Category Archives: John Webster

John Webster on Divine Providence and Concurrence with a Christ Concentrated Edge

Posted on by

Godā€™s providence is a doctrine referred to often, but explicated less. John Webster offers a nice description of the entailments that make Divine providence what it is relative to God. He writes:

The modes of Godā€™s providential activity are often identified as preservation, concurrence, and government (the three modes are not three separate divine works but the one work of pantoc23providence variously apprehended and conceived). In preservation God acts upon and within created reality to hold it in being, maintaining by his power and goodness the order of nature and history that he has established at the act of creation. Concurrence specifies this preserving activity by speaking of how Godā€™s providential work is not simply a force brought to bear upon creation from outside, but is integral or interior to creation: providence works through creaturely working. In his acts of government, God directs creation to its goal, ensuring that the fulfillment he has purposed for it will be attained. In these acts, God operates medially, that is, through the power that he has himself bestowed upon creation. Created reality is not merely passive, for it has been given a movement of its own by which it maintains itself and moves toward its end. Providence does not eliminate but enables this creaturely movement; providence moves creation to move itself, working ā€œinteriorlyā€ rather than as an extrinsic impulse. Providence is not merely to be thought of as maintaining a static creation, a set of unchanging natural or cultural forms. It concerns the teleology of creation: created reality is purposive or historical. Accordingly, providence is related not only backwards to the initial act of creation out of nothing, but also forward, to the saving work of God and to the eschatological future of the new creation.[1]

Concurrence as one of the prongs of providence is very intriguing to me. It conjures up thinking about theories of causation, and how those relate to Godā€™s providence. What is more interesting to me though is how concurrence gets thought into human agency. I see this type of thinking bearing most fruit (because of my prior commitment to a particular theological-anthropology) when tied into the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; when we understand that the Domain of His life is indeed both the protological (backward looking) and eschatological (forward looking) context in which medial and thus creaturely agency finds its scope and/or range of movement. In other words, when we think of concursus Dei (Godā€™s concurrence), to think that from within the relational frame provided for by the inter-relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we begin to see a dynamic in regard to creaturely agency and movement that is at once both mysterious and yet witness bearing to creationā€™s inner-reality in the covenant of Godā€™s life for us and with us.

[1] John Webster, Providence, in eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Bruce L. McCormack, Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical IntroductionĀ (Michigan: Baker Publishing Group, April 2012), 306 Scribd.

T Torrance, The Grammatico-Historico Biblical Exegete: With Reference to John Webster

Posted on by

What I want to continue to engage with in this post will be in reference to, Thomas Torranceā€™s hermeneutics; and this time instead of focusing simply on his revelational/ontic frame towards Scripture we will get further into what Torrance had to say about grammatical-historical-literary exegesis of the text. Sometimes the impression can be given that Torrance may have had no place glossbiblefor such consideration in his approach; the impression might be that he was so consumed with the Dogmatics of things that everything else is simply swallowed up, including thinking about the importance of actual concrete biblical exegesis and practice. John Webster writes this of Torrance:

For Torrance, questions about the nature and interpretation of Scripture are subordinate to questions about divine revelation; bibliology and hermeneutics are derivatives from principles about the active, intelligible presence of the triune God to his rational creatures. This way of ordering matters not only explains a certain reluctance on his part to spell out much by way of a doctrine of Holy Scripture (attempts to do so, he fears, risk isolating Scripture from its setting in the divine economy), but also sheds light on the fact that what he has to say about the nature and interpretation of the Bible is concerned only secondarily with Scripture as literary-historical text and primarily with Scripture as sign ā€“ that is, with Scriptureā€™s ostensive functions rather than with its literary surface or the historical processes of its production. A theological account of the nature of Scripture and its interpretation takes its rise, not in observations of immanent religious and literary processes, as if the texts could be understood as self-articulations on the part of believing communities, but in the doctrine of the self-revealing triune God.[1]

The latter part of Websterā€™s thoughts is what we covered somewhat in this post; it is this reality, indeed, that I think sets Torranceā€™s approach apart from many other approaches to Holy Scripture. And yet, as Webster also notes, there does seem to be a ā€˜reluctance on his part to spell out much by way of a doctrine of Holy Scripture,ā€™ and we might add his apparent commitment to see the literary-historical features present in most accounts of biblical hermeneutics as secondary to Scriptureā€™s reality and/or ontology relative to its givenness within the economy of Godā€™s life. I have had these concerns myself with Torranceā€™s apparent lack of engagement with concrete exegetical questions, and more pointedly with wonderment about how he actually interpreted Scripture itself (i.e. did he actually use literary-historical-grammatical-rhetorical tools, etc.). If you read his (TF Torranceā€™s) book Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics you might be pushed further into the impression that indeed Torrance really had no room for getting into the nitty-gritty details of literary driven biblical exegesis (Webster in another essay voices the same concern in regard to TF Torranceā€™s approach to things as presented in Divine Meaning). Of course, it would be too quick to conclude that Torrance really has nothing to say about such things; and too quick to conclude that Torrance does not engage in a type of ā€œconcreteā€ biblical exegesis in any of his worksā€”with his posthumously published volumes Incarnation&Atonement (his Edinburgh, New College Lectures) we have a demonstration that this is not the case.

With all of the above noted, I was encouraged to come across some things he had to say about this in his 1981 published Payton lectures from Fuller under the title Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation. While what he writes does not undercut Websterā€™s insights into his (TFT’s) secondary concern with literary-historical issues related to biblical exegesis; what it does do is show how Torrance actually does have a place for using these types of grammatico-historico-literary-rhetorico tools towards engaging with the text of Scripture. Of course as you will see he sees these as the necessary and instrumental supports, and natural-flowing realties present in the text, given its given nature by God in Christ. In other words, as you will see, he does not see this type of engagement with the text as an terminus in itself, but in service of the signum (or ā€˜signā€™) function of the text; so he doesnā€™t see such engagement with the text as a foreclosing upon and/or harnessing of Godā€™s Self-revelation (which funds the reality of the text), but instead in service of this Self-revelation and within the accommodating movement of God and embodiment of created media within the economy of His life of incarnation in Jesus Christ. Torrance writes:

In view of the way in which the primary reference of biblical statements to God relies upon the secondary reference of those statements to one another in coherent sequences, a great deal of attention must also be given to how the statements in biblical texts are to be read within their own syntactical or formal-logical structures and within the whole context in which they are found. This must be done if reasonable interpretation is to be offered and any rational account of the meaning to be assigned to them is to be given. In fact, only if we pay careful attention to the orderly connections built up by words, sentences, and continuous reports may we be in a position to discern how, through their objective reference, the Holy Scriptures may yield their own interpretation. Moreover, it is when we allow the biblical texts to declare their own syntactical meaning to us in this way that we are restrained from imposing upon them an objective meaning alien to what they actually say.

