Undeception

It would be indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second best course.

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For that the former was better, God hath made manifest, both by His words and by His doings, since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.

And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the Apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for He, saith our Lord, shall bring all things to your remembrance (John 14:26). And that thou mayest learn that this was far better, hear what He saith by the Prophet: I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them, and, they shall be all taught of God [cf. Jer. 31.33 LXX; John 6.45]. And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said that they had received a law not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart [II Cor. 3:3].

This is certainly in contrast to those who hold the creation of the canon to be the greatest gift God ever gave to the church, second only to Jesus (or so they say).

Chrysostom certainly held Scripture to be divine in origin; in fact the above remarks were brought forth to emphasize that it would only compound our foolishness if, having been so hard-hearted as to require the holy writings as a ”second remedy,” we ignore even those. But notice the logic here: written Scripture is only necessary because we refuse to obey the voice of the Spirit in our hearts.

Because of our incorrigible tendency toward ignoring the law promised to be written on our hearts, it certainly helps to have Scripture and other sacred sources (like our theological traditions) for signposts. But those things, including the Bible, can never take the place of that Word of God that is spoken directly into our hearts — and they certainly can’t trump it. The caution is that if we take those often useful and even necessary crutches as the foundation on which we stand, we’ll find ourselves hugging the floor soon enough.

This is a re-post from last year’s Reformation Day season. It’s not exactly “back by popular demand”, as it didn’t attract much attention. But it still captures where “ich stehe” as a post-inerrantist who loves the Bible so much that I feel obligated to treat it all on its own terms, rather than subjugate its many messages to our day’s entrenched inerrantist dogma.

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Last Sunday night, our church hosted a Reformation Party for the kids. It was sort of a Halloweenish deal, with lots of games and candy, and the kids were encouraged to dress up in Reformation-era costumes. My son won the prize for his age group wearing a Martin Luther costume my mother made for him.

The reason the Reformation Party was scheduled for Halloween week is quite natural: October 31st is not only Halloween but also Reformation Day, the day in 1517 that Martin Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the Wittenburg church, launching the Reformation. When I found out about the party, I good-naturedly smiled and rolled my eyes that our proudly Protestant church would put this on. I am not near so proud of the Reformation as some, and haven’t held a particularly high regard for Luther since undergraduate school. He was a crass and divisive figure, and as such has set the tone for the fractious nature of Protestantism. Aside from disagreeing with Luther’s critiques of some of the Church’s doctrine and practices, the Church also feared that delivering the Scriptures into the hands of non-clergy would result in a myriad competing theologies based upon a plethora of interpretations of Sacred Scripture. In this, they were absolutely correct.

Indeed, I have said on many occasions that I have more sympathy for the Catholic perspective than a lot of my Protestant brothers and sisters do. But Sunday night as my blindfolded son groped around in an attempt to “pin the Ninety-Five Theses on the Wittenberg door”, I felt more of a kinship with Martin Luther than ever before.

As much as they look up to Martin Luther’s courage in standing against a stalwart establishment intent on preserving what it believed was the very truth of God, the affinity of evangelicals with the Church of Rome is striking. It is true that the list of things they require “good” Christians to be in lockstep about is a different, much smaller list than that of the Church. But Luther’s dissent sprang from his conviction that our theology must be based upon Scripture correctly interpreted, no matter whose interpretation might be ousted as a result.

This last week I have had more conversations than ever with friends concerned about my rejection of inerrancy and the reading of Genesis as literal history. Some of my friends’ comments have had an adversarial bent, and I have actually undergone something reminiscent of excommunication by one of them that I’ve known the longest. No, they don’t want to burn me at the stake, but their indignation at my rejection of their interpretation is not at all dissimilar at its source. When I look at the tight formation of the Reformed system within Calvin’s lifetime and the unwritten list of interpretations thought to be untouchable by the evangelical community now centuries later, it seems that Protestantism never did fully embrace the notion that ecclesiastical authority must be subject to an accurate reading of Scripture. Instead, they simply changed from Rome being the ecclesiastical authority to whatever is popular and commonly accepted by their church leadership and culture. Evangelicalism, not a board of authoritative bishops but an assembly of common assumptions, is no less wont to throw someone like me out for demanding an honest treatment of Scripture on its own terms than was Rome.

A famous slogan associated with the Reformation since before the beginning of the 18th century was Ecclesia reforma semper reformanda: “The Church reformed, always reforming (lit. ‘to be reformed’).” Hilariously, I’ve seen some of the Reformed up at arms against this slogan, to the effect of, “You can’t fix perfection.” But delusions aside, is this not a worthy goal for all of us? We don’t have to reevaluate every single thing we believe on a yearly basis, or even once every few decades. But anyone who claims to love the truth and is intellectually coherent enough to acknowledge that the Church has been wrong once or twice about even major issues should be humble enough to look into divisive issues without assuming those holding views other than his/her own is a compromiser in league with Satan.

I’m certainly not holding myself up as the True Heir of Martin Luther, nor, despite my newly recovered respect for him, am I sure I really want to be; I’m fairly confident he wouldn’t spare the rod on a lot of my own views. But I do think that those who won’t be cowed into submitting to the tyranny of the majority and insist upon carefully and humbly cultivating their theology with the best information available, no matter how it horrifies others in their tradition, are following more closely in Luther’s footsteps than those who obdurately defend their inherited interpretation of Scripture against Scripture itself.

Happy Reformation Day!

Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology has a great post up in which he’s critical of an article in the current Christianity Today theme this month by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett in praise of catechism.

Now I must say, since we’re attending a Presbyterian church now (I’m actually serious), my kids have recently been learning the children’s version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for Sunday School. While I’ll certainly need to start shaking loose some of the stuff I have problems with in the WCF before it hardens permanently in their minds, it’s both a good exercise for their brains and a way of learning historical Protestant theology. What I’m just saying is that although I certainly have a problem with overly and artificially systematized theology, I’m not really necessarily anti-catechism.

But I also must say, the following remarks from Daniel Kirk are spot on:

I could not disagree more with the claims being asserted [in the article by Packer and Parrett]: that the real thing we need is theology, and all those stories in the Bible (you know, the actual Bible God, in God’s wisdom, decided to give to the church) are second-rate tools the learning of which makes us less competent Christians.

This is the classic inversion of sola scriptura: no longer do we really want you to do what the Reformers did (read your Bible), we want you instead to read and memorize what they said after they had read their Bibles.

Wow. That last sentence was a home run, with bases loaded. What do you think the Hebrews did before they had a Calvin or a Beza?  Do we really want to take the ancient Jewish commentaries as seriously as we’re to take, e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith? Why the heck would the Bible come loaded with stories of people encountering God, often coming away with differing ideas about what they learned about Him, and very little that even resembles systematic theology? Couldn’t God have provided an inspired, inerrant commentary or hermeneutic key if He really wanted to?

Certainly we should teach our kids our beliefs about what the authors of the Bible believed; it can even take the form of a catechism. But whatever we do, we don’t want to give them the impression that we are teaching them unquestionable Approved and Authorized Theology^®. We should be instructing and encouraging them that good theology isn’t learned by rote, but painstakingly cultivated.