Authoritative interpretation within the Bible

I have really enjoyed reading a book on Bishop Jewel of Salisbury called John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority by W. M. Southgate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). It got me thinking a little about doctrinal authority within the Bible itself:

(a) Consensus achieved over time: the canon of Scripture itself is an example of how an authoritative interpretation can be achieved through consensus - this the New Testament is received by the church as the authoritative interpretation of the Old Testament.

(b) Council referral: when certain questions arose in the early church they were settled with reference to a council (Acts 15).

(c) Consulting an apostle: when the Corinthians were troubled by some questions they referred them to the Apostle Paul.

(d) Christ's own authority: within 1 Corinthians Paul appeals to Christ's own teaching (1 Corinthians 7:10) as authoritative.

(e) Complementary collation rather than competition: the inclusion of the four gospels in the New Testament is a stunning example of the church living with variation in the authoritative interpretation of the life and teaching of Jesus. In theory the church could have chosen one and only one version of the Gospel, but it refused to do so. It accepted the four as complements rather than contradictions of each other.

In current Anglican controversy a bit of each of these strategies is being played out.

Some hope that, over time, if we are patient, gracious, and keep talking, a consensus will be achieved.

Some see the answer lying in councils. But which council? Lambeth 1998, for example, or GAFCON 2008 or General Convention 2009?

Quite a lot of consulting of apostles (i.e. their modern equivalents) is going on. But, again, who is right? JI Packer ... NT Wright ... G Robinson ... D Tutu ... R Williams?

Naturally Christ's own authority is invoked! Though curiously, for some, on one issue, it is the authority of Christ's silence on homosexuality, while for others it is the authority of Christ the upholder of the (whole of the) Law of Moses.

Then, as various views are circulating in the Communion, some wish to see the Communion decide on one, others want to attempt to hold all sincerely hold views together.

That's all I have for now.

I guess further questions to consider could include this: do our current controversies have more in common with one question within Scripture rather than another?

Luke's Gospel and the Roman Empire

Here is a little challenge, but, please note, if you take it up and reply with a comment, I am off-line for a few days, so publication of comments will not be till later in the week:

In Luke's Gospel (and in Luke-Acts as a whole) there is an obvious acknowledgment of the reality of the Roman empire woven through the undisguised story of a new movement, replete with a head called Kyrios, which grows from nothing in Galilee to something with a presence in most towns and cities of a significant portion of the empire, including Rome itself.

Is Luke's Gospel:

(a) an attack on the empire?

(b) an apology for the (non-threatening) kingdom of God?

(c) a presentation of an alternative kingdom to the empire? (In what sense is it an alternative? What are it's long-term ambitions?)

(d) none, some, or all of the above?

(I am working on a presentation on Preaching through Luke's Gospel in 2010).

Translation within Scripture

Every so often controversy erupts about Bible translation - one is scattering its ashes through the blogosphere right now, sparked by news of another form of the NIV due in 2011, and fuelled in some quarters by strong criticism of those versions which get anthropos and aner wrong in respect of humanity/man/woman.

One footnote in all discussion about translation is acknowledgement that within Scripture itself translation takes place. An example I came across last night is in Luke 9:1-6 (a reading in the lectionary for this morning's eucharist at St Stephen's, Tahunanui).

In this famous paradigm for gospel mission, Jesus calls the Twelve together and gives them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases. He then sends them out with this task:

'to preach the kingdom of God and to heal'.

With a few more words of instruction they depart, and, according to verse 6,

'went through the villages, preaching the gospel (lit. "evangelizing") and healing everywhere'.

It seems that 'to preach the kingdom of God' is translated as 'to evangelize'!

In this translation lies considerable room for theological reflection and debate. Consider:

- is evangelism announcing the presence of the kingdom of God? (a point N. T. Wright emphasizes, and argues is the Pauline gospel considered in the New Perspective)

- is preaching the kingdom of God announcing the justification of sin through faith in the crucified Christ? (more or less what Paul the Apostle does, especially according to classic Reformation understanding)

- did Jesus preach a message different to Paul? (and Luke here is attempting to unify the two understandings in the context of his great history which spans the mission of Jesus and the mission of Paul)

- is there one message, one 'gospel of the kingdom' (Matthew 9:35) whose dimensions are bigger than many Christians can grasp, which is both a call to sinners to repent (Mark 6:12 // Luke 9:6) and an announcement of God's rule over the world (cf. Matthew 10:7 // Luke 9:2, 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand')?

