455 - Crisis in Biblical Authority

Crisis in Biblical Authority
By Donald G. Bloesch

BIBLICAL faith cannot be recovered until we recognize anew the divine authority and inspiration of the Bible. This authority has been eroded both by higher critics who read into Scripture a naturalistic philosophy which a priori rules out the supernatural and by its uncritical devotees who absolutize the outmoded world view reflected in the Bible and thereby render the biblical witness incredible. 1

The crisis in biblical authority has recently come to a head with the concerted attempts of liberals in the mainline denominations to reconceived homosexuality as a viable alternative life style and to approve the ordination of committed homosexuals despite the clear witness of Holy Scripture that sexual perversion is morally reprehensible in the sight of God. Proponents of a more relaxed position on this question argue that the biblical strictures against homosexuality are a product of the mores of the culture of that time and cannot be considered binding in the twentieth century. It is also asserted that God is speaking a new word in our time through the knowledge gained in the social sciences that fulfills and even supersedes the revelation to peoples in another era and in a supposedly more primitive culture. This in effect denies the divine authority and normativeness of biblical teaching.

I

As we seek to reaffirm biblical authority, however, there is a need to reinterpret this authority, particularly in light of the present-day impasse in evangelicalism on this question. Rightly understood, infallibility and inerrancy can indeed be posited of the Bible, but wrongly understood these ideas can create division and confusion. Unfortunately a great number of inerrancy advocates today want a rationally guaranteed authority, but this makes reason, not revelation, the final criterion. Paul Holmer astutely comments: "Inerrant Scripture gets to

Donald G. Bloesch is Professor of Theology at the Theological Seminary of the University of Dubuque, Iowa. He is the author of The Evangelical Renaissance (1973) and the two-volume work on Essentials of Evangelical Theology (1978, 1979). This discussion on the authority of the Bible carries forward previous critiques by Richard J. Mouw and Clark H. Pinnock (THEOLOGY TODAY, April, 1978), and will appear in a revised form in Dr. Bloesch's second volume of Essentials of Evangelical Theology (Harper & Row, 1979).

1 While the specific understanding of the cosmos (Weltbild) held by the biblical authors is indubitably outdated, this must be distinguished from their metaphysical vision, their interpretation of history (Weltanschauwig) which has its basis in their reflection on revelation and which in this sense is normative for the believer.

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be an epistemic crutch, a pseudo-certainty, which while it purports to push doubt away, also inserts a humanly devised conceptual scheme by which to get the Scriptures to disclose he Almighty" 2

We go astray if we base tile authority of Scripture On the inerrancy of the writing and then try to demonstrate this according to the canons of scientific rationality. The authority of the Bible is based on the One whom it attests and the One who speaks through it in every age with the word of regenerating power. We here concur with Calvin: "The highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it." 3 This by no means implies that the biblical witness is fallible or untrustworthy; instead we hold that this witness does not carry the force of infallible authority apart from the Holy Spirit who acts in and through it. Where the Bible functions as the sword of the Spirit in the community of believers, there it wields indisputable divine authority in all areas pertaining to faith and practice.

It is possible to discern three basic approaches to Scripture in the history of the church. The first is the sacramental which sees revelation essentially as God in action, and regards Scripture as the primary channel or medium of revelation. Here Scripture is thought to have two sides, the divine and the human, and the hum", is the instrumentality or tile divine. In this category we include Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Spener, Francke, Jonathan Edwards, Pascal, and P. T. Forsyth. This approach also claims such noted representatives of Protestant orthodoxy as Flacius, Voetius, Gerhard, Bavinck, Kuyper, and more recently Geoffrey Bromiley and G.C. Berkouwer. 4 The second position is the scholastic, which understands revelation as the disclosure of a higher truth that nonetheless stands in continuity with rational or natural truth. The Bible becomes a book of revealed propositions which are directly accessible to reason and which contain no errors in any respect. The humanity of the Bible is regarded as an aspect of its divinity. Here we can list Protestant scholastics such as Quenstedt, Wolff, Turrentin, and Warfield, as well as contemporaries like Gordon Clark, Francis Schaeffer, Carl Henry, and John Warwick Montgomery. Finally in the liberal-modernist approach revelation is understood as inner enlightenment or self-discovery: in this category are to be placed Schleiermacher, Herrmann, Troeltsch, Harry

