Hyperspirituality & The Nature of Scripture - Glenn Conjurske
Hyperspirituality & The Nature of Scripture
Introduction: The All-Sufficiency of Scripture
I believe without the slightest question in the all-sufficiency of Scripture, but I have often seen statements which I believe establish a false view of the Bible, while endeavoring to establish its sufficiency. Scripture stands supreme and alone as the living word of the living God, and is certainly all-sufficient for the purposes for which God gave it. But hyperspirituality, after its usual manner, seeks to give to the Scriptures a place which God never intended. With the intent of exalting the Scriptures, it thrusts out other gifts of God from their places, and seeks to replace them with the Bible. It seeks to put the Bible in the place of the preacher or teacher, exalting the Bible as divine, and depreciating the teacher as human. Yet those teachers are among the gifts which Christ gave to his church, and if the Bible alone, without the teacher, is all-sufficient, why did Christ give such gifts as teachers? Are his gifts worthless, or needless?
The Role of Teachers and Human Guidance
It is true enough that there are false teachers—yes, and incompetent teachers too, neither called, nor gifted, nor sent of God—and the Bible is the only and all-sufficient standard by which every teacher is to be judged, yet the Bible is certainly ineffectual for such a purpose, except it be in the hands of an experienced and spiritual man. Babes, with the Bible in their hands, will yet be “carried about by every wind of doctrine,” except they have a human teacher to expose the false and establish the true. It is not the Bible alone which will keep them from error, but “that which every joint supplieth.” (Eph. 4:16). Paul does not establish the word itself as the safeguard, but the ministry of the word. It is the preached word which is effectual.
The Inadequacy of Man’s Understanding
The Bible may be sufficient, but our poor heads and hearts are very insufficient, and with the very word of God in our hands, when asked, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” we must reply, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” (Acts 8:31). Such, at any rate, certainly has been the case with every one of us, and for our benefit the Lord gives to us, as the gift of his love, human teachers. These are men who by long acquaintance with the Holy Book, by long acquaintance with the God who gave it, and by long acquaintance with the hearts of men—by long observation, meditation, and experience—have gained an understanding of the book, and so an ability to open its contents to others. Any doctrine which replaces God-given teachers with the Bible is hyperspiritual, and false. It may be true enough that the Bible is its own best expositor, but this is true only when the Book is in the hands of an experienced and spiritual man. For the rest, the man who reads the Bible alone will go astray as quickly as the man who seeks to understand it with the aid of human books and teachers—and probably more quickly, for there is a price to be paid for despising the gifts of God. Yet the man who has read the Bible alone is likely to have a good deal more confidence in his false interpretations, for hyperspirituality is almost invariably associated with pride.
Hyperspirituality and Rejection of Human Authority
But again, there are also hyperspiritual spirits who would replace human authorities with the Bible, directly against the testimony of the Bible itself. They want no elders ruling in the church, no man in authority over them, to require anything of them, but wish to leave every man to be ruled by the Bible alone. Such spirits are almost certain to be trouble-makers, and the authorities which God has placed in the church ought to be very careful to require of them, as the condition of their remaining in the church, a determination to “obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves,” according to the plain commandment of God (Heb. 13:17). Was God mistaken, to lay such requirements upon his people? Did God not understand the all-sufficiency of Holy Scripture?
The Necessity of Human Teachers
It is altogether proper that the church should take the Bible as “our only rule of faith and practice,” but every man is not competent to understand its principles, nor even its precepts. It is the Bible which says, “When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.” (Hebrews 5:12). “Ye have need.” Ye are not competent in yourselves to understand even the first principles of the Bible. Left, therefore, to yourselves, you are very likely to be wandering in weary mazes of error, even with the Bible in your hands. “Ye have need” of teachers and elders, to open to you the contents of the Scriptures, and to keep your feet in the narrow path—even using the rod to do so, if need be.
Avoiding the Extremes of Romanism and Legalism
Not that we would for one moment suggest that we put the teacher or the ruler in the place of the Bible. God forbid. This is Romanism, Mormonism, cultism, and is surely a much greater evil than putting the Bible in the place of the teacher, or the elder. Yet the latter is an evil also, and an evil which the Bible itself forbids. I realize that it is the Bible which says, “Ye need not that any man teach you, but…the same anointing teacheth you of all things” (I John 2:27), but this was not written to make void the other Scriptures, nor to render the gifts of God useless. The same chapter says (in verse 20), “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” From this we might argue that we have no need of the Bible itself, for it is the Spirit who teaches us all things. Yet the Bible itself forbids such a notion. The Spirit alone will no more teach us without the Bible, than he will without the aid of human teachers. God can do both, and has done both in certain exceptional cases, but that this is not his ordinary way the Bible itself makes plain. But hyperspirituality has a penchant for setting aside the ordinary ways of God in favor of the exceptional. Isaac is made the standard for courtship, while Jacob is ignored. John the Baptist is made the standard for the acquisition of the truth, while Timothy is ignored. Hyperspirituality can almost always quote Scripture for its views, and quote it very plausibly too, but it always does so at the expense of other Scripture.
