Biblical Authority and Christian Faith [1 ed.] 9780834126190

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RICHARD S. TAYLOR

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Biblical Authorltg and

Christian Faith by Richard S. Taylor )\;~Il.

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Nazarene PublislJing House

Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City Kansas City, Missouri

Copyright, 1980 Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City ISBN: 0-8341-0633-7 Printed in the United States of America

Permission to quote from the following · copyrighted versions of the Bible is acknowledged with appreciation: The New American Standar d Bible (NASB), ® The Lockman Foundation, 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975. The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV) , copyright ® 1978 by the New York Internat ional Bible Society. The New Testame nt in Modern English (Phillips), Revised Edition ® J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. By permission of the Macmill an Publishi ng Co., Inc. The Revised Standar d Version of the Bible (RSV), copyrighted 1946, 1952, ® 1971, 1973.

Dedicated to

J. Fred Parker Whose skillful editing has improved many a book -including this one; And whose life has blessed many people -especially me.

Contents Preface

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1 / The Authority of the Bible

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2 / Biblical Authority and Secondary Authorities

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3 / The Nature of Biblical Authority

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4 / The Scope of Biblical Authority

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5 / The Limitations of Biblical Authority

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6 / Biblical Authority and Hermeneutics

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7 / Biblical Authority, the Christian, and the Church

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Bibliography

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Preface "Probably the most emotion-st~rring issue on the current scene is that of the precise nature of biblical authority and particularly of biblical inerrancy, together with the question as to how we are to use the Bible in order to build a valid and normative theology." 80 writes Kenneth 8. Kantzer, editor of Christianity Today.l That Western society is in a crisis of authority is almost universally acknowledged. The crisis is in the state, in the school, in the home, and yes, even in the Church. Complete disintegration and collapse threaten on every hand. For this reason it is absolutely imperative that Christians understand the nature of the Bible's authority and subject themselves to it, intelligently, but without reserve. In the Bible alone do we have the key to a recovery of strength and orderliness. It is the Bible or anarchy-or despotism. Readers who have no problem respecting the fact of biblical authority may wish to skip the first two chapters and delve immediately into the study of its nature, in chapter three. Others may need the ground-breaking of chapters one and two. It is hoped that most readers will take time for them, if not first then at the end, and find them helpful and reassuring. 1. "Evangelicals and the Doctrine oflnerrancy," The Foundation of Biblical Authority, ed. by James Montgomery Boice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978), p. 148.

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I confess to sending this small monograph out with " fear and trembling." I fear the peril of opening up delicate, difficult, and complex issues without being able to handle them with the in -depth thoroughness which their importance warrants. Yet the urgency is upon us and calls for some attempt even now to point the direction we should be going. The chapters which follow were originally preparedor began to be prepared-as lectures for Mid-America Nazarene College. They were later presented also at the Seminario Nazareno Hispanoamericano, Point Loma College, and Western Evangelical Seminary, in each instance with some degree of revamping. Both revamping and expansion continued during the process of preparing the material for publication. Inevitably, because of this background, the discussions are beamed at the college and seminary level reader, who is assumed to have already a working knowledge of certain basic issues and the relevant vocabulary. Yet I would not exaggerate this, lest laymen shy away. Every attempt has been made, short of a total rewriting, to achieve sufficient clarity for the subject matter to be well within the reach of thoughtful, studious-minded laymen, even though in many cases they may be coming face-toface with certain live issues for the first time. I am greatly indebted to Don Dunnington for taking time from a busy pastorate to read the manuscript and supply me with several pages of thoughtful, perceptive queries and suggestions. I see in him the reaction not simply of a seminarian (he was my assistant at Nazarene Theological Seminary several years ago) but of a pastor who is now thinking in terms of ministry. How can the pastor today preach the Bible with both inner conviction and pulpit authority? And let us pray that the current discussion among 9

evangelicals about the Bible will result in a fresh commitment to it as indeed the Word of God, and a more rigorous and consistent conformation of the whole of life to its teachings. If so, homes will be saved, churches revitalized, and society itself leavened redemptively. And who knows, perhaps God would be pleased to honor a fresh note of authority in the pulpit and classroom with a sweeping end-times revival. May I dare to hope that this little volume will make at least -a .small contribution to that end. -RICHARD S. TAYLOR 1980

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I The Authority of the Bible "By what authority doest thou these things?" the chief priests and elders asked Jesus (Matt. 21:23). It was an inescapable question, even if in their case it was quibbling. The questions being asked these days are: (1) "By what authority do we ascribe authority to the Bible?" and (2) "What is the nature of this authority?" In these first two chapters, we attempt an answer to the first; the balance of the book deals with the second. The Nature and Source of Authority First, we must briefly examine the 'idea of authority. Academic authority is the right to speak on a subject based on superior knowledge. Dynamic authority is the right to act, in some cases even to compel action. The academic authority of the lawyer becomes dynamic authority when the state licenses him to practice law. The academic authority of the physician becomes dynamic authority when he passes state exams and is given the right to prescribe medications and direct the care of a patient. Similarly we can speak of the authority of an officer commanding men in battle, the judge handing 11

down a decision, a policeman in uniform directing traffic, the owner of a business giving orders to his employees. We find such authority likewise in the church, as, for instance, the word of the ordaining superintendent or bishop who says to the ordinand, "Take thou authority to preach." Such dynamic authority is itself controned by rule; it is not bestowed at random. Specific levels of knowledge and expertise must be acquired and legal qualifications must be met. This implies the action of some authorizing body, which vests these specific authorities in these qualified persons. Obviously, viewed in this way the authority principle is absolutely indispensable to civilized society. When I fly, I want the pilot to have authority, and I want him to exercise that authority and others to respect it. I want the controller in the tower to have authority; and though it is a disgraceful necessity, I want authority to be displayed at the baggage checkpoint. Not only is authority academic and dynamic, but it exists on two levels, divine and human. God's authority must of necessity be ultimate and absolute. Human authority, in contrast, is derivative and relative: derived from God and relative to His assignment. Christians believe that God has given parents certain degrees of authority over their children, the state certain powers over its citizens, owners certain rights over their goods. Authority derived from God is passed down and fanned out by various forms of acceptable delegation. Even natural law-apart from revelation-would suggest the necessity of these special responsibilities. Orderliness in human relations demands some form of chain of command. Division of labor would require diversity of prerogatives. But natural law alone is not sufficient. If man is not to flounder and swing helplessly between tyranny and anarchy, there needs to be firm and precise criteria by

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which he may know what authorities are legitimate and what are,their boundaries. Where do we learn that God is the Source of all authority? Where do we derive the idea of divinely delegated responsiblities? Where can we find dependable criteria? Only from the Holy Scriptures. These Scriptures present a world view in which the idea of divine authority, delegated in particular ways to men, is the bedrock premise. The idea is seen in the scriptural teaching on the Creation and Fall, and of a God who involves himself directively in the affairs of men. If the Bible has no authority to teach these things, it is difficult to see how any other basis can be found for the grounding of human authority excepting raw power. This would imply, as the bottom line, the dictum that "might makes right." Usually, those who reject the Bible are also those who reject any idea of moral or religious absolutes. Therefore they can begin only from a relativistic position and, as a consequence, their authority systems cannot but remain weak and vulnerable. Theories of authority based on reason alone never get off the ground for the simple fact that they are always preempted by financial or military forces which arbitrarily establish authority on their own pragmatic grounds. "Their justice and authority originate with themselves," says Habakkuk of the Chaldeans (1:7, NASB). On such a base a superstructure of authority may be built which is utilitarian and contractual in nature, only to be demolished or modified when the next wave of power establishes a new authority base. Such is the inevitable lot of man's authority systems when not grounded in the knowledge of the will of God. This is also why much authority in the world today is demonic. It is not the authority principle which is wrong; it is the severance of this principle from the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. 13

The Fundamental Question But this brings us straight to the fundamental question: On what authority do we ascribe authority to the Bible? To put it differently, what are our reasons for saying that the Bible is authoritative? Why do we assume that the Bible has authority for teaching us about authority or any other subject? John Stott says that Jesus is our authority for ascribing authority to the Bible. He says that "belief in the authority of Scripture and submission to the authority of Scripture are necessary consequences of our submission to the lordship of Jesus."l Then he proceeds to show convincingly that Jesus believed in the Old Testament as the veritable Word of God and that He authorized through the apostles the writing of the New Testament. The problem with this approach is that it begs the question. For in actual fact we do not come to the Bible through Jesus, but we come to Jesus through the Bible. It is from the Bible-and only from the Bible-that we learn what Jesus thought and said about this or that. We have to establish the authority of the Bible first in order to be sure that we know the teaching of Jesus. Some would begin not with Jesus, as does Stott, but with the Church. But the Church cannot be our authority for ascribing authority to the Bible. It can witness to its authority, and that witness is valuable; but it cannot and has never attempted to invest authority in the Bible. This is seen from several considerations. One is that the Bible is not the product of the Church; rather, the Church is the product of the Word of God, first preached, then

1. John R. W. Stott, The Authority of the Bible (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsityPre86, 1974), pp. 6ff.

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written. 2 Churches raised issues and in that sense prompted subject matter, but churches didn't write Gospels or Epistles; rather Gospels and Epistles were written to the churches. There is no evidence that any of the documents now in the New Testament were ever tampered with by any church body, with a view to revision or improvement; rather they were read in corporate worship, copied, and disseminated; and they gradually won their way over fraudulent and inferior materials, and in the process shaped the Church. Even the Festival Letter of Athanasius, A.D. 367, which proclaimed the canon to be fixed and unalterable, did not pretend to be bestowing authority but recognizing authority already inherent in the documents. Otto W. Heick writes: "As early as the first part of the second century the Church recognized the authority of the Old Testament, the words of Christ and the Apostles, and the Sacred Scriptures soon to be gathered into a recognized canon."3 To ascribe the authority of the Bible to the authority of the Church would be like a mother depending on her child to inform her of his birth date. It would be much closer to historical reality to ascribe the authority of the Bible to the authority of the apostles and their immediate assistants. They claimed that their authority came directly from Jesus, and the evidence both internal and external is that the Church acknowledged that claim from the very beginning. This is evident 2. So-called "redaction criticism" is untenable. This is a form of higher criticism which assumes the writers of the Gospels and Acts shaped their materials to suit their own theological ends, even putting words in Jesus' mouth which He did not speak. As a scholarly exercise it is a futile attempt to isolate fact from fiction by working back from the church situation at the time of writing to the event or saying which is recorded. 3. Otto W. Heick, A History of Christian Thought (Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1943), 1:82.

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from the Church Fathers, and even from such bits of evidence as the scratchings on the walls of the catacombs in Rome. What we read in the Acts, that from the Day of Pentecost onward the Church continued in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, became the pattern; so that later on the Church venerated not only those who had known the apostles but even someone who had known someone who had known an apostle. So highly did they regard them that cults grew up around them, and churches vied for apostolic relics, especially bones. Martin Luther humorously remarked that of the 12 apostles, 15 were buried in Germany! Or if not an apostle, at least their assistants, as in the case of Venice, which sent a military expedition to Alexandria to fetch the bones of Mark. As ludicrous as this seems to us now, even such superstition bears eloquent testimony to the very special and unique place the Church through the ages has accorded the apostles and their assistants. It was from them, therefore, that the New Testament derives its authority, for it was written by them and under their supervision. We can say, therefore, that the authority of the New Testament is the authority of the apostles.' The "Primary Sources" Approach

It is possible, however, to object to this approach on the grounds that it too begs the question. Rather than assume a divine authority given to the apostles, and through them to the Bible, let us therefore come at our question from another angle. This time let us begin with a premise which even liberals could accept. At the very least the New Testament has the academic authority of primary documents. Good scholarship always tries to get back to 4. Cf. David P. Scaer, The Apostolic Scriptures (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971) .

