SCRIPTURE AS THE
RULE
AND ULTIMATE
STANDARD OF FAITH
Gary W. A. Thorne
(from Rebuilding
the House of God: The Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888
Report of the
1987 Theological Conferences
University of PEI,
Charlottetown, Canada, May 18-20, 1987)
In 1886 the
Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. declared that increased
co-operation with other Churches would require an acceptance of four
principles which were present in the undivided Church in the early
centuries. These four principles, adopted by the American House of
Bishops in 1886, were received by the Third Lambeth Conference in 1888as
the basis for any future discussion of the Church of England with other
Churches.
The 1886 American
wording of the first principle of its Quadrilateral affirms: "The Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God."
The final Lambeth wording, two years later, added a direct reference to
the sixth of the thirty-nine Articles of Religion and changed the
expression of the principle to read: "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, as 'containing all things necessary to salvation,' and
as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith."
In this way the 1888
Lambeth Conference declared that any Church wishing to enter discussion
with a view to union with the Church of England must accept this
description of the relation of the Christian faith to Scripture. This
first principle of the Lambeth Quadrilateral was considered entirely as
a mere restatement of the relation of faith to Scripture which was held
by the undivided Church of the early centuries and which was re-affirmed
at the Reformation in the sixth Article of Religion.
The theme of this
Conference is to consider whether the principles of the Lambeth
Quadrilateral can provide the basis for the rebuilding of the House of
God in our age. The Christian Church today is tempted to abandon the
relation of the Christian faith to Scripture as expressed in the first
principle of the Quadrilateral. In this paper, I will show that the
authority of Scripture has been undermined so severely that it no longer
functions as the rule and ultimate standard of faith in our present
Church. I suggest that there is an urgent need to re-establish the first
principle of the Quadrilateral, and I will indicate how Scripture can
regain its authority to become, once again, the rule and ultimate
standard of Christian faith.
My paper has four
parts: (1) I will outline the view of Scripture described in Article XX
as "God's Word written." (2) I will outline the problem related to the
development of doctrine within the tradition of the Church. (3) I will
sketch briefly the decline of the authority of Scripture within the
Anglican Church to the present day. (4) I will consider what must be
done to re-affirm Scripture as "God's Word written" and as the rule and
ultimate standard of faith, in the rebuilding of the House of God.
I. SCRIPTURE AS
"GOD'S WORD WRITTEN"
Scripture is
properly spoken of as the Word of God, or, as Article XX declares "God's
Word written." St. Paul speaks of the Old Testament as "the oracles of
God" (Rom. 3.2), and the Psalmist tells us that the Lord "sheweth his
word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel" (Ps.
147.19). The first sermon in the Book of Homilies (1547) begins:
Unto a Christian
man, there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable, than the
knowledge of Holy Scripture; forasmuch as in it is contained God's true
word.
For the first 1700
years of the Christian era, what was meant by Scripture as "God's word
written" was not simply an attempt to say that somehow God can speak to
the hearts of men and women through the Bible. Rather, throughout this
long period of Christian Church, there were several essential marks and
characteristics of Scripture which identified it as the Word of God. In
this first part of my paper, I will suggest that from the time of our
Saviour's earthly life, through the Apostles to the early Church, the
Medieval period and throughout the Reformation years, the entire
Christian Church held a view of Holy Scripture as "God's word written,"
which enabled it to stand as the rule and ultimate standard of Christian
faith.
During these 1700
years the three "marks" owned by Scripture were: (a) that Scripture is a
supernatural revelation from God which described both His nature and His
creative and redemptive work in the world; (b) that Scripture finds its
unity, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the Person of
the Divine Word, Jesus Christ; and (c) that Scripture is a "doctrinal
instrument of salvation."
A. Scripture as
Supernatural Revelation
Scripture itself
attests to the fact that man, through his nature and his unaided reason,
cannot attain to a saving knowledge of God. The Psalmist allows that a
knowledge of God as Creator is available to all men: "The heavens
declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." (19:
1-2) However, the human mind is unable to know God as Saviour without
the revelation of His Word in Holy Scripture. The Psalmist continues:
The law of the Lord
is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing
the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
(19: 7-8)
Our Lord tells us
that only He, the Divine Word Himself, can reveal the Father: "No man
hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom
of the Father, he hath declared him." (John 1 :18) In the initial
chapters of his letter to the Romans, St. Paul tells us that the eternal
power of God may be deduced from our observation of creation by the use
of natural reason, but insists that further knowledge of God can be
attained only through the supernatural revelation of God to man in Holy
Scripture.1
The supernatural
knowledge contained in Scripture pertains both to the life of God
Himself and to his activity in the world.2 Of the nature of God Himself,
the Scriptures reveal that in God there is an act of begotten and
responsive love, that it is reciprocated and that it is eternally
sustained by the Spirit mutually indwelling - the Triune God. Of God's
activity in the world, the Scriptures reveal a supernatural purpose and
end of the created world which transcends what we are able to perceive
as the proper activity of the natural order in itself. There is a work
of salvation and redemption, initiated by the Triune God, whereby the
whole created order will someday find its resting place in God.
Since Scripture is
the supernatural revelation of the life of God and of His creative and
redemptive activity in the world, the beginning point and measure of all
theology must be its obedience to the Word of God. John Calvin, in the
sixteenth century, explained:
In order to enjoy
the light of true religion we ought to begin with the doctrine of
heaven: and that no man can have the least knowledge of true and sound
doctrine, without having been a disciple of the Scripture. Hence
originates all true wisdom, when one embraces with reverence the
testimony which God hath been pleased therein to deliver concerning
himself. For obedience is the source, not only of an absolutely perfect
and complete faith, but of all right knowledge of God.3
The first mark of
Scripture as "God's Word written" is that it is the divine revelation of
supernatural knowledge which cannot be ours apart from the revelation
found there. As such, it is the beginning point and measure of all
Christian theology.
B. Scripture Finds
Its Meaning and Unity in Jesus Christ
If Scripture is the
supernatural revelation of God to man, it must be perfectly consistent
in its presentation of divine truth. Article VII tells us that the unity
of Scripture is to be found in the Person of the Divine Word, Jesus
Christ: "The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the
Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered mankind by Christ. . .
."
