Needed Ecclesiastical Stability and the Standard Sacred Text Position

There is nothing exegetically or theologically prohibitive to believing in a standard sacred text. The Bible no where contemns such a belief. There is no distinctively Christian authoritative ground upon which to stand to claim that belief in a standard sacred text of Scripture for the English-speaking believing community is wrong, evil, against Scripture, or unbefitting the Kingdom of God. So while there are many things which can and do divide us because there are disputes on this or that rendering of Scripture, belief in a standard sacred text is not one of them.

We may not be able to agree on which denomination is most faithful to the first century church. We may not be able to agree on what is the proper mode of baptism. We may not be able to agree on the functional nature of the Communion elements. We may not be able to agree on the nature and term of the Millennium. We may not be able to agree on the form of public worship i.e., regulative principle or not. We may not be able to agree on the interrelation of the sovereignty of God in the affairs of men’s souls. We may not be able to agree on the role of the Sabbath in the New Testament or whether an attempted depiction of Jesus is a Second Commandment violation. We may not be able to agree on the nature of our respective biblical hermeneutics. We may not agree on which confession of faith to hold to. We may not agree on whether it is immoral for a Christian to sent their kids to a public school. We may not agree on the point of theological method. We may not agree on the point of apologetic method. We may not agree on the nature of Creation’s beginning. We may not agree on which Bible a Christian ought to read.

But we can agree that there should be one Bible that the English-speaking believing community should read. There is absolutely zero explicit or implicit exegetical evidence/argumentation condemning such a Spirit-led consensus among English-speaking churches. The church in the West is divided, weak, and aggregated and a standard sacred text could easily provide a measure of needed stability for all English-speaking Protestants.

So while the church in the West has much to be divided over and in many cases, for good reason. This one thing we need not be divided over, and that one thing is to hold to a belief in a standard sacred text for the English-speaking church. Let us then have unity around that one thing, around a standard sacred text of Scripture and from that point continue our discussions on those thing about which we disagree.