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 "Return" to American Evangelical Hermeneutics

For anyone who has read me for any length of time at all, it should by now be eminently clear that I have somewhat removed myself from the usual Evangelical-Fundamentalist method of biblical interpretation (not because I think I am better than, or because I no longer self-identify as an American Evangelical; because I do); or from what is known as the historical-critical or Literal, Grammatical, Historical (LGH) reading of the scriptures. It is, in fact, this method of biblical interpretation that has given rise to an idiosyncratic (and I mean this in the sense that this method is peculiar, by and large, to a certain and even large swath of American Evangelicals) expression of this kind of interpretive work; which as I have been surveying in a couple of posts (here & here) prior, is known as dispensationalism. 

I have often, again for anyone who has been reading me for any length of time, referenced how this situation, for American Evangelicals, has come to be. That is, how it is that many American Evangelicals have embraced this mode of biblical interpretation for themselves; it is really a quite ironic (and unfortunate) move, since it is this kind of rationalist, positivistic, and historist approach to biblical interpretation that these same American Evangelicals (originally known as Fundamentalists---I realize they are not the same exact thing, socio-culturally, but Evangelicalism still operates, linguistically and doctrinally from the same historical moorings that their parents, the Fundamentalists taught them) were decrying. They were fighting against the penetration of historical-criticism into the halls of what used to be 'Conservative' American Christianity (like that represented at Princeton, with B.B. Warfield & co.); and yet they chose to fight fire with fire instead of using water to put the fire out [I'd like to try fighting this historical-critical fire and its penetration into American Evangelicalism with the fresh and everlasting water of Jesus Christ ... the kind that once a person gets a drink of she/he never want anything else again]. Jens Zimmerman provides a good sketch, and helpful substantiation of my oft assertions in this very regard; Zimmerman writes,

Modernist interpretation emphasized historical-critical reading of the scriptures that modified or denied the Bible's own claim to be divine revelation and largely abandoned the biblical text as a unity. As a result, other texts gained more importance, and hermeneutics came to be conceived more broadly, comprising secular literature as well. Historical criticism is, of course, enormously important for any textual work. The historical-critical school, with its application of scientific method and positivistic approach to the biblical text, however, forces texts into the Procrustean [sic] bed of an Enlightement framework and rationalist standards, lopping off offending and bothersome textual elements and unenlightened statements with almost Puritan zeal.

Modern fundamentalists [and Evangelicals] who react against this so-called liberal theology unfortunately proceed from the same assumption as the "enemy," namely, that a text can have only one normative meaning but many possible applications, which can never become normative. Premodern interpreters by contrast possessed superior interpretive concepts, such as progressive revelation and typology, and were more keenly aware of the multiple layers of textual meanings. Their view of God's word as a vehicle of typological exegesis, the idea of sensus plenior [fuller meaning], and the analogy of faith renders fundamentalist notions of stable, unitary meanings highly problematic. Yet fundamentalist interpreters cheerfully continue to use modernist principles in their defense of theology, a highly unhelpful strategy of entrenchment, the zeal of whose practitioners does little to conceal the increasing irrelevance of their effort. [brackets our mine] [Jens Zimmerman, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 22-3.]

If this is juxtaposed with my last post on dispensationalism, it becomes clear how dispensational hermeneutics came to be; they are simply a re-telling of an centuries old American interpretive schema (with German origins) that has been employed over and over again within American biblical exegesis and exposition. Such that, the capacity for folk who have sat under the sway of this sometimes bellicose system of interpretation have become incapacitated to critically make a distinction between their system of biblical interpretation and the actual biblical narrative and its primary meaning.

Again, this post only really gestures towards the more 'Christ-conditioned' approach that I want to advocate for. Adam Nigh, an contributing author to our book has offered good development on how I would like to move forward in understanding a doctrine of scripture, an ontology of scripture (its place relative to God's own Self-testimony and speech for us); and how these two realities implicate a system of interpretation (hermeneutics) that finds its orientation intensively in its reality, Jesus Christ. Adam's chapter is entitled The Depth Dimension of Scripture: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Calvinism [Chapter 3]. Adam sometimes ;-) blogs over at Out of Bounds.

