Other Indispensable Criteria of Theological Adequacy

29 Pages·2014·12.42 MB·English

PART III
Other Indispensable
Criteria of Theological
Adequacy

CHAPTER 7
Is It Biblical?
We seek a life-giving and liberating approach to the Bible and its normative
status. We have already said a good deal about the authority and interpretation of
scripture in the chapter on revelation and faith, but we need now to explore fur-
ther what it means for the scripture to be normative. Speaking descriptively, for
Christians an adequate theology or a defensible theological stance on any partic-
ular matter must be biblical. This is not the most fundamental of theological
norms, however, since the Bible is not in and of itself the Word of Goel and not
persistently liberating. It must therefore be read both reverently and critically if
it is to give life. I have already argued that the question Is it founded in Jesus
Christ? is a more basic criterion of theological adequacy for Christians. There is
a sense in which, as Karl Barth said, "theology begins and ends with Jesus
Christ," in that he is, as Jon Sobrino has said, norma normans non normata (the
norm which norms other norms and is not normed by any higher norm).1 While
Christians have most often given scripture this status,2 I would contend (with
many others) that not the Bible, but Christ, is rock bottom for a liberative Chris-
tian theology. Scripture has secondary normative status for us as Christians pre-
cisely because the Bible is our primary witness to Jesus Christ, who is himself,'
in his life, death, and resurrection, the revelation and Word of Goel made flesh
(Jn I: 14 ). Scripture is, or better, becomes again and again, Word of Goel by the
Spirit's power, in that it witnesses to the decisive events of God's revelation. At
the same time we have to recognize that the Bible is our first tangible source for
theology, in that we know Jesus Christ in and through it. Those who argue for
scripture as the norma normans have this on their side: that in a certain practical
sense, we begin concretely with the Bible.
We might initially consider what the scripture itself says about scripture. No
Hebrew term translated specifically as scripture is ever used in the Hebrew Bible
by its own authors, though we sometimes hear of "scrolls" (e.g., Jer 36:2; Ezra
6:2) and frequently of "the book," especially the "book of Moses," the "book of
the law," or the "book of the covenant" (e.g., Deut 29:21; 31: 26; 2 Kgs 23:21;
213
214 Other Indispensable Criteria of Theological Adequacy
2 Chr 25:4; Ezra 6: 18; Neh 13: I; etc.). New Testament texts, of course, do not
refer to themselves as "scriptures" since they were not written as scripture. But
they do refer frequently to the Hebrew scriptures (graphai) and to the "book"
(/Jiblia, from which the term "Bible" comes, especially, again, "book of Moses,"
"book of the law,'' and "book of the prophet," e.g., Mk 12:26; Gal 3: IO; Lk 4: 17),
books that came to be regard eel by Christians as the "Old Testament." Prophetic
texts are cited (whether or not the word "scripture" is used) as foretelling aspects
of Jesus' Ii fe in order to identify him as the expected anointed one (e.g., Mt I :22-
23; Lk 24:27; I Cor 15:3). Very frequently the term "scripture(s)" is found in the
New Testament on the lips of Jesus, and there is every reason to believe that
Jesus knew the scriptures intimately and cited them often (e.g., Mk 12: IO; Mt
21: 42; Lk 24:45; Jn 5:39). Even more numerous are the instances of the word
"written" in both testaments. In the story of Jesus' temptation (Mt 4; Lk 4) he
repeatedly replies to Satan: "it is written .. .. " Evidently, Jesus and his disciples,
and the whole religious milieu of the time, lived out of the scriptures and
regarded them with great reverence as communicating God's will and truth to the
people. With reference to the Hebrew scriptures, we find in the Second Epistle
of Timothy a doctrine of scriptural inspiration: "All scripture is inspired by God
and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righ-
teousness" (2 Tim 3: 16). On the other hand, Jesus sometimes relativizes the writ-
ten word: "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times .... But I
say to you ..." (Mt 5:21-22; etc.). Here the texts place the authority of Jesus
above that of the scriptures. Jesus himself becomes the norma normans. Accord-
ing to Mark 11 :28-29, Jesus refuses to provide scriptural authority for what he is
doing. Sometimes, "human traditions" or "traditions of the elders" are referred
to, suggesting that some of the details of the law, as interpreted by the Pharisees,
are human and not divine in origin (e.g., Mk 7:8; Mt 15:2, 6). The first Chris-
tians, after the resurrection, still quoted the Hebrew scriptures constantly, yet
with a certain freedom in relation to them. Paul, for example, tells the Christians
at Corinth that they themselves are "a letter of Christ .. . written not with ink but
with the Spirit of the living Goel, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human
