Thread Summary: The divine/human authorship of Scripture

a) The relation between the two

1. The divine and human authorship of Scripture
2. The Spirit and inspiration in theological exegesis
3. Inner-Referentiality in the New Testament and the Scriptures as "divine vehicle"
4. How to understand the ways of God: Some pointers

b) The unity of Scripture in its diverse transmission

5. The unity of scripture in its diverse transmission
6. The text-critical challenge to theological exegesis

The text-critical challenge to theological exegesis

In my post The unity of Scripture in its diverse transmission, I raised the theological challenge of the textual diversity of Scripture. The early church depended largely on the Greek translation of the Hebrew, and, as becamse increasingly clear, the two diverged quite a lot. How does Childs' "canonical approach" deal with this?

From Childs’ perspective, the issue of textual tradition is derivative of the concept of canon, as it was only when the

“formation of the literature had reached a final stage of development within the canonical process [that] concern for the text of the literature emerge[d]." (Introduction to the Old Testament, 94).

As such there is an analogy to the considerations in my thread on the two testamental nature of Christian scripture, where I claimed that the integrity of the individual testaments should be held in critical tension with the one divine reality to which they testify. The same analogy is found in my thread on the literal and spiritual sense of scripture, where I claimed that the fundamental focus of Christian interpretation is on the spiritual sense, while still tied to and held in critical tension with the literal sense in its integrity.

And so it is in this case: Biblical theology does not attempt to remain at the textual level, as this would be to miss the key which unites dissident voices into a harmonious whole. Instead, the attempt should be made to hear the different voices in relation to the divine reality to which they point in diverse ways. To fail to grapple with this underlying substance of the two witnesses, and thus to collapse the spiritual and literal senses into one meaning, is to commit the sin which Childs calls “Biblicism.” Biblicism is the attempt to remain at the time conditioned level of the text while attempting to read the Bible theologically. This move can be seen in attempts to simply adopt the particular interpretive methods of various New Testament authors as normative for today, as well as in the attempt to elect one text tradition as more authentic or somehow spiritually deeper. Such a move is to misunderstand the theological relation of the text’s authority to its function as kerygmatic witness (see Childs' Biblical Theology, 85).

It should be added that if one text tradition is to be preferred, then Childs has argued for the MT. His argument, however, is not so much based on inherent properties of the translation, as the theological need to maintain the "ontological unity of the people of God" (Israel/church).

This is the final post in my thread on the divine and human authorship of Scripture. My next thread will look at the Christological content of the Bible.

The unity of Scripture in its diverse transmission

Despite the Jewish people’s role as tradents of the Old Testament witness, the Christian church received the Jewish Scriptures largely through Greek translations. A hermeneutical problem thus arose when it was perceived that the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint did not always agree. Over the years, various hermeneutical attempts have been offered by which to address the issue, such as allegory, various forms of harmonization, the subjugation of the Old Testament to its New Testament reception, dismissal of the issue by reference to history-of-religions categories, or post-modern appeals to the freedom of the creative imagination. (See Childs, Struggle, 311-312)

The purpose of my next few posts is to look at how Childs' canonical approach deals with this issue. Stay tuned!

How to understand the ways of God: Some pointers

I have given an example of what Brevard Childs considers to be the difference between a "spiritual" interpretation of the Bible and a more mundane one in my post The Spirit, Bonhoeffer, and Gunkel. The fact, however, that the shift in perception experienced by confessional scholars is due ultimately to the agency of the Spirit should not lead to the conclusion that such a shift is purely irrational or arbitrary. Theologically, the creation of the canon of Scripture was never claimed by the church to be its own work, but was itself understood to be a response to the divine coercion of the living Word of God. Thus, according to Childs, “the concept of canon was a corollary of inspiration.” ("Speech Act Theory," 381). Within this rule-of-faith, understood as both the hermeneutical structure of the canon and the summa of authentic Christian response to the substance of this canon, Childs identifies the following five pointers for understanding the ways of God in the world (from "Interpreting the Bible Amid Cultural Change," 210-211):

1. Christian spiritual vitality necessitates wrestling with the Bible as the vehicle of God’s word. “To speak of moving beyond the Bible always signals a return to the wilderness and a loss of divine blessing.”

2. Scripture functions properly within the life of the church only if it is heard addressing issues of life and death. When received as a divine gift to believers, the Bible becomes a guide for faith and practice.

3. There is a family resemblance among the ways in which faithful response to the Bible occurs. A likeness arises from the serious encounter with the selfsame God who shapes obedient response into Christian likeness, with a parallel family resemblance on the side of unbelief and scepticism.

4. The Bible calls for faithful reflection, but also for faithful action. Where there is true understanding of the Scriptures, by necessity there arises an imperative for evangelism and mission, a care for the impoverished and suffering.

5. Finally, built into the New Testament’s proclamation of the gospel is the promise of fresh growth and understanding. Change in the sense of growth in the knowledge of God is built into the Christian faith. Our understanding of the Bible can never be static: “Its pages continue to radiate fresh guidance into the knowledge of God and his Son.”

The Spirit, Bonhoeffer and Gunkel

If it's the case, as I argued in my post The Spirit and inspiration in theological exegesis, that the human words of Scripture become a means of revelation by the operation of the Holy Spirit, what does that look like in practice? Childs attempted to answer this question in his fascinating article "Interpreting the Bible Amid Cultural Change," Theology Today 54 (1997), 200-211.

