#biblicism

Tom Underhill writes here about his concerns with Wayne Grudem’s “Systematic Theology.”  I know those concerns are shared among a number of people and Wayne has been called a “Biblicist” for his methodology (where Biblicist is used pejoratively). I agree with Tom and others that there are some challenges both about Grudem’s methodology and specifically his conclusions.  I think that Grudem’s…

the cross scowls at me

with hostility and suspicion

the sly reptile

which callously i am.

brandished steel for teeth

murdering my screaming scales

and that which i bleed,

barely blood

is an apology to man

for my existence.

i am sorry.

i am sorry.

The Acid of Biblicism - Strange Fire - Baptizing Babies - Benedictions - Mastodon - iPad? - Daily Roundup for February 3, 2020

Here are the items and resources of interest for February 3, 2020:

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Theology/Christianity:

The Acid of Biblicism— I have experienced…

"God says it, I believe it and that settles it."

Most of us have seen the bumper sticker. But the saying is far from an idle cliché. Beneath it is a theological root-system that sustains the faith of multitudes.

For the most conservative Protestants, the Bible is nothing less than the divine manual. God gave us the book for detailed, infallible direction. It is all-sufficient, addressing every problem we face in life. Every doctrine God wants us to believe is settled forever, laid out plainly for the faithful to receive. Such is the sentiment of countless thousands who style themselves "Bible-believing Christians."

For conservative Protestants, the all-sufficiency and absolute authority of all Scripture pose few, if any, problems. The propositions are perfectly self-evident in the thought world of fundamentalism. Ipso facto, they constitute good theology. To swerve from the "all sufficiency" of Scripture, to cease viewing it as "the final court of appeal," is to imperil one's walk with God. So we are told. But if Christians are to "test all things," shouldn't our notions of scriptural authority be among the "things"? After all, scrutiny never wears down truth. Why not subject to the rigors of inspection the common understanding of Scripture as "all-sufficient court of appeal"?

Many are hesitant at this point. Sola scriptura is one of the Reformation's foundation stones. Its acceptance seems one of the "ground rules" of being Christian. You acknowledge its final authority, no questions asked. But is this a thinking faith that we can offer to a post-modern society that has learned to ask "why" questions?

The common view of Scriptural authority is based on several statements, each of which is held as axiomatic by conservative Protestant Christians. They are as follows:

1. The Bible was written through supernatural means. God used men to pen these writings, but they are as much God's own words as men's.

2. The canonical writings make up one divine book, a "manual" of Christian faith.

3. The Bible is, accordingly, free of error.

4. All questions of belief are to be brought to its pages. That which can be upheld by chapter and verse must be believed by all Christians. That which is contradicted there must be rejected.

5. Its precepts are relevant and binding through all ages. The Bible addresses us in this century as much as it did the primitive church.

It is my position that none of the above five statements is entirely true. Each is flawed — far from self-evident. I say this as a serious Christian who believes in God, Christ and holiness. And I have no fear that holding such a view puts me in danger of embracing damnable error. On the contrary, I would argue that people have embraced the most outrageous of errors while holding fast the idea of absolute biblical authority. And it can scarcely be affirmed that the old view of the Bible has produced unity of belief. Churches all claiming to believe "nothing but the Bible" hold views so far apart that outsiders might wonder if they confess the same religion.

Still, the church must give a high place to these writings that so inform our faith and practice. But before I attempt to set forth an alternative view of scriptural authority, I would like to outline why I can't embrace the six "biblicist" statements mentioned above:

1. Nowhere do the authors of Scripture ever indicate that they are writing supernaturally. The prophets, of course, made this claim about their speech (2 Pet. 1:21). But no author ever describes the assumed plenary inspiration of the writings. Peter tells us that men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but not that anyone ever wrote in such a manner.

It is not enough to highlight Paul's declaration to Timothy that the Scriptures are "God-breathed" or "inspired" (2 Tim. 3:16). Paul never defines that term for us. He says nothing of the supernatural process assumed by so many. Besides, the context indicates he was talking about the Old Testament, not the New (see verse 15 — "the Scriptures you have known from infancy…"). The famous proof-text proves nothing about the four Gospels or even Paul's own writings.

To say that something is God-breathed is not to say that is wrought by supernatural means. The book of Job tells us that frost comes by the breath of God (Job 37:10), yet we all know that this phenomenon occurs naturally. We have no right to bring so much theological baggage to the 2 Timothy text. It is utterly unwarranted to make one term, "inspired" or "God-breathed," prove so much.

