Evangelicals Bring to Their Reading of The Bible a Presupposition

Evangelicals hold to a fundamental, cardinal error that does not allow them to read Scripture properly or to allow it to speak its message in the plain sense. Evangelicals hold a Neo-Platonic view of matter; they subconciously believe it is “tainted”, (they do not recognise that they bring to the Bible their cultural influences, a mind steeped in the Greek critical intellect and patterns of thinking). Because evangelicals consider matter tainted, they refuse to believe God uses matter in his saving actions: they can’t. They cannot believe in SACRAMENTALITY.

Thus the Bible is bound in shackles. It has been decided in advance what it is not allowed to say. Evangelicals fail to grasp, are not really comfortable with, the fact that God Almighty deigned to comes down from the Glory of heaven and dwell in a humble weak body of dust (Gen. 2:7). The full implications of bodily-incarnational theology has not impacted them. Evangelicals bring a presupposition to the Bible, that there is only one possible channel through which God interacts with them: that of fiducial faith. And because they hold this error (they anchor themselves to it) they have to interpret scripture in a predetermined way. Because they believe matter is tainted they just ‘know’ God does not imbue matter with his power. Accordingly, the Scriptures they profess to hold so reverently are endlessly twisted and misread because they are so sure of their fundamental stand. When scripture teaches in plain words: Acts 22:16 ‘Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins’ they feel they have to explain why scripture does not teach baptism washes away your sins. Their explanations are strained and sound unlikely to everyone who hears them. The truth is, just as God the Son was incarnate in a humble human body, God’s power is really substantially present in the baptismal waters. Likewise, they cannot believe the God who inhabits human flesh can really be in the bread and wine of the Communion; they have to say it is metaphorical.

Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. He taught that He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:55ff "For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink…he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. It is relegated to metaphor. Bibles like the evangelical ESV though based on the RSV change the word ‘eat’ to ‘feeds on’. Yet trogo (G5176) means to gnaw, to munch, to chew on: very strong. Feeds on of course lends itself to anything.

The Scripture never stands a chance, only fiducial faith obtains the things of God. The denials of the plain sense of the text are conditioned by the presupposition. They are so certain God is not a God who imbues matter with his grace, they do not care what a second-century writer who knew the Apostles made even clearer than the Bible. He had to have been wrong. There were no evangelicals in the post-apostolic church so clearly the truth must have been lost. Sacraments? humbug! Justin Martyr, a heretic, Polycarp a muddled man whose writings were full errors. Never mind Martin Luther will be along in 1400 years and he won’t be right either, another sacramentalist. But we’ll get to true Bible teaching eventually, yep we’ll get to the evangelical movement. The evangelical reads that Jesus used mud and spittle to heal the blind,(John 9:6 )but he has to deny that God’s power was really in that humble dirt. It becomes a prop. And what is he to make of 2 Kings 13:20-21. And when the man touched the BONES of Elisha he revived and stood up on his feet.That just won’t do. An explanation has to be given why God’s miraculous divine power did not inhabit that humble rotting bone. Direct from heaven, no “tainted” matter did the Lord use. The evangelical reads in Acts 19:12 how face clothes that touch Paul were used to heal the sick. He cannot accept that God’s eternal power really imbued matter and yet this is the mode of operation our Lord really deals with us.

The evangelical cannot even accept that pictures and icons of God are allowable. Matter is too low. Yet God the Son took on humble flesh, finite form, he graced our world in person. The evangelical cares little that the bi-millennial Christian church has always held a sacramental theology. That the Creeds, the Councils, the writings of the Christian sages, martyrs, saints down the ages understood God acts this way. Many of the Reformers understood it too. But the evangelical only cares 'what the Bible says' as interpretated by er, evangelicals...

Forget the witness of history the evangelical sings a new song: fiducial faith, God’s actions are ‘clean’, he doesn’t touch matter. The truth is matter is good and God uses it in our edification and our salvation. This is a fundamental truth and to understand this is the key to reading the bible honestly. Understand this and it will no longer be necessary to ignore or explain away "difficult" bible verses. In my evangelical years I jokingly called these 'the verses in grey': the ones we swept under the carpet.