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original sources, as far as possible. The question is, Can we view these writers as authorities even on the academic le,{el? Can we accept these documents at their face value as honest attempts to recount the facts? We need to face up to the implications of a negative answer, and to the implications of a positive answer. If the New Testament is inaccurate in its portrayal of the historical Jesus, then we can only speculate about Jesus. In this case we are sure of virtually nothing, and are floundering helplessly in a murky sea of subjectivism. We are like the village that set its clocks by the shooting of the cannon every noon. One day a curious visitor asked the cannoneer what was his authority for knowing it was noon. He replied, "Every day I go by the clock shop and set my watch by the big clock that stands behind the watchmaker." The questioner was satisfied until he asked the watchmaker the same question. "Oh," he said, "I go by the cannon." Without the stars there can be no accurate timekeeping. Without a Bible which carries the authority of God himself there can be no knowledge of moral absolutes or of life's deepest mysteries or answers to man's profoundest questions, and we spend our days taking our cue from each other. The implications of a negative answer are clearly seen by J. S. Whale. He reminds us that we can either refuse to have anything to do with the documents of the New Testament, or we may "sit down in front of these documents and reckon with their testimony." But what we may not do is "to go behind the documents and rewrite them." Then he speaks in reference to what many scholars believe is the earliest Gospel, Mark: "Evacuate it of the faith which is its living content-namely that Jesus is the Son of God, giving His life as a ransom for many-and no

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historian with a reputation to lose will look at what is left."5 But suppose we accept the witness of Mark and the other documents as substantially reliable. And we have abundant reasons for doing so. The internal evidence does not suggest conniving or deception. There is every indication that the writers were both honest and intelligent. Luke claims to have made careful investigation, and modern scholarship increasingly tends to vindicate him as a careful and accurate historian: And the other writers claim to have been eyewitnesses or informed by eyewitnesses. "We have not followed cunningly devised fables," Peter declared (2 Pet. 1:16). They even used such language as this: "That . . . which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life . . . declare we unto you" (1 John 1:1-3). And Paul affirms that about 500 saw the resurrected Jesus upon one occasion, and that most of them were still living when he wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:6). The import of this is that these writers were inviting inspection. The matters they were recording were widely known; they were "not done in a corner" (Acts 26:26). If any generation had evidence at hand to repudiate the stories of the Christians, that generation would have had it. But none was forthcoming. Now suppose we say, "Luke, Peter, Paul, John, others-we too believe you. We believe you were honest and sincere, and that you wrote what you believed to be true. You were not manufacturing tall tales." Let it be repeated: we need to face up to the implications of such an answer concerning the trustworthi5. J. S. Whale, Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: The University Press, 1956), p. 105.

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ness of the account. For if we concede that the academic authority of the books as primary documents is high, we spring a logical trap. That trap is similar to the dilemma Elton Trueblood found himself in as a young liberal professor. 6 He saw that if Christ was a good man and a great teacher as he and his fellow liberals loved to claim, then He was also Son of God and Divine Savior, for that was what He claimed to be. Trueblood saw that either he would have to bow to the claims of Jesus or abandon the "good man-great teacher" line.? So likewise if we accept at its face value the claims of the New Testament to be an honest and competent account, we are going to have to accept the corollaries. One is that we must accept as essentially accurate the presentation of Jesus Christ. Thus we get back to John Stott's argument after all. Jesus' faith in the authority of the Scriptures is incontestable. And what greater authority could we have for ascribing authority to the Bible than He? Another corollary of conceding to the Bible, especially the New Testament, basic reliability, is that it is logical to accept as essentially true not only its witness to Christ but its testimony to itself. For if the Bible is a reliable account of Christ and of the Apostolic Church, then it is not only our primary source of knowledge about Jesus but our primary source of Christian doctrine. We learn from the Bible what the Early Church believed as true, 6. Elton Trueblood, While It Is Day (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 98ff. 7. C. S. Lewis (to whom Trueblood credits his change of view) makes a similar observation. He says, "The discrepancy between the depth and sanity and (let me add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and the rampant megolamania which must lie behind His theological teaching unless He is indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over" (The Joyful Christian [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 19771, p. 53 [from Miracles)).

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and what they expected us to believe. No facet of that content could be more crucial than what we are to believe about the Bible. As Alan M. Stibbs says, "Surely nojustification exists for . . . believing what the Bible teaches about other doctrines, . . . if we cannot equally rely completely on what the Bible teaches about itself."8 Therefore to accept the Bible's witness to its own authority is not circular reasoning but a logical corollary of its pre-theological academic authorjty.9 The Testimony of the Spirit There is yet a more basic reason for ascribing authority to the Bible. I refer to the conviction conveyed to our spirit by the Holy Spirit. Theologians have expressed this by the Latin phrase testimonium intemum Spiritus Sancti-the inward testimony of the Spirit. In a letter received recently from a young mother, whose background is completely nontheological, I found a striking example of this inward witness. She writes: You know ... at times I feel I'm almost falling in love with the Bible! Is that possible? It is just a book--r is it? Something in it is so alive. Though I know the words are very old, they seem to have been written for me, for NOW! It's almost uncanny. I read the Scripture in Eph. 3 verse 19-yes, that is what I want!-To 'know the love of Christ .. .' that I may be filled up to all the fullness of God!

Compare this with the confession of Phillips, intellectually and educationally poles apart from my correspon8. Carl F. H . Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972; first ed. 1959), p. 108. 9. The "Logical Trap" argument, of course, applies particularly to the New Testament. The authority of the Old Testament is established by Jesus and the apostles, whose acceptance without question of the Old Testament as the veritable Word of God is reflected consistently and pervasively throughout the New Testament literature.

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dent, that when he was working with the New Testament in the writing of his paraphrase, he began to feel, to his astonishment, like a man rewiring a house with the power on. Church history bears witness to the reliability of the Spirit's witness. In every age men and women who have approached the Bible with a humble, open, and honest mind, and whose spiritual perception was not paralyzed by continued sin or ulterior motive, have experienced the inward persuasion that the words of the Bible were in some mysterious way the words of God. This inward conviction is so basic that without it an understanding of Scripture is impossible. In this respect, the Bible is like love-it can be understood only from within. Those who have never been in love cannot helpfully write about it, and those who hear not God in the words of Scripture are incapable of explaining them. The Bible is not a cadaver which will yield cold, dead secrets to the scholar's scalpe1. 10 While, therefore, we must examine as carefully and rationally as we can every foundation stone on which we posit the authority of the Bible, we confess that reason alone will fall short of persuading a closed mind. The final certainty must be Spirit-born. Then through careful study this persuasion will be confirmed, and its implications and meaning better understood. But our approach must not be mere intellectual curiosity. Rather our motivation should be a deep passion to know the truth in order to be saved. If so, we will share John Wesley's sentiment: 10. This is what G. C. Berkouwer meant when he hinted that it is not theologically appropriate "to discuss Scripture apart from a personal relationship of belief in it" (Holy Scripture [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975; trans. and edited by Jack B. Rogers], p. 9).

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I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over a great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thingthe way to heaven ... God himself has condescended to teach the way: For this very purpose he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. 0 give me that book. At any price, give me the book of God! I have it! Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri (a man of one Book). Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heavenY

11. Works of John Wesley (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, n.d.), 5:3. In the Preface to his Notes upon the New Testament is a remarkably concise summary of Wesley's general view of Scripture: "Concerning the Scriptures in general, it may be observed, the word of the Living God, which directed the first patriarchs also, was, in the time of Moses, committed to writing. To this were added, in several suc· ceeding generations, the inspired writings of the other prophets. After· ward, what the Son of God preached, and the Holy Ghost spake by the apostles, the apostles and evangelists wrote. This is what we now style the Holy Scripture: this is that 'word of God which remaineth for ever'; of which, though 'heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall not pass away.' The Scripture, therefore, of the Old and New Testament is a most solid and precious system of divine truth. Every part thereof is worthy of God; and all together are one entire body, wherein is no defect, no excess."

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2 Biblical Authorltg and Secondary Authorldes Before analyzing the precise nature of biblical authority, it will be helpful to look more closely at the relationship of the Bible to secondary or adjunct kinds of authority. The problem is stated clearly by Robert K. Johnston: God as "ultimate authority is known only indirectlythrough the Bible, inner experience, church tradition, the creeds, and human reason. While God is the focus of the Christian's absolute allegiance, Christian theology through the ages has given 'mediate authority' to one or another of these secondary sources."! According to Johnston, Dennis M. Campbell in his book, Authority and the Renewal of American Theology, finds that several authorities have at times been made supreme. Traditional Bases of Authority 1. Religious Experience When men experience God, they possess immediate 1. In a review of Authority and the Renewal of American Theology, by Dennis M. Campbell (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1976), in Christianity Today, Nov. 18, 1977.

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certainty which becomes for them a touchstone of truth. Every theory tends to be evaluated by that experience. But since men and women are not only sinful but very complex and elusive in their susceptibility to delusion and suggestion, it is inevitable that religious experience may mislead as well as guide. The possible variations in religious experience seem endless, ~md as a consequence experience is a shaky ground for the development of a theological system. By itself experience has no safeguards against the extremes and vagaries of mystical, irrational subjectivism. The "God" men experience may not be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One reason that experience in and of itself is inadequate is that experience cannot be properly interpreted or described without language. And language is a prerequisite for intelligible religion. The human race began with language as a God-given and God-created gift. This provided Adam in the dawn of creation with the capacity for naming the animals, having conversation with God and with his wife Eve, and understanding God's restrictive commandment. Religious language, or God-talk, belonged to man's primitive speech; it was not a later development. It is language which provides the concepts and categories. A child touches a hot stove and experiences pain, but it is from mother that the word hot is learned, and later the word pain. Language combined with experience gives personal knowledge; experience without language can rise no higher than conditioned reflexes. The word hot is given subjective content by the experience of touching the hot stove, while the experience is made intelligible by the word hot. But the language does not come from the experience; that comes from our parents, and their parents, and so on back to Babel, and from thence back to A~am and Eve. The alteration and proliferation of languages, so that there are multiple ways 24

of saying "hot," does not minimize the primacy of language as a prerequisite in interpreting experience. In Jacob's dream the Lord said, "I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father" (Gen. 28:13). His dream was his experience. But the dream would have been meaningless to him if the concept of God had not already been in his mind and the word God in his vocabulary. The experience did not create this language tool or these concepts; the experience only utilized words already known, and in utilizing them enriched them, and in a sense confirmed them. What needs to be seen therefore is that while Godlanguage is undoubtedly influenced and enriched by experience, it is prior to it; therefore God-language becomes an interpreter and evaluator of experience. If God has utilized religious language as the medium of His self-revelation, and caused it to be written in the Bible, then this written Word takes priority over experience as an authority base for theology. While experience, therefore, is an adjunct source of authority for theology, it is itself subject to the prior authority of God's Word, and cannot stand alone.

2. Religious Experience Plus the Christian Community This is a stronger base, for there is at least one other point ofreference. The broader wisdom of the community, rooted in its own tradition and history, provides a check on the individual. Private experience needs to be subject to the judgment of others, especially those older and more mature. But the community itself may be in error, and the error may only reproduce itself in repeated private experiences. The psychology of religious experience is such that what the group expects is often what the person seeks-and even obtains. The phenomenon of tongues, for 25

instance, almost never occurs spontaneously without prior or concurrent group pressure, even though overt influence may have occurred in the past and be buried in the subconscious. We must confess therefore that even the combination of experience and community is not adequate for a sound theology. Experience may be false, or at least misinterpreted, while the community may be perpetuating a distortion, if not a heresy.

3. The Church as Initiated and Authorized by Revelation This view stresses God's self-revelation in history and in Christ. We have thus the community again, but now as the supreme source of authority, because the Church was created by God as the repository, guardian, and transmitter of the truth. It is easy to take the next step and say that the Bible is the creation of the Church. But what was pointed out in chapter one needs to be repeated here. Historically, the Bible was created by the prophets and apostles, a special group within Israel and the Church, delegated by God with this particular task. The Epistles, for instance, were directed to the churches, but the Church never presumed to edit or revise them. The Epistles-and all the other scriptures-shaped the Church; the Church did not shape the Scriptures, except in the very narrow sense of providing the questions and problems to which the Epistles were addressed. Furthermore, if the Church were to constitute the supreme authority for theology, it would have to be a unified Church with one doctrine, not many, and an unwavering Church century after century, down to the present day. The 20th-century Church would have to be as pure and authentic as the first-century Church; otherwise which Church would be authoritative, the new or the old? If it were the first-century Church, how would we 26

know what it taught if its teachings had not either been faultlessly transmitted by tradition or once for all committed to writing? No, the Church has been too pluralistic, too vacillating, too fallible and often corrupt, to be a reliable authority for theology, excepting as a secondary authority combined with other agencies.

4. The Claim of Secular Reason The next candidate for the high position of supreme authority is secular reason. That reason is indispensable, and plays a vital part in establishing legitimate authority, must never be permitted to be in doubt. But secular reason is reason operating exclusively in a nonsupernatural frame of reference. It is the belief that human reason on its own, without special revelation, is qualified to ascertain moral and religious truth. But this is a brash claim which few thoughtful people would make today: for reason itself would concede that if God is, He represents a dimension of reality outside the categories of finite human experience. Human reason is powerless to penetrate the mysteries of that suprahuman dimension. Reason does perceive hints in the natural order that such a dimension exists, and reason can confirm its value, but reason cannot draw from this dimension its secrets. However, once the secrets are disclosed by revelation, reason can then make some progress in interpreting them. Furthermore, there is not just one secular reason, but dozens, even millions, for individuals reason differently. If reason is then to be the supreme authority for our theology, we would have to settle for millions of theologies, all highly individualistic and subjective. In such a case the concept of authority would be so meaningless as to disappear entirely. '

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5_ The Bible as Authority Frederick Herzog is quoted by Campbell as saying: "The Bible is, and must be, the authorizing source and norm for theological thought and action." Quickly the evangelical says, "Herzog is right. We are Herzogians." But a little thought will show the danger of being simplistic here. Why do we espouse this view? On what grounds do we give such final authority to -the Scriptures? When we try to answer that question, we soon discover that every Bible believer has arrived at his belief under the tutelage of other authorities. One speaks up and says: "That's the way I was taught" -and so we have parental authority. Another says, "But this is the teaching of the Church"and here we have the community. Another says, "When I was born again, my mind suddenly took hold of the Bible with an inner certainty"-there is the authority of experience. Yet another says, "I studied the Bible's claims as intelligently and open-mindedly as I knew how and came to the conclusion even before my conversion that truly this is the Word of God"-reason here is speaking. (But it is not secular reason, for that would have ruled out the possibility of a divine book.) Actually, of course, while these four different persons ascribed their faith to a particular form of authority, these kinds of authority cannot be isolated so discreetly. They overlap and interpenetrate. The Resolution of the Problem Let us reduce the possible authorities to three: community, experience, and reason. Each is valid but only in conjunction with the others. Together they comprise an inseparable triad, even though in different persons one may seem to take the lead over the others.

