By Reinder Bruinsma

How many Christian denominations are there in the world? Nobody knows exactly, but the number runs into the thousands. All have their peculiar beliefs and practices. How is this diversity to be explained, considering that they all take the Bible as their point of departure? And, looking at world-wide Adventism we cannot deny that there are differ- ent streams and different emphases. How can that be? Do we not all claim to follow the Bible?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is currently struggling with the issue of women’s ordination. Those who feel that women pastors ought to be ordained base their view on the Bible. Likewise, those who oppose the ordination of female pastors are sure that the Bible supports their opinion.

Adventists clearly differ in the way they read the Bible. Some advocate a plain reading of Scripture and maintain that wherever possible the wording of the Bible must be taken literally. Many others reject that approach and believe that we must look for underlying principles as we read the Bible and look behind the historical and cultural back- ground to find the application for the twenty-first century.

The Paradox of God’s Word

The Christian faith confronts us with a number of paradoxes. A paradox is a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense, and yet is, somehow, true. The doctrine of the Trinity is a prime example. God is one and yet God is three. The doctrine of Christ presents us with another paradox: Christ is fully divine and at the same time fully human.

Similarly, the church is not only a community of saints, but also a school of sinners. In all these cases it is not one or the other. Two elements, though seemingly contradictory, must be held together, even though they seem to exclude each other. If one aspect is overemphasized or toned down, the result is imbalance or even heresy!

We do not only meet a paradox when we contemplate the Living Word—the person of Christ—but also when we come to the Written Word. The Bible is God’s Word, but at the same time it is also a human product, as two key texts tell us: “All Scripture is God-breathed!” (2 Tim. 3:16, NIV).

“Prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21, NIV).

If we only pay attention to the divine aspect of the Bible, we end up with a rigid concept of inspiration that creates all kinds of difficulties. On the other hand, if the human element is given too much emphasis at the expense of the divine origin, God’s Word loses it absolute authority.

Theologians have long debated the doctrine of inspiration. Two main theories stand out. Plenary or verbal inspiration is the view that every word in the Bible (in the original languages) was dictated by God to the Bible writers through His Spirit. Usually, those who defend this theory say that the Scriptures are inerrant (i.e., without any mistake or inconsistency).

This is not the official Seventh-day Adventist position. Adventists support the view of thought inspiration: God gave the thoughts to human authors, who then expressed these in their own words. Those Adventists who nonetheless adhere to the view of verbal inspiration would do well to remember that Ellen G. White disagreed with this and defended thought inspiration:

“The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen. Look at the different writers.

“It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts. But the words receive the impress of the individual mind.” (1 Selected Messages, p. 21)

So, Where Do We Go?

The main problem with the plain reading of the Bible is that it tends to be very selective in what is taken literally or not. I suggest that we avoid getting caught up in a fruitless debate about terminology, and that we leave the term plain reading aside. When we wonder which approach to the reading of the Bible is correct, we must always start with the basic premise that in the Bible we may hear the voice of God. The Bible is more than a collection of devotional messages from ancient times that may encourage us and uplift us. In the Bible God reveals truth about Himself and His dealings with the world. Every other piece of writing is to be evaluated in the light of His Word.

Yet, paradoxically enough, we must be just as serious about the manner in which God allowed His Word to come to us. He used human beings as the vehicles for His revelation, who each used their own vocabulary and style. They used images and metaphors they were familiar with, and wrote against the background of their time and culture. They wrote in a world in which customs were different from what they are today—a world in which slavery was common and women were, as a rule, subservient to men. And so, the perfect divine Word comes to us through imperfect human words, in the kind of language human beings can understand. Some forty different authors, with wide-ranging linguistic skills, put the message God inspired them with into Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And through the centuries, faithful servants of God have done their utmost to faithfully translate the Bible from the original languages into English, French, German, and thousands of other languages.

Bible Reading Needs the Spirit

Just as “God’s penmen” were dependent on the Holy Spirit when they wrote sections of the Bible, we need the same Spirit when we read their words. The Spirit must guide us, so that we can discover the underlying principles of what we read and gain the insights to apply these principles in our twenty-first century lives.

But what if serious readers, who ask for the guidance of the Spirit, come to different interpretations? Well, let us remember that we are all at different points in our spiritual journeys. And let us never forget that as long as we are in this world “we see only a reflection as in a mirror” (1 Cor. 13:12, NIV). But let us also be mindful of the fact that we have the privilege of belonging to a community of believers, in which we can learn from one another.

We can only prosper spiritually in this community if we are tolerant with one another and accept that others may not interpret every text in the same way as we do, and if we are prepared to adjust our thinking from time to time as we “grow in faith and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18, NIV).

–Reinder Bruinsma is a theologian, writer, and former church administrator. He writes from the Netherlands. Email him at: [email protected]