The truth of God is neither what you or I think, nor what the Church teaches, but what the Spirit says to the Church through the Word. And since churches and individuals err when they are not "governed with the Spirit and the Word of God", the greatest need of the Church in this as in every age is humbly to submit to the authority of the Word and prayerfully to seek the illumination of the Spirit.
I am conscious that some of you may think this places unacceptable constraint on academic freedom, or to verge simply upon a blind obscurantism. But is not this submission of our minds to the mind of Christ an intellectual imprisonment? No more so than the submission of our wills to the will of Christ is moral bondage. Certainly it is a surrender of liberty, for no Christian can be a "free thinker". Yet it is this kind of surrender which is true freedom - freedom from our own miserable subjectivity, and freedom from bondage to the current whims and fancies of the world. Is it stunting to spiritual growth? No, it is essential to it, for Christian growth is nothing if it is not growth into Christ as Lord and Head.
-John Stott, as quoted in Steer, Basic Christian - The Inside Story of John Stott, (IVP 2010) at page 157.
1 comment:
Isn't JRWS great?
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