Determination of the coherent patterns of sense and meaning in biblical passages and documents is not so easy as it might at first appear on the syntactic and semantic surface. Much hard thought and work is required in exegetical and critical inquiry to lay bare what we call their inner rational sequence. The interpreter must seek to clarify rather more than the grammatico-syntactical sense of passages. He must probe into the reasonable ground underlying their linguistic signification, and that needs a comparative examination of their signifying components including the many images, analogies, figures, representations, and idioms that are employed, in order to determine as far as possible their exact sense and then to distill out of them and bring to consistent expression the basic conceptuality they carry. Analytical and synthetical work of this kind calls for a deep perception and judgment on the part of the interpreter in deciding what is finally irrelevant overtone and what is essential to the real meaning intended. It is only as the linguistic and conceptual forms are matched to one another that their inner rational sequence may be disclosed in an adequate and semantically helpful way.[2]

Closing

Much more could and should be said, but suffice it to say: Thomas F. Torrance, while always the consonant Christian Dogmatician, certainly had place in his approach and thinking for deploying the ā€˜regularā€™ and even historical exegetical tools of grammatico-historico analysis of the text of Scripture. While I am encouraged by this, what ought to be kept at the forefront, is that TF Torrance, while committed to regular exegetical practice, always saw such endeavor from a unitary theological vision starting with an order of Godā€™s being leading to an order of knowing within the context of a Christ concentrated doctrine of creation. This is where he saw Scripture located within Godā€™s economy, and this is the frame of reference within which the literary-grammatical-historical realties of the text of Scripture find their inner-logical/inner-theological-meaning from. If context determines meaning, for Torrance, then the context of Scripture is Jesus Christ!

[1] John Webster, The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2012), 89.

[2] T.F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 114-15.

A Fearful Thing to Speak of God: The Role of God’s Holiness in Our Theological Reflection

Posted on by

Theology is a practice in knowing God with all that we are. While this can only remain a provisional, as the old school would say ectypal endeavor it is something we have been called to as Christians set apart unto God in Jesus Christ. But it is also important to remember that theology is not something that we have initiated, that seminaries and post-doctoral programs have invented. God is
russianGodthe one who initiates true theology; He in himself is the true Theologian as Augustine has said: ā€œGod alone is a theologian, and we are truly his disciples.ā€ And so genuine Christian theology starts from God, and our knowledge is contingent upon His graciousness to invite us unto His banqueting table and participate in the meal of holy fellowship that He alone can freely provide for, which He has in His Son, Jesus Christ, God with us.

What viewing theology like this does is that it orients things properly; it takes the keys away from the rationalist who believes that their mind is prior to Godā€™s Self-revelation and action, and it places theological reflection, again, in the domain of Godā€™s holy Word for us, provided for in the election and Incarnation of God (Deus incarnatus), in Jesus Christ. We by nature have unholy thoughts; we by nature are removed from God; we by nature cannot recognize that God has spoken (Deus dixit); we by nature would not approach God even if we could, and if we could we couldnā€™t because to approach God is to come before Him on holy ground. Moses presented himself before God at the burning bush, only because God condescended and presented Himself, first, to Moses; and in this presentation He initiated the invite to Moses, to come before Him. Modern theological thinking tends to forget this. With the continuing influences of Cartesianism (cogito ergo sum ā€˜I think therefore I amā€™), Lockeanism, Kantianism, Schleiermacherianism, etc. we tend to forget that we cannot approach God unless He invites us. The good news is that He has invited us to know Him, to speak with Him, to love and cherish Him, but only on His terms; and His terms or term, is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the holy ground upon which and through whom we have access to God. It is through the broken body of Jesus Christ that the veil between the holy of holies and the outer part of the temple has been torn through. As such, all of our arrogant unholy pretentions about how we conceive of God are contradicted by how God has invited us to think of Him through His personal Self-revelation and exegesis in His Son, Immanuel, Jesus Christ. We come to Him on His predetermined terms not our terms; if we want to come on our terms and name those terms ā€œJesus Christā€ or the ā€œHoly Trinityā€ we will unfortunately only be worshipping our own self-projections of who we think God is based upon our own self-generated machinations. John Webster clarifies further:

Once again, therefore, we find ourselves running up against the contradictory character of theology as an exercise of holy reason. One of the grand myths of modernity has been that the operations of reason are a sphere from which Godā€™s presence can be banished, where the mind is, as it were, safe from divine intrusion. To that myth, Christian theology is a standing rebuke. As holy reason at work, Christian theology can never escape from the sober realization that we talk in the terrifying presence of God from whom we cannot flee (Ps. 139.7). In Christian theology, the matter of our discourse is not someone absent, someone whom we have managed to exclude from our own intellectual self-presence. When we begin to talk theologically about the holiness of God, we soon enough discover that the tables have been reversed; it is no longer we who summon God before our minds to make him a matter for clever discourse, but the opposite: the holy God shows himself and summons us before him to give account of our thinking. That summons ā€“ and not any constellation of cultural, intellectual or political conditions ā€“ is the determinative context of holy reason. There are other contexts, of course, other determinations and constraints in the intellectual work of theology: theology is human work in human history. But those determinations and constraints are all subordinate to, and relativized by, the governing claim of the holy God, a claim which is of all things most fearful but also of all things most full of promise.[1]

Christian theology is an enterprise initiated and ingressed by God. When we attempt to talk about God, we must first recognize the fact that ā€˜God has spokenā€™ (Deus dixit) first, and that He continues to speak everyday in the same way that He has always freely chosen to speak for us, to us, and with us through Jesus Christ. We are always on holy ground when we speak of God, who alone is wise, immortal, invisible who alone dwells in unapproachable light. I fear that we forget this very often. I fear that we have gotten too comfortable talking about God and the things of God as if He hasnā€™t first invited us to speak of Him and with Him on His terms.Ā I fear we have domesticated God to the point that when we speak of God we might not really be speaking of Him at all, but instead from a place, a divine spark, as it were, in our minds that we believe has access to God based upon some other terms than those He has given for us through Jesus Christ. It is a holy endeavor to speak of God, but only as we speak from within the domain He has provided for that to happen from does this holiness truly pervade anything we might think we have to say of Him. If the ground and grammar of our theological discourse is not from God in Christ in a principial way, then it is a fearful thing.

[1] John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), Loc. 157, 162, 167 Kindle.

The Dispensational Hermeneutic, An Enlightenment Invention: Ryrie, Berkouwer, and Webster in Relief

Posted on by
Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid

There is no doubt a retreat, or migration as it were, of evangelicals has taken place from engaging with doctrine, but insofar as doctrine is still present for many evangelicals of a certain era anyway, what informs them most, at least hermeneutically is the hermeneutic known as Dispensationalism. It was this hermeneutic that I was groomed in myself, not only as a kid, but in and through Bible College andĀ Seminary (of the Progressive sort).

