The Clarity of Scripture
In the sixteenth century debate between Erasmus and Luther over the freedom (or bondage) of the will, much of the preliminary discussion regarded the clarity of Scripture. Why was that? One of the tactics of Erasmus was to suggest that the finer points of the doctrine of salvation, such as predestination and the bondage of the will were insoluble mysteries that only divide Christians and encourage unhealthy speculation. Luther instantly called him on this, knowing that Erasmus would at least not deny that these concepts are mentioned in the Bible. Hence Erasmus would have to make an appeal to the obscurity of Scripture. Luther responded,
“But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.”1
But if this spiritual explanation was not enough, there is a fundamental logic problem involved whenever anyone wants to enter the field of controversy over what the Bible says, only to deny that it makes much sense of anything. So Luther also called out Erasmus on his hypocrisy: “What then is your intention, in observing that there are some things which ought not to be spoken of openly? For you mean to enumerate the subject of ‘Free-will’ among those things? If you do, the whole that I have just said concerning the necessity of knowing what ‘Free-will’ is, will turn round upon you. Moreover, if so, why do you not keep to your own principles, and have nothing to do with your Diatribe?”2 It is no coincidence that Roman Catholic theologians will take as their own doctrine the obscurity of Scripture.3
We will divide this doctrine under four basic sections: (1) Definition: What Clarity Is; (2) Distinction: What Clarity Is Not; (3) Reconciliation: Clarity and Consistency; (4) Application: Private Judgment
And the question is simply this: Whether the Scriptures are clear enough to all believers such that they can gather the way of salvation and godliness in this life.
Definition: What Clarity Is
One of the humorous ironies of this doctrine is that another name for it was the perspicuity of Scripture.4 Naturally that strikes us as a very unclear old word! Once we understand what biblical clarity is, it will be plain how this is an essential ingredient to a meaningful doctrine of Scripture.
As the authors of the Synopsis of a Purer Theology said,
“For the recognition of its divinity, authority, and perfection would be of no advantage to us at all, unless we believers can understand Scripture correctly and explain and apply it to the Church of Christ in order to establish the doctrines of faith and moral conduct.”5
What then is it? The clarity of Scripture is the quality of the word of God in which the things necessary for salvation and sanctification are simple enough for every believer to understand.
The Westminster Confession puts it in this way:
“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” (I.7).
There are four basic elements in this statement that will form our conception. First, there is that scope of what is clear; second, the audience to whom it is clear; third, the means by which it becomes clear; and fourth, the degree to which it is clear.
As to the scope, this simply follows what was said about sufficiency. The fundamental design of Scripture is to communicate the way of salvation and God’s will for our sanctification on that same path. Unsurprisingly, this is also what is clearest in Scripture. Remember those words from Paul to Timothy: “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
As to the audience, it says “not only the learned, but the unlearned.” We see this in the words of the Psalmist: “the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7); or, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps. 119:130); or even, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation” (Ps. 119:99). The Scripture opens up God’s truth to the simple, but not so as to leave one in infancy. Clarity builds upon itself.
As to the means, the Confession calls these “ordinary means,” such that all Christians are expected to apply themselves in order to gain such clarity. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:30-31 will supply us with an example; whereas the role of teachers in Ephesians 4:11-12 gives us the logic of it.
As to the degree, the statement ends by the word “sufficient,” now referring to that level of clarity or understanding that the Christian can expect. This refers back to that scope. In other words, it will be sufficiently clear for the gospel to be believed and God’s will to be found. It is directed toward its proper object, not for vain curiosities. So it is compared to a light for this reason: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105); “the teaching [is] a light” (Prov. 6:23); “a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1:19).
Many theologians have taken this passage in the same light regarding the commands: “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off” (Deut. 30:11). This is to the whole assembly of Israel. Bavinck makes a good point that, “Jesus speaks freely and frankly to all the crowds (Mat. 5:1; 13:1, 2; 26:55 etc.), and the apostles wrote to all those called to be saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; etc.”6
So this begs the question: Why, if in the Scriptures themselves we see the divinely inspired speakers communicating directly to the intelligence of the masses—on what ground exactly had that changed once the Scriptures were completed?
