Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Let us not get carried away when affirming scripture's authority
"How scripture is to be brought into play to judge the authenticity of doctrine requires careful reflection. It will not do simply to suppose that if a doctrine is found in scripture, in the sense of being stated explicitly somewhere in the text, it is ipso facto authentic [something Christian communities should believe]. Among the doctrines whose authenticity scripture is to judge are the doctrines found within scripture itself; and it is altogether possible that some of these may be judged non-authentic. To say that scripture has normative authority does not imply that every individual unit of scripture--every assertion of fact, every moral judgment, commandment, etiological tale, psalm, or what have you--has normative authority. Particular elements of scripture may have a role to play in generating theological understanding without themselves being representative of that understanding. Of course, people may grant authority to verses of scripture simply because they are part of scripture just as people may grant authority to what celebrities say in product endorsements simply because they are celebrities. One function of a properly articulated understanding of scriptural authority is to correct such mistakes." (Charles M. Wood, Love that Rejoices in the Truth, 79.)
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Warfield and the phenomena of scripture
On the place of the phenomena of scripture, Warfield seems clearer than Hodge. But before we get to that, let us notice that he wrote:
"The Biblical doctrine of inspiration, therefore, has in its favor just this whole weight and amount of evidence. It follows on the one hand that it cannot rationally be rejected save on the ground of evidence which will outweigh the whole body of evidence which goes to authenticate the Biblical writers as trustworthy witnesses to and teachers of doctrine. And it follows, on the other hand, that if the Biblical doctrine of inspiration is rejected, our freedom from its trammels is bought logically at the somewhat serious cost of discrediting the evidence which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. In this sense, the fortunes of distinctive Christianity are bound up with those of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration." (all quotes from his essay, "The Real Problem of Inspiration")
"In this sense, we repeat, the cause of distinctive Christianity is bound up with the cause of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. We accept Christianity in all its distinctive doctrines on no other ground than the credibility and trustworthiness of the Bible as a guide to truth; and on this same ground we must equally accept its doctrine of inspiration."
Yet he insists:
"The present writer, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, desires to repeat here what he has said on every proper occasion - that he is far from contending that without inspiration there could be no Christianity. "Without any inspiration," he added, when making this affirmation on his induction into the work of teaching the Bible- "without any inspiration we could have had Christianity; yea, and men could still have heard the truth and through it been awakened, and justified, and sanctified, and glorified. The verities of our faith would remain historically proven to us - so bountiful has God been in His fostering care - even had we no Bible; and through those verities, salvation."
These appear (at least at first) to be contradictory, or at the very least in serious tension with each other. One train of thought appears to be that
1) The Bible is trustworthy.
2) The Bible teaches various doctrines.
3) The Bible can be trusted in what doctrines it teaches.
4) Inspiration is a doctrine that the Bible teaches.
5) The Bible can be trusted when it teaches its own inspiration.
In an interesting move, Warfield concludes that 5) cannot be false without out 3) also becoming false. He reasons that if the Bible teaches its own inspiration, but that teaching turns out to be false then it can no long be trusted for what doctrines it teaches. The Bible proves potentially untrustworthy for every other doctrine.
Another train of thought appears to run:
1) The teachings of the Lord and the testimonies of the apostles are trustworthy.
2) The historical witness of the earliest churches passed these teachings along faithfully.
3) The various doctrines passed along in such a faithful manner over time are trustworthy.
4) No inspiration is needed to legitmate the trustworthiness of these teachings.
Warfield insists that these teachings can be accepted as true based on their sources without reference to inspiration. But he he goes on to say that inspiration happens to be one of the doctrines taught by the Lord and the apostles. Therefore, although it is contingently a part of the doctrines that are trustworthy, by the mere fact of being taught at all by the Lord and the apostles, there is nothing different about it that warrants our dismissal of that particular doctrine without also dismissing any number (all?) of other doctrines that have been taught by them.
How do the "phenomena" of scripture play into this picture?
Warfield writes:
"When we approach the Scriptures to ascertain their doctrine of inspiration, we proceed by collecting the whole body of relevant facts. Every claim they make to inspiration is a relevant fact; every statement they make concerning inspiration is a relevant fact; every allusion they make to the subject is a relevant fact; every fact indicative of the attitude they hold towards Scripture is a relevant fact. But the characteristics of their own writings are not facts relevant to the determination of their doctrine. Nor let it be said that we are desirous of determining the true, as distinguished from the Scriptural, doctrine of inspiration otherwise than inductively. We are averse, however, to supposing that in such an inquiry the relevant "phenomena" of Scripture are not first of all and before all the claims of Scripture and second only to them its use of previous Scripture. And we are averse to excluding these primary "phenomena" and building our doctrine solely or mainly upon the characteristics and structure of Scripture, especially as determined by some special school of modern research by critical methods certainly not infallible and to the best of our own judgment not even reasonable. And we are certainly averse to supposing that this induction, if it reaches results not absolutely consentaneous with the teachings of Scripture itself, has done anything other than discredit those teachings, or that in discrediting them, it has escaped discrediting the doctrinal authority of Scripture."
And in response to my last post on Hodge, he might say something like:
"[W]e approach the study of the so-called 'phenomena' of the Scriptures with a very strong presumption that these Scriptures contain no errors, and that any "phenomena" apparently inconsistent with their inerrancy are so in appearance only: a presumption the measure of which is just the whole amount and weight of evidence that the New Testament writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. It seems to be often tacitly assumed that the Biblical doctrine of inspiration cannot be confidently ascertained until all the facts concerning the contents and structure and characteristics of Scripture are fully determined and allowed for. This is obviously fallacious."
