So what do you think? Does God still speak today apart from the 66 canonical books of the Christian Bible? Seems to be a topic on the minds of a few people I respect, but whose opinions seem to differ greatly. For instance…

In this corner, hailing from his 13.2-acre farm in the Buckeye State, it’s Dan Edelen!

The Bible provides some basis for making distinctions between wrong and right, while the Spirit fills in the particulars. This is life in the Spirit, and it requires us to know His voice when He speaks to us in our day to day existence. …I can’t read the Bible and not see the mystical. As noted in the passage that starts this post, the Apostle Paul himself thought nothing of mystical experiences, such as being caught up in a heavenly realm where inexpressible realities can be glimpsed. Paul goes so far as to boast about the man who experienced this (likely Paul, as most commentators note).

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God, the Holy One’s train filling the temple. He saw angels and they symbolically purged his sin with a touch of coal to the lips. Ezekiel glimpsed his famous wheel within a wheel. John fell prostrate before an angelic messenger who delivered a vision of the end of all things. Jacob’s ladder. Abraham entertaining three visitors. The inner sanctum of disciples witnessing Jesus’s transfiguration.

The Bible overflows with the mystical. So how is mysticism bad?

And in this corner, the Pastor of Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN… John Piper!

What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence…. I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God.

I have to say that, without discounting the Bible’s importance at all, I have to kinda side with Dan on this one. I can have a very deep relationship with my wife through letter-writing when we’re apart, but if she never speaks to me when we’re in person (but rather simply points to appropriate passages in her letters)? Well, unless she’s mute, that’s going to put a strain in the relationship.

Especially if I know from her own testimony in her letters that she’s spoken audibly to others.

For instance… does a publisher like Crossway use some special “Holy Spirit Ink” when printing copies of a Bible? No, of course not. The characters on the page are not themselves the Living Word of God. They are words inspired by God, but without the Holy Spirit speaking to us (audibly or not), confirming what we’re reading as Good and True and “that which is come from the Father,” the printed letters do nothing to us. It is not the “Biblical communication” (that is, the printed page) which speaks to our hearts, but rather the “extra-biblical communication” (that is, the testimony of the Holy Spirit) which makes the scriptures powerful and affecting.

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 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 14:25-26, ESV)

I would say that the Holy Spirit’s “extra-biblical” confirmation of the Scriptures is the primary method he uses (at least in Western culture today), but that selfsame testimony will not allow us to pretend that God is silent apart from the Canon, because as Dan points out in his post, the Canon itself tells us many times that God speaks to men and women apart from the written Scriptures.

[UPDATE: It seems my pastor's wife likes what Dr. Piper has to say. What am I missing here?]

[UPDATE 2: Zoanna (below) said, "I think I’ll do a post, since this comment could go on for a while." Well, she did! :)]

[UPDATE 3: Laurie posted again to clarify. Cool!]

[UPDATE 4: John Piper's blog has been updated with a clarification of sorts. (HT: Adrian Warnock)]

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The good folks at DesiringGod told me to feel free to upload this to YouTube. Enjoy!

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I found this on YouTube a few weeks ago, and only just now got around to posting it. Oh well…

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A little while back, I made a lens about DesiringGod and John Piper… could y’all check it out and let me know what’s missing? I can’t help but think I’m overlooking something that might be downright obvious to someone else…

Thanks!

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At its core, Christian hedonism springs from the the belief that delight in God in inextricably linked to gloryfying him — or in other words, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

Go check out my Desiring God: Christian Hedonism in Daily Life lens at Squidoo, and let me know what you think! (Especially since it seems to be missing something vital, and I just can’t figutre out what that might be…)

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