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I. WAYS OF APPROACHING THE BIBLE

1 DIFFERENT WAYS: DEVOTIONAL, DOCTRINAL, ANALYTICAL, EXEGETICAL

There are many different ways of approaching the Bible. The Christian reader has his own particular interests in reading and in studying it.

There is, first, the devotional use of Scripture. We read it to nurture our faith, to gain ‘daily help’ from it in the living of life. We relate what the helpful words say to our past memories and to our present experience. In doing this, we find that there are particular sections or passages of the book which make a particular impression and to which we constantly refer. We find that, approached as a book with a message from God to us in our particular situation, we can draw upon its varied resources and get a word of comfort or of courage, of reproof or of warning or whatever sort of word is appropriate for us in our particular circumstances. The words have direct relationship to the living of our life as they bear for us the appropriate word of God. We are not now concerned about a detailed analysis of the writings we read. We do not have to be. Read in this way, the Bible is a treasury of good things, waiting to be opened, explored and appropriated for the living of the life of faith.

What is here true for the individual is also true for the group. As the community comes together for worship, it looks for and gets encouragement as passages from the Bible are read, explained and applied to the experiences of the worshippers. Again, the words of Scripture become the occasion for the worshippers as a group to get comfort, correction, guidance and challenge –– in short to hear the word of God, what God has to ‘say’ to them here and now. The words of Scripture live again in the midst of the church, and the believers are encouraged and strengthened in their faith and their activity. That such things happen is the experience and confession of multitudes of Christians.

A second approach to the Bible we shall call the doctrinal approach. Every Christian community holds certain beliefs, and teaches particular doctrines. These teachings make that community different from others. Many Christian communities claim that their teachings are either directly taught in the Bible or are derived from the Bible. The claim is that there is a connection between the doctrine the church teaches and the words of the Bible. Often they will take the further step and claim that the teachings of the church have authority because the Bible, which is the source of those teachings, has authority. The authority of the Bible is, so to speak, transmitted to and represented in the doctrines. Or, it will be said that the teachings represent the church’s understanding of Christian faith and life, both individual and in community, as the New Testament accounts represent the understanding of the first century with respect to its faith and its life.

The third approach is the analytical approach. Here the questions we put to the text of the Bible are of an historical and literary kind. How did the writings come to have the present shape? How were they put together? How do they relate to the time when they were written? You ask who wrote the books and when they were written and want to find the appropriate evidence to give good answers to these questions. Further questions arise. How are the various writings related to one another? In particular you ask, as a Christian, How are the Old and the New Testament related? What constitutes the unity of the Bible? Such questions assume that we have appropriate methods to provide answers. What you discover in using this approach will have an important bearing upon the first two approaches. How does the believer and the preacher get the encouraging message from the Bible? How does the church formulate its doctrines by reference to the Scripture? What of the claim concerning authority in these matters?

A fourth approach to Scripture takes the text and seeks to render its meaning. This exegetical approach is distinct from the others. You must take account of it in giving a summary of the manner in which the Bible functions in the Christian community. Here it uses the text of Scripture as the basis for exposition. The meanings that result serve to maintain the distinctive life and understanding of the church and of the believer.

When you ask the question, ‘What did the authors of Scripture mean by what they wrote?’ you are asking an historical question. When you ask, ‘What do the words of Scripture mean?’ you are asking a different question. Some people would say that once you have found what the Bible meant, you have arrived at your goal. The Christian’s job then is to understand and to display that meaning. Please notice that this is a theory about how the Bible is to be treated. Other Christians would disagree and say that the Bible is a living book and its interpretation gives us meaning for the present time, and that this is what is important. You will, on this viewpoint, have the complex task of saying both what Scripture meant, and also of searching for its present meaning, what it now means. The task of grappling with the actual text of Scripture is called exegesis. Its aim is to render the meaning, to clarify obscurities, to present the message of the text. It is the work of the commentator, the task of exposition. As such it must be distinguished from the work of explicit theological construction, which may also sometimes refer to the text of Scripture.

