Category: Soren Kierkegaard

Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.

 

The Bible is the Word of God by its immeasurable majesty, moral purity, essential unity, and time-tested faithfulness. The Bible is unique in its power to convince and convert our hearts, comfort and build-up our spirits, and divide and measure our motives. The Bible is encouragement in trial, insight into the tribulations of life, and guidance in the midst of confusion. The Bible is the only book whose author can personally and directly apply its truths to our daily lives.

The Bible is to be believed, obeyed, trusted, digested, and honored. When we read the Bible, the Spirit leads us to repent that we may be made holy; hear God’s voice that we may be drawn nearer to Christ, renounce the world that we may be transformed into the image of Christ, revived as the people of God that we may be a light unto the world, and prepared for the Second Coming of Christ that we may be ready to see Christ face-to-face.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard

HT: Joe Carter

 

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.

Ps. 119:130

Perspicuity of scripture is the belief that the Bible is sufficiently clear for open-hearted and spiritually-seeking individuals with some degree of faith to understand the Bible’s intent enabling them to come to faith and repentance in Christ. Evangelicals affirm that a man or woman with some measure of literacy can pick-up the Bible and understand it sufficiently to come to saving faith in Christ.

In fact, Evangelicals believe that the difficulty with the Bible is not understanding it, but obeying it. This is the rub, do we make the Bible complicated because we want to avoid the obvious truth of the Word? Do we avoid Scripture study because of the conviction of the Holy Spirit and his desire to conform us to Christ? Are we afraid to be alone with the New Testament?

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Soren Kierkegaard , ed. Charles E. Moore (Rifton, NY: The Plough, 2011).

HT: Scott Howard