Dispensationalism, without getting into all of the nitty gritty, is a hermeneutic that prides itself on using the ā€˜literalā€™ way of reading Scripture in a ā€˜consistentā€™ form as they claim; it is a hermeneutic that maintains a distinction between Israel and the Church (in its classic and revised forms); and it is a hermeneutic that simply seeks to read its understanding straight off the pages of Scripture in the most straightforward ways possible (again ā€˜literallyā€™ with appeal to Scottish Common Sense Realism[1]). One of its most ardent proponents says it like this:

Literal hermeneutics. Dispensationalists claim that their principle of hermeneutics is that of literal interpretation. This means interpretation that gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking, or thinking. It is sometimes called the principle of grammatical-historical interpretation since the meaning of each word is determined by grammatical and historical considerations. The principle might also be called normal interpretation since the literal meaning of words is the normal approach to their understanding in all languages. It might also be designated plain interpretation so that no one receives the mistaken notion that the literal principle rules out figures of speechā€¦.[2]

The Dispensationalistā€™s hermeneutic springs then from a philosophy of language that holds to the idea that language corresponds to real and perceptible things in reality, and as such, based upon this assumption attempts to, in a slavish way (to this principled understanding of language and reality) reads Holy Scripture in such a way that comports with languageā€™s and historyā€™s most basic and simple and normal component parts (i.e. as it can be reconstructed through critical and rationalist means).

It is no surprise that Dispensationalism developed when it did, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when what it meant to do Biblical Studies and exegesis of Scripture was to engage Scripture through developmental/evolutionary criterion for reconstructing Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) history (the periods that Biblical Scripture developed within), and using various other literary criteria for determining Scriptureā€™s origination and the cultural-societal-rhetorical contexts that gave it rise. In other words Dispensationalism developed in a context wherein things are only true insofar as they comport with the canons of observable and empirical protocol. G.C. Berkouwer describes this development this way:

We now confront the noteworthy fact that, during the rise of historical criticism, concentrated attention to the text of Scripture was considered vital and necessary. Criticism protested against every form of Scripture exposition which went to work with a priori and external standards. It wanted to proceed from Scripture as it actually existed; it sought to understand Scripture in the way in which it came to us in order thus to honor the ā€œinterprets itself.ā€ This is what it claimed in its historical exposition of Scripture: something supposedly free of all the a prioris of dogmatic systems or ecclesiastical symbolic. In that way justice could be done to Scripture itself.[3]

Maybe you noticed something in the Berkouwer quote, he is implicitly noting something that happened in the 18th centuryā€”again remembering that this is the context which the Dispensationalist hermeneutic developed within and fromā€”there was a split (as a result of Enlightenment rationalism among other forces) between doing confessional/churchy biblical interpretation/study from the kind of biblical interpretation/study that came to dominate what it meant to do ā€˜criticalā€™ biblical study. This split was given formalization in the mid-1700s first by publications from Anton Friedrich BĆ¼sching and then most notably by G. Ebling; Gerhard Hasel summarizes it this way:

Under the partial impetus of Pietism and with a strong dose of rationalism Anton Friedrich BĆ¼schingā€™s publications (1756-58) reveal for the first time that ā€œBiblical theologyā€ becomes the rival of dogmatics. Protestant dogmatics, also called ā€œscholastic theology,ā€ is criticized for its empty speculations and lifeless theories. G. Ebeling has aptly summarized that ā€œfrom being merely a subsidiary discipline of dogmatics ā€˜biblical theologyā€™ now became a rival of the prevailing dogmatics.ā€[4]

Dispensationalism developed within the new ā€˜criticalā€™ approach to doing biblical studies, although it was attempting to still honor its pious commitment to Scripture as Holy and Godā€™s. But it did so under the ā€˜Modernā€™ constraints provided for by Enlightenment rationalism; its philosophy of language (i.e. the literalism we have already broached), grounded in Scottish Common Sense Realism, was very so much so moving and breathing in and from a non-confessional, non-dogmatic mode of doing biblical study. Hasel once again describes the ethos which the Dispensational hermeneutic developed within:

In the age of Enlightenment (AufklƤrung) a totally new approach for the study of the Bible was developed under several influences. First and foremost was rationalismā€™s reaction against any form of supernaturalism. Human reason was set up as the final criterion and chief source of knowledge, which meant that the authority of the Bible as the infallible record of divine revelation was rejected. The second major contribution of the period of the Enlightenment was the development of a new hermeneutic, the historical-critical method which holds sway to the present day in liberalism [dispensationalism] and beyond. Third, there is the application of radical literary criticism to the Bible ā€¦. Finally, rationalism by its very nature was led to abandon the orthodox view of the inspiration of the Bible so that ultimately the Bible became simply one of the ancient documents, to be studied as any other ancient document.[5]

It might appear that what was just described sounds nothing like who the practitioners of the dispensational hermeneutic are (i.e. evangelical Bible loving Christians). That would be correct, but the point is to note that dispensational hermeneutes donā€™t ever really abandon the Enlightenment principles nor the split from confessional hermeneutics that the Enlightenment produced between the disciplines. Instead dispensationalism attempts to work with and from the material and rationalist principles provided by the Enlightenment;Ā  primarily meaning that the Dispensational hermeneutic hopes to be able to go immediately to the text of Scripture, through its grammatical and historical analysis under the supposition that biblical language simply functions like any other literary language does under its plain and normal meanings without any pretext or reliance upon its (potential) theological significance. Instead its theological significance can only be arrived at after abstracting that out from the plain meaning of the words of Scripture.

Conclusion

John Webster summarizes what happened during this period of development this way (and what he describes applies to the development of the Dispensational hermeneutic as well):

To simplify matters rather drastically: a dominant trajectory in the modern development of study of the Bible has been a progressive concentration on what Spinoza called interpretation of ScriptureĀ ex ipsius historia, out of its own history. Precisely when this progression begins to gather pace, and what its antecedents may be, are matters of rather wide dispute. What is clear, at least in outline, is that commanding authority gradually came to be accorded to the view that the natural properties of the biblical text and of the skills of interpreters are elements in an immanent economy of communication. The biblical text is a set of human signs borne along on, and in turn shaping, social religious and literary processes; the enumeration of its natural properties comes increasingly to be not only a necessary but a sufficient description of the Bible and its reception. This definition of the text in terms of its (natural) history goes along with suspension of or disavowal of the finality both of the Bible and of the reader in loving apprehension of God, and of the Bibleā€™s ministerial function as divine envoy to creatures in need of saving instruction.[6]

Whenever you hear someone say they just interpret Scripture ā€˜literallyā€™ dig deeper to see if what they mean is ā€˜literalisticallyā€™ under the constraints of what we described provided for by the Enlightenment.

