come near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their
lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up
only of rules taught by men.” (Isa. 29:13) This
passage is quoted in the New Testament in Matt. 15:8-9 and Mark 7:6-7. In
these passages, we learn that the Pharisees dishonored their
parents by their tradition of giving to God what would have
otherwise gone to parental support. Jesus accused the Pharisees of
making the word of God of no effect by their tradition. The example
is multiplied, for Jesus said that the Pharisees did many other
such things.
The Pharisees thought they were
experts in the word of God, that they knew what God expected of them. They
were the ones who in their time were considered the most principled in
their adherence to God's word. But they had developed
various traditions, which they thought were applications of the word
of God, and they had their pattern of obedience down to a
routine. But Jesus told them their routines were wrong. The word of
God actually challenged those routines and called for change.
The Pharisees also had their hermeneutical or exegetical traditions. They read the
Old Testament and concluded that a certain kind of Messiah was coming: one
that would restore the throne of David, the independence of Israel from
Rome, and the earthly prosperity of the Jewish people. Again, they had
it wrong. Their traditional ways of thinking prevented them from
recognizing Jesus Christ, the Son of God, come in the flesh to save his
people from their sins.
In John 5:39-40, Jesus says to the
Jews, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by
them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that
testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” A
terrible indictment: they gave themselves over to study the Scriptures,
to becoming experts in God's word; yet they missed the entire
thrust of it, its most important theme.
To two disciples who mourned the
death of Jesus, not knowing that he had risen from the dead, the risen
Christ complained, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart
to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have
to suffer these things and to enter into his glory" (Luke 24:26)?
Again, these disciples had read the Scriptures, but had missed the whole
point. But their hearts burned within them as Jesus taught them the Old
Testament in a whole new way.
Similarly, through the history of
the church, God has from time to time called his people to reconsider
their traditions and to return to the purity of the word of God.
Most of us would agree that the greatest of these occasions was the Protestant
Reformation. The Reformation was a great time of housecleaning for the
church-- in theology, worship, preaching, and every area of the church's
life. The reformers were conservative in going back to the scriptural
teachings; but they were radical in their attack on the traditions of men.
Thus came the slogan “sola Scriptura,"
by Scripture alone. We sometimes refer to that principle as "the
sufficiency of Scripture." This was one of the great "alones" of the reformation, together with sola gratia, "by grace alone," sola fidei, "by faith alone," sola Christo, "by Christ alone," and soli deo gloria, "glory to God alone."
The sufficiency of Scripture means that the ultimate authority
for faith and life is the Scripture alone, not any ideas
or traditions of men. Popes and councils may err and have erred.
But God's word does not fail. All human ideas, whether
contemporary or traditional, are to be tested by the Scriptures. As Paul
said to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:16-17, Scripture is inspired of
God, God-breathed, so that the man of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work.
Scripture is our sufficient rule; we need not and dare not supplement it
with our own ideas.
At the beginning of this lecture, I
said that we need a way of thinking and living which permits neither
compromise of the truth nor withdrawal from the changing world. Sola Scriptura,
the sufficiency of Scripture, is just the principle we have been looking
for. If you adopt that principle and follow it consistently, you will be
absolutely principled, and you will also be absolutely prepared for the
changes God wants you to make. You will not be hidebound by human
traditions, nor will you be carried this way and that by the winds of
modern fashion. See the point: all human ideas are to be tested by Scripture: not only the modern ones; not
only the traditional ones, but all of them.
Another slogan of the reformation
was semper reformanda:
always reforming; hence fides reformata reformanda est, "the reformed faith is always
reforming." That slogan also presents the balance we have seen in the
principle sola Scriptura:
both "reformed" and "reforming." Our faith is
"reformed," based on unchanging biblical principle. But
our faith is also "reforming," challenging all human traditions
and fashions by the word of God. Adopt this principle seriously,
and you will find that you are in truth more conservative than
the conservatives and more radical than the radicals-- at the
same time. It will be quite an adventure! People will
misunderstand! Terrible things could happen to you! But you will be
assured that the infinite power of God's word will undergird
your ministry. _
2. Three
Misunderstandings of Sola Scriptura
In our last meeting, I suggested
that the principle sola Scriptura,
the sufficiency of Scripture, was central to the "theology of
opportunity." This time I will try to flesh out that principle for
you, to show how it helps us to seize opportunities in our time.
First, it is important for us to
make sure that the principle is not misunderstood. There are three misunderstandings which
especially need to be corrected, in my view. One is the idea that sola Scriptura warrants traditionalism; the next is that sola Scriptura leaves no room for human
creativity, and the third is that sola Scriptura leaves no room for the Holy Spirit.
