Putting Things in Perspective
April 9, 2011
I hope that I’m not sounding too much like an anti-intellectual, but there are definitely times where I am reminded about the frustrating gap between certain academic conversations and the real needs of the Church, as well as the indulgent curriculum offered at some seminaries reflecting more the desires of professors than the recognition of appropriate classes for pastoral training. (See these two articles to really fill this out more – here and here).
My father makes an annual trip to India to evangelize and work with local pastors. A significant number of these country pastors, as it happens, cannot even read. Not a Bible, not a hymnal. When he told me this I remember wondering to myself how they could even perform their pastoral duties.
Now, I am in total support of educated clergy, indeed that is why this tidbit of information really got my imagination going, once again, as it is prone so to do, about seminary education. If one were to teach these pastors, just what might be an appropriate “core” to enable and empower them? And by thinking about this, it began to prompt thoughts on our own seminary education here in the States.
It seems to me that apart from needing first to teach them to read, and considering it is totally impractical to expect these pastors to attend a residential seminary, an appropriate “core” would ideally revolve around four books: The Bible, a Prayer Book, a hymnal and a catechism.
At first I questioned this – surely this is a peculiarly Anglican way of looking at things? But inasmuch as there could be developed a Pentecostal (Pentecostal because my father is an Assemblies of God minister) “Prayer Book, hymnal and catechism” it began to strike me as far more appropriate than I would’ve thought at first. Precisely because these clergy have a “blank slate” when it comes to the Faith, and precisely because they couldn’t be expected to leave their responsibilities for too long, by teaching them to read and giving them these elementary tools, what they lacked in “full training” they made up in practice by really getting to know these books.
What it seems the A/G might need, then, is a Book of Common Prayer -of sorts! – appropriate to their tradition, for the training of clergy where otherwise training is unavailable. And as for us, perhaps our own core should revolve around these rather than having so many electives open for “Feminist readings in Daniel” or whatever.
Seminary V.III : Limits in Round Table Theology
April 8, 2010
Before a brief excersion in response to a friend, I was commenting on how seminaries should be purposeful about formation. How we do and do not educate will – I cannot emphasize enough the will – shape the future of our fellowship. There is no getting around it. “Knowledge is Power,” Foucault said, and I couldn’t agree with him more. Of course this has always been known and responsible teachers through the ages would have had no moral qualms about telling people how and even what to think, especially in early stages of learning.
Of late there has been a minor revival of so-called “classical education” largely in response to an essay written by the famous Dorothy Sayers entitled, “The Lost Tools of Learning.” I take this essay to be essentially correct and this (other) hyperbolic statement by Hauerwas properly frames where I am going with these next couple essays:
“As a way to challenge such a [liberal] view of freedom, I start my classes by telling my students that I do not teach in a manner that is meant to help them make up their own minds. Instead, I tell them that I do not believe they have minds worth making up until they have been trained by me. I realize such a statement is deeply offensive to students since it exhibits a complete lack of pedagogic sensitivities. Yet I cannot imagine any teacher who is serious who would allow students to make up their own minds.” —Stanley Hauerwas, “Christian Schooling or Making Students Dysfunctional,” in Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), p. 220. HT: Faith and Theology
I’m preparing a very incomplete and theoretical curriculum for an entire seminary education that I hope to post in the next week or so. For now let us consider a significant if not the most significant aspect of formation (I’m here speaking as an Anglican but most any “Rule of Prayer” in continuity within the liturgical and spiritual tradition of the Church could work); the Daily Office. Any seminary worth its salt will pray, at the very least, the Morning and Evening Office. I’ve always found the “noon” prayer in the ’79 BCP to be lackluster and unfocused but of course the Compline as well as the Service of Light are both spectacular. It may not be of utter necessity that every student attend every single service, though I can’t imagine anything less than three weekday offices being at all adequate. Whatever the case it ought to be performed daily.
Going a step beyond this I think it would be a stroke of brilliance to incorporate the material of the Office directly into the taught classes. So hermeneutics, exegesis (same thing really) and Bible classes should teach from the Scripture readings each day. Instead of a class on “Pauline Theology,” or “Pauline Letters” or “The Synoptics,” a seminary could have a “Bible” track that spans the whole of the education which covers the same material that such a class would have, but is done in a wholistic manner.
