S3 | E7 Don't Accidentally Become a Heretic: Hermeneutics 101 – Reformed Faith and Family
Where Do We Look for Answers?
What is your source of ultimate authority? Where do you turn when you need a final word about what is true, right, good, or how you should live? I am going to go out on a limb and assume that most professing Christians will at least acknowledge that it ought to be Scripture.
What about a different line of questioning?
Where do you turn when you want to understand the world around you? I would bet that you probably don’t start thumbing through the Bible when you are trying to understand weather patterns. And to be honest with you, that is completely okay.
As much as you might expect a pastor to tell you that the Bible is the place you should look to find every answer in life, that isn’t its purpose. God doesn’t expect us to look to the Bible to understand the chemical reactions of various ingredients that go into cake baking (though it does have some things to say about the use of leaven). We aren’t called to search there to find out what kind of oil is best for our lawn mower.
The real question is not where do we look for answers for every imaginable unknown, it is which source are we going to trust when those sources contradict? There are many answers we can find in typical high-school science books. At least in past generations, most of it would have been helpful, honestly researched and organized, and accurate to the best of current human knowledge.
Two Kinds of Revelation
God has made Himself known in both general and specific revelation. That is, He has made Himself known in the created order on display for everyone to observe and study, as well as directly through His God-breathed Word. For knowledge of the creative source of divine revelation, we must apply ourselves to observe, study, and try to understand what we see.
General Revelation
The very best we can come up with to understand general revelation can be summed up in the scientific method. That is what people are supposed to be referring to when they say that science shows us something, or science indicates.
The part that is all-too-often forgotten is that the scientific method does not and cannot guarantee that any conclusion is 100% settled. Any claim that science has proven something forgets what science is. It isn’t about settled facts, it is about applying the very best study, experiments, and research to know things as best as we are able with the limited information and ability we currently possess. And, to give us all a dose of humility, our information and ability is always limited. There is always something else we do not yet understand and are not yet able to identify, quantify, or explain.
The scientific method is the process of observing and asking questions, formulating educated guesses to explain what has been observed, testing and refining that hypothesis, drawing conclusions, inviting others to check your work, and then finding some consensus by which the knowledge can be practically applied and built upon.
We like to think that we know almost everything there is to know, but in reality, we still know very little of all there is to know. A fact that should be obvious to us when we consider that each new breakthrough in scientific research reveals new layers, either on the macro or micro level that were previously unknown and even beyond speculation.
All that to underline the fact that our understanding of general revelation is and will always be incomplete. It is subject to error and to change. We can have a high degree of confidence in much of what we know, and we can depend on a great many principles to the extent that we trust our lives to theories and inventions every day. Even so, we cannot ever be certain that we have full knowledge, or that there will not be a discovery in the future that will change how we think and how those thoughts cause us to act.
Special Revelation
Specific or special revelation is different. While God’s Word does not exhaustively address the breath of subjects to which we may apply the scientific method, in every area to which it speaks it does so with perfect certainty. What God has chosen to give us in His written Word, He has done so without error. As such, even if we do not have exhaustive knowledge on the subject, we can be certain that He does have exhaustive knowledge of everything, and He has truly spoken to us.
2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV)
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
When Authorities Clash
The main question we need to answer correctly is what are we going to trust when the various authorities around us clash? This isn’t just an academic discussion; we see this kind of clash all around us. Scientists make claims that contradict what the Bible says about the origin of the world and of the species. Scientists clash with one another on issues of climate change, vaccines, and the basics of human biology. You can find experts in just about any field that will agree with whatever fringe position you can imagine.
What is the Christian to do when seemingly all of the worlds smartest people are all telling him that the Bible simply cannot be true; it reflects only the ignorance of a superstitious bygone era? Can we afford to dismiss the libraries full of research, theories, and supposed proofs that clearly confirm that the world is billions of years old, man evolved from simpler lifeforms, or that gender is merely a social construct?
