Читать книгу From Inspiration to Understanding - Edward W. H. Vick - Страница 11
ОглавлениеIII. AUTHORITY: INFLUENCE AND ACCEPTANCE
1 STAGES IN THE FORMATION OF THE CANON
Christians call their Scriptures the ‘Holy Bible’. They also speak of God as holy, the ‘holy one’, and claim that holiness is a special attribute of God. They also claim that if creatures are holy, they are holy because they derive their holiness from God’s holiness. Whatever is holy has derived what holiness it has from its source in God. We are then to be warned at the outset, for good theological reasons, against the idea of a book which has an intrinsic holiness, that is a holiness in and of itself and independent of God. We shall be expounding the idea of a ‘dynamic’ authority. We shall relate Scripture to what goes on in the church and in the world. In this case the term ‘authority’ connotes something dynamic and not static. It connotes not a property but a relationship. It is, in brief, a relational term.
The point at issue here is whether the church is the primary authority which invests these books with authority, or whether the Scriptures have the capacity to evoke a recognition of their own uniqueness. These books came to be recognized as Scripture and others did not. To say that they came to be recognized is not the same as saying that they came to be invested with authority. To invest the books with authority would mean to impose on them something which they did not possess before being so invested. It would entail that there was some already accepted authority in the community that could impose authority on these writings. That is not the sort of authority appropriate in the case of the Bible. Authority is not a property to be conveyed. These writings do not need authentication from without.
The important issue can be brought out by contrasting the very different meanings of the following two sentences:
The Bible is now to be recognized because it has been invested with authority
The authority which the Bible has has now been recognized.
The Church did draw up a list of books. By so doing it included some and excluded many. What was happening? Was the Church giving to, i.e. bestowing on these books a status which they did not already have? Or, was it recognizing a status they in fact already had? Even if one were to answer that the Church at a point (say in the fourth century) invested books with an authority they did not previously have, we would still have to ask how this came about and why it was done. Who approved the books and for what reasons? For what purposes were such books approved? Was the move an authentic one? If so how can it be authenticated? That pushes the question one stage further back. Before the books were formally declared, by being included on a list, to be ‘Scripture,’ to have authority, someone had already recognized them and approved them. What was the basis of such recognition and approval? The answer that the books gain authority for the reason that they are included on a list will not do. To get on the list they have already been recognized and approved.
The idea of a canon and of canonical authority is quite different from the idea of the authentication of the writings on the basis of what they themselves contain. To call a book or a set of books canonical is to invest them with authority. A book is not invested with a spiritual or a religious authority because it appears on a list of approved books. ‘Why are they approved and what for?’ That is the question which leads us to examine the facts of the case.
We might distinguish three stages in the formation of a canon of Scripture. First, the writings establish themselves on the score of their contents. Second, they establish themselves as authoritative on the score of their authors. Third, they are authoritative because they belong to an authoritative list. ‘Authoritative’ now means ‘canonical,’ and ‘canonical’ means ‘belonging to the canon.’ First, that is to say, a book commends itself, and holds its place because it makes profound religious sense, as in the case of the writings of Paul. This Evans calls ‘self-authentication,’ and sees it as the primary and decisive criterion. What that particular term means and whether it is satisfactory we shall have to inquire. At all events, to consider this as a criterion we must focus on the book itself and find the reason for its having authority by considering its content and its influence. Its authority is in itself and not in something else asserted of it or imposed upon it. The writing speaks for itself. The community responds to these writings, finding satisfaction in them and getting guidance from them. The community recognises them for the help they had provided and were providing. ‘These are the writings that build us up and give us guidance we can understand and act upon.’ That is sufficient reason for saying they have a special status. This is the way the community speaks about the writings after they have spoken for themselves. They have a special status because they perform a special function.
The Bible does not become something that it was not. It gets recognised for what it is. There are analogies. A great scientist does not become a great scientist only when he is recognised as such. He is then simply acknowledged for what he already is. It is not like the conferring of an academic degree. You were not a Doctor of Philosophy. But now you are. But you would not have been if the university had not conferred the degree upon you. With the Bible it is not like that. Rather the Bible is recognised for what it is. However this criterion of ‘self-authentication’ of the writings gets replaced. It is ‘speedily overtaken by that of authorship, and the writings are then on their way to becoming canonical on other grounds.’26 The idea is that these writings are canonical because they can be traced to particular authors. The authors have a special position of authority. So the writings which can be traced to these authoritative figures come to have authority. The writings are recognized as having authority because they were written by authors whose authority was already established, that is to say, recognized. If the writing of a book can be traced to some such authoritative figure then it has authority. If it cannot be traced to such an authoritative figure then it does not have authority. The authority of the apostle is original and primary. The authority of the Bible is thus a derived authority.
The process of tracing a book to a particular figure is an historical exercise. So, the authority of the New Testament book depends upon the success of an historical exercise. The process by which such a book came to be written was a complex one. It involved a telling and retelling by word of mouth, the activity of amanuenses who transcribe the verbal message, and of scribes who copy it, of the editor who puts it all together. Our historical evidence is debatable in many cases.
Let us consider a particular possibility, using the first category, ‘self-authentication,’ in a somewhat modified form, and relate it to the second, ‘authorship.’ Suppose there is a book widely read in the churches, valued because it edifies the congregation and helps the individual in understanding and living the Christian faith, but whose author is not known beyond doubt. Should it, or should it not, be accepted as Scripture? The problem of being able to identity the author might become more difficult as time passed. Origen in an interesting comment on the epistle to the Hebrews said ‘But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.’27 That was in the third century.