Nevertheless, he concedes:
"[T]he assumption that we cannot confidently accept the Biblical doctrine of inspiration as true until criticism and exegesis have said their last word upon the structure, the text, and the characteristics of Scripture, even to the most minute fact, is more plausible. But it is far from obviously true."
He asks readers to consider which approach will ultimately prove more helpful to them:
"If we start from the Scripture doctrine of inspiration, we approach the phenomena with the question whether they will negative this doctrine, and we find none able to stand against it, commended to us as true, as it is, by the vast mass of evidence available to prove the trustworthiness of the Scriptural writers as teachers of doctrine. But if we start simply with a collection of the phenomena, classifying and reasoning from them, whether alone or in conjunction with the Scriptural statements, it may easily happen with us, as it happened with certain of old, that meeting with some things hard to be understood, we may be ignorant and unstable enough to wrest them to our own intellectual destruction, and so approach the Biblical doctrine of inspiration set upon explaining it away."
Warfield is clearly much more aggressive in his writing here than Hodge, pushing readers toward making a definite decision. He is forthright enough to admit that his own decision has already been made and that any "phenomena" under consideration has to be of such force (which it will obviously never be) that it must overwhelm his confidence already granted to scripture.
Yet the concession Warfield makes is the same that Hodge makes, indeed everyone has to make it during the course of trying to do theology. Warfield's concession lies at the very construction of the doctrine of inspiration. In a bold rhetorical move, Warfield defers to his detractors to define biblical inspiration for him:
"In the circumstances, however, we may venture to dispense with an argument drawn up from our own point of view, and content ourselves with an extract from the brief statement of the grounds of his decision given by another of those critical scholars who do not believe the doctrine of plenary inspiration, but yet find themselves constrained to allow that it is the doctrine of the New Testament writers."
And so he defers to a Richard Rothe who writes:
"We find in the New Testament authors the same theoretical view of the Old Testament and the same practice as to its use, as among the Jews of the time in general, although at the same time in the handling of the same conceptions and principles on both sides, the whole difference between the new Christian spirit and that of contemporary Judaism appears in sharp distinctness...The whole style and method of their treatment of the Old Testament text manifestly presupposes in them this view of this matter, which was at the time the usual one in the Jewish schools..."
Yet for all Warfield's polemical attempts to obscure the fact, he finds himself in the same place that Hodge was in: having to be informed by "the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane, and...the doctrine which the sacred writers and the men of their generation are known to have entertained on the subject.”
Although he more consciously guards himself against the need to ask some of the questions I wanted to ask Hodge in the previous post, recent developments in the study of second temple Judaism have forced some questions upon us with much more urgency than would have been the case during the time when Warfield was writing:
What was the understanding of inspiration had by the "men of their generation" (Hodge's phrase)? What were their expectations of scripture? What does it mean for scripture that the NT writers had much the same view of things as any other religious person of their time?
For there is now the consideration that "inspiration," now more acutely identified as the common assumption of the cultural milieu within which scripture was originally produced, may be what some of the apostles, or perhaps the Lord, really believed but not actually what scripture is teaching. This is a point of contention that might be said to be "new" to more recent generations (over against that of Warfield's), given the discovery of the DSS, for example. Warfield's language opens itself to precisely this kind of observation:
"It is based on the exegetical fact that our Lord and His apostles held this doctrine of Scripture, and everywhere deal with the Scriptures of the Old Testament in accordance with it, as the very Word of God, even in their narrative parts. This is a commonplace of exegetical science, the common possession of the critical schools of the left and of the right, a prominent and unmistakable deliverance of Biblical Theology."
The biblical writers may have held some dictation theory of inspiration, for example, but does that mean that they taught it? If they did teach it, a comparison with scripture's phenomena would cause us to modify scripture's teaching...
And if there is some diversity among the biblical tradents over how to conceive of inspiration, perhaps that means it is up to us to fill in the details as to how best describe inspiration. Here then there is room for some differences of opinion. By parity of reasoning, one might observe that there surely appear to be some minor (and some major) differences of opinion in the other doctrines that are taught in scripture. Why should this one (inspiration) be any different from the others (a variation of Warfield's own argument)?
As for the deductive arguments made by Warfield, some progressives might find themselves open to it, but again there is the very important matter of pinning down what "inspiration" means in the first place. Is there some equivocation with the term "inspiration" between assertions 4) and 5)? And what is the difference between being "believed" by the writers in question and being "taught"? What if the language of "incidental error" proves more helpful to some today?
The last thing I have time to say here (although I'm so busy right now I probably ended up spending more time on these last two posts than I have spent on this blog over the past few months combined!) is that Warfield's presumption in scripture's favor is not going to be as strong in every believer as Warfiled seems to suppose. Although he protests to the contrary, it can be difficult to tell whether Warfield's presumption is concomitant with his inductive efforts or whether it precedes it or whether it proceeds from it. Either way, I don't think it is realistic to suppose that this presumption in favor of scripture's inerrancy is going overtake every Christian in the same way that it apparently did Warfield. Warfield mentions that the probability is so high for him that the scriptures are inerrant that the probability counts for him as equivalent to demonstration. But this is going to differ from believer to believer. No doubt that Warfield's essay is extremely well-written, but I think it ultimately boils down to a pragmatic argument and the effectiveness of such arguments often depend on a number of factors, not least a host of cultural and psychological factors that may or may not effect every believer in their very constitution as historically-situated humans.