Thomas Wilson,
Bishop of Sodor and Man, in the early eighteenth century writes:
Jesus Christ is the
key of the Scriptures: we must always have Him before our eyes, if we
would understand them. . . . He who does not find Jesus Christ in the
Old Testament and in the ceremonies of the Law, does not understand
them.4
Article VII and
Bishop Wilson only echo the teaching of Scripture itself. Our Blessed
Saviour had taught his disciples: "Search the Scriptures [the Old
Testament] . . . and they are they which testify of me." (John 5:39)
After our Lord's resurrection, Jesus explained to two disciples on the
road to Emmaus how Moses and all the prophets and all the Old Testament
Scriptures were written about Himself. Finally, Jesus reminded a
gathering of all the disciples:
that all things must
be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the
prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their
understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. (Luke
24:44,45)
In Acts we are told
that Philip preached Jesus from the Old Testament. The Ethiopian' eunuch
could not understand what he was reading in Isaiah, and so he asks
Philip: "I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or
of some other man?" "Then," we are told, "Philip opened his mouth, and
began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus." (Acts
8:34,35)
If Scripture is to
be recognized as "God's Word written," everything in it - promises,
prophecies, sacrifices, ceremonies and events - must be seen in relation
to Jesus Christ, who is both the Revealer - the Divine Word through whom
all things were created - and also the Revelation "manifest in the
flesh." In both the Old Testament and the New Testament we find Christ;
in Christ we find God; for he that seeth Christ seeth the Father.
C. Scripture as "a
Doctrinal Instrument of Salvation"
Scripture is not
only a supernatural revelation of God which finds its meaning and unity
in Jesus Christ, but it is also the means by which our Salvation is
offered to us.
St. John declares:
"But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name."
(John 20:31) St. Paul tells us that: "For whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. . . . So then faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the Word of God." (Romans 10: 13,17) Timothy proclaims
that Scripture is able to make us "wise unto salvation through faith
which is in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 3:15).
Throughout the
Patristic and Medieval period, Scripture is esteemed to contain all
things needed for salvation. St. Chrysostom, in the fourth century,
writes:
Whatsoever is
required to the salvation of man is fully contained in the Scripture of
God…If it shall require to teach any truth or reprove false doctrine…or
to do any other thing requisite for salvation: all those things we may
learn plentifully of the Scripture.5
In sixteenth century
England, the Book of Homilies (1547), Richard Hooker (Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity, 1559), and John Jewel (Apologia Ecclesiae
Anglicanae, 1562) each in turn describe Scripture as an "instrument
of salvation." The Book of Homilies calls Scripture "a sure, steadfast,
and everlasting instrument of salvation." It continues: "The words of
Holy Scripture be called words of everlasting life; for they be God's
instrument, ordained for the same purpose."6 The Word of God tells us
about the nature of God and our nature as His creatures. There we learn
of our initial righteousness, our fallen nature, and the means whereby
God allows us to regain our righteousness through the mediation of our
Saviour Christ. The Bible is the source, the means and content of the
saving knowledge of the Lord our Maker. All doctrine and knowledge
necessary for our salvation is set out and in its entirety in Scripture.
Richard Hooker sums this up in a well-known passage:
The end of the word
of God is to save, and therefore we term it the word of life. The way
for all men to be saved is by the knowledge of that truth which the word
hath taught. . . . To this end the Word of God no otherwise serveth them
only in the nature of a doctrinal instrument. It saveth because it
maketh "wise to salvation" (II Tim. 3:15).7
The Scriptures
claim, and the Christian Church has always taught, that they are a full,
perfect and complete revelation of all doctrine and truth necessary for
man's salvation.
In this first part
of my paper, I have suggested that the sixteenth century Anglican
Reformers described Scripture as "God's Word written" because it bore
three essential marks: (a) it was a supernatural revelation of God; (b)
it found its meaning and unity in the Person of the Divine Word, Jesus
Christ; (c) it was a "doctrinal instrument of salvation."
Time will not
permit me to illustrate that these "marks" of Scripture went virtually
unquestioned through 1700 years of the Christian Church. These centuries
produced many debates and controversies regarding the interpretation of
Scripture; but it is clear, I think, that throughout this long period,
from the time of Christ to the Apostles, to the Church Fathers in East
and West, to the various Schools of Medieval Scholastic thought and the
many movements of the Reformation, Scripture was consistently viewed to
be the Word of God in which Divine knowledge was given to man for his
salvation, and from which all theology and Christian thinking must
proceed.
II. "ALL THINGS
NECESSARY TO SALVATION"
The first principle
of the Lambeth Quadrilateral asserts that Scripture is not only the rule
and ultimate standard of faith but that it also contains "all things
necessary to salvation." The first part of my paper suggested what must
be true of Scripture if it is to stand as the rule of Christian faith.
In this second part of my paper, I will explain why the Lambeth
Conference added a direct reference to the sixth Article of Religion,
which insists that Scripture contains "all things necessary to
salvation."
Given a view of
Scripture as "God's Word written," which was shared by all of the
Christian world, a continuing problem for the Church had been to
identify the proper relation of Scripture to tradition and the Church.
One approach to this question can be witnessed in the rather ambiguous
language of the Council of Trent, which appeared to place tradition on a
level with Scripture as an independent source of doctrine. A Decree of
the Council of Trent, reads:
the truth is
contained in the written books, and in the unwritten tradition, which,
having been received by the Apostles, either from the mouth of Christ
Himself, or from the dictates of the Holy Spirit, were handed down to
us; [and that the Council] receives and venerates with equal feeling of
piety and reverence all the books of the Old and New Testament, since
one God was the Author of them both, and also the traditions, relating
as well to faith as to morals, as having, either from the mouth of
Christ Himself, or from the dictation of the Holy Ghost, been preserved
by continuous succession in the Catholic Church.8
We must be careful
to note that what the Roman Church was claiming in the Council of Trent
is that there are certain unwritten traditions which are of equal
authority with Scripture, and that these unwritten traditions are to be
considered authoritative on precisely the same ground that the universal
Church had recognized the authority of Scripture. These unwritten
traditions: (1) were supernatural revelations directly from Christ or
the Holy Ghost; (2) found their unity in Jesus Christ, and were entirely
consistent with the rest of Scripture; (3) were matters of doctrine
important to be believed for salvation. It was not that the Council of
Trent viewed Scripture as anything other than "God's Word written," but
that there were certain traditions which had equal authority for
Christian faith.