So apostolicity is a problem. This term assumes one can identify an apostle as the author of the book. Or, if an apostle is not himself the author of the book, at least an apostle was the source of the material of the book, or that the author was the disciple of an apostle. So Mark is a disciple of Peter and Luke a follower of Paul. On this account of the matter their books get included because they are connected with an apostle, not because of their intrinsic worth, nor because of their function in the churches.
This argument makes the important assumption, which again throws us into the midst of historical debate, that in the early church the figure of apostle was clearly distinguished, and so well recognized as to set aside the person from all others. It is a good question, whether even in the first century this accurately represents the real historical situation.
Another point concerns the meaning of the term ‘authentic.’ A book is authentic if, when it claims to have a particular author, it does in fact have that author. Obviously, a writing can claim to come from one author and not do so. In fact what was often done in ancient times was to write pseudonymously, that is, to write a book and associate it with someone else, well known. In that way, the real author hoped that the renown of the figure whose name attached to the book would guarantee it a wider and more favourable response than it would otherwise get, would guarantee it a kind of authority from the outset. That was a widespread practice at the time when the New Testament writings were being produced. So we call a writing ‘authentic’ if the author who claims to write it was the one who actually wrote it. It is one of the tasks of historical assessment to make judgments about the authenticity of particular books. But suppose we cannot be sure?28 Are we then going to stick by this criterion of apostolicity and follow out the logical consequences of so doing? That would mean that in every case acknowledgment of the authority of a book would depend upon a historical judgment about its author rather than experience of its influence in the Christian community. That would mean that it would be the historian who established its authority. But that is surely quite misguided.
Whether it is important to be able to identify the author of any New Testament book, and connect him with an apostle will depend primarily on whether we deem the figure of the apostle to be the key figure. If the apostle did not and cannot be shown to have such ‘precise and central position’ of authority, then our appeal to apostolicity in order to authorize the sacred books will not be convincing.29
At stake here are very important issues concerning the New Testament. What are the right questions to ask? What is the church (and what goes with it) for, or what is it from? Is the question about the Bible’s authority a functional question or an historical question? We can put the problem somewhat differently. Is the New Testament authorized by its connection with apostles, people who held an office recognized to be authoritative? If so, what sort of thing is it that needs such authorization? If the writings are the sort of thing that they must be authorized then they are secondary. What authorizes is primary. Is it not an historical fantasy to invest the apostles with such original, primary, underived authority? After all, their immediate connection was with Jesus himself. This gives them historical primacy over every other source. Indeed apostolicity in this sense constitutes the church, and all secondary sources of authority must demonstrate their roots in the apostolic age.
The third stage in the process was the drawing up or a list of the books considered to have authority. A list separates those that are included from the rest which are not. Those included are recognized books and they continue to be recognized. Now the word ‘canonical’ means ‘on the approved list,’ and ‘having authority for the reason that it is on the list.’ A canonical book on this view derives its unique status and authority by reason of its inclusion on the list.
The alternative to this is that those who draw up the list recognize the authority the book already has. The drawing up of the list is evidence of their recognizing the authority which the book has, for whatever reason it has that authority. It displays that recognition and makes it formal. In this case two things follow. First, the canon can only be provisional. Second, that reasons must be given why each individual book was included on the list. On such an explanation, inclusion on a list does not confer authority on the book. It recognizes an authority which the book already has. But how it has come to be that it already has such authority needs to be further explained. How has it come to have that authority which the list formally recognizes and states?
2 INTRINSIC, EXTRINSIC, INSTRUMENTAL
Let us distinguish between intrinsic authority and extrinsic authority. If someone whose authority I accept tells me to accept the authority of a book (assuming this all makes sense), then I shall accept it. I accept the book’s authority because I accept that person’s authority. So, some authority says to me, ‘These are the books whose authority you are to accept.’ And I duly follow. In such case, the book gets invested with an authority extrinsic to it. I may know very little about the book itself. I then have implicit, but not explicit, faith in the proposition that the Bible has authority. My acceptance is not based on what I know about the book or about the belief, because I have carefully and critically assessed it, found reasons for my attitude to it. My acceptance is second-hand. I accept it as such because I acknowledge the right of a third party to direct me to accept it. I accept that the Bible has authority because I accept the right of the church to direct me in this matter. But then I would need to have been already convinced of the right of the church so to direct me. That the Bible has authority has in such a case become a dogma.
Extrinsic authority means authority bestowed from another, given from outside. Intrinsic authority means an authority which comes either through or from the book itself. Think of the Bible as instrumental. If these books are the instruments, by means of which a certain purpose is fulfilled, if the Bible is the only means necessary for a certain event to happen, to produce a particular condition, and that event and condition comes about, then it has an authority no other books have. If I am involved in the event the Bible produces, included in the purpose it fulfils, then I can speak directly, rather than on someone else’s recommendation, of the function the Bible has performed. If I am a member of the community which the Bible has been instrumental in producing, and my participation in that community is an intelligent and involved participation, and I am aware of the function of the Bible in that continuing process, then I can speak of the role (and thence of the authority) of the Bible. I can do so out of my own knowledge and experience, and not at second-hand. I can testify that this book has an ‘authority’ no other book has, since it has produced an effect which no other book has. I can say this, whoever the authors of the particular books in the Bible were, and whether the books are on a list or not. If they are on the list, then I can understand why they have been put there. Since the uniqueness of the Bible is in what it does, we must, in accounting for this, give primacy of place to the function of the Bible. Questions about authorship and official lists are secondary.