To be clear, following the Enlightenment does not, of course, nor necessarily terminate in the Dispensational hermeneutic, in fact a case can be made that what the Enlightenment did to biblical studies, in some ways provided for some fruitful trajectory as well (insofar as it highlights the fact that the Bible and its phenomenon cannot be reduced to historist or naturalist premises themselves); but we will have to pursue that line later. Suffice it to say, Dispensationalism is not the pure way to Scripture that its adherents want us to think that it is. It does not spring from Christian confessional premises, and in fact ignores the fact that indeed Scripture study and exegesis is actually a theological endeavor at its heart. The only way to get a plain meaning of Scripture is to read it through the lens of Godā€™s life revealed and exegeted in Jesus Christ.

[1] See Thomas Reid, ā€œIf there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them ā€” these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.ā€ The Cambridge Companion to Thomas ReidĀ (2004), 85.

[2] Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism. Revised and Expanded (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 80.

[3] G.C. Berkouwer, Studies In Dogmatics: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975), 130.

[4] Gerhard Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues In The Current Debate. Revised and Expanded Third Edition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmanā€™s Publishing Company, 1989), 19.

[5] Ibid., 18-19 [Brackets mine].

[6] John Webster,Ā The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason(London/New York: T&T Clark, A Continuum Imprint, 2012), 6.

Sin and Its Yucky Implications for What It Means to Be Human: Engaging with Thomas Aquinas and John Webster

Posted on by

What is sin, and how does it shape what it means to be a human being? Throughout the rest of this post we will mostly engage with the latter part of my question, and leave the former part to the side for a later date.

aquinasAccording to Thomas Aquinas, sin is a ā€˜wounding of natureā€™, and by nature he is referring to ā€˜reasonā€™ or the ā€˜intellectā€™ as definitive for what it means to be human at its very ā€˜essence.ā€™ Note:

So three things oppose virtue: sin (or misdeeds), evil (the opposite of goodness), and vice (disposition unbefitting to oneā€™s nature). Whatever accords with reason is humanly good, whatever goes against reason is humanly bad. Human virtue that makes men and their deeds good befits human nature by befitting reason, whilst vice goes against manā€™s nature by going against reason. Manā€™s nature is twofold: he lives by his reason and he lives by his senses. It is through sensing that he learns to reason, but many men never mature beyond the level of sense. Vice and sin result from our following of sense-nature against our rational nature. And going against human rational nature is going against eternal law.[1]

Here we see Thomas elevating reason in ways that, theoanthropologically becomes definitive for what it means to be human. For Thomas he still works within a domain where reason is understood to be something from God, but in his elevating of reason/intellect as the defining feature of what it means to be human, as the defining standard by which we might judge what is ā€˜goodā€™ or not, he engages in a very modern way of conceiving of what it means to be human, and how we determine what is good and what is not.

Ironically, John Webster takes this modern understanding of ā€˜reasonā€™ and what it means to be human and moral (thus engaging with sin, holiness, etc.) to task. I say ironically, because as of late Webster has been becoming increasingly Thomist in the way he thinks and does theology. But I believe his critique of the ā€˜modernā€™ understanding of what it means to be human and moral could apply at some level to Thomas Aquinasā€™ usage of ā€˜reasonā€™ as something that remains something that is somewhat intact and only ā€˜woundedā€™[2] even after the fall of humanity into sin. Here is Webster:

ā€¦ Modernity has characteristically regarded reason as a ā€˜naturalā€™ faculty ā€“ a standard, unvarying and foundational feature of humankind, a basic human capacity or skill. As a natural faculty, reason is, crucially, not involved in the drama of Godā€™s saving work; it is not fallen, and so requires neither to be judged nor to be reconciled nor to be sanctified. Reason simply is; it is humankind in its intellectual nature. Consequently, ā€˜naturalā€™ reason has been regarded as ā€˜transcendentā€™ reason. Reason stands apart from or above all possible convictions, all particular, historical forms of life, observing them and judging them from a distance. Reason does not participate in history but makes judgements about history; it is a transcendent and sovereign intellectual legislator, and as such answerable to none but itself.[3]

The reason I suggest that Websterā€™s critique of ā€˜reasonā€™ as a ā€˜naturalā€™ and definitive capacity of what it means to be human might not only apply to ā€˜modernā€™ thinking but also to Thomas Aquinas is because Thomas holds out the idea that ā€˜reasonā€™ remains only tarnished and incomplete as a result of the ā€˜fallā€™, but not necessarily destroyed and polluted to the point of incapacity. For Thomas the mind/intellect or reason remains intact, as it must (since it serves as definitive for what it means to be human), thus only need of restorative ā€˜medicineā€™ or grace in order to restore it to full functionability before God; in order for humans to truly flourish at full capacity as good moral beings ā€˜perfected by the grace of God.ā€™ Thomas writes:

Now this nature is disordered, however, man falls short even of the goodness natural to him, and cannot wholly achieve it by his own natural abilities. Particular good actions he can still perform in virtue of his nature (building houses, planting vineyards and the like); but he falls short of the total goodness suited to his nature. He is like a sick man able to make certain movements by himself, but unable to move like a man in perfect health until he has had medicine to heal him.[4]

Does this abide well with what we see in the Bible, or in the cross of Jesus Christ? No. When Jesus died he took the whole person, the whole humanity in his humanity to the cross and condemned it; the Apostle Paul writes:

3Ā For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, GodĀ didĀ by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, ā€¦[5]

Humanity did not just need ā€˜medicineā€™, and ā€˜natureā€™ did not just need to be ā€˜perfected by graceā€™ (a favorite Thomas anecdote); humanity (inclusive of reason/mind/intellect) needed to be put to death, not simply healed, it needed to be recreated (ontically at its very essential being) and resurrected anew, afresh in the vicarious humanity of Christ.

And it is this that John Webster understands well in regard to the modern conception of reason as a ā€˜naturalā€™ faculty, and it is what I am not only agreeing with Webster on, but extrapolating and applying his insight to the theoanthropology and theology in general of Thomas Aquinas. Webster continues to write that,

Such conceptions of reason have become so deeply embedded in modern culture and its most prestigious intellectual institutions that they are scarcely visible to us. But for the Christian confession, these conceptions are disordered. Above all, they are disordered because they extract reason and its operations from the economy of Godā€™s dealings with his creatures. To think of reason as ā€˜naturalā€™ and ā€˜transcendentā€™ in this wayĀ  is, by the standard of the Christian confession, corrupt, because it isolates reason from the work of God as creator, reconciler and perfector. Once reason is thought of as ā€˜naturalā€™ rather than as ā€˜createdā€™ (or, to put it differently, once the category of ā€˜the createdā€™ is collapsed into that of ā€˜the naturalā€™), then reasonā€™s contingency is set aside, and its sufficiency is exalted in detachment from the divine gift of truth. Or again, when reason is expounded as a natural competency, then it is no longer understood as fallen and in need of reconciliation to God. Again, when reason is considered as a human capacity for transcendence, then reasonā€™s continual dependence on the vivifying Spirit is laid to one side, for natural reason does not need to be made holy.

