Key Texts: Isa. 8:20; Mark 7:1–13; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 3:6; Rom. 2:4; Titus 3:4, 5; 1 John 2:15–17; 2 Cor. 10:5, 6; Prov. 1:7; Prov. 9:10; John 5:46–48; John 7:38.
Part I: Overview
Often we are not aware of the influence of other sources on our thinking and on our theology. Even if we want to live by Scripture alone, our understanding of Scripture is significantly shaped and influenced by a number of factors: the traditions we are used to and grew up with, the way we are trained to think and how we use our reason in explaining things, our experience with certain people and ideas, and the formative culture around us. The priority given to any source or combination of sources has a significant influence on our theology; ultimately it will determine the direction of the entire theological enterprise. In Catholic and Orthodox churches, tradition often plays an important and decisive role. In charismatic and Pentecostal churches, experience often is credited as final authority. In liberal theology, human reason often assumes the last word that decides what is acceptable or not. Furthermore, every church is impacted to some degree by the local culture. And no church exists without the Bible. We don’t want a faith that is devoid of any experience, and in which we don’t think—a faith that is unreasonable and not blessed by positive traditions. It is important to be aware of all those influences and to understand the positive contribution that each source has on our faith. But it is vitally important to see clearly the limitations of each source, too. Here is the decisive question: To which source do we grant the ultimate and highest authority in matters of faith and practice?
Part II: Commentary
Tradition
Tradition often has a bad reputation. It is associated with a certain narrow-mindedness that slavishly sticks to the rigid repetition and performance of certain rituals and practices. But tradition is not all bad.
Think of some positive aspects that any tradition might have. It gives reoccurring acts of structure and stability. It connects us with our pasts and perhaps even our origins. It transmits values and things that are important to us. It helps to keep alive the memory of significant events and things. All these things are good.
The problem arises when those traditions gain a life of their own and ultimately become more significant than the original things they try to preserve. Traditions also tend to grow over time and are prone to add aspects that go way beyond the initial thing that triggered the tradition.
In Galatians 1:9, Paul admonishes the believers not to preach another gospel than the one that they had received. Thus, there is a tradition that God has initiated, but there are also human traditions that are not originally part of God’s plan or God’s Word.
Experience
Human beings are created with the ability to experience love. We are able to experience beauty, harmony, music, and art and can relate to things and other relationships in far more than just a rational manner. Experience is part of our lives and also forms a significant part of our spiritual lives with God.
Think of aspects of your faith where the experience of joy, forgiveness, a clear conscience, and acts of kindness and love have positively impacted your relationship to God and to other believers.
Where has the experience of rejection, prejudice, hate, suspicion, doubt, envy, and jealousy negatively impacted your relationship and understanding of God? What does that teach us about our responsibility to be living letters of Christ (2 Cor. 3:2, 3) that other people might read when they want to learn something about God?
Illustration
Our human experience is powerful but also can be deceptive and misleading. How would you react if a charismatic Christian tells you that in her experience God has told her to worship God on Sunday, whereas the Bible clearly states that the seventh-day Sabbath is the sacred day of rest for God? What should we do if the experience of one particular spiritual gift is made the norm for what it means to live a Spirit-filled life?
Culture
The English word culture stems from the Latin word cultura, stemming, in turn, from colere, meaning to cultivate. Culture encompasses, among other things, the set of customs, values, social behavior and norms found in human societies. God has given us the ability to shape culture, yet at the same time all of us are influenced by the respective culture(s) we live in.
The Bible came into being in a specific culture. It helps to be familiar with the culture of Scripture in order to understand better some of its statements. The culture of Scripture does not make Scripture relative to culture. After all, Scripture is the revealed Word of God. As such, the Bible can have a positive impact on human culture and uplift any society.
List examples where biblical thought has changed society and your culture for the better or where it could have a positive impact on our society and culture. Think with your Sabbath School members about strategies for introducing the Bible and biblical ideas in ways that will be well received, creating a positive biblical counterculture in our society.
No culture is perfect, and every culture is affected by sin. Hence, not everything in culture is positive. Some cultural things might have a negative impact on our faith or might even be demonic in origin. How can we distinguish between positive and negative aspects of our culture? How can we avoid simply copying our culture in our worship? Why do we have to be culturally relevant in order to reach other people? How can the Bible be the final norm in this pursuit?
Reason
God created us with the ability to think. Much of the Bible calls us to reflect upon what is written in Scripture and stimulates our thoughts and thinking. The repeated question “What do you think?” (Matt. 17:25, Matt. 18:12, Matt. 21:28, Matt. 22:17, Matt. 22:42, Matt. 26:66, etc.) or the related question “Have you not read?” (Matt. 12:3, 5; Matt. 19:4; Matt. 21:16; Matt. 21:42; Matt. 22:31; etc.) implies that God wants us to use our minds in understanding Him and His Word. While we can understand God correctly and truthfully, we have to acknowledge that we will never fully comprehend everything about God. After all, we are created beings. We are not God! Furthermore, our thinking is darkened and affected by sin. Therefore, we need to bring even our thinking “into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5, NKJV). If we are not willing to submit our thinking to the higher authority of Scripture, we will quickly start judging more and more parts of Scripture according to what we think is reasonable and true, thus making our reason the norm for what we can accept or not. This mind-set will eliminate the miracles in the Bible and will affect biblical truths such as the doctrine of God and His triune nature or the divinity of Christ, or the personality of the Holy Spirit, or the bodily resurrection, or the relationship between human free will and God’s sovereignty, to name but a few teachings. In the end, “a critical method must fail, because it presents an inner impossibility. For the correlative or counterpoint to revelation is not critique but obedience; it is not correction . . . but it is a let-me-be-corrected.”—Gerhard Maier, The End of the Historical-Critical Method (St. Louis: Concordia, 1977), p. 23.