Many of the classes could be taught this way. After learning the grammar, such a class could serve “double duty” as a “Greek Reading” class. A teacher could take the NT passage and teach how to grammatically structure that passage. Etc…to infinity. It seems to me that the connection between the Office and the classes could be made in any number of creative ways.
One weakness is obviously the current Lectionary. Anglican liturgical expert and spectacular blogger Derek Olsen says that the point of the Daily Office Lectionary, as compared to the Lectionary for use at the Mass, is to read and learn the Bible, not to be mystagogical. There is of course a place for that but not here. I still dig a two-year structure but it could stand to be more consistent in how it proceeds through books. The entire OT and Deutero-canon every two years, NT about once a year, and the Psalms once a month or month and a half seems both substantial and doable. The books should be read from beginning to end with no cutting out the non-liberal-protestant parts as it does now.
I am assuming that doing the dishes, cleaning the bathrooms and feeding the poor also fit into the general life of the Seminary but those are less “educational” in the same sense that I am talking about here.
Containeth All Things Necessary to Salvation
February 23, 2010
Growing up, my house had probably more than a dozen Bibles in it. There were teen study bibles, children’s picture book bibles, women’s devotional bibles and any number of translations and packagings. The Bible, for me, was supposed to be neither a particularly ancient nor a particularly distant document, but a current, thrilling, best seller complete with pictures and info boxes to keep me up-to-date. The prolific rise of the “customized” Bible has conditioned the modern, western Christian to read Scripture individually as a personal book.
While many Christians, including myself, have found this process edifying, I think we forget that this is not how most Christians in history—nor most Christians alive today—experience Scripture. Bibles were foreign documents for most of history, often written in a language other than the common tongue. For most of Christian history, it was likely that less than half of those people in Church even knew how to read. With this distance came a degree of “otherness” completely lost on us today.
Of course, one of the great successes of the Reformation was making Scripture accessible to the people and this is not a change I would quickly undo. But I must admit it also changed the way Christians experienced the Bible, from a communal to an individual activity. No longer was the primary window into Scripture listening to the stories and letters surrounded by family and friends but sitting alone in a library, studying the minutiae of the written word. Rising literacy and the printing press only made this kind of armchair biblical scholarship more prevalent. While I refuse to condemn this wonderful innovation in Christian History, I cannot deny it’s unintended effect of localizing and individualizing the Scriptural experience.
EDIT 2/24/10: Commenter George P. Wood alerted me to a worthwhile quote I want to include here:
Most North American Christians assume they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to every child when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian maturity is marked… Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own.
-Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture
Apostolic Bias, the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the Catholic Canon
The problem of apostolic bias is more directly felt by a modern church that derives its methodologies and standards of belief from the inerrant nature of stable, unshakeable written tradition.[1] Dobschütz is convinced that “from the beginning there had been degrees of authority. The Lord was more than the apostle; a letter of Paul was appreciated more than an anonymous epistle.”[2] It is this gradation of authority that leads some to deny the inspiration[3] of documents that did not share clear proximity to apostolic authority, but they did so on the basis of defending the integrity of a written, and consequently fixed, document. Indeed, some even went to great lengths to wed the works of Luke and Mark to apostolic writers like Peter and Paul even though these Gospels claimed eyewitness authority and were widely accepted by tradition. While few of the apostolic and Ante-Nicene fathers rejected large portions of the canon,[4] some excluded certain documents. These exclusions were presumably based on a hierarchy.[5]
The primacy of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles is widely recognized by the Ante-Nicene fathers. There is no proof, to speak of, that calls the inclusion of the Gospels[6] or the Pauline epistles into question.[7] This, of course, is representative of the hierarchy held by the early church, and comes as no surprise. What may be surprising to most is the scant objection by the orthodox leaders to most of the New Testament documents. Critical scholarship has grossly overestimated the case against these documents.
“Critical scholarship has grossly overestimated the case against these documents.”