The Anglican
response was clear and forcefully asserted. Article VI denies that any
unwritten tradition shares the authority of Scripture:
Holy Scripture
containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not
found therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any
man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or bethought
requisite or necessary to salvation.
It might be said
that the entire Reformation was moved by this debate of the proper
relation of Scripture to tradition and the Church, and of what force
each of them is in deciding controversies of faith.9
Much of the
argument turned on the question of the authority of the Church, for only
the Church could decide which unwritten traditions had the authoritative
"marks" of Scripture, just as the Church had once established the canon
of Scripture itself. The Anglican statement of the question is to be
found in Article XX, which defines the authority of the Church not only
against "Rom ish" claims but against the Puritan attempts to minimize
its authority. Article XX granted the Church the power not only to
decree rites and ceremonies (even this had been denied by the Puritans)
but also to decide in controversies of Faith. It insisted however, that
although the Church
be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree
anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce
any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.
Much of the writing
of the early Anglican Divines was concerned to defend the Reformation
principle that the Church can add nothing to Scripture because God's
revelation in Jesus Christ contained there is final and complete.10 The
Church's duty is to "guard the deposit," to "keep that which is
committed" to its trust (1 Tim. 6:20), to contend earnestly "for the
faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude3) and to protect
that faith from any diminution or addition (II John 8).
Throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the role of reason and tradition
within the Church was clearly worked out by the Anglican Divines. Human
reason is not to be despised because it is the means by which we read
and understand the literal meaning of Scripture. The tradition of the
Church, as especially seen in the Creeds, the four General Councils, and
in the Church Fathers generally, provides the context for the
interpretation of Scripture.
The Fathers of the
Church are useful in that they lead the Church into the true meaning of
Scripture; but once the meaning of Scripture has been pointed out, the
voice '~ of God is heard plainly in Scripture itself.11 All doctrine
must be proved directly from ~ Scripture. Daniel Waterland, an
eighteenth-century divine, typifies the Anglican position. He says:
We produce not
Fathers to superadd new doctrines to Scripture, but only to secure the
old; not to complete the rule, but more strongly to assert and maintain
both its true sense and whole sense. . . . After using all proper means
to come at the sense of Scripture, [which is in Scripture] it is that,
and that only, which we ground our faith upon, and prove our faith by.
We allege not Fathers as grounds, or principles, or foundations of our
faith, but as witnesses, and as interpreters, and faithful conveyors.12
This debate was
still very much alive in the nineteenth-century Church of England. In
1838, the Tractarian theologian, William Palmer, stated that
the difference
between the Anglo-Catholic and the popular Romish doctrine of tradition
is this: the former only admits tradition as confirmatory of the true
meaning of Scripture; the later asserts that it is also supplementary to
Scripture.13
At the time of the
drafting of the 1888 Quadrilateral, the controversy had been given a
fresh prominence, but with a new twist by the publication in 1845 of
Cardinal Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
The new twist was this: Newman did not defend recent Roman Catholic
doctrine as unwritten ancient tradition but as legitimate developments
of "ideas" which had been given to the world in Christ and by the
Apostles.
The Anglican
response was extensive and predictable. In one of the more substantial
reviews, James Mozley pointed out that Newman had naively accepted the
gross exaggeration of a Scriptural "idea" as a legitimate development of
doctrine. The traditional arguments of the earlier Anglican apologists
were repeated with specific reference to Roman claims relating to
transubstantiation, Mariology, Papal infallibility, and purgatory.14
To the Lambeth
Conference in 1888, this continuing controversy was the battleground on
which the authority of Scripture was to be defended. Since Scripture is
"God's Word written," the only threat to its recognition as the rule and
ultimate standard of faith was the possibility that an equal authority
be given to Christian tradition and the Church as the basis of doctrine.
In the very next year, however, the battleground shifted radically as
the essential character of Scripture as the written Word of God came
under fire.
In 1889 a group of
essays was published under the title Lux Mundi. These essays
served to domesticate and popularize a type of biblical criticism which
was then flourishing in Germany. The Lambeth Conference of 1888 did not
recognize that the new and greater threat to the recognition of
Scripture as the ultimate standard of faith was the biblical critical
movement, which threatened to destroy the very nature of Scripture as
"God's Word written." We now consider the problems which modern biblical
criticism has created for the recognition of the authority of Scripture
in matters of Christian faith.
III. FROM SCRIPTURE
AS "GOD'S WORD WRITTEN" TO SCRIPTURE AS "THE EXPRESSION OF A COMMUNITY
OF FAITH"
In the first part of
my paper, I suggested that from the recorded words of Christ Himself,
continuously through to the seventeenth century, Scripture was
understood as "God's Word written" because it bears the following three
essential marks: (1) It is a supernatural revelation from God; (2) It
finds its unity in the Divine Word, Jesus Christ; (3) It is a "doctrinal
instrument of salvation." In this third part of my paper, I will sketch
briefly how this view of Scripture has been undermined since the
seventeenth century. More particularly, this sketch will help us
understand why the view of Scripture in our Church today, as found in
the Canadian Book of Alternative Services (1985), bears none of
the essential marks which give Scripture its authority as the written
Word of God.
It is beyond the
scope of my paper to trace the historical and philosophical roots of the
historical criticism of the Bible which began in Germany and spread to
England in the nineteenth century, but within England itself the
influence of eighteenth-century Deism should be acknowledged. The
Deistic movement grew out of the rationalism of the previous century,
which was not, in the seventeenth century, a system of beliefs
antagonistic to Christianity but rather an attitude of mind within the
church which assumed that in all matters of religion, reason is supreme.
