This is another entry in our Text(s) of Scripture series. Our text is Luke 1:1-4:
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Thom: Eyewitness is immensely important to the creation and explanation of our Scriptures. If may people have seen something, something must have happened, to paraphrase N.T. Wright. What David touches on with the term certainty I will not tackle here, other than to say that as someone who looks at linguistics/literature/philosophy/theology in a postmodern or postfoundational way, I try to think of certainty as a glass half full instead of a glass half empty. To allude to David’s own blog, we see through a glass darkly—the importance being that we see amazing things, not that sometimes they are obscure or blurry.
The Scriptures are an amazing storybook, a chronicled, multi-genre attempt at telling and retelling the wonderful story of God. This is what Luke is doing here, as he has gone to investigate, articulate, meditate, and create the story of God.
Luke created his gospel. He did it with the help of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, but Luke was in control. He took up the pen, he investigated, he meditated, and then he made an orderly account for all lovers of God to enjoy. The key here is “orderly,” for it denotes the creational aspect of “good news” making. Luke is the writer, who with the help of a brooding Spirit, (re-)creates the Word. Gospel writing is right out of Genesis, as John alludes to in the introduction of his Gospel. The Holy Spirit is hovering over Luke’s writing as he forms it to be the beginning, the Word.
We are all servents of the Word. We enter into the economy of God with some certainty, much certainty even, yet there comes a time when we doubt or have much doubt. Then what may help us in times of darkness but the light of Christ, the Word, the spoken Story of the cosmos. Luke retells that story, not that we should “know” it academically, as is the status quo of Christendom today. Luke wants us to do something different with our knowledge. He wants us to follow in his footsteps and become storytellers ourselves. Just as the accounts of our Scriptures were handed down to us by those who from the first eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, so we too should take Luke’s accounts and hand them down ourselves through service, worship, and sacrament. We are all co-tellers and co-hearers of God’s story. We truly stand in a long line of believers, playing an immense game of Telephone. Except this time the message is not garbled. It comes out clean, pure, and true. Listen to it, the words handed down to Luke, who now hands them to us, and you will know that it is good.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
David: This passage is very interesting and important for the relationship between the Bible and epistemology. Luke’s use of the word “certainty” here serves as a touchstone for many who argue that the Bible serves as a source of objective, unerring certainty for human knowledge claims. Many emerging / postmodern / missional Christians, in contrast, are uncomfortable with, if not sometimes hostile to, any claims to objective certainty, as well as to an understanding of the Bible that makes the Bible primarily a source of objectively certain propositional statements.
I believe this is an important question for nurturing the faith of young people in the Church and for presenting the faith to those outside the Church in our pluralistic world. I hope I can do a longer series of posts on this, but for now, here is my summary.
In a nutshell, I think this passage establishes the Gospel of Luke, and at least the synoptic Gospels generally, as testimonial witnesses that secure the experience of faith in Christ. I do not, however, think this passage bears all the weight that some conservative evangelicals might want to place on it. I say this for two key reasons: (1) the Lukan passage does not itself suggest that it applies outside the context of the particular contents of the Gospel of Luke as communicated to Theophilus; (2) the Lukan passage, though strong in its language, must be understood in its literary context as the formal greeting of a Hellenistic text addressed to a patron; (3) other epistemological passages in scripture stress the provisional and limited nature of human knowledge even when enlightened by the gospel (e.g., many of the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, 1 Cor. 13:12); and (4) yet other epistemological passages in scripture stress that the ultimate ground of certainty / assurance is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, not an external criterion of truthfulness.
At the same time, contrary perhaps to some voices in the emerging church movement, I do think this passage suggest an important “objective” testimonial role for the Gospels and for scripture in general. Without the Lukan witness to the fact that scripture encodes the community’s testimonial witness about Jesus, it is too easy for our faith to become merely existential. The super-existentialism of Schleiermacher, I think, is a key element in “liberal” theology’s eventual serious problems with even central affirmations of the faith, such as the uniqueness of Christ. Faith is existential in that the primary witness to faith is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, but this faith is not merely ephemeral – it is grounded, anchored, or made secure (terms that reflect the root meaning of the Greek word asphelia that is translated “certainty”) in the recorded testimony of scripture, particularly the apostolic testimony about Jesus. The scriptural witness here, I think, plays a confirmatory, solidifying role, which differs from but compliments the initiating, primary role played by the Holy Spirit.
A little excursus: It’s interesting to note Luke’s other use of the word translated “certainty” in the NIV, asphelia, in Acts 5:23. It refers to the doors of a jail in which the apostles were held being “securely” locked. The word is also used in the LXX, sometimes to refer to physical “safety” (Deut. 12:10), “security” for a debt (e.g. Prov. 11:15), or “sound” or secure judgment (Prov. 8:14). As a lawyer, the LXX usage in Prov. 11:15 intrigues me. Posting security for a debt does not create the debt. The debt is created through some primary relationship between the creditor and debtor (for example, a contract to pay a certain amount at a future date for services rendered). Posting security ensures that the debt will be satisfied – if the debtor does not pay, the creditor may exercise its right to obtain the value of the security interest. The security interest gives the creditor assurance that it can enter into the transaction with the debtor without losing its investment. In a somewhat analogous way, I see the deposit of faith instantiated in the relationship between the believer and God, through Christ, initiated and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, with scripture as the stable instrument recorded to secure the relationship.