Evangelicals & Scripture

Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics

Vincent E. Bacote, Laura Miguelez Quay, Dennis L. Okholm, Vincent E. Bacote, Laura Miguelez Quay, Dennis L. Okholm

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830875115
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

By definition, a high view of Scripture inheres in evangelicalism.However, there does not seem to be a uniform way to articulate an evangelical doctrine of Scripture.Taking up the challenge, Vincent Bacote, Laura Miguélez and Dennis Okholm present twelve essays that explore in depth the meaning of an evangelical doctrine of Scripture that takes seriously both the human and divine dimensions of the Bible. Selected from the presentations made at the 2001 Wheaton Theology Conference, the essays approach this vital subject from three directions.Stanley J. Grenz, Thomas Buchan, Bruce L. McCormack and Donald W. Dayton consider the history of evangelical thinking on the nature of Scripture.John J. Brogan, Kent Sparks, J. Daniel Hays and Richard L. Schultz address the nature of biblical authority.Bruce Ellis Benson, John R. Franke, Daniel J. Treier and David Alan Williams explore the challenge of hermeneutics, especially as it relates to interpreting Scripture in a postmodern context.Together these essays provide a window into current evangelical scholarship on the doctrine of Scripture and also advance the dialogue about how best to construe our faith in the Word of God, living and written, that informs not only the belief but also the practice of the church.

Part One

Scripture and the Evangelical Tradition

1

Nurturing the Soul, Informing the Mind

The Genesis of the Evangelical Scripture Principle

Stanley J. Grenz

From infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 3:15 NIV

In 1977, at the height of the "battle for the Bible" that was threatening to polarize American evangelicalism, Kenneth Kantzer described the movement (of which he was an important leader) as concerned above all with "addressing the lost, confused, and desperately needy world . . . with the gospel of God's redeeming love and the sure biblical chart for sailing on life's uncharted seas."[1] This illuminating description of the evangelical self-consciousness embodies two central principles that have marked the movement throughout its three-century trajectory: the concern to be a "gospel people" and the concern to be a "Scripture people."[2] In keeping with this sentiment, many contemporary evangelical leaders speak about evangelicalism as being characterized by commitment to a formal and a material principle.[3] Although difference of opinion remains regarding the latter, American evangelicals since the mid-twentieth century have come to a near consensus that the formal principle of the movement entails loyalty to the Bible as the completely true and trustworthy, final and authoritative source for theology.[4] Kantzer, in fact, went so far as to assert that this principle "represents a basic unifying factor throughout the whole of contemporary evangelicalism" and that as a result "the evangelical . . . seeks to construct his theology on the teaching of the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible."[5]

Kantzer's conclusion may well be a bit overstated, especially as a characterization of evangelicalism as both a historical and a global phenomenon. Moreover, allegiance to Scripture is not a distinctively evangelical commitment, for all ecclesiastical traditions view the Bible as in some sense normative for community life and teaching. Yet evangelicals tend to see themselves as the true guardians of this common Christian heritage. They claim that the church is by its very nature a community that gathers around the Bible and for which the Bible is not merely a norm but the norming norm. Taking their cue from John Wesley—who in the preface to a collection of his sermons declared tersely, "Let me be homo unius libri"—evangelicals understand themselves not only as a people of the book, but as a people of one book.[6]

But what does it mean to be a people of one book? My goal in this essay is to offer a description of what loyalty to the Scripture principle has entailed when viewed from an evangelical perspective. More specifically, I am posing the historical-theological query, what concerns led to the centrality of Scripture in evangelical theology? And I will respond by retelling the theological history of the evangelical trajectory.

The Formation of the Evangelical Scripture Principle

Although evangelicals have always elevated the Bible, they have not agreed—and do not yet agree—among themselves as to how the Bible functions within the believing community. In fact, we could pinpoint at least two quite different, yet mutually informing, approaches to the role of Scripture prevalent among evangelical thinkers.

Some view the Bible primarily, if perhaps not exclusively, as the source of correct doctrine. This is especially evident, for example, in Wayne Grudem, who subtitled his mammoth text in systematic theology "an introduction to biblical doctrine" and, in the preface, stated that the book is "for every Christian who has a hunger to know the central doctrines of the Bible in greater depth."[7] Millard Erickson offers a bit more nuanced understanding. He views the Bible as the means through which we gain access to Jesus' teaching regarding, to cite his words, "what is to be believed and what is to be done."[8] Yet in what follows in his three-volume Christian Theology, Erickson's keen commitment to the task of gaining sound doctrine from Scripture is overwhelmingly evident. In short, these theologians look to the Bible above all as the means for informing the Christian mind.