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The point which is pivotal here is that this triad does serve an indispensable function in the matter of authority. For one thing, the triad of community, experience, and reason serves an initiatory function. Faith in the Bible is the product of the combined influences of this triad. Faith in the Bible begins in the teaching and witness of the Church, is strengthened by the inner light of experience through the Holy Spirit, and is directed by reason's activity in perceiving logical connections. This leads to the second point that the triad serves also a confirmatory function. Elementary, of course, is the need for confirmation by a sound religious experience. In that moment of confrontation with Christ there is not only a perception of Christ's reality but an intuitive gravitation toward the Bible. As this believer grows in grace, and senses while reading the Scripture the testimonium internum Spiritw> Sancti, and as he studies more fully the history and teaching of the community, and thinks deeply about the Bible's claims for itself, he arrives at an impregnable conviction that the Bible is indeed the final authority. Thus the confirmation of reason supports the confirmation of experience and of community. At this point, let us trace the function of reason a little more in detail. Reason is the reflective faculty by which experience and what we hear from others is mentally processed. That is, it is analyzed, evaluated, classified, utilized. Reason perceives connections between this thing and that. But it would be a mistake to suppose that reason operates in isolation from experience or learned ideologies, as if the three could be confined each to a leakproof compartment. Rather, reason operates within the matrix of experience and received teaching. Or, to change the figure, experience and learned ideas are reason's raw material. How does this bear on the subject of reason and

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biblical authority? For one thing, there is nothing in reason, as a thinking process, which requires that it be secular. For many, reason itself points to a religious world view. As the mind reflects on the whole of human experience and takes into account man's demonstrable finiteness and equally obvious corruption, reason perceives the rationality-the reasonableness-of postulating four premises: (1) The inherent necessity of the divine initiative in self-revelation if man is to know God; (2) the inherent necessity of utilizing words as the medium of revelation ("God spoke," Heb. 1:1, NIV); (3) the further inherent necessity of committing the words to writing, if the words are to be widely and accurately known, and perpetually available to posterity; and (4) the inherent necessity that God will sufficiently involve himself in the writing as to assure correctness. And thus we arrive at the logic of an inspired and authoritative Bible. 2

The Primacy of Scripture The dynamics of the interplay of experience, community, and reason are such that sooner or later, unless diverted by willful unbelief, the Christian comes to concede primary authority for life and doctrine to the Bible itself. As has been seen, reason will foster this movement, for reason, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, will perceive that no other authority is adequate. At this point, community, experience, and reason become servants and cease to be masters. Their task is now seen to be interpretive and transmissive, never corrective. The logic is simple: The Bible claims to be the unique and final 2. John H. Gerstner observes: "Reason has to precede faith in the sense that the mind has to know what the Bible claims to be. The idea that faith can exist where there is nothing on which it terminates is absurd" ("The Church's Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration" [In The Foundation of Biblical Authority)).

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Word of God. Experience, the community, and reason find these claims valid; therefore the ultimate authority of God himself is necessarily in the Bible. Having served this function, reason-remaining humble and teachable-will bow to the authority of Scripture and henceforth busy itself with seeking to understand and propagate. It is like the father of the bride at the wedding. It is the father who has rightful authority over the girl up to this moment, but when the preacher asks the fateful question, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" and he courageously answers, "I do," he relinquishes his authority and transfers it to the groom, where it must reside henceforth. The analogy may be inapt, even inept; but it suggests what happens when reason stops assuming final authority and surrenders to the final authority of the Bible. From this moment our handling of the Scriptures should, while always remaining reasonable, be first of all reverent; for our reason, now subdued, no longer claims autonomous right to sit in judgment on the Scriptures. In humility it accepts some teachings which are beyond it, simply because they are biblical teachings. It would appear therefore that unless aborted by sin and rebellion, all roads will lead to the Bible. The word unless reminds us that there is nothing inevitable about this. Parental authority, when we are small, is imposed on us. So likewise is governmental authority, or even institutional authority. But God does not impose biblical authority on us in the sense that we are compelled either to believe or obey. There is a moral arena here, and there is room for moral decision. If the Bible is to reach our minds, our minds must be opened to it. If our minds are to understand and grasp, our hearts must be teachable and obedient. For Jesus said, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine" (John 7:17).

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The Nature of Biblical Authority What, then, is the real nature of biblical authority? Several strongly affirmed adjectives will give us insight. A Divine Authority The authority of the Bible is divine in the sense that it authoritatively reveals to us the mind of God. Its divinely designed function is to speak of God and for God. Other books have less or no religious authority, for they either echo the Bible or else are speculative and philosophical. While the Bible may not properly be said to have been dictated by God, it nevertheless in its wholeness is a transcription of God's mind. Its authority is therefore as superior to secondary authorities as is a photograph to a police ~ketch made from rumors and clues. If the authority of the Scripture is merely human, and in no real sense divine, our interest in the Bible necessarily becomes academic, and our opinion about it is relatively inconsequential. To say that Jesus was a man, truly human, is to tell the truth; but to stop there is to turn the truth into a fatal half-truth and emasculate the gospel of any saving power. The power of Jesus to save rests

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squarely on the fact that He was and is more than man, indeed, very God of very God. Likewise, as freely as we may admit the thoroughly human nature of the Scriptures, we must quickly insist that this side of the truth alone provides no adequate basis for religious authority. I would have no compunction about arguing with Paul as a man. But if what he writes is not just the opinion of a man but also in some very real and unique sense the Word of God, I am stopped dead in my tracks. The same goes for Isaiah and Jeremiah and Matthew-yes, even Obadiah. When we are arguing with Scripture, we are arguing with God. When we disregard or disobey or despise the Scripture, we are disregarding or disobeying or despising God. We read that whoever despises the call to holiness is despising not man but God (1 Thess. 4:7-8). Why? Because man isn't inventing the call to holiness, only voicing it; the call is from God. But it is in the Scriptures that God makes the call. That is, God inspired men to transmit His Word, and in that Word is the call to holiness. That the Bible is uniquely the Word of God has been the undeviating position of Christian orthodoxy from apostolic days until now. l

An Infallible Authority By infallibility is meant unfailing and unerring in disclosing God's self-revelation to man. Some would distinguish infallibility from inerrancy, but this is semantically difficult.

1. This has been demonstrated times without number. as for instance by John H. Gerstner in The Foundation of Biblical Authority. pp.23·60.

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The current debate among "evangelicals" on inerrancy is familiar to many. Among those who are willing to subscribe to inerrancy in some sense are, first, those who would confine it to the biblical teachings on Christ and salvation, but deny it to cosmology and anthropology. Most neoorthodox and some neoevangelicals would belong here. Others, such 8S Harold Lindsell, would insist that to concede any error at all of any kind is fatal to the authority of the whole. 2 ~till others would favor a qualified inerrancy. For them it would extend not only to Christ and salvation, but also to cosmology and anthropology, but would not necessarily extend to every chronological, numerical, and grammatical detail. James Orr frankly denies absolute inerrancy, though holding to a very high view of inspiration and biblical authority. Rene Pache espouses full inerrancy, but by the time he defines it and qualifies it, the net result is a somewhat limited inerrancy. The Lausanne Covenant claims inerrancy for the Bible "in all that it affirms." This is understood by some to imply a qualified inerrancy. H. Orton Wiley is credited with framing the statement in the creed of the Church of the Nazarene which includes the clause, " ... inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation." According to Paul Culbertson, Wiley explained to

2. Harold Lindsell can claim some good company, in the person of John Wesley. Skevington Wood insists that "for Wesley inspiration extended not only to the general content and concepts of revelation, but to the precise vocabulary. The actual terminology of Scripture was accurately supplied by the Holy Spirit." When responding to one Soame Jenyns who believed that the writers of Scripture were sometimes left to themselves, and consequently made some mistakes, Wesley declared: "If there be any mistakes in the Bible there may as well be a thousand" (The Burning Heart-.Iohn Wesley, Evangelist [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967]. pp. 214-15).

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him that he deliberately articulated a moderate statement because he wanted "to leave elbow room in there." But lest we misunderstand what Wiley meant by "elbow room" we should look at Article IV in full: We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, in errantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained there is not to be enjoined as an article of faith .3

A brief analysis will show the nonnegotiable cornerstones of this commitment. Holy Scripture is precisely defined as the 66 books which form the present canon -including such controversial books as James, Revelation, and Daniel. The Apocrypha are obviously excluded. By "plenary" is meant full and complete. Every book is inspired, and every portion of every book-including Genesis 1-12, the account of the Canaanitish conquest, the genealogies of Chronicles and Matthew and Luke. There is no authority for abridging this "plenary" by excluding any portion from the category of "inspired."

3. The Manual, Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1976, and prior quadrennial editions) . In substance this follows the Methodist Articles of Religion of 1784: "The Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor inay be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation ." It would be very wrong to mis· construe this apparently narrow articulation of biblical authority as constituting an implication of error in the Bible of any kind. The statement must be understood in the light of the historical background. The fundamental need was to frame a statement which would guard against the Roman Catholic insistence on tradition as an adjunct and virtually coequal authority in determining dogma. The objective was not to limit inerrancy but to exclude tradition.

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Furthermore, a careful study into the meaning attached to "inspired" by the founding fathers will leave no doubt about certain basic postulates. The theological writings of Nazarenes from the late 19th century to the adoption of the Article in its present form in 1923, do not imply that the Bible is inspired in the sense of being " inspiring," or in the way that great literature or even great hymns may at times be said to be inspired. On the contrary, they believed the Bible to be inspired by the Holy Spirit in a solitary and unique sense-a kind of inspiration which may be ascribed to no other book in the world, past, present, or future. It is the Holy Bible, God's Word. Because of this unique inspiration, its authority is equally sole and unique. There is in the Bible a divine authority not to be found (even in a lesser degree) in any other book or compilation of books. This is not a scientific statement, but a confession of faith, a confession avowed and espoused by all who are members of this denomination. The creed does not include a theory of the mode of inspiration. However, implied is whatever mode was necessary to achieve its end-an inerrant revelation of God's will and plan of salvation for man. Obviously, therefore, the total statement limits the size of the "elbow." The claim of plenary inspiration would rule out serious error of any kind. The elbow then would have to be confined to the debatable question whether (1) there is such a thing as inconsequential error, and (2) whether indeed such inconsequential errors were in the original autographs. Perhaps some of the socalled "phenomena" of Scripture, such as the variations in the Gospels, might be in this category. But clearly, inspiration which was "out of control" and missed essential facts would be poor and feeble 36

inspiration indeed. Without the achievement of truth, the inspiration would be of small value. Even if some room for debate about inconsequential error were legitimate, this latitude does not extend to what by any reasonable criteria would be major error. For instance, whether or not Adam and Eve were real persons (as Genesis obviously intends us to believe), whether the Fall actually occurred in a space-time setting, whether Genesis 1-11 is basically historical or mythological, whether the story of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt is to be received as embroidered legend or sober truth, whether Jesus was born of a virgin as Matthew and Luke claim, whether the Gospels accurately report the sayings pf Jesus-to mention a few items-cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called "inconsequential." If the Bible on these matters is wrong, such error would undermine the very foundations of biblical authority. The Bible's obvious assumption of the factualness of these accounts is so clearly in the very warp and woof of the literature, whether history, poetry, or prophecy, that to weed these elements out-to "demythologize" thoroughly -would leave little Bible left. The remainder would be a feeble reed of support for historic Christianity. Wiley himself intended that the inerrancy which is affirmed be taken very seriously, as a careful reading of his Christian Theology will show. Speaking of the testimony of Jesus as the spirit of prophecy, Wiley says, "It is because this testimony is perfected in the Scriptures, that they become the Word of God objectified." He approvingly quotes Hannah's definition of inspiration as the action of the Spirit upon the writers whereby they were enabled to "embrace and communicate the truth of God without error, infirmity, or defeat." His own definition is as follows: "By inspiration we mean the actuating energy of the Holy Spirit by which holy men were qualified to 37

receive religious truth and to communicate it to others without error ."4 Similar affirmations follow, such as "kept free from error"; "securing at once the infallible truth of his material and its proper selection and distribution"; "the Bible becomes the infallible Word of God"; inspiration was necessary to secure "a true and inerrant account"; "infallibly preserved from error." Obviously the "elbow" Dr. Wiley wanted to make room for wasn't that of Goliath! Objective Authority Because the authority of the Bible is uniquely divine, we must see that authority as objective. This is true in two respects. First, in the sense that the Bible's authority does not depend on the perception of the reader for either its existence or validity. The matter is similar to the old question: Is there sound if no one hears it? If we define sound purely as a subjective phenomenon, in terms of impressions received by the brain, the answer is of course no. But if sound is defined objectively as radiating pressure waves in air, then the absence of ears is irrelevant; the sound is there anyway. Let us apply this to the Bible. We cannot accept the inordinate accent on the experience of encounter, characteristic of neoorthodoxy, which is at the expense of the cognitive content of Scripture. In effect this reduces the Bible to a mere medium of religious experience. But religious experience not linked with truth is evanescent, ambiguous, and even dangerous. 4. H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology (Kansas City: Nazarene Pubiishing House, 1941), 2:168. Elsewhere, Wiley makes the strong statement that "the Bible bears the same relation to the living and Personal Word, that our words spoken and recorded bear to our own persons" (p. 139). The authority of the Holy Scriptures, he says, "lies in the fact that they are an inspired revelation of God to man" (p. 167).