2 Paul L. Holmer, "Contemporary Evangelical Faith: An Assessment and Critique" in David F. Wells and John D. Woodbridge, eds. The Evangelicals (Nashville- Abingdon Press, 1975), p. 75.
3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ed. John T. McNeill. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). 1, 7, 4, p. 78.
4 Some of the early representatives of Protestant orthodoxy can be placed in both the sacramental and scholastic camps in that while they practically equated Scripture and revelation, they qualified this by maintaining that what is meant by Scripture is not the actual writing but the "matter itself" or "the thing signified," viz., that "which is meant and designated by the writing, namely the Word of God which informs us about his essence and will" (Gerhard). See J. K. S. Reid, The Authority of Scripture (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 72 ff.

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Emerson Fosdick, Tillich, Langdon Gilkey, Bernard Meland, Gregory Baum, J. A, T. Robinson, and Rudolf Bultmann. 5

II

Karl Barth succeeded at least in part in recovering the sacramental character of the Bible and revelation in his middle period (when he wrote the first several volumes of his Church Dogmatics), but he was unable to maintain this position because of certain overriding concerns in his theology. In this middle period revelation was conceived as the divine content of Scripture, a content that can only be apprehended by the interior witness of the Holy Spirit. Here he stood very close to Calvin and Luther. Yet later in Volume IV, 3 in his Church Dogmatics he began to refer to Jesus Christ alone as the Word of God and the Bible and the sermon as well as baptism and the Lord's Supper as signs and witnesses of this Word. The old Reformed principle that the finite cannot bear the infinite (finitum non capax infiniti) was undoubtedly at work as well as the growing concern to safeguard the freedom of God in the face of a theology of repristination and a revival of confessionalism. Barth still referred to the Bible as the primary witness of revelation and the church as a secondary witness. He even allowed for true words about God in the secular world, but neither these words nor the words of the Bible or church could be equated with the Word of God itself, the transcendent gospel concerning Jesus Christ and his reconciliation. 6 Revelation was now seen as a direct Word from God spoken to the soul, and the biblical word as only a human witness and pointer to revelation. Barth could no longer speak of the Bible as the Word of God, nor could he consistently affirm the threefold unity of the revealed Word (Christ), the written word, and the proclaimed word, which characterized his middle period. Arthur Cochrane has sagaciously observed that Barth in his last years returned to his much earlier position enunciated at Barmen that Jesus Christ is the only Word of God. 7

To affirm a sacramental approach to Scripture in no way rules out cognitive revelation. Revelation is truly given in and through the words of Scripture, and this means intelligible content as well as spiritual presence (cf. Rom. 16:25, 26; Col. 1:25-28). The action of disclosing God's will and purpose not only entails revelation through Scripture

5 Cf. Bultmann: "What, then is revealed? Nothing at all, so far as the quest for revelation is a quest for doctrines... But everything, so far as man has his eyes opened regarding himself and can understand himself again." Glauben und Verstehen, III, p. 29 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965).
6 Barth goes so far as to declare that the revealed Word "cannot be coordinated or compared with any human word." In his Church Dogmatics IV, 3 a, p. 98.
7 It must not be supposed that Barth wholly abandoned his earlier stance for there are passages even in his later works where the sacramental character of Scripture as a means of grace is still evident. It does mean that Barth was moving toward a position that broke with this sacramental conception, a position that might be denominated "Christomonism," though he steadfastly rejected this appellation.

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but also revelation as Scripture. Yet this does not mean that the words of' Scripture are directly revealed (as in the scholastic approach) but that Scripture embodies the truth that God desires us to hear. The unity between the revealed Word, Jesus Christ, and the written word lies both in the inspiration of the Spirit who guarantees a trustworthy witness to Christ and in revelatory action in which the Spirit speaks through this witness to people of every age(cf. I Cor. 2:10-13).

