Thomas Torrance's view of scripture as 'Human'

Have you eve wondered what Thomas Forsyth Torrance's doctrine and ontology of scripture is, and even more; how his view implicates his hermeneutical approach (maybe you were unable to get to sleep last night because this wonderment so preoccupied you)? Well, you're in luck; Christian Kettler, who wrote his PhD dissertation on Torrance's doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ (which is what I will be writing my PhD dissertation on as well ... if I ever actually am able to start that thing) provides development and answer to your longing wonderment on this very issue. Here is how Kettler develops this for us:

The apostolic authority of the New Testament has its basis for Torrance in its correlation with the saving humanity of Christ. The apostolate is the place where revelation, based on the Incarnation, is "earthed." One wonders whether Torrance is stating it too strongly when he says that the apostolate was "the human expression of his [God's] Word." Should not such strong language be reserved for the Incarnation alone? However, he does stress that Scripture, the writings based on the apostles' teaching, like the apostolate, stands with sinners under the judgment and redemption of the cross. Torrance is quick to point out that this "creaturely correspondence of the Holy Scriptures to God's Word" is "a human expression based on the Humanity of Jesus Christ." Thus, since it is related to the historical humanity of Christ, Scripture must have the character of "learned obedience to the Father." "Just as we speak of his [Jesus'] life in terms of obedience, so we must speak of the Bible as obedience to the Divine self-revelation." Therefore, the doctrine of verbal inspiration should not mean the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible in a literary or historical sense. "It means that the errant and fallible human word is, as such, used by God and has to be received and heard in spite of its human expression then must point beyond itself "to what it is not in itself, but to what God marvelously makes it to be in the adoption of his grace." If revelation [and, therefore, inspiration of Scripture] takes place in the midst of fallen humanity, we must allow the "fallenness" of the humanity of the Scriptures to have its proper place if it is to be regarded as truly human. It is on the basis of such a consideration of atonement as taking place within the realm of fallen humanity that has caused Torrance to call for a serious interrelationship between revelation, Scripture, and "a doctrine of atoning mediation between the Word of God and the word of man." Our doctrine of the human written Word must be seen in correlation, but not to be identified with, the human living Word.

Torrance finds crucial hermeneutical implications in such a view of Scripture. The real text of which we are to be concerned with, according to Torrance, is not the letter of Scripture but the humanity of Christ "as the actual objectification of the Word of God for us within our human mode of existence in space and time. It is to this which the Scriptures refer." The "this-worldly reality," the human aspect of hermeneutics is inherent in the genre of Scripture itself. This is best seen in the parables of Jesus. As they relate their humanness to the humanity of Christ, they point to Christ as the real text of Scripture. "He is God's exclusive language to us and He alone must be our language to God." It is a mark of the New Testament authors, according to Torrance, that

Far from obtruding themselves and their own spirituality upon us, the New Testament writers serve the gospel by directing us back to the representative and vicarious humanity of Christ as the creative ground and normative pattern for actualization of every response to God on our part. It is in fact the humanity of Jesus Christ himself which is the real text underlying the New Testament Scriptures; it is his humanity to which they refer and in terms of which they are to be interpreted. [Christian D. Kettler, The Vicarious Humanity of Christ and the Reality of Salvation, (Euguene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010), 135-36]

By the way, I have taken this quote from the above bibliographic information; and this is a review copy sent to me by James Stock (of Wipf and Stock), of which I am rereading (currently)---since I failed to do the review after I finished reading it the last time, and thus need to refresh myself in order to do a proper review---anyway, you can purchase this book (and you should) by clicking here.

So, there is a lot in this quote. And I would imagine for the typical Evangelical or Reformed person that what is communicated about Torrance's approach on all of this won't go down too smoothly. But, understand that Torrance's view is not "amening" the higher critical method which seeks to undercut the "authority" and centrality of Scripture as God's Word to humanity. Just the opposite! Torrance (and Barth) are seeking to articulate a doctrine and ontology for scripture that sees it in its rightful dogmatic place relative to Jesus Christ's Self-revelation as God's first and last Word for us. We, in America, especially, are obsessed (still!) with scripture meeting some kind of external and public mode of criteria for verifying whether or not it can be trusted or not (as God's Word). But rest assured, scripture is God's Word not because we say so, but because God has said so through his Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. God's Word, as it finds its groove and grip in its rootedness in God's triune speech to us, has the capacity to contradict all of our thoughts (including verification models for adjudicating whether or not scripture can be trusted), 'all the way down'.