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Pastor Herb Ireland illustrated the difference between sight and insight by imagining a Judean shepherd who entered into the Bethlehem cave looking for a stray sheep, and while there admired the Babe and conversed with Mary and Joseph. He left quite unaware that he had seen the King. He had sight without insight. Later the shepherds came who had been told of the great happening. They had been given information which they accepted as reliable. They not only admired, they worshipped, because they had insight as well as sight. The analogy serves also to illustrate the difference between objective truth and subjective impression. The fact is, the identity of that Babe in Mary's arms was the same for the first shepherd as for the later visitors. It was not an ordinary infant in the one case and an extraordinary infant in the other case, just because they perceived Him as extraordinary. The perception or nonperception of the shepherds had nothing to do with determining the fact. The perception was subjective, the reality was objective. So likewise the Bible is God's Word all the time, unconditionally; and its authority is there-for the agnostic, the atheist, the hedonist, the dull, the stupid, and the unseeing. The truth is ontological; only perception is existential. And because the Holy Spirit is always active through the Word seeking to open the eyes of the blind and unstop deaf ears, the encounter with God through the Scripture will always occur when there is a willingness for it to occur. The second sense in which the authority of the Bible is objective is simply the extension of the first: the authority is indeed propositional. This is to say that the Bible authoritatively teaches what is true respecting God, man, and salvation, and what we are expected to believe. This constitutes a repudiation of the contemporary view as 39

expounded by John Baillie in The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, and more recently by James Barr of England. The Bible, according to this view, is not an infallible teacher of truth, but a religious record of past events, the function of which is to serve as a medium of God's personal revelation to the reader. Baillie explains that divine revelation is to be found solely in "the intercourse of eyent and interpretation," to which the Bible is merely a iater witness. While the revelation is infallible, the written witness to that revelation is not. s Not that the Spirit did not aid the writers in conveying the message; the thesis is that such aid did not match in authority or reliability the revelation itself. This view does not do justice to the Bible. A more orthodox view of the relation of the Bible to revelation is to see the written record as integral to the revelation, Le., an indispensable component. The inspiration of the Scripture, by which the original event and its prophetic interpretation are accurately transcribed (and thus perpetuated for personal recapitulation in every age) is as truly an act of revelation as the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, or the raising of Christ from the dead. The inscripturation of the Word of God is complementary to the incarnation of the Logos of God. We heartily concur with Clark Pinnock: "Conservatives have been able to argue with good success that the notion of God speaking and giving man His Word is very central in the Bible, and that Scripture is nothing other than an extension of this modality of revelation."6

5. John Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 10. 6. In Biblical Authority, edited by Jack Rogers (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, Publishers, 1977), p. 61.

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Christological Authority Biblical authority is fundamentally christological in nature. The Bible is authoritative for determining what we are to believe and how we are to live because even more fundamentally it is an authoritative revelation of Jesus Christ. If it is faulty and unreliable in its picture of Jesus Christ, its claim to any kind of religious authority collapses. As the Father invested His authority in the Son, so the Son as the Living Word has invested His authority in the Scriptures, the written Word. But this is meaningful only if the Scriptures reflect Christ accurately, by accurately portraying His person and conveying His teachings. Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31-32). But if we do not have the words of Jesus in the Bible, we have them nowhere and therefore have no chance of knowing the truth-indeed, not even whether He made this statement. Just as Jesus could say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9), so may we say, "He that hath read the Bible hath seen Christ." And if Jesus could say, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (v. 6), so we can equally say, "No man cometh unto Christ but by the Scriptures." Therefore the authority of the Bible lies in its power to show us Christ. That function has been given to the Bible by God. It is part of His sovereign plan of redemption. That was what the Bible was designed for . In fulfilling this function, the Bible does not fail. It is not in error. Its picture of Jesus is not distorted. It authoritatively tells us what Jesus did and said, which is to say that its record of what He said and did is true. We can trust it. This principle has many ramifications, but only one will be stressed here. The quest for the historical Jesus, so dear to the hearts of form critics, is a vain quest for 41

we have the historical Jesus right in the pages of the New Testament. The Gospels are not creations of the Early Church, with sayings and meanings ascribed to Jesus which were not His. The whole value of the New Testament as a reliable revelation of Christianity hangs on one verse: "He shall ... bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26). Jesus is referring to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in His function in enabling the apostolic community to accurately reconstruct and transmit, first orally then to writing, His teachings and, by implication, His deeds. The apostles were commissioned to interpret Jesus and were promised the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in remembering what He said and in properly understanding it. If Jesus actually made this promise, and if it was fulfilled, then the vast bulk of modern critical conjectures and theory-spinning is an exercise in futility. But if Jesus did not say this, and if it was not fulfilled, then we know virtually nothing with certainty about Christ and His teachings, in which case we are all mired in a hopeless morass of guesswork and speculation. 7 The value of such conjecture would be so minimal as to challenge the validity of anything the Church is doing. What is the worth of a "Christian" school (for instance) when we have no sure authority for knowing what it is to be Christian? 7. When C. S. Lewis pays his respects to some of these guesses of the biblical critics, from the standpoint of the science of literary criticism, he is not very complimentary . He says: "Dr. Bultmann never wrote a gospel. Has the experience of the learned, specialized, and no doubt meritorious life really given him any power of seeing into the minds of those long dead men who were caught up in what, on any view, must be regarded as the central religious experience of the whole human race?" (Christian Reflections [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967], p. 158; cf. pp. 153, 154, 157, 160, 162).

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In a very able discussion of Traditionsgeschichte, Grant R. Osborne, commenting on John 14:26, says: "The early Church believed it was imparting the actual teaching of Jesus. This was an internal control that the Church placed on itself: It was not to teach anything that contradicted or went beyond Jesus' teaching." He reminds us further of 2 Pet. 1:16, wherein we are assured that the kerygma was not based on "cleverly devised myths" (RSV). "The early Church argued," says Osborne, "that the pericopes were not 'myths' but 'eyewitness' accounts." He concludes that we "must refuse to view them [the New Testament writers] as playwrights who construct scenes to fit a later theological emphasis that Christ never intended," because, he says, the "evidence shows that the evangelists were not writing an imaginative theological creation but were interpreting historical events."8 And, according to Jesus' promise, they were interpreting truly, because they were reminded and illuminated by the Holy Spirit. Contemporary and Final

While space does not permit development, two "footnotes" need to be appended. One concerns the contemporaneity of biblical authority. We must be on guard against the subtlety of the so-called "new hermeneutic" which would, in effect, deny the extension of authority to the 20th century. After determining what the writings meant for them (is the belief), we must seek to discover what applies to us and what is true for us, and the way in which it is true for us. "To be saved," for instance, could very well have had a knowable particUlar content for 8. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, June, 1978, p. 128.

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the Early Church without the implication that the same expression should necessarily mean the same for us. While this hermeneutical principle has some legitimate applicability to peripheral and also some dispensational matters (as will be discussed in a later chapter), we must resist it in respect to such basic core themes as salvation. Rather, the core of the Bible's message meets the core of human need-a need unchanged through the ages. The Bible's insistence that certain things are wrong in God's sight, that repentance and faith in Christ are the way to .rGod, that holiness of heart is a divine provision and requirement-these teachings are as binding on us as on the very first generation of Christians. The other "footnote" is a reminder of the finality of biblical authority. No additional or supplemental revelations with comparable or competing authority can be expected. Speaking of Jude's phrase "the faith which was once for all delivered" (3, RSV), W. H. Griffith Thomas says: Inspiration, in the unique sense of the Holy Spirit conveying a Divine revelation, ceased when the last uniquely-qualified medium delivered his last contribution to the faith of Christ. After and since then, we have illumination, but not inspiration. The New Testament is therefore unique as enshrining the absolute, final truth of Christianity once for all delivered by the Spirit to the saints. 9

In comparing papal infallibility with biblical infallibility, Baillie complains that Protestant orthodoxy has not been able to show a "convincing reason for insisting on the plenary nature of the divine . assistance to the Scriptural

9. W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1955), p. 212; cf. his description of the astonishing and sudden eclipse of evidences of unique inspiration, pp. 152ff.

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authors while as firmly denying it to the mind of the Church [i.e., the pope] in later days."lo But of course there is a convincing reason for those who are willing to be convinced. It is that a once-for-aU, official, written gospel is complementary to a once-for-all Christ event. Christ commissioned the apostolate to interpret His advent and passion to the world; He did not ordain an open-ended investigation, in which the church's interpretation in A.D. 1000 would be equally inspired and equally official as the interpretation of those who were there. True, the Spirit aids in the sense of illuminating in every age; but such aid does not constitute new revelation, only fresh understanding and contemporary application. This lesser inspiration is qualitatively as different from the inspiration of the Bible as the death of Christ differed from the thousands of martyr-deaths which have been aided by divine grace since Calvary.

10. The Idea of Revelation, p. 112.

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4 The Scope of Biblical Authority We come now to the very practical question of the province or scope of biblical authority. The Bible is our final authority for doctrine, experience, ethics, culturethis much at least. Doctrine To begin with, the most obvious area of authority is in doctrine, which is to say, what the Christian is to believe. "Holy Scripture," says H. Orton Wiley, is "recognized by all schools as the true source of Christian theology."! The word didaskalia is usually translated "doctrine" in the KJV; "teaching" in some of the other versions. But by "teaching" is intended not simply the act of teaching but also the substance of what is taught. This doctrine was well defined in the Early Church, and jealously guarded. Doctrine was important to Paul. He commanded Timothy to see to it that the Ephesian elders taught no other doctrine (1 Tim. 1:3). He urged Timothy to find able and faithful men who would not be inventors of 1. Christian Theology, 1:166.

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novelties but be able to teach others what had been transmitted to them (2 Tim. 2:2). To Timothy he said, "Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee" (1 Tim. 4:16). And well known is the Pauline declaration of one function of Scriptureto be profitable for teaching (2 Tim. 3:16). On the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, Bernard Ramm comments: Sola Scriptura did not affirm that, with reference to the writing of theology, all knowledge other than biblical knowledge is unnecessary. It meant that, when it came to decision-making in controversy, the appeal to Scripture was the highest appeal possible, and that, where Scripture spoke on a point, the verdict of Scripture was final. 2

The Bible is not organized as a systematic textbook in theology, nor does it function as a dictionary of theology. One cannot tum to a specific chapter for a formal definition or statement of a specific doctrine, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. The word Trinity is not even there. Doctrinal nomenclature is the work of the Church in postapostolic periods, as to a great extent are formal dogmatic statements. Yet the New Testament indicates that even those few years between Pentecost and the writing of the New Testament documents, certain elements of the kerygma were creedal in form. A possible example is 1 Cor. 15:1-4: Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you receiued, in which also you stand, by which also you are saued, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 2. In Biblical Autlwrity, p. 116.

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For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (NASB) .