In The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), John Locke was concerned
to show not only that reason and revelation were not opposed but that
the only secure basis for Christianity was its reasonableness. The
seventeenth-century preachers and theologians who were called
Latitudinarians were moved by the conviction that the essence of
Christianity was its reasonableness. They preached and taught that the
goals of morality are the chief content of the Christian religion. The
purpose of the Christian faith is to restore and reinforce the practise
of the natural law and moral duties. John Tillotson, Archbishop of
Canterbury and most famous of the Latitudinarian preachers in the
seventeenth century, in a sermon entitled "Instituted Region not
Intended to Undermine Natural," declared: (1) that natural religion is
the foundation of all instituted and revealed religion; and (2) that no
revealed or instituted religion was ever designed to take away the
obligation of natural duties, but to confirm and establish them.15
This elevation of
"reason" over revelation and the preaching of Christianity as a
"natural" religion led to the denial by the Deists of the eighteenth
century that the Bible presented any supernatural truth at all. The
Deists claimed that the New Testament miracles implied spiritual truth
but could not be regarded as historical events by a rational, reasoning
person. Matthew Tindal published in 1730 the first volume of
Christianity as Old as Creation, the last major work of the
movement, in which he declared that Christianity consists of simple
truths that are common to all religions. The Gospel and the natural law
are one and the same; and any suggestion of a special revelation through
the Bible is superfluous. Tindal's book created such an overwhelming
critical response that it marked the beginning of the rapid decline of
the Deist movement in England.
This first attack
on Scripture as "God's Word written" was easily defeated by orthodox
writers, but the net result of the rationalist spirit of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries was to leave the authority of the Bible in a
much weakened position. During this period both Deists and churchmen
were agreed that reason was the basic criterion for the truth even of
Scripture. If one looks at the sermons of Joseph Butler, a great
defender of orthodoxy on one hand, he will see very little Scripture
quoted or referred to Scripture was upheld not by claiming it to possess
revealed truth, but by arguing that it is reasonable in itself.
The doubts and
inquiries in the field of biblical criticism were silenced in England,
but in the second half of the eighteen century they passed on to
Germany, where historical criticism of the Bible was to take a firm
root.
To most bishops and
clergy in the Church of England, the publication in 1860 of a series of
essays on biblical and theological subjects, called Essays and Reviews,
was their first introduction to the higher criticism which was
flourishing in Germany at the time. These essays contained an extremely
mild form of the German biblical criticism, but it was shocking for the
bishops and clergy to read that the Pentateuch had not been written by
Moses, nor had Isaiah been written by one man, and that Daniel did not
contain prophecy but was a later writing of history as if it had been
written by Paul, nor was Peter the author of his second epistle.
Essays
and Reviews
was soundly criticized throughout the Church of England at the time. One
of the contributors, Dr. Rowland Williams, was charged specifically with
denying that the Bible was the Word of God and the Rule of Faith. Among
other reactions, 8,500 clergy petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury to
condemn the volume, and it was later condemned by Convocation. However,
the spirit behind this biblical criticism was not to go away; and for
the next twenty-five years, individual preachers and theologians,
attracted by the new freedom of thought and interpretation which
historical criticism promised, spread the influence of biblical
criticism as broadly as possible throughout England.
There was no
thought among the supporters of the new historical criticism that the
Christian faith would be weakened by this biblical criticism. Rather,
the Christian Church would be freed and liberated to new frontiers of
truth. Biblical criticism defends and strengthens the faith by showing
how the Bible really is true. In fact this new criticism could bring a
new authority to Scripture and make it once more credible to intelligent
and thinking people. No doubt with some statements in mind that E.B.
Pusey had made in his preface to a work on Daniel16 written in reaction
to Essays and Reviews, F.W. Farrar claims in his 1885 Bampton Lectures:
No conception more
subversive of Scriptural authority has ever been devised than the
assertion, that in the Bible we must accept everything or nothing. . . .
[It is] imperative that new principles of inquiry and modern methods of
criticism should be extended to those records of revelation in which it
was certain that nothing could suffer which was intrinsically truthful
or divine. . . . Where the spirit of God is there is liberty. All these
questions have been under discussion for many years; yet to multitudes
of those who on these questions have come to decisions which are in
opposition to the current opinions, the Bible is still the divinest of
all books, and the Lord Jesus Christ is still the Son of God, the
Saviour of the World.17
Four years after
these lectures, and one year after the Lambeth Conference of 1888,
another volume of essays appeared, Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in
the Religion of the Incarnation. The authors sought to reconcile
Anglican Catholicism with modern thought, including biblical criticism.
Charles Gore contributed an essay "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration,"
which directly raised the question of the historical criticisms of the
Bible. He claimed that the Bible must be interpreted in light of the
fact that it had human authors. The Old Testament was an "imperfect"
book, often claiming to be historical when it was not.
It was this volume
of essays which firmly established biblical criticism in England. The
essayists were well known for their high regard for the Church and as
bold defenders of the historic truths and doctrines of the Christian
faith. Here were Anglo-Catholics and disciples of the Tractarians, now
advancing the theories of biblical criticism. This opened the
flood-gates for those in the Church of England who wished to remain
firmly rooted in the ecclesiology, spirituality and sacramental theology
of the Tractarian tradition, to engage in the historical criticism of
Scripture.
I now pass over
another forty years to another collection of essays published in 1929
under the title Essays Catholic and Critical. These essays made it clear
that the pursuit of historical criticism in the Bible was not to be
deterred or held in check by reverence for the Creeds of historic
Christian doctrine. Already the biblical critics were beginning to see
that the creeds were not expressions of Biblical doctrine but rather
were statements of the experience of the believing community at the
time.
In the forty years
between these two sets of essays, Lux Mundi in 1889 and Essays
Catholic and Critical in 1929, a very important shift in thought had
developed. Christian truth is no longer seen to have been objectively
revealed to the Christian community from above, but Christian truth can
be nothing other than the faith-expression of the Christian community
itself. This shift from Scripture as "God's Word written" to Scripture
as "the expression of a community of faith" becomes increasingly
pronounced in the twentieth century.
The 1938 official
Report of the Archbishops' Commission, Christian Doctrine in the
Church of England, claimed that the Church is not bound by the
"thought-forms employed by the Biblical writers."18 It continued:
There is some reason
to think that in some cases the words attributed to our Lord reflect
rather the experience of the primitive Church, orthe utterances of
Christian prophets, than actual words of Jesus.19
Because Scripture
is viewed by the Doctrine Committee of 1938 to be the product and
expression of the Christian community at the time, all that can be
claimed for the authority of Scripture is that:
it remains true that
the religious and moral teaching of the Gospels conveys faithfully the
impress made upon the Apostolic Church by the mind and personality of
Jesus.20
Biblical criticism
had won the day in the 1938 Doctrine Report, to the extent that it
issued the caution that "the method of direct appeal to isolated texts
in our Lord's teaching… is liable to error."21 The Committee is not here
concerned that error might arise because our Lord's teaching on a
particular occasion might be taken out of context, but that in no
particular instance can we be sure that the biblical record contains the
authentic words of Jesus Christ.
