Lecture 14.docx

I want to talk now about losing on the bondage of the will. My colleague Greg Beale lists this as his favorite book of all time. Mine, I\'ve had to choose one Christian classic to take to a desert island with me. For me it would probably be Augustine\'s Confessions. I\'m a big Augustine guy. Gr...

I want to talk now about losing on the bondage of the will. My colleague Greg Beale lists this as his favorite book of all time. Mine, I\'ve had to choose one Christian classic to take to a desert island with me. For me it would probably be Augustine\'s Confessions. I\'m a big Augustine guy. Greg likes the bondage of the will. I think it had a huge impact on him as a young man. Also it\'s a book that had a profoundly shaping effect on British evangelicalism in the 1950s and 60s when it was translated by a young J.I. Packer and his friend O.R. Johnston, translated the bondage of the will into English and it was published. It had a significant effect in reinforcing the anti-Pelagian strand of British evangelicalism. So it\'s a book that continues to have a significant impact on Christian thinking today. It\'s one of the books if you\'ve got some time to read Luther, bondage of the will should certainly be on your list. It\'s certainly one of only three books that Luther wrote that he would recommend that you read along with the two catechisms. Just to backtrack a little, Erasmus, Desiderius Erasmus was the preeminent intellectual of his day. He was a great example of Northern humanism. Mentioned humanism before, we need to set aside our modern notions of what humanism is. It\'s a sort of naive belief in the perfectibility or the improvability of man without regard to God. Richard Dawkins would be a good example, I think, of a humanist. Humanism in the 16th century, we\'re really talking about men of letters, public intellectuals. I\'ve mentioned before humanism as a phenomenon only starts in the Italian city-states. When the Italian city-states are rising, we want to establish themselves a pedigree, a historical pedigree. The obvious thing to do if you\'re an Italian is to look back to the glories of the classical era, to the Roman Republic, to the great literature of classical times. So what starts really as a matter of political interest, the recovery of classical letters to provide a pedigree for emerging political arrangements, very soon takes on a life of its own. And people start, men start enjoying the study of classical letters for itself. And it\'s the origin actually of this idea that the study of classics of Greece and Rome, classical Greece and classical Rome, the study of classical literature is somehow in itself a morally improving activity. Having studied classics at Cambridge, I can tell you that most of my contemporaries were not morally improved by their studies. The classics department was just as much a slice of real life as any other department was. But particularly I think in Britain, the myth of the greatness of classics persisted for a long time. It used to be said that, I remember hearing some politicians say once, you know, 40 years ago the treasury was run by classicists and the economy was booming. Now it\'s run by economists and it\'s a total disaster. And there was this idea that if you\'d studied classics, well, you could be a brain surgeon or you could run the economy. It just infused you with a wisdom and a skill for life. That really captures something of the ethos of your 16th century humanists. That classical studies was part and parcel of making society a better place. Don\'t get me wrong, I love classics. I could spend all my day reading classical stuff. I think that the literature is fantastic. The personalities it generated were tremendous. The great thing about making a classical citation in anything you write these days is it makes you look like some massive intellectual. You just pull it off Wikipedia, but people think, oh, he cited a classical author. He must be hugely intellectual. Well, no, he may just have pulled it off Wikipedia. But classics does carry a certain ethos with it. There was strong in the early 16th century and Erasmus epitomizes that and the church benefits or Christianity benefits from this because the interest in ancient texts is not bounded by modern disciplinary borders. Ancient texts don\'t just include Cicero. They also include Augustine. And with the advent of the printing press in the 15th century, humanism does tremendous work in creating a market for ancient texts. One of the things, I\'m not sure I mentioned this earlier in the course, but if you remember in the Middle Ages, by and large books were expensive and hard to come by. So most education, university theological education, proceeded on the basis of books and texts and sentences, collections of quotations from authorities, which did a pretty decent