Perspicuity of Scripture:
The Emergent Approach

John MacArthur

This article is adapted from the Fall 2006 issue of The Master's Seminary Journal .

The most recent battle being waged in the evangelical church is one related to the perspicuity of Scripture. Within the larger context of the Emerging Church Movement is the Emergent Church, whose leading spokesman is Brian D. McLaren. Because of his prominence as a leader of both the Emergent Church and the Emerging Church Movement, what he says about the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture needs to be scrutinized. McLaren undermines the clarity of Scripture by questioning whether biblical doctrine can be held with certainty. He questions the clarity of Scripture by needlessly introducing complexity into biblicalinterpretation. He further dismisses scriptural clarity by questioning the possibility of deriving propositional truth from the Bible. Also, his refusal to abide by the Bible’s emphasis on the exclusive nature of the Christian gospel raises questions about the Bible’s clarity. McLaren’s pointed criticism of conservative evangelicals who insist on the clarity of Scripture is another indication of his disdain for the perspicuity of Scripture. McLaren’s position on the perspicuity of Scripture is clearly at odds with what the Bible itself says about its own clarity.

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From the very beginning, the battle between good and evil has been a battle for the truth. The serpent, in the Garden of Eden, began his temptation by questioning the truthfulness of God’s previous instruction: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’? … You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:1, 4-5). And this has been his tactic ever since—casting doubt on the straightforward revelation of God.

Throughout the centuries, that ages-old war on truth has been repeatedly fought, even within the church. The biblical writer Jude, for instance, faced such a situation when he wrote his epistle. Though he had wanted to write about the wonders of the common salvation that he shared with his readers, he was compelled instead to urge his readers to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3). False teachers, like spiritual terrorists, had secretly crept into the church (v. 4). The lies they were spreading, like doctrinal hand grenades, were spiritually devastating. They were enemies of the truth, and Jude was compelled to confront and expose them.

Over the past few decades, the church in the United States has fought the same battle on several fronts. In the sixties and seventies, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy came under direct attack. The Bible, it was said, was full of errors, and thus could not be trusted as historically or scientifically accurate. In the eighties and nineties, the sufficiency of Scripture was targeted. The charismatic movement (with its need for additional revelation from God) and Christian psychology (with its emphasis on neo-Freudian counseling techniques) attempted to undermine the fact that God “has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him” as revealed in Scripture (2 Pet 1:3).

As the millennium drew to a close, the attack on God’s revealed truth came in a new way. This time the relevance of Scripture was the point of attack. Rather than being directly maligned, church leaders for whom biblical teaching was simply not a major priority quietly discarded the Bible. “The Seeker Movement” to some degree advocated limiting the presentation of divine truth to what unbelievers are willing to tolerate.

A new movement is now arising in evangelical circles. Apparently, the main object of attack will be the perspicuity of Scripture. Influenced by postmodern notions about language, meaning, subjectivity, and truth, many younger evangelicals are questioning whether the Word of God is clear enough to justify certainty or dogmatism on points of doctrine. Ironically, this new movement to a certain extent ignores all the previous debates. Instead, its proponents are more interested in dialogue and conversation. As a result, they scorn and rebuff propositional truth (which tends to end dialogue rather than cultivate it) as an outmoded vestige of twentieth-century modernism.

The movement is very diverse and still developing, but it is generally called “the Emerging Church.” 

Emerging, Emergent, and Brian D. McLaren

The Emerging Church Movement (hereafter, ECM) is made up of an admittedly broad and variegated collection of pastors and church leaders, with a common concern for Christian mission to a postmodern generation.

At the heart of the “movement”—or as some of its leaders prefer to call it, the“conversation”—lies the conviction that changes in the culture signal that a new churchis “emerging.” Christian leaders must therefore adapt to this emerging church. Those whofail to do so are blind to the cultural accretions that hide the gospel behind forms ofthought and modes of expression that no longer communicate with the new generation, the emerging generation. (1)

Mark Driscoll, an ECM pastor, defines the movement this way:

The emerging church is a growing, loosely connected movement of primarily youngpastors who are glad to see the end of modernity and are seeking to function asmissionaries who bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to emerging and postmodern cultures. The emerging church welcomes the tension of holding in one closed hand the unchangingtruth of evangelical Christian theology (Jude 3) and holding in one open hand the many cultural ways of showing and speaking Christian truth as a missionary to America (1 Cor. 9:19–23). Since the movement, if it can be called that, is young and is still defining its theological center, I do not want to portray the movement as ideologically unifiedbecause I myself swim in the theologically conservative stream of the emerging church. (2)

In calling himself a theological conservative, however, Driscoll seems to be in the minority among ECM leaders. The neo-liberal thrust embraced by the majority of those in ECM is spearheaded by Emergent, an organization begun in 2001 whose deliberate desire is to impact the entire movement.

By 2001, we had formed an organization around our friendship, known as Emergent, asa means of inviting more people into the conversation. Along with us, the “emergingchurch” movement has been growing, and we in Emergent Village endeavor to fund thetheological imaginations and spiritual lives of all who consider themselves a part of thisbroader movement. (3)

Because of the influence of Emergent, many see the term as synonymous with “emerging,” referring to the movement as a whole as the Emergent Church Movement. Those who are more conservative, however, differentiate between the terms. As Driscoll writes,

I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church Movement in its early days andspent a few years traveling the country to speak to emerging leaders in an effort to helpbuild a missional movement in the United States. The wonderful upside of the emergingchurch is that it elevates mission in American culture to a high priority, which is a needso urgent that its importance can hardly be overstated.

