PEOPLE
OF THE BOOK?
The Authority of the Bible in Christianity
a book review (DipCS assignment)
The author has written this book "for those who would like to explore another possibility [between fundamentalism and unbelief]: a positive but critical evaluation of the Bible, which avoids the absolutes of biblicism but is not simply a watered-down version of it." (Foreword, page ix) with the primary aim "to make a case against 'biblicism' (page 91), and the goal to "plan 'a raid on conservative arguments' which might yield 'treasures for use in a non-conservative, critical theory of biblical authority'" (page 92).
Positioned against fundamentalism, the first chapter The Bible and the Christian Faith traces back to the earliest generations of Christianity, when there have already been polemical views about the Scripture - a quasi-fundamentalist idea against that of rejecting altogether the Old Testament in favour of the new revelation in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. But then Paul's and Jesus' teachings show both extreme reverence to the Jewish Scriptures and an extreme freedom from them. The author resolves the relation between the law and the gospel as a contrast but by way of completion and addition.
The second chapter Prophecy and Fulfilment shows how the resort to arguing from prophecy does not work, since this will only result in judaizing the gospel, or to the another extreme, rejecting everything in the OT that does not seem to point to Christ. The author goes on to point out that whether Jesus fulfils the OT prophecy is in reality an artificial question. He proposes that we should not have a doctrine of the authority of the Scripture for its sake but should look beyond and understand the Scripture as a part in the relationship between God and His people.
The third chapter The Question of the Canon indeed questions a lot about the canon. The author queries the authority of the Bible in its present form as a single book, and questions the impact of canonical shaping on particular books. Attacking anachronistic views of the Bible, he states that the edges of the canon are much more fuzzy for the early church and yet the interpretation is much more rigid. Yet afterall, it is not the Bible as a canon that provides the framework of faith, but the rule of faith which controls what is in and what is out of the canon.
In the fourth chapter The Bible as Evidence, the author expresses doubts about the Bible understood as an infallible supernatural revelation. Rather, he contends that it should be taken as reliable historical evidence for the beliefs of the first Christians and for their reaction to the events on which Christian faith rests. He further argues that the Bible is, at least largely, human reflection on the mystery of God instead of being equal to the "Word of God".
Scripture as a source book for correct theology is discussed in the fifth chapter The Bible as Theology. Similar to the proposition in the third chapter, the author states that the canon of truth exists outside the Scripture. Therefore, Christian faith is not revealed through the Scripture, but it is the faith that causes the things to be written down and canonised. The Bible is thus a document that witnesses things about the faith before Scripture is written.
The sixth chapter Salvation by Hermeneutics deals with the act of interpretation of the Bible as a powerful religious and literary classic, and contrasts the approaches of traditional hermeneutics and hermeneutics in theology. The author states that the problem behind the painful exercise of making it possible for the modern Christian to appropriate the Bible is simply because of an exaggerated view of biblical authority. So it is necessary that our hermeneutical theory encourages us to distance the Bible and honour its historical particularity.
The seventh chapter The Bible in Liturgy starts from the liturgical error of forcing the prophetic paradigm on the congregation and calls for attention to the diversity of genres in the Bible. The author puts forward that most of the Bible is not didactic in form at all, and we should move away from over-identification of the Bible with the "Word of God". The Bible as a vehicle of the Word of God does have a kerygmatic or proclamatory function in good liturgy.
Quoting Karl Barth, the author tries to proposes that only Christ is truly the Word of God in the eighth chapter The Word of God and the Words of Men. The Bible serves as a check and a source for the Christian faith, and at times can become the Word of God. He further explains how sola scriptura is a metaphor instead of a bibliocentric claim, aligning Luther's views with his.
The new edition (1993) of the book includes a Postscript in which the author responds to reviews and further restates the positive elements in it.
