Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Re: perspecuity of scripture
References: <9404280012.AA10802@eurpd.csg.mot.com>

bradk@EURPD.CSG.MOT.COM (Bradley G. Kaiser) writes:

>Here's a problem to puzzle over.  If idea of the perspicuity of Scripture is
>true, then consider the Reformed pastor, who believes in baptizing babies,
>and the Baptist pastor, who is adamantly against baptizing babies.  At least
>one of these folks, if we are to accept perspicuity of Scripture, must be
>"spiritually blind", because they aren't seeing the obvious Scriptural
>truth that babies ought [not] to be baptized.

I think the Reformers were overly optimistic about the perspicuity of
Scripture.  As many have pointed out, there are many issues on which
several approaches can reasonably be viewed as consistent with
Scripture.  However I guess I still hold a somewhat moderate version
of the doctrine:

First, I think the things that are necessary for salvation are clear
in Scripture.  Whether one practices infant baptism does not seem to
be such a thing.

In many classic cases, a fully Scriptural view balances two opposing
emphases.  Examples are faith and works, God's sovereignty and man's
responsibility, Jesus' humanity and divinity.  A lot of the classic
theological debates involve these issues.  In these cases I think
Scripture is actually fairly clear.  The problem is not an inability
to understand Scripture, but a difficulty in constructing a theology
that does justice to it.  I have to say that I'm not as bothered by
this as some people are.  As an example, Protestant and Catholic
theology take rather different approaches to justification and
sanctification.  But I believe the mainstream of current Protestant
and Catholic theology in this area both do a tolerable job of doing
justice to Scripture.  They simply come at things from different
angles.

This does not mean that there are no significant errors in Scriptural
interpretation: I think it's fairly easy to show that the particular
Catholic approach that Luther was fighting had failed to do justice to
much of the Scriptural evidence.  I also think that predestination as
it came to be understood in Protestant scholasticism is just as
serious a problem, though of course in a different direction.  But for
me neither of these things invalidates the primary role of Scripture.
While it's true that there seems to be no limit to people's ability to
read their own ideas into a text, in the long run the plain meaning of
Scripture does seem to get through.

I am reluctant to adopt too cynical a view of Scripture, because it
seems to me that historically, the way errors like this have been
corrected has been precisely by Scripture.  Yes, unbalanced
interpretations do exist, but they are remedied when the full witness
of Scripture comes through, not by abandoning it for some other
authority.  The worst and most long-lasting errors, as well as the
least plausible interpretations of Scripture, seem to me to have been
associated specifically with groups that do have some other authority
that colors their view of Scripture.  This need not mean the Pope,
though I certainly do intend the comment to apply to much of the
history of the Catholic Church.  But it can apply just as much to
churches that think they are Bible-believing.  While I disagree with
Calvin in some areas, he attempted to do justice to Scripture as a
whole.  The most serious problems with predestination didn't occur in
Calvin, but in Calvin*ists*.  As emphasis moved from reacting directly
to the Bible to authoritative Reformed confessions, one lost those
elements in Calvin that tended to balance his predestination, and
ended up with the truly horrible 5-point Calvinism.

In summary, I think we can see a number of things happen when people
try to interpret the Bible.  First, we can see approaches that differ,
but which still try to take into account the full range of Biblical
evidence.  Second, we can see approaches that are based on Scripture,
but which are unbalanced.  E.g. they emphasize free will, or God's
sovereignty, to the exclusion of the other.  Third, we can see
approaches in which some external authority causes Scripture to be
seen in ways that would otherwise be recognized as implausible.

In the first case, I would argue that we should practice more
forebearance than has often been the case in Christian history.  I do
not believe that we all need to have exactly the same theology or
practice.  If Christians in the 5th Cent. had been a bit more willing
to accept multiple theological formulations as possible, I think
Christian history would have gone much better.  (Note that I am not
suggesting the Arius should have been considered acceptable.  But I
think that the battle between those who accepted Chalcedon and many of
those who came to be called monophysite was in a large measure
unnecessary.  There were genuine heretics -- those who emphasized one
thing to the exclusion of the integrity of the whole Biblical message.
But there were also people who simply could not accept that there
might be more than one way to talk about the truth.)

In the other cases, I don't know any good approach but to do our best
to continue preaching the full Biblical view, and to trust that in the
end the gates of hell will not prevail.