In effect, when we ask whether or not Barth, Torrance & co. believed that the Bible was "errant," we need to ask these questions cognizant that Barth, Torrance & co. were not antagonistic toward scripture (as is the case of most of the critics who are usually, and modernistically, trying to punch holes in scripture); instead they were highly driven by their devotion to the God of scripture's giving. Just bear this in mind.

A Christ-Conditioned Interpretation of Scripture, As Literature

Of course in light of my last post; scripture is literature, and so I should be clear that I am not in anyway suggesting a rejection of that more than obvious reality. Instead, that there is an ontology of Scripture that flows from within a properly construed concept of God's triune life and Self-revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. It is this framework that ought to tense the way we approach scripture as the literature that it is, and appreciate that the singular meaning of scripture is centered in Jesus Christ and the God revealed in and through Jesus Christ (Triune). As Thomas Torrance has said, this is scriptures 'depth dimension', and one that framing and understanding scripture in the way that Ernst Käsemann cannot appreciate. Scripture is about Jesus, and I think it is about Jesus in an intensively, principial way; meaning that Jesus and God's Triune life is what holds all of scripture together. If this is the case, and I think it is, then this ought to impinge on the way we interpret scripture (as it did for Karl Barth for example in his Commentary on Romans). Here is how David Gibson describes Barth's approach to biblical interpretation, and in particular, his interpretation of Romans 9--11 as a case study:

Karl Barth

 A good example can be found in the way Barth approaches Romans 9–11. When his thesis of biblical text as witness to revelation is read in conjunction with his understanding of Jesus Christ as the object of that witness, and with his understanding of Jesus Christ as therefore the electing God and the elected man, then a particular set of theological lenses for reading Romans 9–11 come into view. Barth’s approach is well stated by Douglas Sharp:

[Barth's] exegesis [of Rom. 9--11] presupposes the identity of revelation/incarnation and election, and can be seen to consist in the interpretation of an objective reality (Israel and the Church) which he finds imaged in the text. The truly significant element of the exegesis is the fact that it is not so much the intepretation of biblical revelation as it is an interpretation of a medium which is itself an interpretation of revelation. This is to say that the exegesis of Romans 9–11 is an interpretation of an interpretation. Jesus Christ is the revelation, and Barth views the existence of the community as an interpretation of that revelation. Thus Barth interprets the community in its two forms in terms of the primary reality of Jesus Christ’s election.

This argument corresponds with what we discovered in reading Barth’s exegesis of Romans 9–11. The two forms of the community, Israel and the church, were read by Barth as witnesses to the two-fold determination of Jesus Christ for both judgment and mercy; here Christology intensively occupies the horizon of interpretation. We may recall how different this is to Calvin’s approach. Calvin’s covenant hermeneutic for Romans 9–11 (arguably the most salient feature of his exegesis) is influenced by Christology. But his hermeneutic is not christologically intensive, because he does not see Christology as the meaning of certain verses where Christ himself is not mentioned or as providing the typological structures for Israel and the church within the details of the text.

It is now clear that Barth’s reading of the Bible displays a heremeneutical paradigm that is created not just by Barth’s doctrine of election as it has emerged out of his reading of the Johannine Prologue, but just as closely by a tightly related set of well developed and consistently applied hermeneutical convictions that have operated at least as far back as CD I/2. As Barth comes to provide extended exegesis of biblical texts as part of his doctrine of election, his understanding of interpretive freedom and responsibility ensures that his exegesis of election will be carried out in a manner that may be described as intensively christocentric. This is because his account of the required subordination of the biblical interpreter to the witness of revelation is itself intensively christocentric. [David Gibson, Reading The Decree: Exegesis, Election, and Christology in Calvin and Barth, (London: T&T Clark, A Continuum imprint, 2009), 190-91]

I am actually not totally sure I am altogether comfortable with interpreting scripture the way Barth does, in toto, but I am quite close. I see all of the OT, for example, prefiguring the preincarnate Christ; and then the OT given it's proper orientation in its fulfillment in and through Jesus Christ's actual incarnation (and all the attendant realities associated with that). Nevertheless, in gist, I am heading more in the direction of Barth, than what Gibson describe's of Calvin's approach as soteriological-extensive (which we can get more into later); if possible, I might be somewhere in between Barth and Calvin. Which really, that's right about where T.F. Torrance was at.

PS. Just so you all know, if not apparent, I often work through my thinking right here at the blog, in the open. So, a post like this represents that mode of my blogging existence; I'm in process here.