job. But reading a quotation from an authority, well, once a quotation is taken out of its original context, it becomes vulnerable to ambiguity, vulnerable to obscurity. Given the way that the medievals had to do theology because of the mechanical conditions that book production imposed upon the way people read and learned, the medievals did a remarkable job actually of preserving many of the fundaments of Christian orthodoxy. They didn\'t have access to God\'s word in the original languages, and they didn\'t really have access to extended tomes of theology to know what the church had thought over the years. So we should probably be reasonably charitable with the medievals on their theology, and they did a remarkable job in preserving central doctrines of the faith with very little resources, very few resources. Humanism transforms all that. The printing press transforms all that. And of course, by the time we get to the 16th century, the humanists, people like Erasmus, they have a reforming zeal about them. Erasmus is writing satires about the corruption in the church. I think there\'s a general consensus among intelligent people at the start of the 16th century that the church needs reforming. What that reform should look like? Well, there\'s not so much consensus over that, but certainly Erasmus has no more time for the immoral lives of the pope and the monks than Luther does. Of course, what this tends to create is a blurring of boundaries between reformers. And to the casual observer, Erasmus and Luther look as if they\'re pretty much on the same page, and that\'s a dangerous place for Erasmus to be. And it\'s not helped by the fact that Erasmus wrote those notes on Luther that he gave confidentially to Frederick the Wise, and Frederick the Wise or somebody, must have been Frederick the Wise or Spalet or somebody, somebody leaked them to the press and caused this sort of scandal for Erasmus as being pro-Lutheran. So pressure has been growing on Erasmus from 1520 onwards to declare himself clearly and cleanly relative to Luther. And that he does in 1524 when he publishes his work, The Diatribe on Free Will. Actually, although we talk about the diatribe on free will and then on the bondage of the real, the Latin is actually, the Latin word for translated will is arbitrium. Latin has two words that we would translate typically as will into English, voluntas and arbitrium. And really, voluntas is perhaps more cleanly translated as will. We tend to think of will as that capacity we have to make ourselves do things. Arbitrium has, when you think of it and you look at it and think of the well, you could see what English words come from the arbit root in Latin. Arbitration, arbitrary. Arbitrium carries with it a certain quality of choice or judgment that the simple word will doesn\'t carry in and of itself. You could just as easily translate Erasmus\' works and Luther\'s works as diatribe on free choice and on the bondage of choice. It\'s a slightly different thing that\'s being said. It\'s just a linguistic point as we\'re coming to it. Erasmus writes this work and he does it as a way of demonstrating that he\'s not with Luther. The work arrives in Wittenberg and the first one of the first people to get hold of a copy is Philip Melanchthon. Melanchthon reads it and likes it. Goes to see Luther with a kind of isn\'t it great, Erasmus is with us. If there\'s one man, if there\'s one man you want on your side at this point in the Reformation, it\'s Erasmus. He is the stunning intellect of his day and to have him on side would be a major coup. He is the man who provided the world with a sort of a decent Greek edition of the New Testament in 1516 and paved the way for Luther to make his breakthrough on justification, realizing that the Greek word is not entirely accurately translated as justificare, to make righteous, but is better translated as to declare righteous. Erasmus\' work, his linguistic work is foundational to the success of the Reformation. Luther reads the work and his heart falls because he knows that, A, he knows that Erasmus is arguing something that is antithetical to his position in the Reformation and he also knows that Erasmus is somebody who has to be responded to. Particularly I think in the world of the internet. I try to persuade some of my congregants of this, not everybody has to be responded to because some people aren\'t worth listening to in the first place. One of my congregants used to send me, if ever anybody criticized me on the internet, on the rare occasion it ever happens, they would send it to me and say, you\'re going to respond. And most of them would say, I\'m not going to respond. He\'s a loony or this is just some guy in his basement having a go. I don\'t have time to respond to everybody. But we all live in worlds where if a particular person had