hearts." He goes on to say, using a play on words, that "the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:2-3, 6). Jesus and his first followers, then, refused to
give ultimate authority to written words, even words of scripture, or to long-held
traditions, for final authority belongs only to the living God.3
A Posteriori
That Christian theology must be biblical, and that the Bible is a secondary
norm, is not an a priori principle or axiom. As we said in the case of christology,
it would be impossible to say, in the abstract, prior to any engagement with
Christian faith or theology, how theology should proceed, just as it would be
Is II Bi/Jlical? 215
impossible to say, a priori, how geology, history, physics, or sociology should
proceed prior to some engagement with these disciplines and their objects of
inquiry.4 Rather, to say that theology must be biblical is to state an a posteriori
methodological precept. It is an after-the-fact observation about actual Christian
theological discourse. Not that this is a simple matter of observing any theolog-
ical discussion and making normative whatever is going on, since, no doubt, the-
ological discussion often proceeds in inappropriate ways. There is a difference
between descriptive and normative discussion. Yet it is only from within actual
engagement with Christian faith and theology that it becomes evident that Chris-
tian theology is appropriately and properly biblical. While it is true that we need
to be ready to explain to anyone in a reasonable manner, either within or without
the faith community, why and in what sense the Bible has normative status for
us, the rationality we seek is not some external rationality imposed from outside
of faith. What we need to understand is the inner necessity that Christian theol-
ogy should be biblical.5
A methodological precept we identi lied in relation to christology is relevant
here too: Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer is the law of belief. Or, a
little more broadly, the law of worship is the law of belief. Always and every-
where Christians read the Bible when they gather for worship. They pray that
they will hear God's Word from the words of these scriptures. That the Old and
New Testaments have unique status in the church is reflected in the fact that
throughout the Christian ecumenical world only these texts are read out as
"scripture," seeking God's Spirit in order that God's Word of truth may be heard
from them. Yet the reading of the Bible is accompanied by prayer that the Spirit
wil I truly speak through this book, for it is not the book in and of itself that gives
life, light, and wisdom. Moreover, the liturgical reading of scripture is normally
followed by interpretive preaching. Interpretation and preaching are required
because the Word we seek is not an old and dead word but a living Word for here
and now. Scripture's place in worship, then, and therefore in Christian faith and
life, establishes and reflects its normative character for theology. We may recall
once again here the precept that is especially congenial to the liberation theolo-
gies: Lex sequendi, lex credendi. The law of following is the law of belief. We
saw, in the case of christology, that our efforts to follow Jesus in practical life,
and the life and liberty that this affords, establish his authority for our theologi-
cal thought. So also with scripture: we live our lives and carry out the work of
discipleship and mission under the guidance of these scriptures. The Bible is
indispensable to Christian praxis and therefore also to our theological thinking;
without it, the life that Christ offers could not have reached us.
In actual theological discussion among Christians it is normal (if not quite
universal) for people to defend their theological stances by arguing that they are
biblical. "What I am saying," they will contend, "is from the Bible" (that is, those
texts that we read out every Sunday when we gather for worship). Or, "what I am
doing is based in the Bible," or "in harmony with or congruent with the Bible,"
216 Other Indispensable Criteria of Theological Adequacy
or "derives from the Bible at its best" (that is, those texts from which we hear of
God's reign of justice and peace, those texts that teach us about grace, love, and
hope).
Though most Christians will feel it is essential to be biblical in some sense,
both for their own theological integrity and for the purpose of recommending
their theological viewpoints to others in the church, it is not a simple matter to
decide in what being biblical consists. In theological debate among Christians,
when they discuss courses of action, or doctrine, or ethics, or worship, everyone
(or almost everyone) knows that the biblical ground cannot be surrendered. In
theological debate, whether about practices of discipleship, political ethics, ordi-
nation, mission, the Trinity, christology, or baptismal or eucharistic practice, to
admit that your position is unbiblical is to admit that it is indefensible in the faith
community. The authority of the scripture for all theological thinking is, in this
way, a posteriori: after the fact.
