Hi folks. I’ve been lurking here for some time now. I’ve enjoyed this site immensely. I thought I’d post a link to an article (‘Communicating the Authority of Scripture in a Postmodern Environment’) that you all might find as beneficial as I have in the struggle of my postmodern tendencies against objective truth.
- Kevin
On the authority of scripture
Having read the article, I think the point has been skipped.
The real issue (and value) is in questioning what authority the Bible texts have, not in repackaging an assumed authority in a better container. I used to look for new packaging and new concepts but I found that I had to change, not my language. I don’t comprehend the Christian tradition’s obsession with scripture’s absolute truth. I haven’t found it claimed within the texts yet.
When moving beyond casual reading I found a world of uncertainty, ambiguity and competeing viewpoints. This doesn’t inspire me to claim authority. It does inspire me to “court the texts” (as the article recommends) but not to prove their authority; instead to further grasp God within the tradition I adhere to.
No longer can I say the Bible communicates a consistent picture of God…I can still say that it communicates a valid and worthwhile picture.
Have I confused authority with inerrancy? If so, that’s what I found communicated in the article.
I’ve had a look around the articles dealing with scripture/authority on OST and would appreciate reading some other’s viewpoints…
A little bit of history
I am always interested in evangelicals who see inerrancy of close in scripture, and do not accept that they have first a controlled approach to it. One answer to this is historical.
In 1719 there was a meeting at Salters Hall in London among the old dissenters, the Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists. They were now tolerated trinitarians (since 1689) and Calvinist. The majority of Presbyterians (who did not have Presbyteries but independent congregations, a legacy of repression) decided to treat the Bible as having sole authority, whereas the majority of congregationalists (not sure about the Baptists - they were always split) decided on creeds and articles too. As a result, in time, the Presbyterians via Arminianism formed the bedrock of Unitarian chapels. Later Presbyterianism as into the URC was a Scottish export to England. So the answer would seem to be that, given a free attitude towards the Bible, there is a doctrinal slide. These Presbyterians were later invigorated by liberal ideological Unitarians who were Bible literalists but saw no doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible and were quite denominational, unlike the parish minded Presbyterians.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
Lessons from Salters Hall
I tend to agree with Pluralist in the lesson drawn from this (to me, hitherto unknown) piece of history - but I would slightly re-engineer the interpretation.
As those who claimed experience of a supernatural being who interacts with human life on a personal level and through history, believers in Jesus were always going to bring considerations external to text alone to bear on their interpretation of it. Jesus redirected Jewish expectations of their destiny and the outcome of their history, and a changed interpretation of their sacred texts. Peter changed his view of Jewish food laws, attitudes to gentiles, and the entire basis of Judaistic ‘boundary markers’ as set out in the texts through an experience on the roof of the house of Simon the Tanner.
The texts of the new testament scriptures were never going to be ‘selected’ in an ‘open’ way (in the sense that Pluralist uses the word). They were, as we know, selected through a process of use and recognition by the faith communities themselves, a process rather crudely described in hindsight as relating to the apostolic, orthodox and catholic characteristics of the texts. Arguments about inerrancy/authority/infalliblity were largely a response formed against the backdrop of a particular historical period - but were arguably only different in degree from the historic ‘authority’ which faith communities had always invested them with.
My only disagreement with Pluralist here is over the suggestion that the alternative to this sort of process is a ‘free attitude towards the Bible’ which gives rise to a ‘doctrinal slide’. As we both know, there is no such thing as a ‘free’ attitude; if one controlled approach is rejected, it is replaced by another - unless some agreed ‘controls’ are put in place to limit the biases of ‘controlled approaches’.
Today, my view is that definitions of authority/inerrancy/infallibility of the kind we have been looking at need to be abandoned, but not because the alternative is a ‘free’ approach. The background context in which these definitions were formed was one in which scriptural texts were being re-evaluated according to a whole new set of assumptions resting on cultural changes. In hindsight, it might have been more effective to identify and critique the assumptions, rather than oppose them with a set of dogma. One set of assumptions is now being replaced by another, which also need to be identified and critiqued. Where we will differ is over what defines the experiential heart of the Christian faith, out of which all our attempted explanations and views of scriptural texts will flow.