Webster on Bonhoeffer and Scripture

Credit Picture (of Bonhoeffer) by Artist, Charles Pate

John Webster is commenting on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of our relation to Scripture. It’s not as if we give scripture its ground through imbuing it with our exegetical prowess; no, it’s that our ground is given footing as we find ourselves related to God in Christ through the Scripture’s story. This fits with the point that Webster is driving at, over-all, throughout his little book; that Scripture should be seen as an aspect of soteriology — sanctification in particular. And that Scripture is a part of God’s triune communicative act, ‘for us’; caught up in His self-Revelation itself. In other words, for Webster, as for Bonhoeffer (per Webster); Scripture shouldn’t be framed as a component of our epistemological foundation (wherein we put Scripture in its place, in effect), but Scripture is a mode of God’s gracious speech that acts upon us by the Spirit. And it is through this divine speech, that is grace, that we find ourselves — outside ourselves — in Christ, and thus in the Story of Scripture. This should have the effect of placing us under Scripture (which Luther would call ministerial) versus over Scripture (magisterial) — to simplify. Here’s the quote (a little introduction by Webster, and then a full quote of Bonhoeffer [also, notice the idea of vicariousness that Bonhoeffer appeals to as well]):

. . . More than anything else, it is listening or attention which is most important to Bonhoeffer, precisely because the self is not grounded in its own disposing of itself in the world, but grounded in the Word of Christ. Reading the Bible, as Bonhoeffer puts it in Life Together, is a matter of finding ourselves extra nos in the biblical history:

We are uprooted from our own existence and are taken back to the holy history of God on earth. There God has dealt with us, with our needs and our sins, by means of the divine wrath and grace. What is important is not that God is a spectator and participant in our life today, but that we are attentive listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the story of Christ on earth. God is with us today only as long as we are there.
Our salvation is ‘from outside ourselves’ (extra nos). I find salvation, not in my own life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ . . . What we call our life, our troubles, and our guilt is by no means the whole of reality; our life, our need, our guilt, and our deliverance are there in the Scriptures. (John Webster, “Holy Scripture,” 83 citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Life Together,” 62.)

Reading Scripture is a truly Christian Event

I remember my undergrad days in Bible College; one of the perennial questions (at least during our pneumatology section/semester) was:  If indeed the non-Christian, un-regenerate person could access and interpret Scripture in a way that appreciates the point and depth of Scripture? Or, could they understand the primary signification that the Scripture's ontology rises from; viz. Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ God's Son Savior

We had some profs who would argue that clearly there are non-Christian biblical students and exegetes who can offer exegetical insight into the text of Scripture. But to me, this was always skirting the question. The question isn't if the non-Christian can 'offer exegetical insight into the Text,' but if that same person can understand and 'know' what in fact is significant about Scripture's primary intention; i.e. to tell us about, and invite us into an intimate and ongoing-evergrowing relationship with God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

So the question that I was usually interested in was on what has been called in the Christian Tradition, illumination. John Webster offers a good word of knowledge (for all my charismatic brothers and sisters ;-) on this:

[C]orresponding to the perfect and wholly sufficient work of the Son in the redemption of fallen creatures, there is a further mission of God in their regeneration and restoration to intelligent, consensual, affective and active fellowship with God. This is the mission of the Holy Spirit, by whose grace it comes about that there is a company of creatures in whom redemption is brought to full realisation in the renewal of creaturely nature. The Spirit ‘perfects’ the work of the Son by bringing his work to its creaturely term, manifesting its virtue, distributing its benefits, and establishing a creaturely subject to receive, know and act out of its grace. The renewal of creaturely nature includes renewal in the knowledge of God, for the Spirit is ‘the spirit of wisdom and of revelation’ (Eph 1.17). This work of the Spirit is the environment for a theology of revelation, and therefore of Holy Scripture as its prophetic and apostolic form, and therefore of the illumination of the regenerate mind for the reading of Scripture. The Spirit is given that, having the eyes of their hearts enlightened, the saints may know. [John Webster, Journal of Reformed Theology 5 (2011) 325-340, Illumination, p. 328-29

Webster, would answer, in a dogmatically nuance way---answer my question---that it is not the prerogative of the non-Christian to 'know' what Scripture is about, because Scripture is about Jesus Christ. And if the non-Christian by definition (Rom. 8.11) does not have the Spirit of God in Christ; then they, like the Pharisees (Jn. 5) can get at the 'letter' of the Scripture. But they certainly cannot get at the 'Spirit' of the Scripture, sense the Spirit is absent; de facto Christ is absent (for them), because Christ did not come without the Spirit, but with the Spirit full of grace and truth.

