This official position, I can state at the outset, can be summarized as follows: The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, they contain all things necessary to salvation, and they are the rule and ultimate standard of faith.(3)Simply put, Scripture is the primary and fundamental authority for Anglicans. This claim is derived from and documented in seven official sources for Anglicanism: the Ordination Oath, the Tradition of Scripture at Ordination, the Catechism, the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral, the 39 articles, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and the eucharistic Lectionary.(4) The primacy of Scriptures is at the very heart of Anglicanism.
In a sense of course, the classical catholic creeds, Apostles' and Nicene, are themselves also official statements that establish for the Episcopal Church the particular way in which scripture is authoritatively interpreted on major points of doctrine.(5)In sum, for Anglicans, Scripture is the critical norm of faith and it is to be interpreted theologically, in light of the Creeds with Christ at the center. This Anglican perspective will provide the foundation for the ideas of this essay.
By such liturgical requirements, then, we are here asserting that scripture is authoritatively interpreted by us in the way in which we receive the doctrinal formulations of the creeds that we use.(6)
Here, for the Sundays throughout the year, the Old Testament readings are chosen to match the Gospel readings Christologically, either by anticipation or by type, so that the unity of the Old and New Testaments is set forth on a basis of salvation history with Christ at the center, not on some principle of historical criticism or of linear chronology as it is often taught in seminaries. . . . Just as with the requirement for saying the creeds, therefore, scripture is authoritatively interpreted in the Episcopal church by the Christological principle upon which it is to be publicly read in the principal act of Christian worship on every Lord's Day and other major feasts (BCP, p. 13).(7)
Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff describes participation in more contemporary terms: the Persons of the Trinity "co exist simultaneously and the Three are co eternal from the beginning." The unity of the Three is found in their communion; and that communion is one of "permanent interpenetration, the eternal co relatedness, the self surrender of each Person to the others" such that "each Person contains the other two, each one penetrates the others and is penetrated by them, one lives in the other, and vice versa.(10)As a result, Wondra sees the inner triune life as a "mutual participation," a "divine mutuality," a "deepened communion," "self surrender," and a relatedness that entails "both intimate connection and individual distinction, to which diversity or difference is inherent."(11)
Seeing therefore the Father is of none, the Son is of the Father and the Spirit is of both, they are by these their several properties really distinguishable each from other. For the substance of God with this property to be of none doth make the Person of the Father; the very selfsame substance in number with this property to be of the Father maketh the Person of the Son; the same substance having added unto the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the Person of the Holy Ghost. So that in every Person there is implied both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two. V,li,1.Since God's inner triune relations differ, this implies that God's actions as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit differ as well. In other words, they are not mutual. For example, creation by the Father and the incarnation of the Son are not mutually related. For Hooker, the Incarnation restores a corrupted creation, the creation does not restore a corrupted Incarnation. According to Wondra, however, all relations are mutual. Therefore, the Father is of the Son and the Son is of the Father. Outside God, this would imply that Incarnation restores creation and creation restores Incarnation. Of course, Wondra never overtly says this. But, as I will now show, this vision of equal and mutual relations pervades the whole of her thought and entails a pagan conception of the divine.
To the extent that relations among creatures fail or refuse to embody and nurture participation, they depart from their divine ground, and are therefore sinful.(13)Further, since all realities must reflect mutual relations, it follows that all sources of truth or authority are mutual as well. Therefore, the "truth" of Scripture is mutually related to the "truth" of experience. Each mutually conditions the other, both are equally authoritative. One element of experience is particularly relevant, the struggle for liberation. The struggle for liberation on the part of "racial and ethnic minority groups, women of all races and classes, gays and lesbians, and the earth itself"(16) approximates the eschatological goal of complete and final co relatedness. Both Scripture and experience, however, are subject to a higher norm, namely the degree to which both reflect the quest for mutual participation.
Human sin is the sundering of those just and mutual relations that reflect the internal life of the Trinity.(14)
To put it another way: present struggles for liberation have authority precisely because they activity seek to move into a future where the connection between creation and existence and between existence and redemption is restored and renewed; in this longed for future, the possibility of mutual participation throughout creation and with the divine is increasingly approximated.(15)
The God who is creator and redeemer is the source of the norm against which human experience is evaluated. This same God also constitutes the norm against which other authorities including the scriptures are evaluated. Thus, the scriptures have authority in that they may empower and nurture liberation, that is, in that they may contribute to participation in a full humanity.(17)Underlying Scripture's mutual relations with other forms of revelation is an even deeper mutuality. In fact, to the degree that life is true to its divine ground, all of reality is mutual. It is composed of diverse centers of truth and life with each possessing their own integrity and each mutually related to the others. In other words, there is no specific incarnation of truth, authority, or revelation as in the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation. Rather, life, truth, reality, authority, revelation, are all plural, and ideally, mutual. There is not, for example, one Lord, for that would deny mutuality between that Lord and other persons or powers. Here are a few of a number of quotations.
This view of the authority of the scriptures is part of an ongoing process of recovering the scriptures from their role in establishing, justifying, and perpetuating various systems of domination. Each form of liberation theology points to biblical texts that have been and continue to be used as texts of domination and terror. In each case, what is at issue is not only how the scriptures are used or interpreted; also significant are the texts of the scriptures themselves.(18)
Consequently, the approach of liberation theologies to the authority and interpretation of the scriptures has three central tasks: critiqueing scripture's patriarchal aspects; recovering scripture's transformative potential; and incorporating contemporary experience into interpretive processes.(19)
Our understanding of truth and its discernment and the way it shapes action must reflect our understanding of experience including experience of truth as plural, that is, as diverse but connected.(20)From this it follows that biblical interpretation is a process in which Scripture is but one foci in an ongoing struggle for liberation, a struggle that integrates all other foci into the quest for a liberated life. This process is best implemented by those committed to liberation, to openness to the multiple foci, to rigorous dialogue that focuses the multiple foci into a course of action, and to actions that seek the liberation of the oppressed and the formation of a liberated humanity. Wondra ends her essay with these words,
The ultimate source of authority is a God who is good and just and graciously self giving. The dispersal of authority among persons, structures, and modes of reflection and discourse works to maintain the singularity of the ultimate authority of the divine.(21)
Nevertheless, it should be noted that in their reconstructive approaches liberation theologies do not grant normative character to the scriptures alone. Divine activity and revelation are ongoing, and may be encountered in nonbiblical contexts with a force equivalent to that claimed for scriptural times. The multiple loci of revelation including scripture are deemed authoritative precisely because they are illuminated by and illustrate each other.(22)
This consensus is a consensus fidelium, for it arises in a dialogical community whose fidelity is not, primarily, to a set of doctrinal teachings, but to participation in the ongoing transformative action of God in concrete history.(23)There can be no doubt that the picture of God behind this hermeneutic is pagan. It envisions a single high god with mutual internal relations whose revelation is dispersed through multiple foci, where "foci" means a diversity of powers and forces. Paganism is the belief that the multiple forces of creation are divine and therefore centers of authority and truth. Wondra will not say, of course, that the multiple centers of truth and life are divine, but she gives them divine status by making them sources of life and truth. Further, for paganism, as well as Wondra, these forces are seen both as life enhancing and conflictive.(24) At the same time, Wondra paints a Christian veneer on her pagan vision by claiming that the multiple conflictive forces can be brought together in mutual participation and self surrender.