a go, you\'d have to respond. I mean for example, if a high ranking member of my denomination accused me of heresy in print, I\'d have to defend myself. I\'d have to, I\'d either have to repent if he was correct or I\'d have to defend myself. Erasmus isn\'t just some loony pamphleteer having a pop. You know, he\'s not living in his parents\' basement printing Reformation pamphlets or whatever he would have done as a geek in those days. Erasmus is the preeminent intellectual. And if Erasmus\' work is allowed to stand, then it is a crushing blow for Lutheran, for Lutheranism. And it appears that Luther went into something of a depression at this point because he knew that he\'d got to answer Erasmus. And he also knew that answering Erasmus was not an easy thing because Erasmus is a heavy hitter for a very good reason. He is a very substantial intellect and his work is not a trivial piece of mockery. It\'s a substantial theological argumentation. And so Luther writes what will become, as I say, one of the three works that he himself says are worth outliving him. He writes on the bondage of the world, De servo arbitrio, which is a very, very thorough defense of two fundamental principle points of his theology. One is an anti-Pelagian understanding of the relationship between the creature and the creator. Predestinarian, we might say. And the second closely related point is the perspicuity of Scripture. Perspicuity of Scripture. So those are two key things. Yeah? You mentioned how the length and so he presents it almost again. It\'s a great thing. But so Erasmus writes it knowing, does he kind of know he\'s going to set Luther off or does he? Erasmus is not writing, I think Erasmus is writing primarily to demonstrate his orthodoxy over against Luther. But I think Erasmus must have known that the response would come. I mean punching Luther on the nose does not go unpunished. And Erasmus would have known that. It\'s not the character of the man. I think what Luther, Luther generally is a master of knowing at what level to respond to people. I remember very early on in my academic career, Richard Muller, who\'s a sort of mentor and friend said to me, never, in a response to somebody, never give them an audience that they have not earned for themselves. And what he meant was, you know, if somebody hits you in a genre at this sort of level, on a blog or something like that, don\'t respond in an academic journal to them. Don\'t put their name into something where they have not earned the right to be there. And if somebody, and he also said, and there are other ways of putting people down, somebody disses you in a chapter, get rid of them in a footnote when you respond. And I think Luther was a master of knowing at what level he should respond to people. Some of them he didn\'t bother responding to. Others, he\'ll take them, you know, they hit him in the gutter and he\'ll hit them back in the gutter. Erasmus, substantial intellectual production. Luther gets nasty in his response, but he responds with a substantial intellectual production. There is a, Erasmus operates with three basic principles in his work to which Luther will object. First of all, he rejects the idea of dogmatic certainty on the point of the will\'s bondage. That\'s interesting because some people have argued, made the case that Erasmus\'s diatribe on free will is not actually a case for free will. It\'s really a case for arguing that scripture is not clear on the issue, and therefore one should not be dogmatically certain on the issue. And I actually find that quite a plausible interpretation. Secondly, because scripture is obscure and vague, Erasmus wants to assert the authority of the Pope and the church in interpretation, hence distancing himself from Luther. And thirdly, Erasmus wants to argue for economy in doctrinal proclamation, that not all doctrines are to be told to everybody. This is why these reasons connect in some ways to Melanchthon. Melanchthon will move to a position in the late 1520s on the human will, which is very similar to Erasmus\'s. This is one of the reasons for the splitting of Lutheranism after the death of Luther. There are the hardcore guys who want to maintain Luther\'s bondage of the will position, and the followers of Philip Melanchthon who are much more vague on it. If you\'ve ever read the Heidelberg Catechism, it\'s a beautiful Reformation production, the Heidelberg Catechism makes no reference to predestination, because it was written in an attempt to draw together the Reformed and the followers of Philip Melanchthon in Heidelberg. And therefore the Reformed couldn\'t afford to mention predestination, because then the Philippists couldn\'t have signed up to it. Philip really does wander in an Erasmian way. I mentioned this earlier in the week. It\'s one of the mysteries of Luther and Melanchthon