Christian theology, however, must beg to differ. It must beg to differ because the confession of the gospel by which theology governs its life requires it to say that humankind in its entirety, including reason, is enclosed within the history of sin and reconciliation. The history of sin and its overcoming by the grace of God concerns the remaking of humankind as a whole, not simply of what we identify restrictively as its ā€˜spiritualā€™ aspect. And so reason, no less than anything else, stands under the divine requirement that it be holy to the Lord its God.[6]

As Thomas Torrance often states ā€˜we need grace all the way down,ā€™ meaning that we are sinners all the way down, polluted in our whole being. Webster is surely right in his judgment of modern understandings of reason and ā€˜naturalā€™ capacities. But I canā€™t help but think that this kind of ā€˜Thomist Intellectualistā€™ anthropology we have been visiting hasnā€™t had a large role in providing for this kind of Western/modern posture and understanding of reason and humanity. Thomas Aquinas, even if he is more sacrosanct in his own self-understanding and mode as the Angelic Doctor leaves the door ajar for the modern conception of humanity and reason as a definitive and ā€˜transcendentā€™ reality, even within its own contingent and created reality.

Conclusion

Whether or not my extrapolations are correct it is clear, at least for us Christians, as Webster has been underscoring for us, that we need to be recreated. That we need to become brand new through and through; that we need somebody outside of us to reach down deep inside of our very souls, our very beings and recreate them. We do not simply need medicine, nor do we need to be perfected by grace and elevated to our highest state as created persons. We need something and someOne more. That should be the takeaway of this.

[1] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae A Concise Translation, ed. Timothy McDermott (Westiminster: Christian Classics, 1989), 249.

[2] See Ibid., 270-71: ā€˜In the original integrated state of man reason controlled our lower powers perfectly and God perfected the reason subordinated to him. This state was lost to us by Adamā€™s sin, and the resulting lack of order among the powers of our soul that incline us to virtue we call a wounding of nature. Ignorance is a wound in reasonā€™s response to truth, wickedness in willā€™s response to good; weakness wounds the response of our aggressive emotions to challenge and difficulty, and disordered desire our affectionsā€™ reasonable and balanced response to pleasure. All sins inflict these four wounds blunting reasonā€™s practical sense, hardening the will against good, increasing the difficulty of acting well and inflaming desire.ā€™

[3] John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), Loc. 111, 116 Kindle edition.

[4] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae A Concise Translation, 308.

[5] Romans 8.3, NKJV.

[6] John Webster, Holiness, Loc. 116, 121, 125.

Towards a Biblical Doctrine of Inspiration

Posted on by

Yesterday I attended the Evangelical Theological Societyā€™s regional meeting for the Pacific Northwest, held at Western Theological Seminary in Portland, OR. I made a new friend there with a brother who is like minded, and shares a lot of concerns that I do, theologically. His area of emphasis (as he heads into the beginning stages of PhD study), in regard to research, has to do with a Christian biblical doctrine and understanding of inspiration. He in fact delivered a paper, which I listened to, where he proposed a kind of trajectory for developing a Christian Dogmatic frame for locating biblical inspiration relative to God. After he finished reading his paper, as is customary at such conferences, there was a short Q&A period. During that time one of the questioners brought up the issue of how the words of Scripture are somehow properties of divine disclosure; divine discourse. This led further to an even more general consideration, brought up by my friend in response, in regard to: ā€˜How is Scripture Godā€™s Word for us today?ā€™

I think these are very pertinent questions, and as such I would like to provide some response; response in engagement with two lights in this particular area: John Webster and Angus Paddison. Throughout the rest of this post we will consider some ways that might be helpful toward thinking about what in fact inspiration actually is (from a Christian Dogmatic vantage point), and how Godā€™s Word might be Godā€™s Word for us today. Shall we begin?

I would submit that as Matthew Levering has duly noted and developed[1] the primary way that Scripture is Godā€™s Word for us today reposes upon the reality that Scripture lives and breathes within the web of Godā€™s present (not just past) life for us. In other words the category of participation becomes a powerful resource for how we should conceive of how Scripture not only has signified Godā€™s Word for us from the past, but continues to do that for us in the present. In other words, Scripture itself has an ontology or is webbed into a relationship of discourse from on high; i.e. it participates in the Divine discourse as an embassy of Godā€™s Triune speech, speech that is enlivened by the Holy Spirit as He (the third person of the Trinity) bridges the heavenly discourse with our discourse and knowledge of God. This introduces a host of directions we could take (like: the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, the complex of divine and human agency relative to inscripturation, etc.), but letā€™s try to focus our attention, in this post, in one dominant direction.

Signum and Res (ā€˜Signā€™ and ā€˜Realityā€™); these are the two categories that best help us, I submit, towards understanding how we ought to think of ā€˜inspirationā€™, theologically, and attendant to that (definitively) how Godā€™s Word for us is his Word for us today. I could put this in my own words, and will (by way of reflection below), but letā€™s allow Angus Paddison a word on this:

Seeing Scripture is an exercise in seeing the actions in which it is a participant, and so we should properly seek of not just seeing Scripture but also of seeing beyond Scripture. Karl Barthā€™s category of Scripture as a ā€˜witnessā€™ is helpful here in reinforcing the kind of vision required. To have oneā€™s attention grabbed by a witness is to look away from her and towards that which she witnesses. The aim of reading a text written by a biblical author like Paul is not to seek out the putative historical circumstances behind this or that pronouncement, but to look towards the reality which so radically reorientated Paulā€™s life. Just as when we look out of a window at people staring upwards and yet cannot see the plane they are doubtless staring at, so too Paul ā€˜sees and hears something which is above everything, which is absolutely beyond the range of my observation and the measure of my thoughtā€™. Reading Paul as a witness upturned by grace, rather than prioritizing his status as author, is to follow the direction of his gaze, daring to see that which he points us towards. Good witnesses urge us to look not at them but at that which they indicate to us ā€“ a ā€˜successfulā€™ witness is one who recedes as his object of attention begins to absorb our attention. Scripture is then not the end point of our vision, but is rather an invitation to see in what kind of contexts it is intelligible as Scripture.[2]

