Category Archives: Bibliology

Reading the Bible Through and Through

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Just finished again, by God’s grace and mercy. The way I do it is to just start at the beginning and read straight through. While I’m in the OT I am concurrently reading whatever NT books I feel led to read at any given time. Once I make it into the NT I just read the NT through until the read through is complete. At points, on this viatorum, I have read the OT in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) order. I read various translations (and I have read through the NT in the original Koine Greek), but my go to has been the NASB (now the NASB95). Without this commitment to reading and meditating on Holy Scripture I wouldn’t be here with you today. Soli Deo Gloria

Book Impression: The Bible: A Global History

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Just finished. This is the third book of Bruce Gordon’s I have read over the years (his other books: on Calvin and Zwingli respectively). Overall, a good and informative and interesting read. It appears to me that, Bruce, at points, has imbibed too much of the higher critical palate when it comes to thinking of the supernatural nature of Scripture. His chapter on the Pentecostal appropriation of the Bible isn’t the strongest. But again, overall, I would commend this book to you. It will give you a greater appreciation for the Bible’s reception across the millennia and across the globe.

On a James Whitean and Leighton Flowersian Naked Reading of the Bible

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Thumbnail created originally by Leighton Flowers (Caleb)

I was listening to James White live today on his Dividing Line vlogcast, and what he reinforces over and over is that he is what some are calling a ‘biblicist,’ or what I would identify as a solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura proponent, as far as the way that he approaches Scripture. In this way, James White and his archnemeses, Leighton Flowers, ironically affirm the same bibliology and its attending hermeneutic. It is both modern, postEnlightenment, and Lockean (i.e., tabula rasa) in orientation. That is, it sees Scripture and its reception in a historicist frame of reference. This frame leaves the history of interpretation (i.e., creeds, confessions, catechisms etc.) in the dust, in regard to how White and Flowers receive Scripture. This ironically lends itself to a modernist-naturalist appropriation of and engagement with Holy Scripture, insofar that the Bible, in such a frame, seems to be a ‘white-slate’ wherein the interpreter has some type of objectivist angle into its exegesis.

The aforementioned is problematic for a variety of reasons. One prominent reason is that it ends up working from a petitio principii (circular reasoning). That is to say, it presumes: 1) My interpretation just is the objective reading of the Bible, 2) my interpretation of the Bible is a five-point Calvinist reading of the Bible, 3) therefore the objective reading of the Bible just is a five-point Calvinist reading (or just replace five-point Calvinist with Provisionist reading in Flowers’ case). What this approach fails to appreciate, for one, is that nobody approaches Scripture as a presuppositionless blank-slate; human agents are subjects, and as such we bring a variety of preunderstandings and unchecked a priori commitments to theological paradigms as we read Scripture. We could call this the “hermeneutical dilemma.” Neither James White nor his compadre, Leighton Flowers, acknowledge this. And thus, all that they are left to do in their respective debates and correspondences is to sling Scripture right past each other; never critically identifying or checking their theological a prioris at the frontend of their respective readings of Scripture.

But like I was noting, James White, today, as he was talking, in this case about Catholicism, made an absolute distinction between reading Scripture and the history of interpretation of Scripture; as if they inhabit two distinct silos. But they don’t inhabit two distinct silos, instead the history and the biblical exegesis are mutually implicating realities; insofar that human agents are subjectively reading and receiving the text of Holy Scripture. Until White and Flowers can admit this, and until all of their acolytes can come to grasp this, this whole “debate” between them, on five-point Calvinism versus Provisionism, will remain a futile endeavor. Unfortunately, they have many followers, respectively, who they are doing a disservice to. They are teaching young and biologically old, in some cases, Christian hearts and minds to read Scripture rationalistically rather than confessionally (and thus Christologically and Trinitarianly).

In closing, let me refer us to Matthew Levering’s sketch on the Whitean and Flowersian reading of Scripture (viz., what he writes indirectly critiques the Whitean-Flowersian combine of biblical interpretation); as far as its intellectual development and background go. Here Levering also offers an alternative approach that is participatorily grounded in a genuinely christologically and trinitarianly conditioned reading of Holy Scripture.