What we are saying about these writings is that they have been the instrument for their own recognition. They were not ‘authorized’. They were recognized. The Christian community recognized that as Scripture was expounded, faith was nurtured, and the community was built up in the faith. They saw that that was enough to set these writings apart from all others. They continue to do so. So there is both an historical and a contemporary argument for setting these writings apart from all others. What they did in the past, they go on doing now. ‘These are writings which have accompanied the Christian movement; they are the best we have and they have proved themselves.’30
The term ‘self-authenticating’ is not the happiest one. It means not requiring support from something or someone external to itself. To be self-authenticating means that it authenticates itself to someone, the individual and the community for whom it has been effective. The kind of authority the book will have will depend on whether that effect is considered primarily in relation to the community’s life and piety, or primarily in relation to the community’s doctrine. What the church values will show itself in its doctrine of Scripture. The term ‘authenticate’ means (1) to show that an item is genuine i.e. has its origin in the person it claims to be its author or producer. To establish this connection is an historical task. A play is authentic Shakespeare if Shakespeare wrote it. A painting is authentic Vermeer if Vermeer painted it.
To show that a writing is authentic, in the historical sense i.e. coming from its purported source, one appeals to the available and relevant historical evidence. We have a similar case with a work of art. Whether this painting is genuine Vermeer or not is settled by examining the evidence. But an examination of the evidence may lead to a false conclusion. However whether the historical judgment is true of false, it makes no difference to the aesthetic value of the work.
Pursue the analogy for a moment. If a work of art is beautiful and evokes a positive aesthetic response, comparable to that of an original and authentic production then, aesthetically, it does not matter who painted it. It is beautiful and it evokes response. That it is not ‘original’ in the sense of ‘attributable to the author/artist’ does not matter. Originality value is often relic value. Such value has nothing to do with aesthetic judgment.
The term ‘authenticate’ also means (2) ‘shows itself by the response it evokes to be a worthy work of art, a worthy artefact.’ Such a work authenticates itself by evoking an aesthetic response. Such evocation does not depend upon the historical authenticity of the work. Such aesthetic value, and so such authenticity, is independent of historical knowledge. Authenticity in sense (1), with its opposite, forgery, fake, is historical. Authenticity, in sense (2), as (in the case of art) aesthetic value is not historical.
Now we turn to Scripture. The concept of authenticity as referring to the authorship of a book is an historical concept. The concept of authenticity as referring to the religious authority of the Bible is not historical. The authority, as for example, applied to the Bible, is independent of the historical evidence relating to the author of the book. That is authenticated by historical research. The other (so to speak) authenticates itself by what it does, i.e. in its functioning in the life of the community and in evoking appropriate responses. That this is so is the justification for using the notion of ‘self-authentication.’ It has reference to the influence the book has in the community in which it is recognised. Whoever produced the book, the book has influence of the appropriate kind in the community of faith.
The community of Christians, and the individual Christian, appeal to experience, and see the Bible as the instrument of the experience to which they appeal. They testify and then reason on the basis of this book, these words and this experience. Hence for the Protestant the claim sola scriptura, ‘the Bible and the Bible only,’ points to the position of primacy Scripture has in the life of the church.
Catholics also recognise that the Scripture has a primary function for the church. They formulate statements about that primary function differently from Protestants, setting it beside what they consider to be other primary functions for the church, in addition to that of the Bible. For the Catholic the Bible is one primary authority. The living tradition of the church is another.
We can now put our point in historical terms. When Christians testify to their present experience, they claim that the Bible has mediated to them the revelation of God and as such an instrument is an irreplaceable means of that revelation. By means of this book they have come to know his love, his demand, his forgiveness, his call, his succour. The claim about these writings from the very beginning is the claim that they are a part of the total event of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ, that they are instruments creative of Christian faith and of the Christian community. There was a point in history when Christian faith had its beginning. It is because of this event and of the connection of the Christian writings with this event that these books have an irreplaceable position in the church.
Historically, these books are those which came out of the total event in which God revealed himself in Jesus Christ and established the Christian community upon the grounds of faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is these particular books and not others, these books we now call the New Testament, which have this particular historical status.
The New Testament books have a certain historical primacy. They are the historical deposit of the movement of the first century of our era, which included the life and death of Jesus and the coming into being of the Christian church. These documents are unique in that they have survived from this crucial and formative period. Thus they cannot be replaced by later documents, important and even primary as such other documents may be. The historical primacy these documents, our New Testament, have, ensure their irreplaceability as mediating to us our knowledge of that Christian movement whose faith in Jesus Christ we have come to share. They bear witness to that faith. We, in our turn, bear witness to what they bore witness to. Something literary remains of their witness. These are our primary documents reporting it, recording it.
The Old Testament writings participated in this formative event, the Christ-event. They provided the ideas, the means for interpreting what happened. They make it possible for Christians to regard Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of human and Hebrew history. They provide the background for the events which had recently taken place when the New Testament began to be written. The New Testament writings are historically irreplaceable. They are the bridge from Jesus to the church. In this sense we may speak of their apostolicity. The apostles were those who first publicly proclaimed their faith in Jesus Christ, and interpreted his life and death from the viewpoint of their faith in him. They were the first leaders in the church and assumed the task of public witnessing. The term ‘apostolicity’ connotes their distinctive features, their priority as preachers of the Christian gospel. They provide the link with the earliest Christian faith and with the historical Jesus. So the term has sometimes been applied to the books of the New Testament.
