Did Biblical Writers Mature over Time?
00:00:00.000 | Podcast listener Josh in Kelowna, Canada writes in, "Hello Pastor John, do we have any indication
00:00:11.160 | that the authors of the Bible matured in doctrine, ministry, or in their experience of the Christian
00:00:16.520 | life?
00:00:17.520 | For example, should we expect to see a progression of clarity from the earlier writings of, say,
00:00:23.200 | Paul, to his later writings with this ongoing study of the Old Testament scripture combined
00:00:28.500 | with direct revelation he received from Christ early in his ministry have changed or altered
00:00:33.440 | his earlier opinions or viewpoints?
00:00:36.520 | I'm not saying that his earlier writings would have been false or wrong, but wouldn't greater
00:00:40.320 | clarity have come over time as he saw deeper meaning and more connections?
00:00:45.160 | Or does the doctrine of inspiration somehow hedge against this line of thinking?"
00:00:49.600 | What would you say to Josh?
00:00:51.520 | Let me try to say something on a principle of reading or interpretation, which I think
00:00:59.060 | helps us not go down unfruitful rabbit trails.
00:01:05.140 | And I'm relating this to a larger issue that I see, and we'll try to bore in on the particular
00:01:12.500 | issue of a maturing biblical writer.
00:01:17.340 | What I have in mind with this principle that I'm talking about is the tendency, a bad tendency,
00:01:23.620 | I think, to take our focus off of the text of Scripture and put it on influences that
00:01:33.460 | may or may not have shaped the biblical writers, but in fact, which we only have access to
00:01:42.140 | through the text themselves.
00:01:44.560 | Or in some cases, we may have some modest access outside the biblical text to a cultural
00:01:53.060 | or a personal circumstance that may have influenced a biblical writer, but whether in fact that
00:02:01.960 | externally known situation actually did shape the mind of the writer can only be known from
00:02:10.300 | the text that he wrote.
00:02:13.520 | So I have read far too many unwarranted pronouncements that such and such was the situation at that
00:02:23.820 | time, and therefore the writer meant such and such.
00:02:28.580 | And that simply does not follow unless the writer in his text shows us that he was influenced
00:02:37.840 | by such and such.
00:02:40.580 | So I'm very wary of people asserting that the meaning of a text is such and such because
00:02:48.420 | of something they claim to know about the circumstance of the writer, when in fact the
00:02:53.640 | decisive knowledge about that circumstance comes through the writer himself, through
00:02:58.940 | the text itself.
00:03:01.060 | So the principle that follows from that observation and that concern is that we should put primary—this
00:03:09.740 | is kind of John Piper principle number one—we should put primary and decisive emphasis
00:03:17.940 | on construing the text as we have it, allowing any situational factors to help us only if
00:03:28.760 | the author shows us in some way that those situational factors are in fact important
00:03:36.420 | for understanding what he wrote.
00:03:39.020 | So you get from the text a situation at Corinth, say, or at Thessalonica, which you do, but
00:03:46.300 | you get it from what Paul himself says.
00:03:50.080 | So the particular circumstance that Josh is talking about is the extra-textual possibility
00:03:58.020 | that an author's maturing over the years might affect his understanding of reality,
00:04:05.340 | which might alter in some way how he treats that reality in the inspired text of Scripture.
00:04:12.700 | And my point is that the only way we could know this is if the author showed us in some
00:04:20.660 | way that his different way of expressing himself was owing to his growth in the maturing of
00:04:31.820 | his understanding.
00:04:32.820 | Otherwise, we'll only be guessing that the way he expresses himself in a later writing
00:04:39.620 | is different from the way he expressed himself in an earlier writing because of a growth
00:04:44.960 | in maturity.
00:04:46.620 | But we may be wrong.
00:04:47.940 | We don't know that unless he tells us.
00:04:50.380 | There may be other factors that cause him to express himself differently.
00:04:55.220 | And of course, the same question concerning growth and maturity could be asked about senility
00:05:02.900 | or weariness or depression or conflict.
00:05:06.580 | In other words, a biblical author could walk through any of those personal experiences
00:05:14.420 | in such a way that how he expresses himself in one year would be different from the way
00:05:21.460 | he expressed himself in another year.
00:05:24.900 | And one can think of almost endless possibilities of personal and circumstantial factors that
00:05:33.060 | would cause a writer to express himself with greater or lesser clarity or depth at different
00:05:39.340 | times in his life.
00:05:40.940 | So what it really comes down to is whether the claim of Scripture to be written by divine
00:05:48.380 | inspiration implies such a safeguard against error that whatever the personal and circumstantial
00:06:00.220 | factors are in a writer's life, God is so guiding his words that those factors won't
00:06:09.520 | compromise the truthfulness and usefulness of Scripture.
