perspicuity

[rmwilliamsll]

Several times in the last few weeks the conversations here have hit up against the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture although i don't remember anyone specifically bringing up the term for a more careful look.

for example:
things said like--
so you think only intellectuals can understand Scripture.

or
to be like a child means to have the faith of a child not the mind of one.

the Bible is so clear that.....



so what is the perspicuity of Scripture?
and why is it important for the origins discussion?

i like the confessions quote:
1.7. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear to all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.


the image then was that the hand upon the plow, (ignorant, homespun, rural, agriculture etc) could hold that plow in one hand and the Scriptures in the other and could gain from both.

it is not that Scripture is clear, everywhere and on all topics, but that the essentials are clear enough that the ignorant can understand what is required of them.

But this does not limit any part of Scripture to being simple, it does require study and work to understand even those essentials things.

nor does it mean that everyone will think these essentials the same way. even though in some ways they are clear, it is clear from history that there are deep divisions in what people think about even these early essentials. it may mean that all Christians teach a kernel of truth on these topics or that to be a Christian means to share these core essentials. i don't know.

there's lots more, maybe this discussion will cover them all from someone else's keyboard *grin*

 

[Willtor]

I agree. I also think that things that were once simple and obvious have become decidedly otherwise. You mentioned the common uses of puns by Biblical authors. How about literary styles? Poetic forms? We read Bibles that format their texts differently based on how much the translator(s) knew of such things, but what did the ancient people think? What were their thought-forms and symbols?

Anybody who speaks more than one language knows how difficult it is to translate ideas and patterns of thought.

 

[vossler]

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear to all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

I too like this and believe it to be true.

 

[shernren]

Sometimes I wonder if Arius believed that he was reading Scripture "at its face value", his heretical condemnation notwithstanding.

I think a lot of Scriptural ideas seem "simple" to us because we are living in a society whose paradigms have been birthed from two millenia of Christian thought. Christian ideas which took theologians immense tussling to sort out have become the sinews of Western culture. For example, "love" is the highest virtue (it isn't as evident in, say, traditional Chinese Confucian thought, or in typical Asian culture where "shame" judgments are far more important). Wealth is good, but too much wealth unconsciously incites a negative response alongside the envy - it was not always the case; I'm reading Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose right now, where one of the prominent debates is over "the poverty of Christ" and whether it is appropriate for Christians to possess worldly wealth or not, with some abstaining from posession altogether and some saying immense wealth in the church glorifies God and is the most expedient way to usher in His Kingdom. Just two examples.

We are born, grow up, and learn our thought processes in an intellectual world which has been built on Western Judeo-Christian thought forms. No wonder then we find the Bible "simple": we are meeting the familiar thought-forms in it which we have grown up with all our lives.

Because of that, I don't think God's word is "simple" in and of itself. Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit it is a maze which unbelievers do not understand. I once went for a class on Buddhism where this was very powerfully demonstrated in:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

He pointed out that:

- In Buddhism, desire is the origin of all sorrow, and therefore a God who loves the whole world must be a God of suffering!
- The goal of Buddhism is to escape life with all its desire and suffering, and therefore "everlasting life" would hardly be an attractive incentive.

And even if they received the message, the idea of "being sent down from God" would cause them to imagine Jesus as just another "bodhisattva".

Not everything is self-evident in the Bible. Let us not take that for granted.

 

[Willtor]

Funny that you mention Arius. Yeah, the doctrine of the Trinity did not come cheap. And although I agree that it is taken for granted, today, most people don't understand it (hop on over to General Theology and take a look). In this sense, I think the prevailing Christian view is mistaken twice-over. The first is that it is taken for granted (as you say), and the second is that, even then, it is misunderstood.

I think, today, Arius wouldn't make it very far in any Church that uses "the Apostles' Creed," but most low Churches I've attended don't (even if they do use it as a standard for doctrine). I wonder how many people would notice the difference?

 

[rmwilliamsll]

i think missionaries are one of the first Christians to do, as you put it in another thread recently, map the Hebraic and Greek context to the missionaries field cultural matrix.

if we visualize the mapping as a triangle, Bible to missionaries culture, then their culture to the target culture that they work in, and directly from the Bible to the target culture.

the big issue is the direct mapping, avoiding problems like mumus on hawaiian women.

the problem is exactly what you noticed above, the buddhist context is not the same cultural mapping as the missionaries home culture.

