“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
— Matt. 6:12
“This makes us wonder if we really do want to pray that our debts be forgiven as we have forgiven our debtors. In truth we find it easier to forgive than to be forgiven. We do so because so much of life is spent trying to avoid acknowledging we owe anyone anything.”
— Stanley Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew.
“Following Jesus requires that we lose our overpowering sense of self. Such a loss often accompanies participation in any grand movement, but the kind of forgetfulness required to follow Jesus is different from those moments that are briefly exhilarating but soon lost. The forgetfulness that Jesus offers is made possible by the compelling reality and beauty of participation in his time, a time that cannot be lost, because it is God’s time.”
— Stanley Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew 6.
“. . . Jesus commands us not to resist evil by using means that are evil. Jesus calls us to resist evil, but he does so by empowering us with the weapons of the Spirit.”
— Stanley Hauerwas, Commentary on Matthew 5.
Mark Noll’s book Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America, is must-reading for anyone who wants to engage as an evangelical with historical and critical methods in Biblical studies. Noll sketches the history of evangelical interaction with Biblical criticism and points towards a way forward (a “third way”?) for evangelical scholarship. Noll shows that Protestant evangelicals historically tried to develop theological frameworks, such as B.B. Warfield’s notion of “concursus,” that would allow them to interact with the broader world of scholarship. Here is a somewhat lengthy passage in which Noll splendidly makes his point:
Since the fundamentalist-modernist controversies, however, evangelicals have usually lacked this kind of theological anchorage. Evangelical voices on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly drawn attention to the striking absence of a secure theological framework for the study of scripture. So Englishman David Wright: ‘One of our most urgent unfinished tasks is the elaboration of a satisfactory doctrine of Scripture for an era of biblical criticism. . . . In particular, we have to work out what it means to be faithful at one and the same time both to the doctrinal approach to Scritpure as the Word of God and to the historical treatment of Scripture as the words of men.
An even more striking appeal along the same lines has come from Bernard Ramm, one of the leaders with E.J. Carnell and Carl Henry in the postwar renewal of evangelical thought. Ramm’s 1983 book, After Fundamentalism, called upon his fellow evangelicals to learn from Karl Barth how to be both genuinely Christian and genuinely honest about the ‘humanity’ of Scripture. Ramm was especially distressed at the ‘obscurantism’ which he felt had beset evangelical efforts to incorporate modern Western learning into the study of Scritpure. Here was the primary problem, as Ramm saw it, complete with his own italics and an unflattering comparison to Barth:
there is no genuine, valid working hypothesis for most evangelicals to interact with the humanity of Scripture in general and biblical criticism in particular. There are only ad hoc or desultory attempts to resolve particular problems. Barth’s method of coming to terms with the humanity of the Scriptures and biblical criticism is at least a clearly stated program. . . . To date, evangelicals have not announced such a clear working program. If Barth’s paradigm does not please them, they are still under obligation to propose a program that does enable an evangelical to live creatively with evangelical theology and bibilical criticism.
The historical record, both evangelical and more broadly Christian, suggests two things about Ramm’s appeal. First, Christians certainly have often done what he proposed. Whether it was Augustine and Platonism, Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, Luther and nominalism, Wesley and eighteenth-century sentimentalism, or Jonathan Edwards and Newtonianism, the history of the church is filled with orthodox thinkers who have baptized (and transformed) apparently alien world views for the use of the church. But history also reveals that the synthesis of any one era does not remain intellectually or spiritually satisfying indefinitely, at least without periodic readjustments requiring nearly as much creativity as the original formulation. Ramm’s appeal, therefore, does not seek the impossible or the unorthodox, but it does call for the exercise of creative theological energy on a very broad scale.
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.
This stone pomegranate might be the only surviving artifact from Solomon’s Temple. Pretty cool.
Scot McKnight is writing about a “third way” between “conservative” and “liberal” Christian faith. Today’s post is on the nature of scripture — something I’ve been studying and thinking about quite a bit lately. I think I’ve read most of the recent books on the nature of scripture. Here are my thoughts:
(a) any Christian formulation of what scripture is must acknowledge that all scripture is inspired by God; (b) any Christian formulation of what scripture is must be consistent with the completely truthful, loving, and gracious character of God as the one who inspired scripture; (c) if the God who inspired scripture is a God of truth, then any Chrisitan formulation of what scritpure is must be completely truthful and honest about the phenomena of scripture (meaning it must take scripture as we find it, with all of its marks of humanity, and not as we ideally would like it to be); (d) if the God who inspired scripture is a God of truth, then any Christian formulation of what scripture is must not stifle or react defensively to the search for truth in any discipline of study and must not cause Christians to fear any truth wherever it is found; (e) any Christian formulation of what scripture is must locate scripture in relation to God’s revelation in Christ and in connection with scripture’s overarching purposes in God’s plan of redemption (this implies the role of the Holy Spirit); and (f) and Christian formulation of what scripture is must locate scripture within a coherent and satisfying Christian epistemology. As an addendum to all this, I think we need to remember that any creedal / doctrinal statement about the nature of scripture is not scripture itself; scripture might be infallible, but our statements about scripture are never infallible. Also, we need to say something about the canon.