The remaining material to be covered also follows the hierarchy noticed by scholars. The Catholic Epistles were disputed by only two noticeable writers, though. Cyprian lavishes praise on the Gospels and Pauline epistles but does not mention the Catholic Epistles.[8] Interestingly, Origen calls 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James and Jude disputed books, and will not endorse them as Scriptural.[9] Origen, largely a speculative theologian and given to Gnosticism, appears as a surprising opponent to the Catholic Epistles because he so freely utilizes documents that are universally denied by the rest of the church. Also not included in the Pauline corpus by those who would not recognize it is the letter to the Hebrews. Cyprian, however, is the only father to object seriously to the letter to the Hellenistic community.[10]
The only remaining document to receive criticism, which is of special interest to the present study, is also the only document that contains large amounts of prophecy and apocalyptic literature, the Revelation. Dionysius, a former pupil of Origen, rendered the Apocalypse the work of the Apostle John, but still refused to hold it in the same light as the other canonical works.[11] This is perhaps one of the clearest examples of bias toward a document, and, accordingly, the establishment of an inner canon in the patristic writings.[12] As such, it is interesting that Eusebius[13] also lists the Apocalypse as a spurious book, not because of apostolicity, but because of content. According to Bruce, “he could not reconcile himself to its millenarian teaching,”[14] and concludes, “He would simply prefer it not to be in the canon.”[15] This is certainly not enough to justify an affect on either the framing of the canon or the doctrinal beliefs of the church. Why is there not a fragmented canon, or an inner canon for that matter, evident in the writings of the early church, then?
First, it should be increasingly clear that the very notion of a canon is contrary to the preference of one document over another or of one author over another. Apostolicity, and the inspiration it precluded, is a better criterion for inclusion than originally thought. While there were a few documents within proximity to Christ or the apostles not included in the canon, their content was largely Gnostic. These documents were dismissed on conditions subsidiary to apostolic authority, and the bishopric disallowed their consideration. Additionally, in the framework of the canon, each document stood on its own authority and did not rely upon outside sources for consideration. Under such circumstances, it would be difficult to label a document canonical if it did not posses the same attributes as the others.
Second, the rejection of Marcion’s list that spurred the organization of the canon was an event that drove the early fathers toward solidarity. Marcion’s list was a direct affront to the catholic church, and as such, it was necessary for the church to re-evaluate its standing on material fit for consumption.[16] Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament and of three of the Gospels constituted the greatest attack on what the church felt was the heritage of Christological doctrine. Though certain individuals may have questioned the suitability of certain documents, their intent was still to participate in the gathering of all suitable documents, not to deviate from it. As such, the response to Marcion on behalf of the early fathers makes a purposeful identification of special or more inspired material a non sequitur.
Conclusion
Many of the early fathers did express preference for the Gospels and Pauline corpus as those documents best expressed the standard of apostolicity; however, the careful process and widespread acceptance of the canon made the presence of an inner canon a virtual impossibility. Undoubtedly, Dionysius and Eusebius exhibited the preference for some documents over others within the canon of Scripture. For reasons that may be considered inconsequential by some, these writers held the Apocalypse in lower regard than the rest of the canon. Their solidarity with the community of believers made it untenable that this would have affected the outcome of the canon or of doctrine, however.
“Many of the early fathers did express preference for the Gospels and Pauline corpus as those documents best expressed the standard of apostolicity”
The early church’s reliance upon apostolicity as a criterion for canonization, and later inspiration, proved to be exceptionally insightful if not providential. The criteria for canonization ultimately shifted into the criteria for inspiration as the doctrine developed in the Nicene and Post-Nicene fathers. As such, a shift from the authority and influence of a person to that of a document and written tradition was inevitable. Thankfully, though, this progression leaves recourse for discussion and elaboration on the intent of those founding leaders. The development seems inevitable in hindsight. Therefore, the process for canonization of apostolic material seems to have been as thorough and as reliable as the process of declaring those writings inspired in later centuries. This leaves the modern reader with the assurance the sacred writings of the Christian bible are truly reliable and that the canon is justifiably closed.
[1] See Robert Morgan, “Can the Critical Study of Scripture Provide a Doctrinal Norm?” The Journal of Religion, 76 (April 1996): 206-232. Morgan discusses the many pitfalls that the demand of written tradition has had on doctrinal norms and methodologies not only for theological study but also for daily spiritual living.
[2] Ernst Von Dobschütz, “The Abandonment of the Canonical Idea.” The American Journal of Theology, 19 (July 1915): 419.