I won't say much about the first
misunderstanding. I already dealt with that in the previous lecture, when
I showed that in Scripture itself and in the reformation sola Scriptura is
typically used against the
traditionalist mindset. Nevertheless, people sometimes, oddly enough, seem
to employ it in exactly the opposite way, especially when they
are talking about worship. In Reformed churches, of course,
worship is governed by the "regulative principle," which is a
form of sola Scriptura:
nothing must be done in worship without scriptural warrant. Some have
sought to use this principle to argue for a traditional Puritan style of
worship in the church and to attack any practices which have developed in
more recent times.
Now this is a very long argument. I
have written a forty-page paper on the subject. Some people
believe conscientiously that contemporary styles of worship do not
have scriptural warrant, and that argument will have to be
resolved issue-by-issue; I cannot do that here. But I fear that
sometimes in the course of the argument one thing is forgotten:
the regulative principle does not in itself contain any bias in
favor of the traditional and against the contemporary. Indeed, as
we have seen, the primary use of the principle in Scripture
itself and in the reformation polemic is against the entrenchment
of tradition. To hold the regulative principle is not to hold to
the primacy of tradition over contemporary ideas; it is rather
to hold to the primacy of the word of God over all human
ideas, whether traditional or contemporary.
This is not a lecture on worship,
but I believe this point is illuminating in a more general way. For not
only in worship, but also in other areas of life, it is important to
know that sola Scriptura contains no bias in favor of the old fashioned against the contemporary.
Historically, sola Scriptura has
liberated God's people from bondage
to the past, so that they could capture new opportunities. Of
course, sola Scriptura also challenges contemporary ideas. But it creates a level playing field.
It allows the contemporary to compete with the traditional on an equal
basis. Both equally need scriptural warrant. Both equally must meet the
test of sola Scriptura.
The second misunderstanding is the
complaint that sola Scriptura leaves no room for human creativity. Certainly, sola Scriptura places some limits on
human creativity. We are not permitted to do as we please; there is
no autonomy over against God's word. Thus it might seem that
the believer in sola Scriptura may
never exercise his own judgment about anything.
But that also is certainly wrong.
Indeed, every time we use the
Bible, we use our own judgment. Reading the Bible is a rational activity,
requiring human judgment. Choosing one text to study rather than another,
for a particular purpose, is a rational activity. Interpreting the Bible
is a rational activity, requiring a great deal of human judgment. And
applying the Bible to people's needs is also an activity requiring human
judgment.
The step of application is what we
are most interested in now, because it is at that step that we seize
opportunities. Let's say we wish to address a social question as
Christians. It may be the question of abortion, or nuclear war, or government welfare,
or genetic engineering. Well, the Bible doesn't directly address any of
these issues. Finding out what the Bible requires of us in these areas
requires quite a bit of human knowledge and wisdom.
We want to find biblical principles that apply to these
situations; but to do that requires quite a bit of extra-biblical
knowledge. If you want to know what the Bible teaches about abortion, you
need to know some biblical texts; but you also have to know what abortion
is, and the Bible alone will not tell you.
So when we say "Scripture alone," Scriptura sola, we don't mean that the Bible
alone will give us all the facts, all the information, all the detailed
knowledge we need to apply it to contemporary situations. Scripture is not sufficient to do that. For that purpose, Scripture needs
to be supplemented-- by human logic, human knowledge, human
wisdom-- so that we can make the best use of God's word.
What, then, is Scripture sufficient for? The answer is, it is a
sufficient rule of faith and
practice, as our confession puts it. Scripture is the only book in the
world authored by the living God. Therefore it is
ultimately authoritative, and it alone is ultimately authoritative. As ultimate authority it is sufficient. As
our ultimate authority, it judges all of our wisdom, knowledge, and logic.
We may need other information to apply the Scriptures; but we don't need
any more words of God.
But within the bounds that Scripture
provides, there is plenty of room for the play of faithful human
creativity. Indeed, Scripture requires
us to use all our God-given gifts to apply his word.
Surely God expects us, not only to
read the Bible, but to use it, to apply it to the situations of our
experience. The Fourth Commandment says "Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy." Well, what about operating a factory on Sunday: is
that sin? Well, Scripture doesn't say anything about factories. So
are we simply to set that question aside? Certainly not.
Scripture wants us to apply the principle of the Fourth commandment to
all these issues.
To give another example: Some years
ago I served on a committee in another denomination to study the question
of abortion. Our committee gave to the general assembly a
report which, one year before Roe v. Wade, was strongly opposed to abortion.
I'm happy to say that the assembly did approve the report. But there were
some in the assembly who opposed approving that report, arguing that the
church should not speak about abortion at all. Why? Because the church is
limited by sola Scriptura,
and abortion is not mentioned in the Bible.
