Scripture and the Church

The Post-Scriptural Church

By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
The reputedly conservative church, with few and precious exceptions, has unplugged itself from its sole source of power and authority, the Word of God.

From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part two of a series. Read part one.

Reputedly conservative churches, with few and precious exceptions, have unplugged themselves from Scripture. What has taken its place?

In the first article of this series we drew a parallel between the industrial decline of a major American city and the spiritual decline of reputedly conservative churches. Both phenomena, the second far more tragic, go back at least six decades in America.

The Present State of Most Churches

Churches that were once centers of spiritual productivity, with a strong emphasis on the imperative of the fruits of the Spirit shining forth in the lives of a truly regenerated people, are now places largely devoted to spiritual amusement, entertainment, and other forms of personal gratification, with little true regard for God or His Word. Many once-sound churches are but a shell of their former selves.

At the same time many new "churches" have emerged that bear little resemblance to the model we find in Scripture. The term "church" - and indeed, the term "Christianity" - have been un-Biblically redefined. In more recent decades the American church has exported its un-Biblical model to much of the rest of the world. Virtually instantaneous communications via the Internet have dramatically aided the spread of what I have, in other articles, called "the church unplugged."

The Church Unplugged - A Deadly Trap

What do I mean by that term? I simply mean that the reputedly conservative church, with few and precious exceptions, has unplugged itself from its sole source of power and authority, the Word of God. Systematic, chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse, expository preaching of the Scriptures has mostly disappeared from our pulpits. Biblical preaching has given way to a topical approach geared toward the felt needs of the audience.

Look at most televised church programs, or visit most Evangelical churches in your area, and that is what you will find - as many of our readers and listeners testify. At the same time, and quite logically, systematic reading of the Scriptures has largely disappeared from American Christian homes.

The church unplugged has fallen into a deadly trap. When reputedly conservative churches began neglecting the Bible, they created a spiritual vacuum. What is true in physics is also true in the church: Nature abhors a vacuum. The worldly mindset fills the spiritual vacuum. Man, not God, becomes the source of authority. As a result, man's word, not God's Word, shapes the church's agenda and therefore its teachings.

A church that does not teach the Word of God teaches the thinking of the world. There is no third alternative.

The Roots of the Problem

What are the roots of the problem of the church unplugged? It began in the colleges and seminaries that have now trained nearly three generations of men who entered America's - and later the world's - pulpits with a new un-Biblical paradigm that falsely redefines both the church and Christianity itself.

How did the colleges and seminaries come to such an anti-Scriptural position? I submit it is because they have increasingly bought into a naturalistic, rather than a supernaturalistic, view of the nature of Scripture itself. What began in college and seminary classrooms soon made its way into America's pulpits.

It then spread from the pulpits to the pews. The next generation of men who went to America's colleges and seminaries entered them pre-programmed with a mindset that in crucial respects denigrated or even denied the supernatural character and power of the Word of God. Working hand-in-glove with this naturalistic tendency was a lowered view of God himself, and the erecting of a false, naturalistic partition in many church leaders' minds between the Word of God and the God of the Word.

The Church's Abandonment of the Power of Scripture

This is what the present-day church has largely forgotten: The Bible possesses unique authority and power because it alone is the Word of God. It bears the attributes of the God who is its Author. It is the Holy Bible because He is the Holy God. It is infallible because He is infallible. It is inerrant because He is inerrant. It is unchangeable and unchanging because it is the Word, "forever settled in Heaven" (Psalm 119:89) that declares His eternal and unchanging decree. It is, as Hebrews 4:12 tells us, "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" because its Author is the omniscient God who searches the heart, and tests the mind (Jeremiah 17:10).

The present-day church, with few and precious exceptions, views the Bible in a very different way. I have elsewhere called it the post-evangelical church because it has largely thrown away the authentic Gospel. We could just as well call it the post-Scriptural church. The average present day preacher views the Bible, for all practical purposes, as primarily a human book emanating from the mind of fallen man, rather than revelation from the mind of God. As often as not, whatever Bible text (if any) that he may choose as a starting point is merely a pretext to launch into the promotion of his own agenda rather than accurate, faithful exposition of God's agenda for His church.

Viewing the Bible in this way naturally opens the door to the false claims of higher criticism - that the Bible is not totally inerrant; that it may be inerrant when it speaks of "spiritual" matters but not necessarily when it addresses matters related to history, anthropology, or the sciences. The human writers of Scripture, say the higher critics, sometimes contradict one another.

Couple these falsehoods with the further claim of higher criticism over the past two hundred years that the church does not possess the authentic Word of God providentially preserved in the original Hebrew and Greek, and the natural result is that men will enter seminary classrooms and church pulpits proclaiming not "thus says the Lord" but their own agendas and philosophies.

Post-Evangelicalism's Fad Theologies

The spirit of Mars Hill that provoked Paul's indignation in Acts 17 - men "given over to idols. . . [spending] their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing" - is alive and active in the post-evangelical, post-Scriptural world. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the theologies that have set aside Scripture as the Christian's and the church's sole authority - including neo-evangelicalism, postmodern Biblical theology, the Federal Vision, the New Perspective on Paul, the Moral Majority movement, the Purpose-Driven church movement, the Emergent Church movement, the social justice movement, and New Calvinism - all have their roots in a naturalistic view of the Bible.

One of the latest fads to enter post-evangelical colleges and seminaries is "analytic theology" which, while purporting to champion theological "precision" actually seeks to build a broadly-acceptable, humanistic, ecumenical consensus on what the Bible is, and what it says. Those who insist that the words of Scripture have one and only one meaning - the Divine Author's meaning - are unwelcome in such circles.

Analytic theology first developed in liberal institutions in Europe, spread to Harvard, Yale, and other liberal schools in America, and now has established strongholds in post-evangelical schools such as Fuller, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and several Southern Baptist seminaries.

Holy Scripture unequivocally condemns such thinking and throws the bright light of revealed truth upon the dangers. What does Scripture say? We shall see more as we continue.

  

Next: The Church Must Bow to the True Nature of Scripture

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