A friend sent me an image of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, vested as Pope Benedict XVI, his title from 2005 to 2013, the year he retired, now living a life of prayer, meditation, and Scripture study. Inscribed on it is an exhortation:
I urge you to become familiar with the Bible, and to have it at hand so that it can become your compass pointing out the road to follow.
It comes from his April 9, 2006 message to on World Youth Day. The Scripture chosen for his address is from Psalm 119:105.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.“
In his homily, Benedict doesn’t consider the internal resistance some Christians have to letting the Word of God operate as a compass, light, and lamp unto their feet. To understate things, God’s speaking can wrench one out of one’s comfort zone and bring one into conflict with one’s neighbors, business associates, friends, family, and even fellow believers.
I know little of Benedict’s interior life or his struggles. I do believe, however, that he’s always read the Bible through the lens of the Roman Catholic communion.[1] His command of Hebrew and Greek, consumption of commentaries, and interaction with colleagues no doubt facilitate and enrich his handling of Scripture. Nothing, however, can dislodge his confessional commitment, which is not the same as submission to the Word of God. Well, he won’t let anything dislodge it. His personal submission to Rome’s magisterium (teaching authority) is his submission to Scripture, prior to and independent of his reading of it. He implicitly trusts Rome to mediate the Bible’s truth to him.
That’s a controversial assertion, of course, and there’s no shortage of Catholic apologists to controvert it. For them, no submission to the Word of God written is possible extra ecclesia, that is, unless one’s reading occurs within the traditional, communal matrix that birthed the holy texts one is struggling to understand. Just impossible. Even laughably absurd.
My prayer is that in his retirement, alone with God and His written Word, he is open to the possibility that “the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12; cf. also Ephesians 6:17) and therefore no matrix of tradition, however ancient and venerable, can withstand its blows.
Which brings me, at long last, to the subject of this post and of my research, the maverick workmanship (2 Timothy 2:15) of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). He was, for all the world, just another Fundamentalist Protestant, the product of a meager Baptist upbringing and education. But that would be a superficial reading of the man.
It took Sellers about a dozen years to realize it, but Protestants honor the principle of sola Scriptura—Scripture only—at least as much in the breach as in the observance. (He had no quarrel with that Latin Reformation-era formula, but I have yet to find evidence that he ever uttered or written it.) Protestants have their own traditions, some of them a half-millennium old, which are no less non-negotiable than the Catholic’s. These ostensibly “Bible only” Protestants claim that what they teach simply is what the Bible teaches. They can admit no disparity between the two. Their practice is worse: one studies the Bible to reinforce that conviction of identity. “Keep your suspicions of contradiction to yourself,” the sincere Bible student’s church elders warn him, “if you know what’s good for your career.” Sellers grew in knowledge and love of God’s Word enough to protest this irony, this scandalous tension between a profession (fidelity to Scripture) and a practice that told a different story.
In the rest of this post I share Sellers’s telling of how he resolved this contradiction. It wasn’t an overnight affair. A self-effacing man, he rarely interrupted his expositions to commit an act of autobiography. This has been frustrating to us who benefit from his teaching. “Who is this man? Where did get these ideas?” I’d ask, even after meeting him, which I had the good fortune to do in the late ’70s. But when he had a pedagogical reason to reveal his process of discovery, students learned as much from the self-disclosure as from the exegesis.
* * *
In 1940 Sellers recounted the approach to doctrine he had held in 1920-1921, his first two years as a believer, one he accepted uncritically from those who came before. This account, published first in The Word of Truth, IV:2, March-April 1940, was essentially carried over into “Early Experiences,” a section of The Study of Human Destiny: A Testimony and an Appeal, Los Angeles, 1955, 7-12. The following is taken from The Word of Truth version.
Early Experiences
It has now been almost seven years [1934-1940] since I determined that the entire subject of the nature of man and the destiny of man should be reinvestigated, reexamined, and restudied. This determination became a powerful conviction, that in turn became a consuming passion, and this has kept me steadily engaged at the task throughout the years that have passed. . . . It is now my earnest desire to lead others over the steps that I have trod, in order that they may see for themselves the things that I have seen, and discover for themselves the things that I have discovered. My reward for doing this will be to see things again for myself, to see them more clearly, and to discover things that I had not uncovered before. . . .
It troubles me to hear that those to whom I once ministered the Word of God are saying that I “have taken up with some new belief.” This is not true. The truth is that the student you knew, came as a result of his studies to a place where certain inexorable facts and all their implications had to be faced. I came to a place where a decision had to be made and the results of my own studies in the Word of God had to be embraced or rejected. . . .
I had not known the Lord many months before I was busily engaged preaching on the streets, in mission halls, and in churches. Inasmuch as I went from place to place, such work did not require many messages, and the half dozen that I had developed, on as many subjects, soon became very familiar to me. I was soon able to give them with all the assurance of an experienced veteran.
I had no background of Biblical knowledge, but by putting together the things I did know, condemning things that were wrong, commending things that were good, adding to this some anecdotes and illustrations, I was able to satisfy that class of people who have no thirst for knowledge, but who do like to hear a lively and interesting message.
This group was predominant at that time, and it still dominates the religious world today. It is this group that the average minister keeps in mind in all his study and service. They provide the character for the church today.
