Author Archives: John Samson

Hermeneutics

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4 articles in a row:

“That’s What It Says, but…” by Mike Riccardi

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of proper, sound principles of interpretation of Scripture, and particularly how those principles relate to the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament. Studying hermeneutics is a tricky issue, because, of course, the student of Scripture wants to adopt principles of interpretation that are in line with Scripture. But the question quickly surfaces: How can I derive my hermeneutics from Scripture if I first need a hermeneutic by which I approach Scripture? Isn’t it circular to attempt to interpret Scripture in search of how to interpret Scripture? As Professor Matt Waymeyer has cleverly quipped, it’s sort of like asking how it’s even possible to read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book! Where do we start?

I’m not absolutely sure of all my conclusions yet, but I thought I’d present some of my thoughts. This is a little bit more heady than is probably acceptable for a blog post, but I promise I won’t make it a habit. But let me assure you that I think if there’s a topic that’s worthy of a little extra mental effort, hermeneutics is it, precisely because it is so foundational to how we approach and understand the Word of God. (If you’re interested, you might read Dan Phillips’ classic post on how hermeneutics proved to be a life or death issue for him.)

Scripture is God’s Communication

A fundamental assumption that we must work with is that all Scripture is God’s revelation to man. By means of His Word, God is speaking, or communicating, to human beings. I think this is pretty easily established by Scripture itself.

  • The opening verse of Hebrews tells us that God spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and many ways (Heb 1:1). That is, the Old Testament is God’s speaking to man.
  • The writer continues, “In these last days, He has spoken to us in His Son” (1:2). Christ is the ultimate revelation (Heb 1:3; John 14:9) or explanation (John 1:18) of the Father to mankind.
  • Then, in His earthly ministry, the Son promised that He would send the Holy Spirit to bring to the Apostles’ remembrance all that He said (John 14:26). The product of this promise is the four Gospels, and thus the Gospels are God’s speaking to man in His Son.
  • The Son also promised that the Spirit would guide them into all truth, revealing to them those things which they could not bear then (John 16:12–13). This is the rest of New Testament revelation, and thus Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation are God’s speaking to man in His Son.

To reiterate by way of summary, then, all of Scripture is God’s speaking, or His communicating to man. Therefore, if we’re going to honor and respect God’s revelation on its own terms—i.e., as communication—we must seek to understand it as we would aim to understand any other form of communication. That is to say, in the same way one desires to be understood in a way that neither adds to nor takes away from his words, we should afford that courtesy to the Biblical authors. This is often referred to as the hermeneutical Golden Rule: do unto authors as you would have them do unto you. In his book, Think,John Piper puts it like this:

At the root of [a] coherent worldview and the process of being rooted in the Bible is the hard work of understanding what an author intends to communicate. … When I write something, I generally have an idea that I would like others to grasp. If they construe my sentences in a way different from what I intend, then either I have written poorly or they have read poorly. Or both. But in either case, I am frustrated, because the aim of writing (except for liars and spies) is to be understood. So the aim of reading should ordinarily be to understand what the writer wants understood.[1]

We know that God does not inspire poor writing. We also know that neither He nor the biblical authors were liars or spies. So a fundamental aim of our reading the Bible is to understand what the original author wants understood. We must understand God’s Word through the original authors in a way that neither adds to nor subtracts from their words.

The Normal Sense

I believe the only logical conclusion to be reached from these truths—specifically, that Scripture is God’s revelation or communication to us with the intention of being understood—is that our default orientation to any passage of Scripture is to read it in the plain, normal sense. The old grammatical-historical axiom is valid: “When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense.”

Recently in a discussion about the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, someone was speculating on whether or not the passage had anything to say about the doctrine of eternal security, or the perseverance of the saints. Her thought was that Scripture sometimes speaks of oil as being indicative of the Holy Spirit. And since the foolish virgins originally had some oil to keep their lamps burning, that they at one time had the Holy Spirit—and thus were to be considered saved—and then did not have the Holy Spirit—and thus were to be considered lost. Now, this is a rather extreme example, but at the root of this person’s many interpretive problems was simply the fact that in Matthew 25:1–13, oil just means oil. There’s no reason to go fishing for a deeper meaning behind Jesus’ choice of illustrations. The plain, normal sense of the words leads you to a proper understanding of Jesus’ point.

In his Biblical Hermeneutics, Milton Terry put it this way:

It is commonly assumed by universal sense of mankind that unless one designedly put forth a riddle, he will so speak as to convey his meaning as clearly as possible to others. Hence that meaning of a sentence which most readily suggests itself to a reader or hearer, is, in general, to be received as the true meaning, and that alone.[2]

I don’t believe, based on the passages above about Scripture being God’s communication to man, that God has designedly put forth a riddle. The perspicuity of Scripture keeps us from seeking a “deeper meaning” behind what God has clearly said through the Biblical authors.

Now, of course this does not mean, as is so often charged, that we must be committed to a wooden literalism that doesn’t allow for figures of speech. Understanding language in its plain, normal sense allows for someone to interpret a metaphor as a metaphor, hyperbole as hyperbole, sarcasm as sarcasm. If I say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!” you shouldn’t start looking for a really big grill. But neither should you conclude that I have very inimical feelings toward all things equine. Given the conventions of language, you should understand that I’m using a common, agreed-upon figure of speech to emphasize my hunger.

And so, when Micah prophesies that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), we don’t need to find some symbolism about Messiah being Yahweh’s provision of spiritual nourishment from the “house of bread” (HT). We understand that that was a prophecy about the literal birthplace of Messiah. And yet at the same time, when Jesus says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life” (John 6:54), we understand that this was a figure of speech that pictured a greater reality (Lk 22:19–20).

So What?

Now, some of you—hopefully most of you—might be sitting there saying, “Tell me something I don’t know!” And you’d be right to feel that way. I haven’t said much that sound Biblical interpreters of various theological stripes would disagree with. At least, they wouldn’t disagree with it on paper. But when the implications of these principles get fleshed out, a lot of toes start to get stepped on. Especially in texts like Genesis 1–11, Ezekiel 40–48, and Revelation 6–20. But we’ll leave those issues for another time.