At the very least, I wish all inerrantists would follow Warfield and go out of their way to clarify:
"Let it not be said that thus we found the whole Christian system upon the doctrine of plenary inspiration. We found the whole Christian system on the doctrine of plenary inspiration as little as we found it upon the doctrine of angelic existences. Were there no such thing as inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us in the generally trustworthy reports of the teaching of our Lord and of His authoritative agents in founding the Church, preserved in the writings of the apostles and their first followers, and in the historical witness of the living Church...We are in entire sympathy in this matter, therefore, with the protest which Dr. Marcus Dods raised in his famous address at the meeting of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches at London, against representing that 'the infallibility of the Bible is the ground of the whole Christian faith.' We judge with him that it is very important indeed that such a misapprehension, if it is anywhere current, should be corrected. What we are at present arguing is something entirely different from such an overstrained view of the importance of inspiration to the very existence of Christian faith, and something which has no connection with it."
Phenomena or no, this latter matter is definitely something that needs to be made more clear to all believers.
"The Biblical doctrine of inspiration, therefore, has in its favor just this whole weight and amount of evidence. It follows on the one hand that it cannot rationally be rejected save on the ground of evidence which will outweigh the whole body of evidence which goes to authenticate the Biblical writers as trustworthy witnesses to and teachers of doctrine. And it follows, on the other hand, that if the Biblical doctrine of inspiration is rejected, our freedom from its trammels is bought logically at the somewhat serious cost of discrediting the evidence which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. In this sense, the fortunes of distinctive Christianity are bound up with those of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration." (all quotes from his essay, "The Real Problem of Inspiration")
"In this sense, we repeat, the cause of distinctive Christianity is bound up with the cause of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. We accept Christianity in all its distinctive doctrines on no other ground than the credibility and trustworthiness of the Bible as a guide to truth; and on this same ground we must equally accept its doctrine of inspiration."
Yet he insists:
"The present writer, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, desires to repeat here what he has said on every proper occasion - that he is far from contending that without inspiration there could be no Christianity. "Without any inspiration," he added, when making this affirmation on his induction into the work of teaching the Bible- "without any inspiration we could have had Christianity; yea, and men could still have heard the truth and through it been awakened, and justified, and sanctified, and glorified. The verities of our faith would remain historically proven to us - so bountiful has God been in His fostering care - even had we no Bible; and through those verities, salvation."
These appear (at least at first) to be contradictory, or at the very least in serious tension with each other. One train of thought appears to be that
1) The Bible is trustworthy.
2) The Bible teaches various doctrines.
3) The Bible can be trusted in what doctrines it teaches.
4) Inspiration is a doctrine that the Bible teaches.
5) The Bible can be trusted when it teaches its own inspiration.
In an interesting move, Warfield concludes that 5) cannot be false without out 3) also becoming false. He reasons that if the Bible teaches its own inspiration, but that teaching turns out to be false then it can no long be trusted for what doctrines it teaches. The Bible proves potentially untrustworthy for every other doctrine.
Another train of thought appears to run:
1) The teachings of the Lord and the testimonies of the apostles are trustworthy.
2) The historical witness of the earliest churches passed these teachings along faithfully.
3) The various doctrines passed along in such a faithful manner over time are trustworthy.
4) No inspiration is needed to legitmate the trustworthiness of these teachings.
Warfield insists that these teachings can be accepted as true based on their sources without reference to inspiration. But he he goes on to say that inspiration happens to be one of the doctrines taught by the Lord and the apostles. Therefore, although it is contingently a part of the doctrines that are trustworthy, by the mere fact of being taught at all by the Lord and the apostles, there is nothing different about it that warrants our dismissal of that particular doctrine without also dismissing any number (all?) of other doctrines that have been taught by them.
How do the "phenomena" of scripture play into this picture?
Warfield writes:
"When we approach the Scriptures to ascertain their doctrine of inspiration, we proceed by collecting the whole body of relevant facts. Every claim they make to inspiration is a relevant fact; every statement they make concerning inspiration is a relevant fact; every allusion they make to the subject is a relevant fact; every fact indicative of the attitude they hold towards Scripture is a relevant fact. But the characteristics of their own writings are not facts relevant to the determination of their doctrine. Nor let it be said that we are desirous of determining the true, as distinguished from the Scriptural, doctrine of inspiration otherwise than inductively. We are averse, however, to supposing that in such an inquiry the relevant "phenomena" of Scripture are not first of all and before all the claims of Scripture and second only to them its use of previous Scripture. And we are averse to excluding these primary "phenomena" and building our doctrine solely or mainly upon the characteristics and structure of Scripture, especially as determined by some special school of modern research by critical methods certainly not infallible and to the best of our own judgment not even reasonable. And we are certainly averse to supposing that this induction, if it reaches results not absolutely consentaneous with the teachings of Scripture itself, has done anything other than discredit those teachings, or that in discrediting them, it has escaped discrediting the doctrinal authority of Scripture."
And in response to my last post on Hodge, he might say something like:
"[W]e approach the study of the so-called 'phenomena' of the Scriptures with a very strong presumption that these Scriptures contain no errors, and that any "phenomena" apparently inconsistent with their inerrancy are so in appearance only: a presumption the measure of which is just the whole amount and weight of evidence that the New Testament writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. It seems to be often tacitly assumed that the Biblical doctrine of inspiration cannot be confidently ascertained until all the facts concerning the contents and structure and characteristics of Scripture are fully determined and allowed for. This is obviously fallacious."