What happens, then, when Scripture is seen primarily as a linear-historical record of dates and places rather than as a providentially governed (revelatory) conversation with God in which the reader, within the doctrinal and sacramental matrix of the Church, is situated? John Webster points to the disjunction that appears between “history” and “theology” and remarks on the “complex legacy of dualism and nominalism in Western Christian theology, through which the sensible and intelligible relams, history and eternity, were thrust away from each other, and creaturely forms (language, action, institutions) denied any capacity to indicate the presence and activity of the transcendent God.” Similary, Lamb contrasts the signs or concepts that can be grasped by modern exegetical methods with the moral and intellectual virtues that are required for a true participatory knowledge and love the realities expressed by the signs or concepts. Lacking the framework of participatory knowledge and love, biblical exegesis is reduced to what Lamb calls “a ‘comparative textology’ à la Spinoza.” Only participatory knowledge and love, which both ground and flow from the reading practices of the Church, can really attain the biblical realities. As Joseph Ratzinger thus observes, the meaning of Scripture is constituted when

the human word and God’s word work together in the singularity of historical events and the eternity of the everlasting Word which is contemporary in every age. The biblical word comes from a real past. It comes not only from the past, however, but at the same time from the eternity of God and it leads us into God’s eternity, but again along the way through time, to which the past, the present and the future belong.

This Christological theology of history, which depends on a metaphysics of participation inscribed in creation, provides the necessary frame for apprehending the true meaning of biblical texts.

In short, for the patristic-medieval tradition and for those attuned to it today, history (inclusive of the work of historiography) is an individual and communal conversation with the triune God who creates and redeems history—and the Bible situates us in history thus understood. (Levering, 23)

Biblical Studies Has Failed the City of God

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I read NT exegetes, particularly in their commentaries on Paul’s theology, and wonder if they ever wonder if they should in fact be doing so from the theo-logic inherent to the homoousion (the notion that Jesus is both fully God and fully human). Most don’t do this, which illustrates the flaw of their discipline-specific training in Biblical Studies. In other words, just as anti-supranaturalism has yeasted the discipline itself—that is to say, to approach the Bible as if it doesn’t have an inner, antecedent, supranatural reality; and that it can be read purely and critically as a historical artifact—it is this spread of a flawed premise that then informs said exegete’s interpretive conclusions, in this case, about what Paul communicates throughout the corpus of his Apostolic communiques. As a result, such exegetes read Paul based upon a series of ad hoc historical reconstructions, and make their conclusions about say, Paul’s soteriology, contingent upon these reconstructions. But this just won’t do. If so, for one thing, we never would have arrived at the grammar of the Trinity that we did in the early conciliar machinations (because they presumed that Scripture was first received as a confessional reality undergirded by God’s gift of Himself to the world in Jesus Christ). The Bible, for the Christian, is first the Word from the Lord before it becomes a Word at all. If this isn’t underwriting the exegete’s method at the most basic level, then their exegetical conclusions will always run awry of the fact that Scripture is first Holy, before it ever becomes Scripture.

To elaborate a bit further: when I refer to the homoousion as the key to a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture, what I mean to be doing with that is to point to its analogical reality when applied to the “hermeneut.” That is to note, that just as the person and work of God are not ripped asunder in the singular person known as Jesus Christ, likewise, a proper reading of Holy Scripture ought never be dissected into a profane historical reading of the text (i.e., higher critical), over against a confessional reading of the text (i.e., churchly). Just as God and [hu]man are inseparably related, yet distinct, in the singular person of Jesus Christ, likewise, a proper reading of Scripture will start with the premise that its ultimate reality has a depth and inner dimension that must take primacy when attempting to rightly divide the Word of God. When an exegete doesn’t do this, I might find some of their conclusions interesting, but beyond that the only depth it might have is the genius that stands behind said readings and historical reconstructions (which in itself, human genius is never enough to pierce the veil of God’s body).