Several observations are in order. (1) Our salvation depends on knowing the true gospel and believing it. (2) There is a hierarchy in the total system of doctrinal truths; it is important to understand which truths are of first importance. (3) This kerygma consists of propositional revelation; that is, there was cognitive substance which was not optional and was in no sense mythological. (4) The Christian religion is based on the factuality of events in history, primarily the events of the death and resurrection of Christ. (5) Even in that early day, care was taken to align doctrine with the Scripture; the events and the Scriptures constitute a dual witness. This means that the Old Testament Scriptures were understood by the apostles as having foretold these events and of comprising in themselves an official key for understanding and interpretation. The Bible is full of direct doctrinal statements which are to be accepted at face value. Together, they form the basis for the development of dogma. However, it is not necessary that a specific doctrine be found in every book for it to be authoritative. The witness of a small portion of scripture may be sufficient if the scripture wording combined with the historical setting is sufficiently stressed to comprise an incontrovertible witness. An example is the witness of Matthew and Luke to the Virgin Birth. Luke especially claims our acceptance on scholarly grounds, professing to have "investigated e~erything carefully from the beginning" (Luke 1:3, NASB). From the data given by Luke, a doctrine of Virgin Birth is unavoidable. The doctrine is doubly established 48

by the fact that Matthew bears equally unequivocal and unambiguous witness, by giving the standpoint of Joseph. It must be said that, on the purely academic level, if Matthew and Luke were completely unreliable at this point, a matter which was obviously so important to them, there is no reason to trust their reliability anywhere else. Every subsequent narration would have to be suspect. Again, the Scripture does not need to state propositional truth in doctrinal language for it to contain data which are essentially doctrinal in nature and implication. We see this in the historical sections of the Old Testament. We learn much about God, man, sin, and holiness simply by studying man's behavior and God's reaction. On this basis Jacques Ellul draws powerful deductions which, while not formally dogmatized, are doctrinal in nature, from the Books of Kings. 3 While, therefore, the passages which can be cited as laser beams of doctrinal declaration are primary, the doctrinal teachings ascribed to the Bible must be checked and double-checked against the recurrent themes and affirmations in the Bible as a whole, in its history, its poetry, its wisdom, its prophecy. The personality, majesty, and holiness of God; His redemptive purpose for all men; the lostness and depravity of the human race; the persistence of God in moral relations with man, through discipline, judgment, and mercy; His unrelenting standard of holiness; His communication to man by diverse modes but supremely in His Son; the clearly perceived distinction in the divine nature between 3. But he assumes the historical factualness of this materialotherwise he would not be listening to it, to discover what this narrative teaches about God and man. See The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972), p. 44.

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God as Spirit, God as Creator and Ruler, and God as Son; the movement of grace from a legal covenant to an evangelical covenant; the focus of redemptive power in Christ's death and resurrection; the progressive stages of the Spirit's ministry from occasional enduement to the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost; the eschatological nature of God's sweeping overall plan-all these are doc trinal elements of the Christian religion which together make an organism of truth which .becomes the interface of Scripture. This doctrinal interface of necessity carries with it whatever authority the Scripture itself possesses. If we accept the whole Bible, the competent, devout student will emerge with something like this system of teaching. And the certainty of this overarching sweep of truth will become more impregnable with every reading of its 66 books. .

Experience The Bible is also authoritative for religious experience. Not all religious experience is Christian. Not all which professes to be Christian is biblical. What is a religious experience? It is any emotional or transcendent event such as rapturous joy or peace, or sudden deliverance, or apparent metamorphosis of the psyche, or vision or voices which the one experiencing it perceives to be religious in nature. These experiences may be highly suggestible, awakened by others. They are universally highly subjective and are often overwhelming in their persuasiveness. From whence do they come? Hopefully from God, but not necessarily so. They may be from our own longings and autosuggestion mechanisms, or perhaps from the highly charged emotional intensity of a group situation, or even from Satan himself. 50

Since we as human beings are so susceptible to selfdeception and autosuggestion, we need the safety of a third point of reference. Our feelings need to be tested by an objective norm. For the Christian, that objective norm must be the Bible. The Bible will search out the sham and the false and will insist that at the heart of every religious experience there be elements of repentance, faith, and obedience-not obedience to feeling, or an impulse, or the crowd, or a surrender to the guru or to TM, but to Jesus Christ alone, as revealed in the Scriptures. "Try the spirits whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). How are the spirits to be tested? By the Word! As Wesley said, "The Scriptures are the touchstone whereby Christians examine all, real or supposed, revelations."4 The Bible makes exclusivistic claims, such as, "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). This is the supreme offense in the Christian religion. A missionary recently reported that it is no problem in India to persuade Hindus to accept Christ provided they can simply add Him to their already bulging pantheon. But to accept Christ as supplanter of other gods is a very different and highly obnoxious thing for them. Nevertheless the ultimatum remains: "There is . . . one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). Because God's saving grace is channeled narrowly rather than through a multiplicity of channels, the Bible which reveals Christ must sit in judgment on every form of religious experience. This is a very practical principle. This can be illustrated in the following three areas. First many devotees of modem cults give fervent 4. Letters, Standard Edition (London: The Epworth Press, 1:)31), 2:117.

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testimony to deliverance from drugs, in many cases to a change of life-style, to great excitement and exhilaration. But their savior is another savior. However, Paul rules out any other gospel as having any true saving power (Gal. 1:6-9) . What we have before us is the phenomenon of religious experience which in its inner, secret essence is psychological and emotional, but which falls short of regen era tion. Again, take the relation of · religious experience to morals. Many today are claiming to be "born again" whose life-styles are completely unchanged. They continue to live in adultery or homosexuality, continue to gamble, and in other ways carry on as usual. But the Bible says, "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. 2:19); "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid" (Rom. 6:1-2); "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Rom. 6:16); "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" (l Cor. 6:9); "He that committeth sin is of the devil" (1 John 3:8). So the Bible sits in judgment on our religious experiences. It asks two questions: "Is it of Christ?" and "Does it make you holy?" There is a third area wherein the Bible is authoritative for religious experience. This is the area of the charismata. Francis Schaeffer speaks of a "super-spiri. tuality." One of its marks is a tendency to set aside the authority of Scripture and elevate itself as final and independent authority. So today many charismatics seem to live in the euphoria of a personal superrevelation which transcends that which is written. An example is a certain person who wrote in the flyleaf of his Bible: "I don't care what the Bible says; I've had an experience!" Much

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modern Pentecostalism would die out overnight if the movement would rigorously bring itself to heel and subject itself to the guidelines laid down by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, chapters 12, 13, and 14. Ethics The Bible is final authority, not only respecting what we are to believe and what we are to experience, but how we are to live. A bedrock conviction of every Christian must be that the Bible is both a final and a sufficient authority for determining right and wrong. The Bible's authority in ethics is one of the foundations of which the Psalmist speaks (Ps. 11:3) which, if destroyed, will leave the righteous floundering and helpless. These foundations may be attacked by the dynamite of open rebellion and unbelief; or they may be chipped away by a thousand clever sophistries. And the chipping may be done from within, by those who profess to be friends, and claim only to be using the chisel to shape the contours of the foundations to conform to the modern mind. But what the chisel really does is to destroy unobtrusively. We must be clear in our thinking at this point. Otherwise we will be brainwashed by the clever and relentless propaganda that is being unleashed upon us today. This propaganda is battling for the elimination of the last vestiges of the Judeo-Christian ethic from our culture and our legal processes. Medical people, sociologists, newspaper editors, and university professors would argue that promiscuity is healthful, that adultery is unrelated to moral character or fitness to hold political office, that homosexuality is a harmless and acceptable alternative to heterosexuality. This huge segment of our writing and talking world would delete sin from our vocabulary and guilt from human experience. 53

The bombardment of ideas is so constant and so subtle, and sometimes so plausible, that the Christian, if he is to remain Christian, must be anchored very solidly to the Bible as the source of Christian ethical norms. And he must listen to the Word obediently and handle it honestly, absolutely refusing to follow the lead of some renegade evangelicals who would modify and evade plain ethical teachings in the name of scholarship or the new hermeneutic, so that what is left is denuded of its ethical clarity and deprived of ethical sanctions. While it is true that some modern ethical issues-such as abortion, euthanasia, racism, and war-are not discussed directly by name, our decisions today must be made within a biblical frame of reference and in the light of clear biblical principles. Culture Yes, culture also comes within the range of biblical authority. This is true partly because culture soon overlaps with ethics. It is also true because culture represents an avenue of communication; hence evangelism must utilize culture. But this implies that our conformity or nonconformity to a prevailing culture can be a matter of stewardship. Every Christian who elects a subculture must ask himself whether his subculture is a barrier or a bridge to maximum usefulness and influence. Therefore the sincere Christian wants to allow the Bible to shape his culture as well as his ethics. In this connection, note the following three observations. First, the Bible teaches that there are times when a Christian not only witnesses within his culture but should witness in conformity with it. The classical passage here is the oft misunderstood 1 Cor. 1l:5-6-"Every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying [in

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public worship]' disgraces her head; for she is one and the same with her whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head" (NASB). This is puzzling, and somewhat absurd, in terms of our culture, but very relevant to Corinthian culture. Robertson quotes Findlay: "Amongst Greeks only the hetairai [prostitutes}, so numerous in Corinth, went about unveiled." The Christian women, in their new liberation, supposed that as Christians they could dispense with the custom of the veil; but Paul perceived that this was a misconstruing of Christian liberty, for it was a "breach of custom which would bring reproach" (Robertson), They were not to flout the customs if by so doing the church would be cast in a bad light, and the pagans around would be caused to interpret Christian liberty as lewdness. Robertson adds: "Social custom varied in the world then as now, but there was no alternative in Corinth."5 The permanent word in this passage for God's people is that we should respect the conventions and conform to the prevailing culture, when that culture is in itself neutral, and when deviation would be harmful instead of helpful. Second, according to the Bible the opposite situation may dictate opposite decision. When the Word says, "Be not conformed to this world" (Rom. 12:2; or as Phillips puts it, "Don't let thE! world around you squeeze you into its own mOUld"), we are being reminded that while at times we should conform to culture, at other times we should break its hold upon us. For culture is not always neutral; indeed, the underlying currents of culture are 5. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1933),4:160.

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pagan and anti-Christ, and therefore we must see to it that we are not culture's blind slaves. It requires a very high level of intelligence, combined with deep, Spirit-taught sensitivity, to discern the elements in culture which we can sanctify as servants and those elements which will dissipate our spiritual power and compromise our Christian witness. This is an area needing much more careful thinking among us than we generally give to it, and we are the poorer for our failure. Third, there is a quiet influence emanating from the Scriptures, whenever and wherever they are widely disseminated, which shapes culture. Books have been written '. tracing the multiple and exciting lines of influence in our literature, our jurisprudence, our politics, in fact, every facet of Western culture. This process has been going on for hundreds of years, ever since the Church sent missionaries into Europe, and the Norsemen and Teutonic tribes and Angles and Saxons, as well as the southern Europeans, were gradually evangelized. And today, when the Bible is translated and read, people quietly change: monogamy replaces polygamy, the caste system crumbles, manual work gradually is transferred from the shoulders of women to the shoulders of men, the family is undergirded, compassion builds hospitals and dispensaries, enlightened hearts want educated minds, moral standards are elevated, and inevitably the cultural accessories are adopted which support and foster honesty and purity. This kind of biblical authority is not necessarily legislated; but when the religious light of the Bible pierces the darkness, it is not long until the culture begins to conform. When this process is seen over and over in mission fields, it is a shameful anomaly that Christians in America should at times fail to let the Bible shape their own culture more pervasively and consistently . 56

The Llmltadons of Biblical Authority In a very true sense we can say that biblical authority is unlimited. But it is equally true that it has limitations. We need to give careful attention to them. The Primacy of the Original Auto,g raphs It must be stated first of all that the authority of Scripture is unqualified only in the original autographs. In all subsequent copies, versions, and translations, the authority is transmitted only to the extent of their fidelity with the original. Defective manuscripts have impaired authority. For example, it would be risky to defend tongues speaking and snake handling from the ending of Mark, for the inclusion in the KJV of the section from verse 9 onward is very suspect. Thus the science of textual criticism is important, for the scholar desires to know as accurately as possible what the original authors wrote. The interpreter must always ask, "Does this wording accurately convey the writer's intended meaning?" If he is convinced that it does, he may rest the full weight of authority upon it; if he is not sure, then the authority ascribed to the uncertain passage 57

must of necessity be tentative. Of course, any reservation must not be a matter of personal whim or dislike, but be justified only when based on the best textual data available. However, to claim that authority is vested primarily in the original documents raises a serious problem when it comes to the use of the Septuagint, (itself a translation) in the New Testament. Authority is ascribed by New Testament writers to the Old Testament; this much is obvious. What is not so obvious to the casual English reader is that equal authority is ascribed to quoted passages whether they are directly from the original Hebrew or from the Septuagint. Another aspect of the problem, though perhaps less acute, is that even when quoting from the Hebrew, none was quoting from original autographs, only from copies. Furthermore, in the process of writing in Greek, they were translating. It may be that we are compelled to take some such position as that of Abraham Kuyper, who believed that the New Testament writers "were inspired in a way analogous to the writers whose text they quoted," and that the Holy Spirit through the apostles was in reality quoting himself. "and is therefore entirely justified in repeating his original meaning in application to the case for which the quotation is made, in a somewhat modified form, agreeably to the current translation."l However, whether we solve the problem along these lines or not, we should not miss the implication most germane to the relation of authority to translations. The use of the Septuagint by the New Testament writers implies at least this much, namely, that they were not 1. Quoted by Berkouwer. Holy Scripture. p. 230. According to Gerstner (Foundation of Biblical Authority. p. 39). John Calvin took a similar position.