Anyway, as usual, there is more to be said; and I will try to say more as this living thing known as my blog continues to give expression to more of my flowering thoughts on such things and more (of course).   

Trying to Rethink a Usual Evangelical Conception of Scripture and Interpretation

I was trained to study the Bible at what is now called Multnomah University (both the Bible College and Seminary). By and large, the methodology that I was taught (and that I also taught for a time) was/is known as the Literal Grammatical Historical approach to biblical interpretation. This approach is one that has been adopted, and really, inherited from the hard fought battles of yester-year from within the Christian 'Fundamentalist' fight with the so called 'Liberal higher critics'. So it is ironic, to say the least, that the Fundamentalists (and later, the Evangelicals) ended up adopting a historicizing and rationalist mode of interpreting the Bible; wherein Scripture becomes literature like any other kind of literature (albeit, because of the Fundamentalist-Pietist veneration, it is imbued with a special kind of status), and the tools that the Liberal higher critics employed to interpret the Scriptures, just the same. But this is indeed what has happened. Scripture and its interpretation has become reduced to abstracting ethical and propositional axioms which then are made available to furnish the theologian's and ethicist's framework or construct of articulation (but even this style, proof-texting, of theologizing has really gone out of style, except for some hold overs within the Evangelical movement---but I would say that most Evangelical theologians have moved away from using scripture in this way). This problem actually probably plagues the Evangelical pastor more than anyone else; since he has been trained to interpret this way, with no real recourse to trends away from this today (like towards theological exegesis, etc.). I am just reading Stephen Fowl's contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, which is on Scripture. Fowl sketches the history that has led to the usage of the Literal Grammatical Historical method of biblical interpretation; he writes:

[O]ver the past forty years ... it has become much more common for this Christological analogy to be applied to scripture in the way advocated by Ernst Kasemann. For Kasemann (1967), this application of a Christological metaphysic to scripture results in or justifies a further set of arguments and practices. First, scripture's human, historical status necessitates the wide variety of practices commonly known as historical criticism. Failure to see this is to lapse into a sort of docetism. Because the Bible is a human book, it should be subject to the same interpretive practices and standards as any other ancient text. In this light, the interpretative practices and theories of biblical scholars should be accessible to all regardless of one's disposition to the claims of Judaism or Christianity. Should an interpreter be a Jew or a Christian, those convictions need to be abstracted as much as possible from one's interpretative work as a biblical scholar. Biblical interpretation becomes an end in itself whose goal is either the unearthing or the construction of textual meaning(s). 

Upon deciding to treat the Bible as a human, historical text to be read like any other, the remaining issue for theologians, and Christians more generally, is how to treat the Bible as the word of God. Once interpreting the Bible as a human book becomes its own end, the question is how to move from the results of that work either to theological claims, or to the moral and ascetical formation of Christians, or to any other edifying practice which Christians have traditionally based upon scripture. 

Attempts to distil [sic] the timeless truths of scripture from the historical particularities of the biblical texts and those texts' production represent simply one form of the attempt to figure out how to treat the Bible as the word of God after already treating it as the work of human hands. The so called 'biblical theology movement' represents another form of the same attempt . . . . [Stephen E. Fowl, Scripture, in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, 347]

So Fowl, while discussing the impact of using the Christological analogy for scripture, identifies how we have gotten to where we have gotten in much of Evangelical biblical interpretation. Indeed, as he notes in his last paragraph---which is the other way I was taught to interpret the scriptures---was from the 'biblical theology movement'---which is just another attempt for the Evangelical to move beyond the rationalist method of interpretation that they fought against; but this attempt fails too, since, again, along with Kasemann, it views scripture just like any other form of ancient 'Literature', albeit imbued with special prowess, as God's Word---but this move isn't made until as Fowl notes "... simply one form of the attempt to figure out how to treat the Bible as the word of God after already treating it as the work of human hands".

