Info: Sortes Biblicae
The word Sortes Biblicae means sorts of Bibles. Basically, it’s the attitude of God to open the Bible and accept the passage he found accidentally as God’s will, which is Latin for “accidental choice.”
It was especially popular among pious people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those who are godly prioritize their relationship with God and try to be with him all the time.
When they needed to make a decision, they closed their eyes and opened the Bible as they held it in their hands, and then tried to find God’s will in a passage taken with one hand and pointed out.
You’re greatly misunderstanding Christianity if you think you can know God’s will this way.
Every Christian wants to know what God’s plan is. I once read a lot of books about God’s will to figure out what God meant for me.
Joy Dawson’s wrong faith
My knowledge of God grew as I realized many books about God’s will are based on wrong theology. One of them is Joy Dawson’s book. Here’s how she talks about the experience God gave her.
If God lets me, I’ll leave right away. As I was emptying my mind and worshiping him, I left my wish completely in his hands. Around 5:20, God gave her husband the words from Judges 18:6. “Go to peace, for your path is ahead of the Lord.” We were out of the house in no time.
Is this God’s word? Does God talk like this? Like turning the Bible into a fortune cookie.
You look very faithful when you tell me about this. It may look faithful on the outside, but it’s not mature Christian behavior.
This is an example of a Sortes Biblicae. This is empirical piousism. It’s rooted in Count Zizendorf and Philip Jacob Spener’s pious movement. Later on, it affected John Wesley too.
The intimate relationship between Christ and the believer made Zizendorf’s religion a religion of the mind. Zizendorf’s reverentialism emphasizes emotions in Christian lives, and John Wesley emphasized aspects of experience in Christian faith too. If Protestant orthodoxy conceived a dry “formalism,” piousism devoted to experience produced “fanaticism,” says theologian Professor Alister McGrath.
It seems like Joy Dawson’s teaching is very pious. She doesn’t understand Christian love and fellowship. Love grows, whether it’s religious or secular.
Choice and responsibility mark a mature person. That’s why the Lord requires constant training from the saints, which is constant self-awakening.
We think about it all the time. I wish God could tell us directly about important decisions in life, like career or career choice, as I meet my spouse, which is an important meeting for humans.
I love that sense of hope in this from Joey Dawson. Her faith shows the wrong attitude toward the Bible. The Bible isn’t used for that.
The empirical piousism
The empirical piousism of the 19th century accelerated with two developments in the 20th century. Frank Buchman and his colleagues started the Oxford Movement, a spiritual revival.
We learned to listen to God’s voice, which appeals to conscience with the four virtues of Christ: honesty, purity, shame, and love.
The time of reverence shouldn’t be viewed as a magical way to find God.
Pentecostalism is the second development. According to Pentecostalism, the gifts and beliefs of the early church are restored in the church and can be guided directly by God.
Because of that, Pentecostals think structure hinders Protestantism’s history. Worship and missionary work eventually rely on the history of the Holy Spirit, which is too rigid, and structures that can’t respond to the situation can hinder it.
In biblical times, God often spoke his mind and didn’t prohibit it. It’s important to test this empirical argument against the Bible.
Bible quotes aren’t God’s will. On the surface, this faith seems to boost the Bible’s authority, but on the contrary it undermines it.
The biggest problem in Bible application is godliness, which is also the biggest obstacle to justifying its harm.
Every time we read the Bible, God makes the passages come alive through the Holy Spirit. Also, she says God speaks through the Bible a lot.
Christians want to know God’s will, but they’re afraid. There’s deep psychological anxiety about “What if I do something wrong and get out of God’s will?”
For many Christians, God’s guidance is both engaging and horrifying, and it’s a phenomenon caused by the demystification of God’s guidance.
Recently, evangelical Christians have been confused about God’s guidance. Empiricism is the product of a faith called pious empiricism.
Conclusion: How to know God’s will
When Bible believers humbly seek God’s guidance, they can receive direct orders from God in the form of strong inner impulses, imaginations, or voices.
It’s time to let go of this false belief. We need to know what God said to me is dangerous. There are a lot of ways God speaks. The Bible, people, and the environment are all ways God speaks.
It’s better to listen and understand God’s voice than to know what God says to me, so Christians should develop their faith.
