Imagine how it must have once been. Imagine what it would have been like to have read Scripture thinking it clear, thinking that it gave perspicuous answers to questions. Imagine what it must have been like in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during the development of Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxies. These theologians understood what the Biblical text meant within their cultural worlds and within the horizon of their experience; they knew that they could trust Scripture because it had authority.
Things are different now. Oh yes, we denizens of the early 21st century can still talk about the importance of Bible reading, of going to church, of participating in a community of faith. But things are different. We find the Bible today still to be a pretty important book to know something about; we think that reading it might help us. We might even think that if we read it enough, we might believe it. Yet for many, at least, there is a fissure between the text and our interpretation of it. We know that we have a wonderful text that has been handed down to us, but we are not at all sure how trustworthy at is - - well, at least on the details, and . . . well, even thought we can't agree exactly on what is a detail and what is not. It is obvious that Scripture no longer is trusted like it once was.
Every interpretation of something presupposes a pre-understanding of it. One cannot unpack the meaning of something if one does not already have some clue to what the thing is. This is true for books, for nature, and for people. I know, for instance, that Paul is in pain because I have experienced pain: I have a pre-understanding of what it is to be a person, to emit sounds, and to speak in certain ways. I, in fact, live my life pre-understanding what my life is all about. To use a famous example from Heidegger, I can tell what a hammer means in my life because I have a pre-understanding of how it connects to other things in life. There is a context of significances in which I live, and the hammer, its relation to nails, lumber, a roof, and to me, are all part of that context. Most of the time I do not think deeply about my dwelling pre-understandingly in my world.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries men and women pre-understood what the Bible meant. They knew it to be a text that one could trust, that had authority, that spoke the Word of God. Accordingly, one can speak about their ontological understanding of Scripture. It meant then, for many people, that upon which the ultimate signifincance for one's life was known. Thus, one was always already related to Scripture because Scripture always displayed itself as that upon which the proclamation of the meaning of our being depended. Given such a pre-understanding of being, it made sense lovingly to collect passages from the text which displayed truth. In those ages, truth came with a capital 'T' and Scripture was pre-understood as that which could proclaim this truth. It was within the pre-understanding of the be-ing of Scripture that the internal clarity of Scripture arose.
Things are quite different today. The pre-understanding of the text is not, for many, a pre-understanding that regards the text as authoritive, that allows that the text can judge the reader much more profoundly than the reader the text. Our pre-understanding regards the text within the context of texts arising from a particular region from which other texts emerged. The text is already known to be a document upon which the application of historical methods are fruitful. While there is a sense that the text has functional authority within certain religious traditions, it is not a document that can reach across these traditions and provide me with answers about my being and the meaning of my being. The text is therefore not understood as the kind of thing that could in principle give rise to the internal clarity of Scripture. There is no reason for the Scripture to be clear because it is not the kind of thing for which clarity is at issue.
The last five centuries have seen a fundamental shift in our pre-understandings of the Biblical text. These pre-understandings are not themselves the kind of thing that can be changed by evidence. In our day, as in former ones, pre-understandings are gifts to enjoy; they cannot be engineered; they cannot be worked up through our own piety or spirituality.
Luther said that we are ridden either by the devil or the Christ. Maybe this is true for pre-understandings. Of course, for Luther, the Word proclaimed brought the agency of the Holy Spirit into action. This agency, of course, could modify or transform the context of pre-understandings. Simply put, for the Reformers, there was always the sense that the Word of God could be spoken, that it could be found in the text, and that it was vouchsafed by the tradition. It is this pre-understanding that is no longer present in our day.
So how can we jump start an ontology of Scripture and Word when that ontology is no longer present? Does saying, "the Word is sufficient unto itself and unto its own interpretation" help us when there is no longer any pre-understanding of a Word that could be sufficient unto its own interpretation? Lutherans must always, of course, come back to the Word. This is true. But what happens when the lights go out on the context upon which the Word qua Word emerges? What happens then?
Here the answer must be firm and unwavering: the hermeneutical helplessness is itself a riding of the horse. No neutrality is possible here. The first question of the temptor, "did God say?" is also the last. We either find the Word or don't. The only thing that changes is where or where not we either find the Word or don't.
Kasemann argued that Protestantism has always been critical in its approach, and it was the critical approach Luther used against Catholicism that resulted in the doctrine of justification by grace through faith on account of Christ Crucified alone. The rosy picture you painted of pre-enlightenment trust of authority ignores that such simple faith was given to popes, councils, saints, indulgences, and so forth - the pre-enlightenment state was as capable of missing Christ as is the post-enlightenment state.
ReplyDeleteThe clarity of Scripture, and the Scripture interprets Scripture principles are among the finest results of the Reformation.
Nonetheless, I think you have carried your enthusiasm for them too far. Having argued so vehemently for a reclaiming of a pre-enlightenment regard for authority, the faithful should rightly ask "Why should the Authority of Scripture alone be lifted up, when the Holy Fathers of the Church, the Popes, the Saints, and so forth have been regarded with similar or superior authority in the past?" I doubt there is a way past this that is not itself a critical move, which then begs all the questions of the enlightenment all over again.
I have been trained as a theologian and as a scientist. I, and all now living in the West, are children of the Enlightenment. We may not be wiser than our 16th and 17th Century brothers and sisters, but we can never become them. We must find our way forward, surrounded by the great cloud of witness, trusting the mercy of Christ by whom through faith we are saved, not merely from the demonic spirits of our age, but of every age.
Thank you, Brendan, for this comment.
ReplyDeleteI want to be clear that I am not trying to repristinate by bringing back a former time. I have always liked Pelikan's phrase, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." I am not advocating we reconstitute a former time. Rather, what I am hoping to do is to retrieve that time within our present context. I think we share the desire to do this.
When I am using 'pre-understanding', I am thinking in a particular Heideggerian way about how we find ourselves in a world of meaningful entities, entities that have their significance oftentimes in connection with others. To talk about a pre-understand of the authority of the text is already to reference the text to a community for which it has authority. What I am trying to say here is that religious traditions - - of which Lutheran Christianity is one - - must have some basis in authority. For the tradition prior to Luther, it was Scripture, the decisions of Councils, and the proliferation of canon law and church teaching. For Luther and the Reformers it was Scripture itself - - though reference tacitly to a community. For post-Enlightenment, and particularly, post-modern thinkers, it is often personal experience over and against a particular backdrop of a scientific and practical understanding we have of the world, as well as an understanding we have of our religious tradition. What I cannot see is how we can move ahead by granting authority to experience, by making experience itself a source of theological reflection.
But to return to Scripture to find any authority is, of course, very difficult because of the fissure that has opened in our very "non-traditional" Protestant world between the text and its interpretation. Now the key to grounding authority again, I believe, is found in some retrieval of the internal clarity of Scripture, a retrieval that can speak to our time which, unlikie Barth's time, is not dominated by the hegemony of the Kantian paradigm. This is the direction I wish to move this.