The conclusion is that the non-Christian cannot truly engage in biblical hermeneutics, given Scripture's ontology and situadedness from the Spirit's breath, and the Son's humanity; both of these realities being absent, by definition in the non-Christian's life. Clearly the non-Christian exegete can do lexical and syntactical analyses of the Sciptures, etc. But, again, given the dogmatic ordering of things (and Scriptures placement within that through the analogy of faith etc.); they cannot do Christian hermeneutics which flows from the Spirit's authorship of Scripture (through the humanity of Christ and the sending of the Prophets and Apostles), and the corresponding authorship of human salvation in and through Christ. The one correlates to the other; in short, if you don't know the author's intent, then you can't truly appreciate what the author intended and meant (means). Reading the Bible is a truly Christian event. 

Christ Centered Exposition Juxtaposed with Principle-Application Centered Exposition: My Response to my Pastor

My pastor, Daniel Gettemy, made these points and asked this question in response to this post:

[...] I think you're making a pretty clear case for how one's grasp/view of Inspiration (or lack thereof) is feeding their exegetical approach. What role do you think, if any, ones view of Pastoral responsibility plays in the development of a series such as "The Coming Financial Armageddon"? In other words, do you think that such an exegetical approach (as the two had above) develops primarily as a consequence of a low view of inspiration? Or, do you think there are multiple factors, such as one's view of the pulpit's place in congregational ministry that are at play as well? I see both in play - even in my own ministry. There's certainly a tension that exists that has to be managed. I'd love to hear your view on how the Primary can and should feed the secondary issues in exegesis and (even) pulpit ministry.

Thanks brother!
Daniel

The following is my response to his points and query.

I think that both John MacArthur and David Jeremiah both operate from a typical Evangelical concept of inspiration---which as a friend of mine has noted, usually mistakes inspiration for incarnation; meaning that the text of Scripture is mistakenly imbued with properties that solely should belong to Jesus Christ as God's own personal Self-revelation of himself to humanity, of which Scripture then is taken up into as his Spirit breathed act of bearing witness to his own inerrant Word (so to speak), in Christ. So in other words, revelation becomes depersonalized (in the MacArthurite/Jeremiahite construal); and it is reduced to a set of impersonal logically deduced (postivistic) propositions which we squeeze axioms and principles from as a road-map for our daily lives (so the Bible becomes an answer book like the Reader's Digest or something, or a how to book for "Dummies"). This is a hang-over from the rationalist Fundamentalist hermeneutics that folks like MacArthur, Jeremiah, and almost all Evangelicals have inherited from this bygone era in our relatively recent past (e.g. the Fundamentalist reaction to the so called 'Liberalism' and higher criticism that penetrated American Christianity at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries). This in a nutshell serves as the backdrop to MacArthur's and Jeremiah's interpretive moves today.

So I think, in response to your question, that their hermeneutics have resulted from a defective view of inspiration or a bibliology or doctrine of Scripture that is built upon a rationalist/reactionary edifice that reduces and depersonalizes revelation to propositions instead of the person, Jesus Christ. Which explains quite a bit, relative to the way that both MacArthur and Jeremiah have proceeded in their "exegesis" of the text. They both presume that Scripture is our source-bed for providing a set of values and propositions that needs to be discerned (e.g. exegesis), principalized, and then given up for application for their listener's lives.

So the only solution, that I see, is to abandoned the defective edifice upon which Evangelical's understandings on a doctrine of Scripture (and thus hermeneutics) is built; and re-orientate oneself in a way that sees Scripture within the personal triune speech act of God to us, given to us through his Son, in and through the creative activity of the Holy Spirit. This way Scripture is no longer understood as a proposition book which humanity can master; but instead, Scripture is understood as the God ordained place wherein God in Christ by the Spirit contradicts and confronts our "human mastery" through direct encounter with him, in Christ (wherein Scripture finds its Spirit breathed voice through the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ). This will set up a hermeneutical framework that methodologically seeks to lay bare the inner reality of Scripture, which finds its ground in Jesus Christ himself (in principle, quite intensively!). So the exegete and expositor won't be seeking to figure out how a particular text (like in the OT for example) is "relevant" or answers people's particular questions today. Instead, the exegete will trust that God alone knows all of our hearts, and his answer to our deepest longing is personal encounter with Him. That is what Scripture is for; to lead us to him in Christ. So when teaching an OT passage, for example (or even a NT one), the expositor will use a hermeneutical practice that exemplifies the kind that we see the NT authors using; it will interpret the OT promises in light of their fulfillment in Christ. For example, it will tie the suffering and rebellion we see happening over and again amongst God's people in the OT; into what Jesus elected for himself as he elected our humanity/reprobation for himself and gave us his elect status as our vicarious representative in his resurrected humanity (so the exegete would emphasize that God humbled himself, and in that humbling he exalted humanity in the resurrected humanity of Christ ... something like that).

