Barth, Scripture and Inerrancy

Though of the three points, I am least familiar with Barth's view on Scripture, I think I am justified in saying that while Barth rejects inerrancy, he would certainly approve of the idea that the Bible is authoritative in matters of faith and morals. Barth was a huge advocate of returning to Biblically-based theology, which is obvious to anyone who opens up his massive 13 book, 7,000+ page Church Dogmatics and looks at all of the footnotes. But, Barth followed the line of thought of Higher Criticism, which frequently rejects the inerrancy of Scripture, citing internal contradictions, the varying views of authors and the like. A contention of mine is that this is not the fault of Higher Criticism so much as it is of Evangelicals, who generally have avoided using critical methods out of fear and hence forfeited the field to liberal theologians while the discipline was still in its infancy. As a religious studies student, I spent a decent amount of time in the realm of higher criticism, and do not think that higher criticism necessitates a liberal view of Scripture, and even accepting hypotheses such as the Wellhausen (JEDP) source view of the development of the Torah need not necessitate a rejection of infallibility (in point to fact, Deut. 34:5 calls into question the view that Moses was sole author of the Torah).

That said, whatever I may think of JEDP, Second and Third Isaiah, the Q community and other good higher critical concepts, Barth felt that higher criticism's insights required him to reject Scriptural infallibility, while still being one of the most Biblically focused theologians in ages. I can hear your question now: “How can he believe the stuff in the Bible, how can he take it for more than a grain of salt, if he says there are errors? If you pull into question part of the Bible, the whole thing collapses.” Such a response is not a straw man I am creating, but my own genuine view of the issue from not too many years ago.

Imagine you open up a book entitled the History of Western Civilization and start reading it. It describes the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman empires, the spread of Christianity, the Renaissance and all kinds of other things you know to be true. As you read along, you pick up some facts you did not know, but because they come from an authority that seems reasonable, you accept them from that authority. You may stumble on a point or two you disagree with or know to be of dubious quality, but that does not mean you will throw the book out — you will still probably accept most of it. For Barth and others (such as C.S. Lewis), this is precisely the view they take to the Bible. They may feel there are errors, but they are confident the vast majority is truthful. We've set the bar too high. We tell people they must either accept the Bible as infallible or reject it entirely, and in doing so, we add a difficult requirement for faith for many people, which goes entirely against the principle of union with Christ as the one and only point of what it means to be a Christian (anyone in Dr. Douglass's Spiritual and Ministry Formation class will hopefully appreciate that point). I'm not saying I agree with Barth, but I think to attack him too seriously for it is missing the bigger picture.

But, you say, “The Bible is different from a history text! It is the sole authority of our faith — sola Scriptura.” I've said that too. Let's start with the easy critique: sola Scriptura does not come out of the Bible, so you have invoked an external authority (no matter how worthy) already. But let's ignore that bone of contention. Does one really believe the Bible because it says one should believe it? Does one believe the Bible is without error because of its claims to being useful? If so, it has become an idol for that person, because one is essentially turning the Bible into a god that can be listened to. Moreover, this is not helpful for the non-believer, because you are still appealing to an authority, one must always appeal to an authority at some point. Most Protestants appeal to the Bible as authority. Catholics will appeal to the Pope and the Magisterium of the Church. Neo-Orthodox Christians appeal to Christ as the incarnate Revelation of God.

An appeal to Christ. This is the beauty, in my opinion, of Barth's theology. We are told by John that “the Word was made flesh,” and the Neo-Orthodox believer will say, “absolutely, that's our point.” In appealing to the Word, Barth advocates not attempting to read Scripture in isolation, instead appealing to the Scripture enlived and made true as it can be only through the indwelling of God's Spirit. Neo-Orthodoxy, sharing something in common with the unrelated, but similar sounding, Orthodox branch of Christianity, is Christocentric rather than Bibliocentric. Hence, the authority of Scripture is rooted not in its accuracy alone, but in the fact that God reveals Himself personally and actively to us in the reading of the Word. This does not mean the Bible cannot be infallible in the Neo-Orthodox system: on the contrary, it makes perfect sense to affirm the infallibility of Scripture and still argue that God's self-Revelation is not Scripture but rather Christ to whom Scripture is the best and chosen witness. Note that the rooting of Biblical authority in the self-Revelation of God is not really all that different from John Calvin's own view on Biblical authority, which appeals to self-authentication by the Holy Spirit. Basically, Barth is making the same point with more “twenty dollar words.”