Apostolicity does not mean that because a book is written by an apostle its special status is guaranteed. Conversely, it does not mean that we must demonstrate that a book is written by an apostle before we accept its authority. The specific identity of the author is relatively unimportant. The books are the instruments of God’s saving revelation in Jesus Christ without the author being specifically identified. To identify an author is an historical task, and the continuing faith of the church does not depend upon our success or failure at establishing such historical facts. Whoever wrote it, the book does what it does. That is the important thing. It does now and it did from the beginning mediate the reality of God. This is recognized in church doctrine by attributing the effectiveness of the proclamation of Scripture to the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Bible has authority if and when God mediates himself through it. Should one then wish to speak of the apostolicity of the New Testament books one can certainly do so. The term ‘apostle’ is reserved for those who were the first to announce the good news about Jesus. The books share with the men who were apostles that they are the primary historical witnesses to the resurrection, to faith in Jesus Christ. In the one case such primary historical witnesses were human beings. In the other case they are writings. In both cases they have an irreplaceable historical position. They are the first, and in that sense the primary, witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its meaning. These books continue to be the means, as they were from the time of their writing, for understanding and for experiencing the Christian faith. As in the case of the human apostle, the book is what it is because of what it does and because of what it has done. It is its effectiveness and its historical position that constitutes its apostolicity.
3 INTERPRETATION AND TRADITION
It is clear that we need an appropriate concept of authority when we speak of the ‘authority of the Bible.’ We shall discuss the meaning of the word to some purpose as we discover how it is used by those who acknowledge that authority. The community of faith recognizes the Bible. We must give due consideration to the implications of that recognition. The Bible has always held a unique position in the church. So also has the interpreter, the teacher, the charismatic leader. The Bible ‘speaks’ only as someone interprets it, and, in turn, only as someone understands it.
The Bible is a text. That means that it has fixed foci: so many books, so many chapters. It is a set of writings arranged in an order. The words are there, once written by hand, now printed. Whether in some translation or another, or in the original languages, the Bible is a text. As a text it is fixed and static. There are the scrolls, the original pages. There is the book bound between two covers, now sitting on the shelf, now open on the desk, now closed on the table. In what sense can we speak, then, of the authority of the Bible? How can we say that the Bible is the living and challenging word of God, when the Bible is a book of silent words, ink-marks on paper? The Bible has no authority simply by being there, whoever ‘wrote’ it and whatever the circumstances of its ‘writing.’ Does the Bible have authority only when someone in the community interprets and expounds it? In that case does not the teacher, the interpreter, wield the authority by virtue of his ability to interpret the text, which text would otherwise be a dead letter? Is not the authority then within the church which engages in the activity, and exercises control over the process of interpreting the Bible? Does not the church draw limits, give guidance and impose sanctions concerning what the Bible means and how it is to be interpreted? Indeed, is it not the case that the church produced the Bible, that the church decided which books it would accept as Scripture and which books it would reject? Is the authority then not rather of the church than of the Bible? If so we decide the question about authority discerning the church’s attitude to the Bible.
Moreover, interpretations of what the Bible means, when endorsed and agreed upon, are passed on from one generation to the next so that an accepted meaning becomes widely recognized within a particular community. That meaning then has become a tradition. The tradition then provides guidance in indicating what
Scripture means, what is the right and proper interpretation of Scripture. The particular tradition guides the reader by providing him with the questions and the concepts with which to read and interpret the Bible. This church, that church, any church says: ‘This is how we read the Bible,’ and then refers you to its teachings, which it claims are the teachings of the Bible or are related to the Bible. When we come to inquire about the meaning of Scripture we are offered a particular tradition of understanding. So the authority lies in the tradition. It does not matter whether the tradition has its source in a council, in a creed, in the words of a reformer, or in the deliverances of a charismatic. If tradition is the means by which we understand Scripture, then the tradition has the real and primary authority. A particular church accepts a distinctive method of interpretation and produces a doctrinal system. Its reading of the Bible will reflect that doctrinal tradition. The authority then lies in the doctrinal system.
Appeal to the authority of Scripture may not, under analysis, turn out to be what it appears to be.
4 THE CONCEPT OF AUTHORITY
The term ‘authority’ refers to a relationship. It is a relational term. The term, like ‘revelation,’ points to a two-term relationship. Someone or something has authority over or for someone else. Someone reveals himself to someone else. Someone acknowledges the authority of another. Someone understands what is revealed. The institution or the person that has authority has power over another. It has the capacity to influence that other, and it sometimes in fact has done so and does so. The authority may be charismatic or official. Authority may be the effect of the charm or persuasiveness of a person. It may be due to the social pressure of wide acceptance of power as legitimate. It is difficult not to be influenced by a widely recognized authority. We may accept it simply because there is no alternative. We are persuaded by the orator. We bow to pressures we cannot escape. Pressures and sanctions, or simply the threat of pressures and sanctions, can persuade us to act in one way rather than in another. The forces at work around us lead us to the acceptable behaviour. In this sense the term ‘authority’ refers to the effective influence which a person, a book, a custom, a belief, an institution has over people.
The term ‘authority’ is also used of the experts, the persons who know what they are talking about and who, because of this, deserve our respect when speaking. A person who does something competently may also be regarded as an authority when it is a matter of discussing how to do what he can do.
To have authority is to have influence. Someone influences because he is a friend and we are trying to please him, or perhaps because he is an expert and we acknowledge the right he has to be respected. ‘Authority,’ ‘competence,’ and ‘recognition’ are thus all very closely related concepts.31
They are closely related when we attempt to analyse the Bible’s authority. Here it is clear that the effective authority of the Bible is identical with the influence it exerts. It is also clear that an appropriate response on the part of the reader is necessary. One can acknowledge authority when one has experienced the influence of the writing in a particular way.
