Is This Really the Issue?
Friends,
I’m commenting on this because it was posted by Lane Chaplin at SOL. Note this quote from near the end: “A single accurate and correct interpretation of every verse and passage in Scripture.” According to who? Did you ever notice how Paul and James use the exact same passage of Scripture and interpret it two different ways–one to support faith and the other to support works? (Concerning Abraham.) Jesus seemed to think differently on matters of interpretation too: You have heard it said, but I say unto you.
I’m not really sure what to make of this. I’m not sure who the narrator is. I’m not even sure who Lane Chaplin is. I’m not sure what the video is trying to say. But is the ADM crowd really the Elijah and those who oppose them really the Ahab? Oh, really?
You know, from where I sit, Truth here is not as much the issue as this video clip makes it out to be. From where I sit, the issue is not those who ‘take a stand for biblical truth’ being opposed by others. Certainly, no one here is opposed to truth. I’ll bet if you asked, you would find that hardly any one on the planet is opposed to the truth. Is the work of the ADM crowd really comparable to the work of Luther? Is this video really cursing ‘us’? I hardly think that ‘we’ are Ahab; I doubt even more that ‘they’ are Elijah.
Who decided what the ‘rules for interpretation’ are? Aren’t they all arbitrary? ‘Rightly interpret Scripture.’ In college, I learned to interpret Scripture by reading a book by Louis Berkhof of Calvin College. Well, as I have gotten older, more learned, I cannot think of a worse way to interpret Scripture than in the manner which a good Calvinist might. And what about the Left Behind stuff? That way of interpreting Scripture might be as bad as the Calvinist/Reformed way. Even Martin Luther, whom this fellow holds up for his wisdom in such matters, was hardly a bastion of biblical wisdom and orthodoxy. I recall that he rejected the letter of James outright, held over much of his Catholicism, and was at least a closet anti-Semite if not an overt one. The point is that everyone has an interpretation; but those who interpret also have the Holy Spirit: Does the Holy Spirit lead people into un-truth?
‘Those who create their own, personal, inaccurate interpretations of the rules are the ones that are causing the problems.’ ‘Untrained pastors.’ Oh, this is really too much. I don’t care what anyone says: After studying Scripture on a daily basis and preaching it regularly since 1994–not long, I grant–but I can safely say: All Interpretation, no matter how much one adheres to the ‘rules of interpretation,’ is a matter of personal interpretation. And, to be sure, application of said interpretation is something else entirely. I can pull 10 commentaries off my shelf on the book of Matthew alone. I guarantee you that no two of them will be exactly the same at every point. (A good book on this is Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson.) And I read the commentaries of people that they would hold up as orthodox. There’s disagreement all over the place–that’s why so many commentary series’ are written in the first place and why every teacher who writes one takes the first several pages to justify the publication of a new one when so many others already exist. If there was no room for correction and rebuke and accountability there would be only one set of commentaries in existence.
Look, the issue here is not a matter of truth, or the rules of interpretation, or untrained pastors. No one is saying truth doesn’t matter. No one is saying the rules of interpretation don’t matter. No one is saying the Bible doesn’t matter. What we are saying is something closer akin to: Mind your own business because each servant will stand or fall to his own master. Or maybe we are saying: It’s one thing to disagree with an idea and it is something else entirely to destroy a person’s reputation or work. It’s one thing entirely to have a theological issue with someone; it’s something altogether different to cast them as an anti-christ, heretic, or an unbeliever. Maybe, just maybe, God is big enough to handle the fact that Scripture is ambiguous enough at points to allow so much variation in interpretation. To be sure, there probably is a line that should not be crossed, but who decides that line?
And, finally, for the fella in the video to suggest, however implicitly, that somehow or other he or ‘those he speaks for’ have the corner on the ‘one, correct and accurate interpretation of Scripture’ is, in my opinion, the height of arrogance. To the dude in the video: Get a grip.
jerry