The hireling shepherd feels it is best to go along with them. He does not permit his messages to rise above the level of their superficial knowledge. Neither does he say anything that will disturb them or cause them spiritual exercise. He excuses his own superficiality by saying that all that his people want is just the simple gospel.
I remember well how I covered up my own lack of knowledge by claiming to be a preacher of the simple gospel. As I look back upon my first year of Christian experience [1920] I am both amazed and amused at how little a man can know and yet satisfy the average audience that comes to hear a sermon. . . . [I]n those few messages I had quite a bit to say about hell fire and eternal conscious torment. No hesitation was shown in declaring these things and, since they were in harmony with what the world and religious men believed, they were usually good for some resounding “amens.” It was with some satisfaction that I felt I held men over the pit until they smelled the smoke. I fear now that it was true of me that I spoke about hell with all the assurance and knowledge of one who had recently been there.
I am still wondering just where all this knowledge came from. I had never been a student of the Bible, had never sat under the ministry of a Bible teacher, yet my beliefs on the nature of future punishment had already reached finality of truth. At that time I would have readily admitted that I could learn more about my beliefs, but I would not have admitted that I could learn a thing, to change my beliefs. These were fixed before I ever began to study.
It took no more than a year of such trifling with the service of God and the Word of God to cause me to realize its true character and to awaken an intense desire for a knowledge of the Book that I was already preaching. So, the second year of my Christian experience [1921] found me enrolled as a student in a Bible school. [Moody Bible Institute] . . .
The teacher listened with patience as these problems were rehearsed and discussed for almost an hour. . . . He stated that some of these problems had troubled theologians for many years, and reminded us that we were only beginners without the necessary background of experience required for grappling with such great questions. He stated further that a knowledge of the original languages was essential to the study, and said that many of them would clear up in the course of future studies. As a final word he warned us that, if we tried to study out these matters, we would probably end up in some damnable heresy. . . .
I had gone to that specific Bible school because it taught what I believed. Therefore, I took the notes, studied them carefully, and thus I added to my knowledge of future punishment without making a single change in my beliefs.
It is plain now that I was traveling in a circle. I wanted to believe the truth of God; I believed that what I did believe was the truth of God; therefore, I believed what I believed and was quite well satisfied. This complacent state of affairs continued for about five years, until I found myself trying to do the work of a teacher, and discovered that I was expected to answer some of the questions and solve some of the problems that had arisen in the Bible school classroom. . . .
I felt the need of fortifying my beliefs, so I secured copies of Facts and Theories of a Future State by F. W. Grant, Human Destiny by Sir Robert Anderson, Progress in the Life to Come by James M. Gray;
also a number of other books and pamphlets, all of which I knew to be in complete harmony with my own views on the subject. These were carefully studied. Once again, I learned more about my beliefs and avoided the necessity of changing anything I already believed. . . .
With my beliefs thus fortified, I put from my mind the difficulties and prepared some new messages on the subject, which I gave with much assurance for a time. Most ministers are satisfied with their understanding of a subject once they have one or more good messages prepared on it. This has not been, and is not now true of me. My study of a subject does not end when I have written a pamphlet on it.
Neither did my consideration of human destiny end when I had a few messages on that subject. I went on to increase my knowledge of the Word of God, and as this grew I came face to face with the realization that my beliefs and messages on human destiny were not in complete harmony with the Word of God.
The conviction grew that it was my duty to begin afresh and restudy the whole subject, using only the Word of God. The task seemed so big that I hesitated. I sought to interest several friends in undertaking the labor with me, but met with no success. For some time I postponed the beginning of the work, but gave much time to meditation upon the task that was before me, trying to comprehend the nature of the problem and to find or work out a plan of action.
The question was seldom out of my mind. I knew the price I would have to pay for any change that I made in my beliefs, but finally I felt I realized the nature of the problem and began the work with one goal before me—the truth of God’s Word whatever it might be. It has been seven years of happy labor in the Scriptures and has caused continual rejoicing because of the treasure I have found for myself in the Word of God.
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Sellers’s words invite the inference that his “complacency” began to be disturbed in 1927, the year he read Sir Robert Anderson’s 1897 The Silence of God.[2]
It is also the year the future Bible student Joseph Ratzinger came into the world.
If the foregoing has whetted your appetite for more about Sellers’s thought, I encourage you to read these posts:
- Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives
- Otis Q. Sellers’s Method of Interpretation: Notes
- God Has Spoken: Otis Q. Sellers’s Wartime Radio Messages
- Otis Q. Sellers: Maverick Workman (2 Tim 2:15)
- The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919
- Otis Q. Sellers in New York, 1978
- Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement
- Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette
Note
[1] See Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, Jose Granados, Carlos Granados, Luis Sanchez-Navarro editors, Eerdmanns, 2008.
[2] Anderson: “The Pentecostal dispensation is brought to a close by the promulgation of the solemn decree, ‘The salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles” (i.e., Acts 28:28).
Sellers: “. . . it could be that this is one of the earliest references to this illuminating idea. There is no evidence that Sir Robert Anderson ever followed this idea out to all its logical conclusions. In his writings he made no distinction between those epistles written before Acts 28:28 and those written after. He treated them as though they had all been written under one divine administration, which they were not. First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans were written before the dispensational change, and in many passages set forth the distinct truths that prevailed only in the Acts period. Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy, and Philemon were written after the dispensational change and they take on the character of the time in which they were written.” “The Importance of Acts 28:28,” Seed & Bread, No. 11.