“God spoke to me.” “God gave me a
dream.” “The Holy Spirit led me.” All these represent claims that I hear just
about every time I am around other Christians. Rare is the modern Christian
that does not make these claims. Rarer still are those that dare to question
such claims. And most rare of all are those that dare to reject such claims in
preference for, not just a theological, but a practice view of the sufficiency
of Scripture. Why is that?
The proposition that “God spoke to
me” is not the same as the proposition, “God spoke to Moses.” It is not even
the same as the proposition, “God spoke to men and women in Scripture.” There
are a few things we can point out about the experiences revealed in Scripture
and the modern claim that God is still speaking to people. First, the nature of
the experience in Scripture is remarkable. When God spoke in Scripture, it was
a miraculous event. God spoke directly to men, audibly in Scripture. There was
no possibility of confusing God’s voice with a voice in my head, my own
psychological self-conscious dialectic. Second, God spoke to men through the
Torah. The Torah was given by God through Moses during a miraculous,
supernatural event. God spoke to men in visions and dreams within the Scriptures,
but these experiences were divine visions and dreams that also suggest
supernatural properties for lack of a better expression. In other words, they
were real. It was not possible for the recipient to “get it wrong.” God speaks
efficaciously to His children. He does not stutter or stammer. He does not
leave you hanging. You know it was God speaking to you because of the
supernatural imposition of the event itself. In other words, it is not possible
for you to adopt the belief that God had not spoken to you when, in fact, He
had not spoken to you.
What are we to make of the claims:
1) God spoke to me; 2) God gave me a dream; 3) The Holy Spirit is leading or
speaking to me to do x. If you are the one making such a claim, you must
be prepared to defend your claim. If you are going to tell others that God is
speaking to you, you must give us good and justifiable reasons to believe it. No one should expect
to make the incredible claim that God is speaking to them without being willing
and open to showing us why they believe such an event occurred. Yet, when the
people making such claims are questioned, even in the politest way, they get
incredibly defensive. It is has if they think that they are one of the apostles
of our Lord, speaking with unquestioned authority. But even the apostles did
not operate with that kind of mentality. We read Luke’s record in Acts of how the
Bereans responded to Paul’s claims. “Now these were more noble-minded than
those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily to see
whether these things were so.” They turned to God’s speaking in the Scripture
to see if Paul’s claims about the Messiah were true. Luke describes these
individuals as more noble minded than others. Why? Because they readily
received the Word of God and tested all claims by the Word of God. The claims
of the apostles were testable.
This problem has arisen within the
Church because of a flawed understanding of the nature of Scripture. What is
Scripture? A.B. Bruce represents revelation as consisting in the “self-manifestation
of God in human history as the God of a gracious purpose – the manifestation
being made not merely of chiefly by words, but very specially by deeds.”
[Warfield, Revelation & Inspiration] And that revelation comes to us by way
of a text, words put down on paper. The Scripture is not just the record of God’s
revelation, but it included in that revelation itself. The two cannot be
separated.
Many modern Christians do not
appreciate the uniqueness of Scripture. They do not understand that God’s
divine acts in Scripture had a unique and specific purpose. They seem to think
that, like Paul, Christ should appear and speak to them. But such a view cannot
help but devalue the nature of God’s self-revelation in the history of human
redemption. I was watching the popular TV show, “Blue Bloods” not long ago and
one of the actors in this particular episode claimed God had spoken to her.
When Danny, the cop, took the information to his sister, the assistant district
attorney, her response was profound. Danny argued that God had spoken to people
in the Bible, so why not this girl? Erin’s rebuttal was short, and swift, and
on point: “this isn’t the Bible.” Her answer was actually spot on. What I am
saying is that any claim that God has acted especially in your life is a claim
that must be, by its nature, on par with Scripture. God’s acts cannot be
categorized into “really amazing” and therefore, authoritative, like the acts
in Scripture and “not really amazing” and therefore, not binding, because they
are personal to me. We have no record of God acting supernaturally in the life
of anyone that was just personal to them. Every act of God in Scripture was a
unique act designed to reveal something about God to His elect. Think about it.
I blame this particular error of
continuous revelation on two movements primarily: the influence of Anabaptist theology
from the radical reformation in the 16th and 17th
centuries, and the encroachment of Pentecostal theology into main stream
Christian churches in the 20th century. Pentecostal theology, while
denying it theoretically, affirms a standard for revelation apart from
Scripture. Pentecostal epistemology is experiential at its core, subject to the
whim of the individual. According to Pentecostal hermeneutics, we live within
Scripture the same as the apostles. In fact, many Pentecostals claim that the
apostolic office continues to this day. This is a serious error. And it opens
the door for all sorts of subjective claims that God is revealing himself to us
in ways that are distinct from Scripture. And if this is true, Scripture is not
any more unique than its final outward form of being 66 books that happen to be
collected together in one book called the Bible. God’s revelation cannot take
on different characteristics because, well, it is God’s revelation.
The claim is made that the Holy
Spirit will lead us into all truth and will teach us and show us all things.
The references that supposedly support this way of thinking are John 14:26 and
16:13. But do these texts actually teach us that every Christian will have a
relationship with the Holy Spirit, of such a personal nature, that He will
actually lead us in ways that do not concerned the revelation of truth in
Scripture? What does John 14:26 and 16:13 actually say? What does it mean? And
how are we to appropriate it to our lives today?