[3] Again, it is important to read apostolicity here.
[4] Charles H. Cosgrove argues that Justin Martyr had no use for any of the Pauline writings because of the supremacy of the teaching of Jesus. See Charles H. Cosgrove, “Justin Martyr and the Emerging Christian Canon: Observations on the Purpose and Destination of the Dialogue with Trypho.” Vigiliae Christianae, 36 (September 1982): 209-232.
[5] E.g., Origen thought that the canon was given by the Spirit of God, but that he could discern levels of inspiration within the Old Testament and New Testament. See Commentary on John 1.4 – 1.6 in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds, The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325: Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 9, Gospel of Peter, Diatessaron, Testament of Abraham, Epistles of Clement, Origen, Miscellaneous Works, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 1999), 297-298.
[6] John’s Gospel was questioned by some, but none placed it on a disputed or spurious list.
[7] Justin Martyr is a notable exception with his denial of Paul, but his writings may have come before a time when scholars can make a serious examination of canonical study in the fullness of its cultural impetus.
[8] Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds, The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325: Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 5, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 1999), 267-575.
[9] Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds, A Select Library of the Christian Church: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 1, Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 1994), 273.
[10] Roberts, The Writings of the Fathers Vol. 5, 267-575.
[11] Schaff, A Select Library, 309-311.
[12] Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 196.
[13] Eusebius is included in the list to be considered because of his extensive work in communicating the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the modern reader. It is through his lens that we receive much of this content.
[14] Ibid., 199.
[15] Ibid., 200.
[16] Some have argued that this liturgical sense is the only way to understand “canon” in the early church.
In the conclusion of his work on the history of canonization, F.F. Bruce cites the hypothesis of Professor Kurt Aland that the New Testament canon has undergone the same narrowing of scope that the Old Testament received at the inception of the early Christian church. This narrowing has altered Christian thought so that there is an “inner canon” within those works recognized as Scripture.[1] This process is already acknowledged in the New Testament utilization of the Old Testament canon. While the authors of the New Testament professed that every word of Scripture is “θεόπνευστος” and therefore inspired, preference was clearly given to certain documents in their writing. This process continued through the early church, especially in relation to the apocryphal literature, until the Christian version of the Old Testament canon was established.
Bruce, then, interacts with Aland’s conclusion that this same process has begun for modern believers, but will not directly agree that the practice is a concerted effort to narrow the content of the modern canon. Rather, preferential usage is the de facto response of emotional and relational beings interacting with a living document. Bruce’s concern, of course, is to establish the integrity of the “rule” of faith for Christians. His conclusions are wise and fair, especially in that they defend the obligatory integration of centuries’ worth of historical thought and teaching on the matter. Additionally, Bruce contends that the discussion of an inner canon attempts to identify canonicity or inspiration in degrees, and digresses into a process of seeking material that is more inspired within that which has all been declared inspired.[2]
This arouses a question regarding the Apostolic and Ante-Nicene Fathers, though. According to Bruce, discussions regarding the doctrine of inspiration within the context of the early church must be understood in terms of canonicity and, especially, apostolicity.[3] If this is the case, is it not evident that the early church spent a great deal of effort disseminating the authority of documents based upon their proximity to Christ? Indeed, they only gave precedence over apostolicity to the very words of Christ expressed through eyewitnesses. Did this practice reveal that Aland’s narrowing of Scripture was not only endemic to a Christological view of the Old Testament canon but also in the earliest efforts to organize a canon, thereby biasing the formation of New Testament collection with the preference for an inner cannon among inspirational documents?
If a discussion about inspiration in the early church must be held within the context of apostolicity as Bruce has argued, then said discussion must include a review of the early fathers’ writings on apostolic authority regarding the canon. Specifically, did the early fathers exhibit biases for or against documents based on the idea of apostolicity, which, if proven, was a bias for documents that were more inspired? Though the notion is provocative, the reduction of the entire process of canonization that appropriates the early church’s acknowledgment and preference for apostolic authority to the whole product is not fair. Many of the early fathers undoubtedly expressed preference for some New Testament documents over others; however, the final product of canonization was a declaration that ultimately discouraged the emergence of an inner canon by virtue of its lengthy and ubiquitous process.