One evidence of this is the fact that from beginning to end these writings [the Scriptures] build on, comment on, revise, criticize, and generally echo one another. Chronicles redoes Kings. Paul presents a critical rereading of the Abraham epic, in the interests of his Gentile mission, and in this he follows the examples of Isaiah and Ezekiel, both of whom had recalled the story of Abraham, though to quite inconsistent ends. The gospels of Matthew and Luke in effect comment on Mark and set about the business of improving it. All these writings are part of an ongoing conversation, then, a conversation spanning many generations, in which new circumstances compel thoughtful folk every and again to rehearse and reinterpret its earlier stages.(30)This conversation has a theme, the relation of the community to God. As the community reads Scripture, the community is brought into the conversation with God and with those who, both past and present, have known God. Further, the conversation goes somewhere. It culminates in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the key to the conversation, the key to understanding the Old Testament as well as the central revelation of the New.
Furthermore, the conversation it [Scripture] reflects has a direction and an issue: it goes somewhere, or better, arrives somewhere. And the "where" that it attains is the good news embodied in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as attested in the four 'gospels," the letters treasured by the "schools" of Paul and John, and other such writings."(31)Having discussed what the Scriptures are, a library of conversations with and about God, and recognized that Christ is central to the biblical revelation, Harris now describes how the Scriptures function. To do so, he needs to set forth some basic ideas concerning language.
But they [the writers of the New Testament] also judged that the Old Testament reflected a people's engagement with the very same God who had raised Jesus Christ from the dead; and therefore they look to it to illumine their experience of Christ, even as they took Christ to be the key to an understanding of it.(32)
"Symbol," as Rahner understood it, means rather a sign that is constituted by an act of self expression: that is to say, a sign through which an agent is present, or which is an agent's "putting" of itself. It bodies the agent forth (Rahner sees the human body as, in this sense, the self's symbol) and is the mode of its presence, its accessibility. There is, then, a certain identity between the symbol and the reality it conveys: to deal with the one is to deal with the other. On the other hand, there is a real difference between them: the symbol is a presence of something that also exceeds and escapes it. And the fact that there is a difference of this sort means that the symbol does not convey its reality automatically. One can get it wrong.(33)Norris' next step is to say that Jesus Christ is God's body, the symbol by which God becomes present. By hearing his words and seeing his visible deeds, those around Christ could know him and God as well. Further, the Scriptures, with their witness to Jesus Christ, give access to Jesus Christ who in turn joins the reader to the conversation with and about God. In that sense, the Scriptures are symbolic. They make Christ present. They are, however, a secondary symbol, giving access to the primary symbol which is Jesus Christ.
The incarnation, viewed from this angle, is a divine act of symbolization. ... When, therefore, the church describes the scriptures as "Word of God," this means that they too the human writings that constitute church's official library are a symbol in this sense. It must be clear, however, that they, like the sacraments or the individual oracles they contain, are symbols of the second order; symbols that give access to the primary symbol of Christian faith, Christ. It is, then, not alongside Christ but as bodying Christ forth that these other symbols are recognized and encountered as such."(34)This brings Norris to his third question, the way in which the burden of Scripture is conveyed and received. The answer to that is interpretation. By this Norris does not mean that one reads the text and determines an eternal fixed meaning. Rather, interpretation is a process in which the visible body of the text, the second symbol which bodies forth Christ, becomes the medium by which the church converses with and about God and with one another. In this context, the Scriptures are canonical, "normative and constitutional," in the sense that they introduce the church to the conversation. They define how the conversation must begin. As this conversation takes place, the meaning of words change in relation to God and to those who speak. This is true of human conversation. As I get to know someone, what they initially said to me takes on new meanings and these meanings will be revised by subsequent conversations and events. Therefore, the exact lexical meaning of the biblical words do not specify a fixed meaning, but bring one into the process of knowing God ever more deeply. Further, as I speak with someone, I may hear their words, see their actions, but fail to know the person. Or to put it another way, the words we use do not automatically convey who were are as persons, but they do make it possible. The same is true with God.
Understood in this way, the interpretation of the scriptures is a process that never concludes. The conversation that they record is canonical normative and constitutional in the sense that it is by joining this conversation that the Christian community enters into the mystery of humanity in Christ the mystery that the scriptures body forth as symbol.(35)Further, since the biblical writers are revealing God as known in Jesus Christ, they do not merely tell us facts, Jesus' precise words and deeds as if they had video cameras. Rather, they render Jesus Christ through the facts, sometimes varying the facts to make Christ person more visible. For example, the synoptics and John differ as to whether Jesus died on Passover or the day before. John sees Jesus dying on the day itself, so that the slaughter of the Passover lambs occurred as Christ died on the cross. This reveals the person of Christ as a Passover lamb. The degree of variation from the "facts" is hard to determine, but the intent is not. Scripture renders God with us in Christ, not simply facts about God.
In the second place, if "what is revealed" is God in Christ or God with us, it is absurd to suggest that there can be a simple identity between that revelation and the lexical meaning of any particular set of words. The mystery of God cannot be reduced to human words; it can only be rendered accessible through them, that is, conveyed symbolically by them.(36)
The empirical phenomena do not require such interpretation; they are merely open to it. And what this means is that the symbol is never simply identical with what it conveys: the Word of God is more than the Scriptures.(37)
The truth is, though, that narratives are interpretations: they show what something means (as distinct from telling what it means) by the way in which they set the story out. The peculiarity of the gospels from a contemporary point of view is that their normal way of explaining or interpreting is to retell or to vary a story. To their authors or editors, this meant that the truth, or some aspect of it, was being more fully or more pointedly conveyed. To us, on the contrary, it suggests that consistency, and with it accuracy, are being violated.(38)Further, as Norris sees it, the conversation in Scripture continues beyond Scripture since life is ever throwing up new circumstances that require a further conversation with God and one another. In other words, Scripture does not speak in a vacuum because we bring to Scripture new conditions and circumstances not originally envisioned by the biblical writers. For this reason, the Scriptures cannot be seen as a databank of faith and morals, because new circumstances render the original faith and morals of the biblical writers obsolete. Rather, Scriptures begin the conversation, and just as the biblical writers updated the prior conversations, so contemporary readers of Scripture must update Scriptures in light of new circumstances. In fact, it could be said that the Scriptures update themselves. These ideas are critical to understanding Norris, and thereby merit several quotations.
