General Impressions

As the Christian blogoshpere gets bigger and bigger, I see that there is a trend, by many, to shy away from biblical exposition. People would rather deal with their views and argue about their thoughts, rather than go to the texts of our holy book. Even scarier is the fact that many explicitly state that they do not want to deal with the Bible.

For the life of me I cannot understand why a Christian would not want to wrestle with the text of Scripture in formulating and resolving differences in their theologies. Here at Bring the Books…we have had commentators state that they do not want to get into a proof texting war. On one level I agree with this. I do not want to throw a Bible reference out there and then have you throw two more and then I throw three more and so on. But I do want to give texts that prove my view (proof text). I want to show why the text in question does in fact teach the doctrine I am claiming it teaches. I want to give a solid historical-grammatical exegesis of the passage. I want to show that my view is the same as the authors. We cannot do this by arguing about our own thoughts or reasons. The only way to know what God things about this or that subject is to go to his Word.

On another blog I frequent, the author states that he rarely solves theological disputes by exegesis. He thinks that we need to resolve conflict on the level of our presuppositions. I agree that in a dispute our presuppositions often can be the reason for the dispute, but even if this is the case, are we not to get our presuppositions from the text itself? Are we not to let the Bible set the agenda? Should we not have the same presuppositions that the Bible has? The only way to do this is to go back to the text! Even if that means we have to get our exegetical tools dirty. Even if that means we have to set Calvin or Murray or Hodge to the side for a moment. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a high view of tradition and I value the fathers of our faith very much. But you do ultimately settle theological dispute by saying, “My theologian can beat up your theologian.” Or by erecting a balance scale and setting all the fathers on their perspective sides and see which side out weighs the other. As reformed Christians (reformed with a little “r,” those whose theological roots are in the Protestant Reformation) we need to remember sola scriptura. I am not arguing for solo scriptura (only the Bible), but I am arguing that the Bible is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice and we need to take our theological disputes to the text. Back to the Bible!, ought to be out battle cry.