Apostolicity and Inspiration
If a patristic bias for certain apostolic documents did alter the formation or understanding of the New Testament canon, then it must be proven that apostolicity and the notion of inspiration[4] are indeed synonymous. Bruce contends that inspiration in the first century CE was most directly related to the work of the Holy Spirit in directing the prophets to write; and while the early fathers thought of New Testament documents in this regard, most of these authors do not base their authority on any such claim.[5] When most New Testament writers do find occasion to assert authority, they do so on the basis of apostolic authority or eyewitness testimony and not directly on the influence of the Spirit on their writing.[6] At the very least, this is evidence that the biblical writers carried no notion of a mechanical dictation; instead, their calling and separation by God to an apostolic ministry is what gave them authority. Looking back into the first century context, the modern reader cannot superimpose notions of textual authority.
“When most New Testament writers do find occasion to assert authority, they do so on the basis of apostolic authority or eyewitness testimony and not directly on the influence of the Spirit on their writing”
The derivation of authority does not originate from the occasion of their writing or the exact syntax of words and vocabulary. Rather, their authority is derived from concepts and the individuals who delivered them; the most important of these individuals was Jesus Christ and the Spirit through which his words were communicated.[7] This is also the perspective through which the early fathers would have seen the authority of documents in the first two centuries of the church. Without having established a doctrine of inspiration, their notion of authority was derived from an office, much like the authority afforded a prophet.
The important distinction is still that the Spirit led the endeavor, however. Interestingly, though, inspiration was not the trump card that the modern church would think. Clement, a contemporary of the apostolic writers claimed that Paul wrote with “true inspiration” and then makes a similar claim for his own letters, though he does not go as far as equating himself with Paul, though they had received the same Spirit of inspiration. Clement sees that there is a stark contrast between his authority and that of Paul, apostolicity.[8] Ignatius claims to write according to the mind of God, but will not command other churches that are under the authority of other bishops because he lacks the apostolic authority of someone like Peter and Paul.[9] The major concern was that the document displayed at least proximity to apostolic authority, because it was believed that a post-Pentecost community would display a wide range of gifts, including prophecy[10], but not everyone was called to be an apostle.
“It seems, looking back into the first century context, the modern reader cannot superimpose notions of textual authority without violating the early patristic testimony on apostolic authority. For them, it was one thing to write with the inspiration of the Spirit, and quite another to write with the authority of an Apostle.”
While this was not the only criterion for canonization, a document definitely would not have been recognized had there been no justification for apostolicity. Apostolic authority, where not directly necessary, was certainly implied in other criteria for canonicity in the early church. Bruce identifies that the antiquity and the orthodoxy that was so often demanded of documents functioned merely as concerns directly subsidiary to apostolicity.[11] In fact, even the occasion of understanding traditional use or catholicity in a document would be difficult without citing apostolicity at this point in history. For instance, according to Walls, Papias’ claim for the authority of the Gospels rests in the apostolicity of the authors, “To guarantee the truth of traditions was to demonstrate that they derived from an apostolic or quasi-apostolic source.”[12]
Walls also argues that authenticity was certainly the intended meaning behind apostolicity, but the early fathers like Papias would have still been concerned with literary preservation.[13] The culture of the early church, at the very least, was drastically different from the conditions in which the Jews maintained oral tradition for centuries. Consequently, the impetus behind the concern for literary preservation after Christ was not much different from problems the Jews faced in Babylonian exile.
Gonzalez believes that the main impetus behind such literary preservation would have been the rebuttal of Marcion and the Gnostics, but still maintains that canonization was a process and the Gospels and Pauline corpus received approval long before some other documents.[14] This may be an indication that there was some flexibility in oral tradition that could not be afforded in a written tradition. For this reason, the early church may have been careful about endorsing documents too eagerly. Nonetheless, it is clear that the early church was biased toward certain documents and the basis of that preference was apostolicity.