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afraid of the translating process and ascribed to the translation essential authority as the Word of God. This does not cancel the statement of limitation which we are now discussing, but prevents carrying that limitation too far. We cannot at this point in history speak only of the originals as the Word of God. Biblical authority is in every faithful version and translation. If one translation is all a people have, they have no option but to handle it reverently as the Word of God. When, in the course of time, the job is done better, the authority of the familiar but poorer translation must yield to the authority of the unfamiliar but better translation. Unfortunately the average man of the church has no tools for making such valuations, which fact places an enormous load of moral responsibility on those scholars who must do it for him. This challenge is compounded in Western nations where translations and paraphrases are multiplying with dizzying rapidity. Obviously when different Bibles handle the same passage with significant differences, we find ourselves having to retreat to the mundane level of academic authority, which is necessarily relative. But in most cases the differences are not crucial, and in by far the majority of passages the unabridged authority of the original comes through, because the intended meaning comes through. In matters that are really basic-doctrine, ethics, life-style-this correspondence is adequate, at least for a careful and discerning student. Again it needs to be underscored that the presence of divine authority is so infused in a translation that no reader dare pick and choose what he believes to be authoritative purely on the basis of doctrinal bias or personal preference. A Holistic Authority It should be observed also that the authority of the Bible rests in the Book as a whole. not in disattached

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and disoriented fragments of it. This does not mean that a single verse cannot speak with authority, but that its authority resides in its divinely intended meaning; and a correct understanding of a single verse will always be validated by the Bible as a whole. The premise here is that the Unity of the Bible is more determinative for its message and meaning than its diversity. Increasingly in the last generation Bible scholars have come to a new awareness that while the 66 books of the Bible represent a variety of time slots, cultures, viewpoints, and purposes, and themselves comprise greatly diverse literary forms and personal styles, there is nevertheless an astonishing overarching unity. Some see this in terms of the kingdom of God, others in terms of covenant, still others in terms of sin and salvation, including holiness. All such themes are correct if we see them as variants of the one underlying motif-God's redemption in Christ. A further premise is that God ordained all the parts of the Bible, in their rich multiplicity of hues, as essential to provide the complete, unabridged revelation. There are paradoxes in the Bible; they are needed for balance. There is a dialectical development. We do not gain understanding by elevating thesis over antithesis, or the reverse, but by putting them together until we can find the divinely designed synthesis. It is this synthesis which is authoritative. Dismembered portions of the Bible will only yield fragmented concepts of truth. The truth of these passages is to be found not simply in the bare words but in their relation to other words. 2 2. P . T . Forsyth struck a true note when he urged preachers to "cultivate more the free, large, and organic treatment of the Bible, where each part is most valuable for its contribution to a living evangeli· cal whole" (Positive Preaching and Modern Mind [New York: George H. Doran Company. n.d.], Lyman Beecher Lectures, Yale, 1907, p. 28).

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Take the question of divorce. The whole Bible teaching cannot be expounded simply from Matt. 5:32b, "Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (NASB). Many today strictly forbid remarriage under any circumstances by declaring, "This is what the Bible says, and I believe it means what it says." Of course it does, but we don't really know what it says until we put the parts together. We must interpret this uncompromising statement in the light of a number of related factors including the exceptive clause which is in the same verse, the creative intention of one flesh, the gravity of the seventh commandment, the hardness-of-heart provision of the Mosaic law, the discussions of Jesus elsewhere, the background haggling among the Jews which prompted some of these statements, the clear New Testament monogamous ideal, and Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians of the situation in case of desertion. Moreover, the question of divorce is related to the larger matters of the relation of law to grace, the difference in the two covenants, and the redemptiveness of the Christian way. Of course, this is vastly to increase the difficulty of knowing what the Bible really teaches about divorce; and what is said here in no way implies that the Bible is sufficiently clear as to guarantee a total consensus. But this is the job which must at least be attempted if we are to arrive at a biblically authoritative position on divorce. The authority of one-half of one verse is valid, but only as properly interpreted, and such interpretation will be accurate only as it is done in the light of the whole. Inspiration Versus Revelation A third factor is that biblical authority must rest in a distinction between inspiration and revelation. Everything in the Bible is inspired, but not every verse in the Bible

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in and by itself reveals truth which is to be believed. In order to understand this, we must see clearly the distinction between inspiration and revelation, then the deduction which must be drawn from this distinction. As has already been pointed out, "plenary" means that inspiration extends to every part of the Bible. But this inspiration consists first of all, and primarily, in the influence and superintendence of the Holy Spirit in determining what should be included and what should be left out. To whatever extent was necessary, this inspiration extended to the very words, certainly to the ideas, and certainly to the inclusion of this or that bit of history, or this or that viewpoint. But to include this or that viewpoint by inspiration is not the same as endorsing that viewpoint as true. It may be utterly false, yet prove useful for recording. Revelation, on the other hand, is the disclosure of truth which God intends us to believe. Revelation is relative to that body of truth or teaching which the inspired Bible is intended by God to convey. To reveal this message of Christ, sin, and salvation is what the Bible was inspired to accomplish. Inspiration includes not only this revelation, that is, the picture, but the frame on the picture. But the frame must not be confused with the picture. It is important because it was chosen by the Master as the way to show the picture to best advantage. 3 Let us change the analogy. Just as some parts of a jigsaw puzzle are more revelatory of the final picture than others, so some parts of the Bible make very indirect 3. Harold Lindsell acknowledges this distinction in quoting B. H. Carroll: "The inspiration of the Bible does not mean that God said and did all that is said and done in the Bible; some of it the devil did and said. Much of it wicked men said and did" (The Bible in the Balance [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979], p. 133).

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and even minor contributions to the final body of truth . Not much spiritual truth is revealed in the genealogies of Chronicles, but they make some contribution to the total mosaic; they are not there by accident or mistake. The best example and illustration of this principle is Job. Plenary inspiration includes those misguided speeches of Job's comforters. But we get into a hodgepodge of contradictions if we suppose that because inspired they are thereby divinely endorsed, so that we can take any verse from those speeches as a preaching text, on the assumption that because inspired it must reveal truth and therefore possess unqualified authority. In actual fact, while Job's friends expressed some profound truths (cf. Job 5:17 with Provo 3:11 and Heb. 12:5-6), they said other things which were false and cannot be harmonized with the fundamental teaching of the book as a whole (Job 42:7-8) . It is this basic teaching which carries divine authority, not the disparate and incongruent parts, which while inspired in the sense of being properly included, are not in themselves the revelation. Now the deduction which must be drawn from this is quite obvious: The various parts of the Bible are uneven in authority. No one exhibited a higher regard for the Old Testament than did Jesus, yet in His discussion with the Pharisees about divorce He clearly implied that not all parts of Scripture were equally authoritative. Jesus appealed to the Genesis account of God's original intention in creation: "Have ypu not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh'? " (Matt. 19:4-5, NASB). When they appealed to the authority of Moses, Jesus plainly implied that Moses' regulations concerning divorce were deviations from the norm, as accommodations to 63

human sinfulness, and must not be elevated to a level of authority which in effect would supersede the Genesis passage. The primitive Word of God was authoritative in determining the norm; any accommodation was subordinate and therefore temporary and local in authority. Here are two grades of authority, ultimate and secondary; and the ultimate controls the secondary, not the other way around. Progressive Revelation A fourth consideration is that biblical authority is also qualified by the principle of progressive revelation. "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2, NASB). As the sun reaches the meridian very gradually from the first faint dawning of light, so God's self-revelation as recorded in Scripture progressed from the limited disclosure to Cain, Enoch, Noah, and later to Abraham, to the fuller disclosure to Moses, then to the prophets, and finally to the perfect revelation in Christ-and in a sense even beyond, to embrace the authoritative interpretation of Christ in the New Testament. The idea of progressive revelation implies two corollaries: One is that the Fall plunged the human race into abysmal darkness and ignorance. Communication with God, as far as the race at large was concerned, was severed or at least was rare and fragmentary. Because man in his rebellion did not like to retain God in his knowledge, said Paul (cf. Rom. 1:28), God permitted the inevitable consequence to prevail, viz., spiritual blindness. While there were exceptions, such as Enoch and Noah, this was the general state of the human race. The second corollary is that God in His wisdom

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elected to rediscover himself to this race gradually and in particularistic manners, that is, to selected persons and in selective ways and times. The knowledge of God inherent in each contact was retained sufficiently for a strain or line of knowledge to be cumulative. Throughout this special history this knowledge of God was built up, block upon block, and in such a way as to prepare the special recipients of this revelation for Christ. 4 This preparation included the calling of a man, Abraham; the creation of a people, Israel; the giving of the Law; the sending of the prophets; the insights of the poets and wise men. The Bible is the inspired record of this cumulative, progressive, divine revelation. As such, each portion of the Bible necessarily reflects a different stage in this process. Now for the punch line: The authority of these various parts of the Bible is primarily relevant to the stage in this process which they represent. For us these portions representing earlier stages are authoritative in several ways. (1) They are authoritative sources of information concerning God's dealings with His people then. (2) They are authoritative pastorally, to provide examples and lessons and warnings, as Paul says (1 Corinthians 10). (3) They are authoritative in the light that they cast on subsequent developments, including Christ and the Christian Church. (4) They continue to be binding on us for belief and conduct insofar as details are reaffirmed in the New Testament and shown to be part of the timeless gospel instead of the preparatory stages. (5) They remain authoritative

4. Oscar Cullman has popularized the term Heilsgeschicte (Salvation History), but the concept, as often used, allows for a deviation between the facts of real history and the account as found in the Old Testament; therefore evangelicals should use the term guardedly_

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in their revelation of God's redemptive purposes and His timeless will for man's holiness. 5 But the principle of progressive revelation also means that the authority of certain portions of the Bible may not be, in detail or application, the same for us as it was for those to whom those portions were originally addressed. This is to say that authority also is progressive, and that the authority of one stage is modified or even superseded by the authority of a subsequentJuller revelation. It is on this basis (though the full working out of this cannot be traced here) that such matters in the Pentateuch as the dietary laws are not binding on us; nor is the right of the lex talionis our right; nor is it our duty to take our childless brother's wife and raise up children for his name and inheritance. This principle of progressive revelation, and thus changing authority, was clearly illustrated by Jesus in His conversation with the Samaritan woman. She wanted to know if the Samaritans or the Jews were right respecting the proper place to worship. In His answer, Jesus implied that it was the Jews, for God himself had taught the Jews where and how to worship: "For salvation is of the Jews" 5. It is very important to add that every part of the Bible remains valid devotionally. As we read prayerfully, in full commitment to the premise that "this is God's Word; I want to hear what He has to say to me today, " the Holy Spirit can take any portion and quicken it to our immediate personal need. Even seemingly less important passages can "speak to our condition." The Bible is the Spirit's book, and He is sovereign in its use. But such use of the Scriptures by the Spirit in our devotional life does not grant us liberty to build a serious body of interpretation on these personal love-touches between us and the Lord . Perhaps in a deep crisis the Spirit used a promise to give us guidance or rea~8urance-indeed, made it ours; this does not alter the fact that exegetically it may not be ours, but belong to the Jews, or be a passage which finds its primary relevance to a past day. There are secret applications therefore which we are not free to preach or teach as sober interpretation.

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(John 4:22). But immediately He announced a reVISlOn and, by implication, a cancellation. "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father"; then He added that this hour "now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth" (vv. 21, 23, NASB). Jesus thereby annulled the authority of the entire Mosaic system of cui tic worship.6 The Father himself affirmed on the Mount of Transfiguration that all previous authorities were superseded by Christ's authority. When Moses and Elijah appeared in conversation, representing the law and the prophets, Peter's impulsive suggestion carried the implication that they should be retained along with Jesus, unchanged and unabridged. But the representatives of the law and the prophets disappeared in a cloud and God said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; hear Himl" (Matt. 17:5, NASB). In Jesus is God's supreme Authority. This indeed is what Jesus declared in announcing the Great Commission: "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore ... " (Matt. 28:18-19, NASB) . The authority of the Scripture, therefore, is subject to the authority of Jesus. Some levels of Old Testament authority are annulled by Jesus because they are fulfilled. Other levels of authority are elevated by Jesus, because they are endorsed and affirmed. And. all professed authority can be tested by its relation to Jesus. 6. Another sign of radical change and displacement was the rending of the veil in the Temple which separated the holy place from the holiest of all, when Jesus died (Matt. 27:51). That rending typified the real termination of the old restricted system which was brought about by Christ's death. Our access to the holiest is no longer by being represented once a year by a priest, but a wide·open, personal, and individual access through the Holy Spirit (Heb. 10:19-22),

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Yet, underlying the progressive nature of revelation are two constants, which place on the whole a remarkable stamp of unity and authenticity. First there is God's undeviating redemptive concern for man. Wherever the Bible records any contact of God with man (and the Bible is a continuous record of such contact), this redemptive concern comes through, whether with Adam in the garden, or Noah, or Abraham, or even Lot. Justice, yes; judgment, certainly; but even jQdgment was a mode of His redemptive concern. . The second constant is God's requirement for manholiness. By this is meant a walk with God in faith and integrity according to the light possessed . God never negotiated with man a lower standard than this. The judgments were never capricious, never because man was finite, never because of mistakes, but only and always because of wickedness-a refusal to obey God. These two constants, when seen against the everchanging panorama of progress in revelation, certainly lend credence to a Wesleyan thesis, that redemptive love and personal holiness are the fundamental themes of the Bible. They converge at the Cross, as expressed by the hymn writerHe died that we might be forgiven, He died to make us good. -CECIL

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F.

