I was recently in a class where the instructor said that archaeology is the grammar of Scripture. What he meant was that in order to understand the Scriptures, one needed a solid grounding in archaeology. In other words, we needed to examine the Scriptures in the light of, or under the lens of archaeology. He criticized the Puritans because of their "nascent understanding of covenant theology." They simply did not have the tools we have today for understanding these things.
While the Puritans did not have access to some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other artifacts we have today, they did have something that many pastors lack today, and that was a deep reverence for Sola Scriptura. The only lens that Puritans used for examining the Scriptures was Scripture itself. They understood that the lens is the ultimate authority. If archaeology is the lens, then archaeology becomes the standard by which the truth of Scripture is evaluated. If science is the lens, then science is the standard by which truth is determined. If philosophy is the lens, then Scripture is subject to the whims of philosophers. It is only when Scripture is the lens that we can view Scripture through the eyes of God himself. To the Puritans, the Holy Spirit was the great Illuminator of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit was sufficient.
Applying a non-biblical grid to Scripture and forcing Scripture to conform to that grid changes the meaning of everything. It should have come as no surprise then, when later in the class, the instructor told us that divorce was not a sin, that God did not hate divorce, that we need not set aside a day of the week for the Lord, and that the Ten Commandments did not apply to believers today. In the back of my mind I heard a familiar whisper: Did God really say...?
Eve heard the same thing in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life contained all the necessary stuff of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had all that and more. Satan always tries to lure us by making us think that God is cheating us, that Satan can give us a better deal. He promises something more, but in the end it leads to death. Eve was right when she saw that the tree was good for obtaining wisdom. Everything about that tree looked good and much of it was good. It was the extra stuff that brought us down.
The same temptation is present for us when teachers cleverly attempt to lure us away from Scripture by offering us the Scriptures and more. In this class, the extras came in the form of archaeology, Greek, and philosophy. But rather than pull us deeper into the Scriptures, the extras distracted us from the Scriptures. The extras supposedly held the key that would break the code of Scripture. Yet we spent precious little time reading the Scriptures at all.
Archaeology is not the grammar of Scripture. Logos, the spoken Word, is the grammar of Scripture, and the Scriptures are very simple to understand. They are not written in code and we do not need a key to decode them. Nor do we need a pope or a bishop or a priest or a pastor to tell us what to believe. The Word and the Spirit are sufficient. And the pastor who teaches his congregation to trust in these two things alone is a true shepherd of the sheep. Beware of those who offer you all this and more.
"The same temptation is present for us when teachers cleverly attempt to lure us away from Scripture by offering us the Scriptures and more. In this class, the extras came in the form of archaeology, Greek, and philosophy. But rather than pull us deeper into the Scriptures, the extras distracted us from the Scriptures."
ReplyDeleteThis post reveals a clear misunderstanding of how we got our Bible:
1. Without archeology there are no biblical manuscripts.
2. Without a knowledge of Greek we wouldn't be able to read the manuscripts anyway, since that was the language the books of the New Testament were written in. (Your Bible is a translation, which required that at least somebody learn Greek.)
3. Without archeology we wouldn't have access to the writing of ancient coins, pottery, tablets, papyri, etc., and therefore wouldn't have sufficient lexical information to understand the Greek in the first place.
3. Without the science of textual criticism, we would have no idea which manuscripts should be part of the Bible.
4. Without archeology we would have no understanding of the currencies, systems of measurement, geography, government, culture, religious practices, or world-views of the ancient world.
5. Without the information listed in #4 we would have no frame of reference with which to interpret words such as 'denari' or 'caesar' or 'pharaoh' or 'tax-collector' or 'talent' or 'widow's mite,' or 'chariot' or 'burnt offering' or 'prophets of ba'al.' (I could go on, but the list of words would be approximately the length of the Bible.)
Sola Scriptura does not deny the importance of archeology or linguistics. In fact, the Scriptures are intrinsically linked to both, because God gave us the books of the Bible through actual people in real time and space, at actual points in history, thousands of years ago. You can't separate the Bible from where it came from, or from the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic it was written in.
I understand what you are saying in this comment and I heartily agree with all your points. In fact I love studying biblical history and the like. However, I think you missed a crucial part of what I was saying. Notice it says "in this class." I was making reference to one particular class in which the instructor was using knowledge to deliberately mislead people as to the meaning of the Scriptures involved. For example, he said that the moral law is no longer binding on Christians and that divorce is not a sin. His interpretations of the Greek kept colliding with what the translators of our Bibles wrote. He vehemently distanced himself from tried and true biblical interpretations of the reformers, the Puritans and even the Westminster divines.
ReplyDeleteIt is one thing to use all of our biblical tools appropriately. It is quite another to pretend to have knowledge that others do not have and use it deceitfully to lead them astray.