Hyperspirituality & The Nature of Scripture - Glenn Conjurske

Hyperspirituality & The Nature of Scripture

by Glenn Conjurske

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? 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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

But I proceed to another very detrimental manifestation of these hyperspiritual views. There are some who, in order to establish what they conceive to be the sufficiency of Scripture, set aside human reason. “Carnal reason” they call it, and it is evident enough that they have never employed much of it, for it is evident that they have entirely mistaken the nature of Scripture. The Bible is a book which absolutely requires the exercise of human reason, in order to make any use of it at all.

It is not uncommon to hear protests against what is called someone’s “interpretation” of the Scriptures, as though it were wrong to interpret them. “We must have a plain `Thus saith the Lord,’ and we will not accept any man’s interpretation in the place of this.” But hold. I very much fear that such statements are usually nothing more than sophistry, designed only to evade the force of truth. But even where such statements are sincere, they embody a fundamental falsehood. While seeking to guard the sufficiency of Scripture, they serve actually to obscure the issue. The question is not whether it is your interpretation, or my interpretation, or an interpretation, but whether it is the true interpretation. We cannot use the Bible at all without interpreting it. Every doctrine of Christianity—-I mean every true doctrine—-is in fact founded upon the interpretation of Scripture. The Bible is not a creed. It is not a system of doctrine. It contains rather the materials out of which we are obliged to construct our doctrines. Those who claim the Bible alone as their creed have another creed also, and usually a very rigid one, though they may not put it on paper. The Plymouth Brethren have no creed but the Bible, yet they forbade F. W. Grant to teach contrary to their recognized doctrines.

The Scriptures are not our creed, and God never designed that they should be. Set up a church with the Bible only as your creed, and every Neo-evangelical, every compromiser, and every heretic on the earth will subscribe to it. Take the Bible as a creed, and it settles absolutely nothing. It must be interpreted to settle anything. The Bible is not a creed, and cannot be one—-but it is the all-sufficient quarry from which to build one.

An illustration is not an argument, but it may nevertheless throw a flood of light upon the subject, and I offer the following as an illustration. The Bible may be likened to a large jigsaw puzzle in the box—-here a type, there a precept, yonder an example, here a statement of fact, there a principle—-all scattered through the book without the shadow of system, and with scarcely a clue as to how we are to put them together. Perhaps better, the Bible may be likened to the pieces of a dozen or a hundred jigsaw puzzles, all mixed together in one box.

What safeguard is there, then, that we shall put the pieces together properly, or ever produce a sound and Scriptural system of doctrine? Very simply, the safeguard lies in the pieces themselves. The pieces of a puzzle may be forced together in such combinations as manifest only falsehood and confusion, but the safeguard against this lies in the pieces themselves—-in their shape, and in the pattern imprinted upon them. It is not possible to put them together in a wrong pattern without forcing and wresting them. Nevertheless, such false combinations of the pieces may be passed off as true upon those whose eyesight is dim. And so exactly it is with Scripture. When the spiritual sight is dim, a thousand false combinations may appear to be true. But when the spiritual senses are exercised to discern good and evil, when pride and self-sufficiency are purged away, when the eye is single and the fear of the Lord controls the heart, the spiritual sight is then sharpened to detect those false interpretations. “He that is spiritual judges all things,” and the spiritual man may detect in an instant the false interpretations and false doctrines which to others appear most plausible.

But though I would vigorously insist that none but the spiritual man can interpret the Scriptures aright, he does not by his interpretation add one jot or tittle to the Scriptures themselves—-no more than his eyesight adds anything to the shape or the pattern of the pieces of the puzzle. His sight but apprehends what was there before. The contents of the Scriptures themselves are all-sufficient to detect every misuse and every false interpretation of them. Their sufficiency is of exactly the same sort as the sufficiency of the box of puzzle pieces. The box contains every piece required to construct a perfect picture, and every piece contains within itself the properties to detect at once any attempt at a false combination of them. But those properties go for nothing with those whose eyes are dim, or with those who are determined to force the pieces into a pattern suited to their own notions.

