Introduction
How the Bible is interpreted is one of the most important issues facing the Church today. It is important because there are substantive issues that divide the Church, and all sides appeal to Scripture. The problem is, however, that the various sides differ in how Scripture is to be interpreted. For this reason, other issues often boil down to matters of biblical interpretation, and therefore, biblical interpretation is a matter of highest importance for the Church today.
In spite of the fact that so much has been written on biblical hermeneutics, there is one aspect of biblical interpretation that is frequently ignored or poorly developed. Briefly put, every way of interpreting Scripture entails certain theological conceptions of God, and every conception of God leads to a ways of interpreting Scripture. For example, when reading classical theologians, I noticed that there was a common pattern in their way of understanding Scripture. Upon reflection, it became clear that this pattern emerged out of a triune and incarnational way of understanding God. Conversely, there were other theologians and biblical scholars whose interpretations seemed amiss to me. With time, I came to reject these scholars, and did so became I was able to see that their interpretations entailed heretical conceptions of God.
In this essay I analyze a book entitled The Bible's Authority in Today's Church.(1) This book is a set of essays by five different scholars presented to the bishops of the Episcopal Church. As such, it represents some of the best thinking on biblical interpretation in the Episcopal Church today, and further, it portrays the wide spectrum of thought found in the Church. I will lay bare the theological understandings of God that reflect how these scholars make sense of Scripture. This will show how theology and biblical interpretation are intimately related. In the context of that discussion, I will address some of the fundamental issues pertinent to biblical interpretation today. A number of issues discussed here are also discussed in my essay, The Creeds and Biblical Interpretation.
PART ONE
THE OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH ON THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ECUMENICAL COMPARISON
by
J. Robert Wright(2)
In this first essay J. Robert Wright describes the "official position" of the church, traces its development over time, and compares it with other churches. He does not investigate how Scripture is to be interpreted. Since my subject is biblical interpretation understood theologically, I will restrict myself to only a few observations.
By "official position", Wright means the classical understanding of Scripture as held by the Anglican Reformers and enshrined in the fundamental documents of the Episcopal Church. Here is his description of that position.
This official position, I can state at the outset, can be summarized as follows: The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, they contain all things necessary to salvation, and they are the rule and ultimate standard of faith.(3)
Simply put, Scripture is the primary and fundamental authority for Anglicans. This claim is derived from and documented in seven official sources for Anglicanism: the Ordination Oath, the Tradition of Scripture at Ordination, the Catechism, the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral, the 39 articles, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and the eucharistic Lectionary.(4) The primacy of Scriptures is at the very heart of Anglicanism.
Further, in regards to interpreting Scripture, Wright observes that the Apostles' and Nicene Creed belong to Anglican worship, as do lectionary readings that relate the whole of Scripture to Jesus Christ. For this reason, and this tradition goes back to the dawn of Christianity, Scripture is to be interpreted in light of the Creeds with Christ at the center. Here is Wright,
In a sense of course, the classical catholic creeds, Apostles' and Nicene, are themselves also official statements that establish for the Episcopal Church the particular way in which scripture is authoritatively interpreted on major points of doctrine.(5)
By such liturgical requirements, then, we are here asserting that scripture is authoritatively interpreted by us in the way in which we receive the doctrinal formulations of the creeds that we use.(6)
Here, for the Sundays throughout the year, the Old Testament readings are chosen to match the Gospel readings Christologically, either by anticipation or by type, so that the unity of the Old and New Testaments is set forth on a basis of salvation history with Christ at the center, not on some principle of historical criticism or of linear chronology as it is often taught in seminaries. . . . Just as with the requirement for saying the creeds, therefore, scripture is authoritatively interpreted in the Episcopal church by the Christological principle upon which it is to be publicly read in the principal act of Christian worship on every Lord's Day and other major feasts (BCP, p. 13).(7)
In sum, for Anglicans, Scripture is the critical norm of faith and it is to be interpreted theologically, in light of the Creeds with Christ at the center. This Anglican perspective will provide the foundation for the ideas of this essay.
FOR FREEDOM CHRIST HAS SET YOU FREE: THE INTERPRETATION AND AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGIES OF LIBERATION
by
Ellen K. Wondra(8)
Wondra's Theological Perspective
Wondra's theological perspective is two fold. First, God is triune. Secondly, in light of the incarnation, the triune God is "God with us" in history, working with humanity to conform all of creation to God's inner triune life.
In regard to God's inner triune life, Wondra briefly quotes Hooker and then mentions John Booty on Hooker's concept of participation as a form of "both union and distinction in the Godhead and between Christ and the Christian."(9) She further develops the concept of inner triune participation by appealing to liberation theologian Leonardo Boff.
Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff describes participation in more contemporary terms: the Persons of the Trinity "co exist simultaneously and the Three are co eternal from the beginning." The unity of the Three is found in their communion; and that communion is one of "permanent interpenetration, the eternal co relatedness, the self surrender of each Person to the others" such that "each Person contains the other two, each one penetrates the others and is penetrated by them, one lives in the other, and vice versa.(10)
As a result, Wondra sees the inner triune life as a "mutual participation," a "divine mutuality," a "deepened communion," "self surrender," and a relatedness that entails "both intimate connection and individual distinction, to which diversity or difference is inherent."(11)
Secondly, the incarnation means "God with us" in history. Since God is triune, the goal of the divine and human enterprise in history is to mirror the mutual participation which characterizes God's inner triune life. In this way the triune "'community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes the prototype of the human community dreamed of by those who wish to improve society and build it in such as way as to make it into the image and likeness of the Trinity.'"(12)
Several comments are in order. First, the understanding of the Trinity used by Wondra is not properly trinitarian. She conceives of the Trinity as three persons all of whose relations are mutual. She does not envision the persons of the Trinity as equal in substance as God, yet unequal in their inner triune relations. She is a feminist theologian. She will not call attention to inequality in God, for if so, this can lead to inequality upon earth. She quotes Hooker on there being three triune persons, but she ignores Hooker, the great theological tradition, and the Creeds on the inequality of the inner triune relations. Here is Hooker on the inequality of the divine relations and the singularity of the divine substance.
Seeing therefore the Father is of none, the Son is of the Father and the Spirit is of both, they are by these their several properties really distinguishable each from other. For the substance of God with this property to be of none doth make the Person of the Father; the very selfsame substance in number with this property to be of the Father maketh the Person of the Son; the same substance having added unto the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the Person of the Holy Ghost. So that in every Person there is implied both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two. V,li,1.
Since God's inner triune relations differ, this implies that God's actions as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit differ as well. In other words, they are not mutual. For example, creation by the Father and the incarnation of the Son are not mutually related. For Hooker, the Incarnation restores a corrupted creation, the creation does not restore a corrupted Incarnation. According to Wondra, however, all relations are mutual. Therefore, the Father is of the Son and the Son is of the Father. Outside God, this would imply that Incarnation restores creation and creation restores Incarnation. Of course, Wondra never overtly says this. But, as I will now show, this vision of equal and mutual relations pervades the whole of her thought and entails a pagan conception of the divine.
Once she has conceived of God in terms of "eternal co relatedness," she now redefines the fundamentals of the Christian faith in light of this understanding of God. She begins with sin and redemption, defined as the lack of and struggle for mutual participation.
To the extent that relations among creatures fail or refuse to embody and nurture participation, they depart from their divine ground, and are therefore sinful.(13)
Human sin is the sundering of those just and mutual relations that reflect the internal life of the Trinity.(14)
To put it another way: present struggles for liberation have authority precisely because they activity seek to move into a future where the connection between creation and existence and between existence and redemption is restored and renewed; in this longed for future, the possibility of mutual participation throughout creation and with the divine is increasingly approximated.(15)
Further, since all realities must reflect mutual relations, it follows that all sources of truth or authority are mutual as well. Therefore, the "truth" of Scripture is mutually related to the "truth" of experience. Each mutually conditions the other, both are equally authoritative. One element of experience is particularly relevant, the struggle for liberation. The struggle for liberation on the part of "racial and ethnic minority groups, women of all races and classes, gays and lesbians, and the earth itself"(16) approximates the eschatological goal of complete and final co relatedness. Both Scripture and experience, however, are subject to a higher norm, namely the degree to which both reflect the quest for mutual participation.
Since Scripture is subject to this higher norm, it has no intrinsic authority of its own. It is only authoritative to the degree that it fosters mutual participation and freedom from oppression. In actual practice, from Wondra's perspective, Scripture is thoroughly patriarchal, and therefore, it must be approached with suspicion. In fact, one must find a canon within the canon, the texts or the texts behind the biblical text that lead to liberation. This implies that the hermeneutical enterprise has three tasks a critique of Scripture's patriarchal aspects, finding its transforming potential, and integrating that with liberating experience. The foregoing can be seen in the following quotations.
The God who is creator and redeemer is the source of the norm against which human experience is evaluated. This same God also constitutes the norm against which other authorities including the scriptures are evaluated. Thus, the scriptures have authority in that they may empower and nurture liberation, that is, in that they may contribute to participation in a full humanity.(17)
This view of the authority of the scriptures is part of an ongoing process of recovering the scriptures from their role in establishing, justifying, and perpetuating various systems of domination. Each form of liberation theology points to biblical texts that have been and continue to be used as texts of domination and terror. In each case, what is at issue is not only how the scriptures are used or interpreted; also significant are the texts of the scriptures themselves.(18)
Consequently, the approach of liberation theologies to the authority and interpretation of the scriptures has three central tasks: critiqueing scripture's patriarchal aspects; recovering scripture's transformative potential; and incorporating contemporary experience into interpretive processes.(19)
Underlying Scripture's mutual relations with other forms of revelation is an even deeper mutuality. In fact, to the degree that life is true to its divine ground, all of reality is mutual. It is composed of diverse centers of truth and life with each possessing their own integrity and each mutually related to the others. In other words, there is no specific incarnation of truth, authority, or revelation as in the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation. Rather, life, truth, reality, authority, revelation, are all plural, and ideally, mutual. There is not, for example, one Lord, for that would deny mutuality between that Lord and other persons or powers. Here are a few of a number of quotations.
Our understanding of truth and its discernment and the way it shapes action must reflect our understanding of experience including experience of truth as plural, that is, as diverse but connected.(20)
The ultimate source of authority is a God who is good and just and graciously self giving. The dispersal of authority among persons, structures, and modes of reflection and discourse works to maintain the singularity of the ultimate authority of the divine.(21)
Nevertheless, it should be noted that in their reconstructive approaches liberation theologies do not grant normative character to the scriptures alone. Divine activity and revelation are ongoing, and may be encountered in nonbiblical contexts with a force equivalent to that claimed for scriptural times. The multiple loci of revelation including scripture are deemed authoritative precisely because they are illuminated by and illustrate each other.(22)
From this it follows that biblical interpretation is a process in which Scripture is but one foci in an ongoing struggle for liberation, a struggle that integrates all other foci into the quest for a liberated life. This process is best implemented by those committed to liberation, to openness to the multiple foci, to rigorous dialogue that focuses the multiple foci into a course of action, and to actions that seek the liberation of the oppressed and the formation of a liberated humanity. Wondra ends her essay with these words,
This consensus is a consensus fidelium, for it arises in a dialogical community whose fidelity is not, primarily, to a set of doctrinal teachings, but to participation in the ongoing transformative action of God in concrete history.(23)
There can be no doubt that the picture of God behind this hermeneutic is pagan. It envisions a single high god with mutual internal relations whose revelation is dispersed through multiple foci, where "foci" means a diversity of powers and forces. Paganism is the belief that the multiple forces of creation are divine and therefore centers of authority and truth. Wondra will not say, of course, that the multiple centers of truth and life are divine, but she gives them divine status by making them sources of life and truth. Further, for paganism, as well as Wondra, these forces are seen both as life enhancing and conflictive.(24) At the same time, Wondra paints a Christian veneer on her pagan vision by claiming that the multiple conflictive forces can be brought together in mutual participation and self surrender.
Secondly, and critically, there is no place in Wondra's theological vision for the fundamental Christian claim that "Jesus is Lord." Such a claim would destroy mutuality. As a result, Christ has no place in Wondra's essay. He is scarcely mentioned. Only at the beginning, as a symbol for "God with us," does he make his appearance. For Wondra, Incarnation, atonement, resurrection apparently have little significance. If she were to affirm the centrality of the Incarnation as the locus of truth and salvation, that would deny the multiple foci by reducing salvation to one essential locus of saving truth. Ultimately, finally, Wondra will not read Scripture with the hope of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior for the simple fact that the term "Lord" belongs to those "biblical texts that have been and continue to be used as texts of domination."
Rather than revealing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Scripture will be mined for stories, phrases, ideas, symbols, and suggestions that further the quest of liberation on the part of the oppressed. That is what will be found in Scripture, a social agenda rather than a saving righteous God.
Nor will this hermeneutic lead, as Wondra intends, to the liberation of the poor and oppressed. Our fundamental problem is not our oppressors, but ourselves as sinners against a holy, righteous God, and only in that context, can earthly oppression be conquered. God in Jesus Christ has forgiven us our sin and set us free to build his Kingdom on earth as in heaven. That is the gospel, and it is not found in Wondra. This Kingdom, of course, has a social and economic aspect,(25) and Wondra is right to believe that God's liberation includes those dimensions. But it is God's liberation, a liberation given by "Jesus is Lord," and that is not one foci among many dispersed authorities. In short, this hermeneutic has little to do with the Christian faith.