Paddison identifies at least three helpful hooks we might hang our doctrine of Scripture (vis-Ć -vis doctrine of inspiration) upon: 1) the category of ā€˜participationā€™, 2) the Barthian category of ā€˜witnessā€™, and 3) the category of ā€˜visionā€™ or ā€˜realityā€™. As you think about it, what encompasses all of these categories is an uber-category of ā€˜instrumentalityā€™; this a category not far removed from John Calvinā€™s own thinking about Scripture as spectacles. But letā€™s not stop here, lets push further into what Paddison introduces us to by hearing from Webster on how this might relate even further to developing a theological understanding and doctrine of biblical inspiration and how understanding the wordā€™s of Scripture as ā€˜signsā€™ might accomplish this for us; indeed, Websterā€™s thoughts dovetail quite well with Paddison as he writes,

To speak of these signs as divinely instituted is to say that they are brought into being by an impulse which simultaneously employs and sublates human authorship. This, we shall see, does not compromise the integrity of text or authorship and authorial intention, but it does set those realities and activities in a movement whose primary agent is God himself. God initiates and directs this movement; to say anything less would be to compromise the notion of revelation. This divine direction is such that the biblical signs bear the divine Word to their hearers. The speeches of the prophets and apostles are not simply a sort of linguistic wager, rather perilously reaching towards divine speech. They are the actual occasion and mode of its utterance, and the presence of its authority to judge, command and bless. And this, not by way of conversion or confusion ā€“ the prophetic and the apostolic signs remain human, not divine or angelic words ā€“ but by way of the mystery of divine institution. Here, as Augustine puts it, God did not ā€˜broadcast direct from heavenā€™ but spoke ā€˜from his human templeā€™.

There is, therefore, a relation between the words of the biblical text and divine speech. It is not that the sermo humana is just occasionally or accidentally related to the sermo divina, or that the divine Word is so loosely annexed to the fallible human word that all we may legitimately discover in Scripture are traces of divine speech rather than Godā€™s self-utterance. As a divinely instituted sign, Scripture is not a response to a distant Word, a Word which does not take determinate creaturely forms into its service; nor does Scripture signify the divine Word merely by traces of ā€˜excessā€™. If scriptural signs do, indeed, constitute the temple from which God makes divine utterances, then we need not be overzealous in separating divine Word and human service, or too pessimistic about Godā€™s capacity to sanctify human texts. God so acts as to make the text capable, fitting and fruitful in the publication of his Word. This is part of what is meant by verbal inspiration: Godā€™s Word is not at risk when spoken through the ministry of the prophets and apostles.[3]

Conclusion

I walk away from this engagement with these thoughts: 1) Godā€™s Word is Godā€™s Word for us insofar as we understand its participatory relationship (i.e. its ontology) within the web of Godā€™s Triune speech and discourse for us today bridged by the Holy Spiritā€™s witness bearing role in relation to the publication of Scriptureā€™s words; 2) that the primary category under which a confessional and principled Christian doctrine of Scripture and inspiration ought to be framed is ā€˜instrumentalityā€™, in other words, Scripture is not an objective end in itself, but given its ontology in relation to its direct giveness by God, it becomes the sanctioned instrument through which God intends to make his reality known; and 3) the words of Scripture do not have any capacity in themselves to be ā€˜revealing things,ā€™ but they only become this continuously as they by the Holy Spiritā€™s charge point us beyond themselves to their reality (the ā€˜signumā€™/ā€™resā€™ matrix), their living reality found in Godā€™s eternal Logos, as he communes among himself in Trinitarian discourse and bliss ā€“ so it would be wrong, then, to attempt to reduce the words of scripture themselves down into a ā€˜qualitativeā€™ understanding as if the words themselves could serve as ā€˜containersā€™ or ā€˜receptaclesā€™ of God for us, they cannot (this takes us, later, into a discussion about the impact that substance metaphysics has had upon the Western church in regard to developing not just our relative doctrines of Scripture, but everything else theological and ecclesiological as well).

 

[1] Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 1-310.

[2] Angus Paddison, Scripture a very Theological Proposal (New York, NY: T&T Clark. A Continuum Imprint, 2009), 2-3.

[3] John Webster, The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London/New York, NY: T&T Clark. A Continuum Imprint, 2012), 10.

The Eclipsing of God’s Personal Holiness by Metaphysics: John Webster is Right

Posted on by

When we think about God, and we do so through the metrics that analytical theology provides, things, at the very least, get muzzled if creationnot distorted (I opt for the latter). I have been writing about this (here at the blog and through our edited book) now for many years; that is, the role that analytical philosophical categories have played in shaping much, if not most of what we consider to be classically Reformed theology. When we focus on a metaphysic of ā€˜beingā€™ and attempt to fit God into this metaphysic we have the propensity to depersonalize God; his relationality, his Trinity suffers at our hands (even with all of the good intentions in place, maybe especially with these good intentions in place). What am I really getting at here? John Webster unpacks this, my point, in a very eloquent and depth way; he writes (and at length):

ā€¦ Third, a trinitarian dogmatics of Godā€™s holiness will find itself at a distance from important features of the accounts of the divine attributes offered in some dominant styles of analytical philosophical theology. The reader of such work is immediately struck by the absence of serious engagement with divine holiness in the presentations of the attributes of God that are offered there, and the distinct preference for devoting the lionā€™s share of attention to the so-called metaphysical attributes such as omnipotence or omniscience. The reasons for this neglect are varied: a strange incapacity to deal with the positivities of particular religious beliefs and practices; a corresponding preference for highly abstract, simplified renderings of the content of Christian belief as a version of ā€˜natural religionā€™; a reluctance to allow trinitarian doctrine to play any fundamental role in shaping an account of Godā€™s being; the isolation of discussion of the attributes of God from consideration of the works of God in the economy of salvation. But all these features are undergirded by the way in which priority is often given to questions of the essence of God over questions of the character of Godā€™s existence. One immediate effect of this prioritizing is that metaphysics as the science of being has precedence over exegesis and dogmatics (which are simply the domestic reflection of the ecclesial congregation), since metaphysics, from the early modern period, has assumed responsibility for the task of developing an account of first principles. Modern analytical philosophical theology is in many respects a continuation of that division of labour, especially when the overall project of philosophical theology is conceived to be that of giving ā€˜reasonsā€™ for the rational intelligibility of the world and of human being in the world in the framework of a conception of Godā€™. The use of the concept of God in this way ā€“ its deployment in the task of complete explanation ā€“ shapes its content.

Two consequences are to be noted. First, when the concept of God is shaped by proofs for the existence of God which themselves serve to underwrite a complete explanation of reality, then considerable weight is attached to the so called metaphysical attributes of God:

The interpretation of reality which is provided by the theistic proofs is only coherent if God can be seen as a being with specific attributes. As the universal ground of existence and explanation God must be understood as necessary, immutable, uncaused, omnipotent, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient and in every respect perfect.