is Luther remains silent on this point relative to Melanchthon in a way that he, well, while he excoriates Erasmus. How do we explain that? I think friendship. I think it\'s because he likes Melanchthon and Melanchthon\'s a friend. Melanchthon is also very hesitant about preaching certain doctrines. In Calvin\'s Institutes, Calvin will criticize people, certain people. I don\'t think he names them who say that you shouldn\'t preach predestination. That\'s Melanchthon. Calvin\'s actually criticizing Melanchthon at that point. Doesn\'t name him because guess what? Calvin and Melanchthon are very good friends, very good friends. They get on well together. And it\'s tasteless to rubbish your friends. So Calvin doesn\'t do it. And he does critique Melanchthon\'s position. Melanchthon was not comfortable in having the bondage of the will and predestination preached. He felt it was likely to lead to counterproductive results in a congregation. Motivations for Erasmus\'s position. Well, I think the immediate presenting cause of him writing is obviously he wants to ingratiate himself with the pope by distancing himself from Luther. I also think that underlying the clash between the two men are fundamentally different views of what Christianity is about. For Erasmus, Christianity is a way of life. He talks about the philosophy of Christ. What he means is following Christ as an example. It\'s a rather endearing and unlikable view of Christianity in some ways. I don\'t think it\'s biblical, but it\'s a rather endearing, an attractive model of Christianity. There\'s a sense in which the clash between Erasmus and Luther is just the latest example of that. The clash between Christianity is not a set of doctrines. It\'s a way of life that pops up every sort of 10 or 15 years, it seems, in the broader evangelical. The emergent church was a good example of that. And I remember seeing the emergent stuff and thinking, there are a lot of similarities to Luther versus Erasmus here. For Erasmus, Christianity is about following the example of Christ. He doesn\'t need doctrinal certainty, therefore. He just needs, he can trust the pope to get the doctrinal stuff right. For Erasmus, the important thing is that he patents his life after the example of the Lord Jesus. A whole lot of theological and biblical problems with that, of course, but I\'m just trying to give a sympathetic account here of where Erasmus is coming from. So for him, the kind of questions raised by Luther\'s bondage of the will will be very relevant to the core of Christianity. Luther, of course, is driven by the need for certainty. He has that kind of personality. Where can I find a gracious God? How do I know that God will be merciful to me? These are urgent existential questions that drive Luther as an individual. So there is a, without wanting to relativize it totally, I think there\'s a big clash of personalities here. Two different people whose personalities have shaped their view of Christianity in profound ways are on a collision course at this particular point in time. Luther, for Luther, Christianity involves a basic existential quest for certainty about God. That of course, in the grand scheme of things, will push Luther to an anti-Pelagian position, because if even one percent of Christianity depends upon Luther, then the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if Luther is the weakest link, it\'s not that strong. But Luther also thinks, if Erasmus thinks Christianity is a way of life, Luther thinks Christianity no. It\'s an assertion, or it\'s a set of assertions about a state of affairs and about non-negotiable implications of that state of affairs. Nothing Luther says, about a quarter of the way into the Bondage of the Will, nothing is more familiar or characteristic among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions and you take away Christianity. So for Luther, what Erasmus is advocating, if you take it to its logical conclusion, it\'s not Christianity anymore. I think that\'s a good point, a matron. John Henry Newman in his Apologia says, you know, from the moment I became a Christian age 14, it was a dogmatic religion. Christianity is a dogmatic religion. J. Gresham Matron in his Christianity and Liberalism makes the point that Christianity is a dogmatic religion. Liberalism isn\'t. Liberalism is reflection upon human psychology, religious psychology. Christianity is a dogmatic religion. And again, I mention this, that\'s why Matron makes a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestant liberalism. He feels, you know, you can talk about Roman Catholicism, but Protestant liberalism doesn\'t even have any dogma. There\'s no dogmatic constitution there that would make it remotely Christian. Incidentally, I mentioned this to somebody the other day. Have you seen, one of the big differences