You and I share a very high regard for science, and probably the areas of authority established within its practice. The question is how can meld the authority of science with that of a religious tradition that has traditionally found its authority in sola scriptura. (This is a fairly traditional problematic for theology, I think.) The question is how we can do this when we have come to the realization that the "scientific" methods that we have used to attempt to discern the neutral objectivity of the text are themselves found to bear all of the prejudgments, prejudice, and pre-understandings of the anxious self. Here is the issue.
I am saying that at this point, we either must choose Nietzsche or the text. And I am suggesting that the choice is not one a rational agent can finally make. This is pretty Lutheran too, I think.
Dennis
You wrote: "What I cannot see is how we can move ahead by granting authority to experience, by making experience itself a source of theological reflection."
ReplyDeleteYou also wrote: "The question is how we can do this when we have come to the realization that the "scientific" methods that we have used to attempt to discern the neutral objectivity of the text are themselves found to bear all of the prejudgments, prejudice, and pre-understandings of the anxious self."
The point regarding the imposition of the anxious self within the supposed intent of the author is conceded. Human experience can be overenthusiastic about its ability to evaluate theological matters.
Nonetheless, I think you are mistaken when you say that we cannot ascribe theological significance to human experience. So long as there is a basic commitment to the continuity of the content of faith and human experience - that we believe in what is most truly real - then human experience necessarily serves as a foil against enthusiastic misinterpretations of Scripture.
For example, the human experience of the death of a highly moral loved one challenges the perception that only good things happen to good people. Galileo's challenging of the Earth centered universe came from human experience, and forced theological re-evaluations on the part of the Church (and the scientific community of his day as well). The experience of the WWI and WWII was the driving force of the rebellion against Old Liberalism. Many other examples of theologically significant human experiences can be named.
Thus, when we discover these things, we ask, how can these things be? And so we return to a reflection upon Scripture and the living Tradition of the faith of the Church.
Your clarification concerning what you meant by pre-understandings seems well reasoned. However, I cannot see it supporting the theological challenges of the aforenamed human experiences, and think it in need of some revision. Nonetheless, these are new issues, and somewhat external to the points you largely addressed in my first post.
Brendan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. It is nice to have conversation.
I am not saying that human experience has no theological significance. I am saying that it is not a source of theological reflection and judgment. Following Tillich, I would argue that it is rather the medium of theological reflection and judgment. What I mean is that the answers to the fundamental questions of human existence are not going to be found by reflecting upon, or somehow bringing order to human experience as such. The examples you give are clearly occasions and motivation for theological reflection. I would hold that these examples are characteristic of the contemporary horizon into which the Word must be preached and within which theological reflection must proceed. The theological task is always to relate the horizon of the sources of theology to the horizon of the context into which it must speak. I do agree with you the reflection on the problem of evil or on suffering drives us to interpret newly what it means to proclaim the kerygma into the concrete situation. Reflection on semantics is very important in all of this, of course.
Semantics does indeed seem to be what is at issue here. Apparently I'm going to need to brush up on my Tillich. Thanks for the conversation to you as well.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment I have two questions for you Dennis.
ReplyDelete1. Are you taking the position that unless Scripture is internally clear it cannot legitimately be authoritative?
2. If you are suggesting that errors in Scripture are only apparent errors, not actual errors, are you saying that Scripture is inerrant?
Thanks,
Julie
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI would argue that the authority of Scripture arises because of who it witnesses to: The Triune God in creating, redeeming, and sustaining creation. But this does not cover the whole question. Many other books witness to this God but are not authoritative in this way. What makes this book authoritative? The answer here is that, among other books, it must most clearly witness to the Christ. Here is where the internal clarity of scripture is important.
But another question looms. Can a text (or group of texts) have internal clarity and be authoritative in the appropriate way without some kind of artifact relationship with the divine? If there is no causal chain at all linking the text to divine agency, then in what way might one be justified in holding to the perspicuity of Scripture?
As for inerrancy, the question pertains to that term;s identity conditions. How do we apply the term? Talking about an errant map is a different thing than talking about an errant friend. I do not think we want to say that scripture is 'errant' any more than we would want to say that Christ is sinful. However, that Jesus was a man among other men is, of course, true. And that the texts of Scripture are ancient texts among other ancient texts is also true. How can Jesus be a man among other men and not be sinful? This is hard to imagine, for it seems as if being a man entails being sinful - - it does not, of course. It is equally hard to imagine how a text from the ancient world can be inerrant, for being such a text seems to entail being historically-conditionally prone to error. The point is to claim, however, that it does not err.
Does this mean that one would not find factual errors in it? I don't think it means that. Analogously, does the claim that Jesus is sinless mean that he never gets angry, nor never even for a moment fails to God above all things? I don't think it quite means that.
Scripture, like Christ, clearly has two natures. All I want to do is pay serious attention to the divine one.
Ok, Dennis,
ReplyDeleteI think we are starting to get somewhere. Before commenting on your comments, I have a few more questions for clarification.
1. When you say “scripture” what do you mean?
I think I'm going to post my questions one at a time. And I would consider it a personal favor if the words "ontology" and "epistemology" did not appear in your response. :)
js
Julie,
ReplyDeleteBy 'scripture' I mean the 39 books of the Old Testament and 26 books of the New Testament redacted, collected and "canonized" over a period of centuries. These texts from another cultural horizon are capable of meaning something for us, and they make a claim on us.
I have not used 'ontology' or 'epistemology'.
Elsewhere you used the expression "leapfrog over the tradition." Given your definition of scripture as the 66 books of the canon, how could we even imagine leapfrogging over the tradition, since the canon itself is in a fundamental way a product of the tradition?
ReplyDeleteThanks for not using any words I had to look up.
js
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI fully agree that the 66 books of Scripture are a product of tradition. (I was taught the verbal ameneusis view, but don't hold it.) These testify to the Word of God incarnate historically, and these words about that Word are themselves the Word of God.
I do not want to "leapfrog" over the tradition. What I see happening in Protestant circles oftentimes, however, is that people want to leap back beyond the entire history of the interpretation and reception of the texts to some putative pristine unfiltered reading of those tests. For instance, on the homosexuality issue, people are very interested in what was said in the tradition of the Bible, but not so interested in what was held about what was said in by the tradition of the reception of the Bible. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Why privilege one "tradition" over the other?
Protestants have held that there is some fundamental discontinuity between the text and the tradition, for the text gets it correctly, but the tradition can err. The question is how to account for this. The perspicuity of Scripture is a traditional way by which text and tradition has been demarcated.
I just want to be consistent. If we are going to treat the 66 books as tradition, then we should treat the interpretive reception of them as tradition as well. This is very important when making claims about "what Christians believe."
In response to a question asking me to clarify the relationship between the internal clarity of scripture and its external obscurity, I write the following:
ReplyDeleteThere is no reason why Lutherans should leap frog past tradition to Scripture unless one holds to the internal clarity of scripture. One must hold this, I think, for systematic reasons, for without it Lutheran theology itself is incoherent. One has these options:
1)Scripture is not clear in itself, and the Holy Spirit is at work in the church progressively developing and/or clarifying the truths in scripture. One can thus not talk about sola scriptura.
2)Scripture is not clear in itself, tradition is a human endeavor suffering the hermeneutical waywardness of the Fall, and every reading of scripture is finally a subjectivized reading where the meaning of text must be indexed to the reader and her context.
