In an interview for the fiftieth anniversary issue of Christianity Today magazine some handful of years ago, theologian
John Stott made a surprising statement. Surprising,
that is, to the interviewer and perhaps to many fundamentalists reading the
article. Stott was asked to define who
evangelicals are. His response focused
on the centrality of Jesus Christ, that evangelicals may be defined as deriving
authority for faith and practice from the God revealed in the person of Jesus
Christ.
The interviewer wondered if Stott
had not forgotten to mention the Bible, believing that key for evangelicals is
the place of the Bible. But Stott put
forward a gentle correction, saying that he wanted “to shift conviction from a
book, if you like, to a person.”
The fundamentalists within the evangelical
camp have had this equation reversed for far too long. There is indeed a norming
authority of Scripture in the lives of evangelical Christians. However, Stott says, the Bible has authority
“because Christ has endorsed its authority.”
The Scriptures “main function is to witness to Christ.”
While we can affirm that
the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the unique and
normative source for Christian faith and practice, we ought also to remember
that our faith is in a person. Faith—we
trust ourselves to the care of a person.
It is a kind of creeping
fundamentalism to claim faith in an object, even one so revered as the
Bible. It is revered, regarded as holy,
precisely because it reveals to us a holy person. It is a means of grace. However, this mediating function does not,
cannot, work its work without the ongoing activity of the person of the Holy
Spirit.
Unmediated, Scripture becomes a
blank screen upon which we can too easily impose our own ideas, exert our own
wills, making claims that are thin on truth.
It is the reverse of letting Scripture interpret us, this bringing a
pre-set agenda on how to read the Bible.
It is the opposite of humility before God, to interpret Scripture
through the lens of a creedal statement.
By this mindset have some created an
idolatry of the Bible—call it bibliolatry—with their declaring as central to
faith concepts of inerrancy and infallibility.
The Bible is a living document,
though not a person. The Bible witnesses
to a person, God in Christ. The Bible is
a living document when the Spirit of the living God continues to reveal to us
God in Christ through its pages, to impress upon our hearts its truths.
When we replace a transforming encounter and walk with
God (the underpinnings of salvation) with a doctrinal statement or creed,
however piously constructed, we have turned from God and toward ourselves. Thus, idolatry.
It is a movement away from this
fundamentalist kind of construction that Stott wanted to initiate in his
conversations. We ought to be moving
toward a perspective of having faith in a person.
The adaptability and applicability
of faith, doctrine statements included, is a sign of its life—faith and faith
creeds too can be said to be living precisely because they continue to be relevant,
to apply to people in ever-changing circumstances.
This is part of the wonder of God:
Who, unchanging in character—Holy and Person, Loving and Just—is eternally
adaptable in providing the means of grace that meet us where we are, when we
are.
We are not first and foremost
creedal people in the sense that our faith is in a creed; we do not trust
ourselves in a list of doctrinal statements. We are a people of a living faith. It is precisely when a systematic theology
replaces the living God in our esteem and worship that we are in danger of
shifting from faith in God to faith in an object.
So I will venture to say this
careful: we do not believe in the Bible, we believe in the One the Bible
reveals.
(I wrote the preceding essay a few years ago. The following is a Facebook blog post inspired by a book I began to read recently, very much on the same theme, and which occasioned the posting of the older essay here.)
When it comes to the primary nature and role of the Bible, there are major differences between fundamentalists and Wesleyans.
Fundamentalists tend to view Scripture as a body of unquestionable divinely given information that must be accepted as something of a rule book for safe Christian living. The Bible itself, with its comprehensive and rationally accessible inerrant divine truths or propositions, is the depository and residence of inspiration. The Bible and its truths are the primary objects of attention.
For John Wesley, for whom the Scriptures are truly the Word of God, the primary role of Scripture resides not in the text as divine information but in the Holy Spirit's use of it for a transforming encounter with the risen Christ, the true Word of God. The primary purpose of the Bible is to glorify God and form the people in the image of Christ. Christ, as the encountered Redeemer, not the Bible, is of primary interest and importance.
The Bible is the means the Holy Spirit uses for inner regeneration and the sanctified life. Its focus is not on issuing propositional truths about God and the world. Formation, not information, is its defining goal. Wesleyans accordingly believe that the authority of Scripture is centered on its Spirit-inspired ability to nurture Jesus' disciples in loving relationships with God and neighbor. The writers of the Bible tell us how to live in these right relationships and do not attempt to set forth a vast body of knowledge--historical and scientific--that Christians must unquestionably accept.
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