Taking all these things into consideration, in my very humble opinion, the “conservative” evangelical approach to scripture, rooted in Warfield and summed up in the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, misses the mark. However, “progressive” evangelical approaches to scritpure, in my view, sometimes seem weak on (b) and (e) — if “conservative” approaches can seem docetic, “progressive” approaches can seem adoptionist.
So as a very tentative first cut at a summary: “Scripture is the true and trustworthy record of God’s plan of redemption in Christ. It is to be cherished, studied, and heard with reverent humility in the community of God’s people through the ages and under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Each follower of Jesus is responsible before God to seek to understand and live out the story of redemption revealed in the scriptures and summarized in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.”
Michael Bird at Euangelion reviews a recent book on theological education. Bird’s comments here caught my eye:
in the more conservative circles in which I move, certain theologians are given to constructing a doctrine of Scripture that contains many a priori assumptions about how they think God should have given us Scripture, and then you end up with a doctrine of Scripture that will not survive contact with the phenomenon of the text (i.e its origin, transmission, reception, and interpretation). Or else, it is demanded of us biblical scholars that we re-write or even invent a history of the text to line up with theological articulation of what Scripture is, how it came into being, and how it relates to its own context by some theological magisterium. Third, meaning is arguably created by fusing together the horizons of author-text-reader which justifies a modest reader-response hermeneutic in my mind…
RJS writes an excellent post on Jesus Creed about the difficulty, in evangelical circles, of dealing openly with the problems presented by Biblical criticism, archeology and the natural sciences.
I could write about this all day. I think the answer to the question — “is there a conspiracy of silence about ‘problems’ with the Bible” — is yes, no, and sometimes.
Yes — I believe a great many pastors and educators know the problems and keep silent for fear of how their constituencies will react. Look at what happened to Pete Enns and at how his book — a relatively modest proposal in the bigger picture of Biblical scholarship — stirred up a hornet’s nest. There are broods of vipers in the Church who will strike at the first sign of flinching.
No — I believe a significant, significant, significant number of pastors and educators are living in denial about the problems. In the old “battle for the Bible” paradigm, critical methods were seen as prima facie invalid because they approached the Bible from a paradigm of unbelief. The result is that many have steeled themselves against even hearing and testing the claims of Biblical / historic / scientific criticism. They’re pretty sure Answers in Genesis has solved all this, and that’s the end of it.
Sometimes — it seems to me that there are more an more people in evangelical circles willing to take Biblical / historic / scientific criticism seriously. There are at least here and there local church leaders who remain engaged with trends in the academy (I’m blessed to know some personally). And at the same time, there are some GOOD reasons to subject the conclusions of critics to criticism. So-called “scientific exegesis,” all the rage in secular Biblical Studies, excludes a priori any “real” miracles behind any Biblical text, including the bodily resurrection of Jesus (note that this has noting directly to do with the relation of the Bible to the natural sciences — by “scientific” they mean an exegetical method that precludes the supernatural.) To the “scientific” exegetes, N.T. Wright is a fundamentalist — go figure.
The bottom line is that IMHO churches engaging the educated and informed young people of today, especially in a North American context, cannot, cannot continue to keep silent or live in denial and claim to be exercising their missional responsibilities.
I love preparing Bible Studies. This “First John” series will publish study materials on the book of 1 John that I’m preparing for use by small groups. Feel free to use them under a Creative Commons attribution-share alike license.
Introduction and Background
Why study 1 John?
St. Augustine (354-430 AD), one of the greatest Christian thinkers in history, said this about 1 John:
This book is very sweet to every healthy Christian heart that savors the bread of God, and it should constantly be in the mind of God’s holy church. But I chose it more particularly because what it specially commends to us is love. The person who possesses the thing which he hears about in this epistle must rejoice when he hears it. His reading will be like oil to a flame. . . . For others, the epistle should be like flame set to firewood; if it was not already burning, the touch of the word may kindle it.[1]
What kind of text is 1 John, and who wrote it?
