Some further idle and incomplete thoughts about the clarity of scripture

Thought 1: The clarity of scripture is in fact a far more important doctrine to defend than inerrancy. Inerrancy is a red herring for evangelicals and is divisive. It focuses our attention on the wrong thing entirely, that is, the matter of 'errors' or lack thereof. Whereas, if scripture is not clear, Protestantism is a bad joke and we should become Roman Catholics tomorrow. Scripture itself does not claim its own inerrancy (nor its errancy), whereas a very strong biblical case can be made for clarity.

Thought 2: The clarity of scripture is an evangelical clarity. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that both unites scripture and renders it clear - not that the OT was without clarity. Jesus is the 'Yes' who both explains and fulfils the promises of God. The Ethopian eunuch appeared baffled by his reading of Isaiah until he met Philip who explained it to him. We shouldn't be distracted by the presence of an interpreter here: the point is not: 'you need an authorised interpreter' but rather 'Jesus makes sense of it'.

Thought 3: Of course, the doctrine of the clarity of the scriptures has little to do with how simple or how hard the scriptures are to understand. Indeed, in 2 Peter 3 Peter complains that Paul's letters have things in them that are less than crystal. Having said this though: scripture isn't as tough as is often made out!

Thought 4: The clarity of scripture is primarily a teaching about the effectiveness of scripture to do its job, which is to present us Christ Jesus. It is more about discipleship and holiness than it is about linguistic theory.

Thought 5: But the clarity of scripture DOES have implications for linguistic theory. It certainly did in the Reformation (or at least was in dialogue with 16th century humanism); it does also today...