THE SCRIPTURES IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
by
Richard A. Norris, Jr.(26)
Norris begins by saying that he is not going to discuss the authority of Scripture, nor how the Scriptures are the foundation for the church, but rather, how the Scriptures function in the life of the Church. By this he means the manner in which the church reads Scripture and makes sense of it for its ongoing life.
Further, he is not going to be reading Scripture in a confessional sense, that is, in light of dogmatic statements. In his view, dogmas do not represent the "starting points, or premises, of reflection on the status and function of scriptures."(27) Rather, they are the result of reflection on Scripture itself, a reflection that took place in specific cultural contexts so that past dogmas may have little relevance for our contemporary context. As such, dogma sheds very little light on the process of biblical interpretation. "As centuries of argumentation have clearly enough shown, however, when such confessional statements are asserted in splendid dogmatic isolation, their implication is neither clear or distinct."(28) Rather than allowing dogma to guide his interpretation of Scripture, Norris will ask "what the scriptures are, how they function in the life of the church, and in what way their burden is conveyed and received."(29)
Regardless of his attitude toward dogma, Norris operates with an implicit picture of God and this picture can be described formally. Formal descriptions of God are dogma. They reveal how God is conceived. Norris may not make his dogma explicit, but he has a dogmatic perspective. In what follows, I will discern his underlying dogmatic perspective and show how it affects his approach to Scripture.
Norris begins by asking the question, "What are the Scriptures?" In his view, they are a library, a collection of books. They were written over many centuries, in many different genres, in many different circumstances. They are a conversation about God and with God, written by people who exist in a history with God. Further, as this conversation unfolded, earlier portions of the conversation were rewritten in light of new circumstances. This is critical to Norris' perspective the biblical conversation unfolds as new occasions bring forth new issues which entail further conversations which reread and rewrite past conversations.
One evidence of this is the fact that from beginning to end these writings [the Scriptures] build on, comment on, revise, criticize, and generally echo one another. Chronicles redoes Kings. Paul presents a critical rereading of the Abraham epic, in the interests of his Gentile mission, and in this he follows the examples of Isaiah and Ezekiel, both of whom had recalled the story of Abraham, though to quite inconsistent ends. The gospels of Matthew and Luke in effect comment on Mark and set about the business of improving it. All these writings are part of an ongoing conversation, then, a conversation spanning many generations, in which new circumstances compel thoughtful folk every and again to rehearse and reinterpret its earlier stages.(30)
This conversation has a theme, the relation of the community to God. As the community reads Scripture, the community is brought into the conversation with God and with those who, both past and present, have known God. Further, the conversation goes somewhere. It culminates in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the key to the conversation, the key to understanding the Old Testament as well as the central revelation of the New.
Furthermore, the conversation it [Scripture] reflects has a direction and an issue: it goes somewhere, or better, arrives somewhere. And the "where" that it attains is the good news embodied in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as attested in the four 'gospels," the letters treasured by the "schools" of Paul and John, and other such writings."(31)
But they [the writers of the New Testament] also judged that the Old Testament reflected a people's engagement with the very same God who had raised Jesus Christ from the dead; and therefore they look to it to illumine their experience of Christ, even as they took Christ to be the key to an understanding of it.(32)
Having discussed what the Scriptures are, a library of conversations with and about God, and recognized that Christ is central to the biblical revelation, Harris now describes how the Scriptures function. To do so, he needs to set forth some basic ideas concerning language.
First, human language is embodied. It consists of signs, sounds, body movements, a complex ongoing conversation in which the persons become real to each other. As this happens, persons, by means of their words and movements, encounter each other. From this perspective, human language is not simply sounds which gives information about another person, they are a process in which the other person becomes present to us through the medium of the sounds themselves. At this point Norris draws on Rahner who defines embodied language as that which makes another person present, more than words, as "symbol."
"Symbol," as Rahner understood it, means rather a sign that is constituted by an act of self expression: that is to say, a sign through which an agent is present, or which is an agent's "putting" of itself. It bodies the agent forth (Rahner sees the human body as, in this sense, the self's symbol) and is the mode of its presence, its accessibility. There is, then, a certain identity between the symbol and the reality it conveys: to deal with the one is to deal with the other. On the other hand, there is a real difference between them: the symbol is a presence of something that also exceeds and escapes it. And the fact that there is a difference of this sort means that the symbol does not convey its reality automatically. One can get it wrong.(33)
Norris' next step is to say that Jesus Christ is God's body, the symbol by which God becomes present. By hearing his words and seeing his visible deeds, those around Christ could know him and God as well. Further, the Scriptures, with their witness to Jesus Christ, give access to Jesus Christ who in turn joins the reader to the conversation with and about God. In that sense, the Scriptures are symbolic. They make Christ present. They are, however, a secondary symbol, giving access to the primary symbol which is Jesus Christ.
The incarnation, viewed from this angle, is a divine act of symbolization. ... When, therefore, the church describes the scriptures as "Word of God," this means that they too the human writings that constitute church's official library are a symbol in this sense. It must be clear, however, that they, like the sacraments or the individual oracles they contain, are symbols of the second order; symbols that give access to the primary symbol of Christian faith, Christ. It is, then, not alongside Christ but as bodying Christ forth that these other symbols are recognized and encountered as such."(34)
This brings Norris to his third question, the way in which the burden of Scripture is conveyed and received. The answer to that is interpretation. By this Norris does not mean that one reads the text and determines an eternal fixed meaning. Rather, interpretation is a process in which the visible body of the text, the second symbol which bodies forth Christ, becomes the medium by which the church converses with and about God and with one another. In this context, the Scriptures are canonical, "normative and constitutional," in the sense that they introduce the church to the conversation. They define how the conversation must begin. As this conversation takes place, the meaning of words change in relation to God and to those who speak. This is true of human conversation. As I get to know someone, what they initially said to me takes on new meanings and these meanings will be revised by subsequent conversations and events. Therefore, the exact lexical meaning of the biblical words do not specify a fixed meaning, but bring one into the process of knowing God ever more deeply. Further, as I speak with someone, I may hear their words, see their actions, but fail to know the person. Or to put it another way, the words we use do not automatically convey who were are as persons, but they do make it possible. The same is true with God.
Understood in this way, the interpretation of the scriptures is a process that never concludes. The conversation that they record is canonical normative and constitutional in the sense that it is by joining this conversation that the Christian community enters into the mystery of humanity in Christ the mystery that the scriptures body forth as symbol.(35)
In the second place, if "what is revealed" is God in Christ or God with us, it is absurd to suggest that there can be a simple identity between that revelation and the lexical meaning of any particular set of words. The mystery of God cannot be reduced to human words; it can only be rendered accessible through them, that is, conveyed symbolically by them.(36)
The empirical phenomena do not require such interpretation; they are merely open to it. And what this means is that the symbol is never simply identical with what it conveys: the Word of God is more than the Scriptures.(37)
Further, since the biblical writers are revealing God as known in Jesus Christ, they do not merely tell us facts, Jesus' precise words and deeds as if they had video cameras. Rather, they render Jesus Christ through the facts, sometimes varying the facts to make Christ person more visible. For example, the synoptics and John differ as to whether Jesus died on Passover or the day before. John sees Jesus dying on the day itself, so that the slaughter of the Passover lambs occurred as Christ died on the cross. This reveals the person of Christ as a Passover lamb. The degree of variation from the "facts" is hard to determine, but the intent is not. Scripture renders God with us in Christ, not simply facts about God.
The truth is, though, that narratives are interpretations: they show what something means (as distinct from telling what it means) by the way in which they set the story out. The peculiarity of the gospels from a contemporary point of view is that their normal way of explaining or interpreting is to retell or to vary a story. To their authors or editors, this meant that the truth, or some aspect of it, was being more fully or more pointedly conveyed. To us, on the contrary, it suggests that consistency, and with it accuracy, are being violated.(38)
Further, as Norris sees it, the conversation in Scripture continues beyond Scripture since life is ever throwing up new circumstances that require a further conversation with God and one another. In other words, Scripture does not speak in a vacuum because we bring to Scripture new conditions and circumstances not originally envisioned by the biblical writers. For this reason, the Scriptures cannot be seen as a databank of faith and morals, because new circumstances render the original faith and morals of the biblical writers obsolete. Rather, Scriptures begin the conversation, and just as the biblical writers updated the prior conversations, so contemporary readers of Scripture must update Scriptures in light of new circumstances. In fact, it could be said that the Scriptures update themselves. These ideas are critical to understanding Norris, and thereby merit several quotations.
Understood in this way, the interpretation of the scriptures is a process that never concludes. The conversation that they record is canonical normative and constitutional in the sense that it is by joining this conversation that the Christian community enters into the mystery of humanity in Christ the mystery that the scriptures body forth as symbol. Nevertheless, the process of interpretation continues the conversation, and what transpires in this continuation is relevant and indeed necessary to any grasp of the scriptures' burden. The Bible does not speak in a vacuum.(39)
The scriptures are not a theological, moral, or even historical databank, but a medium of communication between two parties.(40)
The "mind" with which Christians read the scriptures is inevitable formed by the customs and prepossessions of their culture; conversations do take new turns, and refection on the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole is bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular moments in it or lead, in certain circumstances, to fresh appreciation of their relevance. The point is, though, that it is precisely the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole that must in the end govern the Christian moral reflection.(41)
It is perhaps a misfortune that the scriptures deliver the truth with which they seek to involve us only through our own participation in an ongoing process of interpretation. Certainly it is the case that many folk would prefer to treat them as a work of reference in which one can "look up" the answer to any and every question. The trouble is, though, that works of reference, quite apart from the fact that they too, can be misunderstood, tend to get out of date and to need revision. Indeed it is precisely the habit of reading the scriptures in this manner that makes them look out of date.(42)
Fortunately, though, the scriptures do not provide a "system" either of doctrine or of morals. They are a medium of communication, and what they communicate is "God with us" in Christ. Accordingly, the process of interpreting them has its goal the church's entrance into "the mind of Christ" that is, a transformation of the way in which Christians see themselves and their world. It is out of the perceptions thus engendered that systems of morals and of doctrine arise. Read in this way the scriptures update themselves as they speak their message in every changing contexts. The wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present, in their (often conflicted) dialogue with each other, become focusing devices through which the lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew; and to this process the "distancing" work of the critic makes an essential contribution.(43)
Norris then gives several examples of how the Church has updated Scriptures. Doctrinally, Athanasius read Scripture in a new way in order to defeat Arius. Augustine came to a fresh appreciation of Paul. Morally, the church has usually accepted the "high" moralities of the culture in which it lives and read scripture to conform to those norms. The early church, for example, accepted patriarchy and slavery yet affirmed monogamy and contempt for possessions. The church has "treasured" the Ten Commandments, but shown scant respect for the Sabbath commandment and has adopted the use of pictures and statues. Further, the church has not followed the teaching of scripture on such matters as usuary, allowing disputes to be adjudicated by secular courts, requiring bishops to be once married householders, rights of the first born, and divine injunctions that encouraged genocide. All these are examples of the many ways in which the church has entered into the mind of Christ and interpreted Scripture in new and fresh ways as demanded by new circumstances.
My next step is to describe the theological perspective underlying Norris' understanding of Scripture.
To begin with, Norris does not understand revelation from the triune perspective of the Creed. From this perspective, God the Father created an original good world, God the Son redeems creation corrupted by sin, and God the Holy Spirit actualizes Christ's work in the church and will complete that work in the "life of the age to come." This trinitarian perspective is one history with three major acts since God is one in three. It is found in Scripture as creation, the history of Israel culminating in Incarnation giving rise to the Epistles, and ending with the eschaton narrated in Revelation. Two of these acts, creation and incarnation, have already occurred. The third, the "life of the world to come" has yet to occur. When that happens, something qualitatively new will occur. We will see God face to face. Until then, nothing qualitatively new happens in history. Of course, new things happen, but there is nothing fundamentally new. The human condition before God remains the same temporally between incarnation and eschaton, personally at various points along the way from original goodness, fall, law and prophets, Incarnation, the giving of the Spirit, and awaiting his coming in glory. Since God gives no new revelation like that given in Jesus Christ, the revelation in Christ cannot be updated. It is permanent, fixed, until Christ returns. For this reason, certain aspects of Scripture are eternal. They cannot be updated, rewritten, or ignored in light of new circumstances. There are no decisively new circumstances. This is how the biblical history looks when it is seen in terms of Trinity.
Norris, however, has a developmental perspective in which a non triune God progressively reveals himself through the emergence of new circumstances. These new circumstances occasion "turns," "reassessments, and reappropriations" that allow the church to "debate, or to ignore a variety of scripture's moral judgements," leading to even more "new turns" which "call in question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular moments" in Scripture, due to a "fresh appreciation of their relevance."(44)
As Norris describes how these new turns forever update Scripture, he gives no examples to show how any doctrinal or moral norm taken from Scripture has been affirmed by the universal church for two thousand years, nor does he make any effort to show that the moral or doctrinal variations that do occur within the life of the church are variations within a consistent and permanent tradition. Nor does he attempt to show how Scripture might contain both eternal and variable norms. His real goal is to "reread" "ignore," and undermine the "permanent value of particular moments" in Scripture. To that end, he cannot have an understanding of a triune God. According to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father sent the Son who gave a definitive revelation for all time. The Spirit witnesses to the Son, making his revelation effective in the Church, but the Spirit does not go beyond the revelation in the Son. By contrast, Norris believes in a monist God because he does not distinguish between the works of the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Since he does not distinguish the works of Father, Son, and Spirit, he does not distinguish the persons. They are blended into one, a god of monism. This monist god is progressively revealing himself through new circumstances that update old circumstances.