He turns to a major source of personal inspiration: the Germany theology of the Confessing Church during the 1920s and 30s. He notes that theologians of this period underwent a paradigm shift that brought them into fresh and empowering contact with God and his Gospel. Karl Barth, among others, talked of the strange new world of the Bible, a vision which empowered him to resist National Socialism “like an ancient Hebrew prophet.” (203) While he admits that cultural or political factors certainly contributed to this shift, such explanations do not get to the heart of the matter. Those involved in this new vision of the Bible spoke of responding to a powerful voice from Scripture itself, language echoing with older models exemplified by the church Fathers and the Reformers.

“The coercion of the biblical text occurred in different ways, often matching the unique personalities of each interpreter, but theirs was always a stance of reception. ... In every case, the Scriptures were the vehicle for the transformation of perspective.” (204)

In order to demonstrate this, Childs compares Hermann Gunkel’s interpretation of Genesis 1 with that of Bonhoeffer. Gunkel, inspired by German romanticism of the period, sought to instil in his readers an aesthetic appreciation for the creative genius of this ancient, primitive document. Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, saw in Gen. 1:1 an affirmation of the Gospel which plunges the reader into a new dimension of reality. He says the following:

“The Bible begins with God’s free affirmation, ... free revelation of himself. . . . In the beginning, out of freedom, out of nothing, God created the heavens and the earth. This is the comfort with which the Bible addresses us . . . who are anxious before the false void, the beginning without a beginning and the end without an end. It is the gospel, it is the resurrected Christ of whom one is speaking here. God is in the beginning and he will be in the end. . . . The fact that he lets us know this is mercy, grace, forgiveness and comfort.” (Creation and Fall: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1-3 (London: SCM, 1959), 11, 16.)

In awe Childs exclaims: “What a different vision from that of Gunkel! Were they even reading the same text?” At the heart of this paradigm shift

“was a new perception of the reality of God and a fresh grappling with the substance of the Bible as providing the true content of the Christian faith.” (206)

I've dealt with this Bonhoeffer quote elsewhere, in relation to the difficult question of whether non-believers can really "understand" the Bible.

The Spirit and inspiration in theological exegesis

In my post on the Divine and human authorship of Scripture, I raised the following question: "how was it possible that fallible human words could have been received as words from God?"

Brevard Childs' answer is that

“they were regarded so not only because of their divine source, but also by their assigned role as medium of God’s continuing communication.” ("Speech-Act theory," 379).

In particular:

“The crucial action of rendering the human words of the past as the continuing divine message – the rendering of human speech into divine speech – was achieved by the promise of the Holy Spirit” (Ibid. 380; cf. John 14:26; Acts 1:8, 16; 1 Cor. 2:10, 13).

In this process it is important to note that

“the human words were not appropriated, changed or semantically filtered, but illuminated in their original temporal form as a divine vehicle.” (Ibid.)

This spiritual element of divine guidance introduces into the equation an element of subjectivity which cannot be totally controlled or circumscribed. Childs talks of the dynamic nature of the Biblical God who both makes himself known and also hides himself (cf. Amos 8:11-12). The ability of the Scriptures to continually evoke new and fresh understandings was commensurate with the promised Spirit of the resurrected Christ to illuminate and guide the church through the Word. Scripture thus has a voice that exerts coercion on its readers. Faithful interpretation involves a response to this theocentric force. In this way, a significant element of the challenge of “wrestling with Scripture” lies in the struggle to acquire the capacity to receive its message (Struggle, 315).

In my next post I will illustrates this dynamic by taking a glance at the modern history of the church.

The divine and human authorship of Scripture

Today I start a new thread as part of my overall project of looking at what B.S. Childs identified as the six constitutive features of Christian exegesis. The previous three threads include The authority of Scripture (which is best supplemented by looking at Childs' essay here); the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture; and the two-testamental nature of Christian Scripture.

The church has always confessed that it is God’s voice in Scripture addressing people in divine speech (Exod. 20:1ff.; 34:1ff.), while at the same time human authors were designated as communicating the teachings of God (Moses, David, evangelists and apostles; Childs, Struggle, 309). The relationship between the two, however, has never reached a consensus. Childs lists various attempts throughout history to clarify and defend this reality, such as Thomas Aquinas’ concept of the human authors as “instrumental cause,” Calvin’s theory of accommodation, and orthodox views of inerrancy. Each view has had its currency and has then been overwhelmed by new challenges. Childs’ concern is not to develop an alternative theory but rather to delineate the contours of the theological claim and thus the arena within which genuine Christian struggling with this issue can continue.

Within the Bible itself, the human agents of God’s will to Israel and the church claimed within their own writings that their testimony had been inspired by God. This claim to be delivering a message from God was made in different ways, such as narrative descriptions of a theophany in which divine words were received and transmitted to the people (Exod. 19:1-20), introductory formulae such as “the vision that Isaiah saw” (Isa. 1:1) or “thus saith the Lord.” The continuity of God’s speaking is best formulated in Heb. 1:1-2: “In many and various ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days has spoken to us by a Son" (Childs, "Speech-act theory, 309).

The question arises, how was it possible that fallible human words could have been received as words from God?

We will deal with this question in my next post.