The Bible and Human Experience
But to proceed. Hyperspiritual notions almost invariably endeavor to put the Bible in the place of human wisdom, human observation, and human experience. “If it isn’t in the Bible, we don’t need to know it.” This may sound spiritual, but it is in fact the quintessence of hyperspirituality, and no man can consistently observe such a maxim. The Bible will not teach you how to tie your shoes, nor how to bake your beans, nor how to make a canoe, nor how to paddle it. When the missionary stands upon the bank of the river, the Bible will not solve for him what missionary Dan Crawford calls “the eternal problem—how to cross.” The Bible will not tell us what kind of mushrooms we may eat, and what kind will kill us—though experience and observation will. Experience, of course, in such a matter, will prove a rather costly teacher, and will doubtless benefit our heirs more than it does ourselves. It will benefit them, that is, if they are not too hyperspiritual to appropriate the human wisdom which has been gained by the experience of those who ate the wrong mushrooms. There are a thousand things which are necessary to our health and well-being, and things innumerable which are necessary to our very being, which the Bible will not teach us. The Bible does not teach us to take quinine for malaria, though thousands have died for lack of it. The Bible will never teach us not to walk on thin ice, though experience will teach us so in a hurry. Yet it is only fools who have need even of experience to learn such a thing. All such matters may be learned from the common stock of common wisdom which the experience of the ages has accumulated. There the wise will learn it. Those who are too spiritual to learn it there must learn it in the school of hard knocks, for it is certain they will not gain much of it from the Bible. The Bible was not given to teach us what we may learn elsewhere.
The Bible and Practical Knowledge
The Bible will not teach us how to tan leather, nor how to make a shoe. The Bible will not teach us how to smelt the ore to make the iron, nor how to turn the iron into an axe or saw, nor how to fell a tree—though for lack of that knowledge some men have died, and others crushed the roofs of cars and houses. I know an old man who calls improperly felled trees—half up, half down, and caught in the middle—by the very descriptive name of “widow-makers.” Yet the Bible will not teach us how to drop the tree where we want it, though we may learn a good deal about it from watching the beavers. They know by nature how to fell the tree. We must learn it by observation or experience, and we certainly cannot learn it from the Bible.
Hyperspirituality’s Approach to Wisdom
Hyperspirituality may quote Scripture, of course, as every error can, and very plausibly, too. The Bible says that God has given us “ALL THINGS which pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him” (II Pet. 1:3), but the fact remains that the Bible will not teach us how to kindle a fire, though a fire is a virtual necessity to man’s existence in most climates. Common sense dictates that “life” in this text must refer to spiritual or eternal life. The Greek will not settle the point. The word “life” ( v in the Greek) is used at least a dozen times in the New Testament to denote this present life, as in James 4:14, “What is your life? It is even a vapour.” Yet the word is very often used of spiritual and eternal life also, as Matthew 19:17, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And I John 5:12, “He that hath the Son hath life.” The Greek determines nothing. But common sense (not to say common honesty) dictates that the “life” spoken of in II Peter 1:3 is spiritual and eternal life. If it is taken to refer to this present life, the statement is simply not true.
The Inconsistency of Hyperspirituality
The maxim, “If it isn’t in the Bible, we don’t need to know it,” is held by folks who have obviously done very little thinking, and it must of plain necessity be applied only in the most inconsistent manner. It is used to set aside certain branches of wisdom, against which its adherents have some kind of prejudice, and the rest of the time the maxim is ignored. The true maxim is, The Bible is all-sufficient for the purposes for which God gave it, but the Bible was never given to teach us what we may learn without it. It was not given to teach us how to add or subtract, nor how to cook, nor which tea to take for the tummy-ache. The Bible was not given to teach us how to make eye-glasses, though millions have suffered for the lack of them. The Bible was not given to teach us how to trap a skunk, nor how to make a kettle or bucket—though life might be inconvenient enough without the knowledge. All of such knowledge is learned by the experience and observation of the human race, and contributed to the common stock for the benefit of all. The saints of God must learn it the same way the rest of the race does, and if they will not learn it thus, they must suffer for it. The Bible has nothing to do here.
Human Experience and the Scriptures
But more. The Bible does have something to say concerning many things purely temporal and earthly, but it usually says them in such a way as to leave us yet with the necessity of learning them by experience and observation. Those scriptures will confirm the truth of our observation and experience, but will hardly lead us to that truth in the absence of that experience. The Bible speaks of “the way of a man with a maid” as a thing inspiring great wonder (Prov. 30:19), but without stopping to define or describe it. There is no need to describe it, since it belongs to the common experience of the human race. Not that every man knows it, but every man may learn it, as much as he may learn “the way of an eagle in the air.” The Bible gives us, in the Song of Solomon, a most beautiful exhibition of “the way of a man with a maid,” and yet thousands have read and studied that book without learning it. Ah! but when a man falls in love, then the book comes alive, and confirms his experience at every point. I once spoke to a married man concerning the nature of marital love, basing my remarks upon the Song of Solomon. His response was, “I cannot relate to that,” which showed me plainly enough that he had never experienced it—that he was not in love, and never had been. He was no doubt “in love” with femininity, as every normal man is, but he was not in love with his wife. And without the experience of it, he could not appreciate the portrayal of it in the Bible.
Conclusion: The Sufficiency of Scripture
It is true indeed that by means of the Bible “the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work”—but this is true only in its own sphere. The Bible will not teach the carpenter how to build a house, nor the Eskimo how to build his igloo. It will not teach the fisherman how to catch fish, nor the tailor how to make a pair of pants. This is human wisdom, to be learned by experience and observation. It cannot be learned from the Bible, yet it is folly to spurn it—folly to deny that it is profitable or necessary. On the basis of this scripture, however, the hyperspiritual have formed another false maxim, namely, “If the Bible doesn’t teach us how to do it, it isn’t a good work.” Perhaps these mistaken souls would grant that it is a good work to read the Bible, yet the Bible will not teach us how to read.