The main take-away from the above discussion is that, based on the conclusion that Scripture is God’s communication to man (Heb 1:1-3), one’s default approach to understanding any passage of Scripture is to understand it in its plain, normal sense. And if we were ever to deviate from that default sense (which is certainly sometimes warranted), the burden of proof is on us to show why that’s a legitimate move. And such evidence must be presented from the text and context of Scripture itself.

God has spoken. What a remarkable truth! And He has spoken to us. What a breathtaking reality! And He has spoken to us clearly. What a marvelous gift! How unfortunate it would be to take an infallible, inerrant, clear text of Scripture and preach error from it because we’ve sought to make it more complicated than it is.

[1] John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 45.

[2] As quoted in Robert L. Thomas, Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2003), 291.

Revealed or Concealed

In my last post, I tried to lay a foundation for an understanding of some ground-level issues relating to hermeneutics, or principles of interpretation of Scripture. Like I mentioned there, studying hermeneutics is rather tricky, because it seems circular to attempt to interpret Scripture in order to glean biblical principles of interpretation. You know, chicken or egg?

I suggested that the way out of this conundrum was to consider the nature of Scripture itself, particularly as defined in the opening verses of the book of Hebrews. From those verses we learned that God spoke, and thus Scripture is fundamentally communication. And based on that, the interpreter’s default orientation to the text is to understand it in its plain, normal sense, just like he does with other communication.

John MacArthur summarizes the point well:

Because God has revealed himself in an understandable, clear way, in keeping with the normal means of human language and communication, the student of Scripture can rightly interpret God’s message in the normal sense in which human language and communication is interpreted. Whether preaching poetry, prophecy, or Paul’s epistles, the student of Scripture is correct if he approaches Scripture with the confidence that God revealed it clearly, and he did so using the normal features of language.[1]

Scripture as Communication vs. New Testament Priority

Now, I also mentioned towards the end of the last post that those foundational principles are not earth-shattering to a faithful, Bible-believing Christian. But when those principles get fleshed out into practice, we do start to see some areas of disagreement. One particular area that is popular right now is how to interpret and understand the Old Testament, especially in relation to Christ and His coming. Some believe (based on what I think are shallow interpretations of Luke 24:27 and John 5:39) that one should find Christ in every verse of the Old Testament. One wonders what he should do if Jesus doesn’t seem to be there. Some respond that we should find Christ in every verse by reading the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament. Some will go as far as to say that the meaning of any Old Testament text cannot be understood without the New Testament. In fact, it seems that this is the majority position among conservative biblical interpreters.

But I think that our previous study presents some problems for that position. What I mean is, to say that the Old Testament can’t be understood apart from the New—and that the New Testament sometimes reinterprets the Old such that the original recipients could not have understood the meaning—is to deny that the Old Testament succeeded as God’s revelation and communication to those to whom it was addressed. Remember: long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets (Heb 1:1). He actually said something to them that was understandable to the faithful Israelite. But to suggest that the original audience could not have understood the intent of the author is to deny the perspicuity of the Old Testament. In that case, it was not light in any meaningful sense, despite the testimony of Psalm 19:8, Psalm 119:105, 130, and Proverbs 6:23. Rather than communicating, it obscured. Rather than revealing, it concealed.

In fact, holding this position would require one to admit the Old Testament did more than conceal. It misled and deceived. For example, throughout the Old Testament God continues to promise what could only legitimately be understood by the faithful Israelite as an earthly reign of Messiah with the nation restored to the land. Yet the majority of otherwise-theologically-sound, conservative evangelicals interpret such passages as God making spiritual promises to the Church, not physical promises to national Israel. Yet it is difficult for me to square such an approach to the text with the reality that Scripture is revealing instead of concealing. Professor Matt Waymeyer summarizes helpfully (see also page 7 here)[2]:

I find it very difficult, however, to accept a hermeneutical approach which insists that the original readers of the Old Testament were left in the dark (and even misled) regarding the true meaning of God’s promises in the Old Testament. This is an outright denial of the perspicuity of the Old Testament. In my understanding of the nature of Scripture, God’s intent was to reveal truth in His Word, not conceal it. I have a difficult time adopting a view that, says, in effect, that much of the Old Testament was intended to be an unsolvable mystery, at least until new light was provided hundreds of years later.

“Have You Not Read?”

Further, Jesus’ own comments seem to contradict the notion that the Old Testament can’t be rightly interpreted apart from the New Testament. His many interrogative indictments of, “Have you not read?” (Matt 12:5; 19:4; 22:31; Mark 12:10; Luke 6:3) demonstrate pretty clearly that He expected the Jews of His day to both (a) interpret the Old Testament on its own terms, since there was no New Testament revelation through which to interpret it; and (b) to interpret it properly, i.e., to understand its true intent.

In fact, this was the way in which the first New Testament believers were to examine this new teaching that Jesus and His Apostles were bringing. God, through Luke, commends the Bereans as more noble because they searched the Old Testament Scriptures to examine the truth claims Paul was making (Ac 17:11). Yet how could that be a noble—much less fruitful—endeavor if the true interpretation of the Old Testament couldn’t be understood without the New as an interpretive grid? Further, how could Paul, in defending himself against the accusations of the Jews, appeal to the fact that he had preached “nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place” (Ac 26:22)? And wouldn’t we have to admit that Jesus was being too hard on the two men on the road to Emmaus when He said, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!”? They should have simply said, “Take it easy, man. How can we understand all that the prophets have spoken? We don’t have the New Testament yet!”

And so it seems rather plain that both Jesus and Paul believed that the true intent of the Old Testament could be understood by interpreting the Old Testament on its own terms.