So this requires a massive paradigm shift for the expositor's hermeneutical practice. It requires that the Pastor believe that God knew best when his prescription for humanities' daily longings and issues was who he revealed, himself, in Jesus Christ. It is this encounter alone that will set the captives free, and provide the deep kind of perspective and spirituality that God wants for all of his people (on a day to day basis)! MacArthur and Jeremiah (and any Evangelical pastor, in particular, that follows in their footsteps, methodologically) have missed the boat I have been describing. Does this help clarify?

The Deplorable State of Evangelical Exegesis and Exposition: A Word from John Webster Applied to John MacArthur and David Jeremiah

 Read the following from John Webster on Holy Scripture, and then read my brief comment following:

[T]he particular relation of prophetic and apostolic words to God's own Word is ambassadorial; they are an embassy of God's eloquence. Not by embodiment or continuation but by authorized representation and testimony, the prophets and apostles are instrumental in the communication of the one who commissions them for their task. So commissioned, they bear authority. They do not do so by virtue of innate capacity; but their commissioning and the providential ordering of their course makes them fitting, drawing them into the movement of God's self-revelation. As God does this, raising up prophets and apostles in the history of the covenant, he makes his people into the community of the Word of God, one in which his Word can be heard in the ministry of his ambassadors.

Holy Scripture is the textual settlement of this embassy. In it, prophetic and apostolic speech is extended into the church's present. Scripture is the availability of prophetic and apostolic ministry beyond its originating occasion. We should note at once that this account of the nature of Scripture does not obliterate its human qualities, but sets them in relation to what Bullinger in a lovely phrase called "the history of the proceeding of the Word of God." Scripture is a human reality ordered to divine communication. There is a parallel here with the elements in the Lord's Supper. Bread and wine are signs in the economy of salvation: by them the ascended Christ distributes the benefits of his saving achievement, comforting and nourishing his people by his presence. These functions do not detract from the created materiality of the elements, but indicate, rather, that such created realities are taken up into the divine service. So also Holy Scripture: prophetic and apostolic words are no less creaturely for being servants of the divine Word; indeed, their creaturely nature is therein fulfilled. It is a bad dualist habit which assumes that scriptural texts are most basically products of a religious-cultural world to be investigated as such, and only secondarily describable as prophetic and apostolic testimony. The astonishingly simple and revisionary rule for understanding Scripture (on which the pre-critical exegesis of the church is predicated) is this: "those moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Pet. 1:21). John Webster, "Anglican Theological Review:90/4," 740-41.

Today, as I drove to Portland, OR (from Vancouver, WA, where I live with my family) I turned on local Christian radio :-(. I heard two sermons from Dr. John MacArthur (one of them was being featured on James Dobson's "Focus on the Family"), and then a sermon by Dr. David Jeremiah; both of these fellows, unfortunately, are prominent voices in large swaths and pockets of the Evangelical sub-culture. As I listened to them, my heart broke; I had a range of emotions: sadness, anger, frustration, unbelief, shock, unsurprised, etc. They both supposedly were doing exegesis and expositional teaching of the Bible. Instead, John MacArthur engaged in a pop-psychology exegesis of why natural theology is biblical; and David Jeremiah taught us how to be good financial planners by using principles he deduced from his exposition of the book of Daniel (the series of sermons that this one is a part of is entitled: "The coming financial Armageddon" or something like that).

Where is what John Webster is describing above present in the sermons given by MacArthur, Jeremiah, and a whole host of Evangelical biblical exegesis? It is absent. Instead what I heard today from Mac and Jeremiah, unfortunately, exemplifies what Webster wrote here "It is a bad dualist habit which assumes that scriptural texts are most basically products of a religious-cultural world to be investigated as such, and only secondarily describable as prophetic and apostolic testimony." Both MacArthur and Jeremiah (as representatives of Evangelical exegesis, in general) offered exegetical conclusions that took their pulse from current pop-cultural norms and mores instead of the the presupposition, point, and deep reality of Scripture; which finds its inner norm through the living voice of God revealed in Jesus Christ!

Do you see why I am so sad?

