Despiser 3: Talking Hermeneutics

Let me start this third and final post by affirming Gary's first three presentations at OWU as intelligent and informed attempts to grapple with the nature and function of Scripture from a largely modernist evangelical perspective. His position is not a stereotypical straw man but is a real position. He acknowledges the incarnational nature of biblical revelation.

He accepts that there are matters to be solved with the traditional affirmation of inerrancy and at least seems to affirm considerations such as 1) the careful definition of exactly what is and is not an error and 2) making distinctions between exactly what the point of a given passage is or is not. He theoretically factors into the equation matters like ancient worldview and expressions not meant to be taken scientifically (e.g., sunrise and sunset). He even allows for interpreting the OT in the light of Christ to some extent and affirms the Christian order of the OT vis-a-vis the Jewish way (thus incidentally favoring the church's order for the books over and against the way they were categorized in Christ's day!!! see Luke 24:44).

At the same time, Gary is extremely conservative in his exercise of these allowances. For example, he stops short of accepting the Septuagint as the Scriptural OT, even though it is the text used by the majority of NT authors (and one of his arguments is that Jesus used it! He thus ironically gives the historical Jesus precedent over the Scriptural text!). He would reject any use of genre to allow for significantly lessened historicity (e.g., in the gospels or Acts). He would reject a combination of sources or process of book development that would result in too much deviation from a "what you see is what you get" behind any biblical text (e.g., the standard Pentateuch or Isaiah development theories). He would reject pseudonymity in the Bible. He also argues strongly that inerrancy has always been part and parcel of the holiness tradition.

As I think about Gary's argument, I can't help but think of Thomas Kuhn and scientific revolutions. Every paradigm has "naughty data" that does not fit as easily with the paradigm. Normal science can spend a good deal of its time trying to modify and "complexify" the basic paradigm to accommodate the dominant paradigm. I see Gary's work as largely reactionary, attempts to plug holes in a leaky ship. His plugins are good, I think. In fact, I think they are so good that they might make a mighty good starting point for a new dominant paradigm.

Those of you who've heard me blather on about hermeneutics will have some sense of what that new paradigm might be. And if I might co-opt a Scripture verse... "which is not a new paradigm, but the paradigm you had from the beginning." Gary seems to be aruging that inerrancy has always been a part of the holiness tradition. I would present Gary's argument in the following way. The holiness tradition has always affirmed the accuracy of the biblical witness, particularly in the face of challenges from Deist, modernist, or naturalist circles. The [traditional] idea of inerrancy is thus in complete harmony with the holiness tradition.

At the same time, he implicitly acknowledges in his comments that it did not appear in the Wesleyan Methodist polity until 1955. He does not mention the Pilgrim Holiness Church, the other half, which did not have this term in its polity. He also implicitly acknowledges that the actual term rose within fundamentalism in response to the challenges of biblical criticism in the latter part of the 19th century. He also implicitly acknowledges (citing none other than our own Steve Lennox) that many late 1800's holiness individuals sought escape from these rational challenges in an experiential focus on the Spirit and entire sanctification.

OK, now I have all the ingredients on the table. Let's cook.

I would argue that there is a slight of hand at work in Gary's presentation in which the word inerrancy takes on slightly different nuances. One the one hand, he is clearly operating primarily with a definition of inerrancy that affirms the historicity of the Bible in the face of questions raised by biblical criticism. He acknowledges that the real rise of this fundmentalist term was after the late 1800's. He acknowledges that most of the late 1800's holiness authors resorted to experientialism rather than intellectualism in reaction. And he acknowledges that the term did not become a part of the Wesleyan tradition until the 1950's, and then only in half of it (not the Pilgrim side).

So I would put the story this way. What we are looking at here is the tension that has arisen as the modern era has thrust a sense of "original meaning" on us. Most Christians throughout the ages, indeed most Christians today, read the Bible primarily in a pre-modern way. The text is read as God's word to us and historical features of the text are only engaged with to flesh out application for us. Hans Frei has argued profoundly that without the rise of modernism, people not only assume the historicity of the text--but the possibility that the stories did not occur doesn't even occur to them. They see themselves as part of the story and the potential distinction between story and history is not made.

Modernism has raised questions of historicity and scientific accuracy about the text. Those who engage with it are changed simply by the raising of the question--the distinction between story and history is made even when a person is defending historicity. And it is true that the Wesleyan tradition, to the extent that it has engaged with such things, has generally taken the fundamentalist side of the argument when the distinction has been made.

But I think Gary implicitly acknowledges that those who have done so have stood on the perpiphery of the holiness movement. The holiness movement itself (and we must remember that it is more the holiness movement than John Wesley that is the forebear of the current Wesleyan church) has historically been more experientially oriented than rationally oriented. We have always had individuals like Gary who were heavily rationalist in orientation. But the bulk of Wesleyans--the people who do most of the living and dying around here--have always been pietists. And they have always been pre-moderns--and thus pre the inerrancy debate in its proper terms. In its history, most Wesleyans have not even engaged the question of whether the Bible is historical. It has not been a part of their engagement with Scripture.