Holiness tends to be a causality of this process because it is apparently less crucial in laying out what kind of being God must be conceived to be if he is to be the ground of the worldā€™s existence. Second, this use of the concept of God characteristically restricts the relation between God and the creation to one between causal power and product, language of God as personal agent-in-relation scarcely features. Once again, therefore, holiness recedes from view, for as a ā€˜relativeā€™ or ā€˜personalā€™ attribute holiness is less important in giving an account of God as the worldā€™s ontological groundā€¦.[1]

Heā€™s right you know!

 

 

[1] John Webster, Holiness, kindle loc. 374.

The Reason ‘Reason’ Should Not Function in Place of Revelation: Against Modernity

Posted on by

In my last post I quickly and from the top sketched the problem that John Shore had in his appeal to reason as if it was a new form or mode
Aristotle Smallof revelation from God, and more importantly, about God and his ways within a God-world relation; particularly as that God-world relation applies to Christian ethics. Fortuitously I just happen to be reading theologian par excellence, John Websterā€™s little book Holiness; in this little book Webster is discussing, but of course: Godā€™s holiness in its reach into various spheres within the Christianā€™s life. For the rest of this post I will be engaging a bit with Websterā€™s thinking about holiness, and in particular, and in dovetail with what I was inchoately talking about in regard to the elevation of reason by John Shore (and many others). That said, I donā€™t really want to get sidetracked by applying this discussion to closely to Shore, maybe only insofar as his approach serves as a contemporary and popular illustration of what Webster describes in regard to a modern understanding of reason and its elevation.

John Webster writes this of modernityā€™s understanding of reason:

ā€¦ Modernity has characteristically regarded reason as a ā€˜naturalā€™ faculty ā€“ a standard, unvarying and foundational feature of humankind, a basic human capacity or skill. As a natural faculty, reason is, crucially, not involved in the drama of Godā€™s saving work; it is not fallen, and so requires neither to be judged nor to be reconciled nor to be sanctified. Reason simply is; it is humankind in its intellectual nature. Consequently, ā€˜naturalā€™ reason has been regarded as ā€˜transcendentā€™ reason. Reason stands apart from or above all possible convictions, all particular, historical forms of life, observing them and judging them from a distance. Reason does not participate in history but makes judgments about history; it is a transcendent and sovereign intellectual legislator, and as such answerable to none but itself.

Such conceptions of reason have become so deeply embedded in modern culture and its most prestigious intellectual institutions that they are scarcely visible to us. But for the Christian confession, these conceptions are disordered. Above all, they are disordered because they extract reason and its operations from the economy of Godā€™s dealings with his creatures. To think of reason as ā€˜naturalā€™ and ā€˜transcendentā€™ in this way is, by the standard of the Christian confession, corrupt, because it isolates reason from the work of God as creator, reconciler and perfecter. Once reason is thought of as ā€˜naturalā€™ rather than as ā€˜createdā€™ (or, to put it differently, once the category of ā€˜the createdā€™ is collapsed into that of ā€˜the naturalā€™), then reasonā€™s contingency is set aside, and its sufficiency is exalted in detachment from the divine gift of truth. Or again, when reason is expounded as a natural competency, then it is no longer understood as fallen and in need of reconciliation of God. Again, when reason is considered as a human capacity for transcendence, then reasonā€™s continual dependence on the vivifying Spirit is laid to one side, for natural reason does not need to be made holy.

Christian theology, however, must beg to differ. It must beg to differ because the confession of the gospel by which theology governs its life requires it to say that humankind in its entirety, including reason, is enclosed within the history of sin and its overcoming by the grace of God concerns the remaking of humankind as a whole, not simply of what we identify restrictively as its ā€˜spiritualā€™ aspect. And so reason, no less than anything else, stands under the divine requirement that it be holy to the Lord its God.[1]

This could bring us into a discussion of how pure nature has functioned in Christian theology, or in secular theologies; or this could bring us into a discussion of Thomas Aquinasā€™ appropriation of Aristotleā€™s idea of an ā€˜active intellectā€™ and how that forms us as people anthropologically; we also could get into a discussion about how the Puritans, for example, spoke about such things in their appropriation of Aristotleā€™s tripartite faculty psychologyā€”indeed all of these things are really correlative with and even fund, to extent, Websterā€™s insights on reason. But letā€™s not, and say we did, for timeā€™s sake.

What is of import, at least to me, in what Webster is highlighting is how all of who humanā€™s are needs redemption. We are noetically flawed, even in redemption we cry out to Jesus along with the man in the Gospel accounts ā€œLord I believe, help me in my unbelief!ā€ It should be clear though: any appeal to human reason, any appeal to reason embedded in the image of God, as if that sanitizes reason in a way that keeps it untouched by sin is a non-starter for the Christian; as Thomas Torrance has said more than once: ā€˜We are sinners all the way down, so we need grace all the way down.ā€™

[1] John Webster, Holiness, kindle loc. 122.

*Credit: Image of Aristotle taken from Matt Ryder’s collection here.

“… it is not Scripture which is self-interpreting, but God who as Word interprets himself through the Spiritā€™s work.ā€

Posted on by

holy_bibleThe perspicuity of Holy Scripture is something quite central to the Protestant Reformation, in principle. In other words, for the
Protestant Reformers and reformed, the clarity of Scripture as to things having to do with who God is and what salvation entails isĀ absolutely central to the capacity for all believers to fulfill the Reformed principle of the Priesthood of All Believers. Note what the Westminster Confession of Faith 1/VII & 1/IX communicates:

VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

X. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

But as we look out on the horizon of present day Protestant exegesis of the Bible, it becomes quickly apparent that something has gone awry; that what sociologist Christian Smith calls Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism is surely pertinent to our current circumstances (i.e. the idea that there are as many interpretations of the text of Scripture as there are interpreters or communities of interpreters).