Getting Beyond Us-Them and the Bible

Something that would go a long way in allowing Christians to dialogue with each other instead of at each other is to come to terms on what Scripture actually is. As an Evangelical Christian (maybe you can relate), I have far too often been party to moments wherein a particular doctrinal topic is under consideration. Both sides, as Evangelical Christians, believe they have Scripture on their side; and thus each side appeals disparately to Scripture as their silver bullet (to win the argument, and substantiate their point). And yet, there is obviously a problem here; since both can provide apparent cogent and coherent intepretations of the same text which apparently favor their doctrinal point---then the question is: how do we adjudicate who is right and who is wrong? But, really, the question needs to step back further; we need to get to the first order issue prior to the second (which is where the debates and arguments and back-and-forths take place). The first order issue is to come to terms with what indeed Scripture is, and where it has its place relative to God and his communication to us through his Son by the Holy Spirit. While discerning this, at the same moment, we should realize that even articulating 'what' Scripture is and 'where' it is placed relative to God; won't end all debate (we'll just end up debating about Scripture's place). Nevertheless, this will help us to deal with deeper issues instead of secondary issues that at the end of the day have more to do with philosophy of history and literature rather than Jesus Christ. I understand that I am being rather oblique in this post (or vague), but I would like to continue to build on the trajectory that this post sets in the days and months to come. I was prompted to write this post because of John Webster; here's what I read, and here's what he wrote in this regard:

With respect to Scripture, for example, lack of clarity about the tasks of biblical interpretation (in which the tug-of-war between "historical" and "theological" interpretation is but one episode) is symptomatic of the absence of shared conceptions of the nature of Scripture and of the tasks which it undertakes in the divine economy. The absence of bibliology, and the widespread assumption that a doctrine of Scripture is exegetically and hermeneutically otiose, cannot be compensated for by further refinement of strategies of interpretation. We need to figure out what the text is in order to figure out what to do with it; and we determine what Scripture is by understanding its role in God's self-communication to creatures. John Webster, ATR/90:4, 734-35.

The short answer is that Scripture is about Jesus; it is from Jesus, given by Jesus, and takes us beyond itself to its reality in Jesus. This will reframe multiple things, like; 1) Ontology of Scripture, 2) Hermeneutics 3) Biblical Theological Grammar, 4) Usage of Scripture, 5) Christian Spirituality/Doxology, 6) etc. 

Speaking Biblically is Speaking Theologically

John Webster offers a very precise way to conceive of what 'Biblical Reasoning' is. He does so in a way that sees Scripture as the final point of authority and witness through which we encounter the living God in Christ by the Holy Spirit's inspiration of the text of Scripture. Here is what Webster writes:

Christian theology is biblical reasoning, in which human intelligence responds to the intelligible divine Word spoken through the prophets and apostles. This conception of theology rests upon an ontology and teleology of Scripture and reason, shaped by an understanding of their place in the divine economy in which God establishes fellowship with human creatures, including the rational fellowship of which Christian theology is an instance. The divine economy, grounded in God's immanent life, unfolds as a history in which human creatures are summoned to know and love God. This history is redemptive and revelatory. The revelation takes form in the embassy of the prophets and apostles, superintended by the Spirit. Reason, corrupted by sin, is renewed by divine grace and participates in redeemed existence. Christian theology is the redeemed intellect's apprehension of God's address through his scriptural ambassadors, and takes the form of exegetical and dogmatic reasoning. [John Webster, ATR/90:4, 733]

One of my concerns is that too many Evangelical (Fundyish type, Conservative) Christians presume that they don't talk or think theologically; instead they talk and think, Biblically. But this is to engage in a false dichotomy. The second anyone begins to engage Scripture through their voice; they have engaged Scripture theo-logically. In other words, even the finest exegetes in the world must engage Scripture, Theo-logically. That is, we can do all of our syntactical analyses, lexical analyses, narratival analyses, literary analyses, etc; but the moment we seek to provide a cogencey and coherency to the findings and implications of said analyses we are reflecting on God's Word, theo-logically. We are doing this, in part, because we have already been brought into a gracious relationship of communion with God through union with Christ. So he has already brought us into his divine-human life resulting in a capacity and desire (on our part) to articulate and seek to understand what it is that he has communicated to us through his given Word through Scripture for us.

In short: To speak Biblically, is to speak Theologically; this is an inescapable reality because the ontology (or being) of Scripture has its location in Christ---and to be 'in Christ' is under the subheading of christology, and we all know that christology is a Christian Dogmatic or Systematic Theological category; and it is only 'After christology' that we have the placement of Scripture, not before. In other words, a doctrine of Scripture is a highly charged theological category in and of itself; we cannot abstract that out of its proper theological placement if we are going to truly going to engage Scripture as it ought to be---that is, as a Theological communication of which we've been taken up into in and through Christ by the Holy Spirit.

