Can I Understand the Bible?
The clarity of Scripture (perspicuity) means that anybody can understand it. No matter the reader’s education, culture, or age, the Bible is clear enough for the reader to make sense of its teachings and to live accordingly. You can understand it. God wants you to know him, so the most important claims of Scripture are plain.
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The Clarity of Scripture—sometimes known by the older word “perspicuity” (Which, for a word that means clarity, is not all that clear)—is carefully defined in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF):
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, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (WCF 1.7)
It’s worth noticing several important nuances in this definition.
First, some portions of Scripture are clearer than others. Not every passage has a simple or obvious meaning.
Second, the main things we need to know, believe, and do can be clearly seen in the Bible.
Third, though the most essential doctrines are not equally clear in every passage, they are all made clear somewhere in Scripture.
Fourth, that which is necessary for our salvation can be understood even by the uneducated, provided that they make use of the ordinary means of study and learning.
Fifth, the most important points in the Scriptures may not be understood perfectly, but they can be understood sufficiently.
The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture is not a wild assertion that the meaning of every verse in the Bible will be patently obvious to everyone.
Rather, the perspicuity of Scripture upholds the notion that ordinary people using ordinary means can accurately understand enough of what must be known, believed, and observed for them to be faithful Christians.
Content taken from Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung, ©2016. Used by permission of Crossway.
Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach...No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
DEUTERONOMY 30:11, 14 NIV
The Scriptures
are shallow enough
for a babe to come and drink
without fear of drowning
and deep enough for theologians to swim in
without ever touching the bottom.
The unfolding
of your words
gives light;
it gives understanding
to the simple.
Is it reasonable to take God’s word and believe that he has spoken the truth, even though I cannot fully comprehend what he has said? The question carries its own answer. We should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.
| SourceIt’s not hard
to understand;
it’s just hard to swallow.