Honor Christ by Honoring the Text

Now, I’m not arguing that we should preach the Old Testament in a way that would make a contemporary Jewish person comfortable. We must certainly preach the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. But we don’t have to make it Christian Scripture by interpreting it non-contextually. It already is Christian Scripture on its own, because the Old Testament as a whole does indeed point to Jesus as the promised Messiah and King. My point is simply that we can see how all the promises of God find their “Yes” in Christ without twisting some of them beyond recognition. We can preach Christ in every sermon while acknowledging that He is not in every text. This doesn’t make us any less “Christocentric.” This is actually more honoring to Christ because, rather than implying that God has not spoken clearly or reading Christ into texts where He’s not (as if the OT just needed a little help), it respects all of God’s Word on its own terms, as His clear communication.

[1] John MacArthur, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Study Method for Expository Preaching,” in Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching: In Honor of R. Kent Hughes, eds. Leyland Ryken and Todd A. Wilson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 79.

[2] Many thanks to Matt Waymeyer, Paul Lamey, and company at Expository Thoughts for their excellent work on this topic. They have helped greatly to refine my thinking.

Hermeneutics: it’s not life or death… right? (Classic re-post) by Dan Phillips

“Hermeneutics” (plural in form, but used with both singular and plural verbs) is the art and science of Biblical interpretation. It’s the set of rules, held consciously or not, that govern the way you read the Bible. You have a hermeneutical construct, I have a hermeneutical construct. It may be pretty darned good, it may be smelly-awful wretched, but you and I have one.

How one arrives at his hermeneutical position may very well be a chicken/egg conundrum. Does [your-favorite-reprobate’s-name-here] read his Bible the way he does because of his appalling lifestyle? Or does he have an appalling lifestyle because of the way he reads his Bible? Or is the relationship symbiotic, co-dependent?

In my case, doubtless there was symbiosis, but mostly it was the former. I was in a cult called Religious Science, or the Science of Mind. I won’t honor it with a link. I was New Age before New Age was cool. Back then we called it “New Thought,” though it was barely either. (If you’ve ever sung “Let There Be Peace On Earth,” you’ve sung a song cherished by that cult.)

It was your standard panentheistic Christian heresy, very like Christian Science except we weren’t so negative on seeing doctors. Fundamentally, Religious Science taught that God is in all things, and expresses Itself as and through all things. Therefore, we are all expressions of God, and all have within ourselves the Christ-consciousness. “Christ” is the principle of god-consciousness, the I AM, within everyone. Our goal in life was to harmonize our minds with God, and thus to manifest truth, love, joy, stuff.

Dizzy yet?

Now, like most American cults, Religious Science wants to get on the Jesus-bandwagon by mouthing great platitudes about Jesus, how He was a great prophet, a great teacher, a great mystic, the most perfect manifestation of God-consciousness to date. But Jesus was no different than we, and we can all live the same life.

Stay with me, I am going somewhere with this.

The Religious Scientist runs into the problem that Jesus did not say much that sounded like any of that.

And that’s where hermeneutics comes in. See (we said) the problem is that Christians have misunderstood and misrepresented Jesus all this time. They took His words too literally and shallowly, when really they had a deeper, spiritual meaning. When He said to pray, “Our Father,” He was saying that all without distinction are God’s children.

So what about Hell, sin, salvation? No problem; Hell is just the experience of being at seeming disharmony with the One Mind; sin are thoughts out of harmony with the One Mind; salvation is just reaffirming and manifesting your union with the Godhead. See?

Now, the tale of my conversion, and of why I am still a Christian, is a much longer yarn than I will untangle here, except to focus on one aspect: how the Holy Spirit used hermeneutics to convert and save me. (The fuller story is told starting here.)

I learned to read the Bible the Religious Science way from my pre-teen years. I looked for (and found) the “deeper meaning” that those idiot Christians and Jesus-Freaks kept stubbornly missing. It was a mindset, on the level of the reflexive.

But I did keep running into things that He said that jarred even my firmly-set grid. It created a slowly growing tension: on the one hand, we thought Jesus was the greatest Teacher and Prophet and Mystic who ever lived; on the other, He sure expressed Himself poorly sometimes! But never mind; we were always there to “help” Him.

The single greatest snag was John 14:6 — “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'”

Sure sounds as if Jesus was saying what we Religious Scientists all denied: that no relationship with God is possible without a personal relationship with the person, the man, God incarnate, Jesus Christ.

But that isn’t what we thought He meant. It couldn’t be. It would destroy the whole foundation and superstructure. Here is how Ernest Holmes, founder of that cult, explains Jesus’ words: “We cannot come unto the Father Which art in Heaven except through our own nature.” So, what Jesus really meant was the precise opposite of what He seemed to be saying.

That worked fine for me, for a good long while.

But over the period of many months, the Spirit of God did a work on me, convicting me of sin, exposing to me my actual distance from actual God, my God-un-likeness, the multilevel trainwreck that was me.

When I combined the realizations that I basically had found a religion that told me what I wanted to hear, and that I myself wasn’t much better than a drooling idiot in the ways that mattered, it shook me to my foundations — and I started looking at Jesus anew. And I prayed, that God would show me the way to Himself, even if it meant that I had to become a Jesus Freak. (That was the worst thing I could think of at the time.) What did I have to do?

And again loomed John 14:6, giving me Jesus’ answer to my question.

This was the great Teacher, the great manifestation of God, Jesus, clearly laying out the only way I could come to God. But what did He mean? Did He mean that I was my own way to God (with Religious Science)? Or did He mean that I needed to believe in and know Him, Jesus, personally (with the Jesus Freaks)?

I had no idea, but at that point my very life was hinging on a hermeneutical question.

Here’s the line of thinking that the Spirit of God used to deliver me from the deceptive maze of mystical subjectivism.

I took the premise that Jesus was the greatest Teacher, and assumed that a good teacher is a good communicator. He says what he means; his words convey his meaning. He speaks to be understood by his audience.

