Biblicism is marked by:
- Superficial reading of Scripture without attention to harmonizing the whole canon.
- Reducing a theological argument to proof texts at the expense of inductive arguments.
- Treating as foreground in the text what must be brought from the background through theological reasoning.
- Not being aware of or intentional about theological interpretation (the interplay of a theological hermeneutic with the historico-grammatical method?)
- Limiting oneself to the foreground — express statements and not considering good and necessary consequences.
- Tendency to see as positive law what is instead an expression of natural law.
- Refusal to use extra-biblical terminology to express or safeguard Biblical ideas.
Biblicism is like someone asking, “Does your wife have a second husband?”
And you answering, “I don’t know. She hasn’t mentioned it.”
Or answering, “She doesn’t, but I only know that because I asked her.”
Some things are so clear from Scripture (from its patterns, portraits, assumptions, implications, entailments, motifs, repetitions, stories, theology, and design) that if you were to insist upon a specific verse before believing them, you would be absurdly rejecting its clarity, not leaning into it.
Consider the deity of Christ. We know, by the Spirit through the Word, that Jesus is talking, walking Wisdom Incarnate. He is the very Author of Proverbs. And the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He doesn’t need to say, “I am God”, for us to know this.
One who swims in Deuteronomy and Proverbs, and then reads the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) with the eyes of childlike faith, can immediately know this without any doubt.
John 1:1 expressly confirms what was always there.
It’s good to appeal to clear Bible verses that speak to specific issues, but we ought not do this as though the rest of the Bible (and in many cases, nature) isn’t already clear and authoritative on the issue. We use Bible verses to appeal to God’s own spoken authority, and to confirm what God has revealed elsewhere, not to imply that he was silent until then on the matter.
There is a similar danger to presenting philosophical arguments for the existence of God—as though, in the absence of such presented arguments, his existence wouldn’t be obvious. While such arguments can be helpful (I’d argue they can serve as a conversational bridge to sharing Scripture), they can also reinforce someone’s prideful assumption that they need arguments, or that nature and conscience and God’s word aren’t clear. James Beutler writes,
“The errors (biblicism and philosophy) run in different directions, but both disembody one element. We should not attempt to argue in the abstract nor seek an absolute particular, but rather bring to bear the full light of revelation. Nature, God’s revealed law, and prophesy are all foundational to Jesus’ teaching and must be presupposed in every discussion, whether philosophical or doctrinal/ethical particulars.”
The opposite error of biblicism found among sophisticated academia is to under-appreciate the sufficient clarity and authority of punchy, terse Bible verses on an issue. If someone asks, “Is homosexuality a sin?”, and you wax on for 20 minutes about a holistic Biblical portrait of gender and marriage, yet without any appeal to the key verses, you’re perhaps:
- Leaning into your own rhetorical abilities
- Ashamed of the offensive, concise, accessible clarity of Scripture
- Avoiding the appearance of uneducated simplicity
Sure, everything you said was true, but waxing on can be a way of avoiding the embarrassment of being a Christian who trusts the authority of God’s word. Why needlessly bloviate when really you could just answer the question—John MacArthur-style—by quoting a Bible verse? Take your blows. Be weird. There’s another time for extended explanations.
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 