Unchallenged Presuppositions: “And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it, and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.” Numbers 11:8. This may seem an odd place to launch some thoughts on false presuppositions, yet this passage offers a striking picture of what uninspired and untaught men often do with the Scriptures of truth. The children of Israel took the manna, heaven-sent, perfect in its form and flavor, and felt compelled to improve it. They ground it, beat it, and baked it until it suited their taste. In much the same way, fallen minds gather fragments of revelation, process them through human reasoning, and reshape them into something more palatable. The truth that came down from heaven uncorrupted is thus refashioned into a system that flatters human pride and accommodates the natural mind.
Peter warned of this same spiritual tampering when he spoke of those who twisted Paul’s writings, “in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.” II Peter 3:16. In that one statement Peter both affirms Paul’s epistles as inspired Scripture and exposes the peril of those who force the text to agree with their own doctrine. The word “wrest” carries the sense of twisting something out of its natural form and forcing it into alignment with one’s private system of thought. So, it is with us who read the Scriptures, not to behold Christ, the sum and substance of all truth, but to circle endlessly around the systems we have erected in His name, fortifying what we have already determined must be true. We compel the Scriptures to say what we already believe, filtering every verse through a theology inherited from others or shaped by our own imagination. The result is not submission to truth, but the reshaping of truth to serve a system.
The word translated “unlearned” refers not merely to a lack of intellect, but primarily to a lack of grace, men untrained in the school of the Christ, Ephesians 4:20-21, blind and incompetent interpreters, advancing error with the confidence of truth, who mistake familiarity with Scripture for the knowledge of Christ that it was given to reveal. II Peter 1:2. This inward blindness soon becomes outward devotion. What they cannot discern by revelation they attempt to construct by repetition. The result is faith without light, and a “christianity” without Christ.
Religion divorced from revelation is the most deceptive form of blindness, for it sanctifies man’s opinion with the language of faith. Thus, we surround ourselves with teachers who confirm what we already believe. It becomes revelation by repetition, a counterfeit illumination in which men mistake the sound of their own voices for the voice of God. Like the Pharisee who prayed with himself, he hears his own voice and calls it divine. Luke 18:11. And so, religion becomes a monologue dressed as worship; what men call “devotion” becomes a closed circuit of self-affirmation, man addressing man under the pretense of addressing God. Only the revelation of Christ can shatter this blindness. Galatians 1:15-16. Only when it pleases God to reveal His Son, does repetition end and revelation begin.
Additionally, these false teachers were not atheists or skeptics; they were deeply religious men, filled with conviction about God and His ways, passionately certain about what they believe, propelling themselves forward with an air of “unquestionable” certainty seldom matched even among those who confess Christ. Besides, it was not ignorance that deceived them most, but the illusion of knowing. Thinking themselves guides to others, they became blind to the truth themselves. Men who could handle sacred words but not discern their meaning. Yet conviction without revelation is a dangerous thing; and, as Peter warns, such error leads not merely to confusion, but to destruction, for when the gospel is misrepresented, the soul that teaches it perishes by the same distortion it spreads. Matthew 15:14.
And such distortions do not die with their teachers; they become the traditions of men, which nullify the Word of God. Matthew 15:6-9. One of the greatest hindrances to truth is tradition. Tradition can so easily overpower the mind that it becomes impossible to see what is plainly written. The heart settles into what is familiar, and truth becomes something to defend rather than something to believe. In that moment, tradition ceases to preserve truth and begins to replace it. It teaches us to read without seeing and to hear without listening. In a very real sense tradition becomes our teacher, and truth becomes its prisoner. We grow blind to our own blindness. Matthew 6:23.
Beneath tradition lies an even deeper tyranny, the standard of unchallenged presuppositions. These hidden assumptions and inner conclusions are the invisible interpreters of our theology; they guide our reading and govern our response. They tell us which passages to embrace and which to explain away; they shape the questions we ask, the verses we underline, and the doctrines we defend. And when we attempt to test them, we do so with bias in hand, forcing the text to support what our hearts already “know” to be true, utilizing proof texts as scaffolding for our opinions. They dictate what we emphasize and what we overlook, filtering revelation through the lens of what feels consistent with our inherited systems.