So is the WCF wrong in its view of the clarity of Scriputure? Were the Reformers wrong in pressing this idea of the perspicuity of Holy Writ? Not necessarily, but maybe we need to take some of those principles and hone them more sharply; maybe we need to identify a canon or standard by which we can identify what clarity actually looks like, and who controls that when we engage with Scripture. And maybe we need to consider the reality (as the WCF does) that sin still clouds things such that we must look even beyond Scripture, through Scripture, for the clarity that Scripture bears witness to. And maybe we should consider Scriptureā€™s clarity as an eschatological and even apocalyptic reality that is not a static thing but a dynamic thing as we are all (as the church) growing more and more in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Todd Billings (with John Websterā€™s help) helps clarify my points further:

It is in this context that the notion of Scripture as ā€œself-interpretingā€ is properly understood. Though this notion that Scripture is ā€œself-interpretingā€ and ā€œclearā€ is often criticized as naĆÆve, it is better thought of as a way to understand the priority of Godā€™s word by way of Scripture standing over the reader and all that the reader brings to the text. As John Webster says, ā€œScripture is self-interpreting and perspicuous by virtue of its relation to God; its clarity is inherent, not made, whether by magisterial authorities, the scholar-prince or the pious reader.ā€ Webster, Holy Scripture, p. 93. This self-interpreting clarity is not a formal property of the biblical text; rather, ā€œScripture is clear because through the Spirit the text serves Godā€™s self-presentation. Properly speaking, it is not Scripture which is self-interpreting, but God who as Word interprets himself through the Spiritā€™s work.ā€ Webster, Holy Scripture, p. 94. In the triune economy of salvation, readers of Scripture enter into the Spiritā€™s work ā€“ which is Godā€™s own ā€œself-interpretingā€ of Godā€™s incarnate Word. The Spirit does not need our advice or input to speak Godā€™s Word.[1]

Is it wrong to believe in the Protestant idea of the clarity of Scripture? No. But it is better, I think, to constructively move beyond its original articulation by following Billingsā€™ and Websterā€™s suggestions of grounding clarity in the nexus of our participation with the living, eternal Word of God by the Holy Spiritā€™s spiration as He illumines, from glory to glory, our relationship and knowledge of God and His Word in ever increasing ways as we are moving toward the reality and consummate form of the once and for all faith delivered to the saints. In other words, it is best to think of Scriptureā€™s clarity as grounded in Jesus Christ, and understand that Scriptureā€™s role is as an instrument or spectacles to allow us to look beyond it to its dynamic and ineffable reality who is, indeed, Jesus Christ. So clarity, by implication, then, should not suggest to us that we have come to possess something by understanding certain things about Scripture; instead the clarity of Scripture should make clear to us that we are now possessed by the One who ever anew and afresh gives Himself continuously to us by the Holy Spiritā€™s recreative work in our lives as we live from His, from Christā€™s life for us.

[1] J. Todd Billings, The Word Of God For The People Of God: an entryway to the theological interpretation of scripture (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 142-43, n. 43.

Scripture as Living and Breathing, It Has ‘Being’ and that Matters Peter Enns and Everyone Else Who Wants to Approach Scripture Naturally.

Posted on by

I have come to the conclusion that I have a major preoccupation with the ontology of Scripture; in other words: What is it? Scripture for me is so important, as I am sure it is for most of you who read here! As a Protestant Christian I am taken with what Karl Barth calls the Protestant Scripture principle, or what others have simply identified as a theology of the Word (instead of a theology of the Church) as the centerpiece of my theological authority base. I realize that none of this is unique to me, and that almost all of the chatter, online in particular, on theological blogs, and theological Facebooking, revolves, really, around an ontology of Scripture.

Furthermore, when I speak of an ontology of Scripture I am gesturing toward the discipline that I think is the most relevant towards establishing trajectory for this discussion; Christian dogmatics. If I am going to talk about Scriptureā€™s ā€˜beingā€™ or taxis (order), I am first presupposing that it has one, and that it comes from somewhere. It is somewhat strange to think of Scripture having an ontology, isnā€™t it? I mean how can something that is made up of paper, ink, binding, and leather have ā€˜beingā€™? So I must be referring to its function, its instrumental place in relation to God. Yes, this is how Scripture must be thought of as having an ontology. When we understand that Scripture has a place it must have a place somewhere, not only in relation to God, but since it involves creaturely media, within an ontology of Creation. So maybe you get the picture a little. Scripture is something that is given by God to us, and as such this dictates the way we will proceed in our engagement with Scripture; not as if it is something that is merely profane, but obviously, as something that is sacred, but further, something that is not ours, but Godā€™s. If we have this idea of an ontology of Scripture, a properly Christian one, as I was just noting, this will dictate how we ā€˜interpretā€™ Scripture; it will give us an ontology of hermeneutics. John Webster communicates it this way:

Much follows from this for a theology of Scripture. An immediate formal consequence is the necessity of a textual and hermeneutical ontology ā€“ parallel to a moral ontology in Christian ethics ā€“ which accounts for the activities of the production and interpretation of texts by referring them to divine revelation as their material, efficient and final cause. The Bible, its readers and their work of interpretation have their place in the domain of the Word of God, the sphere of reality in which Christ glorified is present and speaks with unrivalled clarity. As he speaks, he summons creaturely intelligence to knowledge and by his Spirit bestows powers of mind and will so that they may be quickened by that summons to intelligent life under the Word. This, in turn, suggests other matters of reflection in the theology of Scripture. Bibliology and hermeneutics are derivative elements of Christian theology, shaped by prior Christian teaching abou the nature of God and creatures and their relations. Again, bibliology is prior to hermeneutics, because strategies of interpretation will be maladroit unless fitting to the actual nature of the text which they seek to unfold. A common thread running through a number of essays [Webster in this paragraph is introducing what he will be developing throughout the rest of his book] is the restriction imposed on biblical study by theological inattention to the nature of Scripture, the resultant vacuum often being filled by some kind of naturalism. The cogency (as much political as hermeneutical) of this strategy was that it appeared to recall attention to the fact that the Bible and the interpretation of the Bible are human cultural activities. The recall, however, was often coupled to a kind of nominalism, in which human signs were segregated from the divine economy of revelation, as, once again, elements without principles. The misstep here is the supposition that the properties of natural realities can be grasped without reference to createdness, and that only when so grasped can natural realities protect their integrity. But in a well-ordered Christian theology, the divine movements of revelation, inspiration and illumination do not compromise the human movements of authorship and interpretation. Showing that this is so, however, obliges theology to attend to doctrinal work on creation, providence and the Holy Spirit, in order to demonstrate that divine revelation is not a unilateral cognitive force but a compound act in which the creator and reconciler takes creatures and their powers, acts and products into his service. God speaks from his human temple.[1]

I hope what I was articulating among is even a little clearer now, because of Websterā€™s insight.

The reason my spirit has been being stirred lately is because of what I perceive as the recklessness with which Scripture has been being engaged; in particular by folks in the mood of Peter Enns. Ennsā€™ book, as far as I understand it (I havenā€™t been able to read it in full yet, but I just finished listening to an hour and a half interview he just did on the book) is reckless, for the very reasons I just opined upon. He has no overt ontology of Scripture informing his deconstruction of it; he is simply appealing to the naturalist approach to bibliology that Webster references. This is reckless, not just for him, but for the thousands (I hope that is all that his book will touch) of people who will come into contact with his book, The Bible Tells Me So. When the naturalist bible critic talks about the Bible he doesnā€™t talk about things like inspiration or illumination, why? Because this kind of critic has taken control of the text of Scripture, as if it isnā€™t something that is given, as if it is open to their handling from below; but it surely isnā€™t.

[1] John Webster, The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: T&T Clark, 2012), viii-ix.