6 Conclusion

Let me now try to review the path we have trod to bring us to a point of decision of some sort. Postmodernism has brought with it certain challenges to the way mainstream evangelicalism does its business. In my opinion, it has brought less challenge to the way the Wesleyan Church does business because we have always tended to read the Bible in a more "spiritual" and thus pre-modern way than the stalwart, Calvinist dominated Evangelical Theological Society might.

In my opinion, the greatest value of postmodernity is the way it lets us look into the abyss of uncertainty surrounding everything we think we know. It humbles us and calls attention to the role that faith plays in all knowledge. But you can't live in that abyss--it is an endless falling, never to land, not even to go splat. We learn our lesson from the look and then do our best to move forward as reflectively as we can. Thus one of my colleagues would consider me more a "chastened modernist" than a true postmodernist.

No matter. Given the uncertainty that surrounds the meaning of the biblical text on every side, given the multiply valid ways one might connect its parts to one another, given the countless ways in which one might connect the text to today's world, the postmodern reader needs controls on the meaning of the biblical text. As Christians we must have some "check and balance" on a text that by itself can come to mean almost anything.

Throughout this paper I have suggested three such controls.

1. The original meaning.
The first control I am suggesting is the original meaning of the words of the Bible, which is the meaning these words first had when they were written to their original contexts. To know this meaning to any significant degree you must have an extensive knowledge of the original languages and the ancient cultures and situations to which these books were first written. In many, many cases the best scholar will still have insufficient evidence to conclude on the original meaning with any degree of certainty.

The primary value of the original meaning is two fold. It is first, the meaning that God inspired some ancient author to write to some specific ancient context. The complex, methodical path of mainstream evangelical scholarship is not wrong, it is just filled with great uncertainty and complexity. If it is the only path to finding God's Word, then most of the Christians who have lived and died throughout history have not heard God's Word with any degree of certainty.

The second value is that the original meaning is a primary catalyst for reform. Studying the original meaning helps us identify development of doctrine of practice, not to reject it, but so that the church can evaluate it in the open with greater reflectivity.

2. The Holy Spirit
Both the original texts of Scripture and the authentic developments of belief and practice in the church have been directed by the Holy Spirit. Whether you are Catholic or Protestant, we cannot be who we are unless we affirm the continued work of the Holy Spirit beyond New Testament times. We would not even have a New Testament if God had not led the church to affirm these specific books. We would simply have a bunch of good books, including the Gnostic gospels and countless other books of varying value.

And the Spirit continues to speak even today. The Wesleyan Church is one of an increasing movement of churches that affirms that the Spirit fills both men and women equally and that our daughters can prophesy in this age just as well as our sons. The church of a hundred years from now will look back on us as some of those who heard the Spirit's voice on this topic, while it will shake its head in shame at those who opposed women in all roles of ministry in this time. The church of the future will wonder about the spirituality of Christians today who pigeonhole women into certain earthly roles just as we question the spirituality of those Christians a hundred years ago who were in favor of slavery. There is nothing those opposed to women in these roles can do to stop this forward movement of the church, for they are fighting the Spirit.

3. The Consensus of the Church
There are things that all Christians agree on, things that the Holy Spirit has long since led all mainstream Christians to affirm. I refer to the rule of faith as those canons of Christian belief long established in the church. They are more than the creeds. I would argue that belief in things like fallen human nature and creation of the world out of nothing go beyond both what the Bible clearly teaches and anything explicitly stated in the creeds. Yet these are the common beliefs of Christendom, affirmations we make in communion with the saints of the ages.

The law of love is the unanimous affirmation of the New Testament, beginning with Jesus himself and reiterated by Paul, James, and John. Any appropriation of Scripture in violation with the love of our neighbor is not an appropriate use of Scripture.

So who is the ideal Christian reader of the biblical texts? The ideal Christian reader knows as much as a human can know about the text, is as filled with the Holy Spirit as a Christian can be with the Spirit, and is in as much communion with the saints of the ages as an individual can be. Clearly such a person does not exist. That is why Christians must read the Bible in community far more than as lone individuals. The task of appropriating the Bible for today is bigger than any one person. It is the ongoing task of the church in its entirety.