Experience teaches us how something can be God-breathed — that is, produced by God through his providence, enlightenment, wisdom — without being wrought in a directly supernatural way. A teacher gets up the deliver a message on Sunday. It comes with force, relevance. Afterward, members of the congregation comment on how the teaching was "from the Lord," because of its effect on them. But no one views it as a matter of special metaphysics. Nor does anyone considers the utterance infallible. It was simply a blessed message, one that uplifts and empowers the hearers, moving them closer to the Sacred. Why must we regard the Scriptures as an entirely different kind of inspiration than this?

Whatever Paul meant by "God-breathed," the context tells us it is a property that makes the Scriptures "profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness." At this point, we stop our inquiry. To delve into metaphysics, based on one expression, is surely a questionable course.

The burden of proof is on those who disagree. Show us one text where Paul or anyone else says anything like, "The Spirit came upon me and I began to write the very words of God." Surely no such assertion ever occurs in the Bible. It is devoid of such extravagant claims as inerrancy or all-sufficiency.

Milton Spenser Terry makes the point powerfully:

Let us begin with a brief study of the preface to the Gospel of Luke. "It seemed good to me," he writes, "having traced the course of all things from the first, to write unto thee in orderly sequence." Here we find no claim of supernatural assistance. Like any other historian who aims to put on record a trustworthy narrative of facts, he also made diligent search to obtain the best accredited testimony of eyewitnesses. Why should we or anyone make a claim of infallibility or of supernatural help for a writer who seems not only to make a pretension to such assistance, but rather implies that he has prepared his narrative in the ordinary human way? 1

Among other things, this means the Bible is not the Word of God in the strictest sense. "Word of God" is used variously in Scripture. In the Old Testament, the law is called the Word of God (see Psalm 119: 113,144, e.g.). Of course, the Scriptures contain this law and, therefore, contain the Word of God. And so, it is really more accurate to say that the God's Word is in the Bible, than to say that it is the Bible.

The prophets of Judah and Israel also recognized the Word of God as a revelatory principle that came upon them. It moved their inner being, prompting them to speak the divine message to the redeemed community: "The Word of the Lord came to me, saying…"

In the New Testament, Jesus is called the Word of God (Rev. 19:13), for he is the embodiment of the divine will. Most often, the gospel message is called the Word of God. The reference in 1 Peter is typical: "…the word of the Lord endures forever. That word is the good news that was preached to you" (1:25)."

The earliest Christians equated the Word of God with the "glad tidings of Jesus," not with a collection of "inerrant" writings.

Orville Dewey writes:

The Scriptures, then, it might seem needless to say, are not the actual communication made to the minds that were inspired from Above; but they are a "declaration of those things which were most surely to be believed among them." They are not the actual word of God, but they are a "record of the word of God." They are the nature of a testimony. "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." 2

2. The Bible should never be viewed as a single book. It is an anthology, a collection of sacred writings. Far too many Christians speak as if the 66 books descended from heaven attended by angels, smoke and lightning. Of course, this is far from the case. The early church compiled the books. There was no absolute consensus on which books ought to be elevated above others. Some rejected Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter. Others wanted the inclusion of epistles by Barnabas and Clement. The apocalyptic book of Enoch (quoted in the book of Jude) appears in some early canons, though it is absent from our Bible.

The obvious question is, who gave the church the authority to produce an objective, absolute standard of belief? Certainly Jesus never said anything about a coming addition to the Scriptures, nor did any other apostolic writer. Here evangelical inerrantists find themselves in a conundrum. They reject the notion of "church authority," dismissing it as a Roman Catholic invention that threatens sola scriptura. But they are stuck when it comes to the canon's formulation. Here they must say that God perfectly guided the Church Universal to make a decision binding on all generations — and never worked that way with her again.

There is no doubt that the canon is a valuable thing. It is important for us to know that the books we have today were generally accepted by the majority of early Christians. Thanks to the canon, we know that the Gnostic writings, for example, were not regarded as consonant with the earliest Christian faith. However, a reading of the New Testament reveals no trace that the authors considered their writings part of a larger work. You might even say the idea of a 66-book Bible is unbiblical.

3. The Bible bears the imperfections of its human authors. Few dogmas of Christianity have caused so much embarrassment as the infallibility of the Bible. The doctrine has become a belief of necessity, running something like this: a) Christians need an external, objective standard of belief in order to be secure in the faith, b) the Bible contains words of Jesus and his early followers, c) therefore, it is a perfect standard of faith, free of all error.