Understood in this way, the interpretation of the scriptures is a process that never concludes. The conversation that they record is canonical normative and constitutional in the sense that it is by joining this conversation that the Christian community enters into the mystery of humanity in Christ the mystery that the scriptures body forth as symbol. Nevertheless, the process of interpretation continues the conversation, and what transpires in this continuation is relevant and indeed necessary to any grasp of the scriptures' burden. The Bible does not speak in a vacuum.(39)Norris then gives several examples of how the Church has updated Scriptures. Doctrinally, Athanasius read Scripture in a new way in order to defeat Arius. Augustine came to a fresh appreciation of Paul. Morally, the church has usually accepted the "high" moralities of the culture in which it lives and read scripture to conform to those norms. The early church, for example, accepted patriarchy and slavery yet affirmed monogamy and contempt for possessions. The church has "treasured" the Ten Commandments, but shown scant respect for the Sabbath commandment and has adopted the use of pictures and statues. Further, the church has not followed the teaching of scripture on such matters as usuary, allowing disputes to be adjudicated by secular courts, requiring bishops to be once married householders, rights of the first born, and divine injunctions that encouraged genocide. All these are examples of the many ways in which the church has entered into the mind of Christ and interpreted Scripture in new and fresh ways as demanded by new circumstances.
The scriptures are not a theological, moral, or even historical databank, but a medium of communication between two parties.(40)
The "mind" with which Christians read the scriptures is inevitable formed by the customs and prepossessions of their culture; conversations do take new turns, and refection on the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole is bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular moments in it or lead, in certain circumstances, to fresh appreciation of their relevance. The point is, though, that it is precisely the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole that must in the end govern the Christian moral reflection.(41)
It is perhaps a misfortune that the scriptures deliver the truth with which they seek to involve us only through our own participation in an ongoing process of interpretation. Certainly it is the case that many folk would prefer to treat them as a work of reference in which one can "look up" the answer to any and every question. The trouble is, though, that works of reference, quite apart from the fact that they too, can be misunderstood, tend to get out of date and to need revision. Indeed it is precisely the habit of reading the scriptures in this manner that makes them look out of date.(42)
Fortunately, though, the scriptures do not provide a "system" either of doctrine or of morals. They are a medium of communication, and what they communicate is "God with us" in Christ. Accordingly, the process of interpreting them has its goal the church's entrance into "the mind of Christ" that is, a transformation of the way in which Christians see themselves and their world. It is out of the perceptions thus engendered that systems of morals and of doctrine arise. Read in this way the scriptures update themselves as they speak their message in every changing contexts. The wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present, in their (often conflicted) dialogue with each other, become focusing devices through which the lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew; and to this process the "distancing" work of the critic makes an essential contribution.(43)
Furthermore, for orthodoxy, God is both triune and One. This implies that Scripture is to be read as the revelation of the one God, a unified biblical revelation. Yet, since God is three, there is diversity within a overall unity, beginning with creation in Genesis and ending in with the book of Revelation. From the very beginning, as in Irenaeus, the church has insisted that Scripture is a single narrative because its author is One. Norris doesn't read Scripture that way. He reads Scripture as a library with each element of the library being the expression of the divine under diverse circumstances. He does this because he wants circumstances to determine the content of revelation. That is why he views Scripture as a library created by circumstances rather than a single play with three acts. This allows him to elevate circumstances to a position of hermeneutical prominence, allowing him to "reread," "ignore," "update," and to question the "permanent value" of Scripture.
In regard to Incarnation, Norris actually makes some orthodox statements. For example, he states that Jesus Christ is "God's body." This is orthodoxy, a consequence of the communicatio idiomatum.
He does not, however, follow that idea to its obvious conclusion. Since Jesus Christ was a specific individual, born of Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, he is the only one who is God's body. This implies that the revelation in Jesus Christ is the decisive, definitive, sufficient revelation until the return of Christ. If, as Norris implies, the church can continuously update Scripture just as Christ updated the Scripture before Christ, this implies that the Church has as much authority to revise prior truth as Christ did. This would imply that the Church is "God's body" just as much as Christ himself. Of course, Norris will not say that the Church is God's body. His open ended hermeneutic, however, implies that very thing, and this exists in opposition to his statement that Christ is God's body.
On the other hand, his treatment of Scripture as bodying forth the incarnation, his discussion of revelation as being bodily, personhood as revealed by words and deeds, interpretation as a process in which language becomes dynamically interactive leading to deeper meanings, were all quite illuminating. He could, however, and this would strengthen his treatment, place this incipient Christology in a trinitarian perspective. God the Father is revealed in the bodily words and deeds of the Son made real as a dynamic process through the interactive work of the Spirit. That would significantly enhance his treatment.
I am now going to give a series of short quotations from Norris, each describing how bodily symbols, words, and the biblical conversation reveal God. It needs to be kept in mind that each statement about symbols, words, and conversations apply to Christ since he is, for Norris, the principal bodily symbol or word of the scriptural conversation. Then in the paragraph following these quotations, I will apply each quotation to Jesus Christ. This will show that his understanding of bodily symbol as applied to Christ undermines the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. Here are some of the relevant quotations on how Norris understands symbol and language, and therefore, how he understands Christ who is the primary bodily symbol for God.
There is, then, a certain identity between the symbol and the reality it conveys: to deal with the one is to deal with the other. On the other hand, there is a real difference between them: the symbol is a presence of something that also exceeds and escapes it.(45)If the foregoing be true of bodily symbols, this implies it is true of the primary bodily symbol, the person of Jesus Christ. We have the following: A bodily symbol is "never simply identical with what it conveys" because the thing symbolized "escapes and exceeds" it. This implies that God is "never simply identical" with what Christ conveys so that God "escapes" what was given in Jesus Christ. Further, since bodily symbols only intimate and intend, God as given in the biblical witness to Jesus Christ can only be "intimated and intended." This implies that one doesn't really know God in Christ since Christ as bodily symbol only intimates and intends. Nor can the mystery of God "be reduced to human words," with the implication that the "human words" of Jesus do not reveal the mystery of God. Even more, new circumstances are "bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular [biblical] moments," and logically, that would include the moment of the Incarnation. In other words, the Incarnation may well have no "permanent value." Since Jesus Christ as known in Scripture has no permanent value, he becomes but one moment in a developmental revelation, a revelation that reveals the "mind of Christ" made ever new in fresh circumstances. When the new circumstances occur, the "wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present" enter into dialogue with one another, so that the "lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew." This implies that the "Word of God" is not definitively revealed in Jesus Christ as known in Scripture since both Scripture and Jesus Christ belong to the "wisdom of the past." Instead, past revelation and the new circumstances produce a new revelation of the "mind of Christ, the "lineaments of the Word of God." As a result, the "Word of God is more than the Scriptures."
