Chapter 5: Why Human Language Is Unclear. The reason that Bible-believing Protestants and evangelicals are so divided today is not because the Reformation eventually was derailed; no, it's because the Reformation was never on the right track to start with. In fact, an astute observer in the days of Martin Luther could have quite easily predicted the result of the Reformation: the splintering of the body of Christ.
The reason I say this is that, almost to a man, the Reformers failed to recognize—or refused to admit—that most passages in Scripture are capable of being interpreted in more than one way. Instead, the Reformers steadfastly maintained that Scripture is quite clear and unambiguous. Persons who did not interpret Scripture the way any particular Reformer did were simply enemies of God who refused to accept what Scripture plainly teaches. For example, Martin Luther brazenly declared that Scripture is totally clear.
He denounced those who said otherwise with every invective imaginable. Now, I'm reading you several quotes from "The Bondage of the Will" by Martin Luther. "Therefore, come forward, you and all the sophists together, and produce any one mystery which is still abstruse in the Scriptures. But if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from the obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding.
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 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. In a word, if the Scripture be obscure or ambiguous, what need was there for its being sent down from heaven?
But I fear I must already be burdensome, even to the insensible, by dwelling so long and spending so much strength upon a point so fully clear. But it was necessary that the impudent and blasphemous saying, 'The Scriptures are obscure,' should thus be drowned. Therefore, they who deny the all-clearness and all-plainness of the Scriptures leave us nothing else but darkness." End quote. Somehow the Reformers never came to grips with the obvious.
If the Scriptures are all-clear and all-plain, then why were the Reformers themselves unable to agree on what the Scriptures teach? Why did the Reformation, with its slogan of sola scriptura, create such a patchwork of conflicting denominations and sects? Sadly to say, the Bible-believing Protestant churches have never recovered from the obstinacy of Martin Luther. Christians today still impetuously assert that the Scriptures are completely clear and can reasonably be interpreted in only one way.
Yet those very same Christians are quite unable to agree on just what it is that the Scriptures clearly teach. That is why I said, at the outset, that this is a book about honesty. If we cannot be honest about ambiguities in Scripture, we will never be able to find the true meaning of Scripture. And we will never be able to be one body again. Next subheading: "This Is Not an Attack on Scripture." Let me make it quite clear that I strongly believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture.
I believe it to be the only inspired source of written authority for Christians. Recognizing the ambiguity of human language is not an attack on the authority or inspiration of Scripture. It is simply being honest. The problem is not that there is some sort of deficiency in Scripture, but that our languages are not a perfect means of communication. As an attorney, I have experienced firsthand the difficulty of drafting a contract that is not capable of being interpreted in more than one way.
Even when I write a contract with the utmost care, I often find that there are still some ambiguous statements in it. And when we attorneys try to draft a contract that covers all contingency and is free of all ambiguities, we usually end up with something nearly as thick as a telephone book. Usually, nobody but another attorney can even understand it. It's for good reason that God didn't use attorneys to write the Bible. Of course, the Holy Spirit's means of communication are infinite.
But God chose to communicate His truths through our finite human languages, just as He has chosen imperfect humans to be His co-workers. After Paul had been caught up in the paradise, he said the things he heard were inexpressible in human language (2 Corinthians 12:4). Perhaps many of other God's truths are inexpressible in our languages. Next subheading: "Why Human Language Is So Inexact." A few months ago, my wife Deborah and I went out to eat at a restaurant with another couple, Rhonda and David.
Rhonda and I both ordered chicken for our main course. Rhonda ordered the pineapple chicken along with a baked potato. I ordered the Santa Fe chicken along with rice. When our server brought the meals to our table, Rhonda and I looked at the tray in dismay. My Santa Fe chicken came with her baked potato, and her pineapple chicken was sitting quite attractively on my bed of rice. Our original waiter noticed that there was some problem, and he quickly came over to our table to find out what was wrong.
When we told him about the mix-up, he apologized and very politely asked us, "Would you like for me to handle it for you?" Rhonda and I both quickly replied that we would. Then, as we sat there watching, to our utter astonishment, the waiter grabbed hold of the pineapple chicken with his hands and placed it on Rhonda's plate with her baked potato. Then he picked up the Santa Fe chicken with his hands and dropped it on my bed of rice. To say that we were all quite stunned would be an understatement.
This wasn't a truck stop. As the waiter nonchalantly walked away, Rhonda muttered under her breath, "I wonder where his hands have been today." Why did his actions astonish us? It was because Rhonda and I had assumed that when the waiter asked, "Do you want me to handle it for you?" he meant, "Do you want me to take care of it for you?" That's the fourth definition of "handle" in my Webster's dictionary.
