Why Can’t We Just Read the Bible?

This is a great post over at the Gospel Coalition web site.This has some good suggestions, and some wise counsel. I especially like the Lloyd-Jones remarks to medical students. Enjoy!

The latest issue of Modern Reformation transcribes Michael Horton’s 2003 interview of Don Carson about hermeneutics and theological method: “Why Can’t We Just Read the Bible? An Interview with D. A. Carson.” Modern Reformation 19:4 (July–August 2010): 32–35, 43.

Horton’s questions include these:

• Doesn’t sola Scriptura—Scripture alone—imply that all I really need to do is read my Bible?
• Do you think there has been a lot of polarization where systematicians aren’t always very good exegetes and exegetes aren’t very good systematicians?
• I think of the person sitting at home thinking about the benefits of doing what you’re talking about here but doesn’t have the foggiest idea of where to begin, and so just reading the one-minute Bible devotional every day is about as much as can be handled at this point. How do you stretch that person to go the next step and what resources would you recommend?

The beginning of Carson’s answer to that last question above may serve some young mothers well:

Martyn Lloyd-Jones once spoke with a group of medical students who complained that in the midst of their training and the ferocious work hours they really didn’t even have time to read the Bible and have their devotions and so on. He bristled and said, “I am a doctor. I have been where you are. You have time for what you want to do.” After a long pause he said, “I make only one exception: the mother of preschool-aged children does not have time and emotional resources.”

It is important to recognize, too, that there are stages of life where you really don’t have time to do much, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Children will sap you. If you have three children under the age of six, forget serious reading unless you have the money for a nanny. When our youngest finally went off to kindergarten, we celebrated that day—I took my wife out for lunch. Only then could she get back into reading again. It’s the way life is. You have to be realistic.

As the article says, Read the whole thing. [SDG-JS]