The Forgotten
Tozer
(Chapter 2 - The
Authority of Scripture)
By Dr. J.
D. Watson
Literally millions
of words are printed every day, but the only
authoritative word ever published is that which comes
from the Holy
Scriptures.(1)
Without question, my greatest
burden concerning contemporary Christianity is the
decline of Biblical authority and Biblical
sufficiency. I am thoroughly convinced that this
is the watershed issue of our day. While it is
true that there are many issues facing us today, such as
pragmatism (Chapter 6) and no-lordship (Chapter 7),
these issues and all others are merely symptoms of the
real disease—the denial of Biblical authority and
sufficiency. This chapter lays a foundation for those
that follow.
If one will sit down and
objectively compare contemporary Christianity
with Scripture, it will not take him long to see the
places of departure. The honest observer will quickly
see that men have removed many of the necessities, such
as strong expository preaching, and then added a lot of
baggage. How many doctrinal statements, church
constitutions, and denominational creeds say, "We
believe the Holy Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the
Old and New Testaments, to be the only verbally
inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, the final
authority for faith and life," or words to that effect,
but how many truly practice it? How many pastors
are standing in pulpits and preaching "the whole counsel
of God" (Acts 20:27) and following It alone as
their authority for ministry? How many Christians live a
life that follows solely the principles and precepts of
the Word of God?
Like any true man of God, A. W.
Tozer was deeply concerned for the authority of the Word
of God as the foundation of all our beliefs and
activities. To Tozer, the Word of God was timeless and
practical, meeting every need and answering every
question. In his book I Call It Heresy he
writes:
There isn’t
anything dated in the Book of God. When I go to my
Bible, I find dates but no dating. I mean that I find
the sense and the feeling that everything here belongs
to me. . .
Many other volumes
and many other books of history contain the passionate
outpourings of the minds of men on local situations but
we soon find ourselves bored with them. Unless we are
actually doing research we do not care that much about
something dated, something belonging only to another
age.
But when the Holy
Spirit wrote the epistles, through Peter and Paul and
the rest, He wrote them and addressed them so
universally applicable that every Christian who reads
them today in any part of the world, in any language or
dialect, forgets that they were written to someone else
and says, "This was addressed to me. The Holy Spirit had
me in mind. This is not antiquated and dated. This is
the living Truth for me, now! It is just as though God
had just heard of my trouble and is speaking to me to
help me and encourage me in the time of my
distress."
Brethren, this is
why the Bible stays young always. This is why the Word
of the Lord God is as fresh as every new sunrise, as
sweet and graciously fresh as the dew on the grass the
morning after the clear night, because it is God’s Word
to man!
This is the wonder
of divine inspiration and the wonder of the Book of
God.(2)
More pointedly, he speaks
elsewhere of man’s responsibility to the Word of God,
regardless of all other factors:
You are
responsible to the Light—and to the authority of the
Word of God. You can’t hide behind differences of
opinion, and you can’t hide behind church politics, you
can’t hide behind
philosophies.(3)
Many things today are obscuring
the Light. Many things are undermining the authority of
God’s Word. What did our beloved brother say about this
authority?
"The Waning Authority of Christ
in the Churches"
As mentioned in the
Introduction, it was Tozer’s God Tells the Man Who
Cares that first made me aware of Tozer’s strong
contemporary comment. The chapter that struck me the
hardest was "The Waning Authority of Christ in the
Churches."(4) This chapter was originally an article
that appeared in The Alliance Witness, a
publication Tozer edited for many years. The article
appeared on May 15, 1963, just two days after Tozer’s
death. "In a sense it was his valedictory, for it
expressed the concern of his heart." Because of the
power and timeliness of this article, I want to
reproduce it here in its entirety and make a few
applications. Tozer begins:
Here is the burden
of my heart; and while I claim for myself no special
inspiration I yet feel that this is also the burden of
the Spirit.
If I know my own
heart it is love alone that moves me to write this. What
I write here is not the sour ferment of a mind agitated
by contentions with my fellow Christians. There have
been no such contentions. I have not been abused,
mistreated or attacked by anyone. Nor have these
observations grown out of any unpleasant experiences
that I have had in my association with others. My
relations with my own church as well as with Christians
of other denominations have been friendly, courteous and
pleasant. My grief is simply the result of a condition
which I believe to be almost universally prevalent among
the churches.
