I enjoyed listening to Ben Fitzgerald speaking recently. He is well aware of the major divide between Pentecostals and conservatives, in that conservative denominations discount about a third of the Bible (the spiritual bits) because of their religion. They don't/won't believe God for a miracle.
Nice. Conservatives need to be challenged on that.
So 2 Timothy 3:16 appears to say that we only need the Bible, and not the church, the Spirit, trials or application of God's word in our lives—at least if we approach it within a Western Protestant bias. But if maturity is ultimately becoming like Jesus, that could help us interpret it better.
Now, rather than starting and ending with the concept of "sufficiency", it's helpful to look at the related concept of maturity. This is all about forming into something more Christ-like (Ephesians 4:13). If the principle that maturity is becoming like Jesus is correct, we can think about many other applications.
Consider the missionary, going to a remote tribe where there is no church. How can they be matured, if they are stuck for years outside the normal environment of church? This might be similar to how Jesus sent out 72 disciples, two by two, to preach the good news, heal the sick and cast out demons (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20). This is doing what Jesus did, so it matures us as we learn his ways and act as his ambassador. We live as an open Bible to others, so in that emulation of Christ, we become like him.
Hopefully all this gets you thinking, like it did for me, that if this is about the Bible being the basis for life, the authoritative final word on everything, what then is actually sufficient for life? We need the Word; we need each other—the Body; we need God, so therefore we need prayer, and repentant humility—and so on. So what is sufficient for life as a Christian?
And this is crucial because I fear that some people are too quick to say that all we need for life is a theology of the Word, and they don't know what it means to live in community, to need others and serve others. On the other hand, others are too quick to leave the Word and rely on the Spirit, and slowly move further and further away from the Word.
The Bible has a few things to say about the Spirit in relation to the Body and maturity.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 14:26
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
If the Bible is the sole authority, do we still need the church's interpretation of the Bible? The Reformers said no to Papal infallability. We don't require official interpretation. "Sola Scripturae". But are we just replacing it with our own interpretations? Everyone has their interpretation. We can't escape that, because we all see through a particular lens, a worldview, to make sense of the world. However, as Protestants we don't treat our interpretation as infallible. We (hopefully) have humility and offer our interpretations to others for review. In fact, it's the person who will not allow others to review their work that is both proud and highly likely to be wrong. So while Scripture may have sole place as the authority, we find that we need the church—the people—to help us understand it.
When we say "sufficiency of Scripture", what do we mean?
Wayne Grudem defines it as "...[containing] all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly" (2 Timothy 3:15-17; Psalm 119:1).Systematic Theology: An introduction to biblical doctrine, Wayne Grudem, 1994, IVP, 127.
It thoroughly equips us for every good work, 2 Timothy 3:17 reads.
One of the most common practices of Word Faith followers is to decree and declare things into existence. This can be for just about anything—healing, salvation, miracles, favour, and breakthrough of any kind.
The difficulty with just looking at a few Bible verses is that there are almost always others that don't quite line up. We of course cannot simply throw them out, so, we can find ourselves trying to reinterpret one or the other passage in the light of these.
The following passages describe a view that does not downplay the physical realm. Instead, it sets up a view that there is both a spiritual reality and a physical reality, and they are both very real. Both have eternal impact. Everything is either initiated by or permitted by God, and he is not bound by physical or spiritual laws.
Some ideas are fundamental. They sit at the root of other ideas. Our belief that God is a trinity is one of them—without that, we can't get Jesus being God. Nor could the Holy Spirit be so powerful if he wasn't God too. Everything would change if God were a unity instead of a trinity. So God being a trinity is fundamental to our beliefs.
The Word of Faith understanding of metaphysics is one of these root ideas. This fancy word comes from meta, meaning beyond, and physical—beyond the physical. So we're dealing with the spiritual, and the relationship between the spiritual and the physical.
There is a fundamental belief of the Word Faith system and that is the idea that to produce change in the physical world we need to start in the spiritual world. Put another way, what we do in the spiritual realm causes effects in the physical realm. Furthermore, they believe that this is not just something that might happen that way, but that this is exclusively the way to get things done.
I don't know if you realise what these Faith preachers are asking you to do. They will say from time to time that you are not to ask God for healing, but command healing. That in fact we should definitely not say "if it's your will, God". The supposed reason for this is that we already know God's will on the issue—he wants to heal. Therefore, to come to God and ask is like questioning your orders.
But I would argue this is presumption, and leads us to run ahead of God, and go in a different direction.