Authority is acknowledged power. When people recognize that a person, an institution, a class has the right to exercise power, authority is in evidence. ‘Power’ means the capacity to influence another, to get one’s purpose fulfilled, one’s ideas accepted and acted upon, to get one’s will done. Power can be exercised without being recognized as right and proper. Such power may lead someone to perform exactly the same act as the exercise of legitimate power might produce. If someone flourishes a revolver in my face, that will certainly provide me with an incentive to co- operate with the person flourishing it. But there are also legitimate ways of relieving me of — say — my money. I may recognize the structured power of bureaucratic authority and permit the taxman to claim some of my money. On this definition, ‘authority’ means both the exercise of power and the recognition of it as legitimate.
Indeed, recognition is the defining element. This is the important element in our present considerations. Authority means recognition. Authority ‘is exercised only over those who voluntarily accept it’ (Juvenal).32
How and why do we come to acknowledge an authority? Does such an acknowledgment commit us to an automatic and uncritical acceptance of our authority’s pronouncements and demands whatever they are? What reasons can we give for our initial acceptance? Can a critical acceptance of authority lead to an uncritical following of its demands?
1 One reason for recognition of an authority is belief in the rightness of established customs and traditions. We are taught that we should adopt beliefs and behaviour patterns, and we never question them. They teach us, they train us, before we are able to reason. Later we may find reasons for believing what they have trained us to believe, and doing what they have taught us to do. They socialize us into a tradition of values, beliefs and behaviour, and having accepted that tradition we may never question its validity. We have our authorities handed to us. It is precisely because we have received them in this way, without engaging in a serious process of rational justification, that we feel greatly threatened when we are confronted with alternatives. Do we entrench or do we explore? Shall we give consideration to the criticisms or shall we dismiss them without further ado?
2 Max Weber33 recognizes another form of authority which he calls charismatic authority. An exceptional leader, endowed with outstanding persuasive qualities, gets a following. Such qualities as he manifests are seen as if supernatural, or superhuman. They set the leader apart from ordinary mortals, and make belief, loyalty, devotion and obedience easy and natural.
3 But we do not need to be impressed by such outstanding personalities to accept our beliefs on authority. Most of what we believe comes from other people’s testimony. We have not ourselves been in a position to test all the claims we accept. Nor ever shall. We are usually not inclined to test them. We simply accept them. Such acceptance works and we live together constructively. It was Bishop Butler who said that ‘probability is the guide to life’. We must act on the evidence we have. We can’t prove everything. In fact, we cannot prove much. We have to take things on trust. Our trust is shown to be reasonable in that when we act on probabilities that things go right and not wrong. Many things we simply accept. We couldn’t get along if we didn’t.
4 But human beings, even the most exceptional of human beings, and even human beings under the influence of the divine, are fallible, limited and. suggestible. Suppose there were a human being who was infallible and at the same time was limited. Such a logical possibility is very relevant to the subject under discussion. We can think of an infallibility which extends to some matters and not to others, just as we think of an authority in some areas and not in others. I mean, It is conceivable that someone be infallible about some things but not about others. We can distinguish between total and partial infallibility. ‘He’s never wrong when he’s talking about such-and-such’ could be inferred from ‘He’s never been known to be wrong when he has talked about such-and-such.’ If we keep within the limits we could accept his authority.But if we began asking him questions beyond the limits within which he is infallible, that person would be of little help, indeed might even be misleading, if not irrelevant. That would certainly be the case if he were not infallible and we took him to be so, and it was important for us that he be right.
5 Authorities sometimes conflict. Which, if any of them, are you going to accept? When authorities conflict you have to decide between them. You can start with a high-sounding claim, ‘The Bible says so and so.’ And so it does. But one authority says that the Bible means this, and another says the Bible means that, and yet another says the Bible means something else when the Bible says so and so. When the authority, in this case the Bible, gives rise to such divergence in interpretation the individual will have to choose between the secondary authorities. I’ll choose my secondary authority, and repose my confidence there. But that only slides the issue along the corridor where I’ll meet it again. For why should I repose such confidence in that secondary authority rather than in another one? I have not settled, only shelved, the question of authority. This problem is acute when there is a conflict between interpretations, when for example contradictory doctrinal conclusions are constructed and presented as the biblical teaching.. Of course, a passage may be set in different contexts and speak to different situations without providing the problem of conflict.
6 Religious believers sometimes combine authoritarianism with scepticism.34 They will sometimes say, ‘The authority is so sacred that we must not question it.’ Neither must we try to establish it, give reasons for it. It does not permit, nor require, proof nor even support.’ Such authoritarianism has its particular psychological appeal and that is the main reason why it persists. The intellectually timid or indolent are sometimes quite happy to let others do their thinking for them and believe what they are told to believe. They ask ‘What do we believe?’ and then demand, ‘Please tell me.’ rather than seeking the truth for themselves. They enjoy conforming and the freedom from responsibility such conformity brings. Such a person ‘may be more comfortable, for the search after wisdom often brings sorrow and disillusionment. . . . Better to raise one’s eyes to the sky and seek humbly for the truth, even though the search result in failure and unhappiness, than to give our beliefs into the keeping of another.’35
The sinister counterpart to such conformity is a belief in the virtue of conformity. That may lead to the opposition and persecution of those who quest for truth by those who are certain that they have found it. The will to dominate requires the will to conform. One psychological type supplements the other.
The appeal to the sacredness of the text of Scripture is one example of this type of conformity, of this type of submission. One must not question a sacred text. But questions arise. Once admit the sacredness of the text and one is then free from the responsibility of answering questions that inevitably arise in relation to that text. It may then happen that the purported sacredness of the text gets projected on to the interpreter so that the interpretation is itself put beyond question.