What we trust at the most foundational level, when everything seems in conflict and we don’t know who to trust or if we can even believe our lying eyes, is our god. Or perhaps put another way will help illustrate the principle better. Where we turn when we are really in need and cannot save ourselves reveals the god in whom we have put our trust.
Where have you seen people turn when they were in their greatest need? We have all witnessed just in the past few years that many in our society have turned to the state for help and for answers. Others turn to the so-called experts who run multinational organizations. Still others looked to Scripture to guide them in how they should understand what was happening and for principles on which to act. Perhaps they even looked to church history to see how the faithful have handled such issues in the past.
Biblical Principles
On many things Scripture gives us clear answers right from the mouth of God. In our upside-down world, many of those answers will be in conflict with what our experts currently try to defend by their interpretation of science. God says there are two genders, others are trying very hard to make us believe that there is a fluid spectrum. God says that humans are designed such that one man and one woman should make life-long covenants in marriage, and that all other sexual relationships are perversions and sin, others say that humans are simply not wired that way.
On other issues, the Bible does not give direct answers to our questions, but it guides us to use wisdom in how we think and how we act. Principles like not forming an opinion based on the first argument we hear, even if it does come from so-called experts.
Proverbs 18:17 (ESV)
17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
Or, when the world tells us to trust our heart or our feelings and that we can trust the inward drive towards happiness, the Bible warns us against the passions of the heart.
Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
We are called upon to put our trust in experts, rulers of men, or heads of institutions, yet the Bible warns against hoping in men.
Proverbs 3:5 (ESV)
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.Psalm 118:8–9 (ESV)
8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. 9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.Psalm 146:3 (ESV)
3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.Jeremiah 17:5–8 (ESV)
5 Thus says the Lord: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. 6 He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. 7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
When the voices of men conflict with the voice of God, where are you going to place your trust? When those voices either directly refute what God has decreed, or demand that we lay aside biblical principles of wisdom to simply accept what we are being told and comply, how will you respond?
Reformation Cry
One of the great rallying cries of the Protestant Reformation was “Scripture Alone,” or if you prefer the Latin, “Sola Scriptura.” Click here to read more about the Five Solas. The chief opponent for the trust of men at the time wasn’t public institutions, academics and scientists, or even directly the state. They fought against the tyranny of Roman Catholicism which claimed ultimate authority to declare truth and speak for God.
In the Reformation everyone understood that control over the voice of God was at stake. Either God’s Word would be allowed to stand for itself, and correct every other voice, or the Pope would reserve the right to yield God’s voice and decree and interpret as he willed.
We no longer find ourselves in a society where everyone acknowledges the true God. The dominant god of this society against which we war is the god of the state, with its promises of elevating humanity and solving our every problem. Politicians, academic elites, and experts of every variety all labor to yield the power of whatever god they serve.
We have to learn to see the struggle though this lens. Believing God or believing men. Trusting God or putting our trust in flesh. Worshiping God or giving our allegiance to demons. The enemy knows how to present himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), it should not at all surprise us that wicked men know how to make a persuasive sounding case to compel compliance. We must learn, like the reformers before us, to listen to no voice other than God’s – Scripture Alone!
The Five Solas: Signs to Follow on the Narrow Path Family Bible Study
The doctrine that was at the heart of the Protestant Reformation can be summarized by the Five Solas, or five statements that encapsulate the heart of justification and salvation. It was these five doctrines that put the Protestant Reformers in the crosshairs of the Roman Catholic Church.
- Sola Gratia (Grace Alone)
- Sola Fide (Faith Alone)
- Solus Christus (Alone)
- Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone)
- Soli Deo Gloria (Glory of God Alone)
To summarize the meaning of this series of statements, “Christians are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.”
Lead your family with this 7 day Bible study with more than 50 pages of structured history and Bible-based lessons, fun activities, and corresponding educational crafts that teach the Gospel using the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation.
