In reply to:[color:"blue"]Your link doesn't work. However you do not need to provide a testimony from some dear woman to promote your view that Scripture takes second place to experience.
I've heard arguments like yours before. Instead of being preoccupied with Christ’s person and work as were the apostles and Reformers, Charismatics are preoccupied with religious experience. Instead of being based on the Bible alone, it is based on personal experience, on infused righteousness, on the gifts of the Spirit.
This was why I posted rather lengthily in reply to Pilgrim to clarify what I believed - because as so often happens in discussion/debate on these boards, someone assumes something based on incomplete information. Your quote is incorrect as applying to me. My original post was intended to look closer at experience because my experience is that in 'theology like that on this board', experience is put in such a position as to be well nigh useless. You may well protest that that is not your position. Very well. This was why I used the analogy of Abraham Lincoln (again, in response to Pilgrim's post) - are you going to get to really 'know' someone by reading their book or will you know them much better by interacting with them? And if the case with men is that the book doesn't do what relationship does, then how much more with God?
This doesn't put the bible in subjugation to experience, but it puts both in their right place. Neither are requirements to please God - only faith is. And the classic debate over faith is another reasonably good analogy - faith vs. works. Which is important? Both. Which is more important? Faith, BUT without works, where is faith? It is dead, useless. Thus, the two are inextricably tied together. The same is true of the bible. You can attest to every word in the book, but unless the actions bear out the faith, what good is it? The minister who gets up and preaches the beatitudes and yet does not pray for his enemies or return loving words for wrath is just like the one who places the bible on a throne and subjugates it to experience. If one does not have an active relationship with God, then the bible is just another good book. But if one does have a LIVING relationship with God (which is why I put up the link to Holy Ann - I'll check it out), then one may well learn things that aren't contained in scripture. Paul didn't tell us all he saw. Jesus spoke to the apostles for 40 days on the Kingdom of God and there is one verse about it in Acts 1. Enoch walked with God...and there is nothing in canon that extrapolates the things God showed Him.
The point comes down to a few things, and one of them is that the bible is the only book one needs in life. It contains instructions on all that we need for a firm foundation, but the reading of it will do us nothing unless we meet the Lord and walk with Him daily in a living way (I'm a bit surprised at the reaction here to this line of thought because the Puritans - some of whose sermons are on this board - held that to be a critical aspect of one's walk with God). It is only through interaction with Him that we see ourselves as we are with all the darkness of the human heart. If we rely on the fallen mind to accurately and perfectly receive all that God has for us, we are deceived and trusting more in ourselves than in Him. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the hearts of men those things which God has prepared for those who love Him. I Cor 2 goes on to express that God reveals things to men by His Spirit - whether through the bible or not. And how do we know we are of Him? His Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are His children. And who teaches us all things? The Holy Spirit does. That does not mean the bible is wrong, nor is it secondary to experience, but that we know Him by His Spirit. " Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual." I Cor 2:12,13 . After which, Paul sums that up by saying the spiritual man can only receive these things. And unless that means any old mystic, there must be a meaning that describes a man who has been transformed, is coming to know the Lord greater every day, who walks with Him daily in a real way, who communes with Him in the cool of the day, whose experience is centered around the Lord guiding His steps. THAT is real experience, and while it may well (and often does) come in a scriptural quote, it also comes other ways.
BUT IN ALL THIS, THE KEY IS NEITHER EXPERIENCE NOR SCRIPTURE, IT IS KNOWING HIS VOICE WHICH IS, AT ITS BASE, A SPIRITUAL THING.
This was one of the things I was trying to get at. I see many people throwing out the baby with the bath water.