The Bible
The Bible is our highest and most definitive authority in all matters of faith and practice, because we believe that the Holy Spirit has inspired the writers of the Bible to write down in a trustworthy and reliable manner what God wants to communicate through them. Jesus and the apostles treated Scripture with this understanding. For Jesus, the Word of God is truth (John 17:17). As far as Jesus is concerned, if we don’t believe Moses, we will not believe His words (John 5:46, 47). For Jesus, the Scriptures are the norm for our faith: “ ‘He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:38, NKJV). In a similar manner, the apostles repeatedly refer back to Scripture as the norm of their teaching (Acts 17:11; Rom. 10:11, etc.) and believed Scripture, “for whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4, NKJV). We can’t be more apostolic in our treatment of Scripture than the apostles themselves were, and we can’t be more Christian than Christ Himself was. He is our example. We do well to follow His footsteps in how He used and constantly referred to Scripture as the decisive norm for His faith.
Part III: Life Application
When we love another person, several of the factors we have discussed this week come into play. In love we experience some strong feelings. Yet, love is more than just a feeling. When we love another person, we normally have some good reasons as to why our love for this person is real and why the other person loves us. Yet, it is not wise to ground our love on reason alone.
When we start a loving relationship, we tend to develop some common practices or traditions that remind us of meaningful moments together. But when those traditions become more important than the relationship itself, they have gone astray, and we have lost something essential. When we show our love for another person, we normally do it in ways that resemble and reflect the common customs and norms of our culture. But when we permit only culture to define how love should be practiced, we can quickly be led to do things that are explicitly forbidden in Scripture. For this reason, we need a source that guides and informs our love and our lives that is not just of human origin. We need a reliable source that goes deeper than what we feel, is higher than what we think, and more meaningful than any human tradition or culture. Thank God for His enduring and trustworthy Word that we find in the Bible.
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Key Texts: Isa. 8:20; Mark 7:1–13; 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 3:6; Rom. 2:4; Titus 3:4, 5; 1 John 2:15–17; 2 Cor. 10:5, 6; Prov. 1:7; Prov. 9:10; John 5:46–48; John 7:38.
Part I: Overview
Often we are not aware of the influence of other sources on our thinking and on our theology. Even if we want to live by Scripture alone, our understanding of Scripture is significantly shaped and influenced by a number of factors: the traditions we are used to and grew up with, the way we are trained to think and how we use our reason in explaining things, our experience with certain people and ideas, and the formative culture around us. The priority given to any source or combination of sources has a significant influence on our theology; ultimately it will determine the direction of the entire theological enterprise. In Catholic and Orthodox churches, tradition often plays an important and decisive role. In charismatic and Pentecostal churches, experience often is credited as final authority. In liberal theology, human reason often assumes the last word that decides what is acceptable or not. Furthermore, every church is impacted to some degree by the local culture. And no church exists without the Bible. We don’t want a faith that is devoid of any experience, and in which we don’t think—a faith that is unreasonable and not blessed by positive traditions. It is important to be aware of all those influences and to understand the positive contribution that each source has on our faith. But it is vitally important to see clearly the limitations of each source, too. Here is the decisive question: To which source do we grant the ultimate and highest authority in matters of faith and practice?
Part II: Commentary
Tradition
Tradition often has a bad reputation. It is associated with a certain narrow-mindedness that slavishly sticks to the rigid repetition and performance of certain rituals and practices. But tradition is not all bad.
Think of some positive aspects that any tradition might have. It gives reoccurring acts of structure and stability. It connects us with our pasts and perhaps even our origins. It transmits values and things that are important to us. It helps to keep alive the memory of significant events and things. All these things are good.
The problem arises when those traditions gain a life of their own and ultimately become more significant than the original things they try to preserve. Traditions also tend to grow over time and are prone to add aspects that go way beyond the initial thing that triggered the tradition.
In Galatians 1:9, Paul admonishes the believers not to preach another gospel than the one that they had received. Thus, there is a tradition that God has initiated, but there are also human traditions that are not originally part of God’s plan or God’s Word.
Experience
Human beings are created with the ability to experience love. We are able to experience beauty, harmony, music, and art and can relate to things and other relationships in far more than just a rational manner. Experience is part of our lives and also forms a significant part of our spiritual lives with God.
Think of aspects of your faith where the experience of joy, forgiveness, a clear conscience, and acts of kindness and love have positively impacted your relationship to God and to other believers.