between today\'s liberals and the 19th century liberals of course is the 19th century liberals were at least decent churchmen. They knew that the church was important. There\'s an amazing footnote in Charles Hodge\'s systematic theology about Schleiermacher. And Schleiermacher, of course, represents everything that Hodge doesn\'t represent theologically, the father of liberalism. But Hodge has this incredibly wishy-washy footnote in his systematic theology when he says, you know, when I was in Berlin, I\'d go and hear Schleiermacher preach. And, you know, he reads the Bible to his kids and sings psalms with them. So, you know, I can\'t dismiss him as a Christian because he does all this Christian stuff. And it\'s kind of, oh, Hodge, you know, you\'ve just checked your brains at the door at that point. You know, Schleiermacher is boring as Carlisle would say, boring holes in the bottom of the church left, right, and center. But it\'s interesting comment, you know, that Schleiermacher, Hodge saw in Schleiermacher a piety, a church piety that has been pretty much abandoned, I think, by liberals today. So for Luther and Erasmus, then we\'ve got a clash, two personalities, two different visions of Christianity. And this dogmatic dimension of Luther\'s theology means that he cannot go along this path of holding back certain doctrines. For Luther, the task of the pastor is to proclaim doctrine and not to make critical decisions about which doctrines he should proclaim and which he shouldn\'t. I think as a pastor, I\'d want to qualify that a little and say there are ways of presenting these things and sometimes it\'s more appropriate to present some doctrines than others. But Luther\'s making a general point that we don\'t. He\'s not going to cut the bondage of the will out of his, you know, regular preaching pastoral routine because it might confuse people. It\'s not for Luther to decide what is confusing. It is for Luther to preach the Word of God. Again, it sort of connects a bit to his late medievalism. Remember, voluntarism, what is voluntarism? It\'s about, you know, that emphasis upon God\'s will as being the criterion of everything. God is the criterion for our preaching God\'s will in revelation for Luther, not what I happen to think is tasteful or appropriate or plausible. Erasmus in his diatribe says that there are some issues in Scripture which are too obscure to allow for certainty and therefore we need to delegate that to the church. And by the church he means the Pope and the Magisterium, not in every ministry. Luther responds to this by asserting doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture. This is a key doctrine and I think it\'s actually one that Protestants need to do a lot more work on. I\'ll outline Luther\'s position and then I will sort of, I\'m not going to critique Luther\'s position but I\'m going to say, you know, I think it\'s more complicated than he makes it. Luther argues that Scripture is perspicuous in two ways. Makes a distinction, fundamental distinction between internal perspicuity and external perspicuity. Internal perspicuity or clarity is the clearness, the perspicuousness of Scripture\'s teaching for those who have the Spirit of God. He makes a very bold statement, he says, if you speak of internal perspicuity, the truth is that nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what is in the Scriptures. So in one sense, the Scriptures are perspicuous through the work of the Spirit in faith. Luther here, I think, has in the back of his mind, he\'s worried about the Anabaptists. What Luther always wants to do is tie together the work of the Spirit and the written word of Scripture. So for him, internal perspicuity is as much a way of drawing people away from Anabaptists being led directly by the Spirit to making sure that when we talk about the work of the Spirit, we\'re talking about the work of the Spirit making the word clear and comprehensible to us. It\'s also safeguarding his notion of faith, I think. Because Luther will also argue that Scripture has an external perspicuity. Internal perspicuity, we might say, is the perspicuity that Scripture has as a clearly written text. Think of the Scriptures, think of your non-Christian friend and you could take them to, I don\'t know, the end of the Gospel of Mark. You read Mark chapter 16 with them or the end of one of the other Gospels and you turn to your friend, your non-Christian friend and say, so what does the chapter mean? And they say, well, Jesus was dead but then rose from the dead and the tomb was empty and Jesus had risen from the dead. They don\'t believe it but they know what the text says. How do they know what the text says? Well, they understand language. They understand how language works. Language has a clarity to it, we would say, that allows unbelievers to read