We have spoken above of the ‘authors’ of Scripture, rather than the ‘writers,’ although that is not entirely satisfactory. There is good reason for this. For the books of Scripture, or at least many of them, were not ‘written’ in the way a modern book is written. Indeed Bible books were often not written by their ‘authors,’ if by ‘written’ one means first, that the author actually put pen to paper and composed the product, engaging in the physical process of scribing his words as he proceeded. A secretary, an amanuensis, or a disciple, might be entrusted with the task of actually scribing the words. Second, the modern author is responsible for the production of all that he ‘writes.’ Then the author was often more like a collector, compiler or editor than like a ‘writer,’ in our modern sense, that is one who has himself produced and so is responsible for, all that gets written and published. Indeed sometimes a well- known name was deliberately associated with a particular book.

2 WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BIBLE

To each of these approaches there corresponds an understanding of the significance, status and authority of the Bible.1 What is the primary reason for the status the Bible has in the church?

The Bible is not primarily and characteristically a textbook of doctrines, nor a book of edification, that is to say of building up the teaching and the piety or the church. It is not primarily and characteristically an historical source. The reason that Protestant churches have given the Bible the place of primacy is not because it edifies, ‘not because it builds up what is established but because it does the establishing.’2 The Bible has occupied the place of primacy in the Protestant churches because it is indispensable for the very existence of the churches.

Once the church existed but Christian Scripture did not. This is of course the very earliest period of the church’s existence. The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ. So we have the task of working out how the Protestant conviction of the primacy of Scripture, the ‘indispensable’ Scripture is related to the church’s foundation. What is the relation between Jesus confessed as the Christ and the written Scripture confessing him and serving as the means for continuing faith and confession? To each of the approaches we have outlined there are appropriate attitudes, appropriate questions and appropriate silences. Let us take them briefly, one by one.

When you read the Bible devotionally you are not questioning it. You simply make yourself available for whatever edification and help you can gain from it. Nor, when reading the Bible devotionally does the thought that it is infallible naturally occur to you, the reader. In the attitude of devotion, that is not the sort of thing that you would affirm or deny. When you read the Bible for devotional purposes you don’t think of that.3

It is when you become aware of the disputes among churchmen and the ideas which they discuss, that you begin to ask questions about the status of Scripture. And it is of course true that some ideas and discussions can be very helpful. Others can seriously waste our time and divert our energies. One of these is prolonged discussion of the idea of infallibility.

If you are an intelligent reader of Scripture you will be bound to have questions about Scripture when you begin to think about what you read. You will ask the ordinary questions you ask about any ancient book. These are questions about style, composition, worldview and about the transmission and preservation of the text.

One of the most important and interesting questions is about the church’s doctrinal use of Scripture.4

The word ‘doctrine’ has reference to what is taught in a particular community at a particular time. It is thus recognised teaching. How does such teaching come to be recognised? The answer is, quite simply, that certain people come to agree about it. Orthodox doctrine is doctrine agreed about by a group. The term ‘theology’ refers to the effort to understand the Christian faith and to express it discursively, that is to say, in words, concepts, systems of thought, arguments. Such faith can also be expressed in other ways, for example in liturgy, in art, in moral activity. The theologian serves the church by scrutinising the doctrine it professes to teach. Now our question is this: How is the acknowledged doctrine related to Scripture? How is the teaching derived from Scripture?

This is the question about the relationship between the Bible and the doctrine. How do you get from the Bible to the doctrine? What are the principles of interpretation which are used in the exposition of Scripture? What sort of frameworks are considered appropriate, and why?

There is no easy answer to this question, nor is there simply one answer to it. The different Christian churches derive their doctrine from Scripture in different ways. It is well that we are aware of this and ask how it is done. When we address the question: ‘How is the particular doctrinal statement derived from the Scripture upon which it is based?’ we shall discover that the answer to that question is complex.5

Let’s reverse the familiar advice, ‘Put your theory into practice!’ and adopt the slogan, ‘Put your practice into theory.’ That will guide us in what follows. Let us see what the church actually does in respect of the Bible and insist that the account (the theory) it provides properly represents that practice. So we ask as our basic question, ‘What does the church do with the Bible?’

3 PUTTING PRACTICE INTO THEORY

If you want to correct an erroneous theoretical explanation, you will have to show that the practice of the church is not adequately represented in the doctrine, and then propose an alternative construction of the doctrine.