3)Scripture is not clear in itself, tradition is a human endeavor, yet scripture has an objective meaning that can be discerned through proper application of scholarly tools. The differences in results in application of these tools is due to differences of scholarly judgment that can be adjudicated rationally. The key to discerning the meaning of scripture is academic scholarly preparation that can successfully discern the proper hermeneutic to apply in each exegetical situation. One can reach the meaning of scripture through scholarship.
4)Scripture is clear in itself, and the Holy Spirit is at work in Scripture interpreting itself. This is the notion of the internal clarity of scripture. All of scripture attests to the center of scripture, and the center of scripture informs the interpretation of all of the parts of scripture.
In philosophy we are often forced to accept positions because not to accept them ramifies to contradictions or other absurdities. Such absurdities are not immediately discerned, but are found only after thinking the situation through clearly. I am claiming that not to hold to the internal clarity of scripture basically ramifies to the absurdity of Lutherans leapfrogging past the tradition to encounter a text that in itself cannot have authority, because they authority has been lost in the subjectivization of the readings. It becomes a Nietzschean revel on the text - - though, of course, few would grasp this. To retrieve the internal clarity of scripture is to say that the text has authority in itself, that its meaning is ontologically present and accessible to human beings whose fallen epistemic capabilities can be affected by the Holy Spirit to see that meaning clearly - - while of course, not seeing it clearly. (The simul affects this as well. Under the conditions of existence redeemed life is always experienced ambiguously.)
I used the term ‘ontological’ to get at the notion of internal clarity that could exist without a human reading. I used the term ‘epistemic’ to get at the notion that every act of reading the text is an act that is done by a human being who is sinful and unclean, and who cannot free himself. All human reading of scripture must suffer from an apparent obscurity of the text. Scripture itself, in so far as it is an artifact of the divine, must be clear and proper, as clear and proper as all things are created by a loving God. (Of course, scripture can be given solely a von unten interpretation of its origins. This seems to be quite popular nowadays. The texts then were really about certain tribal issues 3000 years ago that we can read about today in postmodern urban America and find in them some relevance for us.)
In response to another question about the biblical hermeneutics of the early Barth, I write:
ReplyDeleteI have read Barth in his dialectical phase fairly deeply, and have always found him profound. However, at the end of the day, for Barth, the circle and tangent form an extensionless point, and Christ remains in heaven: finitium non capax infiniti. This is, of course, an extremely reasonable position to take. Lutherans, however, are saddled with the problem of really trying to follow Cyril et al and think through how the infinite really does get borne by the finite. The internal clarity of scripture plays in the same geography as the ubiquity of Christ. It must be a theological primitive because scripture, like Christ, really does have two natures. Now clearly I don’t want to be a monophysite. Thus, thinking through scripture’s ontological internal clarity does not mean that the finite goes away. It does, however, entail in good Lutheran fashion the genus maiestiticum whereby the attributes of the divine are communicated to the human. Really, I would not want to say that Scripture contains real errors any more than I would want to say that Jesus really sins. So did Jesus sin?
If you acknowledge that scripture has two natures, then surely you must also realize that the clarity of scripture cannot be a characteristic of its the human nature. On the one hand human nature of scripture is found in the human nature of its authors and in the human nature of those who have since passed scripture down to us and that part is unclear. On the other hand the divine nature of scripture is found in the revelation of God and that part is clear. St. Paul himself acknowledges the difference between these two in his own writings when he states "This comes from God" and again when he states "This is my own opinion."
ReplyDeleteIn the former case there is clarity(Christ provides the clarity). In the latter case there is unclarity. And although Saint Paul himself points out that clarity is a characteristic of the divine and not of the human... yet still today many still try to lump the two together by declaring that all scripture is "inerrant".
Rich Lindeman
Rich,
ReplyDeleteYes. Scripture’s clarity comes in that it interprets itself because the Holy Spirit is carried by the Word and thus interprets the Word in scriptures words. We cannot, however, be Nestorian or crypto-Nestorian and separate these natures. Lutherans always emphasize the unity of the divine and human. This is why we have the ubiquity of Christ and why we have held to the genus maiestiticum, that the attributes of the divine nature of Christ are communicate to the human nature of Christ. What I am advocating is reading the Scripture in a way that retrieves the perspicuity of scripture advanced in the heyday of Lutheran theology when its theology was coherent.
Right... I agree that the two natures should not be separated. Therefore I would not be inclined to say that "Scripture sins" just as I would be reluctant to say that "Jesus sins". Sin is a matter that pertains to the fallen human nature and although Christ himself became man He did not in partake of our fallen nature but rather came to save us from it. According to His human nature Jesus may have gotten lost on occassion in finding his way from one place to another, but according to His divine nature He did not sin. Similarly, scripture according to its human nature is not verbally inerrant, but it does not sin... which would be an anthropomorphism anyway.
ReplyDeleteRich Lindeman
Yes, I am using an anthropomorphism.
ReplyDeleteThe surprising thing to me about the discussion here is how it is that the notion of the internal clarity of scripture gets morphed into a discussion of the inerrancy of scripture. I would much prefer working with internal perspicuity rather than inerrancy.
I have said that if one were to want to apply the term ‘inerrant’ of all of Scripture, it must be applied as part of a “nova lingua”; the criterion of application of the term cannot be what it was in the “old tongue” of the earthly kingdom. I then said that just as one can say that ‘The man Christ created the world’ (perfectly legitimate for Luther because of supposition theory), so might one say that scripture is inerrant. (One wants to think a unity beyond merely adding ‘according to its divine nature.) These might appear to be verbal gymnastics and I have not through it deeply enough here, but it seems to me that the communicatio idiomatum and genus maiestaticum might be helpful for us.
This being said, one might say that “scripture gets lost on occasion finding its way from one place to another but according to its divine presentation of the Word does not err.” I am using your analogy here.
This is such a great discussion, I would love you to post your response to http://disputationes.blogspot.com/2008/11/pre-understanding-scripture.html. I will post my response to your response there.
The nature of scripture is found in the nature of Christ.
ReplyDeleteThe authority of scripture is found in the lordship of Christ.
The message of scripture is found in the gospel of Christ.
The clarity of scripture is found in the person of Christ.
The correct interpretation of scripture is found in union with Christ.
It’s really that simple.
Blessings!
Rich Lindeman
Nicely said, Rich, but I think, probably really not that simple, if we really analyze each assertion. However, I want to respond to your excellent post with a general point. For the past 150 years or so the default Lutheran academic position has been more or less along the trajectory you describe: The Being of Scripture is grounded in the Being of Christ. I really do not want to dispute this deeply here. However, I do want to raise an observation.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me so very much easier to claim that the Being of Scripture echos the Being of Christ in times when there is a general cultural acquaintance with the Being of Christ. (All I mean here is that people within culture in general have some idea of the identity conditions of 'Christ', they can specify the terms meaning.) In very pluralistic times like ours, however, there is not a shared cultural understanding of what Christ is. Notice the difficulty for one's encountering Christianity from the outside. They read a text whose authority is found in the One it proclaims. But does there not need to be some way of talking about an authority to the text itself, an authority which would give reason to take seriously the Christ proclaimed and the authority that Christ has?