Nevertheless, he concedes:
"[T]he assumption that we cannot confidently accept the Biblical doctrine of inspiration as true until criticism and exegesis have said their last word upon the structure, the text, and the characteristics of Scripture, even to the most minute fact, is more plausible. But it is far from obviously true."
He asks readers to consider which approach will ultimately prove more helpful to them:
"If we start from the Scripture doctrine of inspiration, we approach the phenomena with the question whether they will negative this doctrine, and we find none able to stand against it, commended to us as true, as it is, by the vast mass of evidence available to prove the trustworthiness of the Scriptural writers as teachers of doctrine. But if we start simply with a collection of the phenomena, classifying and reasoning from them, whether alone or in conjunction with the Scriptural statements, it may easily happen with us, as it happened with certain of old, that meeting with some things hard to be understood, we may be ignorant and unstable enough to wrest them to our own intellectual destruction, and so approach the Biblical doctrine of inspiration set upon explaining it away."
Warfield is clearly much more aggressive in his writing here than Hodge, pushing readers toward making a definite decision. He is forthright enough to admit that his own decision has already been made and that any "phenomena" under consideration has to be of such force (which it will obviously never be) that it must overwhelm his confidence already granted to scripture.
Yet the concession Warfield makes is the same that Hodge makes, indeed everyone has to make it during the course of trying to do theology. Warfield's concession lies at the very construction of the doctrine of inspiration. In a bold rhetorical move, Warfield defers to his detractors to define biblical inspiration for him:
"In the circumstances, however, we may venture to dispense with an argument drawn up from our own point of view, and content ourselves with an extract from the brief statement of the grounds of his decision given by another of those critical scholars who do not believe the doctrine of plenary inspiration, but yet find themselves constrained to allow that it is the doctrine of the New Testament writers."
And so he defers to a Richard Rothe who writes:
"We find in the New Testament authors the same theoretical view of the Old Testament and the same practice as to its use, as among the Jews of the time in general, although at the same time in the handling of the same conceptions and principles on both sides, the whole difference between the new Christian spirit and that of contemporary Judaism appears in sharp distinctness...The whole style and method of their treatment of the Old Testament text manifestly presupposes in them this view of this matter, which was at the time the usual one in the Jewish schools..."
Yet for all Warfield's polemical attempts to obscure the fact, he finds himself in the same place that Hodge was in: having to be informed by "the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane, and...the doctrine which the sacred writers and the men of their generation are known to have entertained on the subject.”
Although he more consciously guards himself against the need to ask some of the questions I wanted to ask Hodge in the previous post, recent developments in the study of second temple Judaism have forced some questions upon us with much more urgency than would have been the case during the time when Warfield was writing:
What was the understanding of inspiration had by the "men of their generation" (Hodge's phrase)? What were their expectations of scripture? What does it mean for scripture that the NT writers had much the same view of things as any other religious person of their time?
For there is now the consideration that "inspiration," now more acutely identified as the common assumption of the cultural milieu within which scripture was originally produced, may be what some of the apostles, or perhaps the Lord, really believed but not actually what scripture is teaching. This is a point of contention that might be said to be "new" to more recent generations (over against that of Warfield's), given the discovery of the DSS, for example. Warfield's language opens itself to precisely this kind of observation:
"It is based on the exegetical fact that our Lord and His apostles held this doctrine of Scripture, and everywhere deal with the Scriptures of the Old Testament in accordance with it, as the very Word of God, even in their narrative parts. This is a commonplace of exegetical science, the common possession of the critical schools of the left and of the right, a prominent and unmistakable deliverance of Biblical Theology."
The biblical writers may have held some dictation theory of inspiration, for example, but does that mean that they taught it? If they did teach it, a comparison with scripture's phenomena would cause us to modify scripture's teaching...
And if there is some diversity among the biblical tradents over how to conceive of inspiration, perhaps that means it is up to us to fill in the details as to how best describe inspiration. Here then there is room for some differences of opinion. By parity of reasoning, one might observe that there surely appear to be some minor (and some major) differences of opinion in the other doctrines that are taught in scripture. Why should this one (inspiration) be any different from the others (a variation of Warfield's own argument)?
As for the deductive arguments made by Warfield, some progressives might find themselves open to it, but again there is the very important matter of pinning down what "inspiration" means in the first place. Is there some equivocation with the term "inspiration" between assertions 4) and 5)? And what is the difference between being "believed" by the writers in question and being "taught"? What if the language of "incidental error" proves more helpful to some today?
The last thing I have time to say here (although I'm so busy right now I probably ended up spending more time on these last two posts than I have spent on this blog over the past few months combined!) is that Warfield's presumption in scripture's favor is not going to be as strong in every believer as Warfiled seems to suppose. Although he protests to the contrary, it can be difficult to tell whether Warfield's presumption is concomitant with his inductive efforts or whether it precedes it or whether it proceeds from it. Either way, I don't think it is realistic to suppose that this presumption in favor of scripture's inerrancy is going overtake every Christian in the same way that it apparently did Warfield. Warfield mentions that the probability is so high for him that the scriptures are inerrant that the probability counts for him as equivalent to demonstration. But this is going to differ from believer to believer. No doubt that Warfield's essay is extremely well-written, but I think it ultimately boils down to a pragmatic argument and the effectiveness of such arguments often depend on a number of factors, not least a host of cultural and psychological factors that may or may not effect every believer in their very constitution as historically-situated humans.