Many today who appeal to the
Word of God alone and who call for discernment in the
areas of doctrine and practice are often labeled
"intolerant" and "contentious." This was not Tozer’s
motive. His motive was simply the grief he felt over the
Church’s departure from the authority of Christ. Tozer
then appeals to the Scripture as the foundation for his
observations:
I think also that
I should acknowledge that I am myself very much involved
in the situation I here deplore. As Ezra in his mighty
prayer of intercession included himself among the
wrongdoers, so do I. "O my God, I am ashamed and blush
to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities
are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown
up unto the heavens" [Ezra 9:6]. Any hard word spoken
here against others must in simple honesty return upon
my own head. I too have been guilty. This is written
with the hope that we all may turn unto the Lord our God
and sin no more against
Him.
I find Tozer’s choice of
Scripture here startling. Ezra was shocked and overcome
by the iniquity of the people. In abject grief he falls
to his knees, tears his clothes in grief, lifts his
hands toward heaven, and pours out his confession of sin
(v. 5). Further, he humbly identifies himself with his
people. To express the magnitude of their sin, he uses a
metaphor to describe it. The "iniquities" of the people
have not only "increased over our heads" (been
devastating), they have even "grown up unto the heavens"
(attracted the attention of God
Himself).
Likewise, Tozer felt that what
he was about to write about was terrible sin, and that
even he himself was guilty. This is a sobering thought.
The Church today should face the reality that its
dethroning of Christ is sin and that this iniquity has
"increased over our heads" and has even "grown up unto
the heavens."
Let me state the
cause of my burden. It is this: Jesus Christ has
today almost no authority at all among the groups that
call themselves by His name. By these I mean not the
Roman Catholics nor the liberals, nor the various
quasi-Christian cults. I do mean Protestant churches
generally, and I include those that protest the loudest
that they are in spiritual descent from our Lord and His
apostles, namely, the
evangelicals.
The point Tozer makes here is
vitally important. There are, indeed, many heresies and
apostasies among Roman Catholics, liberals, and cults,
but the greatest danger to any organization is always
from within. As someone has said, "Planted at the
beginning of every organization are the seeds of its
destruction." It is often pointed out, for example, that
the mighty Roman Empire did not fall from without but
from within because of its own decadence and corruption.
While it is true that the higher critics, the
evolutionists, and the humanists have fired their share
of "fiery darts" (Eph. 6:16), the far greater danger is
the self-sufficiency and self-indulgence within our own
ranks.
It is a basic
doctrine of the New Testament that after His
resurrection the Man Jesus was declared by God to be
both Lord and Christ, and that He was invested by the
Father with absolute Lordship over the church which is
His Body. All authority is His in heaven and in earth.
In His own proper time He will exert it to the full, but
during this period in history He allows this authority
to be challenged or ignored. And just now it is being
challenged by the world and ignored by the
church.
The present
position of Christ in the gospel churches may be likened
to that of a king in a limited, constitutional monarchy.
The king (sometimes depersonalized by the term "the
Crown") is in such a country no more than a traditional
rallying point, a pleasant symbol of unity and loyalty
much like a flag or a national anthem. He is lauded,
feted and supported, but his real authority is small.
Nominally he is head over all, but in every crisis
someone else makes the decisions. On formal occasions he
appears in his royal attire to deliver the tame,
colorless speech put into his mouth by the real rulers
of the country. The whole thing may be no more than
good-natured make-believe, but it is rooted in
antiquity, it is a lot of fun and no one wants to give
it up.
What a graphic picture Tozer
paints here! No longer is Christ the Head of the
Church (Eph. 5:23), He is merely the figurehead
of the Church. We have put His picture up on the wall as
the founder of our club but carry on the traditions of
the club as we see fit. He no longer rules the
organization; the organization rules Him. Tozer
continues this thought:
Among the gospel
churches Christ is now in fact little more than a
beloved symbol. "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name" is
the church’s national anthem and the cross is her
official flag, but in the week-by-week services of the
church and the day-by-day conduct of her members someone
else, not Christ, makes the decisions. Under proper
circumstances Christ is allowed to say "Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden" or "Let not your
heart be troubled," but when the speech is finished
someone else takes over. Those in actual authority
decide the moral standards of the church, as well as all
objectives and all methods employed to achieve them.
Because of long and meticulous organization it is now
possible for the youngest pastor just out of seminary to
have more actual authority in a church than Jesus Christ
has.
