Andrew,
Thank you for your careful and thoughtful comments. Because I’m jumping into this conversation mid-stream, and don’t know all the background behind your comments, it’s somewhat difficult for me to understand what you are saying. So let me try to understand before proceeding to my reponse: You want to develop a “method” for doing emerging theology. By “method” I take it you mean rules of engagement. Yet you don’t want your rules of engagement to predetermine the content (or outcome) of the theologizing itself, kind of like the constitutions of philosophical liberalism (Locke, Rawls et al). Let’s provide the platform on which to speak, but let’s not predetermine the outcome. So when I speak of a “divinely-conferred authority,” you are concerned about this pre-determining our outcome, which you have called a “pre-judgment.”
At the same time, I suspect this is not exactly what you want to say, for the same reasons that the (political) communitarians and feminists and race-theorists all critique the philosophical liberals like Rawls: you want to recognize that all theologizing is situated or contextualized, and that some supposed claim to a perspective-less, universal reading of the text is (i) modernistic, (ii) impossible/outdated, and (iii) potentially dangerous. Hence, you say you want “A theology that is strongly aware of, and responsive to, the locality in which these conversations take place.” In other words, there has to be some “pre-judgments,” namely, the pre-judgements afforded by our localized perspectives.
At this point, Andrew, I need you to jump in and clarify, because my first paragraph and my second paragraph contradict one another. In other words, why is speaking of a “divinely-conferred authority” a “pre-judgment,” while speaking of the situatedness of theologizing is not? In fact, isn’t every single point you make—e.g. the Lordship of Christ—a form of “pre-judgment”? It feels a little bit like you have a hidden set of “methodological rules” behind the 15 “methodological rules” that you posted. What are they?
And of course you have them. Everyone has them. You can’t do theological prolegomena (method) without certain presuppositions (what you called pre-judgments). The very act of opening your mouth to speak (or turning on your computer) assumes that reality is going to function in a certain predictable fashion. Those are pre-judgments.
Now when a person comes to do theological method, there is one of two pre-judgments that they can bring to the table with them: “there is a God who speaks” or “there is not a God who speaks.” No, this is not a “modernistic” dicotomy, this is Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Some people of course want to propose a third possibility: there is a God who speaks, but we human beings can only understand him partially, perversely, analogously, perspectively etc. I agree with all of that, but this still collapses into option one, because it gives us a God who speaks. Moreover, if you will grant that we begin with a God who speaks, then presumably you want to grant that his words have a divinely-conferred authority (I’m not going to be the one to tell him they don’t!).
This is significant because, as I assume you know, some thinkers today want to say that the authority of Scripture is “conferred to it by the Christian community.” Incidentally, this is why a philosophical materialist, if he or she was in a playful mood, could, with integrity, sign your point 1 (“A theology for a community that is in self-conscious continuity with the biblical people of God and the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world. “) and your point 5 (“A theology that at its heart is a reading of scripture.”). The materialist would only need to define the word “biblical” in point 1 and the word “Scripture” in point 5 as “one particular community’s story.” And they can do this because your “theological method” does not give them any reason not to, i.e. no God is authoritatively speaking on your list.
My original point was this: you can do this if you want to, but don’t call it “theology.” Call it “emerging philosophy” or even “emerging apologetics.” Either we have a God who authoritatively reveals himself or we don’t, regardless of whether or not our understanding of him is perspectival (of course it is!). Moreover, the throw away line “product of an older battle that I’m not sure we’re fighting any more” is not helpful. Are you saying that the question of whether not God has authoritatively spoken is meaningless? Have you told him that? Or are you saying that everyone now agrees that God does or doesn’t reveal himself? From what I can tell, humanity does not all agree on whether or not God has spoken. And I have to think that deciding whether or not he has authoritatively spoken will have a fairly significant impact on a person’s (or a community’s) life. But until they make that decision, they are not doing “theology.” They are doing something else.