At the very least, I wish all inerrantists would follow Warfield and go out of their way to clarify:
"Let it not be said that thus we found the whole Christian system upon the doctrine of plenary inspiration. We found the whole Christian system on the doctrine of plenary inspiration as little as we found it upon the doctrine of angelic existences. Were there no such thing as inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us in the generally trustworthy reports of the teaching of our Lord and of His authoritative agents in founding the Church, preserved in the writings of the apostles and their first followers, and in the historical witness of the living Church...We are in entire sympathy in this matter, therefore, with the protest which Dr. Marcus Dods raised in his famous address at the meeting of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches at London, against representing that 'the infallibility of the Bible is the ground of the whole Christian faith.' We judge with him that it is very important indeed that such a misapprehension, if it is anywhere current, should be corrected. What we are at present arguing is something entirely different from such an overstrained view of the importance of inspiration to the very existence of Christian faith, and something which has no connection with it."
Phenomena or no, this latter matter is definitely something that needs to be made more clear to all believers.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Hodge and the phenomena of scripture
A year ago on another site I argued that Hodge made allowance for the phenomena of scripture to inform his idea of inspiration. Apparently the observation made some headway because not soon after Paul Helm posted his understanding of Hodge's view. I still wonder, though, if Hodge is not a little more ambiguous than he is commonly said to be on this matter.
I am primarily interested in the places where Hodge writes:
“The nature of inspiration is to be learnt from the Scriptures; from their didactic statements, and from their phenomena.” (ST, 1.153)
“Our views of inspiration must be determined by the phenomena of the Bible as well as from its didactic statements.” (ST, 1.169)
While interpreting the passage that includes the second quote above, Helm explains that for Hodge there are two types of phenomena: "The first refers to apparent features of Scripture arising from internal consistency and the relationship between its teaching and established facts from elsewhere, which, if they are true, are relevant to the denying of inspiration and especially of infallibility." Helm concludes: "So there’s an important difference in method between saying ‘the phenomena must be taken into account’ and ‘the phenomena must be taken into account in a way that gives them parity with the teaching of Scripture respecting its own inspiration, or priority over that teaching’."
I don't think this is setting the stage quite right here. I think it is precisely the case that if the phenomena are relevant enough to the conception of inspiration that we are trying to understand in the first place then they must be attended to in a way that they will help mediate the meaning of inspiration for us. How could phenomena possibly be given priority over the teaching of scripture if scripture's teaching is precisely what we are in the process of constructing? How can a teaching that has yet to be distilled from scripture be given priority in its own construction?
Perhaps Hodge was trying to guard, insofar as possible given the conceptual tools available to him at the time, against the prospect of theologians constructing a theory of inspiration as they saw fit relying too heavily on passing fads in philosophy. But I'm not sure that he thought phenomena were off limits for the very construction of our understanding of inspiration. I mean that is the only way to try to understand what scripture is trying to say about itself in the first place. Even someone like Hodge, who is trying to defend conservative Reformed positions from naysayers, would have to concede that.
"Phenomena" has to open up for Hodge to go beyond merely genre and fact when it suits him. It has to refer to more than genre and fact at some point when theorizing. At least in one instance, he says that phenomena may also encompass what he refers to as "the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane" when it comes to formulating our understanding of the concept of inspiration. Helm's dichotomy of "phenomena" and "didactic statement" is apparent to me in the one quote that he exegetes (ST, 1.169), but the idea of phenomena broadens further in scope (as it must) in order to be relevant to the discussion at hand, namely the very construction of our understanding of scripture's teaching about inspiration. So Hodge explains:
“The idea of inspiration is therefore fixed. It is not to be arbitrarily determined. We must not interpret the word or the fact, according to our theories of the relation of God to the world, but according to the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane, and according to the doctrine which the sacred writers and the men of their generation are known to have entertained on the subject.” (ST, 1.158)
So here we seem to have another dichotomy suggested to us by Hodge, but this time during the course of the very construction of a doctrine of inspiration: phenomena (being an "umbrella-term" as Helm points out) referring to usage of antiquity of the concept in this case. There's also a mention of doctrine, namely that which was current in antiquity. Yet strangely enough, once an understanding of inspiration is eventually established with the help of these phenomena, the only questions Hodge wants critical persons to ask are: "Do the sacred writers contradict each other? Do the Scriptures teach what from any source can be proved not to be true? The question is not whether the views of the sacred writers were incorrect, but whether they taught error? For example, it is not the question Whether they thought that the earth is the centre of our system? But, Did they teach that it is?" (1.169) Now are these questions suggested to him by the didactic statements in scripture? By scripture's phenomena? Or perhaps his own cultural milieu?
I have a number of questions to ponder at this point:
Isn't there some diversity to be appreciated in the doctrines "entertained" in antiquity on the topic of inspiration?
Would not the phenomena of sacred writings from antiquity also have an important analagous role to play in the constructions of inspiration entertained by those generations?
Where did the "doctrine" which "the sacred writers and men of their generation" entertained come from?
How/what/where/when/who qualified as "scripture," "inspiration," "canon," "inerrant" in antiquity?
What's the criteria for identifying the difference between what a biblical writer believed and what he taught and how does that approach practically differ from saying there are incidental errors here and there and moving on?
Is the difference between what a biblical writer believed and what he taught suggested to Hodge by phenomena or didactic statements in scripture, or perhaps an urgent 19th century historical/cultural factor?