Let me relay a realization that hit me one day. I was talking to one of my mentors about coming to Christ a few weeks ago, and something dawned on me. He mentioned he guessed the church of his childhood never really preached the Gospel because he did not hear it until much later. I felt the same way about my past, but that did not make sense for me, because I grew up in the same church I am in now, and I think it is unreasonable to suggest my pastors suddenly changed their tune. Instead, it dawned on me, that despite reading the Bible and despite hearing the preaching, I was unable to go from hearing and seeing to comprehending because God had not yet chosen to reveal His saving grace to me. Mark 4.11-12 strikes me in this context:

And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that

“they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.” (ESV)

This is not proto-Gnosticism, rather it is a recognition that God's truth is something that can be understood only by the power of His Spirit and His revelation in the Word made Flesh. Plenty of people far smarter than I have rejected the message of the Bible and this truth is a sobering reminder that it is not by my wisdom that I avoided following them down that path. That, to me, is what Barth reminds us of, and it is something we as Evangelicals ought to heed.

The value of Barth's view of Scripture is not his view on infallibility precisely, but rather the fact that he shakes us out of our comfort zone that often idolizes the Bible. In doing so, he reminds us that we need not waste our time constantly sweating every fire that critics may lodge against the Bible's errorlessness (all of which is really a mind game anyway, since we do not have the original manuscripts that are all that can be defended as infallible anyway). One can defend the Bible's integrity until one turns blue in the face, and without God's spirit no one will be convinced. Instead we must rest on Christ alone, the full and complete self-Revelation of God who lived and died to bring us into union with Him; it is only through Him and by Him that we have any hope of understanding the Bible.

Toward a New Theology, Part I

I'm tired, so I'm afraid I'm probably not going to write this as clearly as I should, but for what it is worth, here is a little stream of consciousness on my thoughts about theology.

I've been contemplating what I would include in the prolegomena of my systematic theology dogmatics (I'm going to be good Barthian and not call it systematic), if I were to write such a thing right now. I certainly hope to write a set of dogmatics someday. But what interpretive framework would I use?

I'd probably look to my two patron theologians, which incidentally are the two great systematizers: Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. From Aquinas, I'd be tempted to include a set of proofs for God in my framework. But, acknowledging Kant, Hume, et. al., I'd probably need to deconstruct my own arguments. This might be a good thing, since that would lead me to the point of crisis where I could argue for the Kierkegaardian-Barthian leap of faith. So far so good.

Now, if I followed the assumptions of Barth, I shouldn't create an external framework at all. The Bible should provide its own framework. However, even reading the Bible requires a linguistic/socio-cultural framework so that's not entirely possible. So, in this skeptical age, maybe a good starting point would be to pick out my Biblical interpretation framework right at the beginning.

This brings me back to my basic school of literary criticism. I may have said on here before that I work primarily from the assumptions of Old Historicism, New Criticism (Formalism) and Mimeticism (Jungian/Archetypal). Given that I was a religious studies major in college, it should come as no surprise that I have been primarily trained in applying historicism as an interpretive framework to the Bible — Old Historicism looks at the history of the author and his culture to discern what the author intended to say. My critical technique is dialectical, because New Criticism rejects the notion that we can know the author or what he or she intended to say. Mimetic Criticism looks at how the text represents the external reality; I juxtapose that with Jungian psychoanalysis. Traditionally Jungian interpretation is placed inside Reader Response criticism, but my basic argument is that I am interested in looking at the objective archetypes the author is aware of (consciously or not) and representing them, as opposed to looking at how the reader is alerted to their own archetypal awareness.

But, there is a plot twist at this point. This dialectical approach seems to be hurdling me toward an eventual meeting with Deconstructionism or New Historicism. Lately, I'm thinking I'm assuming the New Historicist position of the majority of my English professors, a position I previously had rejected. However, while many New Historicists are looking for a meta-narrative of dialectical materialism (e.g. they are doing Marxist criticism), I would propose a meta-narrative of covenant and election (which circularly could be supported by the Bible).

