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"Scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues..."

by David and Tim Bayly on February 22, 2011 - 10:11am

(Tim) From a January 3, 2011 New Yorker article titled, "God's Librarians: the Vatican Library enters the twenty-first century," here's an explanation of Rome's many-century opposition to laymen reading the Bible that strikes me as pertinent to the scientific exegetes who write books and teach in reformed and evangelical seminaries and colleges, today:

(The Vatican Library) may possess some of the most ancient manuscripts of Scripture in existence, but for centuries the (Roman) Catholic church held that ordinary people shouldn't be able to read the Bible--that the Old and New Testaments themselves should be a kind of "secret history" for everyone but the scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues in which they were written.

The modern scientific exegete has done the medieval equivalent of denying Scripture to the layman by...

speaking and writing as if no one can understand what the Apostle Paul or Moses meant without his highly specialized knowledge purchased from this or that institution of higher learning. Ask youself what the significance is of those study notes bound into the latest ESV Bible that take up between a quarter and half of each one of its pages? Are they completely innocuous? Does the sheer mass of those notes reinforce that precious reformed doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture? Do Baylyblog readers even know what that doctrine is?

Read Bible scholars' comments on Genesis 1-3 or 1Timothy 2 and you must conclude that what an uneducated man understands from the text when he reads it in English is better than nothing, but only slightly. The Bible is not a book for the uneducated. They don't--they can't get it.

Pastors with intermediate degrees issued by scholars with the terminal degree from a pedigreed institution of higher learning must guard the good deposit from the simplistic readings of the pious, but unlearned.

Tags: 
Reformed theology
Academia
Bible interpretation
Roman Catholicism

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Comments

Submitted by Johnnie on February 22, 2011 - 1:02pm

This has been my contention for a while. I am not over educated but a "steel man" who works with men who have not gone to college and some have not completed high school. In order for them to come to church membership they have to be catechized, interviewed and proven to be ignorant. Our pastors can discuss complicated doctrines but cannot simply describe what it means to be redeemed by Christ with clarity. My humble thought.

Submitted by David & Tim Bayly on February 22, 2011 - 1:48pm

One reader wrote: "What notes are you talking about? Are you expecting us to go out and buy the latest ESV just so we can understand your post? Either that or you need to provide footnotes to help the reader understand."

Dear Brother,

Sheer mass of notes in proportion to Scripture is all I'm addressing. If half a page is notes, does it build a reader's confidence in the perspicuity of Scripture or lead him, rather, to think he's been initiated into the cognoscenti? I think the latter and I think, also, that's a problem. The Reformers' Geneva Bible was nothing like it. Absolute simplicity. Minimalist commentary getting to the heart of the matter immediately is what the Reformers did.

Think too of the Apostle Paul's commentary on the Creation account. Adam was created first and then Eve; and Eve was deceived--not Adam. Utter simplicity.

Much love,

Submitted by David Gray on February 22, 2011 - 1:55pm

And the Geneva Bible is now available with modern fonts which renders it much more readable than some older reproductions. ESV is my first choice but the Geneva is a viable option.

Submitted by Mark on February 22, 2011 - 6:02pm

"...the perspicuity of Scripture? Do Baylyblog readers even know what that doctrine is?"

It's probably too easy to pick off the low hanging fruit on this and say, "It isn't entirely clear to me."

Submitted by B Kirchner on February 23, 2011 - 7:44am

"Paul, His Letters, and Acts demonstrates extensive research. Phillips has interacted with a broad range of Pauline scholars (as his footnotes attest), and this is helpful. He raises key issues and questions that every serious interpreter of Paul must consider."

The above is a quote from a book review by a PCA pastor: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/35-3/book-reviews/paul-his-letters-and-acts-library-of-pauline-studies

Does this mean that I cannot read and understand any of the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament? Or maybe I can but I'm just not serious?

There is no doubt that the Word must be handled with much care so as to not abuse it. The hermenutics one uses are important but to think that one must read such research and run in such academic circles to understand the Word is, well, disheartening.

There are times when it seems like we are digressing back to the pre-Reformation days.

And I do know what the perspicuity of Scripture means :-)!

Submitted by Tim Bayly on February 23, 2011 - 8:16am

>>(The royalty beneficiary) raises key issues and questions that every serious interpreter of Paul must consider.

That's the precise sort of statement regularly encountered in Evangelical print products and trade association publications today. If every serious interpreter of (NB: not

"the Apostle Paul" but just plain old "Paul") must (buy and read) this latest product of scientific exegetical and hermeneutical interpretation, must every serious pastor do so, also?

And speaking of care in interpretation and application, what's usually lacking is not a proper understanding of the Greek or the original cultural context of the text, but instead a basic ability to read and comprehend what one's read combined with a commitment to fear God rather than man and to improve the text beyond what itching ears would prefer. In other words, the true failure in our preaching today is that we don't read and we don't preach. We're teachers rather than pastors, and our teaching is all gotten secondhand by the exchange of money (degrees and books and conferences).

Love,

Submitted by Mark Horne on February 23, 2011 - 8:59am

I've opted out of notes. What I DO like are cross-references. Those reinforce the idea that the best resource for understanding Scripture is Scripture. The NASB was my favorite. But the ESV has a much better look by making the page look like a real text rather than a series of numbered points.

Submitted by David & Tim Bayly on February 23, 2011 - 9:24am

Dear Mark,

My library contains a two-volume Bagster and Sons set called "A Commentary Wholly Biblical" that can be read here: http://www.archive.org/stream/commentarywholly03lond#page/n19/mode/2up

It's wonderful, being a compilation of texts bearing on the verse and reproduced directly below that verse.

I also prefer the text of the NASB (and use it) but the layout of the ESV. If only someone would produce an NASB with the best cross-reference set available with each page a single column of text (cross-references to the side) and no--NO--words of Jesus in read. If possible, I'd like Cambridge to do the paper and binding and layout. (I've had it with the binding of Lockman and Zondervan Bibles falling apart.)

Cordially,

Submitted by Bert Perry on February 23, 2011 - 11:08am

Doesn't "perspicuity of Scripture" mean that it's hard to understand the Bible? (runs for cover!)

Sorry, couldn't resist....those big words always throw me off. :^)

Seriously, I'm torn on study Bibles. On the one hand, one I had back in the late 1980s really helped me understand the world that Jesus lived in and the significance of some texts. On the other hand, I've come to realize that all too often, the notes in study Bibles serve only to render the reader dependent on the producer of the notes. I've got large portions of the study notes in one Bible I own blacked out because I caught myself paying more attention to the study notes than the Word itself.

Another interesting thought is that a lot of study notes really aren't....study notes at all. There are aspects of various passages that are missed by most all study Bibles, but if you're reading the text carefully, you catch them. Regrettably, I believe I've been under the teaching of a few PASTORS who were more or less dependent on those study notes far more than the Scripture itself.

Submitted by Dan Reuter on February 23, 2011 - 2:09pm

You are right, though a little bit late. For a long, long time, the mainline denominations have not merely abandoned, but denied the perspicuity of Scripture, often deploring at the same time the failure of ordinary Christians nowadays to read the Bible! Writing personally, this was one of the first things that led me to question the "higher" critical tradition in which I was educated: it makes the Bible inaccessible to almost all the people of God. I knew that could not be right.

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