Even if Hodge in his historical context thought it prudent to try to stress "doctrine" over "phenomena," might it not make more sense for us today to focus a little more than he did on things like "usage of antiquity" since so much more data from antiquity is available to us now?
With all that has been learned since Hodge's time in biblical studies about conceptual , textual and hermeneutical practices in antiquity, for example, is it really adequate to simply do "word studies" to get the gist of inspiration (as Hodge appears to have done)? Can we not now be much more thorough than that? Couldn't the Old Princeton illuminaries have been more thorough than they were in this regard? Is that where people like Stonehouse, Kline, Silva, Dillard, etc. tried little by little to pick up the slack and be more thorough in their appreciation of scripture when refining their understanding of inspiration?
Because of the churches' ever-increasing knowledge of antiquity and progress made by the churches' biblical scholars (and others), is not "inspiration" necessarily a tentative construct, a theological work in progress? Should we understand Hodge's idea of "fixed" as meaning "derived from scripture as thoroughly as possible and less dependent on passing fads in philosophy"?
Either way, why are the only two questions one is permitted to ask when being critical: "Do the sacred writers contradict each other? Do the Scriptures teach what from any source can be proved not to be true?" Are not these kinds of questions prompted by passing fads in modern philosophy? Are we more culturally aware about this factor than Hodge was?
I have been thinking about these and other questions in recent days. Of course, it is not ultimately important to me if Hodge meant what Helm says he meant or something else. Yet upon reflection, I wonder if things are not a little more complex than supposed. In any event, I do find it interesting that many of these questions are "pre-" inspiration questions, meaning "it is important to keep ourselves reminded that the doctrine of inspiration which has become established in the Church, is open to all legitimate criticism, and is to continue to be held only as, and so far as, it is ever anew critically tested and approved." (Warfield, "The Real Problem of Inspiration") If some of the questions asked above are so fundamental that the doctrine in question (inspiration) turns out to be what we are attempting to construct anew in order to test and approve it, then it will help none to continue to invoke it, for it is precisely its very construction that is being revisited with a faithful, yet critical, eye.
I am primarily interested in the places where Hodge writes:
“The nature of inspiration is to be learnt from the Scriptures; from their didactic statements, and from their phenomena.” (ST, 1.153)
“Our views of inspiration must be determined by the phenomena of the Bible as well as from its didactic statements.” (ST, 1.169)
While interpreting the passage that includes the second quote above, Helm explains that for Hodge there are two types of phenomena: "The first refers to apparent features of Scripture arising from internal consistency and the relationship between its teaching and established facts from elsewhere, which, if they are true, are relevant to the denying of inspiration and especially of infallibility." Helm concludes: "So there’s an important difference in method between saying ‘the phenomena must be taken into account’ and ‘the phenomena must be taken into account in a way that gives them parity with the teaching of Scripture respecting its own inspiration, or priority over that teaching’."
I don't think this is setting the stage quite right here. I think it is precisely the case that if the phenomena are relevant enough to the conception of inspiration that we are trying to understand in the first place then they must be attended to in a way that they will help mediate the meaning of inspiration for us. How could phenomena possibly be given priority over the teaching of scripture if scripture's teaching is precisely what we are in the process of constructing? How can a teaching that has yet to be distilled from scripture be given priority in its own construction?
Perhaps Hodge was trying to guard, insofar as possible given the conceptual tools available to him at the time, against the prospect of theologians constructing a theory of inspiration as they saw fit relying too heavily on passing fads in philosophy. But I'm not sure that he thought phenomena were off limits for the very construction of our understanding of inspiration. I mean that is the only way to try to understand what scripture is trying to say about itself in the first place. Even someone like Hodge, who is trying to defend conservative Reformed positions from naysayers, would have to concede that.
"Phenomena" has to open up for Hodge to go beyond merely genre and fact when it suits him. It has to refer to more than genre and fact at some point when theorizing. At least in one instance, he says that phenomena may also encompass what he refers to as "the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane" when it comes to formulating our understanding of the concept of inspiration. Helm's dichotomy of "phenomena" and "didactic statement" is apparent to me in the one quote that he exegetes (ST, 1.169), but the idea of phenomena broadens further in scope (as it must) in order to be relevant to the discussion at hand, namely the very construction of our understanding of scripture's teaching about inspiration. So Hodge explains:
“The idea of inspiration is therefore fixed. It is not to be arbitrarily determined. We must not interpret the word or the fact, according to our theories of the relation of God to the world, but according to the usage of antiquity, sacred and profane, and according to the doctrine which the sacred writers and the men of their generation are known to have entertained on the subject.” (ST, 1.158)
So here we seem to have another dichotomy suggested to us by Hodge, but this time during the course of the very construction of a doctrine of inspiration: phenomena (being an "umbrella-term" as Helm points out) referring to usage of antiquity of the concept in this case. There's also a mention of doctrine, namely that which was current in antiquity. Yet strangely enough, once an understanding of inspiration is eventually established with the help of these phenomena, the only questions Hodge wants critical persons to ask are: "Do the sacred writers contradict each other? Do the Scriptures teach what from any source can be proved not to be true? The question is not whether the views of the sacred writers were incorrect, but whether they taught error? For example, it is not the question Whether they thought that the earth is the centre of our system? But, Did they teach that it is?" (1.169) Now are these questions suggested to him by the didactic statements in scripture? By scripture's phenomena? Or perhaps his own cultural milieu?
