Bible Mediated Truth

The Bible is Mediated Truth

Excerpted from "How We Read the Bible"

A second extremely important truth that is obscured in the mystical approach is the need for mediation in God's plan of redemption. In mysticism, one claims a direct communication or contact with ultimate reality or God which bypasses the mind and senses. Mysticism essentially denies Creation by attempting to go outside the realm of creation in order to reach the transcendent or heavenly through human means. This is not Christianity. The Bible speaks of the one true God as distinct from His creation, yet personally involved in it. His assessment of all of the Universe prior to the Fall was, "It is very good." The creation is not bad in itself. It is human sin which has corrupted it. God has not nor will He abandon it. He will restore it when He brings a "new heaven and new earth." It was Greek philosophy which taught that nature and the body are evil. It was Greek paganism which led Christians to see this world as bad and Heaven the only thing worth living for. God made this world good and the message of the Gospel is not to find an escape from Creation through mysticism, but the fulfillment of Creation through Christ's redemption.

The way God redeems His Creation is through the mediating work of Jesus Christ. No one can come to the Father but by Him. Thus, one cannot communicate directly with God save through and by Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is a religion of mediation. The whole Old Testament teaches the need for mediation between sinful humans and the holy God. This mediation comes only through Christ. All must come through Jesus. How do we know about Him? Through the inspired words of Scripture. Without them we would not know about Christ's mediating work. We would not be able to contact God. The Bible is part of God's redemptive mediation. It brings to us the knowledge of God we cannot find or discover by our own mystical efforts. That is why a mystical approach to the Bible is wrong.

The effort to turn first century Christianity into a mystical religion was formidable. As I mentioned above, Gnosticism attempted to change Christianity from a faith in the objective, historical redemption of Jesus Christ, to a religion of individualized, subjective enlightenment or "knowledge," which could be achieved through esoteric initiation into the "mysteries." The Bible was not viewed as a historical book, but as a mystical book filled with primarily allegorical and symbolic messages. This view can be heard from Gnostic teachers even today:

It becomes clear that the scriptures are not always to be taken literally as biographies of the life of Christ but that they also contain allegorical and symbolical meaning as well. The figure of Christ that emerges is not so much one of a suffering Savior, pouring out his life blood for the redemption of the world, but rather of a guide to the essential gnosis that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within.

The mystical approach to the Bible ultimately leads to subjectivism. Subjectivism holds that all truth is relative and is determined by the individual. This is the opposite of what the Bible represents. The Bible teaches that God has revealed truth objectively, and that it is true for all in same sense and at the same time. It is because the Bible is a book of objective truth that we have the Gospel as a historic fact. My warning is that a mystical approach to the Bible inevitably leads to a loss of the Gospel. The whole message of Jesus Christ incarnate to redeem Mankind through His death on the Cross is liable to the whims of individual opinions and experiences. That is because the mystical faith teaches we are to search within ourselves to find the hidden "spiritual" truths of the Kingdom of God. Beware: this is not Christian, it is pagan.