Theology, in our case, as so often, is a four-fold activity. You describe the practice of the church. You test doctrine in relation to that practice. You qualify, correct or replace the doctrine when it fails to represent that practice. You propose doctrine which would lead to a revision of practice. Serious theology does not simply represent the practice of the church without questioning it. Should it understand the practice to be at fault, it will begin by describing what that practice is, and then proceed to make constructive suggestions for a different practice. In proceeding this way the theologian is being practical, and, if people understand, discuss and take heed, there will be positive and creative work within the community of faith. Such discussion will make a difference to the doctrine of the church on the one hand and to its practice on the other. But it is seriously misleading to speak as if there were a dichotomy between theory and practice. Practice influences our theory and just as, if not more important, our theory influences our practice. Hence the primary importance of theological discussion.

4 THE CHURCH’S ACTUAL PRACTICE IN USING THE BIBLE

What is the church’s actual practice with regard to the use of the Bible? Are all portions of the Bible from beginning to end given the same attention in the public and private reading and upon the occasions where there is opportunity for exposition? Does the reading and exposition of certain books and passages assume greater significance than others? Are there passages and portions of the Bible which are never read at all and so play an insignificant part in the church’s understanding? Are there other passages which are used over and over again in public worship, private reading and in exposition and in the construction of doctrine? What is the significance of these practices for an understanding of the Bible? It is to such questions that we shall address ourselves as we discuss the issues of the interpretation and the authority of the Bible. By ‘Bible’ we mean the whole of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. This whole we call the ‘canon.’ These are the books the Christian church agreed upon. It agreed and agrees that it is right to set them apart from all other books. The church of today is one with the church of yesterday in so acting. It affirms the distinctiveness of these books. The church of today goes on endorsing the decision which was made long ago that these books, and these books only, should be separated out from all others and given a special place in the Church. They are, in some sense, primary. That is a tradition all Christians accept, one tradition upon which they agree. But it is a tradition. It is a tradition which most Christians go on accepting without asking about it, without asking why it should be so, and without asking who made the decisions that it should be so.

Now an interesting development has taken place in the last two hundred years in regard to the study of the Bible. Serious, dedicated, intensive and methodical study of the Bible has taken place and is taking place independent of the particular and partisan interests of any particular church. You can undertake study of Scripture without having the particular doctrinal concerns of a particular section of the Christian community in mind. Such biblical studies have developed in non-church related institutions and without the special interests of particular denominations. Many churches have gradually come to recognize that they must take the results and the methodologies of such studies seriously.

What this means is that there is a need to consider older positions, such as for example were proposed at the time of the Reformation. Gone is the time when a sarcastic cartoon, a cliché, or a label was enough to dismiss such analytic work on the Bible. Such work has in some form or other influenced all Christian churches. Gone is the time when it was enough to assert a non- historical interpretation of the Bible, to entrench behind a dogmatic position, and stop one’s ears and hide one’s eyes from the obvious progress which historical study of the Bible involved. Fortunately, we may now say, an analytic method of Bible study is now very widely accepted. Recognition and acceptance of this fact has meant renewed understanding of the Bible in our time. It is not to be thought abstract, ‘clinical,’ and remote from the concerns of the church. Nothing could be more misleading than such an unsympathetic prejudice.

So in our introductory chapter let us point again to the importance of what the church actually does with Scripture. We may here, as in other spheres of our experience, often learn more correctly what the attitude of the group is from what it actually does, from its actual practice, than from what it says, what it proposes as its formal belief or attitude. For example, statements of doctrine in some churches propose that the Bible is in all its parts the Word of God, and have a quite specific way of understanding that claim. That has appeared in official statements and is widely held as a formal belief. In actual practice the situation may be very different from what the formal doctrine would lead us to expect.

What then of the practice of the church in its actual attitude to and use of the books, chapters and verses of Scripture? Here are some pieces of evidence:

1 The church makes selections from the Scriptures, giving greater importance to some passages than to others.

2 It often employs Scripture to support and to endorse the doctrines it teaches.

3 Certain of these doctrines come to have an importance above others. Hence the Scripture which ‘supports’ such central doctrine assumes special significance.