I have a number of questions to ponder at this point:
Isn't there some diversity to be appreciated in the doctrines "entertained" in antiquity on the topic of inspiration?
Would not the phenomena of sacred writings from antiquity also have an important analagous role to play in the constructions of inspiration entertained by those generations?
Where did the "doctrine" which "the sacred writers and men of their generation" entertained come from?
How/what/where/when/who qualified as "scripture," "inspiration," "canon," "inerrant" in antiquity?
What's the criteria for identifying the difference between what a biblical writer believed and what he taught and how does that approach practically differ from saying there are incidental errors here and there and moving on?
Is the difference between what a biblical writer believed and what he taught suggested to Hodge by phenomena or didactic statements in scripture, or perhaps an urgent 19th century historical/cultural factor?
Even if Hodge in his historical context thought it prudent to try to stress "doctrine" over "phenomena," might it not make more sense for us today to focus a little more than he did on things like "usage of antiquity" since so much more data from antiquity is available to us now?
With all that has been learned since Hodge's time in biblical studies about conceptual , textual and hermeneutical practices in antiquity, for example, is it really adequate to simply do "word studies" to get the gist of inspiration (as Hodge appears to have done)? Can we not now be much more thorough than that? Couldn't the Old Princeton illuminaries have been more thorough than they were in this regard? Is that where people like Stonehouse, Kline, Silva, Dillard, etc. tried little by little to pick up the slack and be more thorough in their appreciation of scripture when refining their understanding of inspiration?
Because of the churches' ever-increasing knowledge of antiquity and progress made by the churches' biblical scholars (and others), is not "inspiration" necessarily a tentative construct, a theological work in progress? Should we understand Hodge's idea of "fixed" as meaning "derived from scripture as thoroughly as possible and less dependent on passing fads in philosophy"?
Either way, why are the only two questions one is permitted to ask when being critical: "Do the sacred writers contradict each other? Do the Scriptures teach what from any source can be proved not to be true?" Are not these kinds of questions prompted by passing fads in modern philosophy? Are we more culturally aware about this factor than Hodge was?
I have been thinking about these and other questions in recent days. Of course, it is not ultimately important to me if Hodge meant what Helm says he meant or something else. Yet upon reflection, I wonder if things are not a little more complex than supposed. In any event, I do find it interesting that many of these questions are "pre-" inspiration questions, meaning "it is important to keep ourselves reminded that the doctrine of inspiration which has become established in the Church, is open to all legitimate criticism, and is to continue to be held only as, and so far as, it is ever anew critically tested and approved." (Warfield, "The Real Problem of Inspiration") If some of the questions asked above are so fundamental that the doctrine in question (inspiration) turns out to be what we are attempting to construct anew in order to test and approve it, then it will help none to continue to invoke it, for it is precisely its very construction that is being revisited with a faithful, yet critical, eye.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
On WCF and the misleading rhetoric of good and necessary deduction
In Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic (Brazos, 2009), former ETS president Francis Beckwith writes:
"My Evangelical Protestant contemporarires seemed to treat the Bible as if it could be read as an authoritative depositary of orthodox doctrine apart from the historic church and the formation of Christian theology during the early centuries of its existence. The whole idea that, according to The Westminster Confession, one may 'deduce' necessary doctrines from 'scripture' treats theology as if it were a branch of mathematics." (p 80)
I find it very interesting that Mr. Beckwith has come to this conclusion. When I first made a similar observation in 2005/6, I thought it was such an important insight that I decided to begin writing a book about it. I am excited to say that my new book, By Good and Necessary Consequence: A Preliminary Genealogy of Biblicist Foundationalism, has just been released by Wipf and Stock. It is presently available through the publisher and will become available at amazon, barnesandnoble and other vendors in a few short weeks.
Although in my first book I argued that scripture could never practically be one's "ultimate" authority and, in my new book, that a good-and-necessary-consequence approach to theology is ill-advised, it wasn't until some time last year (when writing an article that that will appear in Theology and Science) that I began to realize that sola scriptura may be little more than a rhetorical rallying cry for Protestants or, in Beckwith's words, "more of a slogan than a standard."
"My Evangelical Protestant contemporarires seemed to treat the Bible as if it could be read as an authoritative depositary of orthodox doctrine apart from the historic church and the formation of Christian theology during the early centuries of its existence. The whole idea that, according to The Westminster Confession, one may 'deduce' necessary doctrines from 'scripture' treats theology as if it were a branch of mathematics." (p 80)
I find it very interesting that Mr. Beckwith has come to this conclusion. When I first made a similar observation in 2005/6, I thought it was such an important insight that I decided to begin writing a book about it. I am excited to say that my new book, By Good and Necessary Consequence: A Preliminary Genealogy of Biblicist Foundationalism, has just been released by Wipf and Stock. It is presently available through the publisher and will become available at amazon, barnesandnoble and other vendors in a few short weeks.
Although in my first book I argued that scripture could never practically be one's "ultimate" authority and, in my new book, that a good-and-necessary-consequence approach to theology is ill-advised, it wasn't until some time last year (when writing an article that that will appear in Theology and Science) that I began to realize that sola scriptura may be little more than a rhetorical rallying cry for Protestants or, in Beckwith's words, "more of a slogan than a standard."