the text and understand what it says. External perspicuity, we might say, understanding the personal existential significance of the text and grasping that by faith, that\'s a work of the Spirit and that\'s the monopoly of those in whom the Spirit dwells and works. But external perspicuity, the ability to understand what the text says, that\'s open to all who can read or if you\'re listening to the text being read, all who understand the language that it\'s being read in. This is important for Luther because what he\'s doing is demystifying interpretation. The doctrine of papal interpretation of scripture depends upon interpretation of scripture being a fundamentally complicated issue such that you need somebody to tell you what the text means. There is a sense in which there\'s a logical problem there because the person who tells you what the text means in fact tells you via a text, which then has to be interpreted. And you see this, I mean, in the history of Roman Catholicism, one of the things that sometimes push on my Roman Catholic friends is, yeah, but you\'re now interpreting papal interpretations. And there is a sort of endless regression here of interpretation that\'s going on. Set that aside for a minute. Let\'s think about what Luther says. It\'s very important for, as we might say, the conceptual underpinnings of what he\'s done at the Leipzig debate. If you\'re going to get rid of the pope and you\'re going to get rid of councils, I think you need something like scriptural perspicuity there. You need to maintain that. What\'s been interesting is a number of high profile conversions to Catholicism over the last decade on the issue of scriptural perspicuity. I\'m good friends with Frank Beckwith, professor of law at Baylor University. Frank was president of the ETS when he sort of reverted back to Catholicism. He\'d been brought up as a Roman Catholic. And in his testimony of why he went back, scriptural perspicuity was an issue. He\'d become convinced that scripture wasn\'t perspicuous and that there was the need for a teaching magisterium to explain what scripture meant. That highlights the importance of this doctrine. I think it is a crucial doctrine for Christians today. I recommend to you the books by Mark, the book by Mark Thompson, A Clear and Present Word. Mark is principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney. His book, A Clear and Present Word, I think it\'s published by Erdmans in the United States, is perhaps the only sophisticated defense of perspicuity that\'s been published in the last few decades. And it\'s really a very important doctrine for Protestantism because if perspicuity falls or perspicuity isn\'t correct, then I think we do need to be Roman Catholics. We do need to be Roman Catholics because we need somebody to interpret the scriptures for us. Now one of the problems I think we face today is we are aware that language and interpretation is more complicated than Luther made it. And there\'s a sense in which Luther himself practically acknowledges that even in his own day. Think about it. Luther never stands up in church and just reads the Hebrew and Greek to people expecting them to understand what it says. So when we\'re thinking about perspicuity, we\'re going to have to qualify it in some ways. And one of the ways we\'re going to qualify, we have to qualify it by saying, you know, there has to be a translation. And that I think requires us to then believe and to argue for the possibility of producing clear and reliable translations. I think it can be done. But that is a point that would be contested today. So if we\'re defending perspicuity today, it\'s going to be a more complicated and elaborate task than in Luther\'s day. Secondly, I think again, Luther\'s understanding of sin implies this, but I think we\'re aware today that interpretation of texts is sometimes more self-serving than we care to imagine, we care to allow. We read texts in a way that suits our sinful purpose. So I think there\'s a sense in which we are going to have to also address that issue if we\'re going to mount a successful defense of perspicuity today. That would actually lead me to, you know, if you would say to me, well, how would you go about this, Truman? A couple of things I would do, I would want to say, I would certainly want to capture something of the corporate nature of interpretation. Because I think large numbers of people over periods of time are likely to wrestle with the text in significant ways that allow me in the present to look at all of the possibilities and assess the meaning of the text. So for me, it would mean that I think we need to do what the Reformers actually did in practice, even though they didn\'t self-consciously articulate as such, and that is connect with traditions of exegesis and interpretation and assess them in the