Approaching Scripture or a Warning Against Speculative Theology

When we approach Scripture we should come with questions. Why was this written? For whom? By whom? Etcetera. But we also need to recognise that Scripture does not answer all of our questions. For instance, what is the book of Jashar (Josh. 10:13; 2 Sam. 1:18)? What does Paul mean that we should wear head coverings because of the angels (1 Cor. 11:10)? What really is a cherubim (Ezek. 1:5-10) and how is it related to a seraphim (Isa 6:2)? The answer to most of those questions are: we really don’t know and if someone claims definitively to know the answers you should be highly skeptical!

John Calvin in his Institutes on the Christian Religion, recounts this story from Augustine. In it, a wayward man confronts a pious one, asking him “what was God doing before he created the world?” The pious man responds (we assume tongue in cheek) “creating hell; for the curious!”

This is picked up by Calvin as a proper warning

Let this admonition, no less grave than severe, restrain the wantonness that tickles many and even drives them to wicked and hurtful speculations. In short, let us remember that that invisible God, whose wisdom, power, and righteousness are incomprehensible, sets before us Moses' history as a mirror in which his living likeness glows. (1.14.1)

And later on in section 5 he further expands his warning from creation to spiritual things.

Let us not indulge in curiosity or in the investigation of unprofitable things. And because the Lord willed to instruct us, not in fruitless questions, but in sound godliness, in the fear of his name, in true trust, and in the duties of holiness, let us be satisfied with this knowledge. For this reason, if we would be duly wise, we must leave those empty speculations which idle men have taught apart from God's Word concerning the nature, orders, and number of angels. I know that many persons more greedily seize upon and take more delight in them than in such things as have been put to daily use. (1.14.5)

Calvin is drawing from Deut. 29 and 30. First God reminds his people in 29:29 that the secret things belong to God alone. If God has not revealed it, then it's not for us to know. In chapter 30 he goes on to remind his people that he has revealed to them what is needed: these commandments (the Law or the Scriptures as they have them). It’s not far away from them, inaccessibly hidden in heaven (30:12) nor is it far away from them in a foreign land (30:13). It is near to them. They have it and they can understand it.

This reminder that they both have God’s revealed word, that they can understand it, that they should not depart from it, and should refrain from speculating outside of it, builds the foundation for the later prophets.

So what does all this mean then? It means that our prayer should be like the Psalmist in Psalm 119:34 “Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.”

Charles Bridges commenting on this verse:

If then knowledge is valuable according to its usefulness, one ray of this practical knowledge — the result of prayer for heavenly teaching—is more to be prized than the highest attainments of speculative religion —flowing from mere human instruction.

When we think of the Protestant principal of Scripture Alone, or Scripture as our highest authority, we can see how valuable this is. When someone teaches things that are not in Scripture we should simply point out, the secret things belong to the Lord. Speculative theology has no place in Biblical Christianity. This is what separates us from Rome and Eastern Orthodox.

For example, the immaculate conception of Mary? Not in the Bible. It is speculative theology. Mary’s bodily assumption, again speculative. The centrality of the church in Rome? Conjecture. Hierarchy of angels, again speculative.

The Word of God is full, final, and complete, as Paul says it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Let us therefore turn to God's Word, praying, “Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.”