Luther recognized the sacramental rote of Scripture when be described the Word as the carriage of the Spirit. Ragnar Bring perceptively shows the similarity between Luther's understanding of Scripture and his understanding of the Lord's Supper: "Just as Christ's body and blood are given under the elements even though the bread and wine are not transformed, so also the divine Word is given through the temporally and historically conditioned Scriptures." 8

Some neo-fundamentalists object to speaking of culturally conditioned words and concepts in Scripture, but we contend that if justice is to be done to the true humanity of Scripture, we must fully acknowledge the human element. This in no way detracts from its divine, authority but instead establishes Scripture as an authentic witness to a real revelation in history. Inscription signifies that the Word of God takes on human dress and imagery as it relates itself to humankind. The Holy Spirit can accommodate to the thought patterns and language of the peoples of biblical times and therefore enter into their cultural and historical limitations. 9 Yet because inspiration also means that the Spirit guided and directed the writers not only in their ideas but also in their selection of words, we can affirm, that the Bible is a divine as well as a human product. Moreover, we must likewise contend that because of the superintendence of the Spirit the Bible is a fully reliable and trustworthy witness to the truth revealed in the history that it records. It gives us an accurate reflection of the mind and purpose of God though not an exact duplication of the very thoughts of God. 10 Its message or teaching transcends human culture and history, though it is mediated only through human language, and imagery. Because there is one Divine Author within and behind the many human authors, the Bible has an underlying doctrinal and theological unity, though there are significant variations in stress and style.

8 Ragnar Bring, How God Speaks to Us (Philadelphia, Muhlenberg Press, 1962),p.30.
9 This is known in evangelical circles as organic inspiration as opposed to a dictation theory on the one hand and a purely subjective view on the other, whereby the Spirit only assists the human authors who remain the sole or primary authors.
10 We acknowledge that the Bible often depicts God as revealing his very thoughts to the prophets and apostles, but this language must not be taken literally. The Ten Commandments, for example, are pictured as being given directly by God to Moses. Yet we contend on the basis of the biblical testimony that the meaning invested in these commandments by God was only dimly perceived by the people of Israel (cf. Deut. 9: 10 f: Ps. 119:18, 19). Conscious of his inadequacy in this matter the Psalmist implored: "Teach me, Lord, the meaning of your laws.... Explain your law to me, and I will obey it" (119:33, 34 Today's English Version; cf. Ps. 139:6). There is always a certain discontinuity between the thoughts of God and human thoughts even in the event of revelation (cf. Isa. 55:8, 9).

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III

The Bibles authority is functional in that it is a signpost to Jesus Christ. But it is not simply functional. There is an integral and organic relation between Christ's promises and the written word. The word not only points to Christ, but it was brought into being by the Spirit of Christ acting upon the prophets and apostles. 11 It not only conveys the truth 'of Christ but also embodies this truth. When we say that the Bible is the Word of God we mean two things: that all the words are selected by the Spirit of God through divine guidance of the human authors; and that the truth of God is enshrined in and mediated through these words. The Bible is the Word of God in all that it teaches, though this teaching is not immediately self-evident but must be unveiled by the Spirit.

The Bible is neither the direct, unmediated speech of God (as we sometimes find in Warfield) nor simply an indirect historical witness to divine revelation (as in Barth). It is the Word of God in human clothing, the revelation of God transmitted through human concepts and imagery. Yet the human concepts do not capture the full impact and significance of what is given in revelation. Commenting on John the Apostle, Augustine explains: "Because he was inspired he was able to say something; but because fie who was inspired remained a man, he could not present the full reality, but only what a man could say about it." 12 At the same time we can know this reality when the Spirit of God acts in and through the written witness. "The word of God indeed is sharp as a two-edged sword," says Jonathan Edwards, "but it is so only through the cooperation of that Spirit that gave the word. The word alone, however managed, explained, confirmed and applied, is nothing but a dead letter without the Spirit." 13 A similar sentiment is expressed by Robert Preus, who here presents the view of Lutheran orthodoxy at its best: "The efficacy of the Word of God does not inhere in the letters and syllables and words as they are written. These are merely symbols, the vehicle (vehiculum) of the divine content, the forma, of the Word, which alone is the Word of God, properly speaking." 14