My Thoughts on Inerrancy and My Doctrine of Scripture

I was recently asked by Brian LePort to fill out a questionnaire on my view of Biblical Inerrancy. He posted my responses to his questions, here. But I thought I would repost what I wrote here at my blog as well. So that's what the following represents.

 

Do you use the word “inerrancy” to describe your understanding of Scripture? Why or why not? (If not, can you explain your “doctrine of Scripture?”)

I grew up ardently advocating for this terminology; it has only been over the last few years that I have taken a different approach to my doctrine of Scripture vis-á-vis an ontology of Scripture. While maintaining my identity as an Evangelical (Reformed) Christian, and some of the received history that this entails (including the intention that inerrancy sought to capture–e.g. the trustworthiness of Scripture); I would probably eschew emphasizing the language of inerrancy relative to my position (even though I remain sympathetic to it, and those who still feel the need to use it).

In a nutshell: I see Scripture within the realm of soteriology (salvation), and no longer (as the classically Reformed and Evangelical approach does) within the realm of epistemology (or a naked Philosophy). Meaning that I think a proper doctrine of Scripture must understand itself within its proper order of things. So we start with 1) Triune God, 2) The election of humanity in the Son (Covenant of Grace), 3) Creation, Incarnation (God’s Self-revelation), 4) The Apostolic Deposit of Christian Scripture (e.g. the New Testament re-interpretation of salvation history [i.e. Old Testament] in light of its fulfillment in Christ). This is something of a sketch of the order of Scripture’s placement from a theological vantage point (I don’t think the tradition that gave us inerrancy even considers such things). So I see Scripture in the realm of Christian salvation (sanctification), and as God’s triune speech act for us provided by the Son, who comes with the Holy Spirit’s witness (through Scripture). Here is how John Webster communicates what I am after:

First, the reader is to be envisaged as within the hermeneutical situation as we have been attempting to portray it, not as transcending it or making it merely an object of will. The reader is an actor within a larger web of event and activities, supreme among which is God’s act in which God speaks God’s Word through the text of the Bible to the people of God, as he instructs them and teaches them in the way they should go. As a participant in this historical process, the reader is spoken to in the text. This speaking, and the hearing which it promotes, occurs as part of the drama which encloses human life in its totality, including human acts of reading and understanding: the drama of sin and its overcoming. Reading the Bible is an event in this history. It is therefore moral and spiritual and not merely cognitive or representational activity. Readers read, of course: figure things out as best they can, construe the text and its genre, try to discern its intentions whether professed or implied, place it historically and culturally — all this is what happens when the Bible is read also. But as this happens, there also happens the history of salvation; each reading act is also bound up within the dynamic of idolatry, repentance and resolute turning from sin which takes place when God’s Word addresses humanity. And it is this dynamic which is definitive of the Christian reader of the Bible. [[John Webster, "Hermeneutics in Modern Theology: Some Doctrinal Reflections," Scottish Journal of Theology, 336]

So I see Scripture as God’s second Word (Jesus the first and last Word) for His people the Church. From this perspective inerrancy becomes a non-starter, since Scripture is no longer framed apologetically; but instead, Christically, and positive witness for the Church.

If you were to provide a brief definition of the doctrine of inerrancy what would it include?

Millard Erickson has provided the best indexing of innerancy[s]; he has: 1) Absolute Inerrancy, 2) Full Inerrancy, and 3) Limited Inerrancy (see Millard Erickson, “Introducing Christian Doctrine [abridged version],” 61). Realizing that there is nuance then when defining a given inerrancy; I would simply assert that inerrancy holds to the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture; meaning that Scripture is both Divine-human speech, or Divine revelation (or God's Words). And since God cannot lie, Scripture must be totally without any error; because if it has error then God has lied.

Can there be a doctrine of inerrancy divorced from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy? If so, what are the “practical” consequences? If not, why?

I think the Chicago Statement, given its recognition for literary and genre analysis of the text of Scripture has effectively allowed for the possibility of qualifying inerrancy to the point that you might end up with my current view ;-).

How does your doctrine of Scripture impact your hermeneutics? Can you use Genesis 1-11 as a case study/example?

I would simply say that I see Genesis 1–11 as the first instance of the LORD's first Word of grace; viz. we have God introduce himself as the personal God who created, and for the purpose of creation communing with him by and through the Son (Gen. 3:15). So, no, I don’t  follow Henry Morris and the Institute of Creation Research  in defending a wooden literal reading of this section of Scripture. I see it literally, but as God’s  introduction of himself to his Covenant people such that His people might know what he intends for his creation; viz. that we commune with him through the Son. It is through this purpose for creation that all other idolatrous parodies (like those in the Ancient Near East) fall by the way side and are contradicted by creation’s  true purpose, in Christ.