We all know the phenomenon of authority. When Willard Van Orman Quine wrote a philosophy paper, it was always published. Why? Because Quine knew philosophy, and people expected him to have something important to say about it. However, when Joe Blow writes a similar paper, he is not published. Why? Because the expectation is that he would not have anything useful to contribute. The truth is that Joe does not have the proper authority to be taken seriously.
Now, of course, Joe could finally get published and gain authority. We see this phenomenon all of the time. However, my point is that he does not have authority out of the chute. He has to argue his views in the market place of philosophical ideas to gain the authority whereby people will begin listening to him.
Now what is the analogue for scripture in our time? Is it that people really do regard the text as a collection of old legends and tales, but somehow will read the text anyway and become captivated by its witness to Christ, and that Christ will thus become authoritative - - and that the text follows suite? Or is it that there is already some pre-understanding at work whereby people regard the text as a competent voice to witness to the Christ? Is it not the case that people tend in practice to take seriously the Christ figure revealed in the pages of the text because they already somehow and for some reason take the text as capable of testifying truly to the Christ figure?
When I do theology, I am always trying to achieve consistency and coherency. I do believe that positions that are inconsistent and incoherent cannot possibly be true. Something that cannot obtain in any possible world can clearly not obtain in this world. My push here to reexamine our views on scripture is due to a sense I have that we are not holding a consistent position, that finally, this horse won't run in the current postmodern marketplace of ideas.
The retrieval of the internal clarity of scripture is an attempt to shore up our theological theory. We simply cannot make sense of that witnessed to without making sense at the same time out of the witnessing to. That the Holy Spirit is involved in Scripture interpreting itself is axiomatic, of course.
All scripture points to Christ. Not just some all.
ReplyDeleteTo try to snatch the cradle out from under Christ and declare that some legs are not worthy does no honor to Christ. The cradle metaphor is not an excuse to discard scripture but to shows its total support for Christ.
Yet again this shows the illness of today's Lutheranism. Rampant intellectual denial of scripture under the guise of "Interpretation". What happens in the end is scripture is declared flawed but out wisdom and everyone's personal interpretation valid. Thus not all scripture points to Christ but our personal revelation and opinion does? Thus we get to create Christ in our own image and use it as a meter to edit scripture to our own liking. So who gets to be God there?
Read the Large Cat on the subject Luther declares scripture is the Holiest of holy things, The Apology warns again slick thought and injecting philosophy into scripture and ultimately Luther in his Thesis "The Letter and The Spirit rails against the kind of dissecting of scripture for hidden meanings (two natures) as is being put forth here.
Scripture is inerrant. We are not. Any effort to say otherwise and or blame it on the Spirit simply shows the latter true.
Rob Moskowitz
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteI think I am getting a handle on what you think is at stake in this debate. Let me know if I’ve got this, more or less, right.
Contemporary biblical scholarship has jettisoned many traditional interpretations of scripture in exchange for some seemingly more pure reading of the texts that is derived from placing the texts of scripture next to other ancient texts with similar styles and themes. This method of reading the Bible has had the effect, in some cases, of taking what was long held to be the plain sense of scripture and making it obscure. So, for instance, even if Paul seems to be clearly condemning homosexual activity, a careful reading of the literature of antiquity demonstrates that the language Paul is using actually has a different meaning than what the tradition has long held it to mean.
Apart from the sex issue, which brings all kinds of baggage with it, the result of this type of biblical scholarship is to take the Bible out of the hands of most Christians and give it, instead, to biblical scholars who, alone, can truly understand what the text is saying. In addition, this is an incoherent and inconsistent approach to take to reading the Bible because it wants to simultaneously hold that the Bible is essentially like all other ancient literature but also somehow reveals the truth about God, truth that is not historically or contextually conditioned.
Before I respond further, please let me know if this is an accurate reading of what you think the problem is.
Thanks,
Julie
Julie,
ReplyDeleteYou have stated what I think the problem is. Once we take the Bible wholly away from those who live out a pre-understood interpretation of it, and subsequently try to find out what it really says objectively, or says with respect to a particular hermeneutical/exegetical procedure, then it becomes a group of texts alongside alongside other ancient texts, and there is no good reason to claim that it is particularly revelatory.
Remember the Jesus seminar thinks that the historical Jesus may have been a wandering Cynic. Paul, of course, could spin this historical figure into the resurrected one. But how does the finding of these "objectivities" in the text - - supported by rationally justifiable evidence according to many - - help us in encountering the resurrected Lord of the Christian tradition?
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
ReplyDeleteHere are some thoughts of mine.
First, while it is true that Luther used the phrase “the word of God” for the Gospel promise, both he and the Confessions also used the phrase for the Holy Scriptures.
Second, while it is also true that Jesus is Lord of the Scriptures, it is only in the Scriptures where we meet this Jesus. If you say, “No, we also meet him in the audible word, then my answer is, “Yes, but where do we get that message we speak in the audible word? From the Scriptures.” If you say we meet him in the Sacraments, then again, I will agree, but ask, “Where do we learn about the Sacraments? In the Scriptures.” If you say we hear of the Gospel in the tradition of the Church, then I will answer, “Yes, but how do we know if those traditions are valid? From the Scriptures.” All too often, when a person says he sets Jesus over the Scriptures what he is in reality doing is setting his own subjective opinion or experience over the Christ of the Scriptures. Then, we are in line with the Zwickau prophets and not with Luther.
Third, to say that the Gospel judges Scripture is to put the cart before the horse, because where we get the Gospel is from the Scriptures. The Gospel cannot be both the formal and material principle of our theology unless we want to eventually lose the Gospel.
Fourth, we often taken enlightenment thinking and force it back on Luther. Luther knew nothing of the modern Historical Critical Method (which, basically is a dead method among scholars today). Take, for instance, his problem with James. It was not so much with the question: “Is James, as Scripture, errorless or not?” Rather, it was: “Should James even be in the canon of Scripture?” What Luther considered to be part of the canon was, for him, authoritative. He, his followers, and even his enemies, agreed that canonical Scripture was authoritative and thus a person must listen to it. This brings us to the importance of the Biblical canon for today. Why listen to what 1st or 2nd Timothy says (even if one does not believe they were authored by Paul)? The reason: Because they are canonical Scripture. If we are going to take Luther for our example, then 1st and 2nd Timothy are considered canonical.
Fifth, why do we think we have to go around showing people that Scripture has errors? I think the only reason for this is because we have been affected by enlightenment thinking more than we care to admit. All we have is the text. I, for one, would rather stand under the text and let it question me, than stand over it to question it.
Sixth, we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble when we play one Scripture off against another, thinking that one passage is more authoritative than another. One such way a person does this is to take such passages as Galatians 3:28 and say it undoes any other passages written by Paul which speak concerning an “order of creation.”