11 We can say that the Bible is authoritative primarily because it proclaims Christ and because Christ speaks to us in and through it. It is authoritative secondarily because it is inspired by the Spirit of Christ. The inspiredness of its writing is secondary to its function of conveying the riches of salvation in Christ.
12 Cited in Augustin Bea, The Study of the Synoptic Gospels. Ed. Joseph A. Fitzmyer (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 59
13 Sermons on John 16:8. Yale MSS, p. 101. Cited in Carl Bogue, Jonathan Edwards and the Covenant of Grace, (Cherry Hill, N.J.: Mack Publishing Co.. 1975), p. 283.
14 Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1955), p. 174. This position is also reflected in the older Reformed theology which distinguished between the divine content and the external forms and special modes of' writing. See Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1950), pp. 15, 16. in this view revelation is in the Bible rather than identical with the Bible.
It is not classical orthodoxy but the rationalistic orthodoxy of the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment that identifies the divine Word and the human words of the Scriptures. This same misunderstanding is present in modern cultic fundamentalism, whose spiritual affinity is much more with the Enlightenment than the Reformation. The cultic leader Victor Paul Wierwille in referring to the Bible states: "The Word is as much God as God is God." In his Power for Abundant Living (New Knoxville, Ohio: American Christian Press, 1971), p. l00

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In leftwing neo-orthodoxy revelation is dissolved in an existential encounter. In right-wing scholastic orthodoxy revelation is frozen into a prepositional formula. In biblical evangelicalism revelation refers to the whole movement of God into biblical history culminating not only in the prophetic and apostolic witness but also in the act of faith and surrender on the part of those who are caught up in this movement. Thus the reader does not possess the truth, which would be the case if it were simply the writing of Scripture, but instead is possessed by the truth, which is the living, dynamic Word of God. 15

What is infallible and inerrant is the Word within the words, the divine meaning given in and through the human testimony. 16 Our ultimate norm is not simply what the human author intends but what God intends through the witness of the author (cf. I Pet. 1:10-12), though there is always a certain congruity between the latter and the former. It follows that not everything reported in Scripture should be accepted at face value. To hear the eternal, living Word means to have to search the Scriptures, to try to see every text in the light of the divine center, Jesus Christ. It means to distinguish the shell and the kernel, form and content. 17 The evangelist Dwight L. Moody referred to the need for "digging out" the divine truth of Scripture, since this truth is not directly available to the "uncircumcised eye." 18 Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann remarks that to regard statements about world history or the cosmos as infallible simply because they are reported in Scripture is "the evil consequence of a merely rational doctrine of Inspiration, and creates many conflicts with the, actual world. 19 Bavinck is helpful here in his distinction between, the historical and normative authority of Scripture. Only in the second, sense can we regard Scripture as absolutely binding and therefore supremely authoritative.

While fundamentalists are prone to stress the infallibility of the

15 The Thessalonians were enabled to accept the Word of God because it was already at work within them (I Thess. 2:13: cf. Rom. 15:13: Col. 3:15,16).
16 Our position must not be confused with the "limited inerrancy" position of Daniel Fuller et al., which discriminates between revelational and nonrevelational statements in Scripture on the basis of an inductive, empirical mythology. Instead we see revelation in all of Scripture, but this divine truth is veiled to the empirical eye. Moreover, we hold that whatever Scripture truly teaches is authoritative and binding and not just, what it affirms on matters of faith and salvation. Our position is at the same time a qualified inerrancy because we recognize that the human expression in which scriptural truth comes to us bears the marks of cultural and historical contingency.
17 This kind of distinction was frequently made in early evangelical Pietism as we see it in Spener and Francke. It is also to be found in early Protestant Orthodoxy.
18 See Stanley N. Gundry, Love Them In: The Proclamation Theology of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), pp. 204, 216.
19 Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann, Interpreting the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1959), p. 67.