The doctrine is entirely deductive, not inductive. No one seems to look at the Scriptures first to see if they really are manifestly inerrant before forming this belief. It is not based on a careful examination of the text, but on an assumption: We need a perfect standard, therefore, God must have given us one. Is this at all logical? Who are we to decide what God should give us?

Biblical inerrancy falls under its own weight when examined critically. The Bible contains obvious contradictions in its parallel accounts (such as the four resurrection accounts, which are irreconcilable). Within the pages of Scripture are scientific inaccuracies based upon ancient understanding. Yet, no matter how long a list of these we produce, the inerrantist will never accept a single one. Why? Because he knows that, even though it looks like an error, it cannot be. The inerrantist has a foregone conclusion that God must secure a perfect standard.

It is really not necessary to list biblical contradictions and problems here. Most reflective Bible students are painfully aware of them. The difficulties fill volumes of apologetic works, such as Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible. Champions of inerrancy have wasted countless hours reconciling difficulties of the most trivial order.

The most damaging feature of inerrancy, however, is the tying of the Christian gospel's veracity to the perfection of the Bible. If we find one real error in its pages, we hear from preachers, then the entire Christian faith crumbles into ruins. This makes faith acutely precarious. No wonder apologists spend so much ink trying reconcile minutiae — they think the truth of the gospel hinges on whether a hare chews cud or whether the mustard seed is really the smallest of seeds.

4. There is a diversity of theological thought in the Bible. Individual Scripture verses cannot really be the touchstone, the "final court of appeal" for Christian doctrines and practices, because not all authors of Scripture agreed on all details. True, there are grand unifying elements in the Bible's pages: the divine mission of Jesus, the imperative of love, the fatherhood of God, the fellowship of the Spirit, the need for holiness, the promise of a future life, the death and resurrection of Christ. But there are also some differences. They are comparatively minor, but they are still differences. Paul and James, for example, appear to differ on the mode of justification. (Many will say they did not, but we would be hard-pressed to come up with more diametrically opposed language if we tried.)

Another point that conservative biblicists seldom take into account is the marked development of ideas throughout the Bible. As we move through the history of redemption, doctrines of God, ethics and immortality grow from comparatively primitive ideas to the highly sophisticated. In Genesis, God appears to have a body. He creates humans in His image (1:27) and walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day (3:8). He allows Moses to see His back parts but not His face (Ex. 33:23). But as we progress into the book of Psalms, we read about God’s omnipresence — He is in heaven, Sheol and everywhere in between (Ps. 139). By the New Testament, God is conceptualized as a spirit (John 4:24). So, in the fully formed theology of Scripture, God is without a body and without spatial limitations, ideas that took centuries to emerge.

In Genesis, God does not know the whereabouts of Adam and Eve (3:9), repents of having made humanity (6:6) and travels to Sodom to learn whether reports of its corruption are true (18:20-21). But as we get to the Psalms, God knows all things, even the thoughts of men (94:11). Later authors of Scripture tell us that God does not repent (Mal. 3:6) or alter his plans (James 1:17).

These theological ideas grew from the nomadic Semites’ less-developed grasp of the Divine. In the sweep of Holy Scripture from beginning to end, we observe an advance in religious understanding as the Spirit of God leads the redeemed community deeper into the truth.

5. The Bible, in many ways, reflects the culture and time in which its individual books were written. There is no doubt that the Bible contains lessons and precepts that apply to humanity in all ages. But was the Bible written for us in modern America as much as for the first century church? The idea, upon examination, turns out to be unconvincing. For example, how can Paul's personal instructions — bring a cloak and parchments, or to greet certain individuals — be instructions for us? Paul addresses specific problems in specific churches. Those problems, though they may have some parallels in today's congregations, really don't address us per se. The specifics simply do not apply. Problems over Jewish exclusiveness, for example, have long passed out of the church at large.

An Alternate Approach

The letter of Scripture cannot be the absolute and final authority. Christians who say it is are not consistent with that belief. Most Christians object, for example, to slavery. They do so because they know that it violates the spirit of the gospel. But does the Bible itself come out and condemn slavery? It most certainly does not. In the Old Testament, slavery was a part of the law of Moses. Even beating one's slave was not forbidden under the law. And in the New Testament, Paul tells slaves to obey their masters. He does tell masters to treat their slaves kindly (a great advance), but nowhere do we read that having slaves was unchristian.