Finally, why do we spend so much time blasting the word ‘inerrant’? Inerrancy does not explain any theory of transmission of the text. To use this word does not mean one is a Biblicist, fundamentalist, or holds to a mechanical dictation theory. It does not mean one avoids textual criticism, or has answers to all the problems in the text. What it does mean is that the person believes Scripture is truthful. The authors did not lie, nor did they give out false information. They can be trusted. The other important positive thing about inerrancy is the 'intended purposes" of the writers. If the writers intended to write history, then they are correct. If the writers intended to write poetry, or parable, then they are correct and absolutely truthful in those areas according to the "rules of poetry and parable” as opposed to the “rules of history." So, if a writer intended to write poetry or parable, I would be stretching it to try to make it into history. On the other hand, if the writer was truly intending to write history, then I would be remiss to try to make it poetry or parable, or anything else.
Blessings in Christ,
Doug Morton
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteChrist is the the one that...
heals the sick
casts out demons
forgives sins
And proclaims the good news of God’s Kingdom
And it is in these acts that the word of Christ goes out into the world and it is in these ways that the authority of Christ finds place in peoples hearts.
It is not because someone has made a convincing argument about the authority of scripture.
Rich Lindeman
Rich,
ReplyDeleteBut it is not a question of making a convincing argument. It is that there is a pre-understanding at work whereby Scripture is prejudged to be capable of truthfully witnessing to the Christ.
What happens in this entire conversation is a particular kind of talking past each other between the two camps represented by the orthodox LCMS view of Scripture and the “received view” that many on this list accept. This latter position is sure that the LCMS types want to espouse a verbal plenary theory of Biblical inspiration making all propositions of scripture inerrant. The LCMS position often assumes that the other view does not regard scripture highly enough. In truth, I believe that the LCMS view understands that the received view itself tacitly affirms that scripture has some authority to proclaim Christ - - even if it does not mention it. After all, why would anyone think the Christ heals the sick, casts our demons and forgive sins if they did not regard the textual witness to this as being reliable? The only other alternative seems to be to claim that the image of Christ in Scripture creates an experience in us that somehow validates that Christ heals the sick, casts out demons, and forgives sins. Now the experience of the reader is somehow supposed to undergird Christ’s healing, casting, and forgiving.
Scripture witnesses truthfully to the Christ because it is inspired. (Now we can unpack that in many ways.) It is pretty Lutheran to claim that Scripture is inspired and hence can be a reliable witness to the Christ. (The Holy Spirit must be causally involved in all of this, of course.)
Doug,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your excellent post. I like very much your pointing out that the Gospel cannot be both the formal and material norm of theology. When the formal norm of scripture abandoned in favor of the material norm of Was treibt Christum, then an important dialectical tension within Lutheran tehology disappears. If it is all about the material norm, then why would scripture necessarily have some special status in enlightening us about that norm?
I have often thought how Nietzsche would have enjoyed our conversations. There can be no greater example of the will-to-power than individuals spinning scripture and tradition in the ways they want so that they can get out what the want: A Christ they like. This can happen even when the Christ they like is what we take to be the content of the Reformation breakthrough. We often miss our formal Nietzscheian commitments because they are hidden underneath the content of our traditional pieties.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteYou have used the term "artifact of the divine" in reference to Scripture.
Two questions:
1. What, precisely (with small words, if possible), do you mean by that expression? What would make the Bible an artifact of the divine? What kind of relationship would it have to have?
2. Are you saying that it is by virtue of being an artifact of the divine that Scripture derives its authority?
Thanks,
Julie
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteHere is the problem, as I see it. When 'Justification by grace through faith in Christ' becomes both the Formal and Material Norm or Principle the stage is set for eventually losing the Gospel. To describe Holy Scripture as the Formal Principle or Norm in theology is not to practice some kind of Aristotelian Scholasticism, but to safeguard the Gospel itself. Thus,it is really in service to the Gospel that one holds to Scripture as the Formal Principle or Norm of theology.
Doug
Julie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your question asking me what I might mean by 'artifact of the divine'. I mean by that phrase that there must be some causal relation between the text and the divine, i.e., that a complete explanation of the text's origination and character cannot be accomplished wholly naturalistically. This claim needs to be clarified, of course, with respect to claims of divine causality for other existing entities. I want to hold that some kind of causality is necessary for the origination of the Scriptures that is in principle different from the causality that could be adduced in explaining an eruption of a volcano. (In other words, I want to claim something more than what the Thomists called God's 'primary causality' in producing all things.)
The Bible could be an artifact of the divine if it were mechanically dictated. I am not claiming that. It could be an artifact of the divine if the divine were involved in the churchly selection process for inclusion in the canon. It could be such an artifact if the text were to be causally related in appropriate ways to foundational events of God's causal disclosure in history. For instance, were God actually to have been causally involved in the giving of the Ten Commandments, and we could trace an appropriate causal chain from that event to the events of writing and redacting the text, then one might make a claim for the scripture being a divine artifact. I don't want to take a position on this now; I am merely pointing out examples.
My present thinking on the issue is that the ability to specify, at least in principle, a causal connection of the appropriate kind between the text and the divine is necessary, though not sufficient, for the text's authority. See my article on the front page of this blog entitled the Internal Clarity of Scripture. I try to lay it out there. Thanks!
Doug,
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly that we abandon Scripture as the formal norm of theology at our peril.
(One of the problems is that Lutherans in North America often seem to think of the formal norm along the lines of Hodge and Warwick and not in the Aristotelian sense supposed by Lutheran orthodoxy. We seem not to be able to think the norm without getting into questions of epistemology. 'Inerrant' is really an epistemological term because late 19th century conservative American Protestants seemed to suppose that inerrancy was a necessary condition for reliability, a deeply epistemic notion.)
Without a formal norm in scripture, the material norm becomes connected to a de facto formal norm of the self and its experience. If our experience of Christ as Lord is that by which the objectivity of Christ is constituted, then we are ultimately playing Nietzsche's game. We just have to be able to see how deep this all runs. If the self is the final arbiter, then why not bring back the Gospel of Thomas, or any other books that speak to the subject and, in so doing, creates the resonance associated with the phenomenon of truth?
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteYou say that "Scripture witnesses truthfully to the Christ because it is inspired." But I think that statement is putting the cart ahead of the horse. First of all it was Holy men of God that were inspired as each in their own way acknowledged the lordship of Jesus Christ. I often have no problem at all in affirming with those in the LCMS group that the testimony of St. Paul is faithful or that the testimony of St. Luke is faithful or that the testimony of St. James is faithful. For each one of these the inspiration was Christ in them.
People who talk about the "inspiration of scripture" generally go in one of two directions. On the one extreme is the group(many in LCMS included) that insists that Christ is not Lord unless there is complete verbal agreement between between the authors of scripture and complete historical and scientific accuracy in the resulting text. On the other extreme are others(enthusiasts?) who insist that Christ is not Lord unless "inspiration of scripture" means that God is speaking dirctly to them in miraculous ways with every word that is written.
As for myself, as I submit to the lordship of Christ and am drawn to the word of God. I read the scriptures and listen for the testimony of faithful men of God that have been inspired by the lordship of Christ. And beyond that I look for the inspiration of scripture itself which is often revealed by comparing the faithful testimony of its authors and sometimes revealed in God speaking directly to me through its pages.