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original manuscripts 20 and liberals the infallibility of conscience, our emphasis is on the infallibility of Word and Spirit, one of the salient themes' of the Reformation. The written Word partakes of divine infallibility because it is grounded in the incarnate or revealed Word, Jesus Christ. Moreover, it is an effectual sign of the revealed Word in that it serves to communicate the significance of this revelation through the power of the Spirit. There is a union but not a fusion between the written word of Scripture and the divine word of revelation. 21

IV

The present impasse in evangelical circles concerning the authority of Scripture could be overcome if we would but return to a sacramental understanding of revelation: that Scripture is a divinely appointed means of grace and not simply an earthly, historical witness or sign of grace; and that Scripture is inseparable from the revelation which produced it and which flows through it but that the words of Scripture in and of themselves are not divine revelation. We should also probably substitute what George Eldon Ladd calls historical theological criticism for the historical-critical method, which has been too often associated with naturalistic presuppositions. 22 Or perhaps it is better to speak of historical-critical methods than of one single critical method, for criticism varies according to the theological outlook of the critic. We need to be free to examine the Scriptures as human literature; yet we must not stop there but go on to find and hear the Word of God in and through the words of the human authors. Historical and critical studies may help to cleanse the lens of Scripture so that it is not simply an opaque medium of the Word of God. Yet "what really makes Scripture a transparent medium is the divine light that shines through it from the face of Jesus Christ into our hearts." 23

20 The autographs are certainly the measure of textual accuracy, and this means that the antiquity of the texts plays a role in their normativeness. At the same time the appeal to the autographs does not solve the problem of cultural and historical limitations on the part of the authors.
21 Revelation might be likened to a song on a sheet of music (cf. Deut. 31:19-22). For those who cannot read music or who have grave difficulties in this area, the song remains veiled even though they can make out the words. But when they hear the song sung by the author, then they truly know it. The living voice does not contradict what is written, but it gives meaning and impact to what is otherwise a dead letter or empty symbol.
22 Gerhard Maier substitutes an "historical-biblical method" for higher criticism in his The End of the Historical-Critical Method (Concordia, 1977). While we have difficulties with his predilection to speak of "revealed writings," since this serves to deny the humanity of Scripture, we agree with him that our hermeneutic methodology must be theologically informed.
Edgar Krentz seeks to retain the historical-critical method understood as historical literary investigation but purged of rationalistic presuppositions. See his The Historical Critical Method (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). We concur with Krentz that theology cannot simply return to a precritical age.
23 Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 12.

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It is important to recover the dynamic and divine character of revelation without separating it from the earthen Vessel of the scriptural writings. We need to recognize anew the element mystery in revelation which was generally acknowledged by the church fathers and Reformers. We need to affirm with Pascal that God "hides himself, in the measure that "he discloses himself." This means that our language about God can be, at the most, analogical, not univocal, since there can be no direct or exact correspondence between human, ideas and the veritable Word of God. It is also imperative for us to reaffirm the mystery of the accommodation of the Holy Spirit to the deficiencies and limitations of human language, an insight fully acknowledged by the great teachers of the church including Origen, Augustine, John Chrysostorn, and Calvin. It must never be forgotten that the Bible is time-bound and time-related even as it is timeless. Finally, we would do well to abandon a rationalistic epistemology (whether of the inductive or deductive type) 24 in determining the truth content of Scripture and confess anew that God can be known only through God.

24 We allow for the fact that both induction and deduction will be used both prior to faith and in the service of faith, but the truth of revelation can be apprehended only by faith. Moreover, the processes of reason before faith can only lead to dead ends, since it is not until reason is turned around by the Spirit that it becomes fruitful in a Christian sense.