Spurgeon maintained that no man-made theological system is authoritative. He said, “My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God.”

I think Charles Spurgeon comes as close as anyone I’ve read to articulating what Scripture as a whole reveals. Sadly, though I attended both a good Bible college and a good seminary, I never read Spurgeon or learned anything about him. I’d been a pastor for ten years before I discovered him, and then I couldn’t get enough of him. The Bible oozed out of his pores, and he let Scripture be Scripture, rarely twisting it to fit his theology. (One of my books on Heaven, We Shall See God, contains segments from his sermons on Heaven, so about 60% of the book is Spurgeon. It was one of my favorite books to work on, since I extracted my favorite portions from many of his messages. One day I’ll meet him and say, “Don’t know if you realized we were co-authors. There really wasn’t any way I could ask your permission!”)

Spurgeon demonstrated the importance of consistency with Scripture over consistency with one’s preferred theological leanings. He advised, “Brethren be willing to see both sides of the shield of truth. Rise above the babyhood which cannot believe two doctrines until it sees the connecting link. Have you not two eyes, man? Must you needs put one of them out in order to see clearly?” [1]

Spurgeon maintained that no man-made theological system is authoritative. He said, “My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God.” [2]

While the Bible is God breathed, theological systems are not. They are valid not to the extent that they’re self-consistent but to the degree they’re consistent with Scripture.

Spurgeon didn’t try to reconcile paradoxical doctrines (like the ones I write about in hand in Hand: The Beauty of God’s Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice). He said, “That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other….These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity.”

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