Furthermore, for orthodoxy, God is both triune and One. This implies that Scripture is to be read as the revelation of the one God, a unified biblical revelation. Yet, since God is three, there is diversity within a overall unity, beginning with creation in Genesis and ending in with the book of Revelation. From the very beginning, as in Irenaeus, the church has insisted that Scripture is a single narrative because its author is One. Norris doesn't read Scripture that way. He reads Scripture as a library with each element of the library being the expression of the divine under diverse circumstances. He does this because he wants circumstances to determine the content of revelation. That is why he views Scripture as a library created by circumstances rather than a single play with three acts. This allows him to elevate circumstances to a position of hermeneutical prominence, allowing him to "reread," "ignore," "update," and to question the "permanent value" of Scripture.
In regard to Incarnation, Norris actually makes some orthodox statements. For example, he states that Jesus Christ is "God's body." This is orthodoxy, a consequence of the communicatio idiomatum. He does not, however, follow that idea to its obvious conclusion. Since Jesus Christ was a specific individual, born of Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, he is the only one who is God's body. This implies that the revelation in Jesus Christ is the decisive, definitive, sufficient revelation until the return of Christ. If, as Norris implies, the church can continuously update Scripture just as Christ updated the Scripture before Christ, this implies that the Church has as much authority to revise prior truth as Christ did. This would imply that the Church is "God's body" just as much as Christ himself. Of course, Norris will not say that the Church is God's body. His open ended hermeneutic, however, implies that very thing, and this exists in opposition to his statement that Christ is God's body.
On the other hand, his treatment of Scripture as bodying forth the incarnation, his discussion of revelation as being bodily, personhood as revealed by words and deeds, interpretation as a process in which language becomes dynamically interactive leading to deeper meanings, were all quite illuminating. He could, however, and this would strengthen his treatment, place this incipient Christology in a trinitarian perspective. God the Father is revealed in the bodily words and deeds of the Son made real as a dynamic process through the interactive work of the Spirit. That would significantly enhance his treatment.
I am now going to give a series of short quotations from Norris, each describing how bodily symbols, words, and the biblical conversation reveal God. It needs to be kept in mind that each statement about symbols, words, and conversations apply to Christ since he is, for Norris, the principal bodily symbol or word of the scriptural conversation. Then in the paragraph following these quotations, I will apply each quotation to Jesus Christ. This will show that his understanding of bodily symbol as applied to Christ undermines the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. Here are some of the relevant quotations on how Norris understands symbol and language, and therefore, how he understands Christ who is the primary bodily symbol for God.
There is, then, a certain identity between the symbol and the reality it conveys: to deal with the one is to deal with the other. On the other hand, there is a real difference between them: the symbol is a presence of something that also exceeds and escapes it.(45)
That conclusion [reached when interpretation comes to an end] does not consist simply in the historical knowledge I have acquired about the symbol, but in my apperception, acknowledgement, and appropriation, through participation in the conversation, of the reality the symbol intends and intimates.(46)
The mystery of God cannot be reduced to human words; it can only be rendered accessible through them, that is, conveyed symbolically by them.(47)
. . . reflection on the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole is bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular moments in it . . .(48)
. . . the process of interpreting them [Scriptures] has its goal the church's entrance into "the mind of Christ" that is, a transformation of the way in which Christians see themselves and their world. . . . The wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present, in their (often conflicted) dialogue with each other, become focusing devices through which the lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew . . .(49)
And what this means is that the symbol is never simply identical with what it conveys: the Word of God is more than the Scriptures.(50)
If the foregoing be true of bodily symbols, this implies it is true of the primary bodily symbol, the person of Jesus Christ. We have the following: A bodily symbol is "never simply identical with what it conveys" because the thing symbolized "escapes and exceeds" it. This implies that God is "never simply identical" with what Christ conveys so that God "escapes" what was given in Jesus Christ. Further, since bodily symbols only intimate and intend, God as given in the biblical witness to Jesus Christ can only be "intimated and intended." This implies that one doesn't really know God in Christ since Christ as bodily symbol only intimates and intends. Nor can the mystery of God "be reduced to human words," with the implication that the "human words" of Jesus do not reveal the mystery of God. Even more, new circumstances are "bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular [biblical] moments," and logically, that would include the moment of the Incarnation. In other words, the Incarnation may well have no "permanent value." Since Jesus Christ as known in Scripture has no permanent value, he becomes but one moment in a developmental revelation, a revelation that reveals the "mind of Christ" made ever new in fresh circumstances. When the new circumstances occur, the "wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present" enter into dialogue with one another, so that the "lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew." This implies that the "Word of God" is not definitively revealed in Jesus Christ as known in Scripture since both Scripture and Jesus Christ belong to the "wisdom of the past." Instead, past revelation and the new circumstances produce a new revelation of the "mind of Christ, the "lineaments of the Word of God." As a result, the "Word of God is more than the Scriptures."
The fundamental error of Norris' Christology is at least two fold. First, Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture is only a way station along the road of continuously updated revelations. Secondly, he believes that the bodily symbol of Jesus Christ is simply a medium. A medium is not the reality itself. It conveys a reality but is distinct from it. In regard to Jesus Christ, there is some truth in this. It was recognized in the great christological controversies that the divine nature of Jesus Christ was distinct from the human. At the same time, however, the human was and is not a medium of the divine. The Word became flesh. It didn't appear in the flesh so that the flesh became a medium for the divine. As a result, the divine nature is not revealed through the human nature of Christ, but as the human nature of Christ, with the human and divine natures united in one person. This implies that the biblical words and deeds of Jesus Christ are the revelation, they are not a medium through which one looks to see something that "escapes" them.
By contrast, Norris does not unite the human and divine in one person, but sees the person of the Word of God, what he calls the "mind of Christ" or the "lineaments of the Word of God," as shining through the human rather than united with the human in one person Jesus Christ. To put it another way, for his Christology there is no divine\human person of Jesus Christ which unites both the human and divine natures. Rather, there is a human person which functions as a medium of the divine person. This devalues the human nature of Christ, allowing it to be a particular moment in a conversation through which a developing Word of God makes a specific revelation, leaving open the possibility that the lineaments of this Word will appear in new forms in later conversations. In other words, the divine Word does not really take decisive form in Jesus Christ, but appears there as one moment in a developing conversation. This is docetism, the heresy that the Word of God was never really incarnate in Jesus Christ. Hermeneutically, it allows the church to "update," "ignore," and "reread" Scripture, including the revelation given in the Incarnation since that part of the conversation was never decisive in the first place.
In regard to interpreting Scripture, there is some truth in Norris' denial that "there can be a simple identity between that revelation and the lexical meaning of any particular set of words." Further, he is right to say that interpretation is a process, a process in which there is no one identity between lexical meaning and interpretation. One must, however, begin with the lexical meanings and these meanings are never abandoned. They are, however, deepened, refined, and modified in relation to each other, to God, and to life. As this happens, one goes deeper into Christ, taking all of life into the process. But it is not a movement which takes the reader beyond Scripture as in Norris, but deeper into the reality of God and all things brought into relation with God. One can, for example, see this in Athanasius. As he wrestled with the meaning of Proverbs 8:22, he was forced to abandon the immediate literal meanings of the text. But he did not abandon some form of literal meaning. The text meant something to him, and that in the context of the entire biblical revelation as interpreted by the tradition. This is due to the fact that Athanasius stays within Scripture, after Incarnation and before the Last Day as narrated in Revelation. By contrast, Norris uses the fact that interpretation is a process to imply that one can move beyond the biblical revelation rather than staying within the biblical revelation and reading it more deeply with wider incorporation.
Also, it must be said that there is an element of truth in Norris' claims that a "symbol intends and intimates," and that the "mystery of God" is "conveyed symbolically" by human words. Having discussed this elsewhere, I will only summarize here. In relation to the Son, biblical language has a literal aspect. One cannot "exceed or escape" Jesus Christ, nor can anyone "escape" God as revealed in Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ points beyond himself. He reveals the transcendent Father, and in relation to the transcendent, language is symbolic or metaphorical. But the mystery of the Transcendent does not relativize the revelation in the Son, rather, the mystery is only known by holding to a literal referent as the Son.
In sum, Norris' hermeneutic emerges out of a developmental idea of God which denies the doctrine of the Trinity. Elements of his "christology" are in conflict with this developmental vision, but ultimately, they are harmonized since his vision of Christ is essentially docetic. His unacknowledged doctrine of God leads to a hermeneutic in which circumstances invalidate the biblical revelation.
HOLY BOOK, HOLY PEOPLE
A STUDY OF THE AUTHORITY AND USE OF THE BIBLE
by
Charles P. Price(51)
Price is a liberal theologian.(52) As such, his hermeneutic is a good example of what happens when liberal presuppositions are applied to the biblical revelation. Specifically, Price's liberal understanding of Scripture robs the Incarnation of its objective, concrete content. He believes that the message of Scripture is to be seen through the biblical words, rather than as the biblical words. This detaches the biblical message from the biblical language, allowing it to take new forms according to evolving historical circumstances. Further, as a liberal theologian, he begins with a general concept of revelation, understanding the Incarnation in terms of that general concept.(53) As a result, he tends to see other sources of revelation the Church, other religions, new historical circumstances, and creation in general as similar to the revelation in Jesus Christ given in Scripture. This diminishes the decisive authority of Scripture and elevates other sources of Truth.
My next step is describe Price's approach to Scripture. Then, in the following section, I will draw on Athanasius, Hooker, and Barth to set forth what I consider to be an orthodox understanding of these matters.
Price begins with Sartre's recognition that all persons are shaped, formed, and immersed in words that create and structure human life. Among those words are sacred words, words that reflect encounters with the transcendent Word, the second person of the Trinity. This Word can become present at any time and any place. Consequently, the Word can reveal himself in creation in general, in the world's great religions, in the Church, in the Hebrew prophets, and in Jesus Christ. All of these are revelation of God the Word. Among all these revelations, the revelation in Jesus Christ is the highest revelation. Jesus Christ is "God's Word most perfectly translated into the terms of human beings can best understand the form of a human life." Here is Price,
The first two sections of this paper are introductory. The first, "The Words", using Sartre's autobiography by that name, seeks to establish the importance of an ambience of words for mediating a culture and affirming the selves shaped by the culture. The second, "The Scriptures of the World", aims to show that human beings regularly surround themselves with sacred words, the "sacrament" of the divine. The transcendent Word addresses human beings in all times and in all places, giving them the capacity to respond in words. They becomes selves in the world.(54)Smith's provocative point is that the one God of all the world seems to make the presence and power of God available to human beings at all times and in all places through words. One might press beyond what Professor Smith indicated in his address, though not beyond the tenor of his thought, to speculate that human beings are called into their humanity by a transcendent Word which addresses them and gives them the capacity to respond to that address in their own words. Christians are clearly of the opinion that God the Word spoke to chosen prophets in Israel and in the church through words which the prophets were able to "hear" and express to the communities whose servants they were.(55)
The Word is God in relation to finite creation. God's "second way of being God" is God with a capacity for relationship with creatures. If this understanding of God the Word is accepted, it is not very far distant to claim that God the Word has sought entrance into the worded minds of his human creatures from the beginning. ... Some of God's human creatures in every place, presumably aided by the grace of God's Spirit, responded to the Word and uttered words. These utterances more or less faithfully expressed the meaning of the Word. In the fullness of time, after a long and stormy period of preparation through the life of the sometimes obedient and usually disobedient nation of Israel, Mary, by the aid of the same Spirit, responded to the Word and became the bearer of the Incarnate Son, "born of a woman, born under the Law." Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, is God's Word most perfectly translated into the terms human beings can best understand the form of a human life.(56)
According to Price, all revelations of the Word in creation, in other religions, in the Hebrew Prophets, and in Jesus Christ are examples of the same general phenomena, God the Word becoming known in various places and times. As a consequence, the revelation in Jesus Christ is like all other revelations. It differs from them only in degree. Of all of them, it is the "most perfect," while the others "more or less faithfully expressed the meaning of the Word." Given that Price believes that the revelation in Jesus Christ differs only in degree, but not in kind, from other revelations, he is willing to grant other revelations significant weight in discerning the Word of God for our time. This will become more apparent in what follows.
Further, for Price, Jesus Christ is the Word incarnate. The incarnate Word is known in Scripture and only in Scripture. The Scriptures, however, are not the incarnate Word. The Scriptures speak of the incarnate Word, but they are not that incarnate Word. This is because Jesus Christ is the only place in creation in which the transcendent Word became perfectly joined (the hypostatic union) to a finite reality, namely, the human nature of Jesus Christ. This is not true of Scripture. Therefore, Scripture has only relative authority. Only Jesus has absolute authority because Jesus is the only one perfectly joined to God the Word. Although Jesus Christ is the only absolute authority, Scripture does have a relative authority because only in Scripture do we learn about the incarnate Christ.