Not only does
Christ have little or no authority; His influence also
is becoming less and less. I would not say that He has
none, only that it is small and diminishing. A fair
parallel would be the influence of Abraham Lincoln over
the American people. Honest Abe is still the idol of the
country. The likeness of his kind, rugged face, so
homely that it is beautiful, appears everywhere. It is
easy to grow misty-eyed over him. Children are brought
up on stories of his love, his honesty, and his
humility.
But after we have
gotten control over our tender emotions what have we
left? No more than a good example, which, as it recedes
into the past, becomes more and more unreal and
exercises less and less real influence. Every scoundrel
is ready to wrap Lincoln’s long black coat around him.
In the cold light of political facts in the United
States the constant appeal to Lincoln by the politicians
is a cynical joke.
This reminds us of the
corruptness of the American political system. The
character and basic morality of men like Lincoln and the
Founding Fathers is no longer the norm in American
politics. To illustrate, during the 1992 presidential
campaign, Republicans raised several issues that called
Bill Clinton’s character into question. The cry among
the Democrats then became: "Character doesn’t matter.
Let’s just deal with the issues." How ridiculous it is
to suggest that character has nothing to do with
leadership! In much the same way, Tozer contends, the
character of Christians does not match the character of
Christ.
The Lordship of
Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it
has been relegated to the hymnal where all
responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged
in a glow of pleasant religious emotion. Or if it is
taught as a theory in the classroom it is rarely applied
to practical living. The idea that the Man Christ Jesus
has absolute and final authority over the whole church
and over all of its members in every detail of their
lives is simply not now accepted as true by the rank and
file of evangelical Christians.
What we do is
this: We accept the Christianity of our group as being
identical with that of Christ and His apostles. The
beliefs, the practices, the ethics, the activities of
our group are equated with the Christianity of the New
Testament. Whatever the group thinks or says or does is
scriptural, no questions asked. It is assumed that all
our Lord expects of us is that we busy ourselves with
the activities of the group. In so doing we are keeping
the commandments of
Christ.
Another vital point. Very few
Christians or Christian leaders today discern anything.
Very few question the validity of the beliefs,
practices, or ethics of their group. As we’ll detail in
Chapter 6, the typical attitude toward "Christian
service" today is that "anything goes" unless it’s
downright wicked, and even that is often judged
subjectively. Any method or ministry is okay unless God
specifically says it isn’t, while the Biblical approach
is that nothing is okay unless God specifically says it
is.
To avoid the hard
necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain
instructions of our Lord in the New Testament we take
refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. Casuistry
[tricky reasoning] is not the possession of Roman
Catholic theologians alone. We evangelicals also know
how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of
fine and intricate explanations. These are tailor-made
for the flesh. They excuse disobedience, comfort
carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect
[Mk. 7:13]. And the essence of it all is that Christ
simply could not have meant what He said. His teachings
are accepted even theoretically only after they have
been weakened by
interpretation.
Indeed, a typical way of getting
around a truth is to simply misinterpret it or explain
it away. To illustrate, one very popular California
evangelical pastor and author was preaching on the
qualifications of elders (bishops and pastors) in I
Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 on his daily radio
broadcast. He actually explained them quite well. The
problem was, however, that he prefaced his explanation
with the statement that these are only the "ideal" and
that we should never expect to find them. This is
clearly a grave error. These are qualifications,
not ideals. If a man does not measure up to these
standards, he is not qualified. Indeed, many of the
problems in Christianity today stem from men in
leadership who are not Biblically qualified to be
there.
Now, all this was not theory to
Tozer, not just general accusations. He looked at
everything in the light of the authority of Christ and
His Word, and in so doing cited specific examples of the
Church’s disregard of this
authority:
Yet Christ is
consulted by increasing numbers of persons with
"problems" and sought after by those who long for peace
of mind. He is widely recommended as a kind of spiritual
psychiatrist with remarkable powers to straighten people
out. He is able to deliver them from their guilt
complexes and to help them to avoid serious psychic
traumas by making a smooth and easy adjustment to
society and to their own ids. Of course this strange
Christ has no relation whatever to the Christ of the New
Testament. The true Christ is also Lord, but this
accommodating Christ is little more than the servant of
the people.
But I suppose I
should offer some concrete proof to support my charge
that Christ has little or no authority today among the
churches. Well, let me put a few questions and let the
answers be the evidence.