00:06:13.620 | And that is, in fact, what I think the doctrine of inspiration as taught in the Bible does
00:06:18.820 | imply.
00:06:20.080 | So Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, "All Scripture is inspired or breathed out by God," that's
00:06:26.660 | one thing, secondly, "and therefore profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training,
00:06:33.420 | and righteousness that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work."
00:06:37.180 | He says two things about Scripture.
00:06:39.980 | One is that it's breathed out by God, it's inspired by God, guided by God, controlled
00:06:43.980 | by God, which means controlled by God's character, which is truth and reliability.
00:06:49.180 | So that's one thing he's saying.
00:06:51.260 | And then he says, "And so it's profitable, it's useful, it's helpful."
00:06:55.900 | So those two important things, it seems to me, imply that we should not be distracted
00:07:04.460 | from the actual text of Scripture by trying to figure out what personal or circumstantial
00:07:12.340 | factors outside the text may have shaped the text, unless the text itself indicates that
00:07:19.340 | those factors are significant, and then we'll know from the text itself rather than kind
00:07:25.220 | of sleuthing around behind the text and thinking we can find it another way.
00:07:30.620 | Generally speaking, I would say that if we see something in 2 Timothy—that's the last
00:07:36.700 | letter Paul wrote—that is different, not contradictory, just different from Galatians
00:07:44.620 | or 1 Thessalonians, two of the earliest letters of Paul, we would be spinning our wheels in
00:07:52.820 | an unhelpful way to devote very much energy to trying to discern if this difference were
00:08:01.420 | owing to Paul's being older or more mature or depressed or in conflict or tired or whatever.
00:08:11.460 | A far more fruitful question would be, what are the differences?
00:08:17.580 | How do they compare?
00:08:19.100 | How do they contrast?
00:08:21.180 | What new and deeper things do we learn about the reality being described?
00:08:26.100 | Because now we have two descriptions, not just one, and the reason for this approach
00:08:31.780 | is that it will be pure speculation to try to guess whether the differences are owing
00:08:38.980 | to maturity or some other factor, unless he tells us.
00:08:43.460 | And it's not useful.
00:08:44.460 | It's not useful for preaching.
00:08:46.140 | It's not useful for personal devotions to diminish our authority by guesswork, which
00:08:53.060 | is what really bothers me about a lot of the way people approach the Bible these days.
00:09:00.060 | There's just so much guesswork in what people are doing with text.
00:09:06.100 | So in summary, my answer is we simply do not know whether Paul had a deeper grasp of reality
00:09:14.820 | near the end of his life than he did at the middle of it.
00:09:19.900 | That may sound strange because you might just assume, "Oh, goodness, don't you grow?"
00:09:24.260 | Well, no, no.
00:09:25.860 | You might be at your peak at age 40 and going downhill from there.
00:09:30.140 | I'm 70, okay?
00:09:31.820 | I know that I'm in some ways not as sharp, probably, and as insightful as I once was.
00:09:41.060 | There is a kind of wisdom.
00:09:42.660 | Maybe aging takes some people backward, not forward.
00:09:47.980 | But either way, either way, how that affected his writing can only be determined by actually
00:09:54.980 | attending to the writing itself, not speculating about the causes of why the writing is the
00:09:59.940 | way it is.
00:10:00.940 | God ordained for the writing to be what it is, old or young, middle or aged, and he did
00:10:08.940 | not reveal all the personal and circumstantial reasons why the writing is the way it is.
00:10:15.100 | So as Isaiah says, "To the teaching and to the testimony, minimize speculation, maximize
00:10:22.660 | observation, observation, observation."
00:10:25.780 | Yeah, very good.
00:10:28.020 | For the record, at 39, I'm nowhere as sharp as you are at 70.
00:10:34.180 | Also for the record, I should ask, Pastor John, to your knowledge, does Paul ever tell
00:10:37.900 | us that his thinking has changed or matured?
00:10:42.260 | Not that I know of.
00:10:43.260 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:44.700 | These are the tricky Bible questions we tackle on the podcast each week, and for more information
00:10:48.580 | and to download our apps and to search our archive of over 800 past episodes now, find
00:10:53.420 | us online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:10:58.060 | We're going to break now for the weekend.
00:10:59.380 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke, and I'll see you on Monday when we look at wartime lifestyle
00:11:04.140 | and the retirement years.
00:11:05.740 | We'll see you then.
00:11:06.460 | [END]
00:11:08.460 | Desiring God's Word for the Rest of Your Life.
00:11:10.700 | 1. Desiring God's Word for the Rest of Your Life.
00:11:12.700 | [BLANK_AUDIO]