So then I simply posed this question question to myself: “If Jesus had meant to say that each of us is, within himself, his own way to God, could He have said it more clearly?” To put it differently, do these words best express that thought? The candid, inescapable answer was an immediate No. In fact, if that had been what Jesus had meant to say, He could hardly have phrased it more poorly… in which case He wasn’t much of a teacher at all, let alone the greatest ever.

Then I asked myself this: “If Jesus had meant to say that He Himself personally is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can have a relationship with God apart from relating to Jesus Himself, could He have said that more clearly?” I was forced to admit that, in fact, that thought is exactly what these words most naturally express. (Later I was to learn that the Greek original underscores this very point all the more emphatically.)

That was a turning-point. I had to face the fact that Jesus did not believe what I believe. Jesus did not think God could be known as I thought He could be known.

And that, in turn, threw the question to the decisive fork in the road: who is more credible? Jesus, or me?

Had you said “Hermeneutics” to me at the time, I might have responded, “Herman-who?” Had you further said “Grammatico-historical exegesis,” I couldn’t even have managed that much. But that is precisely what was going on.

Now it’s well over thirty years later, I’ve taken classes in Hermeneutics on the master’s and doctoral level, read books and articles, written on the subject, fleshed out and used an array of principles of interpretation. But still that single method, that simple question (along with its implications), has resolved more knotty issues for me than any other. It’s why I’m an inerrantist. It’s why I’m a Calvinist. It is at the root of my core convictions. In fact, at bottom, in the hand of God it is why I am a Christian.

As I’ve fleshed it out, it is simply a formulation of Hebrews 1:1-2a. The Bible is God’s unfolding Word, and it is God’s Word to us. He speaks to be heard, and understood. Hence its meaning is not a matter for secret-club decoder-rings, arcane rituals, and secret councils composed of a different class. It is to be understood according to the normal canons of language.

Does that matter? It sure matters to me.

It’s what the Lord used to save me.

Walvoord-Camping debate

Decades ago I heard that Harold Camping and John Walvoord, then president of Dallas Theological Seminary, had conducted an on-air debate. Only recently, I found where it could be downloaded and heard online. The debate lasts nearly six hours, and I just finished listening last night.

The debate is interesting and instructive. The moderator, a gracious man, seems stylistically to be on a radio show from the 40s (the crackling sound quality heightens this effect as he speaks); his is an oddly florid tone. But Camping and Walvoord are both straightforward and to the point.

I could do a fairly accurate job of summarizing the six hours like this: for the most part…

  • Walvoord keeps reading Scripture and saying “I think it means what it says”
  • Camping keeps working his decoder-ring hermeneutics to make Scripture not mean what it says

And that’s pretty much it.

For instance, here’s a big clue: Listen for Camping repeatedly cautioning that we must read a passage “very carefully,” or admonishing that we must “let the Bible interpret itself” rather than being devoted to a particularly school “or consensus.” Sounds good? How can you argue against either?

Yet every time, these words signals that Camping is about to explain how Scripture doesn’t mean what it says. It means he is about to twist Scripture. He is about to bring together two things that have no bearing on each other, and make a bus bench in Ohio mean that a hamburger in California is really a cup of tea in England.

Figures; Camping also says that the whole Bible is in parables, and he says that it is is very difficult to understand. Perhaps his version of Hebrews 1:1 reads that God “spoke in incomprehensible code to the fathers by the prophets”?

Also interesting: a caller asks about not knowing the day or the hour, and Walvoord answers. Camping simply declines to answer, which is an exception. It looms large in light of his recent deadly error.

Now, this may sound as if I’m writing the next bit for effect, but it is literally true: around the third and start of the fourth hour, I was thinking very appreciatively about what gentlemen both Camping and Walvoord were, and I was anticipating praising both for their behavior — and then the fourth hour started. Camping became completely unhinged. He launched an absurd attack on premillennialism, listing off a dozen dire accusations, including that premillennialism distorts the Gospel, denies Christ’s kingship, denies Christ’s lordship, denies the Bible’s authority to explain itself, and a veritable pile of verbal manure.

Camping did not just crack in recent years. He’d already jumped the shark at this point.

Walvoord remained a gentleman in his response, more so than I would have. He said something like this: “My, that is a very impressive list of accusations. The only problem is that every one of them is false.” No kidding.

Ominous note.  There was a very poignant moment at about five hours and thirteen minutes. In the course of his answer, John Walvoord warned against the slippery slope that is spiritualization. He observed that many heresies and much liberalism involved the spiritualization of the Bible. And then he said this: “Once you start spiritualizing, there is no telling where you are going to stop.”

He said this in front of Harold Camping who, decades later, after assuring people that the Bible guaranteed that Jesus would return to rapture His own on May 21, 2011, then said, “Oh yeah, about that — oops, sorry, it was actually a spiritual event.”

A second poignant note is that in his attempt at a response, Camping actually — I kid you not — alluded to the Biblical admonition against many people becoming teachers (James 3:1f.)! You can’t make this stuff up. If only Camping had heeded his own words.

Or listened to John Walvoord.

O Christ, What Burdens Bow’d Thy Head!

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The words of this 19th century hymn, written by Anne R. Cousin capture the essence of what we call “penal substitution.” This is the biblical doctrine of Christ dying in the place of sinners as a substitute, bearing in full, the penalty we deserved.

There is a story associated with it too:

“A young of­fi­cer in the Brit­ish ar­my turned away in hor­ror from the doc­trine of this hymn. His pride re­volt­ed, his self-right­eous­ness rose in re­bel­lion, and he said: ‘He would be a cow­ard in­deed who would go to hea­ven at the cost of ano­ther!’

As the years rolled away this man rose to dis­tinct­ion and high rank in the ar­my, and he al­so learned wis­dom.

In his last hours, as he lay on his death­bed, he re­peat­edl­y begged those near him to sing ‘Christ, what bur­dens bowed Thy head,’ call­ing it, ‘My hymn, my hymn!’”