Rich Lindeman
Rich,
ReplyDeleteThe debate is basically one as to what concept should serve as a logical primitives within theological theory. You claim that 'the Lordship of Christ' is such a primitive. If I am not misunderstanding you, you are claiming that Scripture is Scripture in so far as it attests to the Lordship of Christ.
While I worry about in making that notion a theological primitive in our time is that 'the Lordship of Christ' is not a stable concept; its content is a function of those doing the thinking or experiencing.
Now we might say that "the Lordship of Christ" must be understood on the basis of the Lutheran Confessions. But notice that the Lutheran Confessions were thought to be true quia (because) they are a faithful expatiation of Scripture. They were not thought to be true because they conform to, or are grounded in, our experience of Christ as Christ.
When the church began, the authority rested in the experience of Christ and the testimony of the early accounts of Christ. As preachers and teachers asserted various Christs, however, the tradition soon developed safeguards to curb what were proper understandings of Christ's lordship and what were improper ones. For instance, Gnostic Christs were rejected. What developed were the norms of creed, scripture, and apostolic succession/hierarchy. Not any Joe Blow's experience or notion of the 'Lordship of Christ' was accepted, the concept had to be of an appropriate type. What was appropriate was determined by developing standards of theological normativity found in scripture, creed, and ecclesiastical structure.
So they problem is a very old one. We must always remeber to look back atchurch history so that we don't forget what we once knew.
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteIt may very well be that the early church determined to regulate personal experiences of Christ by their choices in determining canon of scripture and in the formation of creeds, etc... However, that does not in any way negate the nature of the scriptures that we now have which are firmly grounded in the lordship of Jesus Christ. Nor does it negate in any way the possibility of new personal experiences of the lordship of Christ.
The clarity of scripture is found in the person of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, to really understand the writings of Saint Paul one must personally by faith see and experience Jesus Christ crucified and acknowledge that the one crucified is lord and that in His lordship much else must be put to death in our lives.
And to really understand the writings of Saint John one must personally by faith see and experience Jesus Christ as the one that was lord when heaven and earth were first created and is lord now even as He is love and light.
And to really understand the writings of Saint Matthew one must personally by faith see and experience by faith that Jesus Christ our Lord is truly in His person the fulfillment of all that God has promised in times past.
And yet none of this can negate the fact that Jesus Christ is my own personal lord and savior in unique ways in my life. And so there is the added dynamic at work that God indeed declares His word and will to me at times directly through His word speaking personally to me.
Those who attempt to find the clarity and meaning in scripture by declaring it mechanically inerrant I believe are on a fools quest. In this way they turn scripture itself as a stumbling block when in fact the only stumbling block can be that Jesus Christ is lord.
Rich,
ReplyDeleteI know that you are not saying this, but I want everyone to know here that I am not advocating a mechanically inerrant view of Scripture.
When you say that it is requisite for one's understanding of Scripture that one "personally by faith see and experience by faith that Jesus Christ is our Lord," does that not commit you to the position that only the regenerate can properly do theology? But I have always supposed that theology is an academic discipline, and that it is thus possible for the unregenerate to do theology.
Belief is obviously God's gift to us, but is understanding Scripture wholly a gift of God? Does Scripture interpreting itself through the activity of the Holy Spirit entail that only the believer can understand the text? Again, I am concerned that the objectivity of the external Word available in Scripture becomes a Word only in and for faith. This seems to me to be more of a classical Reformed view than a Lutheran one, for faith becomes ingredient in the Word's objectivity.
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteNo, of course scripture does not speak in a "faith language" or in a hidden code that only believers can understand. The language and the text speaks plainly in the language of common man. So also is rejected the thought that the Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew are separate languages unto themselves. It is established forinstance that the Greek of the NT is koine. It is very much the common language and many well intending translators fall into the trap into thinking it is something other.
But what I am saying is that while the language is plain there is indeed some clarity of scripture that is also imparten by faith itself. A whale hunter understands the story of Moby Dick perhaps much better than a landlubber in some way although all can read and appreciate the story.
Rich,
ReplyDeleteI agree that a pre-understanding of the text is useful for an understanding of the text. One cannot grasp that which is wholly foreign.
I want to be clear about what you are claiming: You are saying that Scripture is not clear, but Christ is, right?
Two things:
ReplyDelete1. When the reformers said “sola scriptura” did they mean the 66 books of the canon?
2. Since we’re all about pan-Lutheran endeavors, let us be equal opportunity in critique. I am quite certain I heard heresy preached at my grandmother’s funeral in her Wisconsin Synod Church. I have no doubt there is heresy preached by some of the brothers in Missouri. And LCMC . . . well . . . it would seem LCMC is no immune either.
Julie
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteYes, of course scripture is clear. It is abundantly clear in proclaiming Jesus Christ as lord. Now of course there are a huge number of areas of interest to us in which scripture is not clear at all or in which scripture is silent. But Jesus Christ Himself is abundantly clear in scripture and His lordship is mightily proclaimed in it.
And it is the task of the preacher to preach Christ. In fact, the pastor that preaches Jesus Christ and Christ alone does very well and should not be faulted. But once we preachers open our mouths it seems that all kinds of things go flying out that we might consider as matters tangent to Christ but which in fact are not Christ.
In NT times both polygamy and slavery were still commonly practiced. But the NT scriptures are remarkable silent or at best unclear on these two matters that you or I would probably consider to be of very great significance. Instead the focus of the church is upon preaching Jesus Christ. (with an interesting caveats that elders of the church should be husbands of one wife and that Philemon should consider setting Onessimus free as a brother in Christ)
Incredibly ruthless politics is going on in the world around them with Pontius Pilate and Caesar, but these are not the focus of preaching either. The church continues to proclaim Jesus Christ and Him alone.
One of the problems that we experience in the church today is that far too many tangents find their way into sermons when our real task is to preach Jesus Christ as lord.
Rich Lindeman
Rich,
ReplyDeleteMy Dr. Vater, George Forell, used to say, "You know, Denny, that the Church only does one thing well - - when it does it well. Other organizations build better hospitals and schools, run better counseling agencies, and feed people more efficiently. The only thing that the Church is positioned to do well is preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. So why does it not want to do that thing?"
Why indeed.
The interesting thing about the conversation qw have been having is that I agree with all who want to talk about the centrality and normativity of Christ. Was Treibt Chrstum is the material principle for all Lutheran theology. What I have wanted to point out is that we work with a particular “pre-understanding of Scripture” - - that was the title of the blog piece from which this discussion descended - - that allows us to confidently locate and presuppose the material norm. In my opinion, however, we often simply overlook what we presuppose. What we presuppose is that the Bible has some kind of reliability in terms of presenting us with this material norm. We did not simply start presupposing Christ as the material norm from a immediacy of experience. It was not the case that all of a sudden for us we were convinced that what was central to life was the proclaimed Christ. We did not have a Road to Damascus experience, I think. What we did do was encounter the presupposition of the material norm in a context of an interpretive community (preachers, teachers, and fellow believers) who taught us this thing. This interpretive community has been, for Lutherans, always interpreting Scripture as seen through the lens of the Confessions (faithful expositions of Scripture) and tradition - - though we Lutherans probably have not emphasized the latter enough. Lutherans historically have read their Bibles and found the Christ at the center. I think this places a centrality and focus on Scripture that the old Lutheran dogmaticians clearly recognized, but that we, for myriad reasons, seem now to want to discount.
