Has the Bible been hidden from you?
At first glance, you might laugh at the question. “Of course not,” you might say. “I can find a Bible in any bookstore, at most thrift shops, and for free on my phone in nearly any language—along with reading plans, commentaries, and daily devotionals.” And you’d be right. In terms of physical and digital access, the Bible is more available today than ever in human history.
And yet… it is possible for the Bible to be hidden in another way. A veil can lie over it—not of parchment or encryption—but of confusion. In the time we call the “Dark Ages,” the Bible was hidden in this very way. In fact, the knowledge of God from both general and special revelation was hidden. Yes, the Bible was there—somewhere in the cathedral—but most people couldn’t read it even if it had been placed in their hands. Ninety-nine percent of the population was illiterate. Education was the privilege of a few. And the Bible wasn’t in the common tongue anyway—it was in Latin, out of reach for most Europeans. By contrast, the Jews had long taught their sons to read and recite the Torah. But many Christians, for centuries, lacked the ability, the means, and often even the encouragement to know the Scriptures for themselves. Christians hadn’t made any attempt to teach their children to read the Word the way the Jews had done.
Calvin is very bold and clear in his assessment of the worldly philosophers and their suppression of knowledge of God. In the Introduction to his Commentary on Genesis, he gives this evaluation of Plato and the rest:
“Moreover, the greatest of philosophers, who excelled all the rest in acuteness and erudition, applied whatever skill he possessed to defraud God of his glory, by disputing in favor of the eternity of the world. Although his master, Plato, was a little more religious, and showed himself to be imbued with some taste for richer knowledge, yet he corrupted and mingled with so many figments the slender principles of truth which he received, that this fictitious kind of teaching would be rather injurious than profitable.”
The Reformers rightly saw this darkness as a tragedy—and a scandal. They proclaimed Sola Scriptura—Scripture alone as the highest authority in matters of faith and life—and sought to tear away every veil that had been laid between the Word of God and the people of God. They translated the Bible, taught children to read, and subsequently literacy increased to the highest numbers ever. They believed that to know God and obey Him, we must read His Word. The early modern scientist, like Kepler, told us that he studied creation because it reveals God. The knowledge of God in all that by which he reveals Himself was given to the population in a new way unheard of in Christian history to that date, and Christianity flourished and spread to the corners of the globe.
But today, in a country with more Bibles than any in history, we may have entered a new kind of Dark Age. Bible literacy in the United States is at an all-time low. Fewer people know the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, or even the basic storyline of Scripture. If people think of general revelation at all, it is handed over to the materialist scientist who assures us that it contradicts the Bible. How did this happen?
Let me offer three examples of how the Bible is being hidden once again, and note that it is done by the same old worldly philosophy used to suppress the knowledge of God in Greek philosophy.
First, it is hidden behind materialistic science. This is not a new discovery but the ancient error of Greek materialism. It teaches that everything must be explained by material objects. It looks for the material elements that make up everything else. Materialistic science is not the same as science itself. It is a worldview—an assumption—that everything can be explained by natural causes alone. It dismisses divine action, purpose, or revelation. According to this view, Genesis is not a historical account but must be interpreted in light of current scientific theories about the origins of the universe. The implication is clear: until modern people explain Genesis through the lens of naturalism, it cannot be properly understood. The Bible, then, becomes a book you can’t read correctly unless you have a PhD in evolutionary biology.
Second, the Bible is obscured by allegorization. To be clear, the Bible uses symbols, typology, and parables. But allegory, as it is often practiced, is something different. Allegory takes a story and imports a set of meanings onto it from outside the text, often based on the interpreter’s own cultural assumptions. Again, this is an ancient error introduced by Greek intellectuals to give allegorical readings to their own pagan stories. It was subsequently adopted by early Christian intellectuals. For example, Genesis 1 is not seen as an account of the beginning of time and the days of creation, but as a poetic expression of spiritual truths that just happen to mirror evolutionary progress (or mirror assumptions about creation from the Egyptians and Greeks). This method not only removes the text from its original context but ironically makes the reader the real author. The reader tells God, “You can’t do it that way or in that amount of time, don’t you know about radio-carbon dating?” It tells us less about what God revealed and more about what the modern interpreter wants to find.