ALEXANDER

6 Biblical Authority and Hermeneutlcs When Ezra stood up to expound the Scripture to the returned exiles in Jerusalem, he carefully "gave the sense" (Neh. 8:8), which is the exact task of the exegete and expositor. The intended meaning was conveyed in words which transmitted this meaning to his listening audience without loss or distortion. This is no easy task. But unless the expositor approaches his work reverently, with a high view of God's authority vested in the Scriptures, he will almost inevitably succumb to the temptation of adjusting the meaning as he goes along. He will tend to bring it in line with what he thinks it ought to be, or with what his listeners will bear. He is thus revising the Scriptures on his own authority. When this happens, the subjective factor prevails excessively, and the exposition is being done unreliably. Modern Ezras must never forget that they are seeking to ascertain the meaning, not to correct it. Their objective is obedience and transmission, not criticism and revision.

General Principles Obviously it is impossible to provide in this chapter a

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fully developed system of hermeneutics. 1 There are plenty of helpful books available such as Kaiser and Kummell, Kevan, Ramm, Sproul, Wright, and an older classic, Terry.2 If we are rightly to divide the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), we must distinguish the temporary from the timeless, the local from the universal, the fulfilled from the unfulfilled, the annulled from that which is still binding. All of this naturally presupposes .the necessity of knowing exactly what is said (which certainly requires getting behind the King James Version and back to the original languages), and of interpreting in the light of the context. Furthermore, familiarity with the rules governing different literary genre is absolutely mandatory. Otherwise we will commit such blunders as spiritualizing what should be interpreted literally, and literalizing what should be spiritualized-as the radio preacher who understood Paul's "for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them" (1 Cor. 10:4) as implying that the literal rock was hewn out by Moses and carried in a wagon behind the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings! Those who do not know how to recognize figurative language should not presume to interpret Scripture. Moreover, budding Bible students should have some awareness of the nature of the so-called Historical-Critical approach to the Bible and the Historico-Grammatical hermeneutic, and of the difference between them. Generally, the Historical-Critical approach has been negative and destructive, because it has operated on two presuppositions: (1) That Scripture and the Word of God are not 1. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation; in this case, the interpretation of the Bible. 2. An available, concise introduction to the basic principles of hermeneutics is R. S. Sproul's Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1977), which will prove helpful to laymen though it is not compatible with Wesleyan theology.

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to be equated; rather that there is a "canon within the canon" which the astute student is to find, while the rest he may reject as totally human and full of error. This is vastly different from saying that all is inspired, therefore all belongs to the Word of God; but that because human sins and errors of viewpoint are divinely included we must make careful distinctions, discerning what is truth and what we are bound to believe. To acknowledge the need for "rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15), and for the exercise of common sense, does not imply a subjective assessment of what is and is not "inspired." The untrue (in content) differentiates itself from the true as we compare scripture with scripture. (2) An even more devastating presupposition is the a priori denial of the miraculous. That advance knowledge which we call prophecy is ruled out; therefore Daniel, for instance, must be ascribed to an unknown writer who wrote after the events, not before. This viewpoint in the end challenges the Bible on every front-authorship, history, date, as well as fact and substance. Nothing is to be accepted at face value but must be compelled to prove itself. And by the time it is forced through the naturalistic sieve of these critics, little is left. In contrast, the Historico-Grammatical method of interpretation may and should be practiced by conservative students. This begins with the assumption of inspiration and infallibility, but seeks to understand the Bible by bringing to bear on its pages every possible ray of light from historical backgrounds and setting, cognate languages, philology, and the science of textual criticism. 3 3. A book which explains the tools and methods of various critical schools, and shows both values and disvalues within a conservative frame of reference is The New Testament and Criticism by George Eldon Ladd. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967).

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All of this is clear enough, in theory at least, though certainly not easy in practice. But it does not comprise the subject matter of this chapter. We wish rather to underscore certain guidelines growing out of the foregoing chapters, which guidelines sometimes seem to be ignored or at least neglected. The Hermeneutical Objective The hermeneutical objective has often been said to be the apprehension of the writer's original intention. This is surely vital, but there is a yet more ultimate duty. It is to strive-through prayer, spiritual illumination, and a willingness to let Scripture be its own interpreter-to ascertain the original intention of the Holy Spirit. For often the Spirit's intended meaning was not seen by the human authors. They wrote more profoundly than they knew, and prophesied about things or prefigured coming revelations which they themselves did not understand. For the New Testament assumes that in the writing of the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was the prime Mover. In Heb. 3:7 we read, "Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says" (NASB), and there follow several verses from Psalm 95, which the Hebrews writer interprets to be a prophecy of the gospel dispensation, specifically of the spiritual rest available through Christ. That this is understood as being more than simply an accommodated application is seen in 4:8, "For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that" (NASB). God was speaking of our day, says the writer to the Hebrews, but it is unlikely this was understood by the Psalmist. If, therefore, we had sought to understand Psalm 95 strictly in its own light, by asking, What did this mean to the Psalmist? we would have missed the real meaning (cf. Acts 1:16; 28:25). 72

Similarly Jesus quoted Psalm 110: "David himself said in [or by, margin] the Holy Spirit, 'The LORD said to my lord; Sit at My right hand, / Until I put Thine enemies beneath Thy feet'" (Mark 12:36, NASB). Now notice Jesus' comment: "David himself calls Him 'Lord'; and so in what sense is He his son?" (v. 37). This was advanced as biblical evidence (and for Jesus biblical evidence was final) that the expected Messiah was to be divine. Jesus was stating what He perceived to be the real meaning of the psalm, as intended by the Holy Spirityet very probably a meaning only dimly perceived by the Psalmist. This basic principle-that the true meaning is often beyond the bare understanding of the writer-is conceded by Peter: "As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow" (1 Pet. 1:10-11, NASB). If this is a sound hermeneutical principle, it becomes obvious that men without the Spirit can never become accurate biblical interpreters, for only Spirit-taught persons will have eyes to perceive spiritual meanings (2 Pet. 1:20-21). On the other hand, this principle is not a license to run riot in imagining hidden meanings which are not there. Even a spiritual-mindedness must be disciplined by sound sense. This provides no umbrella for unbridled allegorizing - as in the case of a popular radio and Bible conference speaker who recently said that he could preach the gospel from the names of the gates of Jerusalem as enumerated in Nehemiah 3. The Fish Gate, for instance, stood for evangelism, because Jesus said, "I will make you fishers of men" (Matt. 4:19). 73

But while the principle should not be abused, it has many legitimate bearings. An example is Paul's statement in 1 Cor. 15:51, "Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed" (NASB). Paul is saying that not all Christians will die. If Paul had in mind only the "we" of that generation, he was in error, for they all died. But the question is not what Paul meant by the "we," but what did the Holy Spirit mean? And when we tie this in with many similar uses of you, we, and us, such as Jesus' promise, "I will be with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:20, NIV) , we see that the Holy Spirit had broader vistas for the New Testament than that immediate generation. The "we" is the entire Church, historically as well as geographically extensive, so that it will be literally true that "we shall not all sleep." Most of the Church no doubt will pass through death, but not all. Therefore we may say that while Paul in his own immediate context might have been considered to be "in error," the Bible is not in error. Organic Unity A second major postulate which should govern our hermeneutics can be stated this way. In our approach to the interpretive task we should adopt an assumption of essential unity in the Bible's teachings. This means that we search for the harmonizing key when handling apparent contradictions. This is not to be done artificially but with a conviction that God does not contradict himself or permit real contradictions to occur in the composite whole of the Bible. In affirming this principle, we are not thinking primarily of minor chronological details which have no bearing on the truth being taught. Rather, we refer to more subtle differences which seem to represent opposite teachings.

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Here are a few samples: Jesus said, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" (Luke 6:26). Yet John wrote approvingly of Demetrius (Third Epistle), who had "good report of all men" (v. 12). Jesus said, "Judge not"; but in the same chapter (Matthew 7) He declared, "By their fruits ye shall know them" (vv. 1, 20), and Paul asks that if "we shall judge angels . . . how much more things that pertain to this life?" (1 Cor. 6:3). In the creation account God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18), yet in 1 Cor. 7:1 we read, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." Jesus applied the first passage by saying, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife" (Mark 10:7), but later He says, "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own ... wife and children ... he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26, NASB). The instances could be multiplied. Superficial readers will leap to the conclusion that the Bible is hopelessly inconsistent and self-contradictory. But a more thoughtful inquiry will reveal that in many cases these contrasting statements are but the two sides of the same coin; in other cases they relate to completely diverse or at least special circumstances. If we let Scripture interpret Scripture, and lay passages alongside each other instead of pitting them against each other, we will arrive at a truly balanced and Christian synthesis of Bible teaching. And the conflict will disappear. 4 We should learn from the story of the lone hermit who lived deep in the forest, and who one stormy night 4. James I. Packer rightly says: "The method of interpreting Scrip· ture with Scripture . . . is the only method with biblical warrant, and the only one that can keep us from the impoverishment to which an unsanctified selectiveness will otherwise lead" (from his chapter, "Encountering Present·day Views of Scripture," in The Foundation of Biblical Authority, p. 74).

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opened his door to a traveler seeking shelter. As the traveler settled himself in front of the fire, he began blowing on his hands. When the hermit asked him why, he replied, "To warm my hands." Later the hermit noticed him blowing with equal ardor on the soup. "Now why are you blowing?" the hermit asked. "To cool the soup," was the answer. Whereupon the hermit cried, "Get out of my ' house! I will not have a madman who blows when it is hot and blows when it is cold." The poor hermit had not learned that one action can in different circumstances have opposite results. We too must learn that biblical opposites are not always contradictions but may be equally true in their particular circumstances, Paul K. Jewett (in Man as Male and Female) violates this principle of unity in his way of handling Paul's passages respecting women, by arriving at the explanation that Paul's negative statements are hangovers from his Judaistic mentality whereas his positive statements belong to inspired gospel. This is dangerous, as it opens all sorts of Pandora's boxes and creates a happy hunting ground for those who prefer a theory which permits them to shrug off anything they don't like or which is troublesome to their neat systems. When Paul agrees with them, they quote him as authority; when Paul does not agree with them, they say, "Oh, that's just Paul's hang-up." This puts us right back in the camp of those who say that the Bible is not the Word of God but contains the Word of God, and interpretation promptly becomes an exercise in pure subjectivity. It is better to leave the paradoxes and apparent contradictions right where they are, and see that the inspired truth lies not in harmonizing by excision but in 76

finding the divinely intended synthesis. A stereopticon is needed, not scissors. Unity means that there is a .composite, net teaching of the New Testament about women in relation to the church which is coherent; infallibility means that. this teaching is not in error; and biblical authority means that the teaching is still binding-no matter how cross-grained it might happen to be with contemporary moods.

Internal Balance Instead of contradiction we should see this phenomenon of opposites as the complementary element of the Bible which adds immeasurable richness and depth, and constitutes not so much a mark of humanity as of divinity. Very commonly, even if not universally, every Bible promise or precept has its counterpart somewhere in the Scripture. This counterpart serves to save us from extremes, either in interpretation or application. Jesus' encounter with Satan in the wilderness illustrates this. Satan's fault was not that he misquoted Scripture, but that he applied it without regard to biblical qualifications and conditions. "Throw yourself down" from the temple pinnacle, he challenged Jesus, for God has promised to secure your safety. "For it is written"Satan said. Notice that Satan uses the same formula Jesus does; at least Satan knew what would carry weight with Jesus! He wept on to quote Ps. 91:11-12: "He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone" (Matt. 4:6, NIV). But Jesus replied, "It is also written." Yes, Satan, what you have quoted is in the Bible; it is truly God's Word. But it is not all that is in the Bible. There are other teachings which qualify this, which shed light on 77

this. Another verse says, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" (Deut. 6:16, NASB). We have to remember this in order properly to interpret that. For when God promises that He will protect us in time of danger, He is not authorizing us to be reckless. He is not licensing us to trifle with danger in a presumptuous and false confidence. God is not guaranteeing immunity from the consequences of our own folly. It is in this sort of thing that babes in Christ need much guidance, and they themselves need to ·keep very humble. How can they see the other side of some precious Bible verse? This reservation is not written out in Psalm . 91. But if we know the Bible well enough, as did Jesus, we know the reservation is there. It is dangerous to start interpreting the Bible too soon, for we will build with fragments and uncoordinated bits. An example is the new convert who stopped going to church when he came across 1 John 2:27-"Ye need not that any man teach you." In this connection a warning is needed to guard against a reversion to the compartmentalized approach, so characteristic of biblical theology a generation ago. I refer to the isolation of the major authors from each other, so that Luke, for instance, must be interpreted totally on his own, and in discovering his meaning there must be no cross-references with other portions, such as Johannine or Pauline literature. This assumes that the writer, not the Holy Spirit, is the dominant agent. This in effect reduces any meaningful inspiration almost to the vanishing point. It would be strange indeed, if God had a Bible in mind at all, that He would inspire discrete sections which bore no organic relation with other sections, relations which would be illuminating and explanatory. Rather we should see the Bible as so inspired in its parts that together they comprise an organism of truth. When dealing with an organism, we do not understand

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any part until we perceive that part's relation to the whole. How does it affect other parts, and how is it affected by them? If we keep in mind always the organic nature of the Bible, we will not be afraid of comparing scripture with scripture as integral to our method from the very outset. And in so doing we will be both good Lutherans and good Wesleyans. "Scripture interprets scripture" was a Reformation slogan; and as A. Skevington Wood says, "Wesley was a convinced exponent of it."5 This would save us from such distortions as that of Leonardo Boff, the voice of liberation theology, who in Jesucristo el Liberador claims that Jesus never used the word obedience (po 105), though it is found 87 times elsewhere. Therefore Jesus' new liberated man is the rebel -not the one who obeys the authorities but who resists them. Of course, even on the basis of the Gospels, this smacks of irresponsible, almost hysterical overstatement. But it illustrates the hermeneutical fallacy of such dismemberment of the Bible. For the Gospels do not comprise the whole of Scripture. In the light of the total New Testament, such a one-sided notion disintegrates; it is seen as dangerous caricature, not sober Christianity. The only way to avoid such distortion is to hold fast to the principle of unity, and recognize the propriety of bringing to bear on any one passage the light of every other passage. The Epistles shed light on the Gospels, Paul sheds light on Luke, Luke sheds light on John. The Interlocking of the Human and the Divine A further hermeneutical principle is the necessity of perceiving the reciprocal inherence of the human and the 5. Burning Heart, p. 215.