Because New Historicism assumes many of the techniques of my traditional three school approach, I could retain the formal (generic) analysis, the analysis of the cultural background and — as part of the meta-narrative — Jungian analysis. New Historicism is fairly honest in that it takes a cue from deconstructionism and admits meaning is endlessly deferred, essentially. We will use a meta-narrative interpretive framework with the goal of understanding the original cultures, rather than claiming we can actually ever completely understand the original cultures.

Ultimately, this does not matter because theology is merely a witness to the divine revelation of God: the Word of God, Jesus Christ. It is only through His self-revelation to us that the endless deferment may be set aside.

More later.

TQ: So whatya doing??

Mark provides the following interesting TQ meme with eight interesting questions:

1. So, what are you currently reading?
Well, so far today, I've read some good excerpts from Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics for Church History class (go Barth!) and another set of excerpts from A. A. Hodge and John Murray for another class. I'm about to resume Getting the Bugs Out, an interesting history of Volkswagen by David Kiley. It focuses on the Volkswagen of America, it's marketing strategy and how it made a comeback after almost becoming irrelevant in the early 90's. It has a lot of nice insights into the New Beetle and a good history of the origins of the Beetle and Volkswagen from Porche's dream.

2. So, what are you currently listening too?
I just opened Jeremy Camp's Restored a few days ago. I've also been listening to Evanescence's the Open Door and Plumb's Beautiful Lumps of Coal.

3. So, what are you currently watching?
Nothing.

4. So, what are you doing for exercise?
Enjoying the nice weather by walking.

5. So, what are you surfing?
My usual blogs, news web sites, Facebook and Wikipedia (which I used to refresh myself on meta-narrative tonight).

6. So, what are you doing to relax?
This meme.

7. So, what are you writing?
In my head, I'm working on my book, which I'm not quite ready to reveal the subject of… yet. Otherwise, I just finished some book reviews for a class, and I'm currently working on a paper for a class. I'm writing it in the form of a dialogue (in the style of David Hume's dialogues).

8. So, what are you praying for?
Lots, but here's one that I should post here: my uncle and a family friend, both of whom have cancer. Your prayers are coveted for them. Some other prayers I think I'll leave off my blog, but I can explain by e-mail if anyone really wants to know.

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).

Late Night Haiku XXII

LXI. A lonely thought about
The soft sounds of a tree frog,
Who knows not of it.

LXII. What is this odd place,
That my thoughts arrive at now,
Like a long spring rain?

LXIII. The words do not come,
To match thoughts that bubble up,
Shall the thoughts erupt?

Christ and Culture

My two brothers in Christ, Ed and Brad both touch on elements of directions I want to follow concerning the issue I remarked about in my last post about Archbishop Burke, and societal issues in general. I'm torn, you see.

In my church history textbook tonight, I got to the section on my “theological hero,” the good Dr. Karl Barth. Barth is not only almost unanimously judged the most important twentieth century theologian, he is also probably the most important theologian most people haven't heard about. His story always fascinates me. After World War I, Barth rejected the liberal theology he had pretty much bought wholesale precisely because he saw it was a toothless giant. Liberal Protestantism was of the world and hence went right along with what happened in society, supporting World War I and, eventually, the Reich Church in World War II.

Disillusioned, like many young Europeans who saw the destruction of the first world war, he rethought his whole theology. Out of that came der Römerbreif (the Epistle to the Romans), Barth's commentary on the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, which sent shockwaves throughout the theological world that we are still sorting out today. His Kierkegaardian Existentialist influenced, but highly orthodox views, which would become later known as Neo-Orthodoxy, set the stage for a showdown in Germany in the 1930's.

When Hitler established the Reich Church and the majority of Protestants bowed to the Third Reich's policies (and many even endorsed them), the Confessing Church stood up against it. In addition to Barth, a better known figure, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, participated in this movement.The Confessing Church issued the Barmen Declaration, authored by Barth, which rejected the eclipsing of the Gospel by another, worldly gospel. I think this probably in large part agrees with what Brad is expressing.

However, like all things Barthian, paradox abounds. In addition to rejecting the Gospel influenced by society, the Confessing Church also stood up with the Gospel against society. Bonhoeffer went so far as to participate in an attempted assassination of Hitler. While the Confessing Church refocused the center of the Church on the Word of God, its members lived out their faith in working against an evil regime. Likewise, great Christians throughout the ages have stood against evil societal forces — for example the abolitionists and their stance against slavery. Which are regimes we called to stand against and which are societal issues that merely distract from the Gospel and even threaten to become another gospel?