Third, the Bible is veiled by the critical historical method. This method assumes that the Bible is like any other ancient religious text—neither inspired by God nor providentially preserved. It is similar to how Herodotus conducted his historical research: simply report on what various traditions say and what is found in their scriptures—none of them are inspired by the eternal, infinite, and unchanging creator. According to this method, the Bible is just a human book and its current form is the result of centuries of editing, redaction, and error. The effect is devastating: ordinary Christians throughout history, we are told, did not have the real Bible or understand it correctly until modern scholars recovered it. The confidence of the average believer is replaced by doubt, and the clarity of Scripture is buried under endless academic debates.
One form this takes is the method “you can’t understand the Bible if you don’t know about the wider culture in which it was written.” For instance, the idea that we cannot understand Genesis without knowing about the ancient Near Eastern contractual agreements, or cannot understand the Gospels and letters of Paul without knowing about the literary devices of the Roman world. Such claims veil the Bible from 99% of readers who do not know about such things.
Our day differs significantly from the Dark Ages. We have a kind of public education, yet with increasingly dismal outcomes. And our atheists dedicate themselves to studying creation on principles laid down by early modern scientists, shaped by the Reformation and its beliefs about God, the laws of creation, and the importance of education. I hope you’ve seen in my points above that our materialistic scientists aren’t teaching empirical science when they delve into origins; instead, they are relying on ancient errors. They claim to use this “science” to once again veil the Bible and God’s revelation. In many cases, we have let them have general revelation and accepted the conflict between science and the Bible.
Today, you will find some who defend the Dark Ages. But whatever else is said, they were a dark age of the knowledge of God, in general and special revelation, by Christians. That much cannot be disputed. The Bible was hidden from most, and general revelation was replaced with indigenous pagan superstition or the worldly philosophy of Greece. And we are in another such dark age today.
But we are in a worse spot. What makes ours worse, with greater culpability, is all that we let what we had slip away due to our negligence and further compromise with worldly philosophy. We haven’t loved God as we should have by seeing what is revealed in all of His works. We haven’t sought him in all that by which he makes himself known. Instead, we’ve often abandoned this life for otherworldly heaven, we’ve exchanged the chief end of man as glorifying God in all of his works for the pagan version of beatific vision outside material existence. And the consequence is the lowest Biblical literacy since the start of the Reformation.
By contrast, the Reformers viewed Scripture as clear, sufficient, and intended for every believer to know. They believed that God’s Word was not chained to the altar but must be placed in every home and written on every heart. They knew that the renewal of society began with the renewal of the knowledge of the Gospel—and that could not happen apart from Scripture. This also had consequences for how Christians viewed general revelation. The energy of early modern science was unleashed as superstition and the low view of material existence in Greek philosophy were replaced with the belief that God is revealed in the works of creation and providence.
So what can we do today?
We must teach people to understand both general and special revelation. We have handed general revelation over to the world and made the conflict one between the Bible and atheistic science. The early Christian intellectuals compromised with Greek philosophy when they should have demonstrated its falsity from both general and special revelation. This compromise was a significant factor in justifying the concealment of the Bible during the Dark Ages.
We must reclaim Sola Scriptura. We must train the next generation not only to own Bibles but to read them. We must remove the veils of naturalism, allegory, and skepticism. We can show that naturalistic science is built on faulty presuppositions by reasoning from general revelation: God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:20). Real science—when done rightly—should lead us to awe before the Creator, not away from Him into materialism.
The truth is that atheistic science and Greek philosophy, including their origin stories, allegories, and critical historical methods, can be proven false from both general and special revelation. Our greater neglect must be followed by deeper repentance for all that we have not seen in God’s many works. We are in the condition of Israel in the Book of Judges. Having initially started on the Great Commission, we settled in, compromised with the false philosophies of the nations, and rather than discipling them, we are captive under their rule. In Judges 10, Israel cries out for deliverance, and God replied, “Go to the idols you served and ask them to save you.” But Israel put away their false gods and asked God for deliverance, and he took pity on their misery and saved them.Let us repent for allowing these veils to be placed between us and God’s Word. Let us repent of not knowing God in all that by which he makes Himself known. And let us teach our children not only to read, but to read the Word that gives life. Only then will we be able to disciple the nations, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded in his Word.
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