That conclusion [reached when interpretation comes to an end] does not consist simply in the historical knowledge I have acquired about the symbol, but in my apperception, acknowledgement, and appropriation, through participation in the conversation, of the reality the symbol intends and intimates.(46)
The mystery of God cannot be reduced to human words; it can only be rendered accessible through them, that is, conveyed symbolically by them.(47)
. . . reflection on the meaning of the scriptures' conversation taken as a whole is bound to call into question, from time to time, the permanent value of particular moments in it . . .(48)
. . . the process of interpreting them [Scriptures] has its goal the church's entrance into "the mind of Christ" that is, a transformation of the way in which Christians see themselves and their world. . . . The wisdom of the past and the puzzles of the present, in their (often conflicted) dialogue with each other, become focusing devices through which the lineaments of the Word of God can be discerned anew . . .(49)
And what this means is that the symbol is never simply identical with what it conveys: the Word of God is more than the Scriptures.(50)
The first two sections of this paper are introductory. The first, "The Words", using Sartre's autobiography by that name, seeks to establish the importance of an ambience of words for mediating a culture and affirming the selves shaped by the culture. The second, "The Scriptures of the World", aims to show that human beings regularly surround themselves with sacred words, the "sacrament" of the divine. The transcendent Word addresses human beings in all times and in all places, giving them the capacity to respond in words. They becomes selves in the world.(54)According to Price, all revelations of the Word in creation, in other religions, in the Hebrew Prophets, and in Jesus Christ are examples of the same general phenomena, God the Word becoming known in various places and times. As a consequence, the revelation in Jesus Christ is like all other revelations. It differs from them only in degree. Of all of them, it is the "most perfect," while the others "more or less faithfully expressed the meaning of the Word." Given that Price believes that the revelation in Jesus Christ differs only in degree, but not in kind, from other revelations, he is willing to grant other revelations significant weight in discerning the Word of God for our time. This will become more apparent in what follows.Smith's provocative point is that the one God of all the world seems to make the presence and power of God available to human beings at all times and in all places through words. One might press beyond what Professor Smith indicated in his address, though not beyond the tenor of his thought, to speculate that human beings are called into their humanity by a transcendent Word which addresses them and gives them the capacity to respond to that address in their own words. Christians are clearly of the opinion that God the Word spoke to chosen prophets in Israel and in the church through words which the prophets were able to "hear" and express to the communities whose servants they were.(55)
The Word is God in relation to finite creation. God's "second way of being God" is God with a capacity for relationship with creatures. If this understanding of God the Word is accepted, it is not very far distant to claim that God the Word has sought entrance into the worded minds of his human creatures from the beginning. ... Some of God's human creatures in every place, presumably aided by the grace of God's Spirit, responded to the Word and uttered words. These utterances more or less faithfully expressed the meaning of the Word. In the fullness of time, after a long and stormy period of preparation through the life of the sometimes obedient and usually disobedient nation of Israel, Mary, by the aid of the same Spirit, responded to the Word and became the bearer of the Incarnate Son, "born of a woman, born under the Law." Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, is God's Word most perfectly translated into the terms human beings can best understand the form of a human life.(56)
Only in Jesus of Nazareth is there a complete, unequivocal (hypostatic) union, between the divine and something finite. The Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead.(57)Furthermore, the Scriptures are inspired. God inspired the writers who wrote Scripture, and by the same Holy Spirit, God inspires the Church today as it reads Scripture. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit the Scriptures are a dead book. But God chooses to speak through Scripture, and when he does, the Scriptures come alive, bringing life to the Church.
The Incarnate Word of God is identified as God's normative communication with the world. In Jesus alone do the divine and human appear in complete hypostatic union. Jesus is therefore the Word of God absolutely. The Bible is the Word of God relatively. Yet the only vehicle possessed by the church for knowing the Incarnate Word is the written Word of the Bible.(58)
Jesus, in his living, his teaching, his acting (his life affirming miracles), his passion, his dying, but supremely in his risen life, showed himself to come from God, out of Being Itself. Hence within the Christian community God in Christ is acknowledged as having ultimate authority. The books of our sacred scripture are deemed to have relative authority because their words bring us into communion with the life enhancing, saving power of God.(59)
Human words, no matter how eloquent, cannot of themselves mediate God's self to us. Only God can do that. The traditional language for expressing the way that words of scripture, written by human beings, mediate the reality of God is to say that the writers were inspired by God to write them.(60)As the Church interprets Scripture under the inspiration of the Spirit, it enters into a dialectical relationship with Scripture. Neither Church nor Scripture is above the other since each dialectically informs the other. This has been true from the beginning. The apostolic Church was formed by the preaching of the apostles, and that preaching was informed by the historical conditions which held in the Church where the gospel was preached. As a result, when the gospels were written down, they reflected conditions in the early church as much as they reflected the life of Christ.
"We call the Scripture the Word of God," declares the Catechism, "because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible: (emphasis added).(61)
On the one hand, the writers of the sacred books are declared to be inspired objectively by the action of the holy Spirit upon them; on the other hand, this judgment is made subjectively by hearers and readers of the biblical words by virtue of what Calvin called the internal testimony of the spirit.(62)
The inspired character of the biblical books is recognized within the Spirit filled community which continues to be shaped by them recognized by individual Christians and proclaimed by the church. It takes the work of the Spirit to perceive a work of the Spirit.(63)
We conclude that the relationship between the list of canonical books and the church is dialectical. The canon grew as the church grew. The canon told the church what the church was; the church preserved the canon.(64)At this point, we have the following: The revelation of the Word in Jesus Christ differs in degree but not in kind from the revelation of God the Word found in other times and places. Secondly, only in Jesus, and not in Scripture, is God the Word perfectly joined to a finite reality. Therefore, Scripture has relative, but not absolute, authority. Thirdly, Church and Scripture are dialectically related, each formed by Word and Spirit. Therefore, biblical interpretation is a dialectical relationship between Church and Scripture, leading to revisions, reforms, and changes in how the Church interprets Scripture.
