Denying the Sufficiency of Scripture (with Sinclair Ferguson)

Denying the Sufficiency of Scripture

There is, however, a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture. Indeed, I think there are several different kinds of the denial of sufficiency of Scripture that are current in our contemporary evangelicalism.

They are present at one level in the scholarly world where the sufficiency of Scripture is minimized by the weight that is attached to natural revelation outside of Scripture or events in history outside of Scripture or to scientific investigation outside of Scripture and where the Scriptures are fitted into a new mold of another source of revelation.

Charismatic Immediatism and Competing Sources of Revelation

That's certainly true in a different way at a totally different level in what I think of as charismatic immediatism. We have the Word of God. I've had it said to me, we have the Word of God. The Word of God is expounded to us, but we have this as well.

We have these revelations that God gives to us. You Reformed Christians, you have the Word of God, but you don't have this. We are preaching the Word. We are expounding the Scriptures. We are studying the Bible just as much as you are.

My dear friends, that may be true in the first few years of the first generation, but it never lasts beyond the first generation.

The Psychological Tendency to Elevate a Second Source of Revelation

Why?

Because as soon as you propose an immediate source of revelation, be it holy church or holy charismatic revelation, as soon as you propose a more immediate source of revelation, it is psychologically inevitable that that second source of revelation will become the tail that wags the dog.

Why on earth should I spend my hours studying the Scriptures, trying to find out from my commentaries what the Greek or the Hebrew might mean coming to conferences like this if God can speak to me right here and now with the same divine authority?

There isn't a human being under the sun who isn't psychologically likely to give to that second source of revelation an immediacy of canonical authority for living the Christian life that they do not, have not, and would not give to the pages of sacred Scripture.

Testing the Sufficiency of Scripture by Knowing the Bible

And there's a very simple way to test it. How well do you know your Bible?