It sounds so godly. Why would the Christian need anything more than the Holy Spirit living inside and God's word to direct his theological studies?
After all, God is the Author of the Bible. Now, as a believer, He is dwelling inside of you. That should give you everything that you need. To say anything else would be to diminish God, His word and His work in your life. Right?
Despite the pious sound of the sentiment, it is the height of arrogance and ungodly pride to declare that you need nothing more than the the Holy Spirit and the Bible for theology. Why? You are forgetting you.
Unlike upwards of 80% of American households, we do not have cable or satellite TV in our home. That's not a moral decision we made, it is a purely financial one. Therefore, if we want to watch something on television, we watch broadcast TV. Let me use this as an example to demonstrate my point about arrogance.
The federally mandated switch to digital TV has not been a popular decision at our house. Prior to digital TV, if the station wasn't picking up perfectly, it could be a little fuzzy or not perfectly clear, but you could watch it.
Now, the screen blacks out, freezes and any number of other things making it all but impossible to watch anything unless the signal is picking up perfectly. The further you are away from the digital towers and the cheaper you digital antenna, the worse your signal will be.
The person (or isolated individual church) who relies on "nothing but the Holy Spirit and the Bible" for their theology is like the home with digital TV, but having no idea how it is supposed to look. If you've never seen cable or you've never watched a channel that came through clearly, you would have no idea that your signal was not working properly. You have nothing with which to compare it.
The person with only the Bible and the Holy Spirit is forgetting that they have to be able to completely trust their antenna, themselves. Does anyone want to argue that they are perfect? Because that's what it would take to be the perfect antenna. You would have to be perfectly, without fault, tuned into God and His desires. If you are operating by yourself, you would have to be without need of the Savior to perfectly hear from the Savior. This is what I mean by that stance requiring the height of arrogance.
When you say you don't need other churches or church history to help you with your biblical interpretation or your theology, you are in essence arguing that the Holy Spirit does not operate outside of you. Has God not been at work in His church since its founding? Is He not at work in His church now?
Do you know where those who answer "no" end up at? Cults. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. They all argue that much of church history is wrong and that God wasn't working in those, so He has to restart it all with their teaching. When you have no checks and balances of church history and other Christians and churches in your life or the life of your church family, you end up in cult territory.
Look at a completely isolated church like Westboro Baptist. They accept no influence from the outside, either form the past or the present. They have become a family cult, preaching a false gospel. No one can speak truth into their lives because everyone outside of their circle is considered apostate.
Has the church made mistakes in church history? Yes, plenty. But you can learn from those. When you totally ignore church history, you don't cut yourself off from the mistakes others made. You remove yourself from recognizing how to fix them. Throughout history, the church has dealt with various types of heresies and false teaching. By disregarding what they've done, you open ourselves up to the same temptations to which past Christians succumbed.
This was one of the pitfalls that C.S. Lewis observed so well. In "Learning and War-Time," he wrote:
That is a very dangerous place to set oneself, as the sole mediator between God and man. It is a very dangerous place because it belongs to Someone else.
The Christian should spend time alone with God's word and listening to the Holy Spirit speak, but he cannot assume the arrogant position that he is the only one who has ever done or is doing it now. That's not pious, that's prideful and God will not honor it.
After all, God is the Author of the Bible. Now, as a believer, He is dwelling inside of you. That should give you everything that you need. To say anything else would be to diminish God, His word and His work in your life. Right?
Despite the pious sound of the sentiment, it is the height of arrogance and ungodly pride to declare that you need nothing more than the the Holy Spirit and the Bible for theology. Why? You are forgetting you.
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| Photo from RGBstock.com by Sanja Gjenero |
The federally mandated switch to digital TV has not been a popular decision at our house. Prior to digital TV, if the station wasn't picking up perfectly, it could be a little fuzzy or not perfectly clear, but you could watch it.
Now, the screen blacks out, freezes and any number of other things making it all but impossible to watch anything unless the signal is picking up perfectly. The further you are away from the digital towers and the cheaper you digital antenna, the worse your signal will be.
The person (or isolated individual church) who relies on "nothing but the Holy Spirit and the Bible" for their theology is like the home with digital TV, but having no idea how it is supposed to look. If you've never seen cable or you've never watched a channel that came through clearly, you would have no idea that your signal was not working properly. You have nothing with which to compare it.
The person with only the Bible and the Holy Spirit is forgetting that they have to be able to completely trust their antenna, themselves. Does anyone want to argue that they are perfect? Because that's what it would take to be the perfect antenna. You would have to be perfectly, without fault, tuned into God and His desires. If you are operating by yourself, you would have to be without need of the Savior to perfectly hear from the Savior. This is what I mean by that stance requiring the height of arrogance.
When you say you don't need other churches or church history to help you with your biblical interpretation or your theology, you are in essence arguing that the Holy Spirit does not operate outside of you. Has God not been at work in His church since its founding? Is He not at work in His church now?
Do you know where those who answer "no" end up at? Cults. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. They all argue that much of church history is wrong and that God wasn't working in those, so He has to restart it all with their teaching. When you have no checks and balances of church history and other Christians and churches in your life or the life of your church family, you end up in cult territory.
Look at a completely isolated church like Westboro Baptist. They accept no influence from the outside, either form the past or the present. They have become a family cult, preaching a false gospel. No one can speak truth into their lives because everyone outside of their circle is considered apostate.
Has the church made mistakes in church history? Yes, plenty. But you can learn from those. When you totally ignore church history, you don't cut yourself off from the mistakes others made. You remove yourself from recognizing how to fix them. Throughout history, the church has dealt with various types of heresies and false teaching. By disregarding what they've done, you open ourselves up to the same temptations to which past Christians succumbed.
This was one of the pitfalls that C.S. Lewis observed so well. In "Learning and War-Time," he wrote:
Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.Isolating yourself from the past and others, does not speak to an increased faith in the Holy Spirit to communicate through God's word. Rather, it communicates an increased pride that believes it, alone, can clearly hear what God is saying.
That is a very dangerous place to set oneself, as the sole mediator between God and man. It is a very dangerous place because it belongs to Someone else.
The Christian should spend time alone with God's word and listening to the Holy Spirit speak, but he cannot assume the arrogant position that he is the only one who has ever done or is doing it now. That's not pious, that's prideful and God will not honor it.
