Perspicuity

In this post I'd like to make two related observations. They're not directly related to teach other, but they share the same general topic, and it's more efficient to discuss them together than separately.

1. There are some Christians as well as former Christians who have an unwarranted expectation regarding the nature of Biblical communication. They fail to make certain allowances which they automatically make in ordinary human communication. For instance, when Proverbs makes blanket statements (e.g. Prov 22:6), they treat those as absolute promises. Likewise, when the NT makes blanket statements about prayer (Mt 21:22; Mk 11:24; Jn 14:13), they treat those as guarantees.

They have different rules for Scripture. They have the unspoken assumption that if God is talking, then we shouldn't have to make allowance for implicit conditions or qualifications.

In ordinary human communication, we use hyperbole. We generalize. But when it comes to Scripture, they suppose it ought to mean exactly what it says, without the unstated caveats, conventions, or limitations we take for granted in normal human communication.

It's a simple-minded expectation, like a child who complains that his parents broke their promise if some unforeseen contingency arises. They act as though God would be duplicitous if you had to nuance his statements. As a result, professing Christians who operate with that false expectation suffer a crisis of faith or lose their faith when God "breaks" his promise.

2. I think part of the problem is that you have Christians who read the Bible as if God is speaking directly to them. This segues into my second point. In response to Roman Catholicism, Protestant theologians emphasized the perspicuity of Scripture. Indeed, they may have exaggerated the perspicuity of Scripture. That's understandable, but the case for the Protestant faith doesn't require that.

If God appeared to me and spoke to me personally, the meaning of his statement might well be unequivocally clear to me. That's because God knows how I will understand or misunderstand a statement depending on how exactly that's worded.

Clarity of communication isn't a purely objective feature of speech. It depends on the listener as well as the speaker. What is clear to one person may be unclear to another.

Take opinion polling. The same question may have different connotations to different respondents. Or take an exam in which questions may be open to more than one interpretation. It's possible to overthink some exam questions. 

If the communication is individualized, and the communicator is omniscient, then that can forestall possible misunderstanding. But Scripture is a medium of mass communication. It isn't customized for each reader. In that respect, Scripture won't be equally clear to each reader.

However, a Magisterium is not a solution, not a genuine alternative, because the communications of a pope or ecumenical council will also be mass communication. Will also be a one-to-many communication. 

And even if (ex hypothesi), a pope or ecumenical council is infallible, that's not the same as omniscience. An infallible speaker can still be misunderstood, for unless he knows how the individual will construe his statement, his statement is still vulnerable to misinterpretation. So the Magisterium fails to solve the problem it poses for itself.