On the last suggestion, Luke is a clever theologian and literary artist with his subtle, chiastic method of witnessing to the fullest compass of the gospel message!

Also in the last suggestion we note the possibility that Luke, who almost certainly knows Mark's gospel and possibly knows Matthew's gospel as well, is translating other versions of the same story of Jesus' commissioning the Twelve for mission ... and that reminds us of another famous translation in respect of 'the kingdom of God', when John in his Gospel translates it as 'eternal life'.

The plain reading of Scripture

A little dip of the toe into the deep waters of 'plain reading' of Scripture ...

I take the 'plain reading' of Scripture to be the reading which feels natural, obvious, and common sensical, one sign of which could be that, with nine others in the room, on most readings, 9/10 of the group understand the reading the same way as I do.

One feels bounds these days to state the obvious point prior to the obvious criticism being made: Yes, words such as 'natural', 'obvious', and 'common sense' are fraught with difficulty!

Applying this, I suggest that when we read Scripture today, some things about yesterday (i.e. the time when Scripture was written) yield a ready 'plain reading' for today. Thus when we read a passage such as Ephesians 6:5-9 we understand the passage to plainly speak to the situation of bosses and workers today (there being, at least in these parts and thereabouts, neither slaves nor masters). We certainly do not read the passage 'plainly' as either having no meaning for us in an era without slaves, and even less so, meaning there ought to be slaves and masters today.

But, if you run with my argument to this point, what might this mean for how we plainly read a Scripture close at hand, Ephesians 5:21-33. Do we, as we do with Ephesians 6:5-9, make any natural shifts in understanding because the social situation today for men and women is different to yesterday?

Of course there is an obvious difference between the two passages: we do not still have slaves and masters but we still have husbands and wives. Nevertheless, life has changed: even employees and employers in the post-slavery era applying Ephesians 6:5-9 will do so in a social environment which (say) gives workers more rights and employers more responsibilities than (say) pertained in 1859. In respect of marriage, men and women become husbands and wives in a different manner to (say) 1859. There is, for instance, a quite different set of understandings about the nature of 'property' in relation to the establishment of a marriage, including no remaining sense that a daughter is something to be 'given' away by her father. There are also differences in the way the law provides for husbands and wives to exert their respective wills in a marriage (e.g. wife-beating and forced sex is intolerable under the law today).

Is it then appropriate to understand the instruction "Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord" differently to former times, just as we now understand "Slaves, give single-minded obedience to your earthly masters with fear and trembling, as if to Christ"?

Will stop there for now!

The evolution of Scripture

A post or so below I mused a little on the creationism versus evolution debate.

One aspect of that debate is the pitting of an "instantism" versus "incrementalism"; the former being the approach to Genesis 1 which says an awful lot of development of life stuff happened in seven days; the latter being the approach of evolutionary biology which says that life as we know it now is the result of a very, very long process of incremental development of life (with some instantaneous jolts such as (a) the original 'big bang', and (b) the effects of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteorite collisions on life).

I sometimes wonder if a problem for creationists accepting incrementalism is a lack of understanding of God's patience!

But I also wonder if creationism arises in intellectual contexts which have little or no understanding of the evolution of Israel's Scripture. A God who dictates Scripture to Moses is compatible with a God who speaks life into instant being. But if God did not dictate Scripture to Moses, if God presided over a long, messy, complex, and somewhat incremental or (as theologians say) progressive revelation to Israel, then God might similarly have presided over a long, messy, complex and somewhat incremental development of life, i.e. evolution.