ReplyDeleteScripture is not identical with the Word of God. The only identity statement possible is ‘the second person of 'hte Trinity = the Word of God'. But in the words of Scripture, in the words about the Word of God, the Word of God is available. Scripture thus has the property of being the Word of God, though it is not identical to it. This is an ‘is’ of attribution, not an ‘is’ of identity. All I have wanted to say is that we run into theological incoherencies if we don’t recognize Scripture as having a special authoritative status in reliably witnessing to the Word of God. This authoritative status makes Scripture the Word of God in a way that the writings of Maximus the Confessor or Leontius of Byzantium are not. Systematically, we must deal with this “authoritative gap” in some way. My suggestion is that we go back to our tradition and try to recover some of the thesaurus Lutherani, the Lutheran “toolkit” that got this building put together in the first place.
Given that Lutheran theology worked with the notion of the internal clarity of Scripture, I think the onus is not really on me to argue for it, but on all of those who want to depart from this tradition and argue against it. The real question should be this: “Why, for Lutherans, is the internal clarity of Scripture something we ought not hold?”
Dennis--
ReplyDeleteI've gone back and re-read your post on the internal clarity of scripture. Then I re-read an essay by Forde in which he sets forth the "law/gospel" methodology in contrast to a "verbal inspiration" methodology in granting authority to scripture. The entire essay is posted here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcxw5gn_11htwtphhv
"Law/Gospel" means Scripture is an EVENT. The relevant paragraph follows.
Now what does this law-gospel method mean? It means first of all that I have no a priori ideas about what God’s Word is or what it would have to be. I cannot start with my ideas of what the Word of God is or what it would have to and then try to make the scripture fit this idea. It means that at the beginning I can only hear this thing which some men call the Word of God and then experience what it does to me and says to me, and from this hearing and experiencing learn what the Word of God really is. The Word of God is not a thing, not a proposition, it is an event.
He goes on to write that the text pronounces judgment under the law which then allows for hearing the gospel.
Could the "internal clarity" of Scripture be reclaimed by simply letting the words judge and condemn under the law and at the same time let them give life through the gospel promise?
I think much of the search for the text's "meaning" is merely a desire to either escape from or misuse the law.
What follows is a relevant paragraph from Forde's "The Law-Gospel Debate."
“What faith should do, however, is enable man to make the distinction between law and gospel. Apart from faith man is bound to look for his own “gospel” in the law and thus to refuse to accept law for what it is. In faith man learns to distinguish law from gospel and thus to allow law to be used in its proper manner. Faith sees that man apart from faith misuses the law, which then becomes for him the source of either despair or presumption. Faith sees that man’s real problem with the law is that in unfaith he attempts to use what knowledge he has to gain heaven for himself, or to tyrannize his fellow men, or perhaps even to attempt to bring in a “heaven” on earth in the form of some sort of utopia. Faith, because it trusts totally in God’s grace, sees that all these uses are in fact misuses of the law because they are presumptuous. They attempt to use the law for “supernatural” rather than “natural” ends. They extend law beyond its intent. What faith brings to man’s knowledge of the law is the same thing it always brings: healing. Faith heals because it sets the proper limits to law. It prohibits supernatural pretension and constantly guards against despair.
(Gerhardt Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate, p. 229-230)
Could we say, then, that to argue about the text's "meaning" (the content of information carried by the words) versus what the text "says" (the words themselves delivered to us), is not an activity of faith?
It seems to me that the clarity of Scripture is not about its "content" but about its "confrontation." But then, I suppose, that is only because I have a pre-understanding of the "content" of scripture as the "Word of God" which "confronts" me with the person of Christ.
Rich,
ReplyDeleteYou state: "And it is the task of the preacher to preach Christ. In fact, the pastor that preaches Jesus Christ and Christ alone does very well and should not be faulted. But once we preachers open our mouths it seems that all kinds of things go flying out that we might consider as matters tangent to Christ but which in fact are not Christ."
On one hand, I agree with this completely. Luther, at some points, clearly says the same kind of thing. However, I worry that we sometimes lose a bit of the dialectical tension between law and gospel. Though I am not saying you do this, Rich, I think the general tendency within Lutheran circles is towards antinomianism. It is useful sometimes to look at what Luther said about this all-too-facile temptation:
"They have devised for themselves a new method whereby one is to preach grace first and then the revelation of wrath. The word “law” is not to be heard or spoken. This is a nice little toy from which they derive much pleasure. They claim they can fit the entire Scripture into this pattern and thus they become the light of the world. That is the meaning they foist on St. Paul in Romans 1 [:18]. But they fail to see that he teaches just the opposite. First he calls attention to the wrath of God from heaven and makes all the world sinners and guilty before God; then, after they have become sinners, he teaches them how to obtain mercy and be justified. That is what the first three chapters powerfully and clearly demonstrate. It is also indicative of a particular blindness and stupidity when they claim that the revelation of God’s wrath is something different from the law. This is, of course, impossible, for the manifestation of wrath is the law when it is acknowledged and felt, just as St. Paul says, “The law brings wrath” [Rom. 4:15]. So haven’t they fixed things smartly when they abolish the law and yet teach it by proclaiming the revelation of wrath?" (LW 47:113-14)
Of course, when all of Scripture is about Christ, and Scripture is "tangential" on matters of law, and natural law is no longer in vogue, it does become difficult to give a grounding to law. Let us face the facts: When the Scripture is understood to be reliable only on matters of preaching Christ, then it is natural to slide to antinomianism, or to try to do exactly what the last ELCA sexuality study did: Derive a sexual ethic out of Second Article concerns. Clearly, ethics are different if they are formulate on the ground of the free grace of Christ rather than upon the eternal demand of the law.
Thanks for the conversation!
John writes: "You say you are neither holding to inerrancy nor attacking it. May I assume that you are also neither holding to historic episcopacy nor attacking it?
ReplyDeleteI hold to neither and attack both, and did so in the November ILT newsletter. To preach the gospel without attacking false gospels is impossible."
In response I wish to point out that I have written and spoken about biblioidolatry in the past, and I know that inerrancy can become a biblioidolatry. This being said, I think an analysis of the contemporary Lutheran horizon here in North America does not show that biblioidolatry is generally regnant. For the fledgling LCMC, the problem is neither the idolatry of Bible nor historical episcopacy. The problem, as I see it, is a lack of attention to theological warrants and backings that can easily, in the course of time, turn enthusiasm into pure Nietzscheanism. This structural accommodation to Nietzsche can happen while all the surface pieties remain the same - - at least in the beginning. But just as an undetected cancer, there will be a time when the entire organism gets very sick, and terminally so.