Ten years later,
the Lambeth Conference of 1948 was to speak of the authority of
Scripture in a much different way than it had in the Lambeth
Quadrilateral of 1888. Not Scripture, but only the Triune God, can claim
an infallible authority for man. The authority of the Church:
is distributed among
Scripture, tradition, creeds, the ministry of the Word and Sacraments,
the witness of the saints, and the consensus fidelium, which is
the continuing experience of the Holy Spirit through his faithful people
in the Church. It is this dispersed rather than central authority,
having many elements which combine, interact with, and check each
other.22
The nature of the
Triune God, and His creative and redemptive work, is no longer seen to
have been completely and finally revealed in Scripture. Since Scripture
can no longer be trusted as "God's Word written," it is dismissed as
secondary authority with many others - all, more or less, pointing to
God.
In 1976 another
Report of the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England was
published. The shift from Scripture as "God's Word written" to the Word
of God as an expression of a community of faith, is fully acknowledged:
Jesus himself lives
in the world of today not so much in his recorded words and actions, as
through the community which he founded but which may both in its
teaching and manner of life have changed radically from anything he
envisaged.23
We must admit, says
the Report, that we will never be able to understand the Christian
Scripture because it was so conditioned by the culture of its day. In
fact, it is clear that the biblical writers themselves were
misunderstood by later biblical writers for the same reason. In a review
of the 1976 Doctrine Report, Reginald Fuller comments: "The Commission
writes as though it would like to get rid of the Bible, but
unfortunately we are stuck with it."24
Five years later,
in 1981, another Report of the Doctrine Commission in the Church of
England was more encouraging and more conservative in tone, admitting
the need for declared doctrine in the Church. On the other hand, it
emphatically denies that doctrine is found in Scripture. Scripture is
said to be unsuitable, even as a basis for theologians to say anything
true about God and man. About the life and teaching of Jesus, it
claims:
Some reports of his
sayings or activities are now widely believed to be due to the creative
imagination of the evangelists or their sources; others describe
miraculous events which the modern reader may find frankly incredible
and may prefer to attribute to the alleged credulity of a distant age
rather than to any supernatural powers in the historical Jesus.25
Appended to the
1979 Doctrine Report are several essays by members of the Commission,
some of which express very well the end to which biblical criticism has
led. There is now nothing that we can know objectively about God and His
relation to man. Both G.W.H. Lampe and M.F. Wiles, in separate essays in
the appendix, tell us that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and
the Incarnation have outlived their usefulness. Lampe writes:
During most of its
history the Christian Church has believed itself to be the possessor of
a corpus of guaranteed truth in the form of divinely revealed systems of
beliefs and theological propositions. . . . According to this view it
was proper to call the doctrine of the Trinity a revealed truth. . .
communicated directly by God, like the proposition that the second
person of the Trinity became incarnate for our salvation. . . . [But] we
have come to realize that this is not the case. . . . It was not a
God-given doctrine, except in the sense in which we hope and trust that
all well-motivated and sincere human thinking in every field of inquiry
is divinely inspired and guided. . . . It is not an irreformable truth
communicated to man by God.26
The chairman of the
Commission, M.F. Wiles, writes in another essay: "I cannot with
integrity say that I believe God to be One in three persons."27
This completes my
sketch of the historical development of biblical criticism in England.
It is clear that the biblical criticism of the last 150 years has led to
a denial (1) that Scripture is a supernatural revelation of God and His
creative and redemptive work in the world; (2) that Jesus Christ is the
Divine Word in which all Scripture finds its unity and meaning; (3) that
Scripture is a "doctrinal instrument," and even that any doctrine can be
gained from Scripture. Each of the three essential marks of "God's Word
written," taught by Jesus Christ in Scripture and believed by the whole
Church for 1700 years, is now rejected.
But how do we stand
in the Anglican Church of Canada today? A study of the Book of
Alternative Services (BAS) confirms that it succeeds in what
it sets out to be, viz. a product of our time - "a new rite for a
new age."28 Accepting the latest claims of biblical criticism, the
BAS does not present the Bible as a supernatural revelation of the
life of God and His relation to man. In the BAS, Scripture is
treated as the expression of a community of faith, and as such, contains
the various human points of view of its authors. A quick glance at the
BAS will illustrate this.
In the preface to
the Funeral Liturgy (p. 565), we are told that the Bible reflects many
attitudes to death, only one of which includes belief in the
resurrection. On the central Christian belief in the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, the BAS tells us that "the biblical
account is varied." John, Matthew, Mark and Luke each reflect differing
perceptions of Jesus' experience of death, and the early Christians were
threatened by the death of their fellow-believers. The author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews developed a separate theology of the death of
Jesus, which the BAS calls a "school of suffering" theology. It
concludes: "There is no single biblical attitude to death, not even to
the death of Jesus."29 Thus Scripture reveals, for the BAS, not
God's Word to man, but man's interpretation of a significant event in
the life of the world.
The second
essential mark of Scripture as "God's Word written" is denied in that
the BAS does not allow Christ to be the theme of the Old
Testament. It offers much in the field of modern typology, but it
describes the psalms as an essentially Jewish hymn book which Christians
try very hard to make their own.3D The BAS admits that two psalms
(2 and 16) are used in the New Testament (Acts 13 :30-39) as the basis
of a developing Christology. It also admits that later Christian piety
attempted to treat all the psalms in this way, as descriptions of
Christ, as prayers to Christ, or as the voice of Christ speaking to His
people. Although it is not inappropriate to "Christianize" the psalms,
such use is foreign to their primary meaning, and we are reminded that,
apart from Christ, the psalms continue to have a life and integrity of
their own.
The BAS
tells us, then, that to see Christ in the psalms is to threaten their
integrity. But more than this, the gender-inclusive psalter contained in
the BAS is not an accurate translation and makes a Christocentric
interpretation impossible. Psalm 1 begins, in the Authorized Version:
Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way
of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is
in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
In a typical
Christian interpretation of this psalm, a commentator writes that
Christ
is "the Man" to whom
we sing, "Blessing, and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving, and honour,
and power, and might," as the Lamb of God, Who is God, throughout the
Psalms. In this particular Psalm He is praised as the one only wearer of
our nature in Whom pure and perfect holiness has been found during the
time of earthly sojourn and probation. 31
Far from
encouraging such a Christian interpretation, the BAS does not
allow it! Gender-inclusive language dictates that the pronoun "he" must
be replaced by "they." And so the psalter reads: "Happy are they who
have not walked in the counsel of the wicked. . . . Their delight is in
the law of the Lord. . . ." The admittedly unfaithful rendering of the
Hebrew effectively eliminates Christ from the psalm. We will remember
that our Lord Himself, as quoted earlier, claimed the psalms to have
been written concerning Him (Luke 24:44).
