Wednesday morning began with Matins. The opening hymn was “When morning gilds the skies,” the text Acts 6.1-15, story of selection of the first deacons. Ret. Bp. George Mocko was preaching. Notes from his sermon:
Our situation is akin to the early Christians—need to organize, growing, facing opposition. As then, some of the opponents counseled stringent action, others ignoring the Christians. We need to respond, as Stephen, with the face of an angel. What does that mean?
(1) Stephen begins with telling the roots—Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the Psalms. We must keep this in focus and proclaim it always. Whatever we do, it is as part of the holy, catholic and apostolic church with the responsibility to proclaim this via Reformation themes (solas). The Word of God remains eternal.
(2) We do this forthrightly. This can be tough for me, I’m a Slovak, and we are notably a blunt people! It is easy for us to be sharp, accusing, self-righteous, sarcastic, biting, confrontational, and then justify it by saying the prophets used harsh language too—which is to say, we can do all those things unrepentantly.
(3) We do this with innocence, without guile.
The leadership of the ELCa blew it badly, and continues to blow it badly. They are unrepentant. We are dealing with their mess, and trying to retrieve what we can. As we do it, let us try to do so with the faces of angels—proclaiming our roots, forthrightly, with innocence.
Next the business session, presided over by ret. Bp. Ralph Kempski
Speaker: Stephen Hultgren “The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (Prof. Theology at Fordham University)
Bob Benne told me my role here is to bring down the median age of the speakers. There are many who say this is a generational issue, but I do not believe this. Matters of truth are timeless. Church struggles perhaps more in some generations than others.
There is a widespread sense that the crisis in the ELCA is a crisis of the authority of Scripture. Most recent evidence was 2009 act on sexuality, but not the only evidence. It’s not just about sex, despite what CORE opponents claim. It is about authority of Scripture.
What the issue is not about:
It is not about fundamentalism or inerrancy. That’s a red herring. Recently in an LQ article an ELCA seminary profession claimed there is a struggle between two views: one of Lutheran orthodoxy, holding to inerrancy; the other that of Luther himself, where a distinction is made between Scripture and the Word of God, so that there is “slippage” between Scripture and the Word of God. I do not agree with this analysis. If debate framed between inerrancy on the one hand and the claimed “more Lutheran hermeneutic” on the other, we haven’t identified the real problem. One can find in Luther, certainly, idea that preached gospel has priority over Scripture; this idea of “slippage” is not without support. But where does the slippage end? And does this concept find support in the Confessions, not just in Luther himself? I don’t think so. But notwithstanding all this, I hear no appeal for a return to the view of Scripture of Lutheran orthodoxy.
What is the debate about that? It is a more traditional Lutheran debate between those who would locate the authority in Scripture itself, and those who locate it in the human community. Does God decide, or do we decide?
Noteworthy that when HSGT discusses the nature of sexuality, not a single Biblical text is cited. The impression is that an a priori decision has been made that texts which mention homosexuality simply do not speak God’s word to the church anymore, and therefore can be ignored.
Another recent statement by an ELCA theologian in a paper written for the Conference of Bishops: “When it comes to establishing authority of Scripture, our primary resource is the communal experience of God’s people over time.” This is utterly astonishing. The authority of scripture depends on the experience of the faithful? We, in the community of faith, are in the driver’s seat in deciding when and where Scripture speaks to us? Recipe for the disaster unfolding before our eyes. Not only must we ask WHO makes the decision, but HOW they make it.
Is there another option besides Lutheran orthodoxy’s approach, and the ELCA fallacy? The question is this: Will the church allow the Scripture to speak to us as God’s Word? Can we find the way between the options of “inerrancy” and “slippage”?
Luther: You’ll hear it claimed that Luther thought the Word of God was not something written, but the proclaimed Word. That Luther’s Christocentric approach—authority of Christ over against Scripture (which lies behind Luther’s antipathy to certain books). Luther’s “How Should Christians Regard Moses.” The alleged “Luther” hermeneutic then suggests that the church is free to dispense with Scripture as the Word of God where it does not seem to us to promote Christ. This is the working view of Scripture among many pastors and theologians in ELCA today. Problem is that this ignores many, many Luther texts where Luther speaks straightforwardly about authority of the written Word. Luther in his later years rejected Copernicus because of his view of the authority Scripture. My point is not to condemn Luther’s view (we are all convinced Copernicans); but to note that Luther did, indeed, have some view of the authority of Scripture as Word of God. One may maintain that Scripture is God’s Word in a secondary sense, but one must not drive a wedge between the proclaimed and the written word.
Is the authority of Scripture limited to the gospel? The answer must be “no.” All Scripture, for Luther, continued to have authority. For Luther all true Scripture does point to Christ. Ebeling showed that Luther’s hermeneutic transformed medieval exegesis which understood the “spirit” of the text to the intent of the Holy Spirit, the true author of Scripture. Literal and spiritual sense are always united by the Holy Spirit. All of Scripture contains both a grammatical/historical meaning, and it also all points to Christ.