It [the community of faith] lives in the world, and is shaped not only by the Word of God as contained in the scriptures, but also (since the church does not live in a vacuum) by historical and cultural forces, all of which in some way owe their origin and existence to the Creator of all things, but which at any given time will be partially obedient to the creative Word.(65)
But because the Christian community has been granted the gift of the Spirit the gift of the Spirit of Christ which is love it is able to love the Word, to open itself before the Word, therefore, in this continual dialectic, to submit itself to the words of the scripture, to be grasped afresh by the Word which speaks through the words, and so to be transformed.(66)
In this intense interaction between the Word of God and the hearers and readers of scripture in the believing community, the individual members are grasped by the words and the Word. In the course of time, therefore, accepted interpretations of scripture change as the common grasp of the Word changes.(67)
Modern readers of the New Testament bring to it a new initial understanding of the Word, which revises and reforms the older interpretation of the words.(68)
Two conclusions may be drawn from these considerations. The first is that the meaning of Scripture cannot be discerned once for all from the literal sense of the text, although the process of discernment always must begin with the literal sense. The second is that on reflection, the process of discernment is found to be throughout the work of the Holy Spirit, in the world, in the text, and in the partially obedient partially recalcitrant interpreter in the process of being transformed.(69)
Again, His human nature was subservient to the powers and works of His Divine nature, for it was personally joined to it. His body, indeed, was the body of God, and therefore, the Prophet Isaiah has rightly used the word "carried" (Isa. liii. 4). He does not say, "He hath healed," lest as being external to the body, it should only denote that this was done by some outward method of application, such as He had made use of by Himself or His Prophets before; and this would by no means have freed us from the penalty of death. When, therefore, we are told that "He carried our infirmities," and that "He Himself bare our sins," to make it quite certain that He was made man for our sakes, and that body which bore our sins was properly and personally His; we must remember that His Divine nature sustained no detriment by His "bearing our sin in His own body on the tree," as S. Peter says (I S. Peter ii. 24). But this to us men was great gain, for we were redeemed from our own evil ways, and our nature was filled with the grace and righteousness of the Word of God.(72)For Athanasius, the Word that came to the Prophets came to them externally, as an "outward method of application." It could not be said, for example, that God the Word became Amos, or Hosea, or any other religious figure. These prophets spoke the Word Jesus Christ, albeit in a hidden form, but they were not the incarnation of God the Word. If the Word was joined to Jesus Christ as to the prophets, then Jesus "would by no means have freed us from the penalty of death." Rather, the Word was personally joined to the human nature of Jesus in such as way that it is proper to say that Jesus' body, all his words and deeds, are the words and deeds of God. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere. This means, at least in the case of those who saw and heard Jesus, that they heard the Word of God directly and immediately. They did not look through Jesus' words and deeds to discern a disincarnate Word that could take other forms at other times. No, they saw and heard the very words and deeds of God.
Only in Jesus of Nazareth is there a complete, unequivocal (hypostatic) union, between the divine and something finite. The Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead.(74)Even if God the Word is revealed as the words of Jesus, rather than through them, we still must face the possibility that Scripture is not joined to God the Word as was Jesus' human nature. That is what Price claims. If this be true, then the status of Scripture may well be less than that of the incarnate Jesus Christ so that Scripture has only a relative rather than absolute authority. This possibility must now be addressed. My focus will be the gospels.
In Jesus alone do the divine and human appear in complete hypostatic union. Jesus is therefore the Word of God absolutely. The Bible is the Word of God relatively. Yet the only vehicle possessed by the church for knowing the Incarnate Word is the written Word of the Bible.(75)
That is to say, the biblical doctrine of salvation is not a theory or a set of ideas about God; it is not a logical deduction from a theistic philosophy; nor is it is based upon any technique of mystical absorption into the divine. Biblical theology is essentially recital -- the recitation of the great things which God has done in history for his people; the biblical doctrine of salvation is an assertion of what has actually happened.(77)From this perspective, the events narrated in the gospels are types, representative renditions, decisive actions, whose purpose is to proclaim what God in Jesus Christ does in the present and will fully accomplish at the end of time. When we read the gospels, we find such things as the following: 1. The birth of Jesus. 2. His herald, John the Baptist. 3. The temptations. 4. The Kingdom arrived in the person of Jesus. 5. Jesus healed and cast out demons. He did other miracles such as the raising of Lazarus, feeding the five thousand, and stilling the storm. 6. Jesus associated with outcasts. 7. He forgave sinners. 8. His teaching related his person to the Law and the prophets as their fulfillment. 9. He instituted the Lord's supper. 10. His crucifixion and resurrection were the decisive saving event. In that two fold atoning event he bore the sin and suffering of the world, effected forgiveness, and brought sinners into a living relationship with God that nothing could overcome, not even death.
But it is uniquely the genius of the Bible that the historical is transmuted by the eschatological, so that the action of God in the past becomes the type or foreshadowing of his action in the future. The salvation accomplished in history is the promise and warrant of the salvation that shall be in the end time.(78)
The act of deliverance, so to speak, remains active and potent throughout the continuing history of the people for whom it was wrought; in the biblical view it is not a mere event of the past, but something that is ever and again made present and real in the lives of those who celebrate it in word and sacrament; the salvation that was once for all wrought for the whole people is appropriated by each family or each individual as the family of the individual makes response in worship and thanksgiving (Exod. 12:26; Deut. 6:20 25; 26:1 11; John 6:53 58; I Cor. 10:16 17; 11:23 26.(79)
But Jesus is more than the first recipient and the propagator of the good news. In his ministry, he is himself the good announced. He is God's power and wisdom (I Cor. 1:24); our peace (Eph. 2:14); the end of the law (Rom. 10:4); our righteousness, consecration, and redemption (I Cor. 1:30). The great "I am" statements in John (6:35; 10:7, 11; 14:6; 15:1) have the same function. In his whole ministry, Jesus himself is the gospel.(80)Arnold Come, in his brilliant book, Human Spirit, Holy Spirit, describes how the gospel could be Jesus Christ in proclaimed form by placing the matter in a wider Hebraic context.
In what sense, then [for Paul who never met Christ in the flesh], is Christ (or the Spirit) present according to these passages which do not seem to speak of immediate personal encounter? We would suggest that herein Paul is reflecting his Jewish background and an ancient Hebraic way of thinking. Accordingly, perceptions are not mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind. Rather, they are imprints of the thing or being perceived, and they carry some of the actual substance of the perceived into the perceiver. Or, from the other perspective, the imprint that one makes upon another carries something of one's very self into the other. And even after the immediate contact is broken, the one is still in a sense present and operative upon the other. Indeed, a man is in truly significant contact only with that which actually enters into his soul. It is that which he really knows, it is that which really affects him and which he can act upon.(81)As Jesus lived, his words and deeds were not "mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind" by those who heard and saw him. Rather, the apostles received "imprints of the thing or being perceived," something of his "very self." They, through these imprints, carried Jesus Christ within them, and when they spoke or wrote of him, they conveyed Jesus' "very self" to those who heard their message. Their gospel took written form in four gospels. As previously described, this gospel message was not a video camera rendition of exact events, but a series of representative events and words, chosen from and summarizing many events and words, culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection, integrated into the Old Testament saving types as their fulfillment, and offered to readers as normative types of Jesus' saving actions today. At no point, and this must be emphasized, does one go behind the representative saving events and words to something abstract, to a fleshless Logos. This is because the meaning of the biblical words and deeds is not found in a Platonic heaven. Rather, the meaning of a text is that God does today what the text proclaims that God did then specific events, things that happened on earth, occurrences in space and time, and pledges of God's eschatological salvation.