If we were to stay consistent with the logic of my appeal and premise, then we would see such Bible readers and exegetes as adoptionistic rather than orthodox in posture. In other words, just as an adoptionist christology believes that the divine simply “adopted” this guy named Jesus to be His dearly beloved Son, not having the ground of His person as the eternal Logos, per se, the Bible readers I have been considering, would approach Scripture as if it is just this “Holy Book,” and attempt to understand what it is saying without attending to the fact that Scripture’s ontology itself finds its inner reality not in a nakedly natural form, but as it is given for us in the breath of the Holy Spirit in the face of Jesus Christ. This reception of the Bible, one way or the other, changes how people arrive at their respective exegetical conclusions.

Reading the Bible as a Christian: The Outer and Inner Reality of Scripture

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Scripture has an outer logic and an inner logic. Back in the day this was referred to as its outer and inner clarity (perspicuity of Scripture). In some ways the rift between the disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology pivots on which one of these the practitioner is focused on. That is to say, the biblical studies folks, typically focus on the outer components of the text; i.e., its grammar, philology, sitz im leben (e.g., historical situadedness), composition, transmission, and other “text critical” factors. Whilst the systematic theology folks focus more on the inner-theo-logic of the text; attempting to “lay bare” what is there, and allows the text to make the assertions that it does in its outer realm. But to focus on one or the other is a mistake of “Enlightened” proportions.

As Christians we are to come to the text based on the analogy of the incarnation. That is, we are to recognize that just as the Logos of God came in an outer (and real!) physical body, so too on analogy, the text of Scripture comes with this “two-natures-in-one-person” mode of presentation just the same. As TF Torrance would say, there is a “depth dimension” to Holy Scripture wherein the outer signum (signage) of the text, points beyond itself to its deeper and inner res (reality) in Jesus Christ and the triune God.

To have departments in seminaries and bible colleges that focus on “biblical studies” and/or “systematic theology,” is simply a turn to the Enlightenment way wherein there is continuous competition between the binary of the natural (the outer) and the supranatural (the inner); or the accidents (the outer) and the essence (the inner). This is not the Christian approach to doing biblical studies or theology.

Barth’s, “Biblical Revelation”

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Portrait des Theologen Karl Barth in Basel. Photographie 1956. Portrait of the theologian Karl Barth in Basel. Photography. 1956.

I was chided back in the day by some Princeton Theological Seminary, at that point, MDiv students (who now have their PhDs from the same school), by referring to Scripture as containing biblical revelation; and this with Barth’s theology as the broader background. These guys asserted that Barth would never refer to the Bible as containing “revelation” of God. And yet clearly these lads had never really even read Barth in depth. Barth’s doctrine of the Threefold Form of the Word notwithstanding, he wrote the following in an affirming way:

. . . for we differentiate between the God who sustains the creature and a mere supreme being, identifying that sustaining God with the God of the biblical revelation. . .. -Barth, CD, III/3 §49, 58 [emphasis mine]

To be sure Barth’s theory of revelation was grounded in the Logos of God, Jesus Christ, as the material and formal reality of Holy Scripture’s attestation. Even so, Barth in his Church Dogmatics, as the above attests, does not shrink back from using the phraseology of “biblical revelation” when referring to Holy Scripture. These PTS Barthians would have done well to read Barth at length, rather than simply spot reading him for research purposes.

On the Beauty and Reality of Holy Scripture

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Here’s a short reflection on Scripture I posted on my other social media accounts a couple of weeks ago.

When you inhabit Scripture, over long periods of time, the intricate beauty and artistry of its interwoven reality is undeniable. You realize that you’re reading a literal miracle, particularly as you encounter Jesus Christ on every page turned. Its Divine and Triune imprimatur is everywhere to behold within its Holy binding.

