Greetings and salutations. Welcome to Life and Books and Everything. I'm Kevin DeYoung. Today I'm reading my latest article at World Opinions. This one is entitled, That's Just Your Interpretation.

One of the benefits of getting older is that you become even less impressed with recycled bad arguments.

Fifteen years ago when people were still talking about the Emergent Church,

I participated in a panel discussion about the pros and cons of the movement.

After a riveting panel in front of 50 people, in a cavernous hall that had room for at least 500,

a visibly upset man accosted me, frustrated with how I used scripture to critique the emergent Church. He didn't try to argue with any

particular comment I made, including my references to the Bible. Instead, he argued with me that

everything I said was only my interpretation of the Bible. I tried to show him that Jesus taught

as if there was a discernible meaning in Scripture that could be known, agreed upon, and meaningfully communicated. He replied that this was only my interpretation

of what Jesus was saying. I tried to belabor the point that the men in the Bible didn't speak

or write as if they only had an interpretation of the Bible. He said this line of reasoning

was also just my interpretation. Needless to say, we

both walked away from our exchange more frustrated than enlightened. The debate about

interpretation is an old one. During the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics weren't then divided

over the total trustworthiness of Scripture, they were divided over the clarity and authority

of Scripture. The doctrine of perspicuity, which for a word meaning clarity isn't all that clear,

is sometimes maligned as a magical assertion that everything in the Bible is easy to understand,

but the doctrine is more sophisticated than

that. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives a classic definition when it admits that,

quote, all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto

all, yet the things that are necessary for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in

some place of Scripture

...