What church board
consults our Lord’s words to decide matters under
discussion? Let anyone reading this who has had
experience on a church board try to recall the times or
time when any board member read from the Scriptures to
make a point, or when any chairman suggested that the
brethren should see what instructions the Lord had for
them on a particular question. Board meetings are
habitually opened with a formal prayer or "a season of
prayer;" after that the Head of the Church is
respectfully silent while the real rulers take over. Let
anyone who denies this bring forth evidence to refute
it. I for one will be glad to hear
it.
What Sunday school
committee goes to the Word for directions? Do not the
members invariably assume that they already know what
they are supposed to do and that their only problem is
to find effective means to get it done? Plans, rules,
"operations" and new methodological techniques absorb
all their time and attention. The prayer before the
meeting is for divine help to carry out their plans.
Apparently the idea that the Lord might have some
instructions for them never so much as enters their
heads.
Who remembers when
a conference chairman brought his Bible to the table
with him for the purpose of using it? Minutes,
regulations, rules of order, yes. The sacred
commandments of the Lord, no. An absolute dichotomy
exists between the devotional period and the business
session. The first has no relation to the
second.
What foreign
mission board actually seeks to follow the guidance of
the Lord as provided by His Word and His Spirit? They
all think they do, but what they do in fact is to assume
the scripturalness of their ends and then ask for help
to find ways to achieve them. They may pray all night
for God to give success to their enterprises, but Christ
is desired as their helper, not as their Lord. Human
means are devised to achieve ends assumed to be divine.
These harden into policy, and thereafter the Lord
doesn’t even have a vote.
In the conduct of
our public worship where is the authority of Christ to
be found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely
controls a service, and the influence He exerts is very
small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must
not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right
because we have always done it that way, as have the
other churches in our group.
What Christian
when faced with a moral problem goes straight to the
Sermon on the Mount or other New Testament Scripture for
the authoritative answer? Who lets the words of Christ
be final on giving, birth control, the bringing up of a
family, personal habits, tithing, entertainment, buying,
selling and other such important
matters?
What theological
school, from the lowly Bible institute up, could
continue to operate if it were to make Christ Lord of
its every policy? There may be some, and I hope there
are, but I believe I am right when I say that most such
schools to stay in business are forced to adopt
procedures which find no justification in the Bible they
profess to teach. So we have this strange anomaly: the
authority of Christ is ignored in order to maintain a
school to teach among other things the authority of
Christ.
These are truly pointed
questions, so pointed that they stab deep into
contemporary Christianity. In short, the authority of
God’s Word simply does not rule every aspect of
ministry. The Lord seems to be merely a "member of the
board" who can offer input, instead of the One Who
dictates policy and practice.
Tozer continues by offering two
causes of this decline in Christ’s authority. The first
he submits is "tradition." In his words, "Not Christ but
custom is lord in this situation." The second cause, he
maintains, is "the revival of intellectualism among
evangelicals."
The causes back of
the decline in our Lord’s authority are many. I name
only two.
One is the power
of custom, precedent and tradition within the older
religious groups. These like gravitation affect every
particle of religious practice within the group,
exerting a steady and constant pressure in one
direction. Of course that direction is toward conformity
to the status quo. Not Christ but custom is lord in this
situation. And the same thing has passed over (possibly
to a slightly lesser degree) into the other groups such
as the full gospel tabernacles, the holiness churches,
the Pentecostal and fundamental churches and the many
independent and undenominational churches found
everywhere throughout the North American
continent.
I’m glad Tozer placed
"tradition" first, for I am convinced that it is,
indeed, the leading cause of this decline. This was, in
fact, the key issue of the Reformation. As one author
puts it, sola scriptura (Scripture alone) was
"the so-called formal principle of the Reformation. The
Reformers appealed to the sole authority of Holy
Scripture as the infallible Word of God over against
human opinion and ecclesiastical tradition."(5) In
numerous ways we evangelicals cling to traditions in our
associations, conferences, and other such groups, as
well as in our worship, programs, gimmicks, methods, and
so called "ministries."
This subject is so vital that it
calls for further investigation. Mark 7:1-13 (cf. Matt.
15:1-9) records an incident that strongly emphasizes
Biblical authority, and what makes the emphasis so
strong is that the words are the words of our Lord
Himself. Here the Pharisees confront our Lord and ask
Him why His disciples did not observe the traditions of
the elders. The word "tradition" in verse 9 is the Greek
paradosis, which means "that which is passed
along by teaching." When used in this negative sense it
speaks of the teachings of men in contrast to the
teachings of God.