The early church’s understanding of inspiration, as a doctrine, appears even more circular. According to Bruce, “Books were included in the canon, it is believed, because they were inspired; a book is known to be inspired because it is in the canon.”[15] The church, when forming the canon, would have had little use for the modern sense of the doctrine. By the time Athanasius made his list in the fourth century, there was already a strong preference for documents that held inspiration and authority, but based on apostolicity. It is evident that this preference was not only tied to apostolicity, but that the apostolic authority of certain documents was presumed long before councils were arguing about the Catholic Epistles. This bias was so prevalent that some cities had been questioning the last documents to be approved for decades. A survey of patristic material will prove this bias to an extent, but the scope of its effect is yet to be seen.
[1] F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1988), 270-271.
[2] Ibid., 273.
[3] Ibid., 263-264.
[4] This must also be different from our doctrine of inspiration at this point in history.
[5] Ibid., 264-265.
[6] Ibid., 265-266.
[7] See Ernst Von Dobschütz, “The Abandonment of the Canonical Idea.” The American Journal of Theology, 19 (July 1915): 416-429. This is the conclusion at which Dobschütz arrives during the turn of the 20th century, but for different reasons. He seems to prefer a more allegorical approach to Scripture, but traces the origin and abandonment of these principles in the catholic tradition nonetheless.
[8] 1 Clem. 47.3, 63.2 cf 59.1, 47.1
[9] To the Romans 8.3, 4.3
[10] A notion widely accepted as the biblical equivalent to θεόπνευστος, which was originally a pronouncement of the Old Testament and the Spirit of prophecy.
[11] Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 259.
[12] A.F. Walls, “Papias and Oral Tradition.” Vigiliae Christianae, 21 (September 1967): 138.
[13] Ibid., 139.
[14] Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper, 1984), 63-66.
[15] F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1988), 263.
A Theology of the Bible?
July 28, 2009
One of the first threads that we collaborated on here on the site was one about “Authority” in Christianity. It is something that all non-Roman Catholics need to think about. We went over some bible and sola scriptura stuff. But a few recent comment threads have begged the question again of what Scripture is by it’s nature.
The exchange is usually in agreement that Scripture is authoritative, and even inspired, but how it is and what that means is what we tend to disagree about. So I thought I’d give this another stab, though, as always, I make no claims to being infallable (or is it inerrant?) on this.
I want to start first with some apophaticism (or ‘negative’ theology). It might be easier to begin by asking what is Scripture not?
The Bible is NOT:
- A ‘pure’ reproduction of “God’s words” - That is, the writers were not transcribers. Our understanding of God’s Words in the bible are absolutely different than an Islamic understanding of Allah’s words in the Quran.
- A list of propositional truths about God’s actions or nature – There are two ways I mean this. A) I do not support the “univocity” of God’s “being” and our “being.” And so, even if we took a certain statement from Scripture concerning God to be “true”, it is to us only analagous to what God is in his essence. B) ‘A “proof-text” does not a proposition make’
- Inspired in the same way throughout the whole – Ad hoc pastoral direction in pseudo-pauline letters are not as authoritative as sustained theological reflection in, say, Romans or the Gospel of St. John
- A single massive book – It is a collection of books which where shaped canonically and which underwent a canonical history (btw, I happen to think the Hebrew Bible order makes the most sense theologically)
- In any way shape or form; Inerrant OR Infallable – The two are, after all, exactly the same thing. One for the ballsy fundamentalist, the other for the conservative Evangelical who wants to read the scholars. *more comments on this below*
- Authoritative – WHAT!? That is to say, the book, lying on a coffee table, does not in itself have authority. God exerts his authority through Scripture upon the reading community. The unread text has no authority.
I imagine that is enough of a bee’s nest to get me in trouble around here (with some). But I want to explore some other things which I feel must be accounted for in a theology of Scripture. I myself do not know how to reconcile them all together, nonetheless I feel that they all contribute to what Scripture IS. Though, it seems to me that what Scripture IS is not quite as important as what it DOES.
A theology of Scripture must include…
- The reality of the history of individual texts - To understand how God reveals himself to his people, and how Scripture is itself a “revelation” of God, then the idea of God’s inspiration of the biblical texts must be open to the embodied, political, checkered history of individual texts and texts as they relate to one another. For instance: It is standard scholarly opinion that the prophetic book of Isaiah is a redacted collection of three distinct books, written at three distinct times, collected, elaborated upon, and redacted together at a point in the late exilic/early post-exilic period. This is not to say that they do not contain a fair amount of the real words and trajectories of the prophet Isaiah, nor is it to say that as it stands it does not provide a coherent piece of “prophetic imagination,” nor is it to say that it should be interpreted chopped up to bits. It is to say that the complex history of the text as it came to it’s final shape as a unity, and as a book in the canon, must be accounted for in a theory of its “inspiration.” This is one example why I place the work of the Holy Spirit in the believing Community at the forefront of my understanding of what Scripture is.