And that Deity of Christ which before our Lord's incarnation wrought all things without man, doth now work nothing wherein the nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle. Christ as Man hath all power both in heaven and earth given him. He hath as Man, not as God only, supreme dominion over the quick and the dead, for so much his ascension into heaven, and his session at the right hand of God do import.(82)In regard to Eucharist, this means that the bread and wine become instruments which, by the action of the Holy Spirit, enable believers to receive the saving effects of Jesus Christ the eternal embodied Word. From the very wounds of his resurrected body the grace of God flows forth to believers who receive his body and blood. Hooker did not believe that the bread and wine became the actual body and blood of the risen Christ (transubstantiation), nor that the bread and wine were joined to the resurrected body and blood (consubstantiation), but that the bread and wine became instruments by which grace comes forth from the person of Jesus Christ, from his humanity and from his divinity as one person.
Again as evident it is how they [the Church Fathers] teach that Christ is personally there present [in the Eucharist], yea, present whole, albeit a part of Christ be corporally absent from thence; that Christ assisting this heavenly banquet with his personal and true presence doth by his own divine power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements changeth them and maketh them that unto us which otherwise they could not be; that to us they are thereby made such instruments as mystically yet truly, invisibly yet really work our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit, grace and efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration of death to life.(83)Here Hooker is saying that the person of Jesus Christ is "present whole" in the Eucharist, where "whole" means Christ's human and divine natures. "Spatially" the resurrected body of Christ is in heaven, but it is present in the Eucharist in the sense that the bread and wine become instruments of graces that flow both from his resurrected body and his divine nature, so that the believer is transformed, body and soul, from death to life.
In another essay, In Remembrance of Me, I considered this matter in regard to the Holy Eucharist. That essay made a distinction between the incarnation and what happens when Christ becomes present in the Eucharist. The same approach can shed light on receiving the biblical revelation. In the case of the incarnation, the order is the divine nature (God the Word), the human nature of Mary, and then, the divine nature assumes human nature creating one person by the Spirit in the womb of Mary. With regard to the reading Scripture, it is not the case that God the Word joins himself to the biblical words making Christ present in a new revelation as was the case with Mary. Price recognizes this by saying that Scripture is not another incarnation. Nevertheless, those who read and receive Scripture allow the biblical words to make the person of Jesus a present reality as known from the original, saving revelation. Receiving Scripture begins with the original person of Christ (union of two natures as one person), then, as Scripture is read, heard, and received by faith, the Spirit makes real the original person of Christ who then speaks to those who receive him. The work of the Spirit does not make a new revelation, but enlivens the original revelation as a present reality. As stated in John's gospel, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:26).
Price, however, is thinking of a fleshless Logos that is known through Scripture. Since he is thinking fleshless Word, he does not see that the apostolic witness in its concrete, objective, historical rendering, is essential to revealing the person of the incarnate Christ, fully God and fully human, with a life history conveyed in that apostolic witness. He does not see that Scripture renders this divine/human person. Rather, he is looking for a disincarnate Word that can take new forms according to new historical circumstances. Of course, anyone who listens to the Word Jesus Christ as Scripture will not mechanically duplicate the biblical story in every detail. That being said, however, there is a critical difference between being addressed by the specific words of Scripture, and seeking to go beyond them to hear a Word that leaves the particular words of Scripture behind in favor of something given shape by present circumstances.
This can be described from another angle. For Price, there was only one hypostatic union the original Incarnation some two thousand years ago. All other forms of Jesus Christ, including Scripture, are relative because they are not the original incarnation of the Word. To quote Price, the "Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead." By the same logic, the preaching of Paul and the bread and wine we receive each Sunday, did not die for us nor were they raised from the dead. Not even Jesus' original words died for us and rose again. Since, for Price, the hypostatic union has only one form, the original Incarnation, those who did not hear and see Jesus in the flesh have less of Christ than did the original disciples. Rather than the hypostatic union, believers today have only the apostolic witness given in Scripture, and this is only a "relative" witness.
If, however, the hypostatic union has several forms the original form as words of deeds of Jesus Christ, the bread and the wine that are his body and blood,(84) the apostolic witness which preached Christ to the early church, and the Scriptures which preserves the apostolic witness, then we today have access to Jesus Christ as did the early apostles. If we receive the Word written, Jesus Christ himself, then he lives inside of us in a further form. That is why Paul could say that Christ was in him and he in Christ. The same idea is found in John's gospel. Our access to Christ is given in the apostolic witness, but the fact that the apostles precede us does not imply we have Christ any less. The whole of the New Testament was written to insure that we do indeed have Jesus Christ in their witness.
I may not have stated this as clearly as I could. Price believes that the living Word of God takes several forms. But none of them, in the final analysis, takes an eternal, concrete, particular form, and further, the first of them, the Incarnation, is removed from the others since it is the only expression of the hypostatic union. By contrast, I am saying that the Incarnation is particular, concrete, bodily, and secondly, that the other forms, Scripture, bread and wine, preaching, Christ in us, are all dependent upon the Incarnation. Further, these dependent forms of Jesus Christ are also specific, concrete, and particular since they are acts of God created by a particular, concrete, and objective Incarnation. Further, there is an order of dependence. First there is the Incarnation, then Scripture as the incarnate Word written, then bread and wine as Jesus' body and blood, Christ in the form of preaching, the Christian community as the body of Christ, and finally, Christ in believers and believers in Christ.
Further, as far as I know, the New Testament never states that we have an access
to Christ that bypasses the apostolic witness. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone,
but the apostles, together with the Old Testament witness, are the foundation.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Eph. 2:19 22)Does the fact that believers today are dependent upon the apostolic witness of Scripture imply that Scripture is relative? Not in the least. Scripture reveals Jesus as Lord. When that happens, there is an identity between the biblical words and the risen Christ. There is nothing relative about that. Here is Barth on the matter.
