wisdom

Studies in The Baptist Catechism: Section One – Authority, Revelation, and Scripture (Q.5 & Q.6)

/ William F. Leonhart III / 2 Comments

Q.5: May all men make use of the Holy Scriptures?

A. All men are not only permitted, but commanded and exhorted to read, hear, and understand the Holy Scriptures.1

1John 5:38; Revelation 1:3; Acts 8:30

Having conducted a survey into the nature of Scripture itself, we now bring ourselves to the consideration of how men are to make use of it. The question is asked of the catechumen, May all men make use of the Holy Scriptures? What does the catechizer mean by the words “make use”? To make use, according to the answer offered, is to read, hear, and understand the Holy Scriptures. The catechism goes so far as to note that we are not only permitted, but are commanded and exhorted to avail ourselves of the Scriptures in this way.

Before we begin to flesh out this divinely ordained obligation, another question needs answering. In the realm of soteriology (the study of salvation), we often ask what the biblical authors mean when they use the term all men. There are two possible definitions of this term: all men without exception, and all men without distinction. It is not readily apparent which is meant by the catechism, so let us consider the implications of both.

If by all men the catechism means all men without exception, we must give a hardy “Amen!” Every single person everywhere is bid to hear the word of God and repent. “30Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead,” (Acts 17:30-31; NASB). The word of God and, therefore, the general call of salvation is to go out to all people everywhere throughout the earth. And, as it comes to each ear, it comes with a divine obligation to read, hear, and understand.

If by all men the catechism means all men without distinction, we must likewise give a hardy “Amen!” for this divine obligation is binding on all men of all positions in all tribes, tongues, and nations. Let us recall the Great Commission:

“18And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age,’” (Mt. 28:18-20; NKJV).

Notice two things. The Great Commission that is given to the church is to go and make disciples of all nations. This means that all men without exception will now read, hear, and understand God’s holy word. Notice that the church is not merely commissioned to make converts of all nations. Rather, we have been tasked with making disciples of all nations. This means that they will partake of at least two local church ordinances. They will be baptized into church membership, and they will be taught all that Christ commanded in the Holy Scriptures.

Read the Scriptures

We can affirm, then, that if by all men the catechism means all men without distinction (people of all positions in every tribe, tongue, and nation) and all men without exception (every single human being on earth), that includes us. How then ought we expected to read God’s word? First, we must have access to His word. That means translation. In order for men and women of all tribes, tongues, and nations to avail themselves of Scriptures, they must have it in the common language of their people. Note what is affirmed in The Baptist Confession (1689):

“The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence pure in all ages, are therefore authentic; so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them. But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to read, and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the Scriptures may have hope,” (The Baptist Confession of 1689, 1.8).

Imagine a missionary from England that goes into a foreign land and in order to bring them the gospel of Christ, but who only speaks to them in English with no translation or interpretation. No matter how much he reads to the people or preaches to the people, that man would be speaking only “to himself and to God” (1Cor. 14:28; NKJV). Of course, there are some King James Only movements that would argue for teaching all nations, or at least the most learned among the nations, English so that they can read the King James Version of the Bible.

This mindset is precisely what our Particular Baptists forefathers were hoping to avoid. For centuries the world was shut up in darkness because of this type of thinking. The church had taken a stance that Jerome’s Latin Vulgate was to be the only translation used by the church. As a result, Latin speaking people had the word of God in their language, but the rest of the world had to rely on priests within the church to explain the Bible to them. This period of church history is rightly called the Dark Ages, because the nations were forced to be in darkness as a result of a refusal to translate the Holy Scriptures into their languages. Hence, as Luther and others began to translate the Bible into the common languages of the people, the Reformers coined a new Latin phrase: post tenebras lux, or after darkness, light!

It is important to note, also, that the post-Renaissance education movement was largely started as a biblical literacy movement. Luther is reported to have written to his princes in Saxony demanding that they educate the peasants, because he was finding that none of them could read the Bible he had labored so diligently to translate into their languages. He reportedly told the princes that it was their duty before God to ensure that their people could read His word.