O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head!
Our load was laid on Thee;
Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead,
Didst bear all ill for me.
A Victim led,
Thy blood was shed;
Now there’s no load for me.

Death and the curse were in our cup:
O Christ, ’twas full for Thee;
But Thou hast drained the last dark drop,
‘Tis empty now for me.
That bitter cup,
love drank it up;
Now blessing’s draught for me.

Jehovah lifted up His rod;
O Christ, it fell on Thee!
Thou wast sore stricken of Thy God;
There’s not one stroke for me.
Thy tears, Thy blood, beneath it flowed;
Thy bruising healeth me.

The tempest’s awful voice was heard,
O Christ, it broke on Thee!
Thy open bosom was my ward,
It braved the storm for me.
Thy form was scarred, Thy visage marred;
Now cloudless peace for me.

Jehovah bade His sword awake;
O Christ, it woke against Thee!
Thy blood the flaming blade must slake;
Thine heart its sheath must be;
All for my sake, my peace to make;
Now sleeps that sword for me.

For me, Lord Jesus, Thou hast died,
And I have died in Thee!
Thou art ris’n, my hands are all untied,
And now Thou livest in me.
When purified, made white and tried,
Thy glory then for me!

Public Worship Before Private

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Article: Public Worship to be Preferred before Private by Eric Davis (original source – https://thecripplegate.com/public-worship-to-be-preferred-over-private/) – Eric is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in Wyoming. He and his team planted the church in 2008. He has been married for 18 years and has 3 children.

David Clarkson was puritan John Owen’s assistant minister at the end of his life. Clarkson published several works, and went on to pastor in Owen’s place after his death. On one occasion, he preached a roughly 80-minute sermon from Psalm 87:2, “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” The title of the sermon is Public Worship to be Preferred before Private.

The following is a summary of Clarkson’s sermon.

Public worship involves three elements: ordinances, an assembly, and an officer.

1. Ordinances include prayer, praises, the word read, expounded, or preached, and the administration of the sacraments.

2. There must be an assembly; a congregation joined in the use of these ordinances. We cannot put a number on it. However, one or two people, or a family, is to be considered private (not a church), but is not public worship.  

3. There must be an officer. He must be set apart by the Lord, biblically qualified, and affirmed by a church.

Here are 12 reasons why public worship is preferred over private worship; why my quiet time is not a substitute for biblical corporate worship; why a devotional with friends or family is not an acceptable substitute for God’s kind of corporate gathering.

1. The Lord is more glorified by public worship than private.

God is glorified by us when we acknowledge that he is glorious. And he is most glorified when this acknowledgment is most public. A public acknowledgment of the worth and excellency of someone tends more to his honor than that which is private or secret. David was more honored by the public celebration of his victory than if it were in private (1 Sam. 18:7). Seeking to render God the most glory, the psalmist summons all the earth to praise him (Ps. 96:1-3).

2. There is more of the Lord’s presence in public worship than in private.

We understand that God is omnipresent. He is present with his people in private. However, he is present with his people in the use of public ordinances in a more extraordinary manner; more effectually, constantly, and intimately. After the Lord instructed on public worship, he adds, “In every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you” (Exod. 20:24).

The Lord has engaged to be with every particular saint, but when the particulars are joined in public worship, there are all the engagements united together. The Lord engages himself to let forth as it were, a stream of his comfortable, quickening presence to every particular person that fears him, but when many of these particulars join together to worship God, then these several streams are united and meet in one. Thus, the presence of God, which, enjoyed in private, is but a stream, in public becomes a river, a river that makes glad the city of God. The Lord has a dish for every particular soul that truly serves him; but when many particulars meet together, there is a variety, a confluence, a multitude of dishes. The presence of the Lord in public worship makes it a spiritual feast, and so it is expressed (cf. Isa. 25:6).

3. God manifests himself more in public worship than in private.

David saw as much of God in secret as could then be expected, but he expected more in public. Not satisfied with his private enjoyments as much as public, he longed after public ordinances, for this reason, that he might have clearer discoveries of the Lord: “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple” (Ps. 27:4).

Why was this one thing above all desirable? Why, but to behold the beauty of the Lord? As in Psalm 63:1-2, David was in a wilderness; a dry and thirsty land, where was no water, yet he did not so much thirst after outward refreshments as after the public ordinances; and why? “To see Your power and Your glory” (Ps. 63:2).

4. There is more spiritual advantage in the use of public ordinances than in private.

Whatever spiritual benefit is to be found in private duties, that, and much more, may be expected from public worship. There is more spiritual light and life; more strength and growth; more comfort and soul refreshment. When the church inquires of Christ where she might find comfort and soul nourishment, food and rest, he directs her to public ordinances.

Shepherds are pastors or teachers, those to whom the Lord has committed the administration of his public ordinances. To them is the church directed for food and rest, for spiritual comfort and nourishment; and it is commended to her as the known way of the whole flock; that flock whereof Christ is chief shepherd.

Ephesians 4 proves this. Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). The Lord wishes for our fullest edification: “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).  These are the ends for which the Lord Jesus gave his church public officers and ordinances; and they will never fail of these ends if we fail not in the use of them.

Asaph had private helps as well as we, but his temptations were not conquered until he went into the sanctuary (Ps. 73:16-17). Thus there is more spiritual advantage in public worship than in private, and therefore it is to be preferred.

5. Public worship is more edifying than private.

In private you provide for your own good, but in public you do good both to yourselves and others. And that is a received rule, that good is best which is most diffusive, most communicative. “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together” (Ps. 34:3).

Live coals, if separated, and lay them asunder, will quickly die; but while they are together, they serve to continue heat in one another. We may quicken one another, while we join in worshipping God; but deadness, coldness, or lukewarmness may seize upon the people of God, if they forsake the assembling of themselves together. It is more edifying, and therefore to be preferred.