All Christians in fact do what Luther did. They do not all admit, as Luther did, what it is they are doing.

. . . Luther, who mightily invoked the authority of Scripture to challenge that of Rome, yet who dismissed the Letter of James as an “epistle of straw,” declared that the Word of God to Moses was not the Word to Luther, therefore not binding upon him . . . . A fundamentalist today may claim that no one should “tamper with God’s Holy Word,” yet he or she will by no means feel obliged to obey all the laws of the Old Testament.’ ‘As the New Testament advises us to ‘test the spirits to see whether they are of God,’ so I think we need to test the Scriptures. Indeed, I believe we already do this. As I have already pointed out, people pick and choose their levels of authority in the Bible, yet we rarely confess that we are doing so. It takes a Luther, a Sölle, and other bold people to say of a certain part of the Bible, “I won’t pay any attention to that,” though this is what the rest of us are doing all the time. The New Testament writers, in their use of the Old, did the same.6

The process of selecting from Scripture what appeals to us and of neglecting the rest is made not only for the sake of building up a doctrinal system, but also in the public and private worship of the church. Some Christians make the discussion of faith central and so appeal to the writings of Paul. Others concern themselves primarily with the apocalyptic books. In such a case Daniel and Revelation become effectively more important than the Gospels for that community. For others contemplation of the life of Jesus is of first importance. Then the Gospels are of primary importance. If we ask: ‘As a matter of practice what actually happens?’ we must have regard for what the church does rather than what its formal teaching might lead us to think.

Since it is clear that use of the Bible is selective, we certainly must take that into account in developing a doctrine of the authority of Scripture. What this means is that in giving an account of the church’s practice we shall point to two facts: first, the church claims that the Bible has unique authority; and second, in her practice and her use of Scripture some parts are more frequently referred to, some are built into a doctrinal scheme, others are passed over. The Bible, whose uniqueness the church acknowledges in her doctrine, is never uniformly treated as equally important in all its parts. If it were it could not support the doctrine of the uniqueness of Scripture.

5 TWO RIVAL VIEWS OF THE BIBLE: A DILEMMA?

So there is something of a dilemma between two rival views of the Bible.7 Allowing for a certain latitude in the meaning of the term ‘inspired,’ we can for the present let the assertion stand that all Christians believe that the Bible is inspired. But the question, ‘How is the Bible inspired?’ gives rise to different answers. These answers stand in opposition to one another. One is the conservative view, the other the liberal-critical view. (We must not of course get stalled with names, but it is convenient to have some labels, to point to what may well be ‘ideal types.’) The conservative view stresses that the words are inspired, that the Holy Spirit is the author of the very words of Scripture. It teaches (in the judgment of one writer) ‘a peculiarly materialistic conception of the inspiration of the Bible, identifying its truth with rigid exactness in matters of physical fact.’8 The emphasis here is on the inerrancy of the Bible. Since God spoke through the writings, they are guaranteed to be free of all error. This is the view not only of the conservative Protestant. It is also the officially stated view of the Roman Catholic Church. The writers rendered with infallible truth all that God commanded. The Bible is unassailable, for its truth is God’s truth. Hence all of its statements are true.9

The other view recognizes as of primary importance that the writers of the Bible lived at particular times and in particular places, that since they were human they were conditioned by the understanding of their time. They lived in particular circumstances, under specifiable historical conditions, which provided the milieu, the context in which they worked, thought and spoke. That context can be studied historically. Light is shed on the words they wrote by an historical analysis of the contexts and procedures which influenced them.

The Jewish and Christian faiths are historical. The events which give meaning to faith were historical events. The Exodus, the rise of the prophets, the coming of Jesus, the setting down in writing of the messages of important spokesmen, the compilation, preservation and interpretation of such writings — all these are historical events. That means that they can be studied historically. One of the great events of recent times is the development of the historical method. It has revolutionized our outlook. We now know so much more than people two centuries ago could know about the composition of the Bible, the history of Israel, of the early Christian movement and of the relationship of the writings of the Bible to that history. This has been the result of a dedicated, painstaking and continuing application of the historical method to the Bible. We now carefully consider what we may call the humanity of the persons we study, the social conditions of the time in which they lived and the nature of the experience of individual and group. We put questions to the Bible and carefully analyse its text and content, according to well-established literary and historical principles.

