The Teaching of the Church
The Teaching of the Church
Our third teacher is the church. So far our portrayal of how God teaches his people from his Word has been entirely individualistic. And it has been true. For it is God’s loving purpose to enlighten, save, reform and nourish his people by his Word as each hears it or reads it for himself. Our sixteenth-century reformers were quite right to want to translate the Bible into plain English and put it into the hands of plain people. For they were appalled at the widespread ignorance of Scripture. Hence William Tyndale’s famous jibe to a clergyman critic:
If God spare my life, ere many years pass I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.5
We must also agree with the reformers’ insistence on what they termed “the right of private judgment,” the birthright of every child of God to hear his Father’s voice speaking to him directly through Scripture. This they asserted over against the claim of the Church of Rome that she had been given a unique “magisterium” or teaching authority, because of which she alone could supply the true interpretation of Scripture.
Nevertheless, in rejecting every attempt to interpose the church or any other authoritative teaching body between God and his people, we must not deny that the church has a place in God’s plan to give his people a right understanding of his Word. The individual Christian’s humble, prayerful, diligent and obedient study of Scripture is not the only way the Holy Spirit makes clear what he has revealed. It would hardly be humble to ignore what the Spirit may have shown to others. The Holy Spirit is indeed our teacher, but he teaches us indirectly through others as well as directly to our own minds. It was not to one man that he revealed the truths now enshrined in Scripture, but to a multiplicity of prophets and apostles; his work of illumination is given to many also. It is not as individuals merely, but “with all the saints” that we are given “power … to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ … that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18–19).
A recognition of this truth will give us more respect than we customarily have for “tradition,” that is, for the understanding of biblical truth which has been handed down from the past to the present. Although the Holy Spirit’s work of biblical inspiration was unique, his teaching ministry did not cease when the last apostle died. It changed from revelation to illumination. Gradually and progressively over the centuries of church history, the Spirit of truth enabled the church to grasp, clarify and formulate the great doctrines of Scripture. We owe much to the so-called Catholic Creeds (“catholic” because they were accepted by the whole church) and Reformation confessions, together with the biblical commentaries and theological treatises of individual scholars.
If we should not despise the heritage of the past, neither should we despise the teachers of the contemporary church. The pastoral ministry is a teaching ministry, and “pastors and teachers” are gifts which the ascended Christ still bestows upon his church (Eph. 4:11–12). We should also be willing to listen to each other and learn from each other. The Holy Spirit can illumine our minds through group as well as individual Bible study. The apostle Paul clearly envisaged this kind of mutual instruction in the local church when he wrote:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. (Col. 3:16)
Luke gives a striking example of the role of the teacher in Acts 8:26–39. An Ethiopian minister of state, while traveling home from Jerusalem by chariot, was reading the prophecy of Isaiah. Philip the evangelist asked him: “Do you understand what you are reading?” To which he replied: “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” So Philip went up to sit beside him and to explain the Scripture to him. Calvin comments:
That is also why the reading of Scripture bears fruit with such a few people today, because scarcely one in a hundred is to be found who gladly submits himself to teaching….
Now if any of us is diffident about himself, but shows that he is teachable, angels will come down from heaven to teach us, rather than that the Lord allow us to labour in vain. However, following the example of the (Ethiopian) eunuch, we must make use of all the aids which the Lord sets before us for the understanding of Scripture. Fanatics seek inspiration from heaven, and at the same time despise the minister of God, by whose hand they ought to have been ruled. Others, relying on their own penetrating insight, do not deign to hear anybody or to read any commentaries. But God does not wish the aids, which he appoints for us, to be despised, and does not allow contempt of them to go unpunished. And we must keep in mind here, that not only is Scripture given to us, but interpreters and teachers are also added to help us. That is why the Lord chose Philip for the eunuch, rather than an angel.6
Of course no human teacher is infallible, either of the past or of the present, and Christ forbade us to give any human teacher a slavish following (Matt. 23:8–10). Ultimately, God himself is our Teacher and, speaking ideally, we may all be described as “taught by God” (Isa. 54:13; John 6:45; 1 Thess. 4:9). Indeed, in principle, because of the apostolic word and the anointing Spirit given to us all, we “do not need anyone to teach us.” The right of private judgment must not be taken away from us. Sometimes it is even necessary for us, out of loyalty to the plain meaning of Scripture, to disagree with teachers in the church and say (I hope humbly):
I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. (Ps. 119:99)
Nevertheless, I must repeat that God has appointed teachers in his church. It is our Christian duty to listen to them with respect, humility and eagerness, and to feed upon God’s Word from their lips when they faithfully expound it, at the same time ourselves “examining the Scriptures every day” to see if what they say is true (Acts 17:11).
Our three teachers, then, whom I have mentioned are the Holy Spirit, ourselves and the church. It is by receiving the illumination of the Spirit, by using our own reason and by listening to the teaching of others in the church that we grow in our understanding of Scripture. I am anxious not to be misunderstood. I am emphatically not saying that Scripture, reason and tradition are a threefold authority of equal importance by which we come to know God’s truth. No. Scripture alone is God’s Word written, and the Holy Spirit its ultimate interpreter. The place of the individual’s reason and of the church’s tradition lies in the elucidation and application of Scripture. But both are subordinate to God himself as he speaks to us through his Word.
We turn now from the three teachers who instruct us to the three principles which are to guide us in our interpretation of Scripture.
It is often said by our critics, especially by those who know what a high view of Scripture we take, that “you can make the Bible mean anything you like.” They are probably thinking of non-Christian and semi-Christian cults which support their particular opinions by an arbitrary selection and interpretation of proof texts. But the New Testament itself condemns those who “distort the word of God” and twist it to suit their own purposes (2 Cor. 4:2; 2 Pet. 3:16). To those who accuse us of this, I always reply: “You are quite right. You can make the Bible mean anything you like—if you are unscrupulous enough. But if you are scrupulously honest in your approach to the Bible and in your use of sound principles of interpretation, far from you being able to manipulate Scripture, you will find Scripture controlling and directing you.” What, then, are these sound principles of interpretation?