Barth the Bible Guy: Against Pseudo Rejections of the Bible’s Historicity

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It’s interesting, Barth takes the historical-literal stuff of Holy Scripture more seriously than many who are nowadays rejecting such things in very pseudo ways. Even so, when you read through Barth’s Church Dogmatics what becomes immediately clear is that he rejects the historicism that plagued the modernity he was raised on through his university training. He reads the Bible as a Christian. He takes Scripture at face value, as far as its historical reporting etc. But he operates with what he calls Saga, which is his way of reading suprahistorical passages of Scripture; i.e., like the creation narrative in Genesis, or the resurrection sections in the Gospels etc. He even sees those as more real than “historical history,” insofar that saga sets the boundaries or limits by which and for which historical history unfolds. It isn’t that Barth thinks that the resurrection or original creation didn’t happen in this history. It’s just that he thinks the tangent of the inner reality of created creation, both protologically and eschatologically, has a deeper and more concrete depth dimension than the things that historical history tells us on its own supposed naked narratival force. He is a revelational theologian after all. Barth’s theology is also deeply grounded in the miracle of the Gospel and all of its interesting and far reaching implications.

A longer companion piece.

On Biblical Inerrancy and Jesus

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I just watched a documentary covering a doctrine of inerrancy. Its interlocutors were not proponents of a doctrine of inerrancy. When the theoblogosphere was still a thing I was asked, back in 2010ish, to participate in a series of blog posts where the owner of said blog, Brian LePort, asked has participants to answer a series of questions about how they thought of a doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The following are my responses to those questions.

Do you use the word “inerrancy” to describe your understanding of Scripture? Why or why not? (If not, can you explain your “doctrine of Scripture?”)

I grew up ardently advocating for this terminology; it has only been over the last few years that I have taken a different approach to my doctrine of Scripture vis-á-vis an ontology of Scripture. While maintaining my identity as an Evangelical (Reformed) Christian, and some of the received history that this entails (including the intention that inerrancy sought to capture–e.g. the trustworthiness of Scripture), I would probably eschew emphasizing the language of inerrancy relative to my position (even though I remain sympathetic to it, and those who still feel the need to use it).

In a nutshell: I see Scripture within the realm of soteriology (salvation), and no longer (as the classically Reformed and Evangelical approach does) within the realm of epistemology (or a naked Philosophy). Meaning that I think a proper doctrine of Scripture must understand itself within its proper order of things. So we start with 1) Triune God, 2) The election of humanity in the Son (Covenant of Grace), 3) Creation, Incarnation (God’s Self-revelation), 4) The Apostolic Deposit of Christian Scripture (e.g. the New Testament re-interpretation of salvation history [i.e. Old Testament] in light of its fulfillment in Christ). This is something of a sketch of the order of Scripture’s placement from a theological vantage point (I don’t think the tradition that gave us inerrancy even considers such things). So I see Scripture in the realm of Christian salvation (sanctification), and as God’s triune speech act for us provided by the Son, who comes with the Holy Spirit’s witness (through Scripture). Here is how John Webster communicates what I am after:

First, the reader is to be envisaged as within the hermeneutical situation as we have been attempting to portray it, not as transcending it or making it merely an object of will. The reader is an actor within a larger web of event and activities, supreme among which is God’s act in which God speaks God’s Word through the text of the Bible to the people of God, as he instructs them and teaches them in the way they should go. As a participant in this historical process, the reader is spoken to in the text. This speaking, and the hearing which it promotes, occurs as part of the drama which encloses human life in its totality, including human acts of reading and understanding: the drama of sin and its overcoming. Reading the Bible is an event in this history. It is therefore moral and spiritual and not merely cognitive or representational activity. Readers read, of course: figure things out as best they can, construe the text and its genre, try to discern its intentions whether professed or implied, place it historically and culturally — all this is what happens when the Bible is read also. But as this happens, there also happens the history of salvation; each reading act is also bound up within the dynamic of idolatry, repentance and resolute turning from sin which takes place when God’s Word addresses humanity. And it is this dynamic which is definitive of the Christian reader of the Bible. [John Webster, “Hermeneutics in Modern Theology: Some Doctrinal Reflections,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 336]

So I see Scripture as God’s second Word (Jesus the first and last Word) for His people the Church. From this perspective inerrancy becomes a non-starter, since Scripture is no longer framed apologetically, but instead, Christically, and as positive witness for the Church.

