Across the American church, pastors and lay people alike seem to assume that Scripture is just too complicated for someone without a seminary degree.<\/p>\n\n\n
Or at the very least, a devotional or curriculum written by someone with the degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Sure, you can read it – but you’re just going to be lost and confused.<\/p>\n\n\n
Still, even though we don’t really seem to believe it in practice, there is a term to describe the Bible’s availability to all, degree or not: “Perspicuity”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The “Doctrine of the Perspicuity of the Scriptures” is the belief that, although there are some things in the Bible that are <\/i><\/b>tough to comprehend or interpret properly even with deep study, the basic messages of the Bible are clear to all, especially anything directly pertaining to salvation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The doctrine of perspicuity is foundational for my dissertation. I’m a believer. You can gain meaningful, life-changing direction from the pages of Scripture.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In fact, the whole project will be pretty useless if it turns out that the ordinary guy or gal in the average church CAN’T understand the Bible without expert guidance and commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n
I anticipate facing this hurdle: convincing people that they don’t have to lean on the “experts” to hear God speak to them through Scripture.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(In fact, turning to the experts as your default position is counter-productive to your spiritual health.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Across the American church, pastors and lay people alike seem to assume that Scripture is just too complicated for someone without a seminary degree. Or at the very least, a devotional or curriculum written by someone with the degree.\u00a0 Sure, you can read it – but you’re just going to be lost and confused. Still, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9149,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148\/revisions\/9149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}