"The Reformed position therefore makes understanding an essential part of faith, even at the cost of denying that infants can believe. Aside from infants the preaching of a message would make no sense unless the auditors were supposed to know what was being said. This is why missionaries must work hard to learn a foreign language and try to speak it without an American accent. This is why the Apostles on the day of Pentecost spoke in tongues. The Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia heard the message in their own language. If the message were not supposed to be understood, there would be no need to learn Arabic or Chinese. One could simply speak American slang or quote the Bible in the King James Version.
Understanding, therefore, is a prerequisite to faith. It is impossible to believe what one does not understand. The evangelist or missionary must spare no pains to help his prospective convert to understand the message. Just how much has to be understood is difficult to measure. Obviously a child of ten cannot understand as much as a highly educated adult; yet God regenerates some children. Does it follow that God will regenerate a highly educated adult if he understands no more than a child? Some individuals and some churches have tried to set down minimum requirements. They have tried to separate the few sentences in the Bible that are essential from all the rest that is unessential. One can see how these people become interested in such an attempt, but one cannot see any Biblical recommendation of such an attempt. Christ commanded us to teach all the things he taught; Paul was guiltless of his auditors' blood because he had declared all the counsel of God; and many other passages condemn ignorance and recommend knowledge. In Scripture there is a no minimum. Some theologians try to explain this situation by insisting that truth is organic. Minimum statements are not inert building blocks which when combined with other building blocks can be arranged into a building. Rather, a truth or proposition is like a seed, and when ingested it grows into a full plant in the mind. Hence, say these theologians, any Biblical statement, or at least some Biblical statements contain the complete Gospel as a seed contains the complete plant. Unfortunately for these theologians, their analogy, though it be a beautiful illustration, is intellectually vacuous. Illustrations are usually if not always deceptive; and to say that a proposition is like a seed that grows means nothing and throws no light on the nature of faith. Since the position this present writer defends places such great emphasis on propositions - on an intelligible message composed of sentences - it would seem that he above all writers should indicate which propositions are essential and which are not. No one can understand all the propositions in the Bible, or at least no one actually understands all that the Bible implies. What then are the facts essential to salvation? The thief on the cross very obviously understood only a little. Is not this little, if we can discover it, sufficient for an evangelist's sermons? Well, the thief called Jesus Lord. And Romans 10:9 says that those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord shall be saved. Here if anywhere is the essential proposition. Nothing else - except belief in the Resurrection - is necessary. Maybe the Resurrection is not necessary, for the thief did not know that. Furthermore, as other references in this book mention the devils believe there is one God, they even believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but by some twist of demonic mentality, they do not confess him as Lord. Have not we therefore found the irreducible minimum? The answer is, No. The reason for this negative answer lies in the necessity of understanding the proposition. It is a matter of intellectual apprehension. There are many who in that day will say to Christ, Lord, Lord. And he will profess, I never knew you. Thus, clearly, a verbal profession of Lord is not saving faith. One must understand what the term Lord means. Further, as has already been pointed out, the name Jesus must be correctly apprehended. Confess that the Jesus of Strauss, Renan, or Schweitzer is Lord, and you will go to Hell. 'Jesus is Lord' therefore is not a minimum that means nothing else." - Gordon H. Clark, What is the Christian Life? |
No comments:
Post a Comment