The specific tradition in
question, which was actually just one representative
example of all the traditions that the disciples
and Jesus ignored, was the ceremonial washing of the
hands before eating. The washing had nothing to do with
hygiene but was merely a ritual that symbolically washed
away defilement. As with all the traditions of the
elders, this was not a part of God’s law, rather it was
man-made. These traditions were given equal authority to
Scripture and in some cases were said to impart eternal
life. But of such traditions our Lord said: "Howbeit in
vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of
God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of
pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the
commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition"
(vs. 7-9).
In verses 10-12 our Lord goes on
to indict the Pharisees further by proving that one of
their traditions actually contradicted the fifth
commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy
days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God
giveth thee" (Ex. 20:12). Contained in that command is
the responsibility to love and respect our parents and
help meet their needs. The Pharisees, however, held to a
tradition that in essence said, "If a gift that would
have relieved the need of the father or mother has
already been dedicated to God, the giver is not under
obligation to give it to them and must give it to God."
On the other hand, nothing prevented the giver from
changing his mind and simply keeping the gift, which
usually was exactly what happened. The vow was usually
an empty one said out of selfishness. Our Lord then
brought home His point in verse 13: "Making the word of
God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have
delivered: and many such like things do ye" (cf. Matt.
2:3).
This incident is a dramatic
example of what we see in Roman Catholicism and other
cults (yes, Roman Catholicism is a cult), which equate
church tradition with Scripture. In very much the same
way, however, many Protestants and evangelicals enthrone
their own traditions, rules, regulations, practices, and
associational pronouncements and thereby dethrone the
Word of God. The result, to paraphrase the great Matthew
Henry,(6) is that God’s Word not only lies forgotten as
obsolete laws, but It even stands repealed, replaced by
the traditions of man.
The Apostle Paul echoes our
Lord’s teaching when he writes: "Beware lest any man
spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and
not after Christ" (Col 2:8). "Spoil" is the Greek
sulagogeo, which means "to plunder, to carry off
as prey." How many have been spoiled, plunder, and
carried off to apostate cults. The cults today are, in
fact, populated with former members of so-called
evangelical and fundamental groups. How did it happen?
Because of ignorance, because of the serious lack of
teaching that exists in Christianity today. People are
not being warned of the danger and trained to defend
against it.
People also get "carried away"
by tradition. We can get so comfortable with "the way
we’ve always done things" that we fail to evaluate them
in light of the Scriptures.
Before going on, let us make it
clear that tradition is not always wrong. The word is,
in fact, used in a positive way in II Thessalonians
2:15: "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the
traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or our
epistle." Likewise, in 3:6 we read: "Now we command you,
brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye
withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh
disorderly, and not after the tradition which he
received of us."
In contrast to the negative way
"tradition" is used, it is used in this positive way to
mean divinely revealed teaching. We should also notice
that Paul says the Thessalonians received this teaching
by "word" and "epistle," that is, by preaching and his
written letters. Likewise, the only source of our
teaching today must be the Word of God and the sole
method of teaching must be preaching.
Additionally, in and of itself
there is nothing wrong with tradition. Most of us have
family traditions, for example, which make our family
unique and special to us. But when any tradition,
whether family, church, or society, replaces the
teaching of the Word of God, it has become "the
tradition of men" (Mk. 7:8) and is
apostasy.
Returning to Tozer’s reasons for
the decline in Christ’s authority, he offers another
reason.
The second cause
is the revival of intellectualism among the
evangelicals. This, if I sense the situation correctly,
is not so much a thirst for learning as a desire for a
reputation of being learned. Because of it good men who
ought to know better are being put in the position of
collaborating with the enemy. I’ll
explain.
Our evangelical
faith (which I believe to be the true faith of Christ
and His apostles) is being attacked these days from many
different directions. In the Western world the enemy has
forsworn violence. He comes against us no more with
sword and fagot; he now comes smiling, bearing gifts. He
raises his eyes to heaven and swears that he too
believes in the faith of our fathers, but his real
purpose is to destroy that faith, or at least to modify
it to such an extent that it is no longer the
supernatural thing it once was. He comes in the name of
philosophy or psychology or anthropology, and with sweet
reasonableness urges us to rethink our historic
position, to be less rigid, more tolerant, more broadly
understanding.
These words are even truer today
than they were when Tozer wrote them. The cry we hear
today is, "Let us all throw off our doctrinal
differences and unify." Many evangelicals are calling
for the total abolishing of denominational barriers so
that we can all get together for the sake of political
ends and "the betterment of life in America." At first
hearing, this sounds admirable and desirable, but when
we just stop and think about, it calls for a total
compromise of doctrine. Why? Because denomination
barriers exist because there are differences in
doctrine, so the only way to unify is to get rid of
anything specific, to make everything existential and
experiential. As Paul makes crystal clear in Ephesians
4:1-6, the ground of unity must be doctrine.