Incidentally, Andrew, you have just finished reading my second official blog post ever. Yes, that means you also read my first one! And to be honest, I’m not sure how I presently feel about this medium for theological (or is it apologetic :-)) dialogue at this level. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Am I being a jerk or just passionate? Who can tell? Part of me wants to erase everything I just wrote and insist that we build a friendship before talking about such deep, precious, personal, meaningful, divine (?) things. Well, I won’t erase it. I’ll let this experiment (theological conversation with a stranger on a blog) continue, but I have my doubts and don’t know if I’ll be back—at least about these things. For what it’s worth, I’m Jonathan Leeman (people should stop hiding behind anonymity with their blog names; anonymity just can’t promote healthy conversation; just a guess on my part), I’m married to an absolutely wonderful woman named Shannon, and I have an I-can’t-believe-God-is-so-good-to-me five month old daughter named Emma. We live in Louisville, KY, but are moving to Washington, DC shortly. Wow, I feel like I’m just spilling my guts here.
So thanks for the space to post my thoughts and for hosting this conversation. May God use it to edify all those who participate.
Circular, yes, but not the same circle
Jonathan, this is powerful stuff! I have taken some time to respond to your challenges so I hope you are not going to disappear in a puff of diffidence!
What I said was: ‘Your phrase “divinely-conferred authority of Scripture” is precisely the sort of prejudgment that I think an emerging theology needs to avoid.’ I am not saying that an emerging theology imagines that it can avoid all prejudgments or make absolute and incontestable statements about what constitutes good theological method - that would be absurd. My point is that we need to choose our prejudgments carefully. Argumentation is always circular, always contingent, always arising out of pre-judgments. But arguments differ from each other; and the reason for sketching the contours of an emerging theology is primarily to describe (more than prescribe) how this particular circle of argumentation - with its distinctive emphases and biases - differs from other circles of argumentation, such as that loosely identified (and no doubt often caricatured) as modern evangelicalism.
The reason why some people might call Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction (it’s not really Aristotle’s!) a modernistic dichotomy is primarily that it is a way of questioning the value of such reasoning for areas of thought that seem too complex or ‘mysterious’ to reduce to elementary rules of logic. It is, if you like, a rhetorical strategy for resisting reductivism.
No, I disagree - or at least, I think this seriously oversimplifies things. I can agree that the creator God speaks - for example, through his prophets. But I disagree that this premise necessarily means that that the scriptures have a ‘divinely-conferred authority’, or that it is helpful to make that a dogmatic principle, for the following reasons among others:
i) What God speaks and what man writes (scriptures) are two rather different things, and I think it is unhelpful to confuse them. That is a rather theoretical distinction perhaps, but the danger with a high view of scripture is always that the record of God speaking and acting becomes more significant in the mind of the church than the fact of God speaking and acting.
ii) The presumption of divine authority tends to stop us reading honestly or with critical integrity. The danger is that the assumption of authority entails an implicit judgment about content - it protects certain readings and disqualifies others. At the moment this is more likely to hinder than help the renewal of the theological mind. Emerging theology wants to recover the complexity and diversity of scripture as a literary product in intrinsic relation to history in order to let it speak again to our imaginations and give new shape to the people of God for the post-Christendom era. Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction doesn’t get us very far down that road.
iii) The presumption of divine authority also makes it difficult to respect the historical contingency and limitations of scripture. We inevitably suppose that because scripture has divine authority, what it says must be universally applicable. To my mind, it (unintentionally perhaps) reinforces an ahistorical, mythical and often allegorizing mode of reading scripture that weakens its public and intellectual relevance and mis-shapes the church. I would suggest that an emerging theology is looking to reformulate the whole notion of ‘authority’ - principally, I think, in narrative terms (eg. NT Wright’s five act hermeneutic).
This leads to the next point…
Actually, I think it would be interesting to agree with the materialist here. I think we would gain a lot by recognizing that the biblical story is only the story that one community tells among all the other community-stories out there. I might include in my description / prescription of an emerging theology the idea of an incipient or potential tribalism. But I would still insist that this is a matter of theology, not anthropology: it is about our belief in a creator God who calls a people for his own possession amidst the various other story-telling communities, societies, networks, associations, cultures, etc., in the world.
No, I just don’t think it’s the most important question confronting us at the moment. I am inclined to think that the modern evangelical church’s obsession with the question of the authority of scripture reflects the fact that it has lost interest in and confidence in the content of scripture.
RE: circular...
Andrew,
Thank you for your patient and careful response. With each engagment, you helpfully elucidate the issues at stake.