Distinction: What Clarity Is Not
In the first place, this doctrine does not teach that all parts of the Bible are equally plain. Peter says of Paul’s letters: “There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16). Turretin called these places Scripture’s “heights” and “depths,” and gives a helpful example of a singular doctrine that features both a clear surface and a mysterious depth: “For instance,” he says, “the mystery of the Trinity is plainly delivered as to the fact … which is necessary, but not as to the how …which we are not permitted to know (nor is that essential to salvation).”7
So it is about those most mysterious of prophetic books that we read the instructions, “But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end” (Dan. 12:4); “And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it” (Rev. 5:3). There are degrees, even in these places, of the Lord opening up to us just that amount that He deems necessary to know.
Nor, secondly, does this clarity imply that any part is known exhaustively by finite readers. The shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35), is plain as to meaning and yet, once one thinks about it, opens up to us the mysteries of the Hypostatic Union.
A passage we have already heard speaks to this as well:
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).
There is an infinity of mystery even in relation to those things plainly revealed.
In the third place, this doctrine does not force us to choose between an objective clarity and a subjective clarity. In other words, we speak of the Scriptures as being clear in themselves and of that clarity that is a result of the Holy Spirit’s illumination to believers.8 Taking both together avoids various difficulties. For one thing, sinners often do not see a truth because they will not see it: thus the truth is not obscure so much as that the sinner is obtuse, as when Jesus said, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word” (Jn. 8:43). The same phenomenon can occur with a true believer who is momentarily more gripped by sin than by the Word. So about Jesus’ upcoming death in Jerusalem, it says, “he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him” (Mk. 8:32). Beyond that, there is the difficulty of genuine believers not perceiving that which would be clear with further study. Hence the unity of the covenant of grace and of spiritual Israel and the church are increasingly clear as one studies the Bible as a unity. But these are not at all clear when one has only done their Bible-study in a piecemeal fashion.
In the fourth place, following from that third point, the intrinsic clarity of Scripture does not contradict the idea that there is a spiritual light in God’s word that the unregenerate will simply never grasp until or unless the Holy Spirit has done a saving work in their soul. Remember how Jesus replied to Peter’s confession: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Mat. 16:17). And Paul explains this further,
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned ” (1 Cor. 2:12-14).
For this reason, the work of the Spirit in making the Bible clear is compared by Paul to a veil being removed in 2 Corinthians 3:14-18; and he says, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:3-4).
In the fifth place, the clarity of Scripture does not render preaching and theology superfluous for the same reason that it does not eliminate the means of Bible study. Think of it this way: Windows were not invented because the sun does not really shine. They are placed where they are into walls so that the inner rooms may partake. And not all windows are equal. The activities of preaching and teaching are such windows, loftier and brighter than others. We might think of the Ethiopian eunuch, who knew his own dependence upon the means of the human teacher:
“So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’” (Acts 8:30-31).
Reconciliation: Clarity and Consistency
As we have already seen, the Scriptures are not a collection of magical incantations, mere pithy sayings, or any other kind of discrete units of data whose meaning lies entirely on the surface of each of these units. They must be interpreted, read in context, and seen to fit within wider circles of context, ultimately encompassing the whole book and all of reality besides. So the last thing we would say that clarity is not is this—it is not a so-called clarity of immediate self-contained totality.
Brakel wrote,
“Many texts no sooner become subject for consideration when more diligent study becomes necessary. The interrelatedness of many texts to other texts also cannot be immediately discerned—not because the text itself is neither clear, orderly, nor suitable, but due to the lack of light in the person studying.”9
This reconciliation of clarity and consistency is built into our understanding of canon and inspiration and inerrancy. Consider two passages.
“The sum of your word is truth” (Ps. 119:160).
“for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
How do the words “sum” and “truth” go together in that line of the Psalm? Furthermore, what is meant by the expression “whole counsel of God”?
That many true believers come to different conclusions is largely a result of different levels of maturity—and specifically intellectual maturity—as when Paul deals with the issue of things which the immature think pollutes: “not all possess this knowledge” (1 Cor. 8:7). It is fashionable in our egalitarian and oversensitive age to seek out other explanations for differences in opinion. There are indeed other reasons. But, like it or not, this is very often the most obvious. There just is a truth about every matter, and with maturity one begins to see patterns and hierarchies with clarity. The believer will “excel … in knowledge” (2 Cor. 8:7).