Only in Jesus of Nazareth is there a complete, unequivocal (hypostatic) union, between the divine and something finite. The Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead.(57)
The Incarnate Word of God is identified as God's normative communication with the world. In Jesus alone do the divine and human appear in complete hypostatic union. Jesus is therefore the Word of God absolutely. The Bible is the Word of God relatively. Yet the only vehicle possessed by the church for knowing the Incarnate Word is the written Word of the Bible.(58)
Jesus, in his living, his teaching, his acting (his life affirming miracles), his passion, his dying, but supremely in his risen life, showed himself to come from God, out of Being Itself. Hence within the Christian community God in Christ is acknowledged as having ultimate authority. The books of our sacred scripture are deemed to have relative authority because their words bring us into communion with the life enhancing, saving power of God.(59)
Furthermore, the Scriptures are inspired. God inspired the writers who wrote Scripture, and by the same Holy Spirit, God inspires the Church today as it reads Scripture. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit the Scriptures are a dead book. But God chooses to speak through Scripture, and when he does, the Scriptures come alive, bringing life to the Church.
Human words, no matter how eloquent, cannot of themselves mediate God's self to us. Only God can do that. The traditional language for expressing the way that words of scripture, written by human beings, mediate the reality of God is to say that the writers were inspired by God to write them.(60)
"We call the Scripture the Word of God," declares the Catechism, "because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible: (emphasis added).(61)
On the one hand, the writers of the sacred books are declared to be inspired objectively by the action of the holy Spirit upon them; on the other hand, this judgment is made subjectively by hearers and readers of the biblical words by virtue of what Calvin called the internal testimony of the spirit.(62)
The inspired character of the biblical books is recognized within the Spirit filled community which continues to be shaped by them recognized by individual Christians and proclaimed by the church. It takes the work of the Spirit to perceive a work of the Spirit.(63)
As the Church interprets Scripture under the inspiration of the Spirit, it enters into a dialectical relationship with Scripture. Neither Church nor Scripture is above the other since each dialectically informs the other. This has been true from the beginning. The apostolic Church was formed by the preaching of the apostles, and that preaching was informed by the historical conditions which held in the Church where the gospel was preached. As a result, when the gospels were written down, they reflected conditions in the early church as much as they reflected the life of Christ.
This dialectical relationship between Scripture and Church has a common root. Both came from the same Word. The Word of the Lord gave rise to Scriptures, the Law, the prophets and Jesus Christ. The world was created through that same Word, and therefore, the created order in which the Church exists reflects the Word, the same Word that gave rise to the Scriptures. Further, both Church and Scripture are inspired by the same Spirit. Given that Church and Scripture are both created and inspired by the same Word and Spirit, one cannot be elevated above the other. Rather, they dialectically affect each other.
Since Church and Scripture are in a dialectical relation, the words of Scripture, in and of themselves, cannot have an eternal fixed meaning. The Church changes with time, and biblical interpretation changes as well, taking new forms according to new circumstances. This implies that one cannot stay with the literal meaning of the biblical words. One begins with the literal meaning, but in the dialectical process, the literal meaning is transformed by new circumstances, leading to new interpretations of the original text.
We conclude that the relationship between the list of canonical books and the church is dialectical. The canon grew as the church grew. The canon told the church what the church was; the church preserved the canon.(64)
It [the community of faith] lives in the world, and is shaped not only by the Word of God as contained in the scriptures, but also (since the church does not live in a vacuum) by historical and cultural forces, all of which in some way owe their origin and existence to the Creator of all things, but which at any given time will be partially obedient to the creative Word.(65)
But because the Christian community has been granted the gift of the Spirit the gift of the Spirit of Christ which is love it is able to love the Word, to open itself before the Word, therefore, in this continual dialectic, to submit itself to the words of the scripture, to be grasped afresh by the Word which speaks through the words, and so to be transformed.(66)
In this intense interaction between the Word of God and the hearers and readers of scripture in the believing community, the individual members are grasped by the words and the Word. In the course of time, therefore, accepted interpretations of scripture change as the common grasp of the Word changes.(67)
Modern readers of the New Testament bring to it a new initial understanding of the Word, which revises and reforms the older interpretation of the words.(68)
Two conclusions may be drawn from these considerations. The first is that the meaning of Scripture cannot be discerned once for all from the literal sense of the text, although the process of discernment always must begin with the literal sense. The second is that on reflection, the process of discernment is found to be throughout the work of the Holy Spirit, in the world, in the text, and in the partially obedient partially recalcitrant interpreter in the process of being transformed.(69)
At this point, we have the following: The revelation of the Word in Jesus Christ differs in degree but not in kind from the revelation of God the Word found in other times and places. Secondly, only in Jesus, and not in Scripture, is God the Word perfectly joined to a finite reality. Therefore, Scripture has relative, but not absolute, authority. Thirdly, Church and Scripture are dialectically related, each formed by Word and Spirit. Therefore, biblical interpretation is a dialectical relationship between Church and Scripture, leading to revisions, reforms, and changes in how the Church interprets Scripture.
My next step is to look at Price theologically, in light of his theological assumptions. At the same time, I will be proposing some alternative theological considerations. My first step will be to discuss the relationship between God the Word and the human person of Jesus Christ. Once that is in place, I will discuss the relationship between Jesus Christ and the biblical witness. Finally, I will bring Athanasius, Hooker, and Barth to bear on the discussion.
When Price thinks of the Word of God which is found in creation, in the world, in the Church, and in Scripture, he is thinking of a disincarnate Word, a fleshless Logos. This is because his theological thinking has been shaped by liberal theology, Tillich in particular. This approach imagines the Word as beyond language, beyond the concrete particulars of the flesh. This is Schleiermacher, the father of liberalism. He could not conceive of the fact that the Word became flesh, objective and concrete. Price belongs to that school. With Tillich, he would claim that the transcendent Word appears in the finite rather than becomes the finite. For this reason, Price will never say that God the Word is revealed as the words of Scripture. The phrase "as the words of Scripture" locks God the Word eternally to Scripture in a direct and literal sense. He does not believe in the literal sense because he does not even believe that the transcendent Word became the original words and deeds of Jesus. Rather, the transcendent Word is discerned through the words and deeds of Jesus, and similarly, the transcendent Word is discerned through and beyond the biblical words. Therefore, in regard to Scripture, Price states that: 1) The divine is "discerned" in, not read as, the biblical words. 2) Scripture is not a "textbook of ethics," literally proscribing right and wrong behavior. 3) Scripture is to be read for its "thrust," its general trajectory, rather than specific statements. 4) Words, and this includes the biblical words, "mediate the divine," rather than the divine literally becoming words. 5) God the Word speaks "through" human words, rather than "as" the human words of Scripture. 6) One discovers the Word of God in Scripture, and is then "formed and illumined" by the Word, rather than directly addressed by the Word. 7) Older interpretations of the Word can be revised and reformed, and in the end, the living Word of God can be "finally liberated" from the biblical words. 8) Scripture "shapes" our minds and wills, as opposed to addressing them directly.(70) In other words, the words of Scripture do not directly address us, but rather, serve as an initial reference point on the way to hearing the transcendent Word, a Word that never becomes concrete as the biblical words. To see these matters more clearly, I will now present an alternative view, drawing on Athanasius and Hooker.
In his first two orations against Arius, Athanasius is at pains to show that the Word which became incarnate in Jesus Christ was fully God. In Oration Three, he addresses a different matter. He refutes those who claim that the Word was indeed God, but was present in Jesus in the same way in which the Word was present in the prophets and other inspired persons. This is Price's position. For Price, the only difference between Christ and the prophets is one of degree.(71) Christ was fully inspired and sinless, while others were only partially inspired and sinless. Athanasius will not accept this. He insists that the Word became flesh, not that the flesh was merely inspired by the Word as were the prophets. Athanasius insists on this because he holds that every word, action, thought, and feeling of Jesus were the words, actions, thoughts, and feelings of God the Word. He must affirm this for only if God were fully human, could God redeem human beings in all our saying and doing. Since the words and deeds of Jesus were the Word and Deed of God, one does not look through these words and deeds to see God. Rather, one attends to the very words and deeds themselves, just as they are, because they are God literally speaking and acting. For this reason, Athanasius will say that Christ's body, and this would include everything Jesus Christ said and did bodily, is the body of God.
Again, His human nature was subservient to the powers and works of His Divine nature, for it was personally joined to it. His body, indeed, was the body of God, and therefore, the Prophet Isaiah has rightly used the word "carried" (Isa. liii. 4). He does not say, "He hath healed," lest as being external to the body, it should only denote that this was done by some outward method of application, such as He had made use of by Himself or His Prophets before; and this would by no means have freed us from the penalty of death. When, therefore, we are told that "He carried our infirmities," and that "He Himself bare our sins," to make it quite certain that He was made man for our sakes, and that body which bore our sins was properly and personally His; we must remember that His Divine nature sustained no detriment by His "bearing our sin in His own body on the tree," as S. Peter says (I S. Peter ii. 24). But this to us men was great gain, for we were redeemed from our own evil ways, and our nature was filled with the grace and righteousness of the Word of God.(72)
For Athanasius, the Word that came to the Prophets came to them externally, as an "outward method of application." It could not be said, for example, that God the Word became Amos, or Hosea, or any other religious figure. These prophets spoke the Word Jesus Christ, albeit in a hidden form, but they were not the incarnation of God the Word. If the Word was joined to Jesus Christ as to the prophets, then Jesus "would by no means have freed us from the penalty of death." Rather, the Word was personally joined to the human nature of Jesus in such as way that it is proper to say that Jesus' body, all his words and deeds, are the words and deeds of God. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere. This means, at least in the case of those who saw and heard Jesus, that they heard the Word of God directly and immediately. They did not look through Jesus' words and deeds to discern a disincarnate Word that could take other forms at other times. No, they saw and heard the very words and deeds of God.
Athanasius did not reach this conclusion on the basis of abstract reasoning. He began with Scripture, read it intensively, discerned its theological structure, and reached theological conclusions regarding the person of Christ and his human and divine natures. In other words, on the basis of Scripture, he knew that God the Word became, not simply was revealed in, the words and deeds of Jesus.
For example, in Matthew 24:35 Jesus says that "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." Those words will never pass away. One does not look through them to a divine Word which allows these words of Jesus to take new forms. No, the original words are the eternal divine Word. As human words with divine status, they will always remain God the Word. His literal words are eternal because these human words are also divine words.(73)
Once it is recognized that God is revealed as the words and deeds of Jesus, rather than through them, a second problem emerges. It can be seen in these two statements, both by Price.
Only in Jesus of Nazareth is there a complete, unequivocal (hypostatic) union, between the divine and something finite. The Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead.(74)
In Jesus alone do the divine and human appear in complete hypostatic union. Jesus is therefore the Word of God absolutely. The Bible is the Word of God relatively. Yet the only vehicle possessed by the church for knowing the Incarnate Word is the written Word of the Bible.(75)
Even if God the Word is revealed as the words of Jesus, rather than through them, we still must face the possibility that Scripture is not joined to God the Word as was Jesus' human nature. That is what Price claims. If this be true, then the status of Scripture may well be less than that of the incarnate Jesus Christ so that Scripture has only a relative rather than absolute authority. This possibility must now be addressed. My focus will be the gospels.
The purpose of Scripture is, quoting Hooker, "to lay before us all the duties which God requireth at our hands as necessary unto salvation."(76) When thinking of salvation, it needs to be understood in the biblical sense. Above all, salvation is acts of God. In the Old Testament the primary saving events were the deliverance from Egypt, the giving of the Law, and the entrance into the Promised Land. In the New Testament, it was the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These were the decisive, saving events. These savings event have a temporal quality. First, they happened in the past. Secondly, past events are types, figures, or foreshadowings of what God does in the present. Finally, the decisive saving events are the foretaste and guarantee of what God will fully accomplish on the final eschatological day. In its article on salvation, the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible puts it in these words,
That is to say, the biblical doctrine of salvation is not a theory or a set of ideas about God; it is not a logical deduction from a theistic philosophy; nor is it is based upon any technique of mystical absorption into the divine. Biblical theology is essentially recital -- the recitation of the great things which God has done in history for his people; the biblical doctrine of salvation is an assertion of what has actually happened.(77)
But it is uniquely the genius of the Bible that the historical is transmuted by the eschatological, so that the action of God in the past becomes the type or foreshadowing of his action in the future. The salvation accomplished in history is the promise and warrant of the salvation that shall be in the end time.(78)
The act of deliverance, so to speak, remains active and potent throughout the continuing history of the people for whom it was wrought; in the biblical view it is not a mere event of the past, but something that is ever and again made present and real in the lives of those who celebrate it in word and sacrament; the salvation that was once for all wrought for the whole people is appropriated by each family or each individual as the family of the individual makes response in worship and thanksgiving (Exod. 12:26; Deut. 6:20 25; 26:1 11; John 6:53 58; I Cor. 10:16 17; 11:23 26.(79)
From this perspective, the events narrated in the gospels are types, representative renditions, decisive actions, whose purpose is to proclaim what God in Jesus Christ does in the present and will fully accomplish at the end of time. When we read the gospels, we find such things as the following: 1. The birth of Jesus. 2. His herald, John the Baptist. 3. The temptations. 4. The Kingdom arrived in the person of Jesus. 5. Jesus healed and cast out demons. He did other miracles such as the raising of Lazarus, feeding the five thousand, and stilling the storm. 6. Jesus associated with outcasts. 7. He forgave sinners. 8. His teaching related his person to the Law and the prophets as their fulfillment. 9. He instituted the Lord's supper. 10. His crucifixion and resurrection were the decisive saving event. In that two fold atoning event he bore the sin and suffering of the world, effected forgiveness, and brought sinners into a living relationship with God that nothing could overcome, not even death.