Not Oppressive Biblicism
But let us consider more closely why and in what sense theology must be
biblical. It is not enough to describe this as a.fail accompli without appreciating
its inner rationale. Is this perhaps a piece of superstition, as though the Bible is
some supernatural phenomenon, fallen from the skies, a book "with all the
answers to all our problems" (as I was once told in Sunday School)? Is it because
the Bible is the inspired Word of God from which "God's own words" can there-
fore be quoted to resolve any disagreement?
There are great voices of the Christian tradition which assume a very high
doctrine of scriptural inspiration. Calvin, the founding systematic theologian of
the Reformed tradition, could say of scripture that "God is its author,"6 and he
could even say that it is "dictated by the Holy Spirit."7 The great Methodist patri-
arch John Wesley also, truly a life-giving preacher and leader of his day, could
speak of the Holy Spirit as the "author of Scripture," and in this he was not out
of line with Augustine, Aquinas, and even Luther.8 For Wesley, "the written Word
of God" is "the only and sufficient rule, both of Christian faith and practice."9 He
could say that Protestants "believe whatsoever God has declared. By this they
will abide, and no other."10 Although these authors were not entirely unaware of
the humanity and fallibility of the scriptures, it was the character of scripture as
"inspired" and its powerful, liberating influence in their own lives and in the life
of their churches that most impressed them.
Jn spite of our great respect for these authors of our theological tradition, no
such biblicism will be defended here. A simple application of the logical law of
noncontradiction rules out any such supernaturalist notion of the Bible. A mere
comparison of the creation texts in Genesis l and 2, or the differing stories of
Paul's conversion (Acts 9:7; 22:9) or the divergent reports concerning the resur-
Is It Biblical? 21 7
rection of Jesus in the four Gospels, makes it immediately evident that this is a
human and fallible book. Presumably, if God had written it, God could have done
better. And even a casual reading of the Bible makes it plain to contemporary
people that this collection of ancient books of stories, laws, poetry, letters, and so
on is culturally conditioned, finitely located as to its worldviews and ethical pre-
cepts, and even theologically diverse in its understandings of God, humanity, sin,
and salvation. Karl Barth, who among twentieth-century theologians placed the
authority and "miracle" of scripture very high indeed, pointed out that the Bible
is fallible, not only historically and scientifically, but theologically as well.11 It is
easy for anyone of intelligence to tear the Bible apart; indeed, as William Placher
puts it, "You need not deconstruct these texts. They fall apart in your hands."12
Any dictation theory of biblical inspiration is plainly untenable to reasonable
people.
Moreover, with heightened modern and postmodern consciousness, we real-
ize now that the Bible can be quoted and used to defend all kinds of destructive
opinions, attitudes, and actions, or, as some church people are wont to say, "You
can use the Bible to defend anything!" Or, as Shakespeare put into the mouth of
one his characters: "The devil can cite scripture for his purpose."13 This is not
only because the Bible is badly interpreted; many texts are in themselves poten-
tially destructive, raising questions in the minds of many faithful people about
their status as "inspired" Word of God.
Imagine an encounter between three women, Jenny, Kathy, and Brenda, in a
church study group on peace and violence in the Bible. They have been looking
at parts of the Old Testament, including I Samuel 15.
Conversation
JENNY: Whal do you make of this part in I Samuel J5 :3, where God tells them to
kill all their enemies? It says: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all
that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suck-
ling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. " J don 1 believe God ever commanded
such a horrible thing' One 1hing.for sure. ii doesn i sound like Jesus'
BRENDA: fou know I heard a preacher on TV using one of lhese kinds of texts,
saying thal this shows how God:1· people- and by that he seemed to mean the
United States- sometimes have to kill their enemies ruthlessly. He was actually
using the Bible to back up the president on the Iraq war' I have to say, J really
doubt whelher this lex/ is the Word of God.
KATHY: [Shocked and annoyed] Oh, get of/your anti-American kick' laugh at
these preachers if you like, but al least they 're no! watering anything down.