If we ask why some places are more difficult than others, there may be many reasons that God designed. The authors of the Synopsis of a Purer Theology mention four:
“sometimes to eliminate contempt and aversion from continually reading it; sometimes to break pride, and to stimulate everyone’s attentiveness; and finally, at other times so that we do not undertake reading and searching it except with a sense of awe, with sanctification of ourselves, and with prayer, as in the case of David (Ps 119).”10
The famous statement about the Scripture being simultaneously deep and shallow comes from Gregory the Great: “The Scriptures have, in public, nourishment for children, as they serve in secret to strike the loftiest minds with wonder; indeed they are like a full and deep river in which the lamb may walk and the elephant swim.”11
The consistency of Scripture is, in one sense, manifest in the consistency of the Church throughout the ages. Hodge wrote,
“If the Scriptures be a plain book, and the Spirit performs the function of a teacher to all the children of God, it follows inevitably that they must agree in all essential matters in their interpretation of the Bible. And from that fact it follows that for an individual Christian to dissent from the faith of the universal Church (i.e., the body of true believers), is tantamount to dissenting from the Scriptures themselves.”12
Application: Private Judgment
We briefly touched on the fact that the Roman Catholic case against private judgment is entirely based upon a straw man. The context there was the authority of Scripture. To speak of “private judgment” is not to speak of the individual “determining” the meaning of a passage. The word “judgment” was frequently used as an act of reason whereby one comes to perceive the ground for a truth. This perception is of something outside of the mind to which the mind conforms.
Hodge gives four reasons for the right of private judgment which follows from the clarity of Scripture.
“1. That the obligations to faith and obedience are personal. Every man is responsible for his religious faith and his moral conduct. He cannot transfer that responsibility to others; nor can others assume it in his stead. He must answer for himself; and if he must answer for himself, he must judge for himself. It will not avail him in the day of judgment to say that his parents or his Church taught him wrong. He should have listened to God, and obeyed Him rather than men. 2. The Scriptures are everywhere addressed to the people, and not to the officers of the Church either exclusively, or specially … They are everywhere assumed to be competent to understand what is written, and are everywhere required to believe and obey what thus came from the inspired messengers of Christ … 3. The Scriptures are not only addressed to the people, but the people were called upon to study them, and to teach them unto their children … 4. It need hardly be remarked that this right of private judgment is the great safeguard of civil and religious liberty.”13
Just as there is a link between biblical clarity and the sanctification of God’s people, so there is a link between maintaining its obscurity and the starving of the sheep. Turretin wrote about Rome’s position: “Having concealed the candle under a bushel, they reign in darkness more easily.”14
Many passages assume the connection between clarity and the various responsibilities that the believer has to Scripture. For instance, “Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Ps. 119:34). It is a prayer encouraged by the Spirit, which would hardly be fitting if God had no intention to answer it: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps. 119:18).
It is assumed in the several duties and callings which are common in the body of Christ. Though there is a special teaching office, there are also elements of more basic discernment and admonition belonging to all believers.
“I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Rom. 15:14).
“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God” (Heb. 5:12).
Then there is Paul’s admonition to the Galatians, that, “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). But how can the average believer be expected to discern such a thing if the Scriptures are basically unclear?
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1. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1976), 27.
2. Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 49.
3. Casey J. Chalk, The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity
(Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2023)
4. The word is from the Latin perspicuus, which means “transparent” or “evident, clear, manifest, perspicuous” (Logeion).
5. Synopsis of a Purer Theology, I:43.
6. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I:477.
7. Turretin, Institutes, I.2.17.4.
8. The authors of the Synopsis of a Purer Theology spoke of this breakdown under the more general division of being clear “by itself, or in relation to us” (I:43).
9. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:50.
10. Synopsis of a Purer Theology, I:45.
11. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, I.9 [from Turretin, Inst. I.2.17.12]
12. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I:184.
13. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I:184, 85, 86.
14. Turretin, Institutes, I.2.17.1.