On this web site I have documented how Jesus Christ does these things today. Today, Jesus comes into the world through the preaching of the gospel. Today, he delivers his followers from temptation. Today, he miraculously feeds the poor. Today, he forgives sinners and comforts the comfortless. Today, he casts out demons. He overcomes death. He heals the sick. He enables sinners to live a holy life. He associates with outcasts. By the power of his crucifixion and resurrection he brings people into a life giving relationship with a righteous God. All of these things are narrated in the gospels. That is the purpose of the gospels, to tell us that Jesus Christ once did he does now, and that he will fully accomplish them on the Last Day.
As the gospel writers set forth Jesus' saving deeds, several factors came to the fore. First, the gospels were written after the resurrection. The resurrection was the decisive event in which the disciples came to know that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the one proclaimed in the Law and the Prophets, the Savior, Lord and God, the Holy One of God, to list some of the titles for Jesus found in the gospels. As a result, when the gospels were written, they were not bare factual accounts, but interpretive accounts what placed Jesus in the context of his unique relationship to God, as well as seeing him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament revelation.
Secondly, many of the things Jesus did in the flesh, he did or said repeatedly. This is especially true of his healings and exorcisms, as well as his message of the Kingdom. As it says in Mark 1:39, "And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons." Given this range of saving events, the evangelists chose representative events, those that reflected salvation as they were impacted by Jesus and his message. Redaction criticism has sought to discover how the theological perspectives and life situations of the evangelists affected their choice of materials and their formation into gospel account. Such an inquiry may shed some light on the gospel message, but it cannot detract from the fact that the primary message of the gospels is the saving events, as much now as then.
From that perspective, it is not necessary that all four gospel accounts agree precisely on all details. The gospels record saving types, not events as precisely portrayed by a video camera. Many of the events the evangelists narrate were done repeatedly, and as a consequence, similar events in different gospels are different in their details. Further, they understood these events in the context of Israel's history, culminating in Jesus the Messiah. They differ in what aspects of the Old Testament each might emphasize, and how they understand Jesus as its fulfillment. For example, Matthew and Luke have different versions of the beatitudes and temptations. Doubtless Jesus proclaimed the beatitudes on a number of occasions, and the temptations themselves could well have been a fairly complex process, summarized differently by Matthew and Luke. The gospels need to differ because Jesus is more than any one single gospel account. Further, in some places, the evangelists differ on certain exact historical facts. The Synoptics and John differ on when Jesus died, the Passover or the day before. All gospels understand Jesus' death in light of the Passover, with Jesus being the Passover Lamb slain for the sins of the world. Exactly when Jesus died is of historical interest, but I cannot see how it makes much saving difference. "By his stripes we are healed," regardless of the exact day of his death. That is the critical factor.
The Church, in a process of some centuries, came to formulate that Jesus Christ was one person, fully God and fully man. Within the gospels, the divine and the human are brought together in a seamless narrative that forbids their separation. They cannot be separated because the deeds done by the human Jesus are God's saving deeds. Therefore, though the human and divine are different, the one created and the other uncreated, both natures form an inseparable personal union. This was proclaimed as orthodoxy in the Creed of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. This orthodox formulation, however, was not the result of arriving at an abstract distinction between the human and divine, and then applying that distinction to Scripture. Rather, the Church began with Scripture and there saw that Jesus Christ is presented as fully human and fully divine, and that the biblical narrative does not separate these two aspects of the person of Christ. When Price looks through the biblical message to a fleshless Word which takes new forms according to circumstances, he has, in effect, separated the human and divine nature. The Creeds, at least for Anglicans, guide biblical interpretation. This implies that the gospel narratives must be seen as the revelation of one person, Jesus Christ, whose human acts were acts of God and conversely.
Finally, one other feature merits consideration at this point. From a biblical point of view, when person B repeats, proclaims, or conveys the word and deeds of person A, the words and deeds proclaimed by B are A in another form. This implies that as the gospels narrate Christ, they are Jesus Christ in written form. Jesus Christ is present, personally present, known and real, to those who receive the gospel message, because that message is Jesus Christ in the written form of the apostolic witness. In its article on the word "gospel," the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible puts it like this,
But Jesus is more than the first recipient and the propagator of the good news. In his ministry, he is himself the good announced. He is God's power and wisdom (I Cor. 1:24); our peace (Eph. 2:14); the end of the law (Rom. 10:4); our righteousness, consecration, and redemption (I Cor. 1:30). The great "I am" statements in John (6:35; 10:7, 11; 14:6; 15:1) have the same function. In his whole ministry, Jesus himself is the gospel.(80)
Arnold Come, in his brilliant book, Human Spirit, Holy Spirit, describes how the gospel could be Jesus Christ in proclaimed form by placing the matter in a wider Hebraic context.
In what sense, then [for Paul who never met Christ in the flesh], is Christ (or the Spirit) present according to these passages which do not seem to speak of immediate personal encounter? We would suggest that herein Paul is reflecting his Jewish background and an ancient Hebraic way of thinking. Accordingly, perceptions are not mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind. Rather, they are imprints of the thing or being perceived, and they carry some of the actual substance of the perceived into the perceiver. Or, from the other perspective, the imprint that one makes upon another carries something of one's very self into the other. And even after the immediate contact is broken, the one is still in a sense present and operative upon the other. Indeed, a man is in truly significant contact only with that which actually enters into his soul. It is that which he really knows, it is that which really affects him and which he can act upon.(81)
As Jesus lived, his words and deeds were not "mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind" by those who heard and saw him. Rather, the apostles received "imprints of the thing or being perceived," something of his "very self." They, through these imprints, carried Jesus Christ within them, and when they spoke or wrote of him, they conveyed Jesus' "very self" to those who heard their message. Their gospel took written form in four gospels. As previously described, this gospel message was not a video camera rendition of exact events, but a series of representative events and words, chosen from and summarizing many events and words, culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection, integrated into the Old Testament saving types as their fulfillment, and offered to readers as normative types of Jesus' saving actions today. At no point, and this must be emphasized, does one go behind the representative saving events and words to something abstract, to a fleshless Logos. This is because the meaning of the biblical words and deeds is not found in a Platonic heaven. Rather, the meaning of a text is that God does today what the text proclaims that God did then specific events, things that happened on earth, occurrences in space and time, and pledges of God's eschatological salvation.
Let me consider this matter from another angle. Richard Hooker, in Book Five of his Lawes, discusses the Holy Eucharist. In order to rightly understand the Eucharist, he first did theology, seven chapters of trinitarian and christological doctrine. He began with a succinct statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, and then observed that the second person of the Trinity, God the Word or Son, became incarnate in Jesus Christ. He then described how Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, together with the heresies that deny Christ's fully divinity and humanity as one Person. Once that was in place, he claimed that the eternal Word is forever unified to the body of the resurrected Jesus. Since God the Word, the second person of the Trinity, is now united to the body of Christ, the Word forever works in a two fold manner, as God and man joined together in a personal union.
And that Deity of Christ which before our Lord's incarnation wrought all things without man, doth now work nothing wherein the nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle. Christ as Man hath all power both in heaven and earth given him. He hath as Man, not as God only, supreme dominion over the quick and the dead, for so much his ascension into heaven, and his session at the right hand of God do import.(82)
In regard to Eucharist, this means that the bread and wine become instruments which, by the action of the Holy Spirit, enable believers to receive the saving effects of Jesus Christ the eternal embodied Word. From the very wounds of his resurrected body the grace of God flows forth to believers who receive his body and blood. Hooker did not believe that the bread and wine became the actual body and blood of the risen Christ (transubstantiation), nor that the bread and wine were joined to the resurrected body and blood (consubstantiation), but that the bread and wine became instruments by which grace comes forth from the person of Jesus Christ, from his humanity and from his divinity as one person.
Again as evident it is how they [the Church Fathers] teach that Christ is personally there present [in the Eucharist], yea, present whole, albeit a part of Christ be corporally absent from thence; that Christ assisting this heavenly banquet with his personal and true presence doth by his own divine power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements changeth them and maketh them that unto us which otherwise they could not be; that to us they are thereby made such instruments as mystically yet truly, invisibly yet really work our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit, grace and efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration of death to life.(83)
Here Hooker is saying that the person of Jesus Christ is "present whole" in the Eucharist, where "whole" means Christ's human and divine natures. "Spatially" the resurrected body of Christ is in heaven, but it is present in the Eucharist in the sense that the bread and wine become instruments of graces that flow both from his resurrected body and his divine nature, so that the believer is transformed, body and soul, from death to life.
The critical feature here is that Hooker never imagines Christ as a fleshless Logos, a divine Word apart from the body of the resurrected Jesus Christ. That is, whenever God the Word acts or is spoken, that Word is always the person of Jesus Christ active in both his human and divine natures. When this idea is applied to Scripture, it means that God the Word speaks in Scripture, but not as a fleshless Word heard through Scripture. Rather, the apostolic witness is the instrument that conveys his whole person, his full life history as a man who lived, died, and rose again. For that reason the gospel witnesses are replete with concrete, specific, historical renderings of Jesus' earthly life, the very life that still exists in heaven by resurrection. Within Scripture, this bodily, concrete, specific rendering is integrated with his divinity through his divine titles, his divine acts, his relation to the law and the prophets, his connection as creation's redeemer, and with his coming again as God to judge the living and the dead. If one attempts to go behind this concrete, earthly rendering, one is then operating with the assumption that Scripture witnesses only to a fleshless Word, rather than a savior risen bodily from the dead.
In another essay, In Remembrance of Me, I considered this matter in regard to the Holy Eucharist. That essay made a distinction between the incarnation and what happens when Christ becomes present in the Eucharist. The same approach can shed light on receiving the biblical revelation. In the case of the incarnation, the order is the divine nature (God the Word), the human nature of Mary, and then, the divine nature assumes human nature creating one person by the Spirit in the womb of Mary. With regard to the reading Scripture, it is not the case that God the Word joins himself to the biblical words making Christ present in a new revelation as was the case with Mary. Price recognizes this by saying that Scripture is not another incarnation. Nevertheless, those who read and receive Scripture allow the biblical words to make the person of Jesus a present reality as known from the original, saving revelation. Receiving Scripture begins with the original person of Christ (union of two natures as one person), then, as Scripture is read, heard, and received by faith, the Spirit makes real the original person of Christ who then speaks to those who receive him. The work of the Spirit does not make a new revelation, but enlivens the original revelation as a present reality. As stated in John's gospel, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:26).
Price, however, is thinking of a fleshless Logos that is known through Scripture. Since he is thinking fleshless Word, he does not see that the apostolic witness in its concrete, objective, historical rendering, is essential to revealing the person of the incarnate Christ, fully God and fully human, with a life history conveyed in that apostolic witness. He does not see that Scripture renders this divine/human person. Rather, he is looking for a disincarnate Word that can take new forms according to new historical circumstances. Of course, anyone who listens to the Word Jesus Christ as Scripture will not mechanically duplicate the biblical story in every detail. That being said, however, there is a critical difference between being addressed by the specific words of Scripture, and seeking to go beyond them to hear a Word that leaves the particular words of Scripture behind in favor of something given shape by present circumstances.
This can be described from another angle. For Price, there was only one hypostatic union the original Incarnation some two thousand years ago. All other forms of Jesus Christ, including Scripture, are relative because they are not the original incarnation of the Word. To quote Price, the "Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead." By the same logic, the preaching of Paul and the bread and wine we receive each Sunday, did not die for us nor were they raised from the dead. Not even Jesus' original words died for us and rose again. Since, for Price, the hypostatic union has only one form, the original Incarnation, those who did not hear and see Jesus in the flesh have less of Christ than did the original disciples. Rather than the hypostatic union, believers today have only the apostolic witness given in Scripture, and this is only a "relative" witness.
If, however, the hypostatic union has several forms the original form as words of deeds of Jesus Christ, the bread and the wine that are his body and blood,(84) the apostolic witness which was the Lord Jesus in the form of preaching, and the Scriptures which preserves the apostolic witness, then we today have access to Jesus Christ as did the early apostles. If we receive the Word written, Jesus Christ himself, then he lives inside of us in a further form. That is why Paul could say that Christ was in him and he in Christ. The same idea is found in John's gospel. Our access to Christ is given in the apostolic witness, but the fact that the apostles precede us does not imply we have Christ any less. The whole of the New Testament was written to insure that we do indeed have Jesus Christ in their witness.
I may not have stated this as clearly as I could. Price believes that the living Word of God takes several forms. But none of them, in the final analysis, takes an eternal, concrete, particular form, and further, the first of them, the Incarnation, is removed from the others since it is the only expression of the hypostatic union. By contrast, I am saying that the Incarnation is particular, concrete, bodily, and secondly, that the other forms, Scripture, bread and wine, preaching, Christ in us, are all dependent upon the Incarnation. Further, these dependent forms of Jesus Christ are also specific, concrete, and particular since they are acts of God created by a particular, concrete, and objective Incarnation. Further, there is an order of dependence. First there is the Incarnation, then Scripture as the incarnate Word written, then bread and wine as Jesus' body and blood, Christ in the form of preaching, the Christian community as the body of Christ, and finally, Christ in believers and believers in Christ.