Well, it's true that abortion is not
mentioned in the Bible. I believe there are passages which teach a very
high view of unborn life, and of course there is the sixth
commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not kill." But the Bible does not mention
abortion as such. But put that fact in context. The Bible says "thou shalt not kill," but it
doesn't mention the killing of Presbyterian ministers between 35 and 45
years of age. So somebody might argue that although we may preach against
killing in general, we may not preach against the killing of
ministers between 35-45, or any other particular kinds of killing. The bottom line to that argument is that you
can preach only generalities, not specifics. Or perhaps the conclusion of
this is even more radical: you cannot apply the Bible at all, you
can only read it. For what these people were saying was that
the church can say only those things which the Bible
itself explicitly and specifically says. That would mean that we
could not use the Bible at all. That would mean that we could
not preach, only read the text.
But that certainly is not what sola Scriptura means. Scripture requires us not just to read it, but to use it, to apply it to all the issues that concern us today. "Preach the word," Paul says to
Timothy.
In Matt. 22:23-33, the Sadducees asked Jesus a fairly stupid question: a
widow was married to seven brothers; to whom will she be married in the
Resurrection? They thought that this question made the whole idea of
Resurrection look silly, and they hoped, by asking it, to make Jesus look
silly too. The critics of our abortion report might have answered by
saying: Scripture does not address that question, so we must not address
it either. But Jesus does not do that at all. He assumes that the word of
God is not silent, even about the Sadducees'
stupid question. The Scripture has an answer to it. He says to them in
verse 29, "You are in error, because you do not know the Scriptures
or the power of God." See what he is saying? The Sadducees,
in asking their question, showed ignorance of the Bible. The Bible had an
answer, but they didn't know it. They were ignorant. The answer
was, first, that people don't marry in the Resurrection. Second,
the Old Testament does teach Resurrection from the dead. God is
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not God of the dead,
but of the living. Therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still
live before him. Notice that Jesus's answer goes
far beyond the explicit or literal words of Scripture. Jesus takes several
broad biblical principles and puts them together, applying them to the Sadducees'
stupid question. And he says that because the Sadducees
did not do this, they were ignorant of the Bible. You see the implication?
You don't even know the Bible
unless you can apply the Bible to questions that arise outside
the Bible. You don't know the
Bible unless you can use it rightly.
Yesterday I mentioned the 24th
chapter of Luke, where the risen Christ speaks to the disciples on the
road to Emmaus. These men too were ignorant of
Scripture. Jesus had to teach them, for they were foolish and slow to
believe all that the prophets had spoken. What was it they didn't
understand? The passage does not say that they had failed to read some
passage or other. The problem of these disciples was that they had failed
to see the connection between the Old Testament writings and their
own experience. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had entered
their experience. In their experience, he had suffered and died
for sinners, but they hadn't understood, because they had failed to apply the Old Testament prophecies to
the events of their own experience. So, says Jesus, they didn't understand
the Scriptures. Again: you do not understand the Scriptures
unless you can apply the Bible
to extra-biblical experience.
There are many other examples of
this principle. In John 5:39-40, Jesus upbraids the Jews because they
searched the Scriptures, but did not believe the Scriptures' testimony
to Christ. They didn't apply the
Scriptures rightly, so they didn't understand
the Scriptures. In Rom. 15:4, Paul says that the
Scriptures, written long ago to be sure, were written for our learning. Remarkable statement,
isn't it? Of what other book can it be said that though it was written to
instruct people living hundreds of years after its composition?
Surely that testimony speaks to the divine character of the Scriptures. It
also implies that God gave us the Bible precisely so it could address contemporary issues.
Scripture, according to Paul, is
"profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every
good work," 2 Tim. 3:16-17. That's the language of
application. Scripture is given-- not just to be read, but to be used, to
be applied, to address current issues. In 2 Timothy, Paul is
looking toward the day when he will be in heaven with Christ, and
the church on earth will have to carry on without him. After Paul is gone,
the church will face many challenges; Paul says that false teaching will
abound, and the church will need to make judgments. The key to such
judgments is Scripture, but Scripture applied intelligently to the new
situations that arise. Scripture applied to extra scriptural knowledge.
Therefore, as Peter says, also looking toward the same situation,
Scripture will be a "light shining in a dark place," 2 Pet.
1:19.
My conclusion is that God gave us
the Bible for the purpose of application.
To know the Bible rightly, you must not only have verses in your memory;
you must also have the skill of applying
the Bible to questions that come up outside the
Bible, to questions that the Bible does not specifically and explicitly
address, to states of affairs that are not mentioned specifically in the
Bible.
This means of course that to
understand the Bible we need to know some things from outside the Bible.
To understand the Bible, of course, we need to know something of the
biblical languages, of the history and geography of the biblical period. We
also need to know our own time. We need to know what questions need to be
addressed. We need to know some things about modern technology, modern
culture, science, philosophy, art, music. We need to know our world in
order properly to use the word of God. If we don't know our world, we
cannot apply the word to it; and if we cannot apply the word to our own
time, we don't really understand it.
