Revelation and a System of Doctrine

I really enjoy the last few days of work on a pending book release, because I include an opportunity to read the final form of the book at a more reasonable pace and without the constant distraction of working on editorial changes. Well, I should confess that I’m also always going crazy with production issues, but we’ll leave that to one side.

Right now I’m doing my final run through From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully by Edward Vick. It’s an enjoyable process. I’m going to comment on it a bit more later. Today I’m just going to use one quote, regarding revelation.

But the meaning of the Bible is not exhausted by being made the basis of a system of doctrine. There is much that escapes when ‘Bible’ and ‘system of doctrine’ are conflated. In fact, while by no means denying the importance of doctrine (why should a theologian do that?), one must say that if the importance of the Bible is made to consist in its being construed as a source of doctrine, it is being severely reduced, misunderstood, and indeed distorted. Revelation is not reducible to the communication of propositions, and faith is not identical with assent to propositions, in this case propositions repeating biblical statements, or being inferred or worked out from them (emphasis mine).

Note that Dr. Vick is not suggesting, as the context makes even more plain, that there are no propositions involved or that propositions have no value. Rather, revelation is much more than and other than that.