6. Public ordinances are a better security against apostasy than private.

In times of compromise, this is especially pertinent. He that wants the public ordinances, whatever private means he enjoys, is in danger of apostasy (cf. Heb. 10:24-26). David was as much in the private duties of God’s worship as any, while he was in banishment; yet, because he was thereby deprived of the public ordinances, he looked upon himself as in great danger of idolatry: “…for they driven me out today so that I would have no attachment with the inheritance of the Lord, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods’” (1 Sam. 26:19).

We have many instances nearer home to confirm this. Is not the rejecting of public ordinances the great step to the woeful apostasies amongst us? Who is there falls off from the truth and holiness of the gospel into licentious opinions and practices, that has not first fallen off from the public ordinances? Who is there in these times that has made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience, who has not first cast the public worship of God overboard? The sad issue of forsaking the public assemblies (too visible in the apostasy of divers professors) should teach us this truth, that public ordinances are the great security against apostasy, a greater security than private duties, and therefore to be preferred.

Public worship stabilizes us from being tossed to and fro (Eph. 4:14). No wonder if those that reject the means fall short of the end; no wonder if they be tossed to and fro, till they have nothing left but wind and froth. This was the means which Christ prescribed to the church, that she might not fall away.

7. The Lord does his greatest works through public worship.

The most wonderful things that are now done on earth are wrought in the public ordinances, though the commonness and spiritualness of them makes them seem less wonderful. Here the Lord speaks life unto dry bones, and raises dead souls out of the grave and sepulchre of sin, wherein they have lain putrefying many years. Here the dead hear the voice of the Son of God through his messengers, and those that hear do live. Here he gives sight to those that are born blind; it is the effect of the gospel preached to open the eyes of sinners, and to turn them from darkness to light. Here he cures diseased souls with a word, which are otherwise incurable by the utmost help of men and angels. He sends forth his word, and heals them; it is no more with him but speaking the word, and they are made whole. Here he dispossesses Satan, and casts unclean spirits out of the souls of sinners that have been long possessed by them. Here he overthrows principalities and powers, vanquishes the powers of darkness, and causes Satan to fall from heaven like lightning. Here he turns the whole course of nature in the souls of sinners, makes old things pass away, and all things become new.

The Lord has not confined himself to work these wonderful things only in public; yet the public ministry is the only ordinary means whereby he works them. And since his greatest works are wrought ordinarily by public ordinances, and not in private, therefore we should value and esteem the public ordinances before private duties.

8. Public worship is the nearest resemblance of heaven.

In heaven, so far as the Scripture describes it to us, there is nothing done in private; nothing in secret; and all the worship of that glorious company is public. The innumerable company of angels, and the church of the first-born, make up one general assembly in the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22, 28). They make one glorious congregation, and so jointly together sing the praises of him that sits on the throne, and the praises of the Lamb, and continue employed in this public worship to eternity.

9. The examples of the most renowned servants of God have preferred public worship before private.

It was so in the judgment of those who were guided by an infallible Spirit; those who had most converse with God, and knew most of the mind of God; and those who had experience of both, and were in all respects the best, the most competent judges. This was David’s heart (Ps. 84:1-2). Longing, nothing else could satisfy. Fainting, it was his life; he was ready to faint; to die, for want of it. “For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps 84:10).

David was at this time a king, either actually or at least anointed. Yet, he professes he had rather be a doorkeeper where he might enjoy God in public, than a king where deprived of public worship. He would choose rather to sit at the threshold, as the original is, than to sit on a throne in the tents of wickedness; in those wicked, heathenish places where God was not publicly worshipped.

Hezekiah and Josiah were the two kings of Judah of highest esteem with God, as he has made it known to the world by his testimony of them. Now what was their eminency but their zeal for God? And where did their zeal appear, but for the public worship of God? (2 Chron. 29:2, 8; 34; 35).

The apostles also, and early Christians bear record of this. How careful were they of taking all opportunities that the word might be preached, and the Lord worshipped in public! How many hazards did they run; how many dangers; how many deaths did they expose themselves to by attempting to preach Christ in public! Their safety, their liberty, and their lives were not so dear to them as the public worship; whereas, if they would have been contented to have served the Lord in secret, it is probable they might have enjoyed themselves in peace and safety. The Lord, how much soever above us, did not think himself above ordinances, though he knew them then expiring; nor did he withdraw from public worship, though then corrupted. Nay, he exhorts his disciples to hear them who publicly taught in Moses’s chair, though they had himself, a far better teacher. You find him frequently in the synagogues, in the temple, and always at the Passover. His zeal for public worship was such, as they apply that of the psalmist to him, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.”

10. Public worship is the most available for the procuring of the greatest mercies, and preventing and removing the greatest judgments.

The greatest mercies are those that are most available and of most benefit to an entire nation or church. Public worship is the most effective in declaring the Lord’s mercies, for example, in diverting corporate calamities. An example of this is Joel 2:15-16.

Jehoshaphat also serves as an example (2 Chron. 20:4, 9, 15, 28). A corporate declaration was made, seeking the Lord’s mercy. And a corporate mercy was granted. The Lord provided an extensive corporate mercy to Nineveh in response to the preaching of Jonah to the nation (Jonah 3:4-5, 10). Peter was spared by the mercies of God through the corporate prayer of the church (Acts 12:5). The church received an animated corporate blessing in response to their corporate prayer (Acts 4:31).

11. The precious blood of Christ is most interested in public worship, and that must needs be most valuable which has most interest in that which is of infinite value.

The grace of Christ’s finished work on the cross seems to have higher influence on public worship than private. In corporate worship, Christ is uniquely recalled as crucified before our eyes (e.g. in preaching and the Lord’s Supper). As such, we are reminded that we are the purchased of Christ, and thus the gifts of his triumph over sin and Satan. In Ephesians 4, Paul pulls from the idea that triumphant conquerors would distribute gifts among the citizens. Those gifts, in the church, are public officers, and consequently public ordinances to be administered by those officers (vv. 11-12). How valuable are those ordinances, which are the purchase of that precious blood, and which are the gifts Christ reserved for the glory of his triumph!

