BEING BIBLICAL
Dr. Jeff Kephart
Director, East Central Region
A remarkable distinctive of our MCUSA family is our twin commitment to “Biblical integrity” and “missional passion.” While I’d love to discuss both, allow me to use this article to unpack my understanding of Biblical integrity.
To start, being “Biblical” involves taking 2 Timothy 3:16-17 seriously: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Our source of truth is the written Word of God, interpreted through the work of the Holy Spirit: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). We as an MCUSA family stand firmly upon Scriptural truth — not cultural trends, not intellectual constructs, not well meaning specific teachers, nor any alternative truth source.
Therefore, when the Bible clearly teaches specific truth about critical doctrinal issues, we consider these to be dividing lines between right and wrong, between being inside or outside our denominational family. These are the issues to which Jesus’ statement in Matthew 12:30 applies: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
Our stance on these primary doctrinal issues is delineated in our Articles of Faith and Practice, which articulate our non-negotiable positions on Biblical truth. Indeed, every MCUSA pastor must affirm our Articles of Faith and Practice each year to remain credentialed with our denominational family.
Importantly, though, being Biblical also includes the fact that not all Biblically revealed truth is considered to be primary. The reality is that the Bible does not speak with absolute clarity to every issue it addresses, with the result that truly Biblical thinkers refer to these issues as “secondary doctrinal issues.” These are the ones in which Biblically committed Christians who otherwise agree on the primary doctrinal issues come to different convictions as to exactly what Scripture teaches. In such matters, rather than “us and them,” the better posture is “us with us, wrestling together as we interpret Scripture.” In these situations, Jesus’ words in Mark 9:40 are appropriate: “Anyone who is not against us is for us.”
That such issues exist — ones the Bible does not pin down specifically enough to provide absolute “truth dot” certainty among otherwise Biblically committed Christians — should not be surprising. After all, God is the “supercomputer mind” of the universe, and we human beings are comparatively “dime store four function calculators.” We would expect that God would make sure all His followers could discern the essential truths we must embrace. However, when the infinite God reveals Himself to limited human beings, there would be areas of Biblical revelation that don’t compute easily for us and might result in an “error” message on our little calculator screens.
In those situations, it would be foolish for us to claim God is in error because His revelation doesn’t process neatly into an easy unarguable conclusion for us. It would also be arrogant for us to presume to oversimplify the full scope of Biblical revelation to artificially create a specific “truth dot” for the sake of our desire for Biblical certainty.
To illustrate, consider Romans 9 and Romans 10. If Romans 9 is taken alone, it would be relatively easy to suggest that God would be best described by a Calvinist theological system. However, it would be similarly easy to argue from Romans 10 alone that God in fact “leans Arminian.” Given both those chapters exist as part of Biblical revelation in the same contextual flow, Biblical integrity would suggest that if God wants to reveal Himself in both ways, He is allowed to do so without apology. Further, we should not discount one chapter or the other in an effort to get Scriptural revelation to fit in a particular locked-down doctrinal formulation. Instead, we should allow the Holy Spirit to help us live with the inherent friction the Biblical record reveals.
God has often led our MCUSA family to honor its commitment to Biblical integrity by expressing our positions on these secondary issues with “fenceposts” rather than “truth dots.” For instance, in addressing the spiritual gift of tongues as a prayer language, rather than pin down a narrow position, we have chosen to recognize a Biblical space between the fenceposts of cessationism and pentacostalism. In addressing the assurance of the believer, we have delineated a Biblically informed space between a purely Calvinist and purely Arminian systematic theological position. When addressing sanctification, rather than choosing to be positional or progressive or crisis/entire in our doctrinal formulation, we have instead affirmed that positional and progressive and crisis elements are all part of the Biblical teaching on sanctification, even when those elements don’t fit easily together in a neat theological system.
Some might suggest that the MCUSA is Biblically “wishy-washy” by using fenceposts rather than truth dot position statements in these secondary areas. In response, I’d argue that Biblical integrity demands we allow the whole of Scripture to resonate rather than to risk oversimplifying the full counsel of Biblical material and artificially defining a specific narrow position in the name of seeking certainty and eliminating tension.
In conclusion, being Biblical requires that we stand uncompromisingly on the Biblically revealed “truth dots” of primary doctrine. Being Biblical also includes accepting the inherent friction within the full counsel of Biblical teaching in addressing secondary matters. In fact, given God’s infinite nature processed through limited human reasoning, we should expect such friction at times. We embrace the “iron sharpens iron” reality that comes with such “fencepost” positions, trusting the Holy Spirit to lead and protect our MCUSA family as we trust one another’s shared commitment to hold fast to essential Scriptural truth. Further, we resist the temptation to drift into an “us versus them” posture on secondary matters. Instead, we respect and honor each other in “us wrestling together with us” to fully express Biblical integrity.