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divine. This is essential if the authority of the Scriptures is to remain intact. One cannot be disjoined from the other and be in itself a safe key to Scripture. If we approach Scripture purely from its human side and say we will interpret it from this standpoint (as is the implied attempt when we say it should be interpreted solely as any other book), we are bound to go astray. Nor can we permit the dichotomy of supposing that divinity and humanity are somehow distributed among its parts, so that we can say this book or chapter or verse is human, while that book or chapter or verse is divine. Admittedly some portions seem more divine than human, while others seem more human than divine-just as Jesus seemed more human when asleep in the boat than when He arose and stilled the storm. But, as a matter of fact, He was as divine when asleep as He was when He calmed the storm; and He was as human then as He had been when asleep. Similarly, if we are going to carry the christological analogy through consistently, we must steadfastly insist that every part of the Bible is divine and every part is human. At no point is the divine absent, and at no point is the human absent. 6 What are the implications of this from a practical standpoint? One suggestion: Some stylistic idiosyncrasies and personal remarks seem totally human and individualistic, but who is to say that the Spirit has not utilized them as a significant tone-color which contributes to just the right, total impression which He designs? For example, 6. Admittedly this statement is hard to reconcile with any admission of possible "inconsequential error" (see chap. 3). The only way is to say that the Holy Spirit (and He alonel would know whether a particular error was truly inconsequential, and therefore would permit it. Thus even in such a negative superintendence the divine element would still be present. Of course, the whole question of "inconsequential error" remains debatable; this book is not assuming that such error existed in the autographs.

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it seems embarrassingly human for Paul to forget how many in Corinth he had personally baptized, and in trying to recall give a wrong figure first, then correct himself when he suddenly recalls another family. But this rather homey lapse of memory provides a very significant datum to Paul's total doctrine of baptism. It is a link in the chain of argument by which we arrive at the conclusion that Paul was not a sacramentarian. He was poles apart in his thinking from Francis Xavier, the 16th century Jesuit missionary, who sprinkled holy water on any human head that would stay still long enough, saying, "I make Christians." Paul did not consider that by applying water he was making Christians; otherwise he would not have excused his poor memory by the declaration, "For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel" (1 Cor. 1:17, NASB). Revelation Versus Understanding Our next hermeneutical guideline is drawn from the theme of progressive revelation, which was discussed in chapter five. This is perhaps a good time and place to warn against what seems to this writer to be a serious misinterpretation of the idea of progressive revelation. Progressive revelation should not be understood as primarily a matter of the progressive understanding of the biblical writers, with the added implication that ·earlier writers were mistaken in their understanding of God and His will, and wrote in the various books of the Old Testament only what was believed at that time to be God's commands and deeds. This, of course, is the approach of the "history of religion" school. And it is a very convenient approach, for it absolves the interpreter of all necessity of struggling with seemingly sub-Christian actions ascribed to God-in other words, the Old Testament portrait

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of God himself-with the easy "out" that the New Testament view of God cannot be reconciled with the Old Testament view of God, therefore the Old Testament view of God was simply wrong. This, of course, was Marcion's problem, and his solution was to postulate two gods. But as Otto W. Heick observes, "The Marcionite controversy [second century] led the church to the clearer understanding of the fact that the Creator and the Redeemer are indeed one God, and that 'in God justice and mercy are combined."7 Progressive revelation is not progressive discovery or progressive understanding of the way God does things (though of course such subjective progression will occur), but a real series of stages in God's real self-disclosure, each stage revealing a true and accurate aspect of God's being, but an aspect which needs to be balanced by its complements, Therefore progressive revelation does not mean that we can from so-called advanced knowledge correct the basic view of God found in the Old Testament: God's selfrevelation in the Old Testament is a true revelation, though necessarily incomplete without the perfecting disclosure of the Incarnation. But in Christ we do not see a different God; to suppose so is to misread the data. Now let us apply this principle to the New Testament itself. Jesus said to His disciples: "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12, NASB). It is true He held back because of the unreadiness of their receptivity and capacity. But what was held back was not just their understanding but His revelation. Furthermore, what was revealed so far was true, though incomplete. Further revelation was needed to round out the whole, not to correct previous mistakes. 7. Heick, History of Christian Thought, l :78.

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This implies that not only is the New Testament the supreme authority for interpreting (though not correcting) the Old Testament, but that the Epistles are the key to the interpretation of the Gospels. In the light of John 14:26 and 16:13 it is reasonable to suppose that the Holy Spirit gave to the apostles, and through them to the Church, those advanced truths which Jesus wanted to give His disciples while yet with them, but which they were not able to grasp until filled with the Holy Spirit. Therefore, just as Christ himself opened their eyes to understand the Old Testament Scriptures concerning the necessity of His passion, so the apostles and their delegated spokesmen opened the eyes of the Church to understand both the sayings of Jesus and His person and work. Revelation thus reaches its apex, its grand, authoritative climax in the Epistles. This does not mean that the teachings of Jesus are secondary to the teachings of the apostles. On the contrary, Jesus is the supreme Teacher. It means rather that the teachings of Jesus can only be fully understood in the light of the explanations, terminology, and theological nuances of the writing prophets and apostles.

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7 Biblical Authorltg. the Christian. and the Church If the Bible possesses divine and final authority, the implications are profound and radical. The Bible and the Christian These implications touch us personally as Christians. It is inconsistent, to say the least, to profess high regard for the Bible, then in our daily lives, to neglect it. Daily, devotional, prayerful, reverent Bible reading should have a primary place in our lives. We should cultivate a love for its pages and acquire an intimacy with it surpassing any other book. A proper prayer always is, "Lord, this is Your Word. Speak to me today. Give me insight. Illuminate my spiritual understanding by Your Spirit. Help me to see wherein these truths apply to me. Give me the will and the courage to obey what I read." There is no Christian who has had spiritual power and who has been greatly used of God, who has not been a lover of the Scriptures and has not built his very life by them and around them. Studying the Bible only to prepare a lesson or an argument or a sermon will

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stultify spiritual . growth and lead to emptiness and hypocrisy. The Holy Spirit not only inspired the Scriptures, but speaks and works through them. They thus become a connecting link between the reader and God. Furthermore, God is pleased to honor the words of Scripture-its promises and instructions-as a basis for prayer and a means to faith. There is power in the Bible as the Word of God. "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" (Jer. 23:29). Paul said to the Ephesian elders, "And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified" (Acts 20:32). And the writer to the Hebrews said, "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). While both of these New Testament passages refer primarily to the gospel message itself, it would be highly illogical to assign such power to the spoken word and deny it to the same word when written down. The Bible has in it the same kind of divine touch as the original events and words, for the express purpose of constituting not simply a reliable record of the revelation (a record whose mission is simply to inform), but a perpetuation of the revelation itself, with something of the pristine fire and liveliness and authenticity. This means that through the activity of the Holy Spirit the Bible mediates to us personally a recapitulation of the revelation. In its pages the Christ who spoke to the disciples speaks to us; we become Thomas and figuratively put our 85

hand in His side and say, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28).

The Bible and Our Professional Lives But these implications of biblical authority extend also to the Christian in his professional role. This includes the preacher first, of course, ' but it also includes the scientist, the philosopher, the psychologist, the sociologist, and the physician. It includes the Christian counselor and the Christian classroom teacher. The Bible is not under the judgment of secular psychology or secular philosophy, but it is the other way around. No matter how well versed we are in our special discipline, if we are ignorant of the Scriptures, or if our thinking is unstructured by the Scriptures, we cannot be competent Christian sociologists or anything else. Nothing is more menacing to the health of a denomination than for its professionals to isolate their professional beliefs from their private piety, so that what they teach or counsel bears no relationship to what they are supposed to believe as Christians. This does not mean that some of these disciplines have no independent validity of their own, or that they can teach nothing to Bible-believing Christians. On the contrary, they can shed much light on our total understanding of man and his predicament. But what is here being said is that whatever light they shed on the Bible, the Bible sheds even more light on them, and that the Bible's light is finally determinative at the deepest level of reality. Therefore it is incumbent upon every intelligent Christian to learn a biblical vocabulary. This vocabulary will not be learned in the secular textbooks. It will include such words as God, creation, providence, sin, grace, sal-

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vation, faith, obedience, redemption, Satan, angels, holiness, heaven, and hell. Not only must these words be learned and understood in their biblical meanings, which will imply their interconnectedness, but the Christian who would take biblical authority seriously must perceive that these terms express truth at its most fundamental and elementary level. They are indices of the human situation as it really is. Therefore this vocabulary must structure the thinking of the Christian. It must determine his fundamental way of looking at things. Only thus will he have what Harry Blamire calls The Christian Mind. Any set of terms or concepts which usurps the primary place and claims to diagnose the human situation and provide the cure for man's ills, which in effect contradicts and displaces the biblical concepts, is the product of humanistic unbelief and cannot be reconciled with the Christian religion or with a profession of belief in the authority of the Bible. The Bible and the Church Further, the thesis of biblical authority carries radical implications for the Church. The Church must seek to be a New Testament church, not necessarily copying every external detail, many of which reflected the cultural and political milieu of New Testament times. Rather, it should seek to conform to that pattern of spiritual power and to be committed to that divinely assigned mission so clearly articulated. And surely this will include a large amount of attention being given in ordinary church life to the Bible itself. This will be a far cry from many of our contemporary services, in which at times there is everything hut the Scripture. At stake is authority in the pulpit. Our preachers will

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preach with power only if they can approach the Bible with confidence, as constituting in the Gospels the authentic teachings of Jesus and in the whole of sacred Scripture the authentic Word of God. Textual criticism, in and of itself, has not and will not shake this confidence, nor is rigorous attention to exegesis incompatible with it. But when authenticity and genuineness are questioned, a body blow is struck at biblical authority itself with disastrously crippling results for the ministry ' of the Word. No man can preach with authority who doubts the authority of the Word. This much even the grand patriarch of higher critics, Julius Wellhausen himself, learned. Mter serving as professor of theology for 10 years (1872-82) at Greifswald, he suddenly resigned. When pressed for his reason, he said: I became a theologian because I was interested in the scientific treatment of the Bible; it has only gradually dawned on me that a professor likewise has the task of preparing students for service in the Evangelical Church and that I was not fulfilling this practical task, but rather, in spite of all reserve on my part, was incapacitating my hearers for their office. I

As a young man, Peter T . Forsyth studied in Germany under Albrecht Ritschl, and became steeped in German higher criticism. When he took his first pastorate in Shipley, Yorkshire, he was "by all accounts an out-and-out ' modernist.''' Gradually a great change came over him. Accounting for this he says,

1. This was quoted by William F. Beck. a Lutheran scholar. in an article with the rather ominous title. "How to Kill the Church." He further comments: "Those who teach the documentary hypothesis and other errors are making our young men unfit to serve the Savior. We can see that in the lack of conviction that Bome of these young fellows show in their preaching."

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There was a time when I was interested in the first degree with purely scientific criticsm. Bred among academic scholarship of classics and philosophy, I carried these habits to the Bible, and I found in the subject a new fascinat.ion . . .. But, fortunately for me, I was net condemned to a mere scholar's cloistered life. I could not treat the matter as an academic quest. I ~