Others, in contrast, see Scripture first and foremost as the source of spiritual sustenance. They speak of the Bible as the place—ultimately the only place—where the words of everlasting life may be found. Indicative of this viewpoint, Clark Pinnock observes that because they understand the Bible to be "the God-given documentation which preserves for all time the gospel of our salvation . . . ordinary believers know instinctively from the Spirit their teacher to go there to be nourished in their faith."[9] We might say that these evangelicals view the Bible primarily as the means for nurturing the soul.

In what follows I intend to trace the theological lineage of these two quite distinct yet interrelated understandings of the character of the evangelical Scripture principle and then draw a few conclusions from my historical survey. The obvious place to begin the story is with the turning point in theological history from which nearly all evangelicals everywhere track their lineage, the Reformation.

From Sola Scriptura to the Reverence for the Bible

In taking their stand on the Bible as the norming norm, evangelicals claim the legacy of the Reformation and especially of Martin Luther's great dictum, sola scriptura. This is surely correct both historically and theologically, insofar as the starting point for the evangelical Scripture principle lies with the concerns of the sixteenth century. Although the trajectory from Luther forward eventually launches both aspects of the evangelical view of Scripture, it leads most directly to a reverence for the Bible as Scripture because Scripture is seen primarily as a source of sustenance.

The return of biblical authority. The Protestant commitment to the "Bible alone" arose in the midst of a wider theological conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over the question of the final authority in the church, a dispute that had already charted a two-hundred-year history by the sixteenth century. What brought Luther to enter this fray was his search for a gracious God, a quest that led him to the Bible. In his subsequent conflict with Rome, Luther sought to undercut the Catholic position, which endowed the pope and church councils with ultimate authority and thereby effectively set the church above the Bible.

Luther's position was closely connected to, and found its theological basis in, his understanding of the gospel. In his estimation, justification by faith meant that humans are completely dependent on God's mercy, which we cannot earn and for which we can do nothing. For Luther, this dependency is not only operative in salvation; but because it is soteriologically centered, it affects the realm of knowing God as well. He was convinced that true knowledge of God arises only out of God's self-disclosure in the Word and through the Spirit. Luther likewise attacked the Roman Catholic claims that tradition ought to be placed alongside of Scripture and that only the Roman Catholic Church's teaching office can interpret the Bible properly. In response to what he saw as the erroneous foundation on which Roman Catholic theology was constructed, Luther introduced the principle of sola scriptura, the claim that Scripture alone is the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice.

Like Luther, John Calvin viewed Christ as the Word of God in the ultimate sense.[10] Yet Calvin also spoke of the Bible as the Word,[11] in that it is God's testament or witness to us[12] and the content of divine revelation is Christ himself.[13] As the Word of God, Calvin declared, Scripture does not derive its authority from the church.[14] Rather, the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, and this foundation is now found in Scripture.[15] In Calvin's estimation, the authority of the Bible does not emerge sui generis, but arises from the fact that God speaks in it. Hence, rather than depending on philosophical argumentation to support this claim, Calvin viewed the authority of the Bible as in a certain sense self-authenticating.[16] For Calvin, then, the recognition of the Bible as our authority is closely connected with God's gracious salvific work. As Justo González succinctly declares regarding the Geneva Reformer, "the reason that Scripture is authoritative for him is the experience of grace."[17]

The regenerate reader. Calvin's approach, including his emphasis on the self-authenticating nature of Scripture through the internal testimony of the Spirit, lived on in the English Puritans, who were concerned as to how the insights of the Bible might be applied to church order and to the daily life of the saints.[18] The Puritan understanding of biblical authority, which undergirded their program of church and personal reform, came to expression in the Westminster Confession of Faith.[19] Like the Reformers, the Westminster divines called for a link between Word and Spirit. They appealed to the Spirit as the one who not only guides the reader in understanding Scripture, but also continually leads God's people into ever-clearer understandings of the Bible.[20]

At one point the Westminster divines took the teaching of their mentors a step further. In contrast to the apparent epistemological Pelagianism of the day, the Puritans were convinced that the true significance of Scripture could be understood only by those whose minds were enlightened by the Spirit.[21] In this manner, the link between Word and Spirit that the Reformers had forged came to include, as the location of the Spirit's operation through the Word, the regenerate heart and mind. Maintaining this position, however, required that the Puritans differentiate between two levels of meaning in the text: "the grammatical construction" and "the spiritual and divine sense" (to cite Edward Reynolds's descriptors).[22]