We are not merely exhorted to read the Scriptures in order to have private dealings with God. In reading the Scriptures, we are able to check what is being taught from the pulpit by the very word of God. “10Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so,” (Acts 17:10-11; NKJV). It is when people are robbed of their rightful access to the Holy Scriptures that they accumulate false teachers to themselves (2Tim. 4:3).

Hear the Scriptures

We are not only commanded and exhorted to read the Scriptures, as though the whole of the Christian life were one of seclusion and subjective interpretations of God’s word. Rather, we are also commanded and exhorted to hear God’s word. This brings us to the primary way by which God has promised to work in His church: the public reading and preaching of Scripture.

Over and over again, we are told in Scripture to attend to the public reading and preaching of Scripture. In Antioch, nearly the whole city (Gentiles) came together on the Jewish Sabbath to hear the word of God from the apostles, inciting the Jews to jealousy. Many of the Gentiles received the word with gladness, but they apostles were persecuted and driven out by the Jews (Acts 13:44-50).

Paul binds up saving faith in the preaching of the word of Christ: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ,” (Rom. 10:17; NASB). For this reason, he exhorts his protégé Timothy to “give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching,” (1Tim. 4:13; NASB). The author of Hebrews goes further by exhorting even the hearers to attend faithfully to the public worship of God:

“23Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching,” (Heb. 10:23-25; NKJV).

The preaching of the word of God holds a certain primacy in God’s redemptive economy. It is through the proclamation of God’s word, by God’s ordained ministers, that He has promised to unite His people in truth. Paul tells the church at Ephesus:

“11And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” (Eph. 4:11-13; NKJV).

It is thus through the hearing of God’s word that He has determined, primarily, to work in and through His people. When the church is given either to private interpretations or to untested teaching from the pulpit, the church is opened up to error and to division. This is how cults start. Either men and women come up with doctrines that the church has never believed through private interpretations or they give themselves to the teaching of one man without ever searching the Scriptures for themselves to see if what he is teaching lines up with Scripture.

Understand

Along with reading and hearing God’s word, the readers and hearers are expected to understand it. The Christian life is a life of taking in knowledge, understanding it, and walking it out in wisdom. Paul writes about this correlation between knowledge, understanding, and wisdom in his letter to the Colossians:

“9For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God,” (Col. 1:9-10; NKJV).

The hearers of God’s word are to follow this cycle. We take in knowledge. After obtaining knowledge, we couple it with understanding, which is to say that it affects our character and shapes our dispositions toward God and others after Christ’s. Finally, it is to be coupled with wisdom so that we walk according to the knowledge and understanding we have obtained. The result of this taking in of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom is that we take in more knowledge (vs. 10).

This is an obligation both on the part of he who preaches and on the part of him who hears. It is the job of the pastor to take the cookies down off of the shelf so-to-speak. It’s easy business to confuse people with overly academic language; it takes great work to convey difficult truths with clarity and simplicity. I have heard James White say that the way one truly knows that he knows a doctrine is if he can teach it to children. This is true. The preacher must do all he can to help his hearers understand the meaning of the text of Scripture.

This obligation is not merely a one-sided obligation, though. Hearers have an obligation as well. When any confusion arises over any teaching from the pulpit, it is the hearer’s obligation to ask the preacher afterward for clarification. No godly pastor would ever be upset to be questioned, if he is approached appropriately, about his interpretation of a particular text. In fact, pastors are encouraged by such active listening on the part of the hearers.

 

Q.6: What things are chiefly contained in the Holy Scriptures?

The Holy Scriptures chiefly contain what man ought to believe concerning God, and what duty God requireth of man.1

12 Timothy 1:13; 3:15-16

Questions one through five provide the foundation for The Baptist Catechism, in much the same way that the teachings of the apostles and prophets as set down in Scripture provide the foundation for our faith (Eph. 2:20). The answer to question six could rightly be labeled the thesis statement of The Baptist Catechism, insofar as it provides the structure for all the questions and answers that follow.

The catechism could appropriately be said to be structured according to two categories: right believe about God (orthodoxy) and right observance of the duties God requires of us (orthopraxy). The catechism is so structured because it is meant to teach us the Bible, and these two themes are the two primary themes of Scripture. We are taught in Scripture to know the things of God (John 17:7-8; Acts 2:36) and to love God (Exod. 20:6; Neh. 1:5; John 14:15; John 15:10; 1Jn. 5:3). These two commands go hand-in-hand.

