Father, Son, and Holy Bible
This week, as Lydia and I continue our efforts to obtain our Master's degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary, our professor posed this question for our class discussion. What is the danger of having a belief system of the Trinity that flattens the Trinity to an emphasis on ‘Father, Son, and Holy Bible’? What is the practical damage that happens when a member of the Trinity is replaced by something else?
My hope is that my response to this question will offer you an experiential and empowering theology—one that refuses to replace the Holy Spirit with the Bible, yet still recognizes the essential place Scripture holds in the Christian life.
Buckle up.
This description of emphasizing "the Father, Son, and Holy Bible' causes me to think of the danger of what I believe Dr. Gerry Breshears called 'Biblidolatry' in one of our lectures. This is the idea that the Bible can actually become an item of worship that competes with God Himself. Biblidolatry is what happens when someone becomes so obsessed with the Bible that they forget what the Bible is actually for. Its sole purpose is to lead us to intimately know and encounter the truth and presence of the Trinity. (2 Timothy 3:16, 1 John 3:2) Think of the Pharisees, who loved the scriptures so much that it got in the way of them seeing the author's intent (God’s intent) of the scriptures.
This made me think of a metaphor of a husband and wife. I love my wife, and because I love my wife, I also love the sound of her voice, the words she chooses, and the creativity of how she writes. Now, if Lydia were to write a masterpiece of a book and I became so obsessed with that book that my love for Lydia’s writing competed with my actual ongoing intimate personal knowledge of her, we would have a problem. If every day I held the pages of her book but refused to hold her hands, the book, which was meant to help me understand her better, is now competing with the author herself. Put another way, if I only care for Lydia’s words and not who she actually is—her personality, her interests, what she loves, hates, and how I can live according to those things—there's a barrier forming between us. But now, say the opposite happens: Lydia writes a masterpiece of a book, and I refuse to pick it up and reject it entirely as not worth my time; this is antithetical to the love and union of our marriage. If I love her, I want to know what she has to say. If I disregard her writings, then I disregard her herself. Love takes notice of every opportunity for love to continue to blossom, which always includes knowing the person across from us to a greater degree in intimacy.
The Bible is that masterpiece, inspired by God himself, written for the sake of a lovely connection between God and his bride. If we are to replace the Spirit of God with a Holy Bible, we reduce God to an ancient record of his actions, his nature, and how he thinks rather than a living God who, while never changing, continues to unfold his actions, nature, and thinking to us in realtime using both the Bible and his creation under the direction of His spirit to do so. Isn't this why we study theology after all? To always know him a little better than we did yesterday? To behold the one who is holding us in the palm of his hand? I think so. I believe with all of my heart that is why we are on this earth. To know God and to be loved by Him.
2 Timothy 3:16 says that "All scripture is breathed out by God." When we pigeonhole and become obsessed only with the scriptures, we forget about the Spirit who breathed them out in the first place. The text leads us to the source of breath, and the breath of God leads us to the words that were spoken. We must remember that the Bible is only special because it reveals the specialness of God. It is a means to an end, and the end is God. (Please don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying we will ever get to that end on this side of eternity.) We use the scriptures to search the heart of God, and yet the Holy Spirit seems to be so active in the scriptures that he uses them to search us. Do you see that? We use the scriptures to see God, and the Spirit uses the scriptures to reveal Himself. Without the Holy Spirit, we tend to believe that we interpret the scriptures only, when in reality, as Michael Lawrence puts it, “It’s not just that we interpret the Bible. The Bible interprets us.”1
The Bible should never replace our need to be personally led, fed, guided, and corrected by the Holy Spirit, but neither should we ignore that the Bible, which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, leads us to see the importance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Bible is God’s speech, breathed out and written down. They are holy, but they are not God any more than the things I say are not entirely me, though they reflect the type of person I am. We are not only intellectuals who study the Bible to obtain some superficial, untransformative knowledge. Neither are we only Charasmatics who live our lives encounter to encounter with no Biblical foundation. In the words of Tyler Staton, we are Contemplative Charasmatics. We think deeply about our Bible experientially, in concert with the Holy Spirit. The Bible doesn't replace the Holy Spirit; instead, it gives us glasses to see the Holy Spirit's clear work in our lives in 20/20 clarity.
To correct this, I think we must understand that good hermeneutics (and all the skills that come with them: Cultural context, etymology, biblical theology, original author intent, etc.) are not to be prized as having the same worth as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a tool on our hermeneutical belt. He doesn't exist just to help us have good hermeneutics and exegetical skills. Though he does care about both and will always help us along the way! He must not be reduced to only a Bible study companion (though he is that too). When we reduce him to a mere textual companion, we inevitably reduce his power, authority, and Lordship in our lives. He is God, and God has spoken by His word and through His word, but God is not made up of words; He is Spirit. (John 4:24) May we always read the scriptures as the Holy Spirit reads us. May we cling to his hand as he uses the scriptures to guide us into all truth. (John 16:13)
Bibliography:
Lawrence, Michael. Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church (Foreword by Thomas R. Schreiner): A Guide for Ministry. IXMarks. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010. p31