The third essential
mark of Scripture that the BAS denies is that Scripture is a
"doctrinal instrument of salvation." In the prefaces to the Eucharist
and to the Funeral Liturgy, Scripture is said to contain "fluid" images
and symbols, rather than revealed, doctrinal truth. Doctrine is not to
be found in Scripture, nor to be developed from Scripture. Anything we
say about the condition of the dead in Christ must remain, it is
asserted, "at the level of symbol."32 Likewise, the various biblical
images of the atonement are employed in the BAS, without binding
them to any doctrinal statement or theory of the atonement.33
In conclusion to
this third part of my paper, I would draw your attention to an article
by Alan Hayes of Wycliffe College, Toronto, entitled "Lex Orandi Lex
Credendi and the BAS."34 Hayes takes issue with the claim
made in the general introduction of the BAS that "lex ordandi:
lex credendi, i.e., the law of prayer is the law of belief," is a
theological principle treasured by Anglicans. As I have pointed out in
Part II of this paper, this lex orandi: lex credendi is precisely one of
the "Romish" errors consistently denied by the Articles of Religion and
Anglican apologists and divines. The problem with the principle of
lex orandi: lex credendi is that Scripture loses its place as the
primary source for doctrine to the patterns of worship of a particular
community. Far from being true to the Reformation and traditional
Anglicanism, lex orandi: lex credendi has been the battlecry of
recent liberal Catholicism and the Liturgical Movement, which has
shifted the locus of authority from Scripture to the "faith experience"
of a particular Christian community. Hayes concludes:
Lex
orandi lex credendi
is the ensign of a triumphant party [i.e., the liberal Catholics],
planted firmly in the preface of the BAS and billowing
proudly over the rest of the text, claiming it as its own,
announcing that the historic Anglican witness to the sufficiency of
Scripture has been, at least for the time being, successfully
subdued.35
IV.
REBUILDING THE HOUSE OF GOD
The
first principle of the Lambeth Quadrilateral intended to speak boldly
against the old Romish claim that the Church could pronounce new
doctrine on the strength of its tradition and against the
nineteenth-century Roman claims that the Church could pronounce new
doctrine because it was assured of the infallible guidance of the Holy
Spirit, which was leading it into more truth. The Lambeth Conference was
keen to re-assert the declaration of Article VI that all things
necessary to salvation are to be found in the Scriptures alone.
In this paper, I
have argued that since the Lambeth Conference of 1888, a more serious
threat to the authority of Scripture as the rule of faith has been the
development of biblical criticism. I suggest that, as far as the
authority of Scripture is concerned, the Christian Church generally, and
the Anglican Church of Canada in particular, had been reduced to rubble
and ashes. There is a need to rebuild the House of God on the sure
foundation of the doctrine of God Himself, revealed from above and not
from below. As John Jewel put it in the sixteenth century: "The
Scriptures are the 'bounds' of the Church of God" and "the right and
only way of building God's House is to lay the foundation thereof upon
the everlasting Word and will of God."36
This last part of
my paper will suggest that rebuilding the House of God upon the sure
foundation of Scripture requires (a) that we must acknowledge Scripture
to possess its three essential marks as "God's Word written," which will
re-establish its place as the source of all theology and Christian
thinking; and (b) that we must come to the "true sense" of Scripture
before we can begin to work out Christian answers to contemporary
questions.
A. The Return to
Scripture as "God's Word Written"
The
development of biblical criticism makes the return to Scripture as the
Word of God very difficult. The dominance and powerful influence of
biblical criticism within the Church cannot be ignored or denied. On the
other hand, it is difficult to engage in dialogue with the biblical
critics without acknowledging the very principles of their discipline,
which deny Scripture to be God's Word.37
The Tractarians of
the nineteenth century, early in the history of the new biblical
criticism, perceived that the issue of biblical criticism is a question
of faith rather than argument. E.B. Pusey writes in his response to
Essays and Reviews that biblical criticism did not lead to disbelief
in miracles and prophecy, but that the criticism began with the
assumption that man, and not God, was the measure of all things. He
asserts: "Disbelief had been the parent, not the offspring of their
criticism; their starting point, not the winning-post of their
course."38 Pusey's argument that the question of biblical criticism
resolved to there being no choice to believe all or disbelieve all drew
sharp criticism from many quarters, but was meant simply to warn that
once Scripture loses any of its essential marks (as biblical criticism
demands), it is no longer Scripture; and that eventually the whole
structure of the Bible will fall, and with it, Christian theology and
the Christian faith itself. The Tractarians could see that the
rationalist and humanist principles of biblical criticism would drive it
from its initial skepticism of the historicity of Old Testament miracles
to the denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
As a matter of
faith, we must accept and teach Scripture to be the Word of God. This
recognition of Scripture as "God's Word written" will lead to forms of
preaching, teaching and theology which begin with the revealed doctrine
of Christ in Scripture. When Scripture is identified as Scripture, it
becomes the source of all theology. The same Christ who is the subject
and author of all Scripture is the Divine Word which is made known
through the Creative and redemptive work of God. As the psalmist says,
"By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made. . . . For he spake and
it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." (Ps. 33:6,9) And as the
evangelist says, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full
of grace and truth. (Jn. 1:14)
Since the Divine
Word is the author and subject of all Scripture, the revealed Will of
God found there is in a form available for rational thought and
understanding. This is to acknowledge Scripture as doctrinal in nature
and to insist that it is the explicit beginning point of all our
preaching, teaching, worship and theology.
B. The True Sense of
Scripture
We
must come to an understanding of the spiritual, intellectual and moral
content of Scripture, or we will not be able to begin our preaching and
teaching. This requires that after we acknowledge, in faith, the
authority of Scripture, we must use the aids available to us to help us
discern the true sense of Scripture.