Further, as far as I know, the New Testament never states that we have an access to Christ that bypasses the apostolic witness. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, but the apostles, together with the Old Testament witness, are the foundation.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Eph. 2:19 22)
Does the fact that believers today are dependent upon the apostolic witness of Scripture imply that Scripture is relative? Not in the least. Scripture reveals Jesus as Lord. When that happens, there is an identity between the biblical words and the risen Christ. There is nothing relative about that. Here is Barth on the matter.
The direct identification between revelation and the Bible which is in fact at issue is not one that we can presuppose or anticipate. It takes place as an event when and where the biblical word becomes God's Word, i.e., when and where the biblical word comes into play as a word of witness, when and where John's finger does not point in vain but really indicates, when and where we are enabled by means of his word to see and hear what he saw and heard. Thus in the event of God's Word revelation and the Bible are indeed one, and literally so.(85)
From this perspective, Scriptures and Church are not in a dialectical relationship as Price affirms. Originally, the apostles preached Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to people in the form of the apostolic preaching. The Church recorded that message in written form with the express intent that future generations would know Jesus Christ as the Word written. This implies that the relationship between church and canon was not dialectical because the apostolic church was created by, formed by, and obedient to, the apostolic gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church's aim in writing Scripture was that all future generations would be under the biblical message, obedient to it, and not simply in dialectical relationship to it. The criterion for including texts in Scripture was apostolicity, because it was the message of the apostles that rendered Jesus Christ in verbal form.
Further, if the early Church had been in a dialectical relationship with the apostolic proclamation of Jesus Christ, then the gospel of Christ, and therefore Jesus himself, would be under, obedient to, and shaped by the Church just as much as the apostolic Church was under, obedient to, and governed by Jesus Christ. Nowhere in the New Testament can we find such a concept for it denies the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not equal to the Church, he is the Lord of the Church.
These considerations, up to now, have been christological. They do, however, raise a question, Is not Price correct to say that no one hears the gospel message as a tabula rasa, and therefore, life in the world does indeed shape the gospel message as it is received in every culture? This question is the question of novelty, and was addressed above in the section on Norris. There it was claimed that Norris had no real doctrine of Trinity in regard to reading Scripture as a narrative whole with three primary acts. The same is true of Price. His view of a fleshless taking new forms according to evolving circumstances takes him beyond the text, rather than seeing himself within and under the biblical narrative. As such he is typical of those who uncritically accept the historical critical method.
Finally, one can see the consequences of Price's hermeneutic by looking at how he interprets Scripture on two specific issues, doctrine and ethics. I will concentrate on the ethical aspects.
Price begins by saying that Scripture does not address all ethical matters. It is not a textbook of ethics. Rather than a textbook of ethical commands, it shows how the supreme ethical command, agapé, took form at various times throughout the biblical revelation. In his view, love in the Old Testament is not the same as love in the New because the New Testament was written under circumstances very different from those of the Old Testament. The same is true today. Love today does not mean what it meant in the time of Jesus, nor in the time of Moses. Since love can take on new meanings, there are no eternal specific norms in Scripture. Only love is eternal, and the specific significance of love takes different forms as time unfolds. For this reason, Price will end his essay by affirming faithful committed homosexual relations as these reflect love as known in the Word impressing itself upon a modern consciousness.
These conclusions are the direct result of Price looking through the biblical revelation to an eternal Word whose meaning varies with time and circumstance. If he were to consider Scripture as the Word of God, then he would be forced to come to terms with the fact that Scripture, at least in the verbal sense, forbids homosexuality. Price is aware of this. In his view, the biblical texts on homosexuality are "largely negative."(86) Here is Price.
Nevertheless the Bible is not a textbook of ethics any more than it is a textbook of doctrine perhaps less so. Hooker's words cited early to the effect that Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation but not all things, apply even more to ethics than to doctrine.(87)
One looks through the New Testament in vain for a code of ethical principles or a system of ethical teaching. A large part of Jesus' teaching, or course, had to do with ethics with money, marriage, divorce, citizenship. But in all that teaching there was nothing particularly new.(88)
We have been arguing that the meaning of the scripture is determined by the impact of the Word on the believing person and the believing community who hear or read the words. In the case of doctrine, we said that the Word imposes itself on the community as Logos. In the case of ethical behavior, the Word imposes itself on the community as agapé.(89)
The rules which prescribe ethical behavior are the products of a culture, and the church is not now, nor has it ever been, a culture of its own. It has lived in many different cultures. It is an ecclesia, a people called out 'from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues' (Rev. 7:9). The church does not have, nor did it every have, a ready made all purpose set of habits, customs, or morals. The church came into the Hebrew world, which had its own moral laws. They were not specifically Christian laws. The church has continued to live in alien cultures, each of which takes place between a culture where the church takes root and the Christian ethical norm, which is agapé.(90)
Specifically, what does Price discern as he looks through the texts of Scripture to the eternal Word. He does not see the triune God, nor the incarnate Christ. He doesn't hear a Word. He sees a set of abstractions. In the case of doctrine, that abstraction is the Logos. In the case of ethics, it is love. In his view, love cannot be defined by the incarnate Christ since you can't get ethics out of a life. It is not the case, however, that biblical ethics are read off from the life of Christ apart from the whole of the biblical revelation. According to the New Testament, Christ fulfilled the law and the prophets, so that in considering Jesus Christ, one must consider the Old Testament law. You can get ethics out of a legal code. But Price does not go in that direction. He gets his ethics out of an "abstract definition," and that is Price's final solution. His Word, the Word that one discerns through the biblical revelation, is not really a Word. It is an abstraction. This has more in common with Platonism, or perhaps Whitehead's metaphysics, than with trinitarian and incarnation Christian faith.(91) In short, he has reduced the incarnation to an abstract Platonic form.
However, although we might say that the most concrete and specific instance of agapé is Jesus, yet it is notoriously difficult to translate a biography into ethical precepts and a code of action. We need something at one remove from that concrete and specific life toward a more abstract definition, precisely so that we can know how to apply it to our lives, which are so very different from his, in circumstances very different from his.(92)
Very early in its life the Church fought a hard battle against the docetic heresy. Docetism was the idea that God the Word merely hovered over the person of Christ, so that in Christ we do not really know God because God never took flesh in him. As such, the Docetists drove a wedge between God the Word and the human Jesus. Today, there are those in the church who would drive a wedge between the incarnate Christ and God's Word written. That "Word written" is the Bible, the text by which we know Christ because it is Jesus Christ in written form. For Price, a fleshless Word merely hovers over Scripture so that we must look through Scripture to an abstraction beyond it. This is analogous to the docetic heresy and must be rejected.
Reading the Bible as the Word of God
Stephan F. Noll(93)
Noll is a biblical scholar. His focus is Scripture, texts and modes of interpretation. At times, however, he does articulate portions of his operant theology. I will present that theology, and in places where he is not theologically explicit, will draw out his theology just as I did in the other essays.
He begins with a biblical meditation on the opening verses of John's gospel. From that perspective, in light of the Word made flesh, he argues for a literal approach to Scripture. By this he means that God the Word was revealed in the words and deeds of Jesus and that Scripture bears the image, stamp, impress of Jesus' words and deeds. As such, the words of Scripture, understood by rational persons, communicates the Word of God in the literal sense of the biblical words. This literal sense is made alive through the work of the Holy Spirit who enables God's people to hear and receive his Word.
In one sense scripture is not identical with the Divine Word or an object revealing him in glory or calling for worship (Rev. 19:10 11). Jesus Christ is both the Form and Object of the biblical witness; his royal image is the stamp impressed in the substance of scripture. In this age the written words are the mirror in which we see him; when the perfect comes, we shall see him face to face (I Cor. 13:12). But there is no getting behind (or in front of) the verbal testimony of scripture. The Divine Essence in its Personal relations is 'Logical,' and his revelation comes in words and in deeds interpreted by words (John 14:11). This revelation is received by his rational creatures, irrationally rejected, and finally enfleshed in the Person of the Son, whose grace calls forth a new people with ears to hear his gospel.(94)
The literal sense is that meaning appropriate to the nature of the Bible as the Word of God in the words of men. As the Word of God, scripture is imprinted by the gospel, that obedient movement of the divine Son Jesus Christ from the transcendent Father to his own sinful people and back to him to the praise of his glory (Phil. 2:1, 6 11).(95)
In the previous section I claimed that the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ in another form, just as the bread and wine of communion are a form of his body but not his original body. Here, in a similar sense, Noll states that "scripture is not identical with the Divine Word." Nevertheless, "Jesus Christ is both the Form and Object of the biblical witness; his royal image is the stamp impressed in the substance of scripture," and "imprinted by the gospel." For this reason, "there is no getting behind (or in front of) the verbal testimony of scripture." In other words, one does not look through the biblical witness as do Norris and Price, or judge it by a higher norm as does Wondra, but one begins with the verbal testimony of Scripture itself. That verbal testimony is the literal sense, "that meaning appropriate to the nature of the Bible as the Word of God in the words of men."
These ideas are congruent with the claims I have made in previous sections of this essay. I would not, however, want to say that the Bible is the "Word of God in the words of men," but "as the words of men." Similarly, in another context, Noll will say that the "Spirit bears no new revelation but speaks through the apostolic words, . . . "(96) As previously discussed, I think it best to say that God the Word was not revealed in or through the flesh, but as the flesh since the Word became flesh while still remaining God. Terms such as "in" or through allow the liberal conception that the Word is known by something other than the words themselves, i.e., mystically, or progressively with experience as an equal partner. This is not what Noll intends as he states that "there is no getting behind (or in front of) the verbal testimony of scripture." Be that as it may, the literal sense is the direct result of the Incarnation and Noll makes that critical affirmation.
Noll's next step is to claim that the literal sense of biblical interpretation was the approach of the ancient church as well as the Reformation. The evidence he presents is compelling. In light of that evidence, it must be said that Wondra, Price, and Norris do not hold to the ancient tradition. They are modernists, revisionists. Noll sees this, and pinpoints the fundamental problem by recognizing that the starting point of modernist hermeneutics is the self, the consciousness of the exegete, rather than the literal sense of Scripture. Schleiermacher was the grandfather of this approach, and it comes from the fact that Schleiermacher did not believe that the Word could take objective form as human words.
Contemporary hermeneutics descending from Schleiermacher is founded on the dogma of historicism and its corollary, the "hermeneutical circle," which teach that human consciousness cannot transcend its own time bound milieu. Hence experience replaces literal content as the locus of biblical authority.(97)
Thus interpretation is inevitably dialectical, involving text (words), reference (Word), and reader (significance). Dialectic, like a dance, requires a lead partner. In classic hermeneutics, the literal sense of the Word leads the dance of interpretation; in modern (and gnostic) views, the consciousness of the interpreter or interpreting community governs the final sense of scripture.(98)
Noll now draws three conclusions from the fact that Scripture must be interpreted literally. First, there is the "referentiality" of the text. According to Noll, the text of Scripture refers to something outside itself, and there is an organic link between the literal sign of Scripture and the thing signified. I would understand this from the fact that the message of Jesus Christ given in Scripture brings one to Jesus Christ, and in relation to him, one comes into relation to the transcendent God. The relations between text, those who receive the text, God, and life, are established by the Spirit. Exactly how the Spirit does this scarcely admits of precise explanation. Here is Noll,
The first is the referentiality of the text. Scripture "means what it says," and the "what" must refer to something else outside the text. . . . It is a basic misunderstanding of the literal sense to miss the organic link between literal sign and the "thing signified." Fundamentalists often treat the words of scripture as "steno symbols," having one and only one reference, but this move is defensive and rationalistic. Since the referent can be something visible or invisible, or both, the literal sense is the natural basis for figuration, allegory, and ambiguity. Ironically, when language is seen to be essentially metaphorical, as it is in many contemporary theories, it can no longer mean anything in particular and becomes a kind of verbal black hole.(99)
These ideas can be grounded theologically. In light of Trinity and Incarnation, the biblical language relates one to Jesus Christ as a concrete, specific, and objective person. This is the literal aspect. It is a corollary of the fact that God the Word becomes incarnate objective, tangible, and available to human knowing. Simultaneously, in Christ, one is shown the transcendent Father. Given that transcendence, Scripture makes use of allegorical, metaphorical, and figurative language. In order of appearing, the literal is first because one begins on earth, not in heaven. The Word became flesh, not vice-versa. As such, the literal, as Noll says, is the "natural basis for figuration, allegory, and ambiguity."(100)
Without a doctrine of Incarnation and Trinity, these two aspects, the literal and the metaphorical, fall apart. Fundamentalism emphasizes the literal, liberalism the metaphorical. Both the concrete and the metaphorical, however, come together in the witness of the Spirit. Ultimately, God is Spirit, known in a dynamic personal interaction involving transcendent and literal elements. This can be seen throughout Scripture.
A second implication of the literal sense is what Noll calls "authorial purpose." By this he means that biblical texts are to be read as written poetry as poetry, history as history, wisdom as wisdom. This is a corollary of the Incarnation. In the event of receiving God's revelation, human beings make full use of their capabilities. As a result, revelatory writings reflect the full gamut of literary genres expressing the intentions of their authors. Even more, the whole of the biblical text comes together as one unified narrative, expressing the mind of God who is its author. Theologically, the unity of Scripture follows from the fact that God is One, and therefore his Word written has "one great canonical Design."(101) This understanding of Scripture first came to the fore in the battle against the gnostics who viewed Scripture as the work of several gods each with their own intent. The historical critical method often goes in that direction by atomizing the text, treating each unity solely in terms of its original historical context without relating it to the whole of Scripture.