Modernist evangelicalism stands incoherently between two Scriptural paradigms. On the one hand, it recognizes that the original audience of 1 Thessalonians were ancient Thessalonians and not some modern reader. It recognizes that the meaning of a martyros is not a martyr, what the word suggests to us, but a witness, what the word meant to them. It understands that when Psalm 74:13 speaks of God breaking the heads of dragons (KJV, RSV) it was alluding to a mythical creation story of the ancient near east.

Well, that last one will set off the "circuit breakers" of many modernist evangelicals. It's a little too close for comfort. Like Gary, modernist evangelicalism will only "read in context" so far, then it falls back on its pre-modern heritage. To be fair to Gary, he really does try to listen to the text even when it makes him uncomfortable. He even acknowledges in a footnote that Jude may actually have thought 1 Enoch to be Scripture. And I should clarify that I think Psalm 74 is only using the image of the mythical creation stories, not that the author actually believed them (my circuit breakers?).

The pre-modern paradigm is the other Scriptural paradigm. The pre-modern paradigm reads the text as a direct word from God to us. Forget the Thessalonians, or more accurately, the Thessalonians don't even occur to us because we read the words as God's word to us without a second thought. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:10--"Is it for oxen that God is concerned [when he says not to muzzle the ox when its treading the grain] or it is written for our sake." The other option largely doesn't occur to the pre-modernist--Scripture is for us and was written for our sake! Without even thinking about it, we assume that the Bible was written for us rather than the oxen (the original addressees). Check out any prophecy program on TBN for confirmation.

Of course in practice most people read the words of the Bible somewhere on a continuum between the two. Most Bible readers today will have a good deal of awareness of the ancient world. People like Gary and (I hope) myself have quite a large awareness of the ancient context in which the Bible was created. And yet, at the same time, we are all unaware of our glasses and assumptions, blind spots that make the way we read the Bible different from the way they did.

The new paradigm I am suggesting, one that I think is emerging, affirms both ways of reading the text while keeping them distinct.

We can read the original meaning of the Bible as God's word to them, and let the text be fully incarnated into their paradigms and worldviews. Yet we can acknowledge that the Bible as Scripture, as God's word to us, has always taken the words a little out of context in the sense that the pre-modern hermeneutic--and now post-modern because we are doing it consciously--applies the words to us out of context.

I believe that if we are honest with ourselves, we have always read the Bible with certain rules behind the scenes, what I just called "circuit breakers." When we read 1 Peter 3:19-20 about Christ preaching in the Spirit after he died to the spirits of those who sinned in the days of Noah, we immediately sense that this verse is "weird." It doesn't fit our paradigm. Many a modernist scholar will begin to play dodge ball. No, it can't allude to the story in 1 Enoch of angels having sex with human women and being chained until the day of judgment in consequence.

My point is that pre-modern believers and modernist evangelicals both have circuit breakers in terms of what they will or won't let the biblical text actually mean. Much of the time, these circuit breakers are related to orthodoxy and tradition. I fully affirm this orthodoxy, as well as orthopraxy. I am arguing that these are the appropriate circuit breakers when it comes to applying the Bible to what we believe or do.

But not for determining what the original meaning was! What I don't affirm is twisting the original meaning of the Bible to make it fit with this orthodoxy. I see that as setting yourself up for a crisis of faith the more you learn and ponder. Let the original meaning be the original meaning, truth incarnated in a particular time and place. Let Genesis 1:1 picture a pre-creation chaotic formless mess of primordial waters, cause that's what everyone else in the world thought until at least the 1st century BC (cf. 2 Peter 3:5). But then let's read the text Scripturally as well with the consensus of the church in mind. In that sense it wouldn't matter if Paul did not fully understand Christ's pre-existence (although most scholars think he did), because the issue was fully settled in the church.

In that sense we begin every discussion with the Bible. But as I have written previously, it cannot end there because the Bible itself has not reached a final answer on many very important issues (e.g., the relationship between Christ as Son of God and God the Father; the creation of the world--is it out of nothing; is Christ's death the end of the sacrificial system, as Hebrews indicates, but surely James in Acts 21 might question).

With regard to women in ministry, the booklet was not meant to be an academic piece. It was a sermon. I consider the movement to affirm women in every way as a prophetic movement in the church much as the Protestant Reformation was. It is the cutting edge of the Spirit in the world today. It is the working out of the gospel in the church (this aspect of the gospel has actually worked itself out partially in the world before the church, much to our shame). Those who oppose it will be shamed by the Christians of coming generations, much as we now look at the "fundamentalists" of the 1800's who argued pro-slavery. Those who argue for artificial roles for women because of their anatomy are the heirs of those who used the Bible a 100 years ago to argue for slavery as a biblical institution.

Gary himself is pro-women in ministry, so I consider him a person of the Spirit on this issue. I just think his head is getting in the way as he tries to work "what the Spirit inside him is saying" through his own paradigms and worldview. I do consider it a rather large failure of judgment on his part to use this booklet as the "whipping boy" of his hermeneutical argument on a campus that I hear already leans against women in all roles of ministry. I wonder if he left the campus feeling, "Yep, women in ministry is wrong"--even though that's not what he said.

So let the discussion continue...

I believe we know where God is leading the process (for I am far from alone--we are a growing movement in the church). Although I do not at all believe we are wrong on the issue, I believe strongly that God will get the church where it needs to go. I don't think for one minute that our misunderstandings will somehow foil God's plans! God is in control.