I am grateful for your concern that we not flatten the complex and diverse literary aspects of Scripture. Pointing to the humanness of the text serves good exegesis. Allegorization is distracting at best, misleading at worst. And exegetes need to take care not to postulate absolutes where a right interpretation of the text does not warrant such an absolute.
Therefore, we should take care to be sensitive to the particularities of genre. And we respect the textual, ephochal, and canonical horizons of any given passage, not smothering one at the expense of the other. This includes understanding Scripture as dramatic narrative, among other things. We should not, however, separate the authority of God’s word from the authority of the one who speaks.
At the same time, you present a number of critiques that feel a little bit like straw men and/or false dicotomies:
(1) “the danger with a high view of scripture is always that the record of God speaking and acting becomes more significant in the mind of the church than the fact of God speaking and acting.” Why make this dicotomy? Scripture agrees with your concern, but not your solution! That’s why the biblical authors repeatedly tells us to hear and obey, rather than to simply hear but not do, like Pharisees or hypocrites. It would seem strange for any of the biblical authors to then turn around and say, “Because I want you to hear and obey, let me encourage you not to view these words as bearing God’s authority.”
(2) “The presumption of divine authority tends to stop us reading honestly or with critical integrity.” Whether or not that’s a real tendency—who are you talking about?—it’s not a logical corrolary.
(3) “The danger is that the assumption of authority entails an implicit judgment about content - it protects certain readings and disqualifies others.” Yes! I should think that’s what the Bible intends. God speaks, and he wants his people to listen. I cannot think of a passage in Scripture that suggests otherwise. The way you have construed your argument sounds as if you mean to take away Scripture’s authority so that people can say it means whatever they want it to mean. Wouldn’t it be better to say that Scripture is authoritative, even if we disagree on its interpretation. Now, many people have abused their authority and their own interpretations. But that’s not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You see, I actually think that, if indeed God has given us an authoritative word, we can trust that submitting to it entirely will prove to stimulate our imaginations far beyond any free-wheel theologizing we can do on our own. Doesn’t the submission of Christ to the words of the Father suggest as much?
(4) “At the moment this is more likely to hinder than help the renewal of the theological mind.” I do think God intends for us to renew our minds, but why would you assume that undermining the authority of Scripture is how he intends for us to do it (see Rom 12). From a biblical standpoint, that’s a strange remedy for renewal. Think of Deuteronomy. Think of the prophets. Think of Christ’s upper room discourse in John. Think of the epistles. Throughout Scripture, we are called to renew our minds by learning to think Scripture—learning to think God’s thoughts after him. This is what transforms our minds from the worldly systems that are foolishness to God. He calls us to be conformed to his word, doesn’t he? Not to make artificial, academic distinctions between what he says and what humans write? Can you imagine how radical a people would be who were truly conformed to the word of God? The Israelites couldn’t, b/c they didn’t have the Spirit. But new covenent believers? Gradually? Stumblingly?
(5) “I am inclined to think that the modern evangelical church’s obsession with the question of the authority of scripture reflects the fact that it has lost interest in and confidence in the content of scripture.” Where, specifically, do you see this happening. I cannot imagine what this looks like. Surely, those who prize Scripture’s authority sometimes misunderstand or misconstrue the content of Scripture. But to the best of their abilities they are attempting to bow to it. But if you abandon it’s authority, why care about its content? In short, the two are inseparably linked. You can’t take them apart. Your boss sends you a letter; you care about the content because he’s your boss. Your wife sends you a letter; you care about its content because of who she is that speaks.
With each of these statements, it seems that you say more about humans (and the fact that they don’t make very reliable interpreters) than you say anything about Scripture itself. And I don’t think it’s sufficient to fall back on the claim, “I’m only saying these are ‘tendencies’ of a high view of Scripture.” Presumably, we could take each one of these five critiques an observe instances where people with a low view of Scripture have displayed the same tendencies. Don’t human beings in general—from C. Henry to R. Bultmann—typically privilege their own readings of the biblical text? Again, I don’t believe this says anything about the text itself.
It does say, as I think we agree, that we need a more careful hermenteutic. I know Wright, whom you’ve point to, attempts to do this, as have other writers. (Although, have you seen Carson’s review of Wright’s method?). I guess I would point to Michael Horton’s Covenant and Eschatalogy or the work of Kevin Vanhoozer (I haven’t read his most recent volume) as providing methods which avoid the problems you righly point out.