Tozer continues:
He [the enemy]
speaks in the sacred jargon of the schools, and many of
our half-educated evangelicals run to fawn on him. He
tosses academic degrees to the scrambling sons of the
prophets as Rockefeller used to toss dimes to the
children of the peasants. The evangelicals who, with
some justification, have been accused of lacking true
scholarship, now grab for these status symbols with
shining eyes, and when they get them they are scarcely
able to believe their eyes. They walk about in a kind of
ecstatic unbelief, much as the soloist of the
neighborhood church choir might were she to be invited
to sing at La Scala.
Tozer’s words here remind me of
how Christianity has fallen into the trap of
"accreditation." The attitude today is that a man must
go to an accepted and accredited school. But may we ask,
accredited by whom? By men and their opinions or by the
Word of God and its authority? The philosophy of
accreditation is totally subjective. Standards set in
one accrediting agency may not meet the standards set in
another. Every bit of this is humanistic and contrary to
the absolute truth set down in the Word of God, which is
the only "accreditation" we need.
Please do not misunderstand, I
am not saying Bible Colleges are wrong. On the contrary,
I believe they are desperately needed, but they should
be true Bible colleges. The philosophy,
psychology, and many other secular subjects have no
place in a Bible College, but this is standard fare
today.
Was Tozer just ranting? Was he
just some crackpot? Was he just splitting hairs? No! Did
he offer any alternatives? Yes:
For the true
Christian the one supreme test for the present soundness
and ultimate worth of everything religious must be the
place our Lord occupies in it. Is He Lord or symbol? Is
He in charge of the project or merely one of the crew?
Does He decide things or only help to carry out the
plans of others? All religious activities, from the
simplest act of an individual Christian to the ponderous
and expensive operations of a whole denomination, may be
proved by the answer to the question, Is Jesus Christ
Lord in this act? Whether our works prove to be wood,
hay and stubble or gold and silver and precious stones
in that great day will depend upon the right answer to
that question.
What, then, are we
to do? Each one of us must decide, and there are at
least three possible choices. One is to rise up in
shocked indignation and accuse me of irresponsible
reporting. Another is to nod general agreement with what
is written here but take comfort in the fact that there
are exceptions and we are among the exceptions. The
other is to go down in meek humility and confess that we
have grieved the Spirit and dishonored our Lord in
failing to give Him the place His Father has given Him
as Head and Lord of the Church.
Either the first
or the second will but confirm the wrong. The third if
carried out to its conclusion can remove the curse. The
decision lies with us.
I have no other comment except,
"Amen."
The Sufficiency of
Scripture
As mentioned earlier, using the
principle sola scripture the Reformers (Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin, and others) reaffirmed the authority of
Scripture. To them Scripture was the norma
normans (determining norm) not a norma
normata (determined norm).
For example, while many
Christians are aware of Martin Luther’s (1483-1546)
maxim of justification by faith alone (sola
fide), few are aware of his other maxim, namely, the
sufficiency of Scripture alone (sola scriptura).
In Luther’s day the problem with the Roman Church was
not so much the infallibility of Scripture, for
Rome gladly acknowledged this, rather the problem was
the sufficiency of Scripture. Roman Catholicism
totally rejected (and still rejects) the proposition
that the Scriptures alone are sufficient. It maintains
that the Church’s traditions and teachings, as well as
the Pope’s ex cathedra ("from the chair")
declarations, are equal to Scripture authority. In
practical application, however, these are actually
superior to the Scriptures, for if the Pope declares
something that is unscriptural, it is that declaration,
not the Scriptures, that is
followed.
Luther, however, rejected the
Roman doctrine, declaring that, "What is asserted
without the Scriptures or proven revelation may be held
as opinion, but need not be believed."(7) While Luther
unfortunately compromised on a few Church traditions,
such as retaining the weak Apostle’s Creed and the
heretical Nicene Creed, he would not compromise on the
"sure rule of God’s Word:" "Now if anyone of the saintly
fathers can show that his interpretation is based on
Scripture, and if Scripture proves that this is the way
it should be interpreted, then the interpretation is
right. If this is not the case, I must not believe
him."(8)
While it is hard for us to
accept, it is nonetheless true that the situation in
evangelical Christianity is much the same when it comes
to the sufficiency of Scripture. Yes, we speak of the
Bible’s authority, but when it comes to Its
sufficiency, we seem to think the Bible needs a
little help in "practical application." This, however,
is a staggering contradiction, for if the Bible is not
sufficient, then it simply cannot be authoritative.