12. The promises of God are more to public worship than to private.

Scripture gives several examples of how this is true. The Lord promises his presence in the places before claimed (Exod. 20:24). Protection and direction are promised (Isa. 4:5). The Lord was to the assemblies of his people as a pillar of cloud and fire (Exod. 13:21). His presence shall be as much effectually to his people now as those pillars were then. As formerly in the wilderness, the Lord, having filled the inside of the tabernacle with his glory, covered the outside of it with a thick cloud (Exod. 40:34), so will he secure his people and their glorious enjoyments in public worship. His presence within shall be as the appearance of his glory, to refresh them; his presence without shall be as a thick cloud to secure them.

We are promised light, life, and joy in abundance (Ps. 36:8-9); life and blessedness (Prov.. 8:34-35); spiritual communion and nourishment (Rev. 3:20). Grace and glory, yea, all things that are good are promised. There is not a more full and comprehensive promise in the Scripture than in Psalm 84:11: “No good thing will be withhold from them that walk uprightly.”

But what is this to public worship? The whole psalm speaks of public worship; and therefore, we must take this as promised to sincere walking with God in public worship. The word “for” (v. 11) connecting verses 10 and 11 explain why David had such a high esteem of public worship; why he preferred one day in God’s house before a thousand; and therefore this promise must have reference to public worship, else there is no reason to use this as a reason.

For these reasons, public worship is to be preferred before private worship.

The full transcript of Clarkson’s sermon can be viewed here.

Origins of the Protestant Bible

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The Origins of the Reformation Bible

Edmon L. Gallagher is Associate Professor of Christian Scripture at Heritage Christian University. John D. Meade is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Phoenix Seminary. They are the authors of The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity.

One of the side effects of the Protestant Reformation was intense scrutiny of the biblical canon and its contents. Martin Luther did not broach the issue in his 95 Theses, but not long after he drove that fateful nail into the door of the Wittenberg chapel, it became clear that the exact contents of the biblical canon would need to be addressed. Luther increasingly claimed that Christian doctrine should rest on biblical authority, a proposition made somewhat difficult if there is disagreement on which books can confer “biblical authority.” (Consider, e.g., the role of 2 Maccabees at the Leipzig Debate.) There was disagreement—and there had been disagreement for a millennium or more beforehand. Almost always, the sixteenth-century disputants pointed back to Christian authors in the fourth century or thereabouts for authoritative statements on the content of the Bible.

But fourth-century Christians themselves disagreed on precisely which books constituted God’s authentic revelation. Especially with regard to the books most in dispute in the sixteenth century—the so-called deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament—the fourth century could provide no assured guide because even those ancient luminaries, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, disagreed particularly on the status of these books.

The deuterocanonical books—as they would come to be called by Sixtus of Siena in 1566—are essentially those portions of Scripture that form part of the Roman Catholic Bible, but not the Protestant Bible. (Sixtus had a slightly wider definition of the term “deuterocanonical.”) In this sense, there are seven deuterocanonical books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees. There are also two books with deuterocanonical portions: Daniel and Esther.

In the sixteenth century, it was not clear whether these books belonged in the Bible or not; different theologians and church authorities took different positions on the matter, and there had never been a council that settled the issue for the entire church. While these books appeared in biblical manuscripts and printed Bibles, it was not uncommon in the Latin Church to question their status. For instance, one of the great publishing ventures of the early part of the century was the Complutensian Polyglot, a Bible printed in multiple languages in the Spanish town of Alcalá (Latin name: Complutum), produced under the oversight of the Roman Catholic Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros and granted permission for publication by Pope Leo X in 1520. While this Bible includes the deuterocanonical books, Cardinal Jiménez explains in a preface that they “are books outside the canon which the Church has received more for the edification of the people than for the authoritative confirmation of ecclesiastical dogmas.”

When Martin Luther debated Johann Eck at Leipzig in 1519 on various Catholic doctrines that Luther rejected, Luther probably did not feel that he was stirring controversy by disputing the canonicity of 2 Maccabees, since Catholic Cardinals in full communion with Rome were doing the same thing at the time. Such a position became unacceptable for a Roman Catholic only after the Council of Trent in 1546 declared all of the deuterocanonical books to be fully canonical, a position that made many Protestants more vehement in their rejection of these books. But the earlier Protestant position had valued these books for Christian edification. When Luther translated them as part of his German translation of the entire Bible, he sounded much like Cardinal Jiménez in describing them as “books that do not belong to Holy Scripture but are useful and good to read.”

Both Protestants and Catholics pointed to earlier times, especially the fourth century, as confirming their own views.

They were both right.

The origins of the Bible stretch back a long way before the Common Era, but the fourth century CE was an important time for the Bible. One could say that the Bible was invented in the fourth century, since for the first time all of Scripture could be—and was—contained in a single cover (see Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus), rather than in small codices or scrolls that included only a few biblical books. It was also a time when some Christians were interested in clarifying which books counted as revelation from God, and which books didn’t. They composed lists of the books of the Bible: these lists were very similar to one another, but they also differed in important ways.

In the West, the biblical canon lists usually (not always) agreed completely on the books of the New Testament. In the East, the New Testament was, again, usually very similar across the lists, though the Book of Revelation was long disputed. But the status of the Old Testament deuterocanonical books in both the East and the West proved challenging. The fourth-century lists in the East—composed by such figures as Origen of Alexandria/Caesarea, Athanasius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Gregory of Nazianzus—omitted almost all of them, but these books found a warmer welcome in the West.

Here we come to Jerome and Augustine, the greatest biblical scholar and the greatest theologian, respectively, in the early Latin church. These two churchmen composed lists of Old Testament books within a few years of each other, during the last decade of the fourth century. As for the deuterocanonical books, Augustine did not even mention the issue within his discussion of the canon; he quietly listed all these books in their respective sections of the Bible.