The direct identification between revelation and the Bible which is in fact at issue is not one that we can presuppose or anticipate. It takes place as an event when and where the biblical word becomes God's Word, i.e., when and where the biblical word comes into play as a word of witness, when and where John's finger does not point in vain but really indicates, when and where we are enabled by means of his word to see and hear what he saw and heard. Thus in the event of God's Word revelation and the Bible are indeed one, and literally so.(85)From this perspective, Scriptures and Church are not in a dialectical relationship as Price affirms. Originally, the apostles preached Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to people in the form of the apostolic preaching. The Church recorded that message in written form with the express intent that future generations would know Jesus Christ as the Word written. This implies that the relationship between church and canon was not dialectical because the apostolic church was created by, formed by, and obedient to, the apostolic gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church's aim in writing Scripture was that all future generations would be under the biblical message, obedient to it, and not simply in dialectical relationship to it. The criterion for including texts in Scripture was apostolicity, because it was the message of the apostles that rendered Jesus Christ in verbal form.
Nevertheless the Bible is not a textbook of ethics any more than it is a textbook of doctrine perhaps less so. Hooker's words cited early to the effect that Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation but not all things, apply even more to ethics than to doctrine.(87)Specifically, what does Price discern as he looks through the texts of Scripture to the eternal Word. He does not see the triune God, nor the incarnate Christ. He doesn't hear a Word. He sees a set of abstractions. In the case of doctrine, that abstraction is the Logos. In the case of ethics, it is love. In his view, love cannot be defined by the incarnate Christ since you can't get ethics out of a life. It is not the case, however, that biblical ethics are read off from the life of Christ apart from the whole of the biblical revelation. According to the New Testament, Christ fulfilled the law and the prophets, so that in considering Jesus Christ, one must consider the Old Testament law. You can get ethics out of a legal code. But Price does not go in that direction. He gets his ethics out of an "abstract definition," and that is Price's final solution. His Word, the Word that one discerns through the biblical revelation, is not really a Word. It is an abstraction. This has more in common with Platonism, or perhaps Whitehead's metaphysics, than with trinitarian and incarnation Christian faith.(91) In short, he has reduced the incarnation to an abstract Platonic form.
One looks through the New Testament in vain for a code of ethical principles or a system of ethical teaching. A large part of Jesus' teaching, or course, had to do with ethics with money, marriage, divorce, citizenship. But in all that teaching there was nothing particularly new.(88)
We have been arguing that the meaning of the scripture is determined by the impact of the Word on the believing person and the believing community who hear or read the words. In the case of doctrine, we said that the Word imposes itself on the community as Logos. In the case of ethical behavior, the Word imposes itself on the community as agapé.(89)
The rules which prescribe ethical behavior are the products of a culture, and the church is not now, nor has it ever been, a culture of its own. It has lived in many different cultures. It is an ecclesia, a people called out 'from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues' (Rev. 7:9). The church does not have, nor did it every have, a ready made all purpose set of habits, customs, or morals. The church came into the Hebrew world, which had its own moral laws. They were not specifically Christian laws. The church has continued to live in alien cultures, each of which takes place between a culture where the church takes root and the Christian ethical norm, which is agapé.(90)
However, although we might say that the most concrete and specific instance of agapé is Jesus, yet it is notoriously difficult to translate a biography into ethical precepts and a code of action. We need something at one remove from that concrete and specific life toward a more abstract definition, precisely so that we can know how to apply it to our lives, which are so very different from his, in circumstances very different from his.(92)Very early in its life the Church fought a hard battle against the docetic heresy. Docetism was the idea that God the Word merely hovered over the person of Christ, so that in Christ we do not really know God because God never took flesh in him. As such, the Docetists drove a wedge between God the Word and the human Jesus. Today, there are those in the church who would drive a wedge between the incarnate Christ and God's Word written. That "Word written" is the Bible, the text by which we know Christ because it is Jesus Christ in written form. For Price, a fleshless Word merely hovers over Scripture so that we must look through Scripture to an abstraction beyond it. This is analogous to the docetic heresy and must be rejected.
In one sense scripture is not identical with the Divine Word or an object revealing him in glory or calling for worship (Rev. 19:10 11). Jesus Christ is both the Form and Object of the biblical witness; his royal image is the stamp impressed in the substance of scripture. In this age the written words are the mirror in which we see him; when the perfect comes, we shall see him face to face (I Cor. 13:12). But there is no getting behind (or in front of) the verbal testimony of scripture. The Divine Essence in its Personal relations is 'Logical,' and his revelation comes in words and in deeds interpreted by words (John 14:11). This revelation is received by his rational creatures, irrationally rejected, and finally enfleshed in the Person of the Son, whose grace calls forth a new people with ears to hear his gospel.(94)In the previous section I claimed that the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ was Jesus Christ in another form, just as the bread and wine of communion are a form of his body but not his original body. Here, in a similar sense, Noll states that "scripture is not identical with the Divine Word." Nevertheless, "Jesus Christ is both the Form and Object of the biblical witness; his royal image is the stamp impressed in the substance of scripture," and "imprinted by the gospel." For this reason, "there is no getting behind (or in front of) the verbal testimony of scripture." In other words, one does not look through the biblical witness as do Norris and Price, or judge it by a higher norm as does Wondra, but one begins with the verbal testimony of Scripture itself. That verbal testimony is the literal sense, "that meaning appropriate to the nature of the Bible as the Word of God in the words of men."