1 John is an “epistle,” which is simply a Greek word for “letter.” During New Testament times, the Apostles and other leaders wrote letters intended to instruct and encourage local groups of Christians. [2] Some of these letters were recognized by the early Church to contain authoritative “apostolic” teaching – teaching coming directly from the Apostles who were commissioned by Jesus. These authoritative letters are the “epistles” contained in the New Testament.[3]
The writer of 1 John does not identify himself, but the related letters of 2 and 3 John were written by a person who called himself “the elder.”[4] He most likely was the Apostle John, who was an eyewitness to the life of Jesus.[5]
What are the primary concerns of 1 John?
The New Testament epistles are not dry, abstract theological treatises. They were written to address particular problems faced by local churches. 1 John was probably written between 95 and 100 A.D. – about 60 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection – to churches in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) that were being confronted with false teaching about Jesus.
The false teachers likely were promoting ideas that later came to be called “Gnosticism.” The Gnostic teachers denied that Jesus is God. They taught that all matter is evil and that the physical world therefore was not directly created by God. Because they believed the physical world is evil, the Gnostics could not accept the claim that Jesus, a physical person, was God incarnate (in the flesh). Instead, they believed that God possessed the body of Jesus only for a brief time. The Gnostics claimed that they had learned special, secret knowledge from God that was superior to the life and teaching of Jesus.
These false teachers could easily unsettle early groups of Christians. With all of the resources and support available to us Western Christians today, it is difficult to imagine living in a time and place when most of the New Testament was not yet written, local Churches often met in homes and were small and scattered, the official religion was pagan, and the government opposed the Church. The early Christians could easily have become confused by Gnostic teachers who talked about Jesus but whose beliefs and lifestyles were opposed to authentic Christian faith. The author of 1 John wrote to provide clear instruction to these believers about authentic Christian faith and living, and to comfort and reassure Christians about their faith in Jesus as God incarnate.
How do the Concerns of 1 John Relate to Us Today?
As North American Christians living in the 21st Century, we have far more education, freedom, and support available to us than did the people to whom 1 John originally was addressed. Yet, we face many of the same problems. Our popular culture is fascinated with “alternative” explanations of Christianity, such as the “Da Vinci Code” book and movie. Many of these alternative explanations (including the Da Vinci Code) can be traced directly back to Gnosticism and other similar beliefs that deny Jesus is God.
Aside from these very extreme views, there are groups of Christians all over the world who agree that Jesus is God, but who differ in important matters of doctrine and practice. How can we assess whether something is really “Christian?” What are the most basic marks of someone who is a true follower of Jesus? How should we as followers of Jesus think and live? 1 John gives us guidance relating to these questions.
Digging Deeper
This section lists some resources for those who are interested in learning more about some of the issues touched on in the study. These resources are available from the study leader or on the Internet.
High-level discussion of the formation of the “canon” of scripture: Craig Allert, A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s Future) (Baker Academic 2007).
Detailed discussion of the authorship of 1 John: I. Howard Marshall, New International Commentary on the New Testament, The Epistles of John (Eerdmans 1978) (“NICOT Commentary”).
Culture and History of Asia Minor: Wikipedia entry for “Asia Minor,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolia (Note that Wikipedia can be a good source, but that it should be used with some caution. It is edited by users and is not always completely objective or accurate) and the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for “Asia Minor,” at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01782a.htm (Note that the Catholic Encyclopedia also can be a good source particularly for historical matters, but that it is written from a conservative Roman Catholic perspective. On some issues of doctrine and practice, we might offer a different perspective.)
Various theories about the false teaching addressed in 1 John, see NICOT Commentary, and Peter H. Davids, Douglas J. Moo, Robert W. Yarbrough, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2, & 3 John, Jude (Zondervan 2002).
Gnosticism: Wikipedia entry for “Gnosticism,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism and the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for “Gnosticism,” at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm.
Detailed study of how early Christian doctrine confronted the challenges of Gnosticism and other doctrinal and social questions: Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Univ. of Chicago Press 1975).
[1] Augustine, Ten Homilies on 1 John, Prologue (quoted in Oden, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. XI).
[2] The “Apostles” were some of the first followers of Jesus who were specially commissioned by Jesus to be the leaders and teachers of the early Church.
[3] Because these epistles were recognized as authoritative, they were included in the “canon” of scripture, and so are called “canonical” epistles.
[4] 2 John 1:1; 3 John 1:1.
[5] John the Apostle probably also wrote the Gospel of John and perhaps the book of Revelation.