The Old Testament is widely agreed by scholars conservative and liberal and in between to be an extraordinarily complex set of writings, which include differing lines of theological commitments. Consider:

Genesis to Deuteronomy (the Pentateuch): its origins clearly lie in oral tradition, it has a strong association with Moses as a presiding genius over its writing, yet betrays various clues as to its multiple authorship and final editing during the years of the Babylonian Exile.

Isaiah: the most important book of the OT for the early Christians is written in at least two stages, most likely one before the Babylonian Exile and one after, and thus this book is likely the expression of a school of prophets rather than one lone prophet called Isaiah.

Deuteronomy to 2 Kings (at least) is guided and shaped by the theology of Deuteronomy, that obedience to the Sinai covenant will be blessed and disobedience will be cursed. The perspective of final compilation is that of the Exile: Israel is shattered by the hammer of the Babylonian Empire because of its disobedience. The sequence of post-Deuteronomy history books, Joshua - 2 Kings is often described as the Deuteronomic History.

1 & 2 Chronicles presents an alternative history of Israel, beginning with creation and ending with the restoration from Exile with the decree of Cyrus that the temple in Jerusalem may be rebuilt. Its perspective is shaped by the theology of the Jerusalem Temple: good marks are awarded to kings who honour and progress the worship of Israel in the Temple; the exile is a consequence of defiling the Temple, and its end is marked by the restoration of the Temple.

That the compilers of the Scripture of Israel did not understand this alternative history of Israel to contradict the Deuteronomic History follows from the inclusion of both in the Scripture. (A similar point can be made in respect of alternate creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2)!

But, in turn, this (brief) explanation of some aspects of the character and the development of the OT implies that God embraces messy, long development of Israel's theology, indeed of Israel's complementary theologies. In short God has presided over the evolution of Scripture.

Can we accept that the God of Scripture presided over the evolution of life?

Human Dignity and the Gospel

Archbishop Vincent Nichols (i.e. Dear Leader of English Roman Catholics) preaches:

"... The Father ceaselessly ‘sends out’ the Eternal Word, that expression of the very mystery of God, and does so in the utter, self-emptying love which is also the nature of the Godhead, the love which is the Holy Spirit. This giving out and receiving in of love, which is the very life of the Holy Trinity, is the first and unequivocal meaning of the word ‘missio’. God, of his infinite nature, is ‘missio’ and, of course, ‘communio’. These are the foundations of our use of this word, its most profound truth for us to keep in mind always.

The first outward expression or fruit of this inner ‘missio’ of the Godhead is, of course, the work of creation. St John tells us that all creation, every being, has its existence through the eternally spoken Word of God.

And so that this creation might indeed find its integral and full development or salvation, that Word become flesh in a particular and historical Incarnation. This ‘missio’ of the Eternal Word into our flesh and history gives all the defining characteristics of our sharing in that mission, in our work of ‘missio’ today. It is the full revelation of ‘integral human development’ and establishes for ever the need for the Gospel to be present as an essential part of human progress. Only in the Gospel is the full truth of our humanity told; only in the Gospel, which is Christ, does our humanity come to its true source and fulfilment, the mystery of God and God’s unequivocal love. ..."

The italics are mine, emphasizing the relationship between the gospel of Christ and the truth of human dignity. Inter alia Nichols makes the point that Hermeneutics is constrained in the service of the Gospel, the fullest revelation of the truth of God, which is simultaneously 'the full truth of our humanity': the goal of hermeneutics is human dignity.

The full text of the sermon is here. H/T Ruth Gledhill who makes an interesting point about the character of St Tony Blair's Catholicism!

Dawkins: There could be a god so why not start believing in him now and enjoy life?

OK Richard Dawkins does not quite say that, but Melanie Philips reports this about a recent debate she attended (h/t Stand Firm):

"This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that

...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could."

You can read Melanie's whole article here.

Why post this here? Another great issue in 'hermeneutics and human dignity' is the issue of our interpretation of Genesis 1-3 in respect of 'creation', 'evolution', 'creationism', and 'theistic evolution' (a rumble of which is just nudging its way into my consciousness through an email exchange tonight ... raising the question whether a 'theistic evolutionist' is an 'apostate' ... so not an entirely abstract/academic issue)