Last updated on 1/16/99

Remarks On Proper Bible Study by Steven Clark Goad
		JESUS calls US to be members of His church
The Christian religion is the worship and service of Jesus Christ. It’s not Mary we worship, but her Son. We worship neither saints, angels, a law code, nor even God’s Spirit. It’s JESUS who is to be honored. The Bible is our guide.

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Here's a study written recently by my
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Steven Clark Goad 1222 words
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"See to it that you make everything according to the pattern
shown you on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5b).

Of Patternism & Hermeneutics
by Steven Clark Goad

This attempt at scratching an itchy area is surely not intended as sour grapes. But many in Churches of Christ have an ongoing lover's quarrel with each other over something that falls into the realm of opinion, opinion repeated long enough that it has become law.

To question it is to subject the inquisitor to accusations of mutiny at best, or outright disrespect for Holy Scripture at worst. I will risk being misunderstood by broaching this delicate subject once again.

Religious hucksters often build their empires on simplistic approaches to complex matters. Deep and mysterious doctrines are usually dealt with in a "cotton patch" sort of exegesis. To buttress their teaching, appeals are often made to slogans, or catch phrases, that are easily learned and repeated. And if we can get folk to repeat something long enough, they will eventually begin to believe it, whether it's truth or not.

The Restoration Movement has not been void of such hucksterism. Slogans that were meant to unite and clarify became rallying cries around which sloganeers hitched their belief systems. Many of them were noble in their efforts to make truth plainer. "We speak where the Bible speaks and are silent where the Bible is silent." Now, if one could get their disciples to believe that line, no matter what they taught would be believed if the auditors felt the one speaking was "speaking as the oracles of God."

The Restoration Movement inadvertently coined some phrases that sort of rolled off our tongues. "Hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized" was a grouping that sort of came together, though the original five steps were not presented in that order. It doesn't matter that there is no exact 1, 2, 3 order, we presented it that way, and have done so for so long that to suggest that more or less would also allow for God's grace is tantamount to blasphemy.

What if I preached that one must:
1) Hear or read the gospel plan of salvation,
2) Understand what it involved,
3) Accept it by faith,
4) Repent of sinning and living outside of God's mercy,
5) Submit to baptism, and
6) Walk in the light of God's word to the best of the person's ability?

If I taught a sinner exactly that, and the person did that, would he be saved if his heart were right in obedience? Watch out, for if you say yes, you not only have extended the salvation formula by one point beyond the kosher five, but you have also relinquished one of the major points of the traditional five, that is, public "confession."

See what a muddled mess we make when we don't speak where the Bible speaks and instead insert our short cuts while demanding they be complied with? In the scenario above, if we are reluctant to sacrifice our 4th requirement for salvation, namely confession, are we prepared to deal with those candidates for baptism that apparently weren't told to confess, but were told to repent and be baptized (such as Acts 2)? We must be extremely careful when seeking to bind matters that God has not specified clearly in His Word.

More slogans: "No creed but Christ; no book but the Bible." That sounds as if it came down from Mount Sinai itself until we begin binding our own creeds on others while insisting we have none.

"There are five items/acts of worship" is another slogan, even perhaps a creed among us, we who have no creeds. Where, pray tell, does God tell us there are five and only five expressions of worship? I've looked for it and can save you the trouble. It just isn't there.

We have made the pleasure of supporting worthy causes a sacrament of worship. We don't use the word sacrament, for we have devised our own vocabulary. We call our sacraments, "acts" or "items." A rose by any other name ...

Is embracing a bereaved brother in Christ not an "act" of worship? Is feeding a hungry soul not an act of worship? Who says it isn't? My Bible tells me that all we do in word or deed should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

In a very real sense, most of what we do ought to be for the glory of God. To limit worship to five acts that must be done in corporate assembly between 11 o'clock sharp and 12 o'clock dull is to make a creed where God has not made one. Were the women who took our Lord's body and tenderly wrapped it not "performing" an "act" of worship?

Patternism seems to be the problem in such matters as mentioned above. We have forced methods and patterns on each other as tests of fellowship that were never meant to be so used.

The pattern approach in dealing with New Testament spiritual matters is the same method used by the Pharisees in dealing with Old Testament teaching. They lined their ducks up in a row and thought of themselves more highly than they ought, and our Savior leveled His severest rebukes at them. Alexander Campbell attempted to eliminate tests of fellowship that were unbiblical, those that used creeds, confessions of faith, traditions, and other such ploys to find specks in the eyes of others so they could be excluded from the body.

Our divisions, it seems to this scribe, have been over how we apply an unbiblical hermeneutic which shakes out very glibly as: apostolic commands, approved examples, necessary inferences.

The dilemma we face is that some of the commands we bind on each other are not apostolic; the examples bound are only approved by those binding them; and the inferences are hardly necessary, more unnecessary perhaps than required. We end up binding on each other inferences while loosing direct commands. This is a dangerous hermeneutic to be insisting upon as a guide for others.

Every 20 or 30 years a new division is birthed among Restoration churches. I've seen two or three in my lifetime. It has been pointed out that we now have some 24 divisions among churches that have claimed to be a unity movement calling the sects to unite. Is there any other movement in "Christendom" that has produced so many warring factions in so little a span of time (175 years)? Sadly, preachers and those with persuasive debating skills and printing presses have led the way in division.

Some of God's dear elders are partly responsible for remaining silent while panderers of discord wielded their influence. To use any device from the mind of man to divide the body of Christ, whether hermeneutic or creed, is a horrible and embarrassing legacy to leave our children.

Though often helpful, our command/example/inference hermeneutic is a formula for interpreting Scripture not presented as such from Scripture itself. Are we willing to admit that our splits have been over opinions insisted upon as matters of faith, goaded by the misapplication of a questionable hermeneutic? I am.

And when we come to this point of confession, we will be ready to start practising more beautifully the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

(Received in Joplin by e-mail 1/13/99)