By the grace of God
working within us, we look to the Creeds, the four oecumenical councils
of the undivided Church and the Fathers of the Patristic era and of the
Reformation, to hel p us discover the true sense of the Divine Word
revealed in Scripture. The key that lets us into Scripture is the
operation of the Holy Spirit in our life, which is the same Holy Spirit
that has worked through the tradition of the Church. It is the Church
which draws us to our initial belief in Scripture and, even more, to an
understanding of the doctrines of Christ found there. Archbishop William
Laud, in the seventeenth century, put it very well: "After the tradition
of the Church hath taught and informed the soul, the voice of God is
plainly heard in Scripture itself."39 Later he says:
The key that
lets men into the Scriptures, even to this knowledge of them, that
they are the word of God, is the tradition of the Church: but when
they are in, they hear Christ Himself immediately speaking in
Scripture to the faithful; and "His sheep" do not only "hear," but
know, "His voice."40
We can really do
nothing substantial to rebuild the House of God upon the sure foundation
of Scripture until we come to know the voice of Christ in the Word of
God. Laud explains that after we come to this "true sense" of Scripture,
and recognize the voice of Christ within, the tradition of the Church
has served its purpose, and
then here is
no vicious circle indeed of proving the Scripture by the Church, and
then round about, the Church by Scripture. . . . For a beginner in
the faith, or a weakling, or a doubter about it, begins at
tradition, and proves Scripture by the Church, but a man strong and
grown up in the faith, and understandingly conversant in the word of
God, proves the Church by the Scriptures.41
If we are to
rebuild the House of God, we must come to the true meaning of Scripture
through help of the Creeds, Councils, and traditions of the Church.
Then, armed with that true spiritual, intellectual and moral sense of
Scripture, there is an urgent need to think theologically about
questions being raised in our time, inside and outside the Church, and
to provide answers to these contemporary questions which are clear,
meaningful and true to the Word of God.
Our faith
ultimately resides not in the tradition of the Church but in the Christ
revealed fully in Scripture. Each of the major shifts in philosophical
and theological thought over the last 2000 years has been occasioned by
an attempt to answer the ultimate questions of man's existence. The
Christian believes that these questions find their deepest and truest
answer in Scripture, properly understood.
The world view of
the Church Fathers is very different from that of the Medievals, which
is different from that of the Enlightenment, and so on. Our world view
is perhaps most radically different from that of any period in the
Christian era. Yet the Word of God abides for ever. The Word of God
which enabled the Church Fathers and the Medievals to understand God,
His relation to them, and the spiritual, intellectual and moral
character of their very existence, is the same Word of God which can
give us understanding and insight in our day. The Church Fathers and
others in the Tradition of the Church help us to understand the Word of
God. That is their sole use. Our task is to allow the Church Fathers to
help us to understand Scripture and then to give meaningful and helpful
answers to the important questions being raised in these last decades of
the twentieth century.
Through our
preaching and teaching, and in our theology, we must show that men and
women can come to discover answers to the perplexing issues of our age;
and that they can come to know themselves, in and through a thinking and
reflecting which begins with the Scripture, which reveals the God in
whose image we are made and in whose image we come finally to know
ourselves even as we are known.
Only insofar as we
are able to give insightful answers to the pressing spiritual,
philosophical and moral questions being asked today, will we be able to
convince those within our Church that Scripture does given meaning to
our life. We must point to the spiritual realm as that which gives
unity, order and purpose to the created order of which we are a part.
This spiritual realm has been made known to us through the Incarnation
of the Divine Word, Jesus Christ, Who is revealed and made known in
Scripture.
CONCLUSION
Once Scripture is
acknowledged to bear the essential marks which allow it to be "God's
Word written," it will be seen to be the source and beginning point of
all Christian thinking and the rule and ultimate standard of faith. Our
task is to come to know the "true sense" of Scripture through help of
the Tradition of the Church, to allow Scripture itself to speak to us of
that spiritual realm which gives meaning to our existence, and then to
articulate insightful and clear answers to the spiritual, philosophical
and moral questions of our day. In all that we say, preach, teach, write
and live, the truth of God as revealed in Scripture must be our sole
authority.
The rebuilding of
the House of God must begin with a faith in, and an understanding of,
Scripture as "God's Word written." Scripture can function as the sole
"rule and ultimate standard of faith" only when we come to know the
doctrines of Christ found therein.
The Bible presents
us with the "lively oracles of God," in which the Divine Word Himself,
through whom the worlds were created, reveals in His written Word the
life of God and His creative and redemptive work which is accomplished
in Himself, Jesus Christ, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, to
the glory of God the Father. It is, indeed, "a doctrinal instrument of
salvation," through which we have been born anew, not of perishable seed
but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God, which
abides for ever.
Notes
1. Richard Hooker briefly described this biblical doctrine in Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity (1594-1597): "Scripture indeed teacheth things
above nature, things which our reason by itself could not reach unto."
(111,8.12)
2. See Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision, (Westminister; Dacre
Press,1948), pp. 30-31.
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), Bk I, VI.2.
4. Thomas Wilson, The Works of Thomas Wilson (Oxford: John Henry Parker,
1859), VI,1-2.
5. John Chrysostom, as quoted in "A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading
of Holy Scripture," The First Book of Homilies, 1547 (London: SPCK,
1908), pp. 2-3.
6. Ibid., p. 3.
7. Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V, 2.i .3.
8. Concilium Tridentinum, Session IV (8 April, 1546).
9. In the seventeenth century, Herbert Thorndike suggests that the
entire Reformation in Britain and the Continent was moved by this one
great controversy regarding the relation of Scripture to tradition and
the Church and of what force each of them is in deciding controversies
of faith. See Herbert Thorndike, "Of The Principles of Christian Truth,"
Part I of Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England, 1659
(Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1845).
10. Taking up the argument in the nineteenth century, Tract 78 of Tracts
for the Times contained a catena Patrum, compiled by Manning and
Marriott, of no less than forty-two Anglican Divines who had expressly
defended this position.