As most reviewers, or even the author himself, agree, the book has been doubtlessly successful in clearing the ground of fundamentalism, but to a large extent has left clean earth in which other may plant (page 92), instead of doing the planting too as he has intended. In W D Stacey's words, this book "most obviously…is a critical examination of fundamentalist claims and assertions; less obviously it is a constructive statement about faith and objective authority." (page 93)
Here the title of the book may have to bear partial responsibility. The question mark, for which reviewers have diverse comments, has already clearly shown the general direction of the book. This is a provoking question, and inevitably it prompts for the answer "no", consistent with, in fact, a large part of the book which is saying no to biblicist views.
The other cause, I suspect, is that throughout the book, the author has made elaborate effort in demolishing false views, but has not been the same elaborate and objective when he tries to establish something constructive. The author quotes verses from the Scripture, argues with his knowledge of the early Christians, pulls in theories of the early fathers as well as modern theologians and theorists, to attack the biblicist views. The recurring theme of fundamentalism appears everywhere, demolition is everywhere. But yet what is meant to be constructive is rather brief and abstract. In fact the author seldom spend more than a couple of lines on the "constructive" views in each chapter in the main text.
For example, for the first three chapters, minimal "constructive" elements have been articulated. The third chapter sounds even more suspicious about the canon, in its use of the words "curse" (page 24) and listing the drawbacks of having a canon. The way out is expressed like "…the position Scripture holds…only on the basis of a belief that God was genuinely and uniquely known in Israel, and was then made more perfectly known through Jesus Christ" (page 21), "…it does not matter so very much exactly which books are in the Bible and which are not" (page 31). What the author has done here is basically proposing a more relaxed attitude to the Scripture, and to reduce the level of its "authority" to an appropriate level.
In the remaining chapters, a little more "constructive" remarks are indeed uttered. Yet these remarks are much more in the form of an attitude, a perspective, sometimes abstract, sometimes showing (rather personal) strong conviction, than an "obvious" and practical theory of biblical authority.
For instance, the author ascertains that "…the New Testament is authoritative because it provides at least some of the early evidence with which it is possible to judge how far the Christian faith really does have a secure historical foundation" (page 43), "The authority…is…but after the analogy of a trusted friend, on whose impressions and interpretations of an important event of experience we place reliance." (page 45). Also "Hermeneutics is thus not the solutions of a difficulty, but the contemplation of a mystery." (page 66). The almost only practicable idea is the "bricolage" in the seventh chapter (pages 76-77). The author uses a whole paragraph detailing this to provide an example of good liturgy.
Finally, more explicitly in the very last pages of the main text, the author establishes that "By reading the Bible, studying it with all our critical powers, using it in worship, and being challenged by it as a literary text, we can come face to face with the gospel and respond to it with our whole lives. If that is not to accord authority to the Bible, I do not know what would be." (page 89)
To do fairness to the book, however negative its language may sound on the whole, the strong conviction of the author in the authority of the Bible is obvious. However, those constructive elements have been inconspicuous because they are brief, at least in terms of length in each chapter, and their expressions inevitably sounds too soft to balance the strong raids against biblicism.
All in all, the repeated effort of moving the readers beyond the text (of the Scripture) itself to understand that the faith and the gospel precedes the Scripture, and that the Scripture is only a human reflection on God and faith having a part in the web of the relation between God and His people should have succeeded. Also the author has shown his conviction that the Bible is more than valuable for the Christian life. These ideas have been unambiguous and convincing. Yet how to practise these convictions or views is left to the readers, for example, whether we should then go for a Christianity with Scriptures that have no boundaries.
Last but not least, I suggest the author to do a favour for the average reader to facilitate understanding. Latin words are widely used without explanation, eg "tabula rasa" (page 19, 63, 68), "ipsissima verba" (page 39), "ad hominem" (page 67, 87 etc), to name just a few. So are with theological, philosophical or theoretical terms like "Wittgensteinian fideism" (page 38), "canonical criticism" and "narrative theology" (page 59). Either brief explanations, a glossary or including them in the chapter notes will be appreciated.