So you see how sola Scriptura does not exclude the use
of knowledge from outside the Bible. In fact, that knowledge is absolutely
essential if we are to use the Bible
to reform ourselves, our church, and our culture. sola Scriptura, in fact, is a divine
mandate for human creativity. Relating Scripture teachings to contemporary
problems requires considerable creativity. It engages all the gifts which
God has given to us.
And there's another dimension to
this as well, which brings us to consider the third misunderstanding of sola Scriptura,
the idea that sola Scriptura leaves no room for the work of the Spirit. Evaluating present-day
situations is not merely a matter of taking the Bible and relating it to
our extra-biblical knowledge. It is also a matter of
spiritual insight, spiritual growth.
Many Christians, especially those
who are inclined toward the charismatic movement, fault the Reformed for
making the Christian life too much of an intellectual exercise. To them,
the sola Scriptura principle looks like an academic way to God. You have a textbook; you read
the textbook; you correlate it with other factual knowledge, and you act.
But where is the spirit? Where is the personal relationship between
ourselves and God?
I do believe that some Reformed
teachers and writers can be justly criticized in this way. The idea of the
"primacy of the intellect" has been prominent among some
Reformed writers, and I believe that idea is not biblical at all. But the
genius of Reformed theology is not at all to turn the Christian life into
a kind of academic curriculum. Above all, our relationship to God is
fully personal: covenantal, as the theologians say.
Learning to apply Scripture to our present opportunities is also
a personal process, the process of a developing personal relationship
between ourselves and God.
Let us look at a familiar passage: Rom. 12:1, 2. We could also look at other passages,
such as Eph. 5:8-10 and Phil. 1:9-10, where Paul
uses a similar pattern of argument; but we'll stick with Rom. 12 for now. In the first eleven chapters
of Romans, Paul has expounded very systematically, but
also passionately, God's way of salvation in Jesus Christ. Then
he comes to the question, "how shall we then live?" He
says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is
your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will
be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing
and perfect will.”
The second verse tells us how to
discover God's will. The question, "how do I discover God's
will?" is a very practical question. High school young people ask it
all the time. In Reformed churches, we tend to answer by saying "read
your Bible," and that answer is very sound. sola Scriptura; the will of God is the
content of the Bible. But as we have seen, finding the will of God in the
Bible and relating it to my life situations can be rather complicated. It
is not just a matter of reading; it is also a matter of understanding your
own times in the light of Scripture. And what Paul tells us here is that
it is also a matter of spiritual transformation. It is when by God's grace
we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, turning away from
worldly patterns of behavior, it is then that we come to know, and
take delight in, the will of God.
1 Cor.
2:14 tells us that the "natural man," the unregenerate person,
cannot rightly understand the word of God; the word is foolishness to him,
and of course his ideas are foolish to God. But when God comes and transforms
a person by his Spirit into his image, a whole new way of thinking
develops. Paul calls that in 1 Cor. 2:16, "the mind of Christ." Rightly understanding and using God's
word, therefore, is a spiritual process, an ethical process, the outgrowth
of our personal relationship with God.
It is those who walk with God who
are able to discern God's will for their lives. Perhaps that seems
backwards to you. You might think that one must know God's will before one
can obey him. Didn't J. Gresham Machen say that
doctrine comes first, and then life is built on doctrine?
But of course it works both ways.
Obedience is built on knowledge, but knowledge is also built on obedience.
Knowledge contributes to obedience; obedience contributes to knowledge.
It sounds paradoxical, but of course
we know how it works, don't we? We've all experienced it. Regeneration
comes first; that's good Reformed doctrine. The first change in us
is not something we do, but something God does. Unless a man is born again,
he shall not see the kingdom of heaven. Regeneration creates both new
knowledge and new obedience. The knowledge feeds on the obedience and the
obedience feeds on the knowledge. Our knowledge of God's word helps us to
obey him. But as we continue to obey him, over and over, overcoming
temptation, going through trials in a godly way, we find ourselves
thinking differently. New patterns of thought develop. With new habits of
life come new habits of thought. We look at Scripture in a new way, and
our knowledge grows. That leads to more obedience and more
knowledge, on and on.
Hebrews 5:11-14 tells us a bit about
this process. The writer here intends to enter a rather difficult
theological discussion, concerning Melchizedek
and his relation to Christ. He pauses, however, to observe that his
readers are not quite ready for this teaching. They are "slow to
learn." They should be teachers themselves, but at this point they
need someone else to teach them the elementary truths of God's word all
over again. They need milk, not solid food. Who subsists on milk? Babies,
of course; the Hebrews are spiritual babies. Theological babies,
we might say, since they are not ready for heavy, though
valuable, theological teaching.
