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Doctrine One and Hermeneutical Integrity
by Major Wayne Ennis

We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.  -  Doctrine 1

 

The TSA Doctrine Book states that  “Our first doctrine establishes the Bible as definitive for Christian faith and practice. The inspiration of Scripture ( 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21) requires that its authority supersedes all other sources of revelation as the primary source of Christian revelation (Psalm 119:105-112). Its unique authority reveals the thoughts and actions of God. The authority of the Bible tests all other authorities. It is therefore described as a ‘sufficient authority”. If we think for a moment what we are actually saying in the doctrine when we use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’, we must surely acknowledge that what we saying is that, though all authority belongs to God, God has somehow invested this authority in scripture.

 

The Bible is different to every other book because it is ‘inspired by God’ and is therefore true and trust worthy., which means if this is a book written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit then the ‘Divine rule of Christian faith and practice’ and its warning and reprimands concern sin do not fit into applied categories of cultural obsessions. If God is good then his goodness  is unrestrained by time on the one hand which also means the admonitions against sin are followed by offers of grace ( Exodus 33:19 and following). The God of the Bible deals differently with God when people deal differently with him. To most people this is nothing more than an oddity and can simply be ignored.

 

If, as the doctrine states, God is the Creator of all things and if the Bible is the word God and therefore has the authoritative seal of Truth and power it has the right to interrogate our lives and culture and not the other way around. When it comes to authority in our post-modern world seeks to deny any higher authority other than the authentic self.

 

Because the post-modern world along with post-modern Christian (an oxymoron) have a problem with authority they are only too willing to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion and convivence when it comes to the biblical text and the  question as to how the Bible can be such an authoritative book let alone agree to proposition that it actually exercises authority over our Christian faith and practices.

 

When we go down this stream, we wind up belittling both the Bible and the doctrines. Such a position goes even further by inferring that God has, after all, given us the wrong sort of book by implying  that the real place where God has revealed himself—the real locus of authority and revelation—is, in fact, somewhere else, and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book by engaging in these hermeneutical dishonest moves, translation procedures or whatever.

 

Some even want to go so far as to say the Old Testament with its sexual morality can be safely denied, even abandoned. By doing so basically means we have become Gnostic Marcionite heretics. I for one don’t want to swim in that river.

 

The Scripture of both Testaments have a unique job to do, as the doctrine states. A reader, regardless of whether we believe it or not, is called upon to respect the text and faithfully deal with then with a hermeneutic of integrity.

 

Worldviews are basic stuff of human existence, the lens through which we see the world, the blueprint for how we should live in it,  and the sense of identity and place which enables us to be what we are. Worldviews seek to answer four questions that have to do with; who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?

 

The problem we face today is the world’s worldview can no longer agree on what the important questions are let alone truthful answers to such questions as:

 

Is there any such thing as knowable truth? Are people accountable to truth even though they believe, or feel it or not?

 

Is our personal identity subject to any external objective truth or is it all solely subjective? Are feelings more important than facts?

 

This, then,  brings us back to the Scriptures and where we actually stand in relation to them and their authority  and the ‘we believe’. 

 

Do we believe that both the Old and New Testaments firstly, tells a story and they both seeks to articulate that story truthfully coherently, and secondly do we believe that this story is fundamentally an articulation of God’s worldview and that they do in fact provide a set of answers to the four questions all worldviews seek to answer? 

 

Do we really ‘believe’, do we want to understand God’s worldview from God’s point of view, or are we only interested in arguing with him about his word’s truth claims and his lines and boundaries? Welcome to the worldviews war.

 

Sitting comfortably living within the world’s worldview and taking pride in living independently of God’s authority makes sense to way too many who fail to see that by doing so results in the whole structure of the doctrine, the ‘I believe’ and their faith deconstruct before their very eyes.  Having deconstructed the doctrine and degraded its and the Scriptures authority they feel emboldened to cross biblical lines and boundaries with apparent impunity. I do believe that Genesis 3 puts paid to that idea.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

   

 

 

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