It is the initial step which must be questioned, the initial acceptance of the authority, in this case the text of Scripture, as untouchable, as beyond question. What if any is the rational ground for taking this decisive step in the first place? Or is it irrational? At what point does one refuse to give reasons for one’s belief ?
5 THE EFFECTS OF THE BIBLE
It is as the Bible is effective within the church that the church is in a position to acknowledge its authority. It is when God has made his presence known within the church that the church is in a position to confess his present reality. As God’s presence becomes known through the instrumentality of the Bible, the church confesses the authority of the Bible. This means that the ‘question’ of the Bible’s ‘authority’ is a question about an answer which has already been found.
It is when the individual acknowledges the Bible as the means of God’s word, the avenue through which he ‘speaks’ to the individual and to the church as a community, as something which
has become real to one in one’s experience, that one can recognize the authority of the Bible. It is then a real and living thing. If the question of its authority comes up one then knows what the appropriate answer is. The Bible has exerted influence, has produced certain effects. You acknowledge that it has done so and agree that it has authority. This authority cannot be imposed upon you. You assent to it, agree that it is this way. In your acknowledgment you recognize something which comes to you. You do not constitute the Bible authoritative because and when you recognize it to have authority.
The authority of the Bible is ‘acceptable in the sense that, while independent of the person upon whom it imposes itself, it secures the assent of that person.’36 The person does not assent because some authority insists that the Bible must be believed. The believer should not be irrational. The believer acknowledges the Bible because it has become the instrument through which God has made himself known, whatever other instruments or agents may have been involved in the process. The Bible is a constant factor in the complex process which results in the Christian confession of faith. The term ‘assent’ therefore is rather misleading.
6 ACCEPTANCE, RECOGNITION
The believer responds, makes a judgment. He is aware of and responsible for what he hears and experiences of the word of God. In saying this we avoid one-sidedness. The Bible is not an external authority imposed on the believer by another external authority. If it can be and sometimes is, the believer himself being a willing accessory in the process, that is to misunderstand. It is to avoid this, while not reducing the word of God, or the testimony of the Spirit, to the believer’s or the church’s experience, we must hold firmly to two complementary assertions when we speak of the authority of the Bible:
1 Its authority is not constituted authoritative by our acceptance and recognition of it.
2 Our recognition of it is essential to its having authority. The recognition or acknowledgment of this authority takes place when the Bible has had and continues to have the effect upon the believer, of evoking and nurturing Christian faith. In the words of C. H Dodd,
a book is as external as a church, or rather it is much more so. The act of faith which accepts the authority of the Bible is as purely individual a judgment as that which accepts the authority of the church. What is the ground of it? . . . . Really — may we not say? — he believes the Bible to be authoritative because of the effect it produces upon his own mind and spirit. In this as for all his beliefs he must accept personal responsibility.37
The acceptance of the authority of the Bible, associated with and dependent as it is upon confession of faith in God, is a reasonable and responsible act.
7 TESTIMONY NOT PROOF
Authority resides in the truth alone, in the mind and will of God. The Bible possesses authority in religion as it mediates the truth, as the ‘Word of God.’ The truth is not given in an external, self-subsistent form. In dealing with the question of biblical authority we must consider the response of the subject. ‘Granted that religious authority somehow resides in the Bible, how does it become authoritative for me?’38 The answer to this question is not to be found in thinking of the Bible as a repository of doctrine, waiting to be excavated. ‘The most important thing we find in the Bible is not “doctrine” but something that helps us in a new attitude to God and to life.’39 If we treat the Bible as a source of information, whether doctrinal information or historical information, we are missing the point. The traditional theory valued the Bible ‘as giving authoritative information, in the form of dogma, upon matters known only by special revelation.’40 The critical method treated it as a source of historical information. In both cases there is a failure to understand the real character of the Bible. The authority of the Bible is not in its being a source of doctrine, but rather and ‘primarily in inducing in us a religious attitude and outlook,’41 not in providing static and unchanging dogma, but in including us within ‘a tradition of life and experience.’42 That means that we are caught up in a progressing movement, in which (as the New Testament says) the Spirit of God is leading us into a developing and forward-looking experience. It is in performing this activity that the authority of Scripture consists. The Christian believer’s claim is that the religious authority of the Bible is known when God makes himself known. Such authority is known in the experience of the believer. The Bible is the instrument through which believers receive the word of God. ‘The Scriptures are holy because they are the vehicle through which the Gospel is communicated to us . . . . Hence there is no outside standard by which we can measure the adequacy of the biblical communication.’43 This unique authority can be witnessed to but it cannot be proved. It is a matter of testimony and not of proof.
8 RELIGIOUS AND FACTUAL AUTHORITY
The religious value and authority of the Bible does not depend on its reliability as a different kind of authority, namely its historical and factual trustworthiness. It is not my purpose at all to re-engage in the battles fought and fought again in the nineteenth century over this issue. I shall survey and draw lessons from some of that debate later.44 If we learn a lesson from history it will be that we must fight our own battles and not simply replay old ones, even if in some contexts it seems we are very much doing the latter, or observing others doing the latter.
Statements in the Bible frequently have reference to historical, geographical and other factual states of affair. Such statements may be confirmed where there is appropriate evidence. We can check such biblical statements by examining the relevant evidence. The cosmological assumptions of the Bible are a quite different matter from its factual claims. By ‘cosmological assumptions’ we mean what they took for granted about how the universe is structured, how it operates, how the bodies that make it up and the events which take place within it are related to one another, about whether there is something more than the natural world to be accounted for and, if there is, how the supernatural world is related to the natural. The Bible is an ancient book and its writers operated with pre-scientific assumptions. It is pre-Einsteinian, pre- Newtonian, pre-Copernican. This means that they had a different kind of understanding, a different mode of thinking from ours. We understand Newton and know he is a watershed in the history of human development. We may not well understand Einstein, but we well know that we live in a quite different world from the ancients when it comes to our understanding the universe. The words ‘nature,’ ‘universe,’ as we use them were unknown to the ancients. There is a great divide between us. It is the advent and long success of scientific method that has brought about this change.