Jerome, the primary translator of the Latin Vulgate, took the opposite path. Not only did he exclude the deuterocanonical books from his biblical canon, but he was far from silent on the issue. In his most well-known statement on the matter—a preface to his translation of the books of Samuel and Kings—Jerome listed all the books of the Old Testament in (what he took to be) the order of the Jewish Bible, thus without the deuterocanonical books. Then he brought up the issue, asserting that the books we call deuterocanonical are actually “apocrypha” and should be excluded from the Bible.

Like the Protestants and their Catholic opponents, neither Jerome nor Augustine were coming up with a new teaching on the biblical canon—they were both passing along what they took to be Christian tradition as they had received it. Augustine was right that for many Christians, particularly in the West, the deuterocanonical books had functioned as Scripture and appeared in canon lists for decades before the late fourth century. Jerome was right that for many Christians, particularly in the East and those Latin-speakers influenced by the East, the deuterocanonical books had not been considered on par with the other books of the Bible and had consequently been omitted from many biblical canon lists.

Catholics and Protestants have different Bibles today because of the disputes of the sixteenth century, when the opposing sides each claimed that the early church supported their own views.

The bottom line is: they were both right.

Myths About Nicea and the Canon

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Article: No, Nicaea Didn’t Create the Canon by John D. Meade (original source – https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/nicaea-canon/)

John D. Meade is associate professor of Old Testament and director of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary. He has edited the materials for A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22–42 (Peeters, 2020).

Ideas have consequences. One idea that has yielded dangerous consequences is the notion that the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), under the authority of Roman emperor Constantine, established the Christian biblical canon.

Did the Bible originate from a few elite bishops selecting which books to include? Should we credit a Roman emperor with creating the Bible? No. This falsehood has been used to cast suspicion on the origins of the canon, which undermines the Bible’s authority.

Dan Brown’s 2003 bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, planted this idea in our culture, and many now think Constantine or Nicaea established the Bible. But Brown didn’t invent this story. He only perpetuated it through his fiction. (Same goes for popular spy novelist Daniel Silva’s latest book, The Order. He admits in an author’s note: “Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy will no doubt take issue with my description of who the evangelists were and how their Gospels came to be written.”)

Nicaea and the Canon in History

There is no historical basis for the idea that Nicaea established the canon and created the Bible. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity and other early evidence show that Christians disputed the boundaries of the biblical canon before and after Nicaea. For example, even lists from pro-Nicaean fathers such as Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. AD 350) and Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. AD 367) don’t agree on the inclusion of Revelation. None of the early records from the council, nor eyewitness attendees (Eusebius or Athanasius, for example), mentions any conciliar decision that established the canon.

In the preface to his Latin translation of Judith, Jerome wrote:

But since the Nicene Council is considered (legitur lit. “is read”) to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request (or should I say demand!).

Could Jerome be referring to a formal decision to include Judith in the canon? That’s unlikely.

The earliest adopters of Nicene orthodoxy—from Athanasius to Gregory of Nazianzus to Hilary of Poitiers to Jerome himself—don’t include Judith in their canon lists. If a decision was made at Nicaea on the canonicity of Judith, the earliest adopters would’ve listed it among the canonical books. But they don’t. Rather, Jerome is probably describing discussions in which some fathers may have referred to Judith as scriptural. In any case, these discussions didn’t end in a formal conciliar decision on the canon’s boundaries. It seems Jerome’s statement, though, was later misunderstood to say that Nicaea decided on the canon, which leads us to the rest of the story.

Nicaea and the Canon in Legend

The source of this idea appears in a late-ninth-century Greek manuscript called the Synodicon Vetus, which purports to summarize the decisions of Greek councils up to that time (see pages 2–4 here). Andreas Darmasius brought this manuscript from Morea in the 16th century. John Pappus edited and published it in 1601 in Strasburg. Here’s the relevant section:

The council made manifest the canonical and apocryphal books in the following manner: placing them by the side of the divine table in the house of God, they prayed, entreating the Lord that the divinely inspired books might be found upon the table, and the spurious ones underneath; and it so happened.

According to this source, the church has its canon because of a miracle that occurred at Nicaea in which the Lord caused the canonical books to stay on the table and the apocryphal or spurious ones to be found underneath.

From Pappus’s edition of the Synodicon Vetus, this quotation circulated and was cited (sometimes as coming from Pappus himself, not the Greek manuscript he edited!), and eventually found its way into the work of prominent thinkers such as Voltaire (1694–1778). In volume 3 of his Philosophical Dictionary (English translation here) under “Councils” (sec. I), he writes:

It was by an expedient nearly similar, that the fathers of the same council distinguished the authentic from the apocryphal books of Scripture. Having placed them altogether upon the altar, the apocryphal books fell to the ground of themselves.

A little later in section III, Voltaire adds:

We have already said, that in the supplement to the Council of Nice it is related that the fathers, being much perplexed to find out which were the authentic and which the apocryphal books of the Old and the New Testament, laid them all upon an altar, and the books which they were to reject fell to the ground. What a pity that so fine an ordeal has been lost!

Voltaire earlier mentions that Constantine convened the council. At Nicaea, then, the fathers distinguished the canonical from the apocryphal books by prayer and a miracle. The publication of Pappus’s 1601 edition of Synodicon Vetus—and the subsequent citing of the miracle at Nicaea, especially by Voltaire in his Dictionary—appears to be the reason Dan Brown could narrate the events so colorfully and why many others continue to perpetuate this legend.

Matter of Authority

As our culture becomes increasingly secular, many will continue to cast doubt on the Bible’s origins and especially on early Christianity’s role in the canon’s formation. Although the history of the canon is a bit messy at junctures, there is no evidence it was established by a few Christian bishops and churches convened at Nicaea in 325.

Christians need to prepare their minds for action in this age and confidently assert that the biblical canon is the work of God, recognized by churches over many years’ time. In the vivid words of J. I. Packer, “The church no more gave us [the] canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.”

Further Reading: