FAQ for the book When People Speak for God
The Bible is not a straightforward instruction manual. It is not historically or scientifically inerrant. Instead, the Bible contains wisdom literature that requires comprehension and application. Your mind, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, acts as the final filter to discern sense from nonsense. Revelation requires personal comprehension. The decisive person to hear from God is you. God also works through the natural. To that end, grace makes it all possible, but no number of gifts will make you rich if you throw them all away.
Many Biblical passages need to be read not simply to find out what the say, and who they are saying it to, but also to discover where God is going with a particular set of commands. Biblical passages are not necessarily static commandments. Look for the trajectory or line of development of a particular command. We need to take God’s word and get active with the word.
The Bible is not a collection of words dictated by God, except in rare circumstances. What God says and what people say God says may well be two very different things. When someone announces–”God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”–without being certain that God says it, that bypasses the human mind. Instead, inspiration involves God working through human authors in various ways. God not only has information for us; he has a plan. The authors compile and organize material under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The word is active, and we need to get active with the word.
God’s command is to test everything. Only a small portion of the work of a prophet involves predicting the future. If you are not sure that what someone has claimed as a word from God actually is such a word, I will often choose to say simply, “God is going to have to tell me that,” or “That is not what I hear.” We test the Scriptures by placing our trust in God and seeing what He will do for us through Jesus Christ. You can tell what they are by what they do.
It is not your responsibility or even your right to correct everyone in sight. The idea of God speaking requires that we work in community, with a common set of principles to apply before we can correct one another. Make sure it ends either with acceptance of the word, or a gracious rejection—and I emphasize gracious—rejection with explanation and correction provided to the person who made the claim in the first place. If you cannot graciously respond, even when you reject the word, you likely need to examine yourself. Don’t make the claim; let others make the claim for you.
God’s words, brought to us in these various ways, also aids us in doing much more than just gaining information. It can help us resist sin, help us discern right and wrong, and guide us in knowing what God will do soon. A valid view of inspiration must take into account the purpose of the entire collection. The prophets stand on their claim to receive messages from God through the Spirit. Under progressive revelation, we would understand this to be a command that was appropriate at the time, and possibly as much as the people could take. It moved them in the direction in which God wanted.
A canon is a set of writings held by a community to be authoritative in some formal sense, such as church law. What a defined canon does for us is tell us what defines our community. It does not define the boundaries of what helps us grow spiritually. Stick to God’s word, not to someone’s understanding of it.
God’s word includes whatever God says, and since his word is also action, whatever God does. The phrase “word of God,” as used in scripture, is very broad in meaning. The primary function of the word is creation. The last person, and the decisive person, to hear from God is you. God not only has information for us; he has a plan.