They 're not picking and choosing, taking fi'om !he Bible what they like and
throwing the rest out' J still say the Bible is the Word of God, the whole Bible,
and not just a couple o,f verses you like'
218 Other Indispensable Criteria of Theological Adequacy
JENNY: Yes, but what do we rnean by the Word of God? 1 can i really think of ii
that w~)'. To me the Bible is a kind of religious classic. like other great classics
o/religious literature. ft has a lot o/deep, inspiring thoughts, but a lot of primi-
tive and really dread/id stuf/as well. And besides, there are lots o.fother inspir-
ing books besides the Bible with deep inspiring thoughts. 1 get more out of the
Bhagavad-Gita than I dofimn I Samuel, let me tell you. The book of Leviticus
never did much for me, or parts of the New Testament, for that matte!'. 1 love
Kahlil Gibran. You know, The Prophet? Now there~- an i11.1piring autho1'. He~- so
humane, so wise, and he :s· not even a Christian' This bit about God commanding
a massacre without mercy just seems to be a piece of power politics. imagine
reading this out in church? It would be dangerous in case there was some unbal-
anced individual who might take ii serious~v
KATHY: Well, 1f I thought the way you do I'd be so confused I wouldn't know what
I believed. MF .faith is important to me, but if I can i trust the Bible, how can I
believe in God at all?
BRENDA: 1 know what you mean, Kathy. There '.s· no way I could start reading all
the holy books ofa ll the religions oft he world. let jface it, I haven i got the time,
and I've got enough trouble just understanding the Bible. But I must admit, there
are other spiritual writings that !find much more inspirational than most parts
of the Bible. Sometimes I think that maybe we should add on to the Bible some
of the reall)l good writings from later times. like Christian writers of our own
time who seem to be in touch with the world as it is now. Recently I picked up
Dietrich Bonhoejfer j· Letters and Papers from Prison. Found it in the church
library. Now there is a deep thinkCI'. !found what he had to sa)l really moving. I
felt when I was reading Bonhoe.!Jer that God was speaking straight to me. I can i
believe God stopped revealing himself with Jesus.
JENNY: So you think other books besides the Bible are inspired as we//?
BRENDA: [Hesitantly] }'Cs, I guess so.
KATHY: Well, 1 'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, the Bible is the Bible, and
nothing can take its place. Last Sunday in church, what did we read? The Bible,
and nothing but the Bible. Nobody got up and read from the Koran or Gibran or
Bonhoeffe!'. If we went by what you two are saying, we'd be reading from who
knows what' Be/ore long ever)lthing would be the Word of God' But it doesn't
make sense'
All of these women are making good points. "The Bible has done so much
damage in the world I" a liberal church member said to me once. We see the need
to defend ourselves theologically by means of"hermeneutical suspicion" against
those who would quote the Bible for destructive or oppressive purposes. In our
time it has been especially the feminists who have pointed out the potential of the
Is It Biblical? 219
Bible to do damage, since it has so often been used as a weapon against women,
for example, texts that blame women for the sin of the world and place them in
subjection to men (e.g., Gen 3: 16; Juel 11; Eph 5:22; I Tim 2: 11-15). But beyond
th is, the authority of the Bib le has been used to suppress the freedom of the m incl
to think and research in the physical and biological sciences. It is still used to
defend creationism and other forms of anti-intellectualism. Parts of the Bible
have been used to uphold the violence and domination of oppressive rulers over
their subjects (e.g., Rom 13: I -7) and authorize the discrimination or abuse of
homosexual people by heterosexual people (Lev 20: 13); of clisablecl people by
those who are well (Lev 21: 18-20); of conquering peoples over the vanquished
(Deut. 7: 1-5; I Sam. 15:3); of the natural order by humanity (Gen. I :28). Of late
some folk have been taking very seriously the text from Proverbs 13 :24: "Those
who spare the rod hate their chi lclren ... ,"and shocking the Children's A id Soci-
eties by beating their little ones. The authority of the Bible for Christian faith and
life can no longer be this kind of authority. For example, rules for the regulation
of relationships cannot be read simplistically out of the Bible. Few today will
agree that wives should obey their husbands or slaves obey their masters! (Eph
5:22; 6:5). The Bible is simply not a rule book, and attempts to use it as such
have lost credibility to reasonable people in our time. Yet, on the other side of the
argument, the Bible has to be taken seriously as "scripture," and therefore indis-
pensable to faith and theology.