This Puritan emphasis found echo among the continental Pietists, who sought to bring the Reformation to completion in response to what they considered to be the deadness of Lutheran credalism. The Pietists believed that Scripture was not so much a source of doctrine as a devotional resource and guide for life. In their attempt to maintain the Reformation link between Word and Spirit, the Pietists followed Calvin in appealing to the internal testimony of the Spirit. But here they, like the Puritans, took a step beyond the Reformers. By the testimonium spiritus internum, Pietists such as Philipp Jakob Spener meant the enlightening work of the Spirit within the heart that leads believers to understand the Scriptures. According to the Pietists, the presence of the Holy Spirit within a believer enables the dead letter of the sacred writings to become a living power.[23] Thus, although Spener acknowledged that the Bible is objectively true, he asserted that it is transformative only in the life of the reader who allows the Spirit to work through Scripture. In Spener's estimation, therefore, it is not possible to grasp the spiritual significance of the Bible unless the reader is illumined by the Spirit, that is, unless a person is born again.

The Pietists paralleled the Puritans in another manner as well. Similar to Reynolds, who made a distinction between the two levels in Scripture, they differentiated sharply between mere theological knowledge, which anyone can attain, and true saving knowledge, which only the Spirit can give. Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen offered this definition of illumination:

Illumination itself consists in this, that in his light the Holy Spirit mediates the heavenly truth of the Word of God to the human understanding, introducing it and giving it to be recognized so clearly, so powerfully and so convincingly that from this the human person recognizes it as truth, believes it with divine certainty, and thereby knows what has been sent to him from God by grace, and that spiritual things are to be spiritually judged.[24]

One long-term result of the Pietists' reformulation of biblical authority was a renewal of devotion to Scripture. The Pietists sought to place the Bible in the hands of the laity. Francke and his associates put wings on their theological convictions by establishing a publishing venture for the purpose of producing inexpensive editions of the Scriptures for mass consumption. The historian of the movement, F. Ernest Stoeffler, concludes, "It was Francke who, above all others in the history of later Protestantism, supplied the initial inspiration to make the Bible really a book of the people."[25]

Reverence for the Bible. As Puritan concerns and Pietist renewal converged in the eighteenth century, they gave birth to an evangelicalism that looked to Scripture as the vehicle through which the Spirit accomplishes the miracles of salvation and sanctification. Sparked by their experience of the nurturing work of the Spirit through the pages of the Bible, their overriding aim was to allow the message of the Bible to penetrate human hearts and to encourage the devotional use of Scripture.

Evangelicals agreed that the Bible is inspired by God. Yet they were not particularly concerned with devising theories to explain the dynamics of inspiration. Moreover, the early evangelicals displayed a remarkable fluidity in opinions about the effects of such inspiration. Some, such as the British evangelical Charles Simeon, went so far as to acknowledge within Scripture "inexactnesses in reference to philosophical and scientific matters, because of its popular style."[26] Rather than constructing theories about the Bible, these evangelicals were content simply to cherish the Bible. They often expressed their devotion to Scripture in symbolic acts of reverence for the actual copies they possessed. Hence, his biographer said about the nineteenth-century evangelist Henry Moorhouse, "He would not suffer anything, not even a sheet of paper, to be laid upon his Bible."[27]

From Scholastic Propositionalism to Neo-evangelical Inerrancy

Beginning in the 1820s, the reticence to theologize about the Bible began to wane. Some theologians came to insist that the truly evangelical approach to Scripture includes the affirmation of verbal inspiration and biblical inerrancy, together with a literalist hermeneutic. The roots of this growing focus lay in the post-Reformation era known as Protestant scholasticism.

The scholastic defense of the Bible. The ongoing controversy with the Roman Catholic understanding led seventeenth-century Lutheran theologians to seek out a clearer Protestant understanding of biblical authority by concerning themselves with questions about the origin, inspiration and authority of Scripture. As a result, many came to treat Scripture as accurate in every detail and as a storehouse of revealed propositions. Some asserted that even the vowel points in the Masoretic Text were as inspired as the consonants.[28]

In its attitude toward Scripture, Lutheran scholasticism marked a significant shift from Luther. Carl Braaten pinpoints the nature of this shift:

Protestant scholasticism appealed not to the content of Scripture, its witness to Christ and the gospel, but to the manner in which it was written, the how of its inspiration by the Holy Spirit. . . . For Luther the...