Upon further reflection, I might be a little too optimistic (from earlier) about Evangelical exegetes moving beyond the specter that Fowl describes as a result of Kasemann's impact. I interact with quite a few Seminary trained Evangelicals who seem to engage the scriptures in the same way that Kasemann does; as historical literature that anyone has access to.

But how is this Christian in methodology? There is a dualism of history V. faith that is presupposed in this approach. Which is illustrated in Historical Jesus studies; when these scholars refer to 'The Jesus of Faith V. The Jesus of History'. For the Christian there should be no such competition in their Christology, and I think most Christians would say amen. But I wonder if we are this careful in the way that we conceive of Scripture and the hermeneutical theory which we so often employ as we interpret Scripture. If we follow Kasemann (like I think so many Evangelicals do), then scripture is reduced to ancient historical literature (akin to 'the Jesus of history'), to be interpreted like any other ancient literature; and then afterword, we try to figure out how our findings, through this kind of interpretive work, can be imbued with special significance for the faithful (Christians) (this is akin to 'the Jesus of faith'). But this is not to think of Scripture from within a Christian doctrine of God, and from within God's speech act to us which is centered in and from his Self-revealed Word, who is Jesus Christ.

In the next section of Fowl's chapter he moves to John Webster's proposal for scripture and biblical interpretation which Webster articulates in his awesome little book Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. I am really happy to see Fowl make this move. I have already previously discussed this through some posts, not too long ago, right here at the blog. I would like to challenge my brethren and sistren to maybe rethink their conception of scripture, and the impact that this has upon their exegesis, their expositing, and their pulpit -preaching ministries. This is only an invitation to re-think, not, obviously, a full offering for how to proceed forward (although those other posts broach that).

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?

Do I still hold to 'Inerrancy'?

I was asked, by Brian LePort, to answer these questions relative to my view on Inerrancy:

• 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?”)
• If you were to provide a brief definition of the doctrine of inerrancy what would it include? 
• 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?  
• How does your doctrine of Scripture impact your hermeneutics? Can you use Genesis 1-11 as a case study/example?

My responses will be posted by Brian at his blog tomorrow around noon (pst). You might be interested in hearing what I have to say. Although if you go to the Evangelical Calvinist archive (my old blog on wordpress), and click on the 'doctrine of Scripture' category, and read all of those posts; you might have an advanced understanding on the way that I might have responded to Brian's questions. Although, further, my responses to Brian are more definitive than anything, heretofore, I have expressed on my current views in this regard.

I am only one of many folk Brian sent this questionnaire to; he has been sharing some other people's responses over the past few days. And I think there will probably be some more after mine is posted tomorrow. Check out his blog here.

John Webster, Biblical Interpretation: Some Reflection

Here is how John Webster sums up his discussion on the relation of ‘The Word’ (Jesus) to biblical interpretation (hermeneutics). Webster

has been arguing against the usual modes of hermeneutical consideration, as anthropology; and through a resourcement of Barth, he is presenting a ‘way’ that provides for a thick dogmatically oriented mode of hermeneutical theory.

To sum up: because God in Jesus Christ speaks, because Jesus is God’s living Word, then the ‘hermeneutical situation’falls under the rule: ‘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’.52 Once this is grasped, then doctrines begin to do the work so frequently undertaken by anthropology or theories of historical consciousness in determining the nature of the hermeneutical situation, thereby making possible the ‘formed reference’ which is the basic mode of theological depiction. [John Webster, "Hermeneutics in Modern Theology: Some Doctrinal Reflections," Scottish Journal of Theology, 328]

In other words, modern hermeneutical proposals that seek to propound a theory of biblical interpretation that aren’t first given shape by a direct encounter with the Word (Jesus), dogmatically; will always fail to encounter Jesus for who he actually is because the interpretive event is not dominated by him, but them.

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).