"Canon" of "Inspired" Scripture
Having recognized the human and flawed character of the Bible, we need to
acknowledge and understand its unique place as "canonical scripture" in the life
of the church and its indispensable and incomparable place in theological
method. It has been considerations such as those mentioned above that have
pushed so many people in our churches, quite understandably, to adopt another
kind of extreme in their attitude to the Bible. If one extreme is a dictation theory
of inspiration and an oppressive biblicism by which the words of the Bible
become the very Words of God available for the support of our prejudices, there
is another extreme that sees the Bible not as holy scripture at all but as just one
of many sources of truth and inspiration in the church- a kind of religious clas-
sic. It is surely true that scriptural texts such as I Samuel 15 and many others
have to be read critically in light of our primary norm, Jesus Christ. We believe
we know God most fully in Christ, that he is God's revelation and Word made
flesh. The gentle, compassionate, and suffering God whom we meet in Christ
seems to pass judgment on the concept of God found, for example, in I Samuel
15 or I Timothy 2. Surely it is true that God is free to "speak" to us beyond the
words of the Bible, so that we may indeed feel that God is speaking to us through
the scriptures of other religions or through other later Christian writings, whether
220 Other Indispensable Criteria of Theological Adequacy
devotional or theological. Goel speaks through sermons, and even through
movies and novels. To say that the Bible is uniquely holy and scriptural is not to
say that Goel is tied clown to communicating with us through the Bible only. Yet
scripture does have a special and unique place in the church's life and worship .
.Just what is really special about the Bible that makes it holy scripture? Why do
we read only these texts in the context of worship? It is interesting that even
many liberal members of the church feel that they must show that their theolog-
ical stances and practical proposals for decisions in the church are biblical, and
that their protagonists' viewpoints are not biblical enough.
Wherein lies, then, the Bible's unique place in the life of the church? It is
derived, first, from the historical character of the church's foundational events. A
peculiarity of what Christians believe concerning God is God's historicity. Chris-
tians (defined very loosely for the moment in terms of belief) are those who
claim that the ultimate truth, and the meaning and destiny of humanity and of all
things, is found in the holy One disclosed in the history of the people Israel and
in the Jew from Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, who was crucified, is risen, and is
present with us by God's Spirit. A few people, like the nineteenth-century
philosopher G. E. Lessing, have tried to argue that "the logical truths of reason
have nothing to do with the accidental truths of history"14- that is, that Christian
truth is a general metaphysical and moral truth, independent of any historical
events. But Christians have usually recognized that their actual faith in God is
tied irrevocably to the events of Israel's history (such as exodus, covenant, Sinai,
the prophets, exile, restoration) and finally to the events of the life, death, and
resurrection of .Jesus Christ. Without these foundational events Christian faith as
such would certainly not exist. This does not mean that God's self-disclosure
ended with Jesus' resurrection. It does mean that all subsequent self-revelation of
God, as far as Christians are concerned, has reference back to Jesus within the
history of Israel. What we know of God there, in the biblical testimony to that
history, has become normative, or as we say, "canonical" for what we know of
God here and now. Fresh revelation. through the Holy Spirit, of the love of God
and of God's will for us, is evaluated, or discerned, by reference to the decisive
past events of God's self-disclosure and liberating work.
This very historicity of God in Israel and in Jesus Christ implies the neces-
sity of scripture. Since God has given God's very self to us in an extraordinary
manner at a particular time and place, those of us in another time and place can
only know of this by the "narrative of the things which have been accomplished
among us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses" (Lk I: 1-2). What
we have in the Old and New Testaments is testimony to particular, unique, unre-
peatable events. The exodus, for example, was a specific historical, liberative
event. Even if the story is told in legendary fashion and the actual events prove
difficult to reconstruct, even if the vision of God we find there falls short of what
we find in Jesus, this event still became and remains formative for all subsequent
Jewish faith, and for Christian faith as well. Jesus too, was a very specific, data-