I had to distance myself, however, from one of many streams in the emergingchurch because of theological differences. Since the late 1990s, this stream has becomeknown as Emergent. The emergent church is part of the Emerging Church Movement butdoes not embrace the dominant ideology of the movement. Rather the emergent churchis the latest version of liberalism. The only differences is that the old liberalismaccommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernity. (4)

It is this particular segment of ECM, the Emergent Church, that has most blatantly attacked the clarity and authority of the Scripture. And of all the voices that make up Emergent, the most prominent belongs to Brian D. McLaren. For this reason, this article will focus primarily on him and his teachings.

McLaren has been called the emerging church’s “most influential thinker,” (5) as well as “the de facto spiritual leader for the emerging church.” (6) He currently serves as the chair of the board of directors for Emergent Village, and is a frequent guest on television programs and radio shows. In February 2005, he was listed as “One of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time Magazine. (7) His books include A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, and most-recently The Secret Message of Jesus. Because of his prominent role within both Emergent, and the larger ECM, it is appropriate to critique his views—recognizing that in many ways they represent the philosophical underpinnings of the whole.

Brian McLaren and the Clarity of Scripture

The doctrine of the clarity (or perspicuity) of Scripture (i.e., that the central message of the Bible is clear and understandable, and that the Bible itself can be properly interpreted in a normal, literal sense) has been a cornerstone of evangelical belief ever since the Reformation. The dominant Roman Catholic idea had been that the Bible was obscure and difficult to understand. But the Reformers disagreed, arguing instead that anyone who could read could understand biblical teaching. Rather than limiting biblical interpretation to the clergy or the Magisterium, the Reformers encouraged lay Christians to study and interpret God’s Word on their own. This was premised on the Reformed belief that the Bible itself was inherently clear and that God had the ability to communicate His message to men in an understandable fashion. As Luther explained to Erasmus:

But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in theScriptures, but from [our] own blindness or want [i.e., lack] of understanding, who donot go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of truth…. Let, therefore, wretched mencease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their ownheart to the all-clear scriptures of God…. If you speak of the internal clearness, no mansees one iota in the Scriptures but he that hath the Spirit of God…. If you speak of theexternal clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that arein the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimedto the whole world. (8)

Though such an understanding, as Luther openly admits, did not demand complete agreement among Protestants on every secondary doctrine, it did establish an important principle: That the Word of God was revealed in an understandable way, that its central message is clear, and that (because it is clear) all men are fully accountable to its message.

In contrast to this, the teachings of Brian McLaren (and others of his Emergent persuasion) directly assault the doctrine of biblical clarity. Instead of promoting a settled confidence in the fact that the Bible can be understood, McLaren does just the opposite. And he does so in at least five important ways.

1. McLaren and Doctrinal Uncertainty

McLaren undermines the clarity of Scripture by denying that biblical doctrine can be held with any degree of certainty. Certainty, of course, comes from clarity. Where there is no clarity, there is no certainty. And vice versa.

For the Reformers, it was because the Bible was clear that they were certain about its central message. But not so for McLaren, who says: “Certainty is overrated…. History teaches us that a lot of people thought they were certain and we found out they weren’t.”9 And in another place,

When we talk about the word ‘faith’ and the word ‘certainty,’ we’ve got a whole lot ofproblems there. What do we mean by ‘certainty’? . . . Certainty can be dangerous. Whatwe need is a proper confidence that’s always seeking the truth and that’s seeking to live in the way God wants us to live, but that also has the proper degree of self-critical andself-questioning passion. (10)

In A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren even champions ambiguity. He writes,

A warning: as in most of my other books, there are places here where I have gone out ofmy way to be provocative, mischievous, and unclear, reflecting my belief that clarity issometimes overrated, and that shock, obscurity, playfulness, and intrigue (carefullyarticulated) often stimulate more thought than clarity. (11)

So it is no surprise when he readily admits that he is not even sure if what he is espousing is correct.

If I seem to show too little respect for your opinions or thought, be assured I have equaldoubts about my own, and I don’t mind if you think I’m wrong. I’m sure I am wrongabout many things, although I’m not sure exactly which things I’m wrong about. I’meven sure I’m wrong about what I think I’m right about in at least some cases. Sowherever you think I’m wrong, you could be right. If, in the process of determining thatI’m wrong, you are stimulated to think more deeply and broadly, I hope that I will havesomehow served you anyway. (12)

For McLaren, benefit comes not from being right, but from dialoguing with those of all different viewpoints. Thus, great reward results in always pursuing but never finally arriving at truth. Correctness in doctrine is something that cannot be attained—at least not with any degree of certainty. In McLaren’s words, “The achievement of ‘right thinking’ therefore recedes, happily, farther beyond our grasp the more we pursue it. As it eludes us, we are strangely rewarded: we feel gratitude and love, humility and wonder, reverence and awe, adventure and homecoming.” (13) In his view, Christians “must be open to the perpetual possibility that our received derstandings of the gospel may be faulty, imbalanced, poorly nuanced, or downright warped and twisted … [and must] continually expect to rediscover the gospel.” (14)

McLaren rightly anticipates that theological conservatives will find such an approach to biblical doctrine unacceptable.

If, for you, orthodox means finally “getting it right” or “getting it straight,” mine is apretty disappointing, curvy orthodoxy. But if, for you, orthodoxy isn’t a list of correctdoctrines, but rather the doxa in orthodoxy means “thinking” or “opinion,” then thelifelong pursuit of expanding thinking and deepening, broadening opinions about Godsounds like a delight, a joy. (15)

By reducing biblical doctrines to “opinions,” McLaren denies both Scripture’s clarity and its authority. Because the Bible is unclear, the chorus