A husband cannot rightly say that he loves his wife and yet know nothing about her. At the same time, he cannot learn more of her without being provoked toward greater or lesser affections toward her. As the unbeliever learns more of God, apart from the effectual calling of the Spirit, he will grow in his hatred for Him. As we believers learn more of Him, we grow in our kindly affection toward Him. As we commit ourselves to a study of The Baptist Catechism, let us keep these two commandments in mind. Let us endeavor to know the things of God more, through His word, and so to grow in our love for Him.

The Mind in Black Spirituality

/ theroadofgrace / 2 Comments

In the last blog, I mentioned that syncretism was perhaps the largest barrier between Reformed and Black spirituality. The final blog post in the series is perhaps the most personal for me and has been the reason that I have not been able to be a member at a predominately Black church for over ten years. In addressing the question of how a believer may become more spiritual, I’ve rarely heard any Black Christian even comment on the role of the mind and intellect in Christian spirituality. At times, the impression that one can get from Black Christians is that spirituality is completely separate from the mind. This means that the general mode of Christian spirituality for many Black Christians is thoroughly anti-intellectual.

It’s important to note that this problem was not present historically among Black Christians. This argument has been demonstrated very well in The Decline of African-American Theology by Thabiti Anyabwile (the first chapter of this book can be read here for those who are interested). Historically, Black theology could be characterized by simple words which convey deep meaning. This means that older Black preachers emphasized double meaning language to convey theologically rich ideas. This is seen in many of the classical Negro spirituals such as Were You There? or My Lord, What a Morning. It can be seen by this poem from Phyllis Wheatley

Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too

Once I redemption neither sought nor know.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die,”

Remember, Christian, Negro, black as Cain,

May be refin’d and join th’angelic train.

A more anti-intellectual approach to the faith by African-Americans seems to be paralleled with the growing anti-intellectualism within American evangelicalism in general. As mentioned above, this is something that I’ve experienced personally. For a large portion of my high school days, I was an atheist. After my conversion, I was mentored by older Black Christians to which I remain personally indebted to this day. However, as I began to ask more questions about the scriptures, I was generally told that I’m thinking too much about these matters and I need to “catch the spirit” of the text. When I asked questions on how I should study the scriptures, I was told that I needed to read a passage of scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to tell me the meaning of the passage. I was told that thinking about hermeneutics was an academic, unspiritual way to approach the scripture and that I would only learn “head-knowledge”. They warned me that people who attempted to know God in this way would end up walking away from the faith. At one particular instance, I was told that intelligence was a handicap towards true spirituality.

romans12This view was reinforced up through my college years and I believed this for many years until I heard a sermon named Modern Spirituality and Your Mind on Romans 12:1-2. This sermon greatly edified me as I began to devote my mind to the study of scriptures and it introduced me to the role of the mind in Reformed spirituality. In order to truly know God and to know His will, we must devote ourselves to a diligent study of the Word so that our minds may be renewed. This means that the mind plays a central role in Christian development. We are exhorted to discipline our minds for the purpose of godliness and to devote our mind to His Word so that we may become wise for salvation (cf. 2 Timothy 3:15). We are told that our sanctification is based upon our understanding and apprehension of the truth of scripture (cf. John 17:17). Hence, true spirituality is done not by circumventing the mind, but it’s done through the active engagement of the mind.

This emphasis on the mind also explains how Christians develop wisdom. The Bible is clear that all people should seek after wisdom. Proverbs 9 is a single exhortation to see this gift. The question becomes how do we obtain this wisdom? For many Black Christians, this is done primarily through personal experiences. In Reformed theology, wisdom is divinely produced in those, and those only, who apply themselves to God’s revelation in the scripture (cf. Psalm 119:98-99; Colossians 3:16; 2 Timothy 3:15-17). This means that our ignorance of God’s revealed will is a grave sin. According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, one of the sins forbidden in the First Commandment is “ignorance, forgetfulness, misapprehensions, false opinions, unworthy and wicked thoughts of him”. Moreover, in the Westminster Larger Catechism, one of the sins forbidden in the Third Commandment is “misinterpreting, misapplying, or any way perverting the Word, or any part of it, to maintaining of false doctrines”.