Tozer addressed this issue
pointedly. In his powerful book Rut, Rot, or
Revival,(9) Tozer writes:
In effect, [many
Christians] say that the Bible must be interpreted in
the light of new developments. A book that was written
in the day when people rode donkeys must be
reinterpreted to mesh with contemporary society. They
say that the prophets and apostles mistook what God
intended to do. The Bible is outmoded and largely
irrelevant. Irrelevant means that it is not
related to anything. Outmoded means we have new
modes of thinking and living now, so the Bible is
out-of-date—a back-issue magazine. We must, therefore,
reassess its teachings and rethink our beliefs and
hopes.
I am not
overstating this at all. This is what is being taught
today. It gets into the newspapers, and people are
saying that the Bible must be interpreted in the light
of all these changes. The apostles and prophets were
mistaken. They had ideas that were good and advanced for
their day, but not advanced for our day. We know more
about ourselves, human motivation and the nature of
things than they did back
then.
As in Tozer’s day, do we not
hear this today? After hearing Paul’s teaching on women,
I once heard a woman say, "Oh, Paul just didn’t know
what he was talking about." It’s also quite common
nowadays to hear Paul called a "male chauvinist," even
by so-called Christian women, simply because his words
don’t match contemporary thought and custom. The Word of
God is not ruling the Church today, rather the Church is
ruling the Word of God. The world has so tainted the
Church that God’s Word has been rewritten. Tozer
adds:
The tragedy of the
century is that Protestants have accepted this as
progress and actually believe it. The children of the
protesters, children of the Reformation, have been
brainwashed and indoctrinated by those who believe that
changes have made a difference in God’s plan, a
difference in Christianity and a difference in Christ.
We have been brainwashed to believe that we cannot read
the Bible as we used to. We must now read it through
glasses colored by change. We have been hypnotized by
the serpent, the devil, into believing that we no longer
have a trustworthy Bible, so Protestantism is no longer
a moral force in the world.
Protestantism is
not a force in this world because we have sold out to
the brainwashers. Instead of being the sons and
daughters of the protesters, we are now yes-men and
yes-women. Running our Protestant world are people who
talk solemnly about Christ but who do not mean what the
Bible means. They talk about revelation and inspiration,
but they do not mean what our fathers
meant.
We are forced to ask at this
point, where are the leaders today who remind us of
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingly, John Owen,
Thomas Watson, Charles Spurgeon, and other powerful men
of God who have stood uncompromisingly in the face of
change? There are few indeed. Oh, how this needs to
change!
We need sweeping
reformation. Let me give a definition of reformation as
it is given in a religious dictionary: "Change by
removal of faults or abuses, and a restoration to a
former good estate." Now that is not so bad. I do not
know how anybody who believes he or she is a Christian
could ever object to changing in the direction of the
removal of faults and abuses toward the restoration to a
former good estate.
The problem is
change, which disturbs many people. They have accepted
the status quo as being the very tablets given by God on
the mountain. Most people, if they happen to be in any
church anywhere, accept the status quo without knowing
or caring to inquire how it came to be. In other words,
they do not ask, "Oh God, is this of You, is this
divine, is this out of the Bible?" Because it was done
and is being done, and because a lot of people are doing
it, they assume it is all right.
Today we need
people who dare to question the status quo and say,
"Wait a minute here. Where do you find this in the
Bible?"
Indeed we do! A phrase I have
tried to make the cornerstone of my ministry is, "What
saith the Scripture?" We find the phrase twice: Romans
4:3 and Galatians 4:30. In both instances, we see Paul
concerned with one thing only, namely, what Scripture
says on a particular subject. In the first instance
(Rom. 4:3), he speaks of justification by faith and
cites Abraham as the prime example. To emphasize his
point, he quotes from Genesis 15:6. In the second
instance (Gal. 4:30), he speaks again of justification
by faith. Illustrating the principle that we are no
longer under law but under grace (vs. 21-31), he again
quotes from Genesis (21:10, 12).
Over and over again, we see Paul
going to the Old Testament Scriptures as His authority.
