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Dialogue on the Inevitable Clarity of Scripture

 

Does God’s ability to communicate imply that 

Scripture must be clear?

 

Gary Hoge

 

The basic sticking point between us so far has been the question of whether clarity implies understanding. You say it doesn’t. That way you can claim that Scripture is “clear” even though it is widely misunderstood. I say this empties the word “clear” of any real meaning. At the very least, it’s not the way people usually use the word. Usually, when we say, “That was clear,” we mean, “I understood that without difficulty.”

 

I thought I understood your position on clarity (i.e., that it’s unrelated to understanding), but then you said:

 

I believe that God’s ability to communicate is the foundation of Scripture’s basic clarity, yes. God intended to communicate with us (else why give Scripture in the first place?), so it stands to reason that He would use a method He knew we could understand.

 

In other words, because God wanted us to be able to understand him, it stands to reason that Scripture must be basically clear. But why does that stand to reason if clarity is unrelated to understanding? It seems to me that your statement here only works if you accept my definition of clarity. So, I’m confused.

 

You said that the foundation of Scripture’s basic clarity is God’s ability to communicate. But doesn’t successful communication also require that the message be understood? My dictionary defines “communicate” as, “to transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood.”

 

Hmmm. My dictionary defines “communicate” as: “impart, transmit, succeed in conveying information.” Your definition would be fine except for the fact that it includes the word “satisfactorily,” which seems to imply that the receiver of the communication necessarily understood the message without any distortion caused by factors internal to himself – such as his preexisting biases, dispositions, presence or absence of desire to know the truth, and so forth.

 

I really don’t see how your definition of “communicate” is any different from mine. You said it means, “succeed in conveying information.” Well, if I have some information I’m trying to convey to you, but you don’t understand what I’m saying, I obviously haven’t succeeded in conveying that information, have I? So, clearly, communication requires understanding. But then, it seems you already know that, because you said, “God intended to communicate with us, so it stands to reason that he would use a method he knew we could understand.”

 

This is the crux of my dispute with your definitions – it acts like human minds are totally objective and that if, therefore, multiple minds don’t unanimously agree as to the meaning of some information they all received, there must be something wrong with the information itself (or at least, the way the information was conveyed).

 

If multiple intelligent, educated, faithful minds don’t agree as to the meaning of some text they’ve studied for years, then the true meaning of that text is obviously not readily apparent and easily understood. That’s all I’m saying. I’m well aware that human minds aren’t objective, and that everyone is influenced by his own biases and presuppositions, but overcoming those problems is what clarity is all about. It’s about presenting your ideas so plainly that most people can understand them regardless of their biases and presuppositions. For example, if I wanted people to understand that they’re supposed to baptize babies, I could say, “You’re supposed to baptize babies.” That’s clear enough, isn’t it? I think any mentally competent person can understand my meaning, regardless of his “preexisting biases, dispositions, presence or absence of desire to know the truth, and so forth.”

 

Well, again, the crux of the problem I have with your view is that you proceed from this definition [of “clear”] to the existence of multiple contradictory interpretations and draw the conclusion “Gee, the book must not be clear after all.”

 

The existence of multiple contradictory interpretations of the Bible indicates that many people are misunderstanding its teachings, including millions of intelligent, educated, faithful people who are sincerely trying to understand those teachings. That being the case, it follows that those teachings must not be readily apparent and easily understood. If they were, these people would easily understand them. I think that’s self-evident.

 

Now, “easily understood” is the definition of the word “clear.” Therefore, if the Bible is not easily understood – and it’s obviously not – it’s not clear. To say that the Bible is clear, but not easily understood, would be nonsense. It would be like saying that a person is famous, but not well known.

 

Now, try as hard as I can, I just can’t get my mind around the idea that this conclusion logically and necessarily follows from the premises of the argument. Observe:

 

1. The Bible is communication.

 

2. Communication is the successful impartation of information.

 

Right – emphasis on “successful.”

 

3. But different people sometimes disagree about the meaning of the imparted information.

 

Conclusion: Therefore, there’s something wrong with the imparted information (your conclusion, as you stated it multiple times in the discussion over the summer).

 

That was not my argument, or my conclusion. My argument is simple. I start with the premise that “clear” means “readily apparent” and “easily understood,” because that is in fact what it means. Therefore, if Scripture is clear, its true meaning will be readily apparent to most intelligent, faithful people, and easily understood by them. I then look around and observe that this is not the case. Instead, there is widespread disagreement about many, many points of doctrine among those intelligent Christians who study Scripture in good faith. Therefore, because most people don’t easily and correctly grasp the Bible’s intended meaning on a host of subjects, that meaning obviously isn’t readily apparent and easily understood, and hence, it isn’t clear.

 

One doesn’t have to be an expert in formal logic to see that the conclusion simply does not follow from the premises.

 

One also doesn’t have to be an expert in formal logic to see that the argument, as you presented it, is illogical. For one thing, premise 3 contradicts premise 2. If people don’t understand the information someone was attempting to impart, then it wasn’t successfully imparted. As Scripture says, “If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me” (1 Cor 14:11). That doesn’t sound like the “successful impartation of information” to me. It sounds more like a “failure to communicate.”