The fact that the Bible has a special and irreplaceable authority in the Christian church is not in question when the historical, analytical, critical approach is used. In fact the historical studies of the last two centuries have made it possible to answer questions which the traditional view either did not consider (and which it should have considered), or which it considered inappropriate. Such historical studies have enabled us to find answers to problems of interpretation we had not hitherto been capable of solving.

This can be disturbing. When we question older positions we have to consider anew what we mean by the authority of the Bible. But the labours of such dedicated scholars are labours of love, seeking for truth and understanding, often the labours of sincere Christians.

The contrast between these two approaches can be put in various ways. An unquestioning acceptance of the text of the Bible is set over against a dedicated effort to establish the text that we are best able to achieve, even if this means the raising and the consideration of critical questions.

Some doctrines of the Bible’s authority so emphasise the divine that they minimise, even overlook, the humanity, the historicity, of the ‘writers’ of the Bible. The writers of the biblical books were human beings with limitations of understanding and experience. Of course, some had extraordinary gifts and perception.

The belief that there is a direct divine source of all that is written in Scripture contrasts with the principle that the place to start is where and when the human writer lived and see life as far as is possible in the light of the history we are able to reconstruct. This means dealing first with the text, and then framing a theory of inspiration, of revelation, of canon.

Emphasise the non-historical, the supra-natural in sharp contrast to the historical, the divine rather than the human and you then think of the person as the supernaturally inspired spokesperson for the divine. Their native abilities are in abeyance as the divine spirit takes over. But why set divine authority in contrast to, even in opposition to, the human character of the biblical writings? Why claim that where God acts the human diminishes to the vanishing point? The principle of incarnation, that the divine reveals himself through the human, sets itself against such an extreme view.

Can one reasonably affirm the divine authority of Scripture and at the same time recognize the genuine humanity of its writers? Can Christians believe the Bible to have unique religious authority and at the same time accept the genuine humanity and historicity of the writings? Is there a way of affirming that the Scriptures are both the word of God and the word of men? It would seem that the Christian, holding the fundamental principle of incarnation, that God operates through the human, should be striving for a position which can do full justice to both sides of what, expressed in an exaggerated form, leads to paradox. The heavenly treasure is contained in earthen vessels. Recognise the humanity and historicity of the ‘writer’ and he is then the discerning and perceptive human being speaking out of his understanding and discernment at a particular time and to a specific situation. To give a theological expression to this principle in relation to the Bible, to affirm that the human is a suitable vehicle for the divine: — that would seem to be the task.

In what follows we shall seek to present a carefully studied account of the Bible which will try to do justice to both of these interests: an interest in the divine authority and in the genuine humanity of the writers. We shall not ‘plead’ for either, but move forward in the belief that in trying to account for both we can arrive at a balanced and reasonable Christian account of the Bible.

We shall not shirk the real problems, but in every case we shall try first to see clearly what the facts are. We must not turn aside from the facts of the matter, but give them their due weight as we try to provide a theological account of the Scriptures. No theology is worthy if it finds it inconvenient to pass over salient facts. In our exposition we shall find ourselves constantly coming back to the facts of the matter.

1 Martin Kähler in The So-called Historical Jesus, develops this threefold rubric.

2 lbid., p. 130.

3 ‘Whether the writers of the New Testament are infallible or not is a question which rarely occurs to me. Somehow when they tell me a truth, I come to know it for myself; the truth is mine and not merely theirs.’ R. W. Dale, quoted in Albert Peel, ‘The Bible and the People,’ in C. W. Dugmore, The Interpretation of the Bible, p. 72. ff.

4 See the suggestions based on case studies of contemporary theologians in David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology.

5 See below: chapters IX to XI address some problems involved in interpreting the text of Scripture.

6 Tom Driver, Christ in a Changing World, pp. 86, 94.

7 A. G. Hebert, The Authority of the Old Testament. London: Faber and Faber, 1947. pp. 23-42.

8 Ibid., p. 25.

9 See below: Chapter V. 7,8, where we discuss the concepts of inerrancy and infallibility.