 

[gluadys]

Because of that, I don't think God's word is "simple" in and of itself. Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit it is a maze which unbelievers do not understand. I once went for a class on Buddhism where this was very powerfully demonstrated in:

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

He pointed out that:

- In Buddhism, desire is the origin of all sorrow, and therefore a God who loves the whole world must be a God of suffering!
- The goal of Buddhism is to escape life with all its desire and suffering, and therefore "everlasting life" would hardly be an attractive incentive.

And even if they received the message, the idea of "being sent down from God" would cause them to imagine Jesus as just another "bodhisattva".

Not everything is self-evident in the Bible. Let us not take that for granted.

Very true.

Another aspect of this is that English hides the nuances of the Hebrew and Greek. "Love" in English correlates most often to the Greek "eros" which explicitly focuses on the desire of the lover for the beloved. But the most frequent NT term for "love" is "agape" which is much closer to "compassion" than to "desire". And in Buddhism, compassion is considered one of the highest if not the highest virtue. The authors of the Septuagint chose "agape" to translate the "hesed" of God. When the pioneers of English translation came to the same Hebrew word, they felt "love" was an insufficient indication of its meaning and coined the term "loving-kindness" to bring out the fullness of its meaning.

I wonder how a Buddhist would parse the original terms as compared to their English translation?


Interestingly, I am finally reading a primer on process theology. It too makes the point that a loving God must experience suffering. I have no problem with this. It is fundamental to Christian theology I think. But very different from both the ancient Greek and the Buddhist view.

 

[shernren]

I wonder too. A heretical idea that popped into my head: wouldn't Hinduism see the exercise of Brahma's creation of Maya in Genesis 1? After all, the reality of the world was incepted by a word of God. Surely this means (to them) that the universe proceeds from the mental principles of God and has no real existence in and of itself?

 

[gluadys]

I wonder too. A heretical idea that popped into my head: wouldn't Hinduism see the exercise of Brahma's creation of Maya in Genesis 1? After all, the reality of the world was incepted by a word of God. Surely this means (to them) that the universe proceeds from the mental principles of God and has no real existence in and of itself?

The whole question of what really exists has multiple answers.

Scientism holds that only what can be scientifically affirmed really exists. And so only the material world, the world science can affirm, really exists. Ideas, mental concepts, notions of spirituality are shadowy things, less than real until they are realized in some material form.

The drive of YECism to affirm the literal "reality" of Gen. 1-11 stems from this view that the material world IS the only real world. Therefore, the global flood must have really taken place materially in this real material world. The six days of creation must be real days measured by the material reality of the rotation of the earth on its axis.

At the opposite extreme, Platonism holds that the only true reality, the only thing that really exists, is the eternal immaterial world of ideas or mental forms. Material things have only a very tenuous hold on being; they are shadows of reality, not reality itself. That is why material reality is ever-changing, just as a shadow changes from hour to hour. To exist in the material world is to lose hold of real being.

Basically the same holds in Hinduism and Buddhism. The essence of liberation (salvation) in these faiths is to be able to detach oneself from the illusion that the material world is real and grasp the greater reality of the immaterial world.

The genius of Christianity, I think, is to come somewhere between these extremes--to affirm the reality of both the spiritual and the material, and even more, to affirm both as good.

 

[artybloke]

I can see where this idea of the "perspicuity" of the Bible came from. It came from a desire to get out from under the influence of the priests, scholastics and the Pope: away from a centralised authority who controlled the meaning of scripture.

Now, I don't for one minute think that we should return to such a totalitarion control of scriptural knowledge. But the unintended consequence of moving away from a centralised control of Biblical meaning has been that anyone can come along with an interpretation of scripture and if they say "it's obvious, it's simple," they will find willing followers. It they say that such and such an authority is deliberately obfuscating what really "ought" to be obvious to all and sundry they will find willing people to follow their conspiracy theory.

Thus the idea that the Bible message about creation is "simple", as if a piece of ancient literature could be read as if it were written yesterday. the idea that some unnamed authority is somehow hiding the obvious truth from the rest of the church is very prevalent among the smaller and more fractured denominations. They alone have seen the "obvious" truth - a "truth" which is far from obvious to most other Christians.

Saying that something is "obvious" and can be read easily off scripture can be seen even in those churches with highly complicated and convoluted beliefs about the second coming.

The problem with getting rid of the authority of the Pope, or the Magisterium, is that there is no central authority except an ill-defined idea of the Holy Spirit - who remarkably seems always to agree with "us" - however few "us" happen to be.

 

[Numenor]

Good thread, reps all round.

 

[billwald]

Sounds like the thread author has run into some Reconstructionists/VanTillists. Only they can determine "Truth."