{"id":911,"date":"2015-12-31T17:09:02","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunergoi.com\/?p=911"},"modified":"2015-12-31T17:09:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:09:02","slug":"if-god-spoke-would-we-understand-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"If God Spoke Would We Understand (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do Seth’s wife, the Nephilim, and the circumcision of Moses’ son have to do with reading and preaching Scripture?\u00a0Part two<\/a> of my three part series on the clarity of Scripture in the Reformation is up over a Christward Collective this week.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the first post in this series\u00a0we briefly considered the way in which the Reformers viewed the Scriptures–as they are in truth, the authoritative written word of God. But God\u2019s Word is not only uniquely authoritative; it is also uniquely clear, or\u00a0perspicuous.\u00a0 It is intelligible and accessible to ordinary Christians for the work of faith.\u00a0 This teaching of the scripture\u2019s clarity is as crucial to Reformed view as the teaching of inspiration.\u00a0 After all, no matter how inspired scripture is, it causes little practical effect if it is not knowable to ordinary humans.<\/p>\n

The Westminster Confession, that great document of the English Reformation and the governing theological document for certain confessional churches like my own, teaches the following:<\/p>\n

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other\u2026(WCF 1.6)<\/p>\n

In other words, the scholars and pastors who gathered to compose the confession recognized that scripture was not without its difficult passages.\u00a0 As an Old Testament professor I am often asked about certain passages that have vexed the church for millennia and also fed not a few horrible theological errors.\u00a0 There are usual suspects:\u00a0 \u201cWho were the Nephilim?\u201d is a common one.\u00a0 \u201cWho were Seth\u2019s wives?\u201d \u201cWhat is going on between Zipporah and Moses during the circumcision scene in Exodus 4?\u201d The early books of the Bible provide a home to some of the Bible\u2019s most titillating mysteries. Then there is always Jude 9. There is a lot we can say about these questions, but at the same time, we have to admit that their meaning is just not explained in full.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do Seth’s wife, the Nephilim, and the circumcision of Moses’ son have to do with reading and preaching Scripture?\u00a0Part two of my \n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ESBE-eH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sunergoi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/tumblr_mw7pmfmlSF1svrh8zo3_1280.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}