- The relation of texts to one another – There are times, within the Scripture themselves, when one text purposely aims to alter the theological and/or historical claims of other Scriptural texts. A paradigmatic example of this is the history of Israel given to us by the Chronicler over and against many parts of the “deuteronimistic” history of Kings or the other related historical texts. Or the tensions in the NT between the chronology/theology of Acts and Paul’s own picture in his letters, or the corrective of the letter of James to the writings of St. Paul.
- The comparison of the hard texts themselves, via Textual Criticism – I am well aware that the vast majority of textual variants are minor and irrelevant. But not all are, and the method can only bring us “back” to the “earliest texts available” and not necessarily the “original text.” What does it mean to say that the book of Acts in Codex Bezae is inspired?
- The reality of “borrowing” from other texts/cultures/myths – What does it mean to say that Genesis is both inspired and that it is a creative and subversive retelling of other creation myths from other peoples?
- The ad hoc nature of certain parts of Scripture – As for instance in certain parts of St. Paul
- etc…
So far, this is all to say that what Scripture IS cannot be separated from where it has come from and how it came to be. Because, it seems to me, that what is of greatest importance in all this is how God reveals himself, and only secondarily how he does this in/through Scripture.
For a variety of complex reasons, most of which are probably beyond my comprehension, I have slowly come to place Holy Scripture into a larger framework of God’s revelation. Karl Barth’s 3-fold understanding of the Word of God has been helpful for me in reflection:
- The Word of God in/as Christ… - Jesus Christ himself is the logos of the Father. Especially in his death and resurrection, we get a the supreme picture of what God is and what his will for us is.
- …Witnessed to in Scripture… – If we want to use Scripture to understand God, it must be read through a Paschal lens
- …Preached in the community of faith – It comes to us as something handed down which transforms us and re-imagines us and the world.
So there it is. My completely unsystematic understanding of what it means to say that Scripture is inspired. It’s not pretty but it’s where I’m at. It is still the primary source of theological reflection for us as Christians, it is functions authoritatively in the Church, and when used faithfully can be counted on to unveil the God whom we worship. To use Anglican terminology, it is “sufficient unto salvation”
*epilogue* – If someone can give me a thorough and clear way to differentiate inerrancy and infallability I’ll give them $5. Adding qualifiers like “in matters of faith” as opposed to “matters of history” do not count since they can and have applied to both terms. As far as I can tell, these terms are used to safeguard the authority of Scripture in a community and are not actually relevant or true in regards to the nature of Scripture. Hence why a 5-fold Pentecostal can be fully recognized by a conservative Baptist. They are tied into the agreed formula of authority in Scripture, despite their wildly varying readings of Scripture. Their differences are no less wide than they are to Mainline understandings of Scripture, but as long as they have the “secret handshake” of “inerrancy” or “infallability” they get along. The more Evangelicals do exegesis, the more qualifiers they add to the terms. Just get rid of them!!!
To Tony: A Response
March 30, 2009
*This is a response to Tony’s post which he just put up. I was going to just put this in the comment box but I soon realized it was too long. So read his post first, comment if you feel like it, and then if you want you can read this.*
Tony:
I’ll try and mention a few things that have helped me and that I think might help you; but in the end there’s no way I would presume to “solve” all your worries.
I am not sure if you are attending any specific church but I would highly recommend trying out churches in the liturgical tradition. (by “try out” I don’t mean to reduce it to “what liturgy you like,” or “church shopping;” I assume that you would be searching out their doctrine and all, talking to priests/pastors) There are many reasons why I would suggest this but I would point out one first, which is to me the most important; namely the Eucharist as focus and climax of worship. The famous and late Orthodox historical theologian Jaroslav Pelikan said it like this –
“That as long as there have been Christians they have gathered around bread and wine; theories about it have changed, details on performance have changed, but that central practice has never changed.”