What they have to say about God and the world and his relation to the world and history they say in their idiom. They were well able to say what they had to say in the form and within the thought- patterns within which they operated. It did not stand in the way of their communicating what they had to communicate, which were their convictions about what God was doing in the world, what they understood God to have done and what he would yet do.
Christian believers, who live in a different world from them and who try to understand them, have to make allowance for the important fact that their world was very different from ours. We want to understand their message, and we want to let God speak through their words. We also want to put the message about the God of whom they speak in our words, to relate the message about him to our problems. So we must interpret their message, understand their expression. We may do so because we experience through their words the revealing activity of the same God who revealed himself to them. To say this is to claim that we find the unity of the Bible in its witness to the revealing activity of God.
The Christian’s task is to make that clear and to find in the present time the means to speak intelligibly about the activity of God within the world.
Science resulted from the discovery of scientific method. Ancient peoples did not know what scientists of the seventeenth, eighteenth and later centuries discovered. Ancient writers did not know the scientific method. For example, the Bible writers did not know about the circulation of the blood, the constitution of the universe, the movements of the planets, and the diurnal motion of the earth as it makes its annual circuit around the sun. Their astronomy was geocentric.
What does it matter that they thought very differently about the way things are than we do, that they did not have the idea of nature which we have? How could they? For us the eighteenth century is history. But not for them! They could not, and therefore did not, think of nature in Newtonian terms, let alone in post-Einsteinian terms as we do. There is a distance between them and us. The temporal gap is also a cultural gap. We think of a universal order of nature with each event linked to every other in a chain of cause and effect. Our science does not speak of God nor of divine or supernatural activity as cause in any sense whatever, neither in physics, nor in psychology, nor in economics. We explain nature and history in secular terms. So our horizon is very different from their horizon.
9 MUST?
Christians sometimes speak of the Bible as the ‘word of God.’ ‘To believe the Bible’ means then to accept it as the means through which God ‘speaks.’ By using this analogy from human speech as communication, they convey the idea that God communicates with the human person through the reading and exposition of the words of Scripture. To have Christian faith is the product of this revelation of God through Scripture. But this does not entail belief in the literal accuracy of all the statements of Scripture.
To decide whether the Bible is the ‘word of God’ requires a different sort of approach than to decide whether its statements are true or false. If the Bible has proved to be the vehicle through which readers and hearers have come to have faith, the means through which that faith is strengthened, then there would be sufficient ground for a special claim about the Bible. But the Bible will have a quite different kind of ‘authority’ in this case from that which it would have purportedly in the case where someone says, ‘I will demonstrate why you have to believe the Bible,’ and then try to establish its factual accuracy. Or even, as one sometimes hears, ‘The factual claims of the Bible must be true, and therefore we can, in principle, show them to be true, as a necessary condition for accepting it as having authority.’ That is a most extreme position indeed!
No one can say in advance that every claim the Bible makes is true. You cannot reasonably believe an historical claim, unless and until you have evidence to establish that claim. You may be pre- disposed to believe it. You may hope that it will prove to be true. But it would be unreasonable to say that it must be true. Historical judgments are not necessary. They are contingent. That means that you cannot say in advance of having considered the evidence that claims will be true, or that they must be true. You have to test the claims and find out whether they are. You have to check the evidence and decide whether the historical (or other factual) claim is probably true. We cannot say a priori, before examining the evidence what the outcome of the investigation will be. Whether you wish it to be true or are predisposed to believe it true is neither here nor there. You can only reasonably believe a factual claim for which there is evidence that makes it probable. You must examine the particular case and follow the rules of evidence. You may then be able to decide whether the claim, explicit or implied, is probably true or probably false. The evidence may lead you to conclude that it is highly probable that it is true, or false. The probability may be such that you have good reason for being certain that your judgment is correct.
This is correct procedure in principle. That means that it applies in whatever context claims are made and so in considering the historical and other factual claims of the Bible. The Bible does not have a special status when it is a question of deciding whether its factual claims are true. It would be irrational to claim in advance of a reasonable consideration of the appropriate evidence that its claims must be believed. If that is accepted, and if a person says he is quite prepared to be irrational there can be no further discussion. For that person will believe what he wants and feel no obligation to give reasons for his belief. It is impossible to hold intelligent discourse with such a person.
One writer claims that the New Testament commands our unconditional obedience. He speaks of the ‘authoritative preaching and teaching of (the) apostles.’ Since Paul is an apostle his writing ‘therefore demands obedience.’45 But what does that mean? It just will not do to speak so vaguely about ‘the New Testament’ or ‘the Bible.’ Does the writer mean, ‘Broadly and vaguely, the New Testament commands our unconditional obedience,’ or does he mean that every command, exhortation or directive, wherever found and on whatever theme, commands our unconditional obedience? Speaking broadly and vaguely conveys little or no meaning. We cannot obey or believe broadly and vaguely. Our unconditional obedience is quite specific. Is every command or directive of an apostle’s teaching to be obeyed? Are women to remain silent in our churches?46 Are we to practice celibacy?47 Must we maintain rules and procedures regarding hygiene such as Jesus commended?48 Should one Christian never ever file a law suit against another?49 Is there to be no separation after marriage?50 And so on! Are Christians to take these demands as absolute and unconditional? The obvious fact is that they do not do so. So since they do not do so, that practice needs to be put into theory. They need to say how it is that they approach the Bible so as not to do what in many instances it says should be done. The words of the New Testament were written in particular contexts and addressed to quite specific situations. Those contexts and situations have passed and the advice and direction given to them may well be no longer relevant. However, there may be an important principle behind the particular directives. But that principle will have to be discerned. It will require a sympathetic interpretation of the text to show what that principle is. Does the Christian, if disagreeing when the interpretation is presented, reject the authority of the text? If you derive the principle from the specific instances dealt with in the text, is it the text or is it your interpretation which has authority?