Finally, when Scripture is received by the power of the Spirit, its essential message is clear. This also is a corollary of the Incarnation since human beings understand human beings. Fundamentally, the literal sense is plain to those who receive its message by the Spirit and encounter the God that Scripture conveys. Apart from that, it is not plain. Even as the Spirit works, however, parts of it appear obscure, but that is only because we have not fully penetrated it mysteries. As these are received, the biblical message becomes clearer. The fact that Scripture is not always clearly perceived, that there are differences of interpretation among Christians on matters of supreme importance, is not due to Scripture's inadequacy. It is due to sin, to blindness and hardness of heart.
At the same time, however, I would want to add that Scripture needs to be interpreted theologically, in light of the Creeds. This was the approach of the early church, and the approach needed today as the church no longer lives in a culture where Christian presuppositions are widely held. The essays by Wondra, Norris, and Price make the point.
Noll continues by describing three dimensions of Scripture, the poetic, the truth dimension, and the dimension of salvation history.(102) These can be coordinated theologically. By poetic dimension, he does not mean "poetry" in the usual sense. He means the sense of the words word usage, syntax, genre, literary devices, and so forth. These need to be investigated at the literary level because God the Word speaks as normal human words.
Noll divides the truth dimension into two aspects, propositional and mimesis. Essentially, I addressed the theological basis for this earlier. When God takes form upon earth and speaks, he speaks in words (propositions) that can be understood by the mind. Yet, even as he speaks, he hides himself in his transcendence so that revelatory language requires imagination as in mimesis. Imagination is also required because it is the whole of Scripture that communicates the Word, and not simply individual texts in isolation. Together, propositional and mimesis reflect the fact that the human and the divine were both united in the person of Jesus Christ.
The salvation historical dimension is a consequence of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. According to the Nicene Creed, God the father created the earth, God the Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ to redeem a corrupt creation, and God the Holy Spirit will bring the "life of the world to come." Narratively, these acts of God appear as the Genesis creation narratives, the history of Israel culminating in Jesus Christ and leading to the biblical history of the early church, and finally, the eschatological vision of the new heaven and the new earth given in the book of Revelation. Since Scripture is one, this salvation history surrounds all units of Scripture, and each unit must be interpreted in that context.
Further, as God reveals himself, he always reveals himself as Three in One because he is triune. This means that individual revelatory passages reflect this triune nature. They contain elements from the past corresponding to God the Father who is the origin of all, elements from the moment of writing corresponding to Jesus Christ who is Immanuel, God with us, and from the future, God the Spirit who will complete all things on the last day. Past, present, future, are often blended in a single passage, and this in turn, is located in the context of the entire biblical narrative of Creation (Father), Incarnation (Son), and Life of the world to come (Spirit). In that sense, many units of Scripture are like fractals, they reflect the same structure as the whole of which they are a part. For example, Noll points out that he once made a study of Ester, and as a result,
. . . I found it impossible to separate with any certainty the elements of history, liturgy, and fiction. While our modern sensibility insists on deciding the issue, biblical writers seemed confident that fact and fiction can be mixed and remain a witness to a transcendent order not of our own making.(103)
"History, liturgy, and fiction" appeared in the book of Ester because God acted in the past and this is recorded in Ester as history. As liturgy, God acts in the present in worship, and as God acts, he gives a foretaste of the eschatological age (fiction?). Since God is three in one, every revelation of God entails past, present, future, as seen in the book of Ester. These three elements are difficult to untangle since God is one, and the acts of the three persons are all acts of the one God.
Noll's use of the term "fiction" may not be for the best. Scripture reveals God, and matters that appear to be "fiction" will surely come to pass since they are already present in their root, God's past acts and their reflection in worship.
In regard to the life of Christ, the gospels reflect this three in one pattern. They do not disentangle just exactly what the historical Jesus did, how the risen Christ continued to act in the community that wrote the gospels, and how he will "come again to judge the living and the dead." The important thing is that he acted, acts now as Scripture proclaims he did then, and will act decisively at the end of time. Noll goes in this direction when he says,
Unfortunately, skeptics and defenders of orthodoxy have chosen to skirmish in the historical underbrush. By asking a different set of questions of the biblical data ("Did it really happen that way?"), they have obscured the more eschatological concern of biblical narrators ("Where is it all headed?" Luke 24:13 27).(104)
Further, biblical revelation preserves the inner triune relations revealed in God's acts. For example, the gospel witness to Christ was preserved, summarized, and developed and by the early church in light of Christ's action in their midst and their historical circumstance. But, the Word, the Incarnation, is prior to the action of the Spirit who brings the risen Christ to the Church, with the result that the New Testament witness is derived from the historical Jesus. It is not the case that the early Church created the Jesus of the gospel accounts. The converse is true. The Jesus of history created the gospel accounts as a branch grows from a trunk, and that includes what has been called the "Christ of faith." The fact that the branch does not look exactly like the trunk does not imply that the trunk came from the branch. The post modern assumption that truth lies in the self, that the church wrote the gospel accounts and can therefore rewrite them, is false. It is false because faith, the faith of the Creeds guiding biblical interpretation, places Incarnation before the work of the Spirit. Incarnation is given in the second article of the Creed, Spirit and Church in the third. The Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, the Son does not come from the Father and the Spirit. For Wondra, Price, and Norris, Word and Spirit are in a mutual and dialectical relation, contrary to the creedal faith of the Church.
Noll's final step is to exemplify his hermeneutical approach. He exegetes Mark 12:1 12, and then discusses resurrection, virgin birth, and sexual morality. These are complex matters, and a thorough analysis of his treatment is beyond the scope of this essay. However, I will comment on his exegesis of Mark 12:1 12.
In regard to his exegesis of Mark 12:1 12, I read it carefully to discover just how his reading would differ from a liberal reading. The difference was not clear. In regard to the poetic dimension, he made a literary analysis of the parable and located it in its immediate literary environment of Mark, a series of periscopes running from Mark 11:27 33 as:28 34. Next, in regard to the truth dimension, he describes how the parable describes God as patient and merciful, a ruler of his people, one who sends his Word. In regard to Jesus, the parable ultimately affirms him as the Son of God, a position that Mark certainly holds. As to whether Jesus thought he was the Son of God, Noll seems to think he did, but doesn't' press the matter. He simply states that "Many commentators admit that Jesus identified himself in some way with the son and that this was a messianic claim (cf. Mark 12:35 37)"(105) Up to this point, no liberal would find anything objectionable in Noll's approach, and they would appreciate his open mindedness on whether Jesus knew he was the Messiah.
In regard to the salvation historical dimension, Noll admits that Mark may have altered the words of Jesus so that the parable may not fully reflect an original historical event. Even so, the parable does have some basis in history. In Noll's words, "We have already noted that 'historicality' does not demand exact 'historicity' to authenticate its claim to be a genuine witness to history."(106) For Noll, however, the exact history is not the point. As it stands, the fundamental point is that the parable points to Jesus' death and his miraculous exaltation as a rejected "stone." That exaltation is the "true end of history," the "fulfillment of God's saving purposes in the apparently tragic death and the miraculous exaltation of Jesus the Son."(107) For Noll, whether Jesus foresaw his death and exaltation is difficult to determine, but that should not detract the reader from the critical question raised by the parable, "Who do you say that I [Jesus] am?"(108)
Historical criticism cannot prove or disprove how far the "historical Jesus" understood the outworking of this parable. The precise arbitration of who said what between Jesus and the church is not crucial to establish the historical dimension of the passage. Such a quest, while not illegitimate in itself, can distract us from the powerful crisis of response which the parable conveys. The Gospels not only report what Jesus said and did, but they confront us, like the original hearers, with the challenge: Who do you say that I am?(109)
As it stands, a liberal interpretation of Mark 12:1 12 would be congruent with virtually all that Noll has said. Liberals would be particularly open to his idea that both Jesus and the Church contributed to the formation of this parable. The only possible point of real disagreement would be Noll's statements about the "miraculous exaltation of Jesus the Son," a "miraculous act of God, breaking through the natural and historical cycles."(110) In a subsequent section, Noll claims that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, a claim many liberals would deny. Two comments are in order.
First, in regard to historicity, the witness of the New Testament, the faith of the Creeds, and the tradition of the Church, has been that Jesus is the source of the tradition about him, including the witness of the four gospels. Logically, it can be claimed that the gospel accounts contain very little historical material perhaps Jesus was only a wandering teacher of wisdom as the Jesus Seminar would claim and that much of what we read in the gospels was created by the early church. This denies the Christian faith, but it is a logical possibility. Faith insists, however, that the Creeds must guide biblical interpretation. They place things in the right order. As previously discussed, Jesus the Word is prior to the work of the Spirit guiding the church. Reading the gospels literally, as Noll does, does not solve the problems raised by liberal exegesis. Scripture must be read from the perspective of the orthodox faith.
Secondly, when Noll discusses the salvation historical dimension, he appears to focus on two aspects what did Jesus really say and do, and secondly, the eschatological aspect, "where is it all headed." In regard to Mark 12:1 12, he accepts the liberal claim that both Jesus and the early church formed the gospel account. He does not suggest putting them in the right order, Christ first, church second. In regard to the eschatological aspect, he focuses on the parable's reference to Jesus' death and exaltation. These are important, but the critically important question of the salvation historical dimension must be, "What is salvation, and how does it occur historically?" The final and definite answer, seen in Mark 12:1 12, is the resurrection of Jesus and our final resurrection. But that is not all. Before we get to Mark 12, Mark has already described Jesus' saving acts. When Mark is read literally, as Noll reads it, these acts are rather obvious. I will begin to list them in order: 1. A precursor, John the Baptist. 2. Baptism by water and the Holy Spirit. 3. Temptation. 4. Preaching. 5. Calling of disciples. 6. Teaching. 7. Exorcism. 8. Healing. 9. Massive healings and exorcisms. 10. Forgiveness of sins. 11. Calling of more disciples. 12. Associations with outcasts. 12. More teaching, healings, and exorcisms. 13. Commissioning of the disciples to preach and cast out demons. 14. More teaching . . .
When one considers the life of Christ, there are things that only happen once, the virgin birth and his crucifixion, for example, and there are other saving acts that Jesus does repeatedly. These repeated saving acts are all of one piece the preaching, teaching, healing, the exorcisms, forgiveness, and the commissioning of his disciples to do the same. They cannot be separated from one another, either then or now. They define salvation according to Mark. Mark gives no hint that Jesus has quit saving people, in fact, just the opposite. The gospel was written as a narrative whose only value would be that Jesus does today what he did then. Anyone who takes the gospel of Mark seriously would set about teaching, preaching, healing, casting out demons, and forgiving in Christ's name. That is the message of Mark's gospel, verified, among other places, by the addition of its ending, Mark 16:15 18. Athanasius believed this, and I am convinced it was a saving reality in the church of the first few centuries.
Also, in regard to the context of Mark 12:1 12, the church fathers located their interpretations in light of the entire biblical revelation. Their approach reflects their doctrine of recapitulation, the idea that Christ undid the sin of Adam and made the whole creation new. From that perspective, Jesus' healings, teaching, forgiveness, exorcisms, and above all, his resurrection, would be the redemption of a corrupted creation, a corruption that resulted from Adam's Fall. This is the widest context of Mark 12:1 12, a context that results from the doctrine of the Trinity.
Further, according to Mark, the saving deeds of Jesus are recognized as belonging to the identity of Jesus. As a result, the question, "Who do you say that I am," must include the whole of his saving deeds and not simply his resurrection as Noll describes it. If his identity is limited to his Lordship as proclaimed in his crucifixion and resurrection, without including his deeds in the flesh, then I do not think Noll's exegesis of Mark 12:1 12 will produce what he calls a "crisis of response." If however, he included the whole of Jesus' identity, including his relevance for today's church, then his audience, the Episcopal Bishops, would be faced with a real crisis. They would be challenged to do what Jesus did heal, cast out demons, associate with the poor, and much more. That would be a crisis, for it would mean the end of biblical exegesis and pastoral practice as currently practiced in the Episcopal Church. It would not, however, be the final crisis, for in the end, "Jesus is Lord" produces the real crisis.
When Noll makes the point that we do not need to know the exact historicity in order to believe that the account has an historical basis, one could then ask, "What sort of history should we be looking for?" According to the Creed, for "us and our salvation he [Jesus Christ] came down from heaven." In other words, the gospels are interested in salvation. They reveal Jesus saving words and deeds, culminating in his resurrection. By Pentecost, the claim is made that the church, as much today as then, can do Jesus' saving needs in his name. That is the essential message of the New Testament, and that is the history that it proclaims.
Given that emphasis, the gospel narratives show little interest in certain matters central to the historical/critical method. For example, they don't tell how the early church modified the oral tradition prior to its taking written form. They are convinced, however, that the saving acts of Jesus Christ originated in Jesus and not in the mind of the early church. They are also convinced that Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, a notion which fulfilled ancient expectations, and therefore, Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of Old Testament hopes. Among other things, one of the earliest traditions (I Cor. 11:23f) was Jesus' eucharistic words. These words superseded the Passover words, and could only be uttered by one convinced of his messianic status. But the gospels do not describe exactly how the early church took Jesus' sense of fulfillment and preserved, expanded, and related it to the whole of the biblical history. That is of concern to critical studies, but it doesn't appear to be a biblical concern. For my part, I am convinced the early church did little to change the substance of his saving deeds, and they only drew out the implications of what he taught of his relation to the Old Testament tradition and to the eschaton. Why would they change his saving deeds? The risen Jesus was doing in their very midst the things he did in the flesh.