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to
your remembrance all that I said to you. [John 14:26] First of all, this
statement is made within the context of what is called “The Upper Room
Discourse.” This is Jesus’ final interaction with his disciples prior to His
arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He has gathered His disciples together one
final time. Hence, He is speaking to His disciples. In this setting, Jesus
makes a statement of fact: when the Helper comes, who is the Holy Spirit, He
will teach you all things. So the Helper is going to teach the disciples all
things. What things? All things that Christ has taught them up to this point.
The Holy Spirit is going to bring all things that Christ said to them
to their remembrance. Jesus makes it plain that the role of
the Holy Spirit is to enable appropriation of the truth revealed by Christ to
His disciples. Jesus is not speaking broadly to you and me here. D.A. Carson
explains it well:
“One of the
Spirit’s principal tasks, after Jesus is glorified, is to remind the disciples
of Jesus’ teaching and thus, in the new situation after the resurrection, to
help them grasp its significance and thus to teach them what it meant. Indeed,
the Evangelist himself draws attention to some things that were remembered and
understood only after the resurrection (2:19–22; 12:16; cf. 20:9). Granted the prominence of this theme, the promise of v.
26 has in view the Spirit’s role to the first generation of disciples, not to
all subsequent Christians. John’s purpose in including this theme and this
verse is not to explain how readers at the end of the first century may be
taught by the Spirit, but to explain to readers at the end of the first century
how the first witnesses, the first disciples, came to an accurate and full
understanding of the truth of Jesus Christ. The Spirit’s ministry in this
respect was not to bring qualitatively new revelation, but to complete, to fill
out, the revelation brought by Jesus himself.”
Since this passage is not a blanket
promise to all Christians everywhere, it is improper to interpret it to mean that
Jesus is here suggesting that the Holy Spirit is going to teach all of us
everything that He said to His disciples. It is important to remember the basic
steps for interpreting a passage. We must understand what the text is saying,
then what it means, and then determine how that applies to us. We have already
explained what the text is saying and with D.A. Carson’s help, both what it
means and how it applies to us. Because the apostles were taught directly by
the Holy Spirit how to understand and interpret Jesus’ revelation of divine
truth, we can trust what they wrote to the church.
The other text cited by many
Christians that hold this “divine impression” position is John 16:13: “But when
He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He
will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and
He will disclose to you what is to come.” It must first be understood that
Jesus makes this statement in the very same Upper Room Discourse as he did John
14:26. There is a variant in this text that has a bearing on its
interpretation. If eis is preferred, the reading should say “into all
truth” while if one prefers en, the reading should be rendered “in all
truth.” Metzger prefers en. Carson comments, “If there is a distinction
between ‘in all truth’ and ‘into all truth’, it is that the latter
hints at truth the disciples have not yet in any sense penetrated, while ‘in all truth’ suggests an exploration of
truth already principally disclosed. Jesus himself is the truth (14:6); now the
Spirit of truth leads the disciples into all the implications of the truth, the
revelation, intrinsically bound up with Jesus Christ. There is no other locus
of truth; this is all truth.” Again,
this text is speaking specifically about the relationship and role the Holy
Spirit has with the disciples. Neither John 14:26 nor John 16:13 suggests that
Christians can expect to be taught all things.
Finally, the notion that we need
divine impressions, voices, visions, and dreams today has serious implications
for the attribute we call the sufficiency of Scripture. Either the Scripture is
enough for right relationship with God, for walking in divine truth, for
walking in God’s will or it is not. Francis Turretin puts it like this: The
question then amounts to this – whether Scripture perfectly contains all things
(not absolutely), but necessary to salvation; not expressly and in so many
words, but equivalently and by legitimate inference, as to leave no place for
any unwritten (agraphon) word containing doctrinal or moral traditions.
[Turretin, Institutes] Can a Christian violate the will of God without
violating Scripture? Can a Christian violate the will of God without also
sinning? This is the question. According to Paul, the word of God enables the
Christian to meet all the demands of godly ministry and righteous living.
[MacArthur]
In summary then, to claim that God
is speaking to you through some small voice in your conscience, through divine
impressions, through dreams, or visions is an extraordinary claim that requires
extraordinary justification if it is to be accepted. To argue that God is still
speaking to us today because he spoke to others in the Bible is a logically
specious argument. We are not living in the unique revelation of God as it
unfolds across the history of redemption. Third, such claims are simply
untestable. Whether or not you married “the one” based off some impression is a
claim that can in no way, shape, or form be tested. Fourth, if these claims are
true, a person could sin without violating a command of Scripture. If I refused
to relocate when God was telling me this was His will for me, that would
necessarily be a sin because I am going against God. But that sin is not found
in Scripture. How many of these could there be? It seems there could be an
infinite number of them. Moreover, this thinking impugns the sufficiency of
Scripting by implying that Scripture alone is not enough. After all, if I can
sin while being obedient to Scripture, then obviously Scripture is not
sufficient to keep me from sinning or failing to walk in the will of God. There
are numerous problems with this way of thinking. I hope this post has, at a
minimum, helped you recognize some issues with this behavior that you may have
not considered previously.
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