However, the waiter was meaning, "Do you want me to touch it with my hands?" That's the first definition of "handle" in Webster's dictionary. As a lawyer, I know all too well how this sort of misunderstanding happens every day. Virtually every word in the English language has more than one meaning. Flip through a collegiate dictionary sometime, and you will see what I mean. In fact, a large percentage of our words have three or more possible meanings.
For example, my dictionary gives 44 different meanings for the word "hand." When words are joined together in a sentence, it usually eliminates most of the possible meanings. Yet it still often leaves us with more than one possibility. This situation is not unique to English. Other languages are similar, so it's not the fault of Scripture that many Bible passages could be interpreted in more than one way. It's simply a reflection of our imperfect human languages.
Next subheading: "Other Reasons Why Scripture Is Unclear." The ambiguity of human languages would be enough by itself to create ambiguity in Scripture. However, the problem is further complicated by the fact that our Bible is a collection of works written during a span of about 1,500 years by about 40 different men. The New Testament alone was written by at least 8 different writers over a period of 50 years. The majority of the New Testament works are letters, often written to a specific person or congregation.
It should come as no surprise, then, that we sometimes find that the literal language of one part of Scripture contradicts the literal language of another portion of Scripture. Perhaps the classic example is the comparison of Ephesians 2:8-9 with James 2:24.
Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works." Yet James wrote, "You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone." I very much believe that the same Holy Spirit inspired both of those verses to be written, and I therefore believe that those verses can be harmonized. But the issue here isn't how those verses can be harmonized.
The point is that they need to be harmonized, because the literal language of those verses is contradictory, or at least seems to be contradictory. The presence of such seemingly contradictory passages in Scripture should come as no surprise. In ordinary speaking or writing, we all say contradictory things. Sometimes, unlike Scripture, this is simply due to our imperfection or forgetfulness. But much of the time, the contradictions come because we are addressing different issues at different times.
A statement we make on one occasion is not necessarily intended to apply to another occasion or another issue. Let me give you an illustration. One of the first secretaries I had was a mature woman who liked to second-guess everything I wrote. Sometimes she would come back to me with a letter I had dictated and say something like, "Are you sure this is what you want to say?
Wouldn't it sound better if you said such-and-so?" Sometimes her comments were helpful, but oftentimes she merely wasn't familiar with the language we attorneys use when writing to one another. On several occasions, she simply took it upon herself to change things I had written without asking me. So on one day, with a bit of irritation in my voice, I told her, "When I dictate a letter to you, please type it just the way I dictated it.
Don't change a thing." Several years later, I was working with a younger secretary. Her shortcoming was just the opposite. With her, it was garbage in, garbage out. If there was a glitch in the dictating equipment and some words of a sentence got left out, she would just go on typing, ignoring the fact that what she was typing didn't make any sense. If I addressed a letter to a Mr. Smith, but then in my absent-mindedness began the letter with, "Dear Mr. Jones," she would type it exactly the way it was given.
So one day I told her, "Look, when I give you something to type, think about what you're typing. If it doesn't make sense, come and ask me. Don't just type it the way it is." So here I gave almost opposite instructions to these two secretaries. Was this because I didn't know what I really wanted? No, I knew what I wanted. Neither set of instructions was intended to be a complete set of guidelines by itself. I was addressing different situations at different times. So I said differing things to fit the occasions.
We find similar situations in Scripture. For example, Jesus told the Pharisees, "He who is not with me is against me," in Luke 11:23. Yet later he told his disciples, "He who is not against us is for us," in Mark 9:40. Did Jesus not know what he meant? Of course he did. He simply was addressing two different groups of people about differing issues. Neither statement was intended to be an absolute truth in all situations.
Next subheading: "What Scripture Is Not." Yet there is still another reason that Bible-believing Christians cannot agree on the meaning of Scripture. It's because so many of the doctrines we fight over are never directly or thoroughly addressed in Scripture in the first place. The New Testament does not contain a nicely summarized list of Christian doctrines. It doesn't even contain a basic statement of faith. None of the New Testament works were intended to be theological treatises on a given subject.
So most of the doctrines that we cull from the Bible are from statements that are made while the Bible writer was in the course of addressing some other subject.
A classic example is Colossians 2:11-12, "In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead." Many Christians have used this passage to argue for a particular mode of baptism. And that's not necessarily a misuse of this passage.
However, Paul's subject was not the mode of baptism. He simply made a brief reference to baptism in the course of discussing our relationship with Christ. Once we admit that much of Scripture is ambiguous, we can begin looking for an answer to resolve those ambiguities. However, I'm not going to give you my answer quite yet. Instead, I want to examine with you some of the popular approaches Christians use to resolve these ambiguities. Unfortunately, none of them work.