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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Only one authority -- the Bible This is a continuation of the former post; Thy Word is Truth Only one authority -- the Bible Faced with this possibility the only satisfactory course is to accept as authoritative nothing but the original teaching expressed by the founders of the Christian church. In other words our knowledge of God must be obtained exclusively from the words of Jesus and the Apostles and any writings whose trustworthiness they endorse. This means that the Bible, and that alone, is the source of the information about God that is so vital for human salvation. By the Bible we mean the whole of both Old and New Testaments. Most of those who claim to be Christians would accept the authority of the New Testament, but some have reservations about the Old. Such a view overlooks the fact that the Old Testament was the only Bible the first Christians possessed. They regarded it as the sole authority on divine matters, they drew their teaching largely from it, and to them a "thus saith the Scriptures" was an end to all argument. This was particularly true of Jesus and his apostles. Christ would round on his opponents with a "Have you never read?", and then proceed to base his infallible teaching on the relevant passage from the Old Testament, quoting the words of such men as Moses, David or one of the later prophets. In fact he made acceptance of the Jewish Scriptures an essential pre-requisite for believing on himself: If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:46-47). "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31). Jesus accepted the authority of the Old Testament because he knew that it was his Father's revelation to mankind, produced by the Holy Spirit power of God acting upon the writers. As the Apostle Peter was later to say: "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:20-21). This compulsion to speak and write the words of God is termed in Scripture inspiration, and there are many examples which show that the writers knew they were speaking God's words, not their own. Here are some samples: "The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, his word is upon my tongue" (2 Samuel 23:2). "Hear the word of the Lord" (Isaiah 1:10). "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord" (Jeremiah 35:1) The Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, are therefore an infallible source of revelation for all time. They represent the words of the unchanging God Himself. This is important for our enquiry into the God of the Bible. One often hears people contrasting the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament, as if there were two separate deities. One is allegedly cruel and vindictive, the other loving and merciful. So if asked the source of the following two quotations: "Our God is a consuming fire" and "In his love and in his pity he redeemed them", many would probably instinctively locate the first in the Old Testament and the second in the New. In fact the reverse is true (Hebrews 12.29, and Isaiah 63.9), and many other examples could be given. So these stereotyped concepts of God are completely wrong. The Bible teaching about God is consistent in both the ancient Jewish Scriptures and the later Christian ones. Recognition of this essential unity of teaching throughout both Testaments is vital for a biblical understanding of God. Turning to the origin and authority of the New Testament we are told that it was written by chosen men within the original Christian community who were also invested with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke to them of this impending inspiration: "... the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:26). This inspiration, Jesus said, would give the New Testament writers the authority of Jesus and of God Himself: "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (Luke 10:16). On this basis the Apostle Paul could claim: "What I am writing to you is a command of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37). Every genuine follower of Jesus should therefore agree wholeheartedly with Paul's assessment of the authority of Scripture as the infallible guide to Christian doctrine and behaviour: "All scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). There is no escaping the meaning of these words. The Scriptures are inspired by God, and are the source of all doctrinal information. In the spirit of this pronouncement the present authors will base their discussions and arguments relating to the doctrine of the Trinity on the Old and New Testaments. The Authority of the Church. But some will say "Surely, this is also the position of the Church. No Christian would deny that the Bible is the ultimate source of appeal in theological questions." It is true that this is the theoretical position, but in practice the authority of the Church itself is given equal or even greater weight than that of Scripture. One of the dominant ecclesiastical figures of the nineteenth century was John Newman, an Anglican vicar who in later life switched to Rome and eventually became a Catholic Cardinal. If he is at all remembered today it is for his hymn "Lead, kindly Light", but in his day he was well known for his prolific doctrinal writings. He wrote about the doctrine of the Trinity as follows: "It may startle those who are but acquainted with the popular writings of this day, yet, I believe, the most accurate consideration of the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the statement as a general truth, that the doctrines in question (viz., the Trinity and the Incarnation) have never been learned merely from Scripture. Surely the sacred volume was never intended, and is not adapted to teach us our creed; however certain it is that we can prove our creed from it, when it has once been taught us ... From the very first, the rule has been, as a matter of fact, for the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching". 