Well, who are the mature? Are they
the ones with more book learning, with academic doctorates and the
like? Surprisingly not. The mature, the ones who can take the
solid food, the meaty theology, are those "who by constant use have trained
themselves to distinguish good from evil," verse 14.
Notice that maturity here is ethical
in character, rather than merely intellectual. Theologically mature people
are people who are ethically mature, who are able to make
proper distinctions between good and evil. And where does that
ethical maturity come from? From "exercise" gymnazein. From "constant
use."
Theologically mature people are not
necessarily the most academically astute; they are, rather, the ones who
have been on the front lines of the battle against Satan and sin and
death. They are the ones who have fought the good fight. When you seek
a fellow-believer's help in discerning the will of God for your life,
those are the people you should go to. Not the smarty-pants types
whose sole accomplishment has been a string of As in college and seminary,
but the people whose devotion to Christ you have come to admire: those who
have made sacrifices for the kingdom; those who have suffered some persecution
and ridicule; those who have been tested and, by God's grace, have
prevailed.
So when Scripture sets forth the qualifications
for elders in the church, it demands people of this kind:
above reproach, sexually pure, temperate, self-controlled,
respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not
violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money, managing
his own family well, having a good reputation with outsiders (1
Tim. 3:1-7). Not much there on academics, except perhaps for
the ability to teach; but even there the emphasis is less on
academic preparation than on the ability to communicate.
To summarize: We now know how to
discern opportunities, to evaluate options set before us. First, there is
God's word, our sufficient final authority. Second, there is the work
of applying that word to contemporary situations. Third, there is the
work of the Spirit which transforms our lives and our minds so that we can
make reliable judgments in the work of application. Next time, we will
explore some examples.
3. Making the Most
of Every Opportunity
In the last two sessions I've been
focusing on the sola Scriptura principle as a key to principled change. It is through sola Scriptura that we can change to meet
the challenges of our time, without compromising principle.
In this lecture I'd like to get more
specific, dealing with some areas in which we have opportunities today to
minister in old and new ways, without abandoning or compromising
our foundation in the word of God.
The Apostle Paul says, shortly after
one of the passages I mentioned last time, “Be very careful, then, how
you live-- not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of
every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not
be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Eph. 5:15-17) The King James version used to read that
phrase, "redeeming the time;" the NIV renders it, "making
the most of every opportunity." Note the negative and positive sides
of that passage. Negatively, the days are evil, says Paul, and of
course our days are evil too. We are not to copy the ways of the
world, but as light is different from darkness, we must be distinct
from it. In 5:6, Paul has warned us not to be partners with those
who are wicked.
But there is the positive side as
well. You might expect Paul to say, withdraw from the world, because the
days are evil. Rather, what he says is "make the most of every
opportunity." And he says to take opportunities, not in spite of, but because of the fact that the
days are evil. Paul is aware that there is danger of compromise when we
seek to take advantage of opportunities. But he urges us not to be
paralyzed by that danger. Rather, the evil of the world must motivate us
all the more to spread the light.
The Opportunity For
Simple Obedience
What are the opportunities before
us? In Ephesians 5-6, the opportunities are
deceptively simple. They are, simply, opportunities to live holy lives.
Verse 18: don't get drunk, but be filled with the Spirit. 19, sing to one
another about the Lord. 5:21-6:9, maintain good relationships in
households between husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, slaves. In
6:10-17, put on the armor of God, which includes, of course, God's
truth and his word. God's soldier is one who lives and also speaks
the truth of the gospel. In 6:18-20, pray, especially for
Paul's witness.
These are not the things we usually
think about when we hear the word "opportunity" in a church
context. They are not particularly sophisticated or jazzy, not distinctive
to the 1990s, not likely to get us written up in Christianity Today or Leadership.
They are not the kinds of things that usually get discussed in seminars on
evangelism or church growth. Usually, we think of an
"opportunity" as an open door for a new kind of ministry, social
action program, witness to a particular group of people, or some new
apologetic approach suited to the contemporary mind. The opportunites Paul mentions seem rather ordinary, not
at all new and different. These are just opportunities to do the things
God has always told us to do.
There is also a surprising
epistemology operating here. We are often vexed by questions of how to identify opportunities in our time.
In this passage, it looks pretty easy. There are plenty of opportunities
right here in this chapter. They are as old and scripturally
commonplace as the creation ordinances and the Ten Commandments. This
reminds us that if our overall principle is sola Scriptura, then the first place
to look for opportunities is right on the surface of the
biblical text.
From this we can learn that God
expects us to obey what we know of his will before expecting him to give
us wisdom to discern the more obscure opportunities, to obey him in
the commonplace areas before we get the opportunity to obey him
in some exotic way. As we saw in Heb. 5, God
gives his deepest lessons to those who have developed by his grace habits
of righteousness, who have won battle after battle against the devil.
