If the Bible tells us not to lean upon our own understanding, are preachers, and Bible professors, leaning upon the theirs’?

In our world, there are lots of people who consider themselves the only appropriate people to talk about the Bible, because they have studied at the university of theology and/or philosophy. The clergy with their priests and pastors in a variety of denominations all try to convince those coming into their church, that their church is the only true one.

Though we can find lots of denominations in Christendom, of which there are many where the clergy are not exactly behaving like Christ Jesus instructed. In Why there are so many denominations in Christendom we tried to give a short answer to a question many times posed. What is striking about many denominations in Christianity (or better: in Christendom) is that often not much attention is paid to the biblical texts. It is as if the Bible is only a small faits divers within religion.

The absence or minimisation of biblical content means that by paying more attention to human doctrines, more conflicts have also arisen, leading to splits in groups and thus to the emergence of multiple denominations.

So the question may be asked, why is it that the clergy of these denominations do not resort to the Book of Books, which can indeed give them the best information and teachings?

At the question:

If the Bible tells us not to lean upon our own understanding, are preachers, and Bible professors, leaning upon the theirs’?

We think that is the whole problem in Christendom, people leaning upon their own understanding, following more the philosophical and theoretical theologian writings of human beings instead of going by what is written black on white in the Holy Scriptures.

D. Paul Walker, An Elder with many years in the faith, writes

Many reject the teaching of the Bible based on their own faulty belief such as that something is impossible when the Bible says there is nothing impossible for God.

According to Theodore Tsistinas

the understanding of the bible is plain to those who read it with the purpose of not challenging it. That’s why the language has been changed from time to time because people wanted their own opinion to be expressed. The entire bible is the history of the people of God from the Jews to the Christians. There is one god spoken of in the bible. Its people and their personal interpretation that has challenge the understanding spoken very clearly in scripture. But then stupid is what stupid does and the mass of humanity would rather listen to the opinions of men rather that the wisdom of God.

Michael Ballai writes

There’s a certain amount of, hopefully, Biblical understanding that a student of the Bible can readily bring to a given text of scripture or how the Bible explains an appropriate worldview. I know stuff after more than three decades that are bedrock to the Bible and I have no intention of putting my personal two cents in on what God says.I revisit passages regularly and seek to consider them afresh each time because I know there is more in there than I have seen previously. People who are lazy simply deprive themselves of the depth of treasure.God is perfectly ok with how an individual preacher chooses to explain something in their own style as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the message.A preacher is called to cut it straight. It lines up with God’s understanding. The reason we do it is to tell it according to the way God sees it. And that is how God wants to sanctify us in getting us to line up our understanding with Him.

Scott Bissell sees one of the difficulties in what we think is a major issue in many churches, namely when they quote half a verse, or as we would add, take just part of a verse and use it out of context. In case people would check more what is taught at their church with was is written in the Bible, more people would grow closer to a unity of Bible-reading people.We may not forget that the attitude to the Bible is of paramount importance.Robert Hoge reacts to this by writing

Scripture is subject to endless interpretation, some of which is purely tendentious. I recently got a comment from someone who was gushing over the Bible as the greatest collection of symbolism in the world, or something to that effect. My own principle when reading and teaching the Bible comes out of a book I read long ago but no longer own:“When the literal meaning makes sense, seek no other meaning.”Not only does this save a lot of effort, it also ensures that we don’t add or take away anything. Rev. 22:18–19 says,“18 I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book,19 and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”For all I’m concerned, these last words of the Bible apply to the whole of the Bible, not just to its last book, Revelation.

That warning may make it very difficult to teachers of the Word of God, preachers and/or pastors, having them to be very careful what they say and how they say it. They always should control if their teaching is in accordance with the teaching of the Bible.For those who read the Scriptures, there is the danger that they got into the trap of their church to which they belong and that they cannot do away of their own indoctrinations or doctrines of their own church. They are so used to think in the same way as their church teaches that it has become very difficult to read the words like they are written in the Bible. For example when there is written in the bible about Jesus “the son of God“, many read “god the son“, which is something totally different from what there is written and from what God said on several occasions when He declared Jesus to be His only begotten beloved son.According Michael Abernathy

most people approach the Scripture with a certain bias. Before they even open their Bible, they have creeds and denominational positions that they force upon a text. On the other hand, most of the preachers I know spend a great deal of time searching the Scripture and praying for God’s enlightenment. Yes, they use their minds to help them understand what God has written. But anyone who says they don’t do that is either lying or deluded.

Matthew Heady likes to extend the above question and asks

Does not everyone, including the questioner “lean” on others? Why restrict the question to just preachers and professors?What the biblical teaching refers to is not facts and conclusions which are known to or drawn from the minds of humans. The biblical teaching refers to how a person is actually informed about the Triune God of the Bible.

Here in his answer already gives a big sign of how he himself fell for the human doctrinal teaching, because in the Bible there is no such information on a Trinity, though there is a clear teaching we may have no other gods than the Divine Creator God, Who is a Singular eternal (= having no birth + no death) all-knowing Spirit Being Who is the Almighty God above all gods.Heady continues

There is nothing a sinful human being with a corrupt (and limited) understanding and reason of all things may do. There is not any thought, word, or action, that will allow a person to recognize the Triune God, they may only realize that a god is, but not the Triune God.

People when willing to give their full attention to the Words of the Bible, shall come to see clear and understand that there is no such thing to worship as a three-headed god. There may be many gods in the world but people should only keep to that Only One True God God of gods of the Bible, Jehovah, Who is the God of Israel.