 

The only way the argument can work is if there is a hidden fourth premise of the form: “Minds can’t / don’t ever distort the information they receive, so if the information is really clear, all minds will always agree on its meaning.”

 

If the information is really “clear,” that means it was presented in such a way that even fallible, biased people can understand it, because its meaning is readily apparent and easily understood. The more plainly something’s stated, the more difficult it is to misunderstand it. As I said, that’s what clarity is all about. For example, the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus rose from the dead. By this I mean that when we read the New Testament, its teaching that Jesus rose from the dead is readily apparent and easily understood. And therefore, just as we would expect, almost everyone who’s ever read the New Testament agrees that it says Jesus rose from the dead.

 

Likewise, I’ll bet that just about everyone who’s ever read the Westminster Confession of Faith agrees that it endorses infant baptism. That’s because in Chapter XXVIII, paragraph IV, it says, “Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents, are to be baptized.” Now that’s clarity. I don’t care how biased you may be, I don’t care what your theological presuppositions may be, if you can read English and are mentally competent, you can understand that the WCF endorses infant baptism. That fact is readily apparent and easily understood. Unfortunately, the Bible isn’t nearly as clear on this subject as the WCF is – not by a long shot – and that’s why there are so many Baptists in the world.

 

Now, it’s pretty obvious that John Doe Baptist thinks his views are “what Scripture clearly teaches”–he doesn’t think Scripture’s teaching on baptism is unclear. The same goes for John Doe Presbyterian. But what is not obvious (despite your insistence that it is blindingly obvious) is that this difference of viewpoint arises from problems in the text.

 

The difference in viewpoint arises from the fact that the Bible doesn’t directly say whom to baptize. On the one hand, it doesn’t say we should baptize infants, but on the other hand, it also doesn’t say we should baptize only adults, either. That isn’t a “problem” with the text, it’s simply a result of the fact that the text was written to people who already knew whom to baptize. Therefore, the authors of Scripture didn’t have to mention it. I guess they didn’t feel the need to waste ink and papyrus telling people things they already knew.

 

The problem, then, isn’t with the text, it’s with the way Protestants misuse it. They treat it as if it were a catechism, or a systematic theology text that clearly spells out every element of Christian faith and practice. But it doesn’t, and the reason it doesn’t is because it was written to people who were already Christians, and who didn’t need to have every little thing spelled out for them in writing that they’d already been taught in person. That’s why some things – like infant baptism – weren’t explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. There was simply no need to mention it. These people had already been baptizing infants for decades. They didn’t have to scour the New Testament (which hadn’t been written yet) trying to establish a “scriptural basis” for baptizing infants; they simply did as the apostles had taught them.

 

And what is even less obvious (again, despite your insistence that it “logically” follows) is that the difference of viewpoint can only be solved by appeal to an infallible interpreter.

 

Okay, how would you solve it?

 

It appears to me that you can’t. Instead, you can only continue to insist that you’re right and that Scripture clearly affirms you in your rightness, while your Baptist friend does the same. Your example illustrates my point, and so does Church history. If there’s anything that’s obvious from even a cursory examination of non-Catholic Christianity, it’s that Scripture’s true doctrines are not stated so plainly that they’re readily apparent to sincere believers. Instead, on point after point, disagreement and division have been the order of the day. Therefore, if we’re to have any hope of achieving the unity of faith for which Jesus prayed (John 17:22-23) and which Paul commanded (1 Cor. 1:10), we need a God-ordained interpretive authority to whose judgment all believers must ultimately subordinate their own private interpretations. You say this isn’t necessary, but you just argue in a circle:

 

Tim: “Scripture is clear.”

 

Gary: “But we don’t understand it.”

 

Tim: “That’s because human minds are biased, and they often misinterpret the information they receive.”

 

Gary: “Then obviously we need a God-ordained interpreter to show us the right interpretation.”

 

Tim: “No we don’t, because Scripture is clear.”

 

The methodology you employ and defend simply is not the way we human beings normally work at understanding communications from each other via ordinary language, so why it should be the way we work at understanding communications from God given to us in ordinary language I cannot fathom (it seems like special pleading to me).

 

You say God communicated with us in “ordinary language,” and therefore, theoretically, we should be able to understand it just fine without the help of an authoritative interpreter, but the fact is, we don’t. John Doe Baptist and John Doe Presbyterian are intelligent, faithful people, but they’ve been studying this “ordinary language” for centuries, and they’ve gotten nowhere. They’ve translated it, analyzed it, exegeted it, parsed it, and prayed about it, but still they can’t agree on whom to baptize. Your sola Scriptura methodology can’t solve this problem. In fact, I’d argue that it caused the problem.

 

So you can criticize my solution if you want, but at least I have one. In this case, your perspicuity doctrine actually works against you, because the louder you insist that Scripture is clear, the harder you’ll make it for John Doe Baptist to entertain the idea that he and his fellow Baptists have badly misunderstood it for the past 400 years.

 

Unless of course you can also convince them that “clear” doesn’t mean what they think it does. :-)