Ultimately, however, it looks to me like we do have significantly different views of what the Bible is. Is that your reading? You write, “What God speaks and what man writes (scriptures) are two rather different things, and I think it is unhelpful to confuse them.” Whether you are getting that from Barth, or Frei, or wherever, I would not say that. As soon as you make that distinction, I believe you give up any reason for privileging the Bible over any other book. I’m sure you’ve heard these argument before. I’m saying nothing terribly original. Yet why should I read the Bible and care a wit about it’s content if it’s not “God speaking,” albeit through a meaningful and strong conception of human instrumentality and personality? Yes, Scripture does say we can have a both/and here.
Is the Bible our community’s story? Sure, but I’m presently staking my livelihood and my eternity, as well as the livelihoods of my wife and daughter, on the fact that the story corresponds to reality “out there.” I’m staking all the time I spend with other people according to the various ministries God has given on the fact that Jesus, the God-man, really did get up from the grave. Are we not fools if he didn’t? The question of whether or not God actually and authoritatively said Jesus rose from the grave seems pretty meaningful to me.
Thoughts? (Forgive my length.)
A bit of a rant...
Jonathan, you asked where I see the evangelical church’s loss of interest and confidence in the content of scripture happening. I see it in glib, shallow sermons. I see it the persistent habit of proof-texting without regard for argumentative or narrative context. I see it in the reliance on simplistic dogmatic summaries and formulae. I see it in the bored mouthing of platitudes in Bible studies. I see it in the lack of interest in the historical context of scripture, in contemporary writings such as those of Josephus. I see it in naive apologetic arguments. I see it in the isolationist tendencies of the evangelical mind. I see it in the facile sentimental language of much evangelical-charismatic worship. I see it in the dilemma of pastors who can’t preach what they really think. I see it in the crass commercialization of faith. I see it in the distrust of critical thinking. I see it in the large numbers of people who are leaving evangelicalism because they can no longer endure the cognitive dissonance ringing in their heads. And so on…
Our doctrine of biblical authority has kept us from thinking, kept us from struggling, kept us from fighting to make sense of what it means to tell this extraordinary and very strange story in the world. We have grown fat and lazy because we have been told, ‘Don’t worry it’s all true, it’s all God’s word. Everyone else is simply wrong. Just believe what it says and everything will be fine.’ I think we need to make scripture prove itself again - make it justify itself. That won’t happen as long as we cling to our doctrine of biblical authority. We’re like a little boy who’s put his toy boat in the water but won’t let go of it in case it sinks.
This may not mean much to you, but I think it reflects how a lot of people feel, how they see things. The old paradigm simply does not work for them anymore, it doesn’t convince, they can’t hold it with integrity, they are fed up with pretending. So (if they haven’t given up altogether) they are struggling to renew their understanding of scripture - and as far as I’m concerned, it is a serious undertaking. It is not ‘free-wheel theologizing’, as you put it - at least, it shouldn’t be. A significant and growing part of the church in the West feels that the mind of faith - I mean biblical faith - needs to go through a process of dying and rebirth for the sake of the meaningfulness of scripture.
For example, I don’t think your letter metaphor, which I would consider characteristic of the modern evangelical approach at least at a popular level, does justice to scripture or to the challenge of reading it. First, the boss didn’t ‘write’ the letter. His workers recorded his instructions at an operational level, along with a lot of other information, and then passed that on to succeeding generations of employees. Secondly, the letter was written a long time ago for the benefit of a completely different group of employees under very different circumstances. Thirdly, the interpretation of that letter today is controlled, on the one hand, by tradition and, on the other, by a layer of intermediate management and lawyers - and postmodernism has taught me to distrust the spin that they tend to put on things. Having read the letter through a couple of times myself, I’m not entirely sure they’ve got it right. And having got to that point, I get very suspicious when they start telling me that the letter is authoritative. Maybe, but…
Incidentally, I once suggested a ‘conviction-based model of biblical authority’. I still, personally, prefer this more pragmatic approach, in which ‘authority’ arises as an emergent and experiential quality rather than as an a priori postulate. It comes with understanding. It doesn’t precede it.