It is this knowledge of God, revealed in His Word, the Holy Scriptures, that is what a person must “lean” on. Not the thought and practices of humans. They will get us nowhere. Our minds come into play after we are gifted by faith in Christ and are then able to properly understand and explain to others Biblical teaching and practices.

writes Matthew Heady.

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Continues with: Should church members question preachers about the doctrine that is not in the Holy Bible?

Preceding

Confrontation by people telling lies to force others to avoid the targetted groups

Daring to speak in multicultural environment

Many opportunities given by God

Christian denominations as pots in the desert

Having to learn and benefit from other Christian denominations

Preaching as Public Speaking

Maybe it is About Me

Hitler and Christianity: Some Trends in Interpretation

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Additional reading

1. A world with or without religion
2. Science, belief, denial and visibility 2
3. People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations
4. Being Religious and Spiritual 7 Transcendence to become one
5. Approachers of ideas around gods, philosophers and theologians
6. Digging in words, theories and artefacts
7. Catholicism, Anabaptism and Crisis of Christianity
8. Protestant denominations of the Low Countries and Abraham Kuyper
9. Counterfeit Gospels
10. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:26
11. Religious people and painful absence of spring of living water
12. Denominationalism exists because?
13. Why the church keeps losing it’s grounds.
14. Why there are so many denominations in Christendom
15. Tri-union gods and Pagan, Christian, Muslim and Jewish views on the Creator God
16. Reading to grow and to become wise concerning the most important thing in life 1 Times of reading
17. Literalist and non-literalist views
18. From Bibles and other religious writings and those who witness for Jehovah
19. Exceptionalism and Restricting Laws
20. 2013 Lifestyle, religiously and spiritualy
21. Pastoral discipline and dissent from papal teaching
22. Not true or True Catholicism and True Islam
23. Good or bad preacher
24. Many churches
25. Religion and believers #7 Independent and organised form of existence of a religion
26. Looking for a biblically sound church
27. In all circumstances preaching Christ
28. You Are The Truth
29. The Most Appropriate teacher and Scoffers in our contemporary age
30. From those preaching the Gospel and Baptism in Jesus name
31. A Book to trust #1 Background book for debate
32. Challenging claim 1 Whose word
33. Divine revelation mediated by Moshe and other selected people
34. Vital importance of reading and following the Kitvei Hakodesh
35. Reading to grow and to become wise concerning the most important thing in life 1 Times of reading
36. One of the most important Truths
37. Bible Inspired Word of God
38. Everything from the Bible is useful for humans
39. Importance to read the Bible regularly and gain understanding
40. Bible exceptional Book of books where nothing can be taken away or added
41. Bible in the first place #1/3
42. Where to learn the truth
43. Lovers of God, seekers and lovers of truth
44. Engaging the culture without losing the gospel
45. By the closing down of the Association for Biblestudy
46. Challenging claim 4 Inspired by God 3 Self-consistent Word of God
47. Different wineskins
48. Manifests for believers #5 Christian Union
49. The Bible: is it contradictory?
50. Those willing to tarnish
51. Follower of Jesus part of a cult or a Christian
52. Those who call the Christadelphians a cult
53. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
54. Jeshuaists, Carrying the name of Christ
55. About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated
56. When there is secrecy involved

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Related

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3. What Do We Mean by the Word Christian?
4. Variations of Christianity
5. Religious Population Is Growing
6. The Problem with Christianity
7. One Body
8. TRUTH – I believe that God’s greatest disappointment in the Christian Church is our lack of solid unity
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10. Which Church Would Jesus Choose?
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22. Denominations Part 2
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24. Denominations part 4
25. Denomination’s 5..Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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27. Are Different Denominations Okay?
28. Do Denominations Divide Us?
29. Are denominational differences a blot on the church?
30. Does Denominationalism Blind You to the Truth?
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32. Putting Denominational Disagreements in Perspective for the World and the Church
33. Denominational Dialogue
34. Denominations Losing Internal Influence
35. Bethel, the BGC, and the Decline of Denominational Financial Support for Christian Higher Education
36. We’re All Heretics Now
37. Roger Olson on Denominations and Christian Unity
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39. Is religious faith madness?
40. Declining Denominational Support for Evangelical Colleges?
41. Charlottesville and storms
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43. By What Authority? – A Non-Denominational Response
44. Rethinking Scripture
45. Researching outside of the Bible – is it safe
46. Please don’t call me a Christian
47. There is no other identity needed, Only Christ.
48. Why My Family Is Changing Churches (and Denominations)
49. Are Pastors Lying to You?
50. There are many Trinities!
51. Christianity vs. Catholicism
52. Baptists, Catholics, and the Protestants
53. Are you a “hypenated-Christian”?
54. Embrace diversity by embracing tribalism. It’s okay to be different
55. Being Religious Is Not The Way
56. Deceived
57. Can Christians now remain in the Methodist Church?
58. Why are there so many splits in the Presbyterian Church? Here’s an Explanation
59. Self Deception Part III – Wolves Among Us
60. On the Intersection of Differences and Unity in the Body of Christ
61. Throwing Away The Wrong Thing
62. Christianize Christianity (6)
63. Isolation of the Church
64. My church History (Part 2)
65. Is There Life After Leaving Church?
66. If I Were Starting A Denomination From Scratch
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69. The Holy Struggle
70. Brand Ambassador or Christ’s Ambassador?
71. Can I attend an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship instead of a church while at college?
72. What Does It Mean To Be Non-Denominational?
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80. How Many Gods?
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82. Unity (Ephesians 4:1-10)
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84. Warning! Get Out of Her – My People!
85. The American Gospel