He uses the phrase "it is written," for example, 30
times (e.g. Rom. 1:17; 3:10; 9:13; I Cor. 1:19, 31; Gal.
3:10; etc.). Further, including all New Testament
writers, we find this phrase a total of 63 times in the
King James Version. Similarly, we find the words
"Scripture saith" six times (Jn. 19:37; Rom. 9:17;
10:11; 11:2; I Tim. 5:18; Jas. 4:5). All this
demonstrates the importance of the declarations of
Scripture. Would that the phrase that characterized
Christians today was, "What saith the Scripture?" Would
that Christians today discern
everything.
To close this chapter, I’d like
to cite an illustration Tozer uses in The Price of
Neglect. He refers to the odd instance when Moses
asked an in-law named Hobab to guide the Israelites
through the wilderness, since he evidently knew a lot
about that desert (Num. 10:29-32). Think of it! In spite
of the fact that God promised that He would protect them
(Ex. 23:20) and guide them (Num. 9:15-23), Moses
mistakenly thought they needed
Hobab.
Tozer uses this incident to draw
a parallel with the Church, in that she is to be lead by
God’s Word alone, not the plethora of Hobabs that are
running the Church today.
What need do we
have of Hobab’s eyes? Surely none at all. Yet the Church
has a whole army of Hobabs to which it looks eagerly for
guidance and leadership. That Hobab has no place in the
divine plan never seems to matter at all. That Hobab is
an intruder, that his eyes are not sharp enough to
search out the path, that he is altogether superfluous
and actually in the way is passed over by almost
everyone. God seems so far away, the Bible is such an
old book, faith makes such heavy demands upon our flesh,
and Hobab is so near at hand and so real and easy to
lean on—so we act like men of earth instead of like men
of heaven, and Hobab gets the job.
Now, who is Hobab?
and how can we identify him? The answer is easy. Hobab
is anything gratuitously introduced into the holy work
of God which does not have biblical authority for its
existence. At first this new thing may seem innocent
enough and even look like an improvement over the
biblical pattern; and because it is new it is sure to
catch on fast and spread quickly among the churches. We
Christians are soon playing "follow the leader,"
trotting along docilely behind Hobab and justifying his
presence by appealing to his popularity. Anyone as
popular as Hobab cannot be wrong, no matter how far he
may be from the Word of God.
Hobab is not an
individual. He is whatever takes our attention from the
cloud and fire; he is whatever causes us to lean less
heavily upon God and look less trustfully to the guiding
Spirit. Each one of us must look out for him in our own
life and in our church. And when we discover him we must
get rid of him right
away.(10)
What is the ultimate danger in
these Hobabs? As Tozer puts it, "The more they trusted
to Hobab, the less they trusted in God." The Church
today is trusting in countless Hobabs instead of God.
She is trusting in countless methods and techniques for
success in ministry instead of the Holy Spirit empowered
methods outlined in Scripture. She is captivated by and
follows anything new—a new ministry, a new idea, or a
new program—without ever considering it Biblically,
without ever testing its methodology or even its
validity according to the Word of God.
Biblical authority will be a
recurring theme as we continue. I thank God that A. W.
Tozer was a man of God that clung uncompromisingly to
the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. I thank God
that he had the courage to point out that the Church in
his day (and today) "quotes the Bible copiously but
without one trace of authority."(11) May we admit this
fact and claim sola scriptura as our battle
cry.
NOTES
1. The Tozer Pulpit, 2
vols. (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1994),
Vol. 1, Book 1, p. 147. All other references to this
work will be abbreviated, as in Tozer Pul2. Tozer
Pulpit, 2. 2. Tozer Pulpit, II.5.18-19 (I
Call it Heresy).
3. Tozer
Pulpit,
I.1.148.
4. God Tells the Man Who
Cares (Harrisburg: Christian Publications, 1970), p.
163-172. The emphasis in the quotation of this article
is all Tozer’s.
5. Timothy George,
Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman
Press, 1988), p. 328.
6. Matthew Henry,
Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible,
Vol. 5 (McLean, Virginia: MacDonald Publishing Company,
n.d.), p. 495.
7. Cited from
Luther’s Works by Timothy George, Theology of
the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1988), pp.
80-81.
8. Ibid. p.
82.
9. A. W. Tozer,
Rut, Rot, or Revival (Harrisburg, PA: Christian
Publications, 1992), pp. 94-95, 100-103 (emphasis in the
original).
10. The Price
of Neglect, p. 20-21.
11. God Tells
the Man Who Cares, p.
36.