Why do we believe slavery is wrong, then? It is because we know that it does not follow the course set by the gospel. The gospel is about freedom, "the opening of the prison to those who are bound," treating others as we ourselves wish to be treated, relieving the oppressed. We rightly sense, then, that slavery does not fit in with the gospel paradigm.

The New Testament did not give us a full-blown, perfect application of the gospel. It has taken time to flesh out the teaching of Jesus, to apply it to contemporary circumstances in a consistent way. Liberation of the slaves was latent within the seed of the gospel when it was planted in the first century. But it took a long time to germinate and spring forth. That Paul did not see past the culture of his day on this point is understandable.

Truth Test #1: The Spirit of the Gospel

This brings us to the first test of Christian truth: Any doctrine of the faith must be consistent with the spirit of the gospel. It must be harmonious with peace, love, justice, equity, benevolence, goodness. A given teaching may actually pass muster with the chapter-and-verse test of biblicism. But if it contradicts the tenor and trajectory of Jesus' gospel — as set forth by his life and words — it should be laid aside whether biblical or not.

Truth Test #2: The Consistent Themes

A second test of Christian truth concerns the Bible, but not as a collection of "verses" whose citations "settle the matter." A safer course is to treat the sacred volume thematically. The test is simple: Any doctrine of the faith must be consistent with the broad, overall ideas of Scripture. As stated earlier, the Bible contains some diversity of opinion. But it does have grand streams of truth that are consistent from cover to cover. Any doctrine under consideration must have the sanction of these major currents. The doctrine of God's faithfulness, for example, is upheld throughout the entire Bible and therefore must be considered integral to our religion. The same is true of the power of faith, the virtue of goodness, the forgiveness of sin: all truths that track throughout the sacred volume.

Truth Test #3: Good Fruit

Third, we have this test: Any doctrine of the faith must show that it has or will bring forth "good fruit" when put into practice. This is crucial. Truth in the abstract is of little worth. Show, however, that a given teaching bears a harvest of righteousness and you have Christian doctrine that cannot be reproached.

We have a certain advantage over the early church in this regard. We have been able to observe what 2,000 years of church history has produced, how teachings have shaped that history for evil or good. Take militarism, for example. Someone might produce a Scripture argument for Christians fighting in a war to establish a "greater good." But look at the fruits Christian militarism has produced over the centuries and there is no doubt of its evil . Any so-called biblical argument can be swept aside by the testimony of history, if that testimony shows that a given doctrine has led men away from righteousness.

Take another example: futuristic schemes of prophecy. A Christian may argue all day long from the Bible about the propriety of speculative "end-times" ideas. But point him to the witness of history. Show him how such ideas have brought discredit upon the church. Let the fruits of such doctrine speak for themselves: an obsessive study of futuristic schemes has historically lead to fanaticism, date-setting, bizarre doctrines, distractions from the gospel.

Conclusion

The Bible is undoubtedly stamped with the influences of heaven. This is undeniable. Still, some may object that I have left no "absolute authority" to replace the Bible's. That is precisely the point. We see in a glass, darkly. We have no absolutely perfect standard of doctrine anywhere. The quest for such a standard is a quest for security. Faith does not always guarantee this; it is often fraught with tension. Besides, if we are living out the example of Christ — the love, sacrifice, self-denial, humility, faith recorded (albeit imperfectly) in the gospels — why do we need anything else?

Christians concern themselves excessively with having right opinions. They go to the Bible as their perfect guide. They study the Greek, pore over concordances, read commentaries. Having done this, they announce they have "God's truth" on a particular subject. Unfortunately, another astute believer may go through the same studying ritual and arrive at an opposite conclusion. His detractors will say his view is unbiblical; he will say the same of theirs (possibly even adding that they are deceived by Satan). All of this work is done for the grand virtue of "sound doctrine," which is a profoundly overrated virtue after all. Having accurate opinions on theological matters is not an emphasis in Jesus' teachings. The preoccupation with "orthodoxy" has done little, if any good, throughout religious history. And the fighting, the schisms it produces violate the pure spirit of the gospel. It is time for us to begin majoring in the majors, not in abstractions.

Christianity vs. Biblicism – Brian Zahnd

Biblicism is an interpretative method that reads the Bible as a “flat text” where every verse is itself “the word of God” and carries the same authority as any other verse. Biblicism, in effect, attempts to make the Bible the head of the church. Where Catholics err in seeking to give ultimate authority to the Pope, Protestant Biblicists err in seeking to give ultimate authority to the Bible. What…