3 Notice the clear implication of these words. The Church formulates the doctrines and then appeals to Scripture in an attempt to support them. This is very different from coming to the Bible with an open mind in order to learn what it teaches.4 Another Catholic priest, the Rev James Hughes, was even more outspoken about the real source of Church doctrine in general and the Trinity in particular: "My belief in the Trinity is based on the authority of the Church: no other authority is sufficient". 5 This is a bold, even audacious claim. It alleges that the Church has greater authority in formulating its doctrines and traditions than God*s own revelation to mankind. This simply cannot be right. Way back in the days of Israel*s prophets God castigated those who disregarded His words: "Should not a people enquire of their God? ... To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn". (Isaiah 8:19-20 NIV) Undoubtedly, then, if the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be reconciled with the whole tenor of Scripture, it should immediately be dismissed as spurious—no matter what the Church teaching and centuries of tradition may be. In those comments of Newman and Hughes do we detect some uneasiness among the advocates of the doctrine of the Trinity? If the biblical evidence for the belief is unassailable why does the Church need to justify the doctrine by invoking its own authority? Such a claim suggests that the Bible*s support for the Church doctrine is, to put it mildly, not as strong as is generally supposed. A later chapter 6 will show that many theologians down the centuries have admitted that the biblical evidence for the Trinity is indeed very weak. But not all Christians are members of an Established Church. Many non-conformists and evangelical groups claim to have by-passed the Church and to have gained their teaching directly from Scripture. And they, almost without exception, believe the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet how accurate is their claim that they are guided solely by the Bible and not by church tradition? Professor F.F. Bruce, the noted Manchester University theologian, keenly observed: "People who adhere to sola scriptura (as they believe) often adhere in fact to a traditional school of interpretation of sola scriptura. Evangelical Protestants can be as much servants of tradition as Roman Catholics or Greek Orthodox Christians; only they don*t realise that it is ‘tradition*" 7 The seeker after truth, then, will test every belief by Scripture, and will accept nothing that cannot be clearly demonstrated by the Word of God. But in relying exclusively on the Bible for our understanding of God we must also recognise the fact that the Bible is an ancient book—one of the oldest in the world—and that it was originally written in languages now unfamiliar to most of us, and to a people of an entirely different culture and society. The only way that ordinary people today can understand the Bible is because it has been translated into their own language. Recognition of the fact that the English Bible is a translation — for ease of reading often a rather free translation—must always be borne in mind in our attempt to probe its teaching about God. The Trinity a ‘Mystery* This leads us on to mention another frequent misapprehension about a word often used in relation to the Trinity. We refer to the word ‘mystery*. The doctrine of the Trinity is termed a mystery, and the implication is that the relationship between God and Jesus is therefore beyond our understanding. This is based upon the conventional meaning of the word, which implies something inexplicable or unintelligible. Bishop Beverage in his Private Thoughts on Religion described the Trinity as the "mystery of mysteries" and went on to call it a "heart-amazing, thought devouring, inconceivable mystery". Such a view may have been prompted by a passage about the coming of Jesus in the writings of the Apostle Paul: "Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory" (1 Timothy 3:16). But by using the word translated mystery is Paul really saying that Christ's appearance among men is something impossible for us to understand? Not at all. His word had a slightly different meaning. Rather than describing something inexplicable it meant "what is known only to the initiated" (Young's translation). So the idea is that of secret information which once divulged is clearly understood by the recipient. Jesus used the word in this sense concerning his parables. The crowd could not see the underlying meaning of the stories, but Jesus explained them to his disciples with the comment: "To you it has been given to know the secrets (AV mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables" (Luke 8:10). So Biblical mysteries are in fact Biblical revelations that all who read with care and understanding can readily grasp. The whole purpose of the Bible is to reveal, not to conceal. This is particularly true of this topic of the relationship between God and His son Jesus. If we allow the whole Bible to speak and if we listen to its voice to the exclusion of all others, this "mystery" becomes crystal clear. 8 Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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