For instance, the Arminian begins with an untested presupposition, that man, by his own natural sense of justice, can determine what is fair, and that assumption becomes the lens through which every text is read. Whenever Scripture declares a sovereignty that offends that sense of fairness, it is trimmed to size, reinterpreted, softened, or explained away. In this way, reason becomes the judge of revelation, and God is summoned to conform to man’s moral categories rather than man to God’s truth.
This is what happens when fairness becomes the standard of faith. Think about this, a man may read A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God, a book steeped in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, line upon line, precept upon precept, and yet that standard of fairness instantly diffuses the force of it all. Every text that magnifies God’s absolute dominion is softened, reinterpreted, or neutralized. Verse after verse is dismissed, reinterpreted, or neatly arranged to oppose the very truth it proclaims. The truth is not denied outright; it is explained away, its edge dulled, its authority domesticated, until divine sovereignty is reduced to a system that man can approve. Psalm 50:21.
“That can’t be saying that,” he insists, “because it offends what I have already decided in my mind as to what is fair, besides it’s completely contrary to everything that I’ve ever been taught.” His whole framework of belief depends upon that assumption; it is the pillar of his theology and the source of his authority. It’s all he’s ever known! To question it now would be unthinkable, it would dismantle his entire world, ruin his confidence, and expose the fragility of the foundation he has mistaken for truth. Matthew 6:23. If he is a teacher of others, a guide of the blind, he has too much invested to reconsider his ways. To renounce his error would be, in his eyes, nothing less than theological suicide, an admission that all his wisdom was folly and all his reasoning darkness; and to turn and bow before the sovereignty of God would require the death of everything he has built in his own name. And that, he cannot bear. II Samuel 17:23. Unable to surrender his own wisdom, he begins to shape the Scriptures around it, and what was given to reveal Christ becomes a tool to defend himself.
Of course, in such a scheme, there need be no continuity in the Scriptures. A verse from here, a phrase from there, and a system of belief can be cobbled together that bears little resemblance to the living word it claims to defend. Yet God has not spoken in scattered riddles or isolated truths, but in one coherent revelation, centered in His Son. Hebrews 1:1-2. Our safety lies not in selecting verses that suit us, but in believing the divine continuity of revelation, the unity of all Scripture in the person and work of Christ, from Genesis to Revelation, where every line finds its meaning in the doctrine of Christ. “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” Revelation 19:10, and “all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen.” II Corinthians 1:20. The doctrine of Christ is not one doctrine among many; it is the axis upon which all others turn.
And wherever that axis is displaced, both tradition and presupposition rush in to fill the void, adding to the “revelation” of Christ without any actual revelation. Jeremiah 2:13. To form conclusions where God has not spoken and build doctrines without the “light” of Christ to guide us is dangerous business, Matthew 6:23, for deprived of revelation, reason manufactures its own light, and mistakes it for truth. Revelation does not turn knowledge into faith, but gives life to knowledge, transforming truth from something known about Christ into something known in Christ. II Corinthians 4:6. It presses upon us the fact that true doctrine is not discovered by intellect but disclosed by illumination, the Spirit revealing the Son through the written Word. John 6:45. Only the Spirit of truth can cast down those imaginations and make us free by the revelation of Christ. II Corinthians 10:4-5. Our liberty, our joy, and our protection are found in receiving that revelation as one unbroken testimony to the grace and glory of Christ. After all is said, and the dust of our reasoning has settled, we stand where all men must stand, wholly dependent upon the mercy of God to give light where there is none. Like Bunyan’s pilgrim who said, “I think I see it,” we walk by faith, not by sight, trusting that the faintest gleam of gospel light will lead us home to Christ. All boasting is excluded. We are in the hands of a merciful God. Titus 3:5. May it please the LORD to direct us in the way of Christ, in the way of truth, and in the way of life. MPJ