The literal sense is that meaning appropriate to the nature of the Bible as the Word of God in the words of men. As the Word of God, scripture is imprinted by the gospel, that obedient movement of the divine Son Jesus Christ from the transcendent Father to his own sinful people and back to him to the praise of his glory (Phil. 2:1, 6 11).(95)
Contemporary hermeneutics descending from Schleiermacher is founded on the dogma of historicism and its corollary, the "hermeneutical circle," which teach that human consciousness cannot transcend its own time bound milieu. Hence experience replaces literal content as the locus of biblical authority.(97)Noll now draws three conclusions from the fact that Scripture must be interpreted literally. First, there is the "referentiality" of the text. According to Noll, the text of Scripture refers to something outside itself, and there is an organic link between the literal sign of Scripture and the thing signified. I would understand this from the fact that the message of Jesus Christ given in Scripture brings one to Jesus Christ, and in relation to him, one comes into relation to the transcendent God. The relations between text, those who receive the text, God, and life, are established by the Spirit. Exactly how the Spirit does this scarcely admits of precise explanation. Here is Noll,
Thus interpretation is inevitably dialectical, involving text (words), reference (Word), and reader (significance). Dialectic, like a dance, requires a lead partner. In classic hermeneutics, the literal sense of the Word leads the dance of interpretation; in modern (and gnostic) views, the consciousness of the interpreter or interpreting community governs the final sense of scripture.(98)
The first is the referentiality of the text. Scripture "means what it says," and the "what" must refer to something else outside the text. . . . It is a basic misunderstanding of the literal sense to miss the organic link between literal sign and the "thing signified." Fundamentalists often treat the words of scripture as "steno symbols," having one and only one reference, but this move is defensive and rationalistic. Since the referent can be something visible or invisible, or both, the literal sense is the natural basis for figuration, allegory, and ambiguity. Ironically, when language is seen to be essentially metaphorical, as it is in many contemporary theories, it can no longer mean anything in particular and becomes a kind of verbal black hole.(99)These ideas can be grounded theologically. In light of Trinity and Incarnation, the biblical language relates one to Jesus Christ as a concrete, specific, and objective person. This is the literal aspect. It is a corollary of the fact that God the Word becomes incarnate objective, tangible, and available to human knowing. Simultaneously, in Christ, one is shown the transcendent Father. Given that transcendence, Scripture makes use of allegorical, metaphorical, and figurative language. In order of appearing, the literal is first because one begins on earth, not in heaven. The Word became flesh, not vice-versa. As such, the literal, as Noll says, is the "natural basis for figuration, allegory, and ambiguity."(100)
. . . I found it impossible to separate with any certainty the elements of history, liturgy, and fiction. While our modern sensibility insists on deciding the issue, biblical writers seemed confident that fact and fiction can be mixed and remain a witness to a transcendent order not of our own making.(103)"History, liturgy, and fiction" appeared in the book of Ester because God acted in the past and this is recorded in Ester as history. As liturgy, God acts in the present in worship, and as God acts, he gives a foretaste of the eschatological age (fiction?). Since God is three in one, every revelation of God entails past, present, future, as seen in the book of Ester. These three elements are difficult to untangle since God is one, and the acts of the three persons are all acts of the one God.
Unfortunately, skeptics and defenders of orthodoxy have chosen to skirmish in the historical underbrush. By asking a different set of questions of the biblical data ("Did it really happen that way?"), they have obscured the more eschatological concern of biblical narrators ("Where is it all headed?" Luke 24:13 27).(104)Further, biblical revelation preserves the inner triune relations revealed in God's acts. For example, the gospel witness to Christ was preserved, summarized, and developed and by the early church in light of Christ's action in their midst and their historical circumstance. But, the Word, the Incarnation, is prior to the action of the Spirit who brings the risen Christ to the Church, with the result that the New Testament witness is derived from the historical Jesus. It is not the case that the early Church created the Jesus of the gospel accounts. The converse is true. The Jesus of history created the gospel accounts as a branch grows from a trunk, and that includes what has been called the "Christ of faith." The fact that the branch does not look exactly like the trunk does not imply that the trunk came from the branch. The post modern assumption that truth lies in the self, that the church wrote the gospel accounts and can therefore rewrite them, is false. It is false because faith, the faith of the Creeds guiding biblical interpretation, places Incarnation before the work of the Spirit. Incarnation is given in the second article of the Creed, Spirit and Church in the third. The Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, the Son does not come from the Father and the Spirit. For Wondra, Price, and Norris, Word and Spirit are in a mutual and dialectical relation, contrary to the creedal faith of the Church.
Historical criticism cannot prove or disprove how far the "historical Jesus" understood the outworking of this parable. The precise arbitration of who said what between Jesus and the church is not crucial to establish the historical dimension of the passage. Such a quest, while not illegitimate in itself, can distract us from the powerful crisis of response which the parable conveys. The Gospels not only report what Jesus said and did, but they confront us, like the original hearers, with the challenge: Who do you say that I am?(109)As it stands, a liberal interpretation of Mark 12:1 12 would be congruent with virtually all that Noll has said. Liberals would be particularly open to his idea that both Jesus and the Church contributed to the formation of this parable. The only possible point of real disagreement would be Noll's statements about the "miraculous exaltation of Jesus the Son," a "miraculous act of God, breaking through the natural and historical cycles."(110) In a subsequent section, Noll claims that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, a claim many liberals would deny. Two comments are in order.
God is with us, rather than a distant, imperial Lord. Human authority is then measured by its coherence with its divine source. And claims of divine authority for anything that hampers or counters divinely empowered impulses toward liberation for example, proclaiming texts or traditions of domination as "the Word of God" are unwarranted and even blasphemous: God who is both creator and redeemer, cannot support domination. (p. 110)18. Borsch, p. 110.
Nevertheless, the patriarchal character of the scriptures is sufficiently significant that the authority of scripture must be redefined: the scriptures are not automatically normative, and their authority is, in any event, balanced by the authority of the theological presuppositions sketched at the beginning of this essay, and by contemporary experience of a specifiable sort. In other words, the first of the three 'moments' is incomplete with the other two, each of which involves scriptural interpretation. (pp. 113).20. Borsch, p. 119. Also,
I view our contemporary situation as one of irreducible plurality, which I see as revelatory of God and God's saving presence with us. The ambiguity of this contemporary situation is very sharply presented by social movements for liberation, which are prompted by resistance to social and symbolic systems of oppression and marginalization. (p. 104)21. Borsch, p. 122. 22. Borsch, p. 125. 23. Borsch, p. 127.
Living with plurality and ambiguity requires more than tolerance. It requires a basis in confidence that the rubs, gaps, fissures as well as the agreements and overlaps that we encounter are generative. That confidence is based in a certain faith in the power of the divine as "God with us,' such that we can be sure in religion while tentative in theology (as Ian Ramsey put it). (p. 103)
First of all, every human person has a gender, a race, a class. Beyond this, the elements that constitute experience are tied together in relations of conflict, domination and subjugation, mutual support, and overlapping struggles for survival, liberation, and transformation. Genders, races, classes, are irrevocably related to each other. . . . In other words, human experience is diverse in its concreteness. (p. 117)Hooker does not begin here, he begins theologically, understanding humanity in terms of Adam and the redemption given by the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
We are by nature the sons of Adam. When God created Adam he created us, and as many as are descended from Adam have in themselves the root out of which they spring. The sons of God we neither are all nor any one of us otherwise than only by grace and favour. The sons of God have God's own natural Son as a second Adam from heaven, whose race and progeny they are by spiritual and heavenly birth. V,lvi,625. How the Kingdom of God relates to political action is a most important matter, something I have researched and tried to live for years. In general, I believe Barth has the best approach of any theologian I have read. I discuss his perspective in chapter four of my dissertation.
On this one may comment that the words, action and passion of Jesus Christ and His being cannot be separated from one another in such a way that the words, action and passion are only an expression of His being, as though His being stood behind the words, action and passion. The being of this person is identical with His speech, action and passion. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume I. The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part One, Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by Bromiley, G.W. Edinburgh: T, & T. Clark, 1975, p. 138.)73. By the communicatio idiomatum, the human words and deeds of Jesus Christ are the divine Word. This sort of logic only applies to Incarnation and not creation.