Published: August 3, 2026 | thefinalconvergence.com
Days 16 through 18 are a different kind of argument. Not constructive, the positive case has been built. Not historical, the Reformers’ testimony has been established. Not structural, the mechanism has been named and the diagnostic tests offered. These three days are responsive. They engage the specific charges that the critics of Biblicism have deployed. Not straw-man versions of those charges, the actual arguments made by serious scholars whose work deserves serious engagement.
The first charge is the one deployed most frequently and with the most rhetorical force: Biblicism is naive.
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). The charge of naivety is ancient. The Sanhedrin called Peter and John unlearned and ignorant, agrammatos and idiotes in the Greek, untrained and laypersons. The institutionally authorized scholars of the first-century Jewish establishment looked at the fishermen who were speaking about the Scripture with authority and dismissal was the first response: these are not trained scholars; they have not been through our formation; their reading cannot be trusted.
They had been with Jesus.
The charge of naivety against Biblicism is the same charge, made by the same kind of institutional authority, against the same kind of direct engagement with the Word. And the answer is the same: not the absence of scholarship, but the presence of the one who is the Word.
The Charge as the Critics Make It
Before answering the charge, it must be stated in its strongest form. The critics do not make the naivety charge carelessly. They make it with specific content, in specific forms, and with the force of genuine concern for the integrity of biblical interpretation.
Michael Horton’s formulation: Horton has distinguished between Sola Scriptura, the genuine Reformation principle, and what he calls solo scriptura, the individualistic, tradition-ignoring approach that bypasses all of church history and treats every individual reader’s interpretation as equally authoritative. The Reformation principle, Horton argues, was never the elimination of tradition from the interpretive process. It was the declaration that tradition must be subordinate to Scripture. Biblicism, in Horton’s analysis, has collapsed into solo scriptura, the naive individual reading in isolation.
R.C. Sproul’s concern: Sproul argued that Sola Scriptura requires the church’s careful, historically informed, community-tested interpretation, not the individual’s direct access to the text without guidance. The privatization of biblical interpretation, Sproul warned, leads not to the freedom of the Word but to interpretive chaos and sectarian fragmentation.
K.J. Vanhoozer’s critique: Vanhoozer has argued that “mere Biblicism” ignores the role of the interpretive community, the importance of theological tradition, and the necessity of what he calls “canonical practice”, the community-formed habits of reading that are essential to faithful interpretation.
These are serious scholars making serious arguments. They deserve serious engagement, not dismissal.
The Solo Scriptura Distinction — Why It Fails as a Critique of Biblicism
Horton’s solo scriptura / Sola Scriptura distinction is the most rhetorically effective form of the naivety charge. It claims to defend the genuine Reformation principle against a naive individualism that the Reformers themselves would have rejected. The problem with the distinction as a critique of Biblicism is that it misidentifies the target.
Solo scriptura, the individual reading in complete isolation from the interpretive community, treating their own unaided reading as the final authority, is a genuine error. The Berean community was not a collection of individuals reading in isolation. They received apostolic teaching, Paul’s preaching, the benefit of trained scholarly interpretation, and they tested it together against the Scripture.
But this is precisely what Biblicism claims. Day 1 of this series defined Biblicism explicitly: not the rejection of scholarship, not individual anarchy, not the dismissal of the interpretive community. The Berean congregation of Acts 17:11 is the Biblicism model; community, reception, testing, accountability to the text.
Horton’s solo scriptura is not Biblicism. Horton’s solo scriptura is a real error that this series has explicitly named as distinct from genuine Biblicism. The critics have constructed a distinction between genuine Sola Scriptura and solo scriptura, and then attributed solo scriptura to Biblicism without demonstrating that Biblicism is actually solo scriptura.
That is the straw man. The Biblicist being critiqued by Horton is not the Biblicist this series has defined.
What the Naivety Charge Actually Requires
For the naivety charge to succeed as a critique of genuine Biblicism, the position this series has defined, it must demonstrate one of three things.
First: that the Berean virtue (receive and test, community-based, using every scholarly tool available) is naive. But this is precisely what Acts 17:11 commends as noble. The critics cannot call the Berean congregation naive without calling Luke’s commendation of them naive.
Second: that engaging the interpretive tradition as a resource rather than an authority produces naiver readings than treating the tradition as an authority. But the evidence runs the other direction. The most careful, most historically informed, most scholarship-intensive textual engagement in the history of the church has consistently been produced by people who held the tradition as a resource rather than as an authority, precisely because they were not constrained to arrive at the tradition’s predetermined conclusion.
Third: that perspicuity, the Westminster Confession’s own doctrine that the essential things are clearly stated and accessible to honest inquiry, is naive. But if perspicuity is naive, the Westminster Confession itself is naive. The critics cannot invoke the Reformation’s authority against Biblicism while abandoning the Reformation’s doctrine of perspicuity.
None of these three demonstrations has been made. The naivety charge relies on identifying Biblicism with solo scriptura, an identification that the definition of genuine Biblicism refutes.
The Reversal
Here is the charge that the naivety argument fails to consider: The truly naive position is the one that mistakes the tradition’s reading for the text’s meaning.
The reader who has been formed in the Westminster tradition reads Romans 9 and encounters a text that speaks with power about the sovereignty of God in election. They receive the text’s meaning. But what they receive is not the text’s meaning alone, it is the text’s meaning as the Westminster Confession’s categories have already organized it, filtered it, and pre-interpreted it before the reading began.
The Westminster Confession’s reading of Romans 9 may be correct. The point is not that it is right or wrong. The point is that the reader formed in the tradition cannot distinguish between what the text says and what the tradition has told them the text says. They believe they are reading the text. They are reading the tradition’s reading of the text.
This is not a form of intellectual sophistication. It is the opposite, the inability to distinguish between the text’s voice and the tradition’s voice, because the tradition’s voice has become so familiar that it sounds like the text.
The Biblicist is the reader who knows they have glasses on. Who acknowledges the tradition’s influence on their reading. Who works; consistently, honestly, with community accountability, to hear the text on its own terms rather than through the tradition’s predetermined conclusion.
This requires more intellectual effort, not less. More self-awareness, not less. More rigorous engagement with the scholarly tools that help identify where the tradition may have shaped the reading inappropriately, not less. The naivety charge has the epistemological situation exactly backwards.
The Answer to the Sanhedrin
Peter and John were unlearned and ignorant men. The Sanhedrin was right about that. They had not been through the scribal formation that produced the authorized interpreters. They did not have the institutional credentials that the establishment required. But they had been with Jesus. And what they said about the Scripture was true.
The Biblicist claim is not the claim to be more learned than the confessional scholar. It is not the claim to have better credentials, a more impressive formation, a more authoritative institutional position. It is the claim to be reading the text honestly, with all the scholarly tools available, in community accountability, with the humility that comes from knowing the tradition are the glasses, and following where the text leads. Not where the tradition requires.
The institutional authority will always call that naive. The institutional authority called it naive when Peter and John did it at the temple. The answer in both cases is the same: the text is what it is, the Spirit illuminates what He breathed out, and the authority being exercised is not the authority of the reader but the authority of the Word being read.
Tomorrow, Day 17, the anarchy charge. When Biblicism is accused of producing interpretive chaos.
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” — Acts 4:13 KJV
📖 This post is adapted from Biblicism: The Faith Once Delivered. If it helped you, the full book is available on Amazon — or you can support this ministry directly.
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