On the other hand, the historical/critical method has been quite helpful in clarifying various biblical customs, the meanings of words, the development of biblical ideas, the antecedents of biblical texts, and many other matters that shed light on the biblical message. By virtue of the Incarnation, these studies are important. In the main, however, the method has badly eroded confidence in the biblical narrative by not calling the church to do the deeds that Jesus did. This volume, the The Bible's Authority in Today's Church, is witness to that fact.
Keeping in mind that every hermeneutic carries within it an implicit theological perspective, and every developed theological perspective leads to a hermeneutic, it must be said that Noll's hermeneutic reflects the orthodox faith. He shows convincingly that his approach, in contrast to the other authors, has been the classical approach to Scripture. He anchors his approach in the Incarnation, the literal sense, where "literal" does not mean woodenly literal, but that the words, as they are, mean something and can be apprehended by the mind. Within that context, he recognizes that Scripture possesses many genres, poetry, proverbs, gospels, history, and more. His sense of the salvation historical dimension is rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity. This anchors his approach theologically, for Trinity and Incarnation are the fundamental doctrines of the faith. As for the other hermeneutics offered in this volume, I must confess, they strike me as "springs without water and mists driven by a storm." 2 Pet 2:17
Endnotes
1. Borsch, Frederick Houk. (ed.) The Bible's Authority Today's Church. Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1993. 2. Borsch, p. 43. 3. Borsch, p. 44. 4. Borsch, p. 44. 5. Borsch, p. 56. 6. Borsch, p. 56. 7. Borsch, p. 56. 8. Borsch, p. 101. 9. Borsch, p. 106. 10. Borsch, p. 106. 11. Borsch, pp. 106 7. 12. Borsch, p. 106. 13. Borsch, p. 107. 14. Borsch, p. 109. 15. Borsch, p. 110. 16. Borsch, p. 102.
17. Borsch, 110. Similarly,
God is with us, rather than a distant, imperial Lord. Human authority is then measured by its coherence with its divine source. And claims of divine authority for anything that hampers or counters divinely empowered impulses toward liberation for example, proclaiming texts or traditions of domination as "the Word of God" are unwarranted and even blasphemous: God who is both creator and redeemer, cannot support domination. (p. 110)
18. Borsch, p. 110.
19. Borsch, pp. 111. Also,
Nevertheless, the patriarchal character of the scriptures is sufficiently significant that the authority of scripture must be redefined: the scriptures are not automatically normative, and their authority is, in any event, balanced by the authority of the theological presuppositions sketched at the beginning of this essay, and by contemporary experience of a specifiable sort. In other words, the first of the three 'moments' is incomplete with the other two, each of which involves scriptural interpretation. (pp. 113).
I view our contemporary situation as one of irreducible plurality, which I see as revelatory of God and God's saving presence with us. The ambiguity of this contemporary situation is very sharply presented by social movements for liberation, which are prompted by resistance to social and symbolic systems of oppression and marginalization. (p. 104)
Living with plurality and ambiguity requires more than tolerance. It requires a basis in confidence that the rubs, gaps, fissures as well as the agreements and overlaps that we encounter are generative. That confidence is based in a certain faith in the power of the divine as "God with us,' such that we can be sure in religion while tentative in theology (as Ian Ramsey put it). (p. 103)
21. Borsch, p. 122. 22. Borsch, p. 125. 23. Borsch, p. 127.
24. Wondra does not first define the person as a descendant of Adam, a sinner in need of redemption, and when redeemed, a sister or brother of Jesus Christ and a child of God. No, Wondra first defines a human being in terms of the diverse foci, and these elements are both conflictive and life enhancing. This is the old pagan vision that creation is essentially in conflict and that redemption occurs through that conflict. Unlike the pagan creation myths, creation by God as described in Genesis one and two did not entail conflict. Here is Wondra,
First of all, every human person has a gender, a race, a class. Beyond this, the elements that constitute experience are tied together in relations of conflict, domination and subjugation, mutual support, and overlapping struggles for survival, liberation, and transformation. Genders, races, classes, are irrevocably related to each other. . . . In other words, human experience is diverse in its concreteness. (p. 117)
Hooker does not begin here, he begins theologically, understanding humanity in terms of Adam and the redemption given by the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
We are by nature the sons of Adam. When God created Adam he created us, and as many as are descended from Adam have in themselves the root out of which they spring. The sons of God we neither are all nor any one of us otherwise than only by grace and favour. The sons of God have God's own natural Son as a second Adam from heaven, whose race and progeny they are by spiritual and heavenly birth. V,lvi,6
25. How the Kingdom of God relates to political action is a most important matter, something I have researched and tried to live for years. In general, I believe Barth has the best approach of any theologian I have read. I discuss his perspective in chapter four of my dissertation.
For most of us, in terms of how we live, there are three levels -- paganism, the Old Testament revelation as Law, and finally, the New Testament revelation. For the most part, our present world system, including the United States, is essentially pagan. The Old Testament revelation was a significant advance over paganism, introducing the idea of a single God, the equality of all people before God, a concern for the poor and the oppressed, the distribution of the land and its renewal in the Jubilee, the dispersal of authority as in Yahweh as King, and then later, the idea of a righteous ruler. This social and economic vision was partially implemented in ancient Israel and influences our present social structures. The New Testament goes further and deeper, dealing with the root of all problems, including social and economic problems. That problem is sin, before God and before each other, and Jesus Christ conquered sin by his cross and resurrection. He established a new order which includes the Old Testament order including its social and economic aspects. This liberated order must be followed in the church. It also, entails a commitment to improve social and economic conditions within the larger society. Within society, the best one can probably hope for is a partial implementation of the Old Testament vision, since the present system as a whole does not follow Christian principles, and further, commitment to Christ in social and economic matters is so very difficult.
The question of how the political realm is related to the church, how Eucharist relates to Passover, how politics relates to evangelism, is a major theme of my novel, Face to Face.
26. Borsch, p. 168. 27. Borsch, p. 170. 28. Borsch, p. 170. 29. Borsch, p. 170. 30. Borsch, p. 172. 31. Borsch, p. 175. 32. Borsch, p. 176. 33. Borsch, pp. 179 80. 34. Borsch, p. 181. 35. Borsch, p. 189. 36. Borsch, p. 182. 37. Borsch, p. 183.
38. Borsch, p. 189. I agree with this statement provided that it is understood that the variations only bring forth what God the Word had already revealed. This is because the Word is prior to the Spirit who shows forth the Word in greater depth and detail.
39. Borsch, p. 189. 40. Borsch, p. 177. 41. Borsch, p. 191. 42. Borsch, p. 192. 43. Borsch, p. 192. 44. Borsch, pp. 190 1. 45. Borsch, pp. 179 80. 46. Borsch, p. 186. 47. Borsch, p. 182. 48. Borsch, p. 191. 49. Borsch, p. 192. 50. Borsch, p. 183. 51. Borsch, p. 71.
52. Price was my primary professor in seminary. He essentially taught Tillich.
53. Schleiermacher begins with the "feeling of absolute dependence," a general category, common to all revelations of the divine. Tillich begins with ecstasy, Macquarrie with the holy, and Price with the notion that the revelation in Jesus Christ is essentially that of revelation in general, though raised to perfection.
54. Borsch, p. 71. 55. Borsch, p. 74. 56. Borsch, pp. 82 3. 57. Borsch, p. 80. 58. Borsch, p. 71. 59. Borsch, pp. 77 78. 60. Borsch, p. 78. 61. Borsch, p. 80. 62. Borsch, p. 71. 63. Borsch, p. 79. 64. Borsch, p. 76. 65. Borsch, p. 84. 66. Borsch, p. 84. 67. Borsch, p. 85. 68. Borsch, p. 85. 69. Borsch, p. 86.
70. Borsch, 1) p. 71, 83, 86. 2) p. 72. 3) 72 4) p. 74, 78, 89. 5) p. 74, 80, 84, 87. 6) p. 83. 7) p. 85. 8) p. 88, 93, 96.
71. This is Schleiermacher's position as well.
72. Athanasius, Against the Arians, III,31. In an earlier work, On the Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius tended to view the body of Christ as external to the Word. He would, for example, state that the Word had "wore a body," that it was "his very own as an instrument," and that he was "wielding it." (On the Incarnation of the Word. The Library of Christian Classics. Volume III. Christology of the Later Fathers. Hardy, Edward Rochie, and Richardson, Cyril c., editors. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954, pp. 56, 62, 75.) On the Incarnation was written when Athanasius was quite young. By the time of his orations against Arius, his sense of the Incarnation had deepened. He no longer believed that Christ's body was external to the Word, but that Christ's body was God's very body by virtue of the human and divine natures in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the communicatio idiomatum.
Barth has similar ideas. For him, the person of Jesus Christ is identical with his words and deeds.
On this one may comment that the words, action and passion of Jesus Christ and His being cannot be separated from one another in such a way that the words, action and passion are only an expression of His being, as though His being stood behind the words, action and passion. The being of this person is identical with His speech, action and passion. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume I. The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part One, Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by Bromiley, G.W. Edinburgh: T, & T. Clark, 1975, p. 138.)
73. By the communicatio idiomatum, the human words and deeds of Jesus Christ are the divine Word. This sort of logic only applies to Incarnation and not creation.
74. Borsch, p. 80. 75. Borsch, p. 71. 76. Hooker, Lawes, I,xiv,1.
77. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, George Arthus Buttrick, ed., Volume IV, New York: Abingdon Press, 1962, p. 172.
78. IDB, Vol. 4, p. 170. 79. IDB., Vol. IV, p. 172. 80. IDB, pp. 445 6.
81. Arnold Come, Human Spirit and Holy Spirit, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959, p. 116. I first became aware of Arnold Come in 1976 when Charlie Price recommended this book to me as the finest book he had ever read on the Holy Spirit.
Come wants to know how Paul could say that he was in Christ and that Christ was in him when he can Christ had never directly met each other in the flesh. Come concludes that Paul believed that the words and deeds of another person, that is, the message of Jesus Christ, was Christ in the form of a message. As that message entered him, Christ lived in Paul, and as Paul became obedient to that message, he lived in Christ.
82. Hooker, Lawes, V,lv,8. Unlike Hooker, who believes that God the Word operated apart from his body prior to Incarnation, Barth believes that the Word was always, from eternity, unified to his body. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV:2, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1958, excursus pp. 33 4 and I:2, 1956, p. 50. I think Barth makes the better case.
83. Hooker, Lawes, V,lxvii,11.
84. In reference to the bread and wine Jesus did not say that the "Infinite appears as my body," or that "my blood is symbolized by the cup of wine," but rather, "this is my body" and "this is my blood." The bread and wine are Jesus Christ in another form.
85. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume I. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Part One Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by Bromiley, G.W. Edinburgh: T, & T. Clark, 1975, p. 113. See also Barth on Anselm.
86. Borsch, p. 97.
87. Borsch, p. 93. It is odd, but the revisionists seem unusually fond of quoting Hooker, and generally speaking, they misuse him.
Price rightly observes that Hooker did not believe that one must have a verse of Scripture to justify every thing we do, even to the "taking up of a rush or straw." Price apparently uses that fact about Hooker to insinuate that Hooker would say that Scripture never determines the morality of any given behavior. Of course Hooker didn't think everything we do is determined by biblical mandates, but he did think that certain behaviors were forever contrary to Scripture and other actions forever mandated by Scripture. Price doesn't mention that, nor does he mention that virtually the whole of Hooker's Lawes was dedicated to the task of showing which biblical laws were eternal, which could be partially modified, which no longer applied, and what actions were beyond the compass of Scripture's laws. Price has grossly distorted Hooker at this point. (See Price's comments page 93.)
88. Borsch, p. 95. 89. Borsch, p. 94. 90. Borsch, pp. 94 5.
91. I read Whitehead with Charlie Price while in seminary. According to Whitehead, God, in his primordial nature, envisions the eternal forms and then tenders them to subsequent emerging actual occasions. As each actual occasion passes through concrescence and fades away, it actualizes elements of the eternal forms and these are received into the consequent nature of God where they are then available to subsequent actual occasions. This is the vision that underlies Price at this point. The Incarnation is abandoned because the Whiteheadian vision is developmental, with actual occasions reaching higher and higher forms of satisfaction through spreading intensity. In this view, the man Jesus would pass into God's consequent nature so that subsequent occasions would receive his imprint and pass beyond him to higher levels of resonate intensity.
92. Borsch, p. 94. 93. Borsch, p. 133. 94. Borsch, p. 135. 95. Borsch, p. 140. 96. Borsch, p. 136. 97. Borsch, p. 138. 98. Borsch, p. 140. 99. Borsch, p. 140.
100. I would feel more comfortable with the word "mystery" rather than "ambiguity."
101. Borsch, p. 141. 102. Borsch, pp. 142ff. 103. Borsch, p. 144. 104. Borsch, pp. 145. 105. Borsch, p. 148. 106. Borsch, p. 148. 107. Borsch, p. 149. 108. Borsch, p. 149. 109. Borsch, p. 149. 110. Borsch, p. 149.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