If you were to provide a brief definition of the doctrine of inerrancy what would it include?

Millard Erickson has provided the best indexing of inerrancies; he has: 1) Absolute Inerrancy, 2) Full Inerrancy, and 3) Limited Inerrancy (see Millard Erickson, “Introducing Christian Doctrine [abridged version],” 61). Realizing that there is nuance then when defining a given inerrancy, I would simply assert that inerrancy holds to the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture; meaning that Scripture is both Divine-human speech, or Divine revelation (or God’s Words). And since God cannot lie, Scripture must be totally without any error; because if it has error then God has lied.

Can there be a doctrine of inerrancy divorced from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy? If so, what are the “practical” consequences? If not, why?

I think the Chicago Statement, given its recognition for literary and genre analysis of the text of Scripture has effectively allowed for the possibility of qualifying inerrancy to the point that you might end up with my current view.

How does your doctrine of Scripture impact your hermeneutics? Can you use Genesis 1-11 as a case study/example?

I would simply say that I see Genesis 1–11 as the first instance of the LORD’s first Word of grace; viz. we have God introduce himself as the personal God who created, and for the purpose of creation communing with him by and through the Son (Gen. 3:15). So, no, I don’t follow Henry Morris and the Institute of Creation Research in defending a wooden literal reading of this section of Scripture. I see it literally, but as God’s introduction of himself to his Covenant people such that His people might know what he intends for his creation; viz. that we commune with him through the Son. It is through this purpose for creation that all other idolatrous parodies (like those in the Ancient Near East) fall by the way side and are contradicted by creation’s true purpose, in Christ.

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I would recommend John Webster’s little book: Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. His book articulates and informs my view on this like no other I have ever come across.

Finding Ourselves in Scripture’s Reality: With Reference to Dietrich

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John Webster is commenting on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of our relation to Scripture. It’s not as if we give scripture its ground through imbuing it with our exegetical prowess; no, it’s that our ground is given footing as we find ourselves related to God in Christ through the Scripture’s story. This fits with the point that Webster is driving at, over-all, throughout his little book, that Scripture should be seen as an aspect of soteriology—sanctification in particular. And that Scripture is a part of God’s triune communicative act, ‘for us’; caught up in His Self-revelation itself. In other words, for Webster, as for Bonhoeffer (per Webster), Scripture shouldn’t be framed as a component of our epistemological foundation (wherein we put Scripture in its place, in effect), but Scripture is a mode of God’s gracious speech that acts upon us by the Spirit. And it is through this divine speech, that is grace, that we find ourselves—outside ourselves—in Christ, and thus in the Story of Scripture. This should have the effect of placing us under Scripture (which Luther would call ministerial) versus over Scripture (magisterial)—to simplify. Here’s the quote (a little introduction by Webster, and then a full quote by Bonhoeffer [also, notice the idea of vicariousness that Bonhoeffer appeals to as well]):

More than anything else, it is listening or attention which is most important to Bonhoeffer, precisely because the self is not grounded in its own disposing of itself in the world, but grounded in the Word of Christ. Reading the Bible, as Bonhoeffer puts it in Life Together, is a matter of finding ourselves extra nos in the biblical history:

We are uprooted from our own existence and are taken back to the holy history of God on earth. There God has dealt with us, with our needs and our sins, by means of the divine wrath and grace. What is important is not that God is a spectator and participant in our life today, but that we are attentive listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the story of Christ on earth. God is with us today only as long as we are there.

Our salvation is ‘from outside ourselves’ (extra nos). I find salvation, not in my own life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ . . . What we call our life, our troubles, and our guilt is by no means the whole of reality; our life, our need, our guilt, and our deliverance are there in the Scriptures.[1]

[1] John Webster, Holy Scripture, 83 citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 62.

*A post originally written in 2011.