It is those people who have been faithful in small things to whom the Lord
will give greater responsibility.
The Opportunity For
Conquest
But I don't want to mislead you to
think that Ephesians 4-6 deals only with simple,
timeless morality. There is a context here. Paul is very much aware of his
own time. The obedience of the Christians in this passage is constantly
set against the background of the darkness of the world. Chapter four
tells us how the Ephesians came out of paganism,
how through grace God enabled them to live lives radically different from
their pagan neighbors. They put off the old self and put on the
new (4:22-24). When they live obediently, they send a bright
light into the darkness. We are light, as Paul says, reflecting Jesus's
statement, "you are the light of the world."
So chapters 4-6 of Ephesians are not a mere ethical treatise; rather,
they are a battle plan. Living a holy life is not only good in itself,
though it is that; it is a way of winning a spiritual battle, as Paul
emphasizes in 6:10-18. It is a way of advancing God's kingdom against the
forces of Satan. It is pre-eminently an "opportunity."
The light of godly Christian behavior
exposes the evils of paganism for what they are, 5:11-14. It convicts the
world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, as Jesus said his Holy
Spirit would do in the world. It also brings the truth before the
world, as believers are buckled with the truth, shod with the gospel
of peace, armed with the word of God; this is Great
Commission language. This passage has an evangelistic thrust.
We should then add this to our
understanding of the passage: that the daily obedience of believers to
God's commands in word and life, their practical holiness, is itself a
powerful force for the kingdom of God. It rebukes and evangelizes
those outside of Christ. Imagine what a tremendous power it would be
in our society today if all believers were simply to do the
things they know they ought to do! To pray, to witness to the lost,
to help the poor, to be hospitable, to be sexually pure, to love
and be submissive to one another in the family and church. To
trust God through pain and sorrow. If everybody in our churches behaved that
way, how our society would be changed, and what a powerful witness it
would be to the unbelieving world! Instead, we read for example that the
level of premarital sex, for instance, among evangelical young people is
about the same as in the general population. The world sees that, and
winks.
As I said before, we haven't yet had
any really stiff persecution in this country during our lifetimes; God
doesn't expect much of us. Cannot we bring ourselves to carry out
some simple obedience? And can we expect that God will
provide exciting new breakthrough-opportunities if we cannot do
these little things which he makes so clear to us in his word?
Prioritizing God's
Commands
There is a bit of complication which
enters at this point, however. We want to obey the commands of God.
Sometimes, however, we must choose which command of God to obey at
a particular time. That sounds a bit strange; I've explained it rather
fully in my book Evangelical Reunion.
Let me just say here that we cannot obey all of God's commands at once. We
cannot pray, evangelize, teach our children, help the poor, seek
social justice, all at the same time. We have to postpone some of
them in order to do others. That means that we have the
responsibility to prioritize God's commands. That sounds very
suspicious, doesn't it? We want to say that all of God's commands
are absolute; all are of ultimate importance. How can we dare
to arrange them on a scale of
relative importance?
Well, some distinctions need to be
made. God's negative commands must, of course, be obeyed instantly and for
all time. "Don't commit adultery" means stop it now if you're
doing it, and never do it again. Some positive commands are also to be
obeyed instantly and for all time, like the command to believe in
Jesus. But sometimes God commands us to do things that take
definite periods of time to do, and he doesn't tell us when or
where. Praying, evangelizing, teaching, giving to the church,
helping the poor are examples of such commands. With those commands,
we must prioritize. We must decide what we are going to do, when
and where. We must decide what emphasis we will place on these.
Every believer should pray, for
example; but there are differences among us here. Scripture tells us that
some people have (or had) the "gift" of prayer. Evidently there
is something about the prayer life of such people that is different from
the prayer lives of those who don't have this particular gift. We
are told that Luther prayed for three hours every day. If he did,
I have no doubt that God honored that. But does that mean that it is
sinful for someone else to pray for only two hours a day, or fifteen
minutes? Not necessarily. Some people spend ten hours a week evangelizing
neighborhoods; knocking on doors to make basic gospel presentations.
Luther did not do that, to my knowledge. But I have no doubt that God
honors those who do.
So even with regard to applying
simple divine commands, there is a place for sanctified human wisdom. We
must not only look at the scriptures, but also look at our own individual
gifts and callings, and the needs of the church in a
particular situation. There is, therefore, a place for using
extra-biblical knowledge to determine where we can best expend our
energies at a particular time. And there is a need for the wisdom of
God's Spirit to enable us to make godly judgments in these areas.
Like Paul, we must be aware of where we are in space and time, and
we must seek to do there what God calls us to do.