The Bible does not lack authority because it is not verse by verse ‘immediately employable.’ For example, How does one apply the principle of love to difficult and complex personal and social situations? Where there is disagreement about ethical questions, one can hardly settle the matter from the text of Scripture when parties appeal to the same text but draw different meanings from it, different directives for action.
The following warning is appropriate here. ‘Authority is often confused with immediate applicability. It is then thought that every word and command in Scripture is forthwith obligatory for faith and conduct . . . The Bible is not authoritative because it is verse by verse immediately employable.’51
It is not an uncommon procedure to assert the authority of the Bible on inadequate grounds and then to demand unconditional belief or unconditional obedience. Take the following as examples of this logic:
‘The New Testament is clothed with his supreme authority and commands our unconditional obe-dience.’52
‘The most basic and fundamental of all claims made on behalf of the Bible, and that which it makes for itself, is that it is true. This means that whatever statements it makes on whatever subject are all true. The Bible is a book of truth not lies, of integrity not falsehood. The reason the Bible claims to be true is because what it contains comes to man from God. Holy and good men wrote the Bible, but what they wrote was not their own ideas or wisdom. They wrote what God gave them to write. What they committed to writing was the Word of God expressed in human language.’53
We should now consider two questions. What is entailed in demanding belief and obedience in the name of an authoritative writing? Does the demand for obedience rest upon the demand for belief ?
10 RECAPITULATORY STATEMENT
1 Christians find themselves recognizing the authority of the Christian community with which they are connected.
2 The Christian community appeals to the Bible, as authority. At the same time it presents its teachings for acceptance as authoritative for the member.
3 By pronouncing that the Bible has authority, whether for doctrine, organisation, practice, the community is making a judgment about the Bible.
4 The community demands that such judgments, usually indeed a whole series of judgments, often in great detail, about the Bible be endorsed by the members of the community.
5 The believer’s acknowledgment means that he lets himself come under the influence of both the Bible and the ‘authority’ which interprets the Bible to him.
6 It is then his responsibility to assure himself that he is doing so for the right reasons. If he gives the right reasons he may be reasonably sure that he has not misconstrued the Bible, that his attitude to it is reasonable.
7 The authority of the Bible is not identical with its immediate applicability. The meaning of the biblical passages is arrived at through interpretation.
26 C. Evans, op. cit., p. 24
27 Reported in Eusebius, HE, VI, 25, 11-14 Cf. Stephenson, A New Eusebius, p. 223.
28 Adam Fox, Meet the Greek Testament, pp. 16-17. ‘I am not sure if John in all the five cases where his name indicates an author is the same John, nor whether he is John the son of Zebedee one of the Twelve, nor another John, the aged divine of Ephesus, or a young disciple of the Lord outside the circle of the Twelve. I am not sure if Matthew whose name is connected with the first Gospel is the same as Levi, called from the receipt of custom to be one of the twelve (Mark 2:14). I do not know who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Second Epistle of Peter. I do, however, know a great deal about Paul and Luke and I feel fairly certain that between them they wrote about half the New Testament.’
29 Evans, op. cit., pp. 25-27.
30 Ibid., p. 25.
31 Cf. Article, Authority in Paul Edwards (editor), The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 216. ‘A person may fall in with another’s suggestions, however, not precisely because he feels that he has a duty to obey, but because the other person is an authority, meaning that he is believed to possess expert knowledge and therefore the right to be listened to because he knows what he is talking about. This is the borderline case between authority and influence. The authority of the expert . . . involves the notion of someone qualified to speak. It presupposes standards by which expertise is assessed and recognized, for example, degrees or professional reputation. Evidence of this kind serve (sic) as reasons why laymen should take the expert’s word without understanding his reasons, even without asking for them.’
32 Quoted in P. Edwards, op. cit., p. 215.
33 Cf. the excerpt in Sociological Perspectives, Edited by Kenneth Thompson and Jeremy Tunstall, pp. 67-79.
34 Cf. W.P. Montague, The Ways of Knowing, pp. 39-53.
35 Ibid. p.49.
36 J.K.S. Reid, The Authority of the Bible, p. 235.
37 C.H. Dodd, The Authority of the Bible, pp. 25-26.
38 Ibid., p. 265 (italics in original).
39 Ibid., p. 268.
40 lbid., p. 270.
41 Ibid., p. 271.
42 Ibid., p.273.
43 John Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 117.
44 See below, chapter VI.
45 J. Nowal Geldenhuys, ‘Authority and the Bible’ in Carl F.H. Henry (editor), Revelation and the Bible., p. 384.
46 I Corinthians 14:34-35.
47 I Cointhians 7:1, 38.
48 John 9:6.
49 I Corinthians 6:1-9.
50 I Cointhians 7:10, 11.
51 J.K.S. Reid, op. cit., pp. 235-236.
52 Geldenhuys, Ibid.
53 Patrick Boyle, ‘Evidence for the Book’, Focus, p. 10.