If every man had sharp spiritual sight, and if every man were honest in his interpretation of the Scriptures, how very soon all doctrinal controversy would be at an end, and the whole church of God established in the whole truth! If only every man who engaged in teaching, or in controversy, had both the ability and the purpose to simply exhibit every piece of the puzzle as it actually is, there could remain but little question as to how to put them together. But alas, much of the teaching and contending which goes on in the church is aimed precisely at obscuring or altering the true nature of the component parts of Scripture. A thousand voices cry up a thousand different doctrines, every one of them citing Scripture to prove it. What resource have we, what security, what hope, in the midst of such confusion?

Ah! here we fall back precisely upon THE ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF THE SCRIPTURES. From them we have everything to hope, and nothing to fear. They are sufficient. They are not a creed, nor a system of doctrine, nor even a handbook of morals, any more than a box of puzzle pieces is a picture, but they are sufficient not only to supply us with the true picture of divine truth, but also to secure that we shall never reach any result but the true one, provided that our eye is single and our mind spiritual.

Not that I would dare to suppose that any man has ever completed the picture of divine truth. “We know in part,” and the part which we know is doubtless small enough. Nevertheless, we may certainly know the general pattern of truth, howsoever ignorant we may be of a myriad of details. We may surely have a sufficient view of the truth to keep our feet from every false way, and to serve the Lord effectually and acceptably. It was of Old Testament saints, under the old economy, without a completed Bible, and without the indwelling Holy Ghost, that it was said, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity; they walk in his ways” (Psalm 119:1-3). Who will deny that we may have what they had?

The Scriptures are surely sufficient to secure this—-to secure that the man of God should be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. But they are certainly not sufficient to secure it without a good deal of labor, meditation, and experience on our part. This is true in spiritual matters, as well as earthly and temporal. We are dealing here with the actual nature of Scripture.

Now when once the actual nature of Scripture is understood, this will immediately expose two notions which seem to possess the minds of most of the church today. On the one side it is held that we must have a perfect translation, or we can have no security for the truth. On the other side it is held that we must have a translation which can be easily understood. Both of these notions fail to apprehend the actual nature of Scripture. If God himself were to place this moment a perfect translation in the hands of his church, and command every saint to use that version only, upon pain of death, this would not solve a single practical or theological question which now unsettles the church. It would not make the Calvinists Arminians, nor the amillennialists premillennialists. It would not move the women to give up their jewelry, nor the men their ball games. It would, in fact, leave us just exactly where we are today. Many today of course believe that the King James Version is perfect, but if they are honest they must candidly acknowledge that the advent of the King James Version never solved a single doctrinal or practical difficulty in the church. I cannot here enter more largely into this, but perhaps may devote a separate article to it in the future.

Just as shallow is the notion that we must have a translation which can be easily understood. When the nature of Scripture is understood, it plainly appears that such a thing is not possible. Those who labor the hardest to produce translations which can be understood by anybody, generally depart the farthest from the actual meaning of Scripture. They resort to explanation—-paraphrase, that is—-in the place of translation, and so give us in essence a commentary instead of a Bible. The fact is, the Bible cannot be easily understood. God never designed that it should be. God never wrote a Bible that could be easily understood. God never gave a Bible that could be understood without long and deep meditation and experience. He never gave a Bible that a babe could understand without the aid of a teacher. To attempt to produce such a Bible generally leads men directly to alter the nature of the Bible. Of course we ought to translate the Bible as clearly as we can—-to introduce no needless obscurity or ambiguity—-but if we translate faithfully, the result will not be a book which is easy to understand. The original is not easy to understand. There is plenty of ambiguity and obscurity in the original, besides a myriad of things which by their nature will not be readily understood. It was the original which Nehemiah read in the ears of the people, and “gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” (Neh. 8:8). The sense, then, was not obvious, and the only way to make a translation which is easy to understand, or which may be understood without study, meditation, experience, and human teachers, is to depart from the nature of the original.

Glenn Conjurske