11. Roman Catholic writers at the Reformation repeatedly challenged the
Anglican Divines to solve the following problem of authority in matters
of faith: since it is the Church which has defined Scripture and has
canonized the Scripture, is the Church or Scripture the ultimate
authority? The Anglican Divines refused to consider this as a genuine
problem. It was clear to the Anglican Divines that Scripture is the
authority in all matters of faith. In the seventeenth century one of the
many public debates on this question involved the Archbishop of
Canterbury, William Laud, and the Jesuit Fisher (an alias). This
conference in 1624 clearly expresses the Anglican response to the Roman
Catholic presentation of the problem put forth boldly by Fisher. Laud
argues that the early Church and the latter Fathers led the Church into
the true meaning of Scripture, just as the Church chose the Canon of
Scripture by the leading of the Holy Spirit; but that once the meaning
of Scripture has been pointed out the voice of God is found plainly in
Scripture itself, independent from the Church. Laud cites Hookers'
Polity, 111,8:
The first outward
motive, leading man so as to esteem of the Scripture is the authority of
God's Church. . . . But afterwards, the more we bestow our labour in
reading or hearing the mysteries thereof, the more we find that the
thing itself [Scripture] doth answer our received opinion concerning it
. . . . ("Conference with Fisher and Jesuit" [1624], The Works of the
Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.O., [Oxford: John Henry
Parker, 1849], II, 103).
Laud argues that a beginner in the faith, or a doubter, begins at
tradition and proves Scripture by the Church; but when the Christian
becomes mature and grows up in the faith, and begins to understand
Scripture truly, he then proves the Church by the Scripture (p. 116).
The Church must always stand under the judgement of Scripture.
12. Daniel Waterland, The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, Works of Daniel Waterland (Oxford, 1843), 111,624,652,653.
13. William Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, 3rd. ed. (London,
1842), 11,35.
14. James Mozley, The Theory of Development, (Oxford, 1878). Mozley
shows that the charge of Anglicans against the Roman Catholic position
historically has been that of corruption through exaggeration. Although
Newman introduced a new line of argument for the Roman claims, the
writings of the earlier Anglican apologists were sufficient to uncover
the weakness of Newman's argument. For example, to Newman's claim that
these "idea" developments were no different from the kind of development
inherent in Nicene theology, Mozley points out that previous Anglican
Divines had adequately dealt with this suggestion. Following George
Bull's Defensio Fides Nicaenae (1685), Mozley argues that Nicene
theology is not the development of an earlier "idea":
We have the unanimous
testimony of the whole body of Nicene Fathers to the fact that they had
received the doctrine they asserted from their predecessors in the
Church, which predecessors had asserted that they had received it from
their predecessors, and so on up to the age of the apostles. It was the
full historical belief of the Nicene Church that its doctrine had been
the doctrine of the anti-Nicene up to the commencement of Christianity.
(p. 190)
15. John Tillotson, "Instituted Religion not Intended to Undermine
Natural," Sermons on Several Subjects and Occasions, 14 vols. (London,
1695-1704), VI (1742), 1672-1698.
16. E.B. Pusey, Lectures on Daniel the Prophet (1864).
17. F.W. Farrar, History of Interpretation (London, 1886), pp. 421 ft.
18. Doctrine in the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1938), p. 32
19. Ibid., p. 33.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. As quoted in Reginald H. Fuller, "The Authority of the Scriptures in
Anglicanism," in, The Report of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Second
Series, 1976-1980, p. 102.
23. Christian Believing (London, 1976), p.11.
24. Reginald H. Fuller, op. cit., p. 109.
25. Believing in the Church (London, 1981), pp. 40-41.
26. G.W.H. Lampe, Essay appended to Christian Believing, p. 102.
27. M.F. Wiles, Essay appended to Christian Believing, p. 126.
28. My glance at the BAS here is not meant to be critical of its
authors, who reflect simply the claims of biblical criticism which the
contemporary Church teaches and encourages. It is the Church itself
which must engage in a self-examination to realize that it has severed
itself from its very life: the Scriptures as the Word of God. My
comments on the BAS, because it clearly reflects our Church's
view of Holy Scripture, illustrates how far we have gone in dismissing
Scripture as "God's Word written."
29. BAS, p. 566.
30. BAS, p. 700.
31. J.H. Blunt, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London,
1874), p. 318.
32. BAS, p. 567.
33. BAS, pp. 178-179. 34. Alan L. Hayes, "Lex Ordandi Lex
Credendi and the BAS," Insight (Wycliffe College, Toronto),
No. 21 (November, 1986), pp. 1-4.
35. Ibid., p. 4.
36. John Jewel, Thesis, The Works of John Jewel (Cambridge: Parker
Society, 1845- 50), 11,819; Defence, Works, IV, 1058.
37. Austin Farrer and Brevard Childs represent very serious attempts to
deal with biblical criticism and move beyond it to re-establish the
authority of Scripture. In each case, their dialogue with the critics
ultimately commits them to deny one or another of the three essential
and uncompromising marks of Scripture as "God's Word written." Austin
Farrer insists that Scripture is supernatural revelation and interprets
Christ as the consistent theme throughout; but biblical criticism has
made it impossible for us ever to read Scripture in the way it was read
before this century, and Farrer denies the doctrinal nature of
Scripture. The Supernatural truth of Scripture, which is not as
approximation, but inspired as intelligibly accurate, is to be found in
the interplay of images, and not as propositional truth. Biblical
criticism has closed the door to a view of Scripture which finds there
"theological propositions, out of which a correct system of doctrine
could be deduced by logical method." (The Glass Vision, p. 94). Brevard
Childs, (and the canonical approach to Scripture in general) succeeds in
giving a unity to Scripture by insisting that the Old Testament
"functions within Christian Scripture as a witness to Jesus Christ
precisely in its pre-Christian form." (Old Testament Theology in a
Canonical Context [Philadelphia, 1985], p. 9). Childs also treats the
final form of Scripture as essentially doctrinal and happily reunites
the Bible as the Church's book. But Childs gives up too much and calls
in question the authority of Scriptural revelation when he admits:
One of the central goals
of emphasizing the role of the canon is to stress the horizontal
dimension of the reception, collection and ordering of the experiences
of the divine by a community of faith. (Old Testament Theology in a
Canonical Context, p. 23.)
In order to dialogue with the biblical critics, Farrer and Childs deny
one or another of what I suggest are the three essential and
uncompromising marks of Scripture as "God's Word written."
38. E.B. Pusey, Preface to Lectures on Daniel the Prophet (1864), 9th
ed. (London, 1892), p. vi.
39. William Laud, "Conference with Fisher," Works, 11,98.
40. Ibid., pp. 115-116.
41. Ibid.,p.116.
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