If there are such differences among
individuals, there are differences among churches as well. In Evangelical Reunion I make the
point that at least some of the differences between churches and
denominations are not over doctrine, but over priorities. In
Presbyterianism, we can sometimes distinguish among churches according to
their relative emphasis on evangelism, doctrinal orthodoxy, or procedural
regularity. We all believe in all three of these things. But some churches
give relatively more time and energy to one, time that is
necessarily not given to the others. Some analysts of the Dutch
reformed churches say that these are divided into "piets, Kuyps and docts." The piets, or pietists, emphasize personal piety; the Kuyps or Kuyperians emphasize the
transformation of culture; the docts emphasize
conformity to the Reformed Confessions. These emphases are not contrary to
one another. The problem is simply that we are finite. None of us can do
everything, so practically our emphases will be different
Here we need to have more love and
understanding of one another. People who emphasize doctrinal orthodoxy
tend to look at those who emphasize evangelism as if the latter group were
not interested in orthodoxy, and vice versa. There is, of
course, room for us to stir one another up to more complete visions
of God's purposes. But our main attitude in such situations should be
one of thankfulness to God that he has equipped others for tasks different
from ourselves. Remember the New Testament metaphor of the body with many
parts. The parts do different things; but none is absolutely superior or
inferior to the others. The head cannot look down on the foot, nor the
heart upon the liver.
What we should not do, certainly, is
simply to insist that everybody do things in the precise way we have been
doing them. Here again, it is important for us to recognize that sola Scriptura is
very different from blind traditionalism. Under sola Scriptura we allow scripture to identify
those areas in which we must all be alike; beyond those areas,
we recognize those spheres in which we are free to be different.
And under sola Scriptura, we
are free sincerely to honor those who differ from us in such matters of
emphasis.
And, if you can bear another point
from Evangelical Reunion: it
seems to me that when we learn to honor such legitimate differences of
emphasis, we will come closer to breaking down the sinful denominational
barriers that today keep Christians from working together. God intends for
his church to operate as one, not as many denominations. Our lack of oneness,
I am convinced, is one important reason for the
church's powerlessness in our time. For a church to be powerful, it
needs to have the full variety of the gifts of the Spirit, and
that means that it must have a wide variety of different prioritizations among the commands of God.
General Priorities:
The Great Commission
We have seen that scripture permits
considerable diversity among us in prioritizing opportunities for
obedience. But there are some general, broad priorities, which all of
us should share. As I pointed out, we are all equally obligated
to repent and believe, to abstain from evil, to pray, to witness
of Christ to the world, above all to seek the glory of God. And
I believe there is also a single task that God gives to all of us as
individuals and as members of His body, a task which encompasses all the
other tasks, and which, therefore, can be described as the task of the church.
That single task is the Great
Commission. In Matt. 28:18-20, Jesus tells his disciples, “All authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with
you always, to the very end of the age.”
Reformed theologians have sometimes
asked how the Great Commission is related to the "Cultural
Mandate" of Gen. 1:28, where God commanded Adam to fill and subdue
the earth. It seems to me that the Great Commission applies the Cultural
Mandate to the situation after the Fall. If we are to fill the earth
with people who will subdue it to God's glory, we must
first evangelize and teach them. As such, the Great Commission has
the highest priority in defining the task of the church.
It has often been pointed out that
the Great Commission is not narrowly evangelistic. It does not single out evangelism as the church's task over against the nurture of those
who are already Christians; rather it includes both. We are to make and baptize
disciples, but also to teach those to obey everything Jesus commanded us.
Clearly, then, there is something wrong with a church which focuses on
evangelism, but in which the new converts remain spiritual babies. On
the other hand, and I think this is the greater danger in Presbyterianism,
there is also something wrong with a church which spends all of its time
nurturing believers and very little time reaching out to the lost. And
there is something wrong with our nurture if we are not teaching our children
how to evangelize, how to make new disciples. People grow best,
they receive the best nurture, not in a hothouse that is isolated
from the world, but in an environment where people are
constantly leading others to Christ and discipling
them.
I mentioned in the first lecture our
historic tendency as Presbyterians to withdraw from the world, to be
suspicious of evangelism and of involvement in society. A sola Scriptura Presbyterianism
will not withdraw, but will reach out in simple obedience to claim those
for whom Christ died.
Placing the Great Commission as our
first priority will affect many other things we do. It will challenge us
to train our people in evangelism. It will remind us also that even
our worship must be intelligible to visitors, so that they will
fall down and exclaim that God is in our midst.
Great Commission churches will think
less of themselves and more of "seekers." I agree with my former
pastor Dick Kaufmann that churches should not be "seeker driven," but they should be "seeker
sensitive." The ultimate authority for our ministry comes not from
the preferences of unbelievers, but from the word of God. But for that
same reason, we are not to be governed by our own preferences either, by
what makes us comfortable. It is not ultimately important what music we
like, or how long we like to sit, or how big a church we like to
have, or how Presbyterians have always done things, our
historical traditions. God's word is important, and that word tells us
to sacrifice our preferences for the needs of others,
particularly the desperate need of the lost.