light of Scripture. I think we need to think of perspicuity not as any old person picking up the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures and reinventing Christianity. We need to understand that the perspicuity of Scripture must be set in an ecclesial context. Luther does that instinctively without reflecting upon it. I think today we\'d have to offer a reflective defense of that. Having said all that, I do think that the complexity of textual interpretation has been massively overplayed by linguistic theory over the last 20, 30, 40 years. If interpreting text was as complicated as some of the radical post-structuralist and deconstructionists have made it out to be, the world could not possibly operate. There\'s a great article by John Webster. I think it\'s in his Word and Church, I think it\'s reprinted in his Word and Church or Church and Word volume from T.N.T. Clark. It\'s sort of on hermeneutical overload in which John Webster, who\'s a high-flying theological professor, actually says, you know, bottom line is interpretation isn\'t that difficult. It actually isn\'t that difficult. It\'s not an arcane science. It has been done pretty successfully over the years. So I\'d want to argue that interpretation is not as difficult as people make it out to be. Secondly, I would want to argue that one of the classic contemporary Catholic objections to perspicuity is a bit of a non sequitur. The argument is that because there is a diversity of interpretation of Scripture, therefore Scripture cannot be clear. I don\'t think so. I don\'t think that because certain people interpret text incorrectly means that the text itself might not be clear. I think interpreting text requires learning the appropriate skills to interpret the text, but it doesn\'t mean the text is not clear. There are manuals out there on machine codes for computers, computer codes, that are entirely opaque to me because I have no idea about computer codes. My associate pastor was a very successful Silicon Valley person in the late 1980s and 1990s. He can read these books quite happily and tell you that they\'re actually very clearly written. Why? Because he has learned the skills of reading them. I think we need to also think about perspicuity in pedagogical terms. Scripture is perspicuous when one has developed the skills for reading a text about the subjects to which Scripture refers. Now all of this is to qualify scriptural perspicuity and in some ways to make it more complicated. What I would say is if you want to say, well how does this connect to the Reformation? I would say, well Luther doesn\'t articulate this. He doesn\'t articulate a sophisticated view of scriptural perspicuity, but when you look at how he handles Scripture, actually he\'s instinctively acknowledging quite a number of these issues. He arranges the translation of the Bible, so he instinctively acknowledges that the Greek and Hebrew need to be turned into something comprehensible for his people to read. Secondly, when he exegetes Scripture, what does he do? He\'s constantly citing the commentary tradition. He\'s constantly looking at commentaries that are written before. Does he follow them blindly? No. But he\'s constantly interacting with them in order to understand what Scripture says. Luther\'s view of scriptural perspicuity does not lead him practically just to sit down, man with his Bible, and invent it from the word go. Practically it doesn\'t mean that for him. He still believes Scripture is perspicuous, but he does believe that there is a training, a pedagogical ecclesial skill set that one acquires over time that, perhaps one could put it this way, that makes Scripture more perspicuous as you go on. Luther will say in the bondage of the world that certain basic doctrines are very clear to anybody who cares to look fairly at Scripture. Scripture becomes more perspicuous the more you read it and the more skilled you are in interpreting it. So perspicuity of Scripture, very important doctrine. I think it\'s one that Protestants neglect at their peril. We should not sit complacently by and simply juxtapose, well, Scripture\'s clear. Scripture\'s clear on this, over against Roman Catholics or Charismatics or whatever. We shouldn\'t complacently do that. I think it\'s a doctrine that does need consistent reflection and more sophisticated defense today, but I think it can be done. I think Mark Thompson\'s a good example of that. The fun thing about Mark Thompson\'s book is by the time you finish chapter one you think, how on earth is he ever going to be able to argue for Scripture or perspicuity? Because what he does is he lays out all of the complexities that modern linguistics are brought to bear on the issue, and then in the succeeding chapters he addresses each of them and attempts to offer a response based on traditional