Where has the experience of rejection, prejudice, hate, suspicion, doubt, envy, and jealousy negatively impacted your relationship and understanding of God? What does that teach us about our responsibility to be living letters of Christ (2 Cor. 3:2, 3) that other people might read when they want to learn something about God?
Illustration
Our human experience is powerful but also can be deceptive and misleading. How would you react if a charismatic Christian tells you that in her experience God has told her to worship God on Sunday, whereas the Bible clearly states that the seventh-day Sabbath is the sacred day of rest for God? What should we do if the experience of one particular spiritual gift is made the norm for what it means to live a Spirit-filled life?
Culture
The English word culture stems from the Latin word cultura, stemming, in turn, from colere, meaning to cultivate. Culture encompasses, among other things, the set of customs, values, social behavior and norms found in human societies. God has given us the ability to shape culture, yet at the same time all of us are influenced by the respective culture(s) we live in.
The Bible came into being in a specific culture. It helps to be familiar with the culture of Scripture in order to understand better some of its statements. The culture of Scripture does not make Scripture relative to culture. After all, Scripture is the revealed Word of God. As such, the Bible can have a positive impact on human culture and uplift any society.
List examples where biblical thought has changed society and your culture for the better or where it could have a positive impact on our society and culture. Think with your Sabbath School members about strategies for introducing the Bible and biblical ideas in ways that will be well received, creating a positive biblical counterculture in our society.
No culture is perfect, and every culture is affected by sin. Hence, not everything in culture is positive. Some cultural things might have a negative impact on our faith or might even be demonic in origin. How can we distinguish between positive and negative aspects of our culture? How can we avoid simply copying our culture in our worship? Why do we have to be culturally relevant in order to reach other people? How can the Bible be the final norm in this pursuit?
Reason
God created us with the ability to think. Much of the Bible calls us to reflect upon what is written in Scripture and stimulates our thoughts and thinking. The repeated question “What do you think?” (Matt. 17:25, Matt. 18:12, Matt. 21:28, Matt. 22:17, Matt. 22:42, Matt. 26:66, etc.) or the related question “Have you not read?” (Matt. 12:3, 5; Matt. 19:4; Matt. 21:16; Matt. 21:42; Matt. 22:31; etc.) implies that God wants us to use our minds in understanding Him and His Word. While we can understand God correctly and truthfully, we have to acknowledge that we will never fully comprehend everything about God. After all, we are created beings. We are not God! Furthermore, our thinking is darkened and affected by sin. Therefore, we need to bring even our thinking “into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5, NKJV). If we are not willing to submit our thinking to the higher authority of Scripture, we will quickly start judging more and more parts of Scripture according to what we think is reasonable and true, thus making our reason the norm for what we can accept or not. This mind-set will eliminate the miracles in the Bible and will affect biblical truths such as the doctrine of God and His triune nature or the divinity of Christ, or the personality of the Holy Spirit, or the bodily resurrection, or the relationship between human free will and God’s sovereignty, to name but a few teachings. In the end, “a critical method must fail, because it presents an inner impossibility. For the correlative or counterpoint to revelation is not critique but obedience; it is not correction . . . but it is a let-me-be-corrected.”—Gerhard Maier, The End of the Historical-Critical Method (St. Louis: Concordia, 1977), p. 23.
The Bible
The Bible is our highest and most definitive authority in all matters of faith and practice, because we believe that the Holy Spirit has inspired the writers of the Bible to write down in a trustworthy and reliable manner what God wants to communicate through them. Jesus and the apostles treated Scripture with this understanding. For Jesus, the Word of God is truth (John 17:17). As far as Jesus is concerned, if we don’t believe Moses, we will not believe His words (John 5:46, 47). For Jesus, the Scriptures are the norm for our faith: “ ‘He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ ” (John 7:38, NKJV). In a similar manner, the apostles repeatedly refer back to Scripture as the norm of their teaching (Acts 17:11; Rom. 10:11, etc.) and believed Scripture, “for whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4, NKJV). We can’t be more apostolic in our treatment of Scripture than the apostles themselves were, and we can’t be more Christian than Christ Himself was. He is our example. We do well to follow His footsteps in how He used and constantly referred to Scripture as the decisive norm for His faith.
Part III: Life Application
When we love another person, several of the factors we have discussed this week come into play. In love we experience some strong feelings. Yet, love is more than just a feeling. When we love another person, we normally have some good reasons as to why our love for this person is real and why the other person loves us. Yet, it is not wise to ground our love on reason alone.
When we start a loving relationship, we tend to develop some common practices or traditions that remind us of meaningful moments together. But when those traditions become more important than the relationship itself, they have gone astray, and we have lost something essential. When we show our love for another person, we normally do it in ways that resemble and reflect the common customs and norms of our culture. But when we permit only culture to define how love should be practiced, we can quickly be led to do things that are explicitly forbidden in Scripture. For this reason, we need a source that guides and informs our love and our lives that is not just of human origin. We need a reliable source that goes deeper than what we feel, is higher than what we think, and more meaningful than any human tradition or culture. Thank God for His enduring and trustworthy Word that we find in the Bible.