That at least, Tony, is some incredible continuity. Certainly preachers all have their own interpretations, but the celebration of the Eucharist, and all that it entails, is contiguous with the whole of Christian history. It has been a great help for me to slowly understand the Eucharist as more than symbolic – as the place where we offer ourselves up and are taken up by grace into the living presence of our Lord. And, you are sort of right with Catholics, but also sort of wrong. As our friend “quickbeamoffangorn” will tell you, since the de-latinization of the liturgy there has been a proliferation of different takes on the liturgy and there are even now some Catholics who have to “church shop” if they don’t want to be in a “spirit-of-Vatican II” kind of parish. For instance in downtown Minneapolis, if you are a liberal Catholic you go down to the Basilica, and if you are not you go to St. Olaf. Nonetheless, there is certainly more continuity within Roman Catholicism between parishes. Though different “orders” emphasize different parts of Catholicism.
This is why both “Word” (ie-preaching, but not restricted only to this) AND “Sacrament” (ie-Communion, Eucharist, Lord’s Supper etc…) are the two central aspects of a worship service. Now we were raised with a very low view of the Sacraments in the AG (but oddly, a high view of the worship service and an understanding that God met us in worship). To us they were merely symbolic, and indeed, the symbolism is a necessary part of what is going on; but I would say that there is much more to the Eucharist than symbolism. Be it “transubstantial,” “consubstantial,” or “real presence,” the great catholic traditions all assert that it is Jesus Christ himself coming to meet us in the celebration of Communion. I also want to comment on the problem of “multiple interpretations.” Because I think that we are heirs to worst kind of low protestantism which believes that reading the Bible is an individual affair. Just me and my bible, yep. That reason alone, I think, has been the the cause of so many divisions within the protestant tradition: This idea that ones interpretation is the be-all-end-all interpretation, which can only result in confusion (as you and I have experienced it) and division. “I’m gonna leave and read the Bible MY way” I see this for instance in the fall away groups within Anglicanism in the US. There are 40 some odd “Continuing Anglican” churches and I expect there will be 40 more one day.
Let me humbly suggest that bible reading is a Communal affair, and even a graced one at that. When you and I read the Scripture we should be reading it with Jerome and Chrysostom as much as we read it with Borg and Wright. That is not to say that I believe in the Roman Magisterium, or in controlling Bishops, or that the older the interpretation the better – many allegorical readings by some church fathers are way out of the park – or whatever; but that there is a sort of hubris of Time in thinking that where we are right now is the full truth. Certainly “historical” reads of Scripture have changed in huge ways over the last 300 years of “historical investigation” of Scripture and certainly in 100 years our readings will be different. Continuity in this regard is not so much about monolithic readings of Scripture (as if it’s just one big book anyway!) as it is the mutual submission and self-giving in interpretation. Wright calls this a “hermeneutic of love,” I call it “reading with the church.”
To sort of synthesize what I am trying to say I would say that it seems that you are still in a “bible-centered” Christianity; I have found a “Gospel-centered” Christianity to be that which puts the focus where it needs to be. That is one of the reasons that I am becoming Anglican as opposed to Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. As Anglicans, we try to put the great Creeds and the core of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection at the center of our Ecclesiology. You can be an anglo-catholic, Calvinist, Weslyan, liberal and it doesn’t mean that “your out.” That is also why I can say that I am a “whatever-I-am-now.” It’s not a lazy cop out of conviction, rather it is knowing that what I believe now at this very moment is not the whole of the Church. I can struggle in faith and even doubt certain doctrines (though I don’t want to just give up in doubt) because my belief is centered in prayer, worship and Eucharist; I’ve been baptized and filled up with the Holy Spirit.
I was just watching Star Wars and Princess Leia at one point says to her enemy “The tighter you grip the more star systems are going to slip through your fingers” That is sort of how I look at “truth” and “continuity.”
If I try and grip the truth, then fragments sort of pour out and I lose that certainty that I was looking for. But “knowing” is more like being held by truth than holding truth.
St. Paul said it outright – that we only see and know “in part,” but one day we will know fully even as we are fully known. So perhaps we are not reading the same book, but we serve the same Lord.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