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I would recommend John Webster's little book: Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. His book articulates and informs my view on this like no other I have ever come across. 

I would be interested in knowing what you think about my response; and like to hear what your own view is on this issue. I am highly sympathetic to the impulse that charged the construction of inerrancy (i.e. to defend the reliability of Scripture as God's words to humanity), but I ultimately think there are better ways to frame Scripture rather than from the defensive and largely reactive posture that gave inerrancy rise. To be totally frank; when I read Scripture I still cannot but read it as if (because I believe this to be the case) it is indeed completely accurate relative to the standards of accuracy it originally intended to be accurate by ;-).

A Christian Statement of Scripture V. An UnChristian Statement

Here is a very dynamic statement on Scripture and its placement within the life of God's people; finding its continuity in ongoing witness for those people in the 'point and purpose' of their existence, Jesus Christ.

[T]he source of all our knowledge of God is his active revelation of himself. We do not know God against his will, or behind his back, as it were, but in accordance with the way in which he has elected to disclose himself and communicate his truth in the historical-theological context of the worshipping people of God, the Church of the Old and New Covenants. This is the immediate empirical fact with which the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are bound up. They were composed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and in the providence of God have been handed on to us as the written form of the Word of God. They are the Scriptures of the people of Israel, for Israel was the selected medium of God's revelation in which his Word operated prophetically in the life and understanding of a particular historical community in order to provide within mankind a place where divine revelation might be translated appropriately into human speech and where it might be assimilated and understood in a communicable form by all humanity. And they are the Scriptures of the Christian Church, for the Church was the appointed sphere in which the historical self-revelation of God through Israel, gathered up and transcended and fulfilled in Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, is given an evangelical form in the apostolic witness and tradition, kerygma and didache, through which the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ himself continues to meet men and women as the living Word of God and to impart himself to them as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, apart from whom, as our Lord claimed, no one has access to the Father. [Thomas F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 5]

I would suggest that this is a properly articulated and understood ontology and/or doctrine of Scripture and its placement within the grasp (so to speak) of God's people; Christians. This is in contrast to the classical understanding of Scripture, here given voice by Evangelical Systematic Theologian, Millard Erickson:

[T]he epistemological question is simply, How do we know? Since our basis for knowing and holding to the truth of any theological proposition is that the Bible teaches it, it is of utmost importance that the Bible be found truthful in all of its assertions. If we should conclude that certain propositions (historical or scientific) taught by the Bible are not true, the implications for theological propositions are far-reaching. To the extent that evangelicals abandon the position that everything taught or affirmed by Scripture is true, other bases for doctrine will be sought. This might well be either through the resurgence of philosophy of religion or, what is more likely given the current "relational" orientation, through basing theology upon behavioral sciences, such as psychology of religion. But whatever the form that such an alternative grounding takes, there will probably be a shrinking of the list of tenets, for it is difficult to establish the Trinity or the virgin birth of Christ upon either a philosophical argument or the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. [Millard J. Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine, 62]

The nuance between the two statements is quite subtle to the naked eye, but there is one. The primary distinction between these two articulations is that the former does not make the veracity of Scripture contingent upon creation, or proving it to be so. Instead Torrance's statement places Scripture within the divine speech which actually is life giving and formative to his people's existence, as his people, indeed. The latter thesis statement, from Erickson, places humanity (in general) prior to God's Word in Scripture; such that its veracity can only said to be so through the apologetic works of God's people making it so. In other words, for Erickson, and the Evangelical sphere in general, Scripture is annexed to the realm of philosophical (epistemological) materiality in a way that leaves it out in the open until Christians can prove its reliability. But this is exactly backwards!

The question is who comes first? 1) God, 2) creation, 3) Scripture (Torrance); or, 1) Creation, 2) Scripture, 3) God (Erickson)? The latter set of questions see Scripture placed in the secular realm of philosophy; the former set of questions see Scripture located in the sacred sphere of salvation. Which means that Erickson's approach cannot, theologically, be said to endorse a particularly Christian doctrine of Scripture---only Torrance's can, because his does not make Scripture's prophetic witness dependent upon humanity but upon God's free voice of 'Lordness'---since Erickson's approach moves from a view of creation that ultimately sees creation as a mode of existence that determines its own fate and reality (this is a very modern move, but not a very Christian one).