I do believe that God is calling us
Presbyterians to a style of church life, a style of worship, teaching, and
nurture, which is far more centered on evangelism than our tradition
has historically been. Some have observed that the American Presbyterians
lost the frontier in the early nineteenth century to the Baptists,
Methodists, cultists, and secularists. Various reasons have been proposed,
such as an unbalanced emphasis on an educated ministry, an unwillingness
to make the best use of ruling elders and deacons, and so on. I think
there is truth in these analyses; but perhaps we can sum it up by saying
that for the Presbyterians in those days evangelism was not a high
enough priority. They missed that crucial opportunity; and
Reformed Christianity has been trying ever since to make up for that
loss. In our time, we need to be very clear as to what the task of
the church really is. That task must be taken from the scriptures, sola Scriptura,
not from tradition or from our human preferences. That task
Techniques and
Strategies
It is the Great Commission also, I
believe, that helps us answer questions about the use of
"techniques" and "strategies." I am not one who
condemns modern techniques or strategies with a broad brush. As I argued, sola Scriptura does not shut us up to doing only things that are mentioned in scripture.
And the sovereignty of God in scripture is never opposed to human responsibility;
God uses human beings to accomplish his great purposes, and he calls them
to use the best means, the best techniques and strategies, they can use.
Surely there are some techniques developed after the biblical period that
none of us would question, such as the use of the printing press, or
the microphone, or the tape recorder, to spread the gospel. Nor
do any of us question the legitimacy of teaching and
learning techniques in preaching. God can use a poor sermon, and he
can withhold his blessing from one which is technically very
good. But he certainly calls us in preaching as much as anywhere
else to do the work heartily,
The same is true for every area of
ministry. When people say that churches should never develop evangelistic
plans, or that we should never plan for church growth, since it is all
in God's hands, they are not really talking seriously. The
early Christians were methodical in spreading the Gospel. They
expected God to add to their numbers through the preaching of
God's powerful word. They used the best human means that were available at
the time. They went where the people were, not where the people weren't.
They went to the synagogues rather than the pagan temples. They spoke the
languages of the people. Paul urged the Corinthians at great length to
carry on their worship, not in unknown tongues, but in known languages, so
that both unbelievers and believers could be edified. And the church
mobilized all the believers to carry the word of God on their lips
wherever they went. All of this was strategy and technique, done in faithfulness
to the Great Commission.
Indeed, you really cannot avoid
strategy and technique, unless you cut the brain out of your head. It is a
simple fact of human nature that you cannot perform any rational action,
as an individual or as a church, without a prior mental intention.
That is, you can't do anything without at least implicitly
planning what you are going to do. The plan may be stupid or
brilliant; but there will always be a plan.
That does not mean, of course, that
every technique or strategy is biblically acceptable. It is hard sometimes
to make judgments in these areas. What about telemarketing? What
about modern sales techniques? (I wish I had a dollar for every famous
evangelist who had a background in sales.) What about attempts to produce
a "user-friendly" atmosphere in our worship services? What about
drama and dance in worship? What about modern styles of music?
We are too close to the end to
discuss these issues one by one. I expect to do some future writing on at
least some of them. But as the conclusion to our "theology of
opportunity," let me make some suggestions on how to reach conclusions
in these areas.
Negatively: we should not resolve
these issues simply by referring to our tradition, or to what we are
personally comfortable with. We should also pay little attention
to objections to modern techniques that are based mainly on
taste, granted that there is a fine line, especially in art and
music, between matters of taste and matters of objective quality.
Positively, we should ask questions
such as the following:
1. Does the technique achieve
legitimate biblical values, such as clarity and intelligibility of
communication?
2. Does it violate any biblical
norms, such as the command against false witness, or the regulative
principle of worship?
3. Does it communicate a false
subtext? For example, does it encourage pride or complacency?
4. Does it spring from a right or
wrong motive on our part? Are we seeking to glorify God and reach the
lost, or are we trying to please ourselves? This question should not be
answered quickly, but reflectively and prayerfully.
5. Does it tend to manipulate people
into ill-considered, perhaps insincere, responses?
6. Does it give people false
assurance, or unjustified fears, as to their standing with God?
7. Does it fit consistently into a
comprehensive plan to evangelize and to teach everything Jesus commanded?
We have much yet to learn from the ancient principles of sola Scriptura and the Great Commission. The questions before us are not easy, but God has promised to give us wisdom when we ask him, and I believe that in many of these areas he already has, in the Bible. I am convinced that discussions of these matters to date have been focused all too much on what is traditional, or up-to-date, or respectable or comfortable or tasteful, and all too little on what God's word actually says. May he honor that word in our ministries as we seek to be more faithful to him, for Jesus sake.