Another question that can be asked is what effect does God’s gift of wisdom have on a person? Here is a place in which the differences in spirituality become quite apparent. For many Black Christians, the gift of wisdom consists in a deepened insight into the providential meaning and purpose of events going on around us, an ability to see why God has done what He has done in a particular circumstance, and what He is going to do next. Some feel that if they were really walking close to God (so that He could impart wisdom to them freely), then they would discern the real purpose of everything (and perhaps even discover the hidden will of God). In this view the Holy Spirit is the one who gives this hidden insight and it’s reserved for those who diligently seek Him.

In Reformed spirituality, the wisdom of God enables us to know the revealed will of God and to know how to respond appropriately to the providential situations in our lives. In particular, Christ is the divine Wisdom in Proverbs 9 and through a saving knowledge of His Word, believers are brought from darkness to light. It is this approach that places a high value on teaching and preaching in the life of devotion and this is the view that is consistent with both the Old and New Testaments. The Judaism in which Jesus was brought up gave a tremendous amount of time to the study of the sacred text, the scholarly exposition of the Scriptures, and the hearing of sermons which applied this scholarly work to the life of the community. Thus, there was a very genuine scholarly piety that is engendered by this approach. The same was true of the early Christian church. Studying Scripture, memorizing it, meditating on it, and interpreting it were regarded as the most sacred of task. They were among the most essential devotional disciplines. Delighting in the God’s law, which is most clearly seen in the diligent study and meditation of Scripture, was understood as worship in the most profound sense. This is consistent with the wisdom psalms, such as Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119, and this approach is also reflected in Reformed spirituality. In Calvin’s commentary on the prologue of John, he says

For knowledge of God is the door by which we enter into the enjoyment of all blessings. Since, therefore, God reveals Himself to us by Christ alone, it follows that we should seek all things from Christ. This doctrinal sequence should be carefully observed. Nothing seems more obvious than that we each take what God offers us according to the measure of our faith. But only a few realize that the vessel of faith and of the knowledge of God has to be brought with.

Therefore, in Reformed spirituality, there is an emphasis upon obtaining a true knowledge of God which comes through a dedicated use of the mind. In other words, God is honored when believers dedicate their affections and their minds to know Him. This explains why there is an emphasis on creeds, catechisms, and confessions within Reformed churches. The anti-intellectual approach of many Black Christians also tends to make many Black Christians anti-confessional as well. Thus, the pursuit of doctrinal precision is an irrelevant and useless endeavor for many Black Christians.  For many Black Christians, you can still be considered deeply spiritual and godly, even if your doctrine is borderline heretical. This is the only way to explain why ordinarily sound Black Christians will also listen to Word-of-Faith/prosperity gospel teachers, like T.D. Jakes, Juanita Bynum, Eddie Long, Creflo Dollar, Jamal Harrison Bryant, Frederick Price, etc.

For these reasons, it is very difficult for many devout Black Christians who grew up in this background to accept this “bookish” form of piety as legitimately spiritual. This approach (and the accompanying theological jargon) sounds too academic for many because in their view, the true mode of spirituality is through internal intuition and through personal experience. Hopefully, this mini-series has helped to shed some light on the differences between Reformed spirituality and traditional Black spirituality. Even though many similarities between these traditions, there are significant divergences that continue to prevent many devout Black Christians from embracing full-orbed Reformed theology. I will end this blog series with a quote from Anthony Carter

Today, we find ourselves in a dark place, yet the light of the truth of the Scriptures continue to shine brightly. All over this country, and indeed around the world, men and women, particularly those of African descent, are falling out of love with the world and the worldliness of popular television-driven Christianity, and falling in love with the biblical, historical faith that was and is found in Reformed theology… We are witnessing the rise of a new generation of African-American Christians who see through the fading glory of the empty way of life advocated by the false prosperity gospel, and are seeing more clearly the faith that has once and for all been delivered to the saints – the faith rediscovered during the Reformation and being re-energized in our time