Monday, July 5, 2021

Hal Hougey, "Can Unregenerate Man Understand the Bible?"

 

Can Unregenerate Man Understand the Bible?

 

The great Reformation theologian John Calvin developed a theological system which has dominated much of the conservative Christian world since the sixteenth century. Calvin’s concern was to magnify God at man’s expense. He emphasized the sovereignty of God, and would accept nothing that appeared to him to compromise that sovereignty in any way.

 

Calvin believed that unregenerate man could not think or do anything good, and therefore could make no move toward God. God must first come to him, which he would do through the Holy Spirit, who regenerates man and makes it possible for man to have faith and live righteously.  If man was to understand the scriptures, he could do so only through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. This is a logical conclusion, if we accept Calvin’s presuppositions.

 

Calvinism teaches that the Holy Spirit enters unregenerate man and operates directly upon him to bring about his redemption. However, in the NT, the Spirit is promised to men who believe in Christ, repent of their sins, and are baptized for the remission of sins, in response to Christ’s death for our sins (Ac 2:38-39).

 

The Calvinistic view is that man cannot understand the scriptures without the intervention of the Spirit. Paul says,

 

“We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they ae spiritually discerned” (1Co 2:12-14)

 

Calvinism says unregenerate man is incapable of understanding the word of God until the Spirit operates directly on him, and enlightens him. It is true that the man without the Spirit cannot fully understand God’s will, but it is because he has a different set of values, and as long as he lives by those worldly values, the messages of the Spirit are foolishness to him. Here we see the difference between understanding intellectually (the demons “believe and tremble”), and accepting, trusting, believing—which means an understanding that goes beyond the intellectual, and changes lives.

 

The Bible was written at the direction of the Holy Spirit. If it is not understandable, and we need the Spirit’s illumination to make the meaning clear, may we not also need an interpreter for the Spirit’s illumination? And so on, ad infinitum.

 

Contrary to Calvin’s view, we believe unregenerate man is capable of understanding God’s word in human language. There is no difference in language, whether the subject is biblical or secular. If a person is capable of reading and understanding a science textbook, or a history book, what is there to prevent him from understanding a biblical text? After all, a science textbook tells us about God’s creation, and a history book tells us what God has done in human affairs. Since the Bible is God’s message in human language, inspired by God, it should be easier, not more difficult or impossible, to understand.

 

If a man cannot understand the scripture without the Spirit’s intervention, how would Israel understand the OT scriptures? It they could not, why were the Scriptures given in the first place? If they could, then we can too, so we conclude that the scripture can be understood without the direct operation of the Spirit. (Hal Hougey, The Quest for Understandable Hermeneutics [Concord, Calif.: Manna, 1997], 256-58)