Personal Autonomy

August 5th, 2008

IN 1 Peter 4:11 we read the injunction, "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God." To our ears these words sound strange. Today, we are millenia, continents, and cultures removed from the people these words were originally spoken to. The words we speak are said to be "of God" meaning he is the author and originator of them. As we speak them we are to make a conscious effort to acknowledge who they originated with. To think that God has revealed his mind and will to us is unbelievable. David wrote: "What is man that thou art mindful of him." Isaiah wrote: "As the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." So again, for God to reveal his thoughts to mankind is awesome.

If the one who made us takes it upon himself to communicate with us, should we want that message firsthand or secondhand? I suggest the answer is we should want to receive the message for ourselves and not rely on someone else's reception, interpretation, and re-transmission back to us. Most, however, do not agree; they want a middle-man, someone who will save them the effort. I can't help but think of Jesus words—"He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear."

Years ago I read J.I. Packer's "Fundamentalism and the Word of God", and found some words most meaningful. I have since found those words in Samuel G. Dawson's book "Denominal Doctrines"

We do not start our Christian lives by working out our faith for ourselves; it is mediated to us by Christian tradition, in the form of sermons, books, and established patterns of church life and fellowship. We read our Bibles in the light of what we have learned from these sources. We approach Scripture with minds already formed by the mass of accepted opinions and viewpoints with which we have come into contact, in both the Church and the world. ...It is easy to be unaware that it has happened; it is hard even to begin to realize how profoundly tradition in this sense has molded us. But we are forbidden to become enslaved to human tradition, either secular or Christian, whether it be ‘catholic’ tradition, or ‘critical’ tradition, or ‘ecumenical’ tradition. We may never assume the complete rightness of our own established ways of thought and practice and excuse ourselves the duty of testing and reforming them by Scriptures. (J.I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958], pp69-70)

What I am trying to say is summed up in the last line from J.I. Packer when he writes: "We may never assume the complete rightness of our own established ways of thought and practice and excuse (emp J.B., Jr.) ourselves the duty of testing and reforming them by Scriptures." To be sure there are passages of Scripture that we find difficult and may read a commentary or ask the opinion of another, but we must still test them by Scriptures. Never simply believe and accept something because someone important said it, or assume because the speaker is a great person of God that they are automatically right. We must all study the Scriptures for ourselves.