this thread is a response to:
By rejecting all of man's evidence that contradicts the Bible I'm stating that God and His Word are superior to man and his findings. I'm wrong when someone or the Holy Spirit can show me biblically what I believe the Bible to say is incorrect.
from: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=28265446&postcount=4
this is exactly what is wrong with the currently dominating hermeneutic of solo Scriptura or "just me and my Bible".
Not only is it extraordinarily self centered* and a claim of autonomy and the right to judge but it enshrines a faulty idea of how we are to understand the Scriptures.
I think the easiest way to demonstrate this is to think about how i would make such claims.
God is sovereign and His desires and principles are both good and true. As in the image of God i can understand the truth of some of these things but my experience of them will never be complete or exhaustive because i am finite. But my major problem is not that i am finite but that i am sinful. A significant part of what i think is true is not, a signficant amount of the things i do thinking they are the right things are not.
My responsibility then is to understand the Scriptures as closely to what God intends for me as i can, knowing i will never even be very good at it. Therefore i must always reexamine what i think, be aware and searching out things that will help me change my faulty interpretations and challenge the sin that remains within**. I need to look at history and theology for examples of brethren that had a good understanding from God about these things and learn from them. i need to always be reforming, to identify and root out the sin that remains not just in my life but in my thinking.
i am not a good judge of how to read Scripture, i am neither bright enough, driven or ambitious enough, nor do i have the time to do all of this by myself. I am consciously part of an interpretive community that speaks to these issues. I consciously put their understanding and interpretation above my own and struggle to make it my own, learning and discovering what they have to teach me. if i differ i am probably wrong, even though i can not see how(at this moment), my prayers are consistently that God would help me understand as they do, to give me just a piece of this wisdom so i can see these things rightly.
i find it sad that so much of the current evangelical community has accepted this false notion of self-interpretation***, this false notion of solA Scriptura transmogrifying it into "just me and my Bible alone".
it is no wonder that all the attempts here to deeply pursue the meaning of specific verses fractures into a million different interpretations, for these ideas lead directly to solipism. each man under his own tree, reading his own Bible and interpreting it as a autonomous being without any responsibilities towards a community or other people.
sad.
wrong.
notes:
* essentially "you must prove to me" vs. i need to submit and learn from God in the form of other people in a community talking about these things over a long period of time. the default condition is expressly stated to be to "reject all of man's evidence" that contradicts his current interpretation of the Bible which is assumed to be correct and corresponds directly and intimately to God's own interpretation. no separation of "my interpretation" from the very Word of God, they are essentially the same.
**the responsibility is not for the world to come knocking at my door with things but for me to go out looking to correct the errors inside of me that i know are there but invisible to me now.
***the default is that i am right, that any changes to be made have to present themselves to my consciousness, i am not looking or seek for them, just expecting God to cater to me on my conditions, in my good time.
By rejecting all of man's evidence that contradicts the Bible I'm stating that God and His Word are superior to man and his findings. I'm wrong when someone or the Holy Spirit can show me biblically what I believe the Bible to say is incorrect.
from: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=28265446&postcount=4
this is exactly what is wrong with the currently dominating hermeneutic of solo Scriptura or "just me and my Bible".
Not only is it extraordinarily self centered* and a claim of autonomy and the right to judge but it enshrines a faulty idea of how we are to understand the Scriptures.
I think the easiest way to demonstrate this is to think about how i would make such claims.
God is sovereign and His desires and principles are both good and true. As in the image of God i can understand the truth of some of these things but my experience of them will never be complete or exhaustive because i am finite. But my major problem is not that i am finite but that i am sinful. A significant part of what i think is true is not, a signficant amount of the things i do thinking they are the right things are not.
My responsibility then is to understand the Scriptures as closely to what God intends for me as i can, knowing i will never even be very good at it. Therefore i must always reexamine what i think, be aware and searching out things that will help me change my faulty interpretations and challenge the sin that remains within**. I need to look at history and theology for examples of brethren that had a good understanding from God about these things and learn from them. i need to always be reforming, to identify and root out the sin that remains not just in my life but in my thinking.
i am not a good judge of how to read Scripture, i am neither bright enough, driven or ambitious enough, nor do i have the time to do all of this by myself. I am consciously part of an interpretive community that speaks to these issues. I consciously put their understanding and interpretation above my own and struggle to make it my own, learning and discovering what they have to teach me. if i differ i am probably wrong, even though i can not see how(at this moment), my prayers are consistently that God would help me understand as they do, to give me just a piece of this wisdom so i can see these things rightly.
i find it sad that so much of the current evangelical community has accepted this false notion of self-interpretation***, this false notion of solA Scriptura transmogrifying it into "just me and my Bible alone".
it is no wonder that all the attempts here to deeply pursue the meaning of specific verses fractures into a million different interpretations, for these ideas lead directly to solipism. each man under his own tree, reading his own Bible and interpreting it as a autonomous being without any responsibilities towards a community or other people.
sad.
wrong.
notes:
* essentially "you must prove to me" vs. i need to submit and learn from God in the form of other people in a community talking about these things over a long period of time. the default condition is expressly stated to be to "reject all of man's evidence" that contradicts his current interpretation of the Bible which is assumed to be correct and corresponds directly and intimately to God's own interpretation. no separation of "my interpretation" from the very Word of God, they are essentially the same.
**the responsibility is not for the world to come knocking at my door with things but for me to go out looking to correct the errors inside of me that i know are there but invisible to me now.
***the default is that i am right, that any changes to be made have to present themselves to my consciousness, i am not looking or seek for them, just expecting God to cater to me on my conditions, in my good time.