No warrant in Luther to use justification by faith as a scissors to cut anything out of Scripture that is difficult. Luther regarded ethical teaching of the OT as authoritative. Law of Moses points to Christ, and the Law must be preached to Christians.
The Lutheran Confessions:
(1) Confessional writings understand themselves to be explications of the church’s articles of faith. Augustana is presented in some ways as an exposition of the Creed.
(2) Luther’s Christological canon criticism recedes in importance in the Confessions. The hermeneutical center of justification is used differently. Apology, FC, e.g., treat James quite differently from Luther.
(3) Nowhere do the confessions make a theoretical distinction between Scripture and the Word of God, nor do they question whether Scripture is the Word of God for the church. They place high value on proclaimed word, but it is not set up as a critical lever against the written word. Confessions repeatedly emphasize the importants of the commands of God for the church.
(4) For the confessions, there can never be a contradiction to justification by faith. They acknowledge that some apostolic admonitions were of passing use for the church, but moral commandments remain binding because they maintain their guiding and sanctifying function. For example, they argue against the idea that worship of God on Sunday is a new “divine law” that replaces the Sabbath; rather, they argue, the NT itself abolishes the Sabbath in its literal sense.
Lutheran Orthodoxy:
(1) Scripture and Word of God absolutely identified with one another.
(2) Scripture is self-authenticating. Words give direct knowledge of God, history, etc., without error.
(3) All Scripture is equally inspired.
Orthodoxy is faulted for a formalistic view of authority, and this is justified. This view does not do justice to the human factor in Scripture, and not capable of handling challenge of the Enlightenment. But there is one very important point for us: confidence of unity of Scripture.
That confidence was lost in rise of critical methodology. Three aspects of Semler’s view:
(1) Rejected orthodox view of the canon, that these books and none other are divinely inspired.
(2) Semler saw in Luther a precedent for his own view, critical of the canon.
(3) Semler saw in Luther’s focus on literal sense of Scripture an opening for the critic: historical investigation to determine the “real” literal sense.
The rise of historical criticism was necessary, in view of the Enlightenment, and there’s no going back, but we must be critical of the critics.
(1) Semler believe he was being faithful to Luther, but there is a fundamental difference: Semler abandoned Luther’s view of union of letter and spirit. Luther could continue to view OT as Word of God, but for Semler large segments of OT become literature of merely antiquarian interest.
(2) Unity of canon is broken in Semler. Impossible any longer to conceive of Scripture as a single book of divine authorship for the church.
(3) Long before Bultmann, Semler had his own program of “demythologization.” Core articles of faith thereby no longer belong to the interpreter’s horizon of reality.
What we get is loss of OT as word of God (along with anti-Semitism, antinomianism); loss of unity of canon.
We must retrieve from pre-critical period this sense of confidence in Scripture—confidence that church, in its decision to canonize these books and not others, was in fact the work of the Holy Spirit. Regain primacy of literal sense, and clear unity between literal and spiritual sense. Problem of fundamentalism is that it reduces the literal to the spiritual, and it is thereby unable to deal with “contradictions” or tensions. Interpreter will seek to understand the literal sense, but never divorce it from the spiritual sense, the sense intended by the Holy Spirit. Exegete must take his/her bearings from the articles of faith of the church.
I am a historical critic, a hard-nosed one. There is something genuinely Lutheran about historical criticism. BUT the question has to be asked about the proper role of such study in the church. The basic point is to illumine the historical reality BEHIND the text, and this serves a useful function when it seeks to explain how a text came to express the theological truth that it expresses. But it overstates its bounds when it seeks to make normative for faith and life a reality different from that which the text itself claims. For example, the way the some scholars have used Greco-Roman sources to undermine what Romans 1 says about homosexuality. Such an argument cannot stand up to the truth. One must go on to ask who is the God that Paul cites, and what does that God mean to say? To understand that, one must look, not to Greco-Roman sources, but to the rest of the canon.
Conclusion: As we look forward to renewal, how do we think about authority?
(1) Church must take all of Scripture as the word of God for the church. This does not mean fundamentalism, but taking seriously the canonical unity of Scriptural, and to allow the articles of faith to set the correct parameters of interpretation. It also doesn’t mean “inerrancy”—as long as articles of faith are secure, we need not be “bothered” by “contradictions.”
(2) Church must not be in business of “deciding” what in Scripture is relevant and what is not.
(3) Lutheranism must be enriched by all churches that view Scriptures authoritatively, to be enriched by theological reflection of other traditions.
(4) Authority of Scripture will prove itself again today when the church refuses to allow Scripture to be squeezed into the mold of human experience, but will open vision of human life to one not inhibited by narcissim, consumerism, nihilism. The church must give young people today a view of the possibility of life shaped by God’s Word.
[Note: I found Hultgren's presentation to be extremely interesting and helpful. Scott Yakimow, who is here, had a different perspective, so maybe he'll say something about it. Or not.]