orthodoxy. Yeah? Along these lines, what of eldership? Would the Catholic Church find issues with that? Because in some respects there you also have leaders in the church who are forming doctrines for their church, and so do they find issues with the church even today I guess on that front? Almost similar to a magisterium in the Pope. Sorry, do you mean would they look at Protestants with a high view of the eldership and see them as akin to the Pope? Or find an issue that Protestants would have issues with their magisterium Pope authority that we have a form of leadership in our church that is somewhat similar even though as individuals we can come to our own interpretation. I think what we\'d do there is, you know, the difference would be magisterial and ministerial authority. The Protestants, you know, they would have to I think see that when we have leaders in our church the authority is ministerial and therefore in practice more provisional than their claiming for the church. I mean a Catholic would say, I can imagine a Catholic sitting here, and I always hate to put words in people\'s mouths because I\'m pretty sure their own arguments would be better than the ones I\'d put in their mouths, but I can imagine a Catholic, conservative Catholic saying this, yes, perspicuity also requires a canon of scripture. You have to have a closed canon in order to be able to interpret the text in any kind of certain way. Oh, and by the way, the canon of scripture comes from the authority of the church. So even your own doctrine of scripture pushes you to acknowledge something that you\'re going to have to acknowledge the authority of the church deciding which books are in and which books are out. That\'s something else that I think a good defense of perspicuity would have to address. Again, I think there are good Protestant arguments on the canon. Mike Kruger\'s two books on the canon should be required reading for all pastors. Most of the time the questions of the pastor who get asked by your congregation about the canon are ones that can answer fairly straightforwardly. I mean I found as a good answer when people say why these books are not others, they say well imagine, you know, let\'s imagine taking out one of the books that only just made it in humanly speaking. Let\'s take 2 Peter out and let\'s stick the Gospel of Timothy in. Go away and construct me a coherent theological scheme from scripture becomes impossible. So that kind of argument works well pastorally for, it\'s the kind of what I would call the Sunday school question on the canon. More sophisticated people say but why is this canon? You know, okay, that\'s one reason but why so? Why you could remove 2 Peter and it wouldn\'t really damage your theology very much. So why is 2 Peter in? Then you\'re going to require a more sophisticated argument and I think that connects. That will ultimately have to have an ecclesiastical response to it. And I do think, you know, I don\'t think the Reformers, whatever else the Reformers do, they don\'t want everybody going home and reading the Bible by themselves and deciding what it means. They know perspicuity doesn\'t mean that idiots can come up with the Nicene Creed just by reading the Bible. They know that. So perspicuity is generally something more sophisticated than a lot of Protestants think it is. I\'m writing an article at the moment for a Roman Catholic guy asked me to do an article for a journal and he said what topic I do. I said I\'ll do it on scriptural perspicuity and his response was, he said that would be great, because I\'ve never quite understood what you Protestants mean by that. I thought well this is a great opportunity. I\'m writing for a Roman Catholic audience on why scriptural perspicuity is of great importance and I think it is central. It\'s central and we need to think about it. It needs to be articulated in a way that addresses contemporary concerns. It is central. It\'s one of the important aspects of Luther\'s bondage of the will. I don\'t want to say it\'s the article by which the church stands or falls. There are a number of those, but it\'s kind of one of the articles by which the Protestant church stands or falls. If you don\'t have scriptural perspicuity you\'re going to end up with some kind of papal magisterium. And yet we know that the Bible isn\'t perspicuous to most people in a common sense way in Hebrew and Greek. So what do we mean by it? How do we articulate it? How do we defend it? What does it practically mean not only for theological education of pastors but for the week by week pedagogy in our churches? I hope as people sit in my church week by week and hear me preach, not only am I proclaiming the word but I\'m also modeling to them a pattern of interpreting the word that will make scripture more subjectively perspicuous to them as time goes on.