I am not sure.

This is a paradox that I think yields no easy answers. I think the Catholic Church is doing a better job at grappling with this than many of us who are Protestant are. The Catholic Church is quite firm in its stand against abortion, cloning, and the like, but it also lives the Gospel out in its many mercy ministries, charities and other works to help the poor and sick. I think that's why many outside of the church hold in higher esteem the pope than they do many Evangelical leaders. I think much of the problem in Protestantism is not that we take stands for political causes, but that we let them take over our message. We are pro-life, but we also should care for the sick. We stand against sin, but we are also sinners. I think this is what Roland Martin was getting at in a piece I blogged about a few weeks ago. We should live out the Gospel, but in a consistent manner, not just in a few key issues that support our favorite political party. At the center must be the Gospel. The problem is that the center becomes decentered.

That's the challenge.

Gone Fish'in, Go Read Elsewhere

Ok, I'm not really out fishing at midnight (and I'm not going fishing tomorrow either, in fact, I don't like fishing). But, I am drawing a blank on something to post. So instead, let me point you to my latest column on Open for Business.

Archbishop Raymond Burke is not the type of man you would label as a conciliator. Since he came to St. Louis a few years ago, he has inflamed via his vocal opposition of politicians who support abortion, his suppression of a parish that ignored his orders and now his resignation from a charity board after it brought Sheryl Crow, a supporter of embryonic stem cell research, to play at a benefit concert. The common wisdom says he must be wrong, but is he really?

Feel free to let me know what you think either over on OFB or here.

An Ending

It was an odd feeling. I returned to my alma mater for one last official activity as a student. Because I graduated mid-year, I did not qualify last year for a senior certificate from a society I had been inducted into in my Freshman year. Instead, I was eligible this year. So, for the first time since December, I stepped onto campus today for “business.” I've been on campus to visit a few professors and attend a “coffee conversation” this semester, but all of that has been “just for fun.”

But, I knew this was still coming. It felt somehow especially final today to walk off the campus for the last time in anything related to my status as a student there. Unless someday I should be honored to return there as a professor, this will be my last official time on campus, though I'll surely be back more times to visit my professors.

I'm appreciative of the fact that I am already at Covenant. The last few months there have been great; the classes are great, the professors are great; and my fellow students, many of which I am please to be able to call friends, and a few of whom now read asisaid, are great. At least one ending leads into another beginning.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

With three weeks or so left of the Spring semester, I can really identify with the persona in Robert Frost's famous little poem. Especially the last couplet.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Barthism for the Day

Karl Barth on Paul's inclusion of Timothy in the greeting in Philippians 1.1:

A hero, a genius a “religious personality” stands alone; an apostle has others beside himself like himself and sets them on his own level. He speaks in an office occupied by many. He can fall, but his Lord does not fall with him.

Hmm… that's an interesting insight. I just discovered Barth's Epistle to the Philippians, which appears to be a fairly thorough commentary on the book of Philippians. Like all of Barth's works, it appears to have a thoughtful, pastoral tone. I need to look into getting a copy (I'm viewing what I can using Amazon's “Online Reader.”).

Another nugget from his section on 1:3-4:

The proper basis for thinking of each other and praying for each other among Christians is that they thank their common Lord. That is indeed the proof of whether in the prayers they offer they are really turning to him, the Lord, and not to some God of their own making.

Chick-fil-A

I had never eaten a Chick-fil-A before I started at Covenant. However, I heard from many of the students around campus about the “high holy day” of Wednesdays, when Chick-fil-A showed up on campus and had food for sale. Part of this can be explained by the total lack of hot food for sale on or near the campus the rest of the week, part of it can be explained by those looking for a bit of a taste from the South (particularly since many CTS students are from the South), but apparently Chick-fil-A can just generate a following beyond those reasons.

The funny thing is, I've probably had seven or eight Chick-fil-A meals this semester, and I'm starting to look forward to that special day of the week myself. Yesterday, I was at a local mall after lunch and happened to walk through the food court, which has a Chick-fil-A. They were giving away samples, and I had a nugget. After eating that nugget, I knew I really needed to get my Chick-fil-A sandwich today, along with their tasty carrot and raisin salad.

It doesn't hit me like “the Crave” for White Castle, but I am none the less craving a simple chicken sandwich. Interesting.