Scot McKnight has been blogging about a “Third Way” in evangelicalism. Donald Bloesch wrote a book in 1983 — yes, 25 years ago! — talking about many of the same ideas: The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid Diversity. Among other things, Bloesch’s book (and others from that era like it) show that thinking about a “third way” is not just some kind of emergo-liberal babble. Bloesch resonates with me on scripture and epistemology. Here he is in “The Future of Evangelical Christianity” on scripture:
As I see it, there are three basic approaches to scriptural authority: the sacramental, the scholastic, and the liberal-modernist. In the first, the Bible is a divinely appointed channel, a mirror, or a visible sign of divine revelation. This was the general position of the church fathers, the doctors of the medieval church, and the Reformers. In the second, the Bible is the written or verbal revelation of God, a transcript of the very thoughts of God. This has been the viewpoint of Protestant fundamentalism, though it was anticipated in both Catholic and Protestant scholastic orthodoxy. in the third, the Bible is a record of the religious experience of a particular people in history; this refelects the general stance of liberalism, both Catholic and Protestant. Only the first position does justice to the dual origin of scripture — that it is both a product of divine inspiration and a human witness to divine truth. We need to recognize the full humanity of Scripture as well as its true divinity. Indeed, it should be impressed upon us that we can come to know its divinity only in and through its humanity. As Luther put it, the Scriptures are the swaddling clothes that contain the treasure of Christ.
Well there you have it — all of the issues that are on the table today were being discussed by wise and eminent evangelical theologians such as Bloesch twenty-five years ago. And, as Bloesch notes, what we are calling the “third way” is really the ancient way of “faith seeking understanding.”
Similarly, Bloesch deals in “The Future of Evangelical Christianity” with how we define the inerrancy or infallibility of scripture. He says:
On the intractable problem of whether Scripture contains errors, e need to recognize that this conflict is rooted in disparate notions of truth. Truth in the Bible means conformity to the will and purpose of God. Truth in today’s empirical, scientific milieu means an exact correspondence between one’s ideas or perceptions and the phenomena of nature and history. Error in the Bible means a deviation from the will and purpose of God, unfaithfulness to the dicates of his law. Error in the empirical mind-set of a technological culture means inaccuracy or inconsistency in what is reported as objectively occurring in nature or history. Technical precision is the measure of truth in empiricism. Fidelity to God’s Word is the biblical criterion for truth. Empiricism narrows the field of investigation to objective sense data, and therefore to speak of revelation as superhistorical or hidden in history is to remove it from what can legitimately be considered as knowledge. The difference between the rational-empirical and the biblical understanding of truth is the difference between transparency to Eternity and literal facticity.
Again, here it is — a critique of modernist epistemology from an evangelical theologian who is not “post-modern” twenty-five years ago. The “third way” is not an effort to do something new. It’s an effort to correct something new and get back to something ancient.