I am not pointing fingers, nor claiming that anyone is doing anything wrong. It is not the kind of thing that one person can control. All I am saying is that there shall be extreme pressure within LCMC congregations over the next decades to fade into the fabric of mainline Protestant denominationalism, a move already made by much of the ELCA. Braaten and Jenson wanted to halt this face by adopting the idolatry of the historic episcopate. It clearly doesn’t fit Lutheran DNA. I think a more effective means of halting the fade is to adopt a higher view on Scripture. This fits the Lutheran DNA. Can this become idolatrous? Yes, clearly so. Will it? Well, we all might have something to say about that.
I think there is something right for Lutherans about inerrancy and something wrong. (I say this given what I have already said about the nova lingua of theology that would allow predication of ‘inerrancy’ within certain contexts.) I can’t see much right for Lutherans about the historic episcopacy.
If we are in agreement concerning the clarity of scripture then that certainly is a huge step in the right direction for LCMC. Having identified the clarity of scripture the church then needs to proclaim it loudly and clearly and defend its proclamation at all costs. It was for this reason that the early creeds were formed: to defend against heresies that threatened the clear proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord.
ReplyDeleteI have already stated that a precise definition of sin is not a part of the clarity of scripture. However, it is certainly true that sin exists. To state that sin didn’t exist would run directly counter to the ability of the church to proclaim that the Lordship of Jesus Christ is good news. And so in the church we must acknowledge the existence of sin so that the good news that Jesus is Lord might be clearly proclaimed. And there are also times when we must call sin by name even as Satan himself was named by Jesus as seen falling from heaven as the disciples went out to proclaim the Good News.
But now comes an important question: When does it become advantageous for the proclamation of the Gospel to name sin? In scripture the practices of polygamy and slavery are referred to numerous times but they are never named as sin. Should we then fault the apostles for this glaring omission? Or should we instead acknowledge their great wisdom in leaving this matter of naming sin to the governing authorities and going on with their clear task of proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord?
In matters of human sexuality I personally think that St. Paul’s advice is still good and gives us the guidance that we need for our contemporary issues. It may not be part of the clarity of scripture when St. Paul says that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, but through these words of instruction (without actually naming sin) he at least give some measure of protection to the clear proclamation of Christ as Lord in a world that is utterly confused about the morality issues of human sexuality.
The fact that we live in a democracy today also makes the matter of naming sin a complicated matter. On the one hand, as a citizen of the Kingdom of God it is my primary task to name Jesus Christ as Lord and proclaim that as good news. On the other hand, as a citizen in a democracy it is my duty to assist government in fulfilling its duty of naming sin and punishing sinners. It is important for me to strive to remember this separation of my duties and not get them mixed up.
Rich Lindeman
Rich,
ReplyDeleteI am probably missing something in your post, but are you saying that "as a citizen of the kingdom of God your primary task is to proclaim Christ" and "as a citizen in a democracy you task is to name sin and punish sinners?" If you are saying this, I would have to disagree. To preach God's Word is to proclaim God's law and gospel. As a citizen of the kingdom of God we clearly have a duty to name sin. 'Sin' is, after all, a theological term; it is an implicitly relational term that connects to God. As an American citizen, I do not sin, no matter what I do. However, I might break the law. In fact, 'sin' is not a term that connects to our moral discourse at all. It links only to transgression against the divine, and so properly implied only within theological contexts. In other words, it is a necessary truth that all sinning is sinning against God.
The claim "Jesus is Lord" cannot be made outside of faith. That is true. Dennis, if I have understood him, is struggling to reach out to those for whom Jesus is not Lord and for whom the Bible is not even as reliable as a telephone directory.
ReplyDeleteIn order for us to converse with those folks, we must recognize that "reliability" has both logical and historical components, as Dennis has been saying. To elaborate:
Many Bible scholars, not even Christian, let alone Lutheran, agree that there was a man, Jesus of Nazareth. Some would go so far as to say there is some reliability in the claim that Jesus' mother's name was Mary.
I recall that one, a Jewish scholar, even agreed that Jesus was raised from the dead, but then went on to say that there are other reports of other people being raised from the dead as well. So far so good. So, what makes Jesus so special, or the claims of the Bible that the death and resurrection of Jesus was special?
These students of the New Testament and its' environment are not making these claims on the basis of revealed faith, but on the basis of their research. They are dealing with degrees of reliability, which is a relative kind of thing. To continue ....
When we make the move from the Jesus of history to the Christ of faith, we have a riddle on our hands. As Dennis has agreed, this focuses the problem.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said something about this too. It went something like this: "the necessary truths of faith cannot be based upon the shifting sands of historical research." Lessing, a leader of the German Enlightenment, had clearly given up on the Bible as anything more than a collection of ancient literature. Revealed religion is bunk. We have to figure it out on our own and we can do it because we are the bourgeosie "Enlightened."
That said, I still don't know where we are with Dennis' program of retrieval. Are we deep sea diving for something that is really down there somewhere, or, are we just talking past each other?
John Fahning
John,
ReplyDeleteYou completely see the problem. Now to a couple of questions:
I have used the term ‘reliable’ which - - as Julie knows – has a definite meaning in the field of epistemology (discourse about what we mean when we claim to know, and how we would ever know that we knew). To say that the texts are reliable would be to say that they at least weakly justify the assertion that ‘Jesus is Lord” (whatever we might precisely mean by that locution). To weakly justify that claim J (Jesus is Lord) is to claim that there is evidence such that one is not irrational in asserting J. Clearly, Lutherans used the biblical text evidentially traditionally. Just read Baier, Quenstedt, Hollaz, Gerhard, et al.
To claim that Scripture S would strongly justify J would however be to claim that person P reading S would be irrational not to believe J. While I have met people who would claim that it is so clear in the Bible how can anyone not believe, this sentiment is not widely shared. Thus, I would assume all of us would concur that if the Bible is to justify (this is an epistemic term as well) believe J, then it can do this only weakly. So let us say that S weakly, but not strongly justifies J for P.
Now the question at issue: Do members of this group really want to reject the weak justification of J by S for P? Do they want to say that the Bible provides no evidence that claims of Christ’s lordship are true? I raise this as a serious question because to say “for faith” can devolve exactly to that statement.
Imagine person P encountering the text S with the full knowledge that it is a number of interesting texts from another time dealing with a wide variety of issues. Imagine that P knows that S was read by a group G as asserting J, that P knows that there is nothing intrinsic to S such that it ought to have been read by G in asserting J, and that P decides to read S that way anyway. Or, taking seriously the “for faith” aspect here, that P cannot help but read it that way anyway. We might call P’s reading of S a reading “in faith,” but “faith” here has a pretty dismal contour. In fact it conjures people reading texts in a prejudicial way, in a way that goes against how we, steering by our best epistemic lights, ought so to read them.
So my question is this. There was once a Dane named after a graveyard. Soren Kierkegaard taught us all that to have faith is to leap into the absurd. This is great stuff when the cultural ethos is still Christians but the intellectuals are having problems. My friends, a leap into the absurd no longer works when the general cultural ethos is not Christian. Why would I want to have students leap into the absurd with me? What kind of epistemic abuse is that?
Now, I am not saying we decide to have faith, or that these movements of the spirit are ultimately in our control. I am saying that beings snatched by God into faith does include the snatching of our cognitive faculties, and if we don’t have clarity on these issues we simply will not see vast numbers of people being so snatched (raptus).