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Torn between two words of counsel regarding postmodernism
"Insofar as the church (and mutatis mutandis, Christian theology and philosophy) has bought into key assumptions of modernity;
And insofar as these assumptions (for instance, regarding the nature of freedom, the model of the human person, the requirements for what counts as 'rational' or 'true,' or what can be admitted to the 'public' sphere of political or academic discourse) represent a rejection of biblical wisdom and the Christian theological heritage;
And insofar as postmodernism articulates a critique of just these assumptions;
Then the postmodern critique of modernity is something to be affirmed by Christians, not because it is postmodern, but because the postmodern critique of modernity can be a wake-up call for Christians to see their complicity with modernity, the inconsistency of this with a more integral understanding of discipleship, and thus actually be an occasion to retrieve ancient and premodern theological sources and litrugical practices with new eyes, as it were."
(James K. A. Smith, "The Logic of Incarnation: Towards a Catholic Postmodernism," in The Logic of Incarnation, [Wipf and Stock, 2009], 5-6.)
"Should Christians utilize postmodernist insights from time to time as they find helpful? I don't believe they should, and to see why, consider Nazi ideology. Surely, some aspects of Nazi thought--for example, a commitment to a strong national defense and to solid education for youth--are correct and appropriate. But for two reasons, it would be wrong to say that one was neutral or even favorable toward Nazi thought, rejecting its problems and embracing its advantages. First, Nazi thought is so horrible and its overall impact so harmful that its bad features far outweigh whatever relatively trivial advantages it offers. Thus, such an attitude is inappropriate toward Nazi thought. Second, neither of the advantages just cited (strong national defense and solid education) requires Nazi ideology for its justification.
The same points apply to postmodernism. Its harm to the cause of Christ and human flourishing far outweigh any advantages that may accrue to it, and whatever those advantages are, they do not require postmodernism for their justification...
...[P]ostmodernism is a form of intellectual pacifism that, at the end of the day, recommends backgammon while the barbarians are at the gate...However comforting it may be, postmodernism is the cure that kills the patient...As followers of the Lord Jesus, the postmodern option is a concession to our culture that goes too far, however well-intentioned it is. We can and must do better than this if we are to be up to the task of responding to the crisis of our age."
(J. P. Moreland, The Kingdom Triangle, [Zondervan, 2007], 86-87, 88.)
I have been wrestling with these two opinions existentially for some time now. On the one hand, I think the task at hand should be theological construction yet the insights provided by the acute spiral of hermeneutical suspicion, a spiral that is largely deconstructive to the point of being leery of the very possibility of theological construction, are hard to shrug off simply because one is anxious to get on with constructing in a context of crisis. Perhaps a way out of this dilemma is to say that there is a time and place for both construction and deconstruction depending on one's existential and cultural location. If it took some of the excesses of postmodernism to draw believers' attention to particular debilitating weaknesses in contemporary expressions of faith, what's so irresponsible about someone like Smith coming out and saying, "This is what my exposure to postmodernism has taught me"?
And insofar as these assumptions (for instance, regarding the nature of freedom, the model of the human person, the requirements for what counts as 'rational' or 'true,' or what can be admitted to the 'public' sphere of political or academic discourse) represent a rejection of biblical wisdom and the Christian theological heritage;
And insofar as postmodernism articulates a critique of just these assumptions;
Then the postmodern critique of modernity is something to be affirmed by Christians, not because it is postmodern, but because the postmodern critique of modernity can be a wake-up call for Christians to see their complicity with modernity, the inconsistency of this with a more integral understanding of discipleship, and thus actually be an occasion to retrieve ancient and premodern theological sources and litrugical practices with new eyes, as it were."
(James K. A. Smith, "The Logic of Incarnation: Towards a Catholic Postmodernism," in The Logic of Incarnation, [Wipf and Stock, 2009], 5-6.)
"Should Christians utilize postmodernist insights from time to time as they find helpful? I don't believe they should, and to see why, consider Nazi ideology. Surely, some aspects of Nazi thought--for example, a commitment to a strong national defense and to solid education for youth--are correct and appropriate. But for two reasons, it would be wrong to say that one was neutral or even favorable toward Nazi thought, rejecting its problems and embracing its advantages. First, Nazi thought is so horrible and its overall impact so harmful that its bad features far outweigh whatever relatively trivial advantages it offers. Thus, such an attitude is inappropriate toward Nazi thought. Second, neither of the advantages just cited (strong national defense and solid education) requires Nazi ideology for its justification.
The same points apply to postmodernism. Its harm to the cause of Christ and human flourishing far outweigh any advantages that may accrue to it, and whatever those advantages are, they do not require postmodernism for their justification...
...[P]ostmodernism is a form of intellectual pacifism that, at the end of the day, recommends backgammon while the barbarians are at the gate...However comforting it may be, postmodernism is the cure that kills the patient...As followers of the Lord Jesus, the postmodern option is a concession to our culture that goes too far, however well-intentioned it is. We can and must do better than this if we are to be up to the task of responding to the crisis of our age."
(J. P. Moreland, The Kingdom Triangle, [Zondervan, 2007], 86-87, 88.)
I have been wrestling with these two opinions existentially for some time now. On the one hand, I think the task at hand should be theological construction yet the insights provided by the acute spiral of hermeneutical suspicion, a spiral that is largely deconstructive to the point of being leery of the very possibility of theological construction, are hard to shrug off simply because one is anxious to get on with constructing in a context of crisis. Perhaps a way out of this dilemma is to say that there is a time and place for both construction and deconstruction depending on one's existential and cultural location. If it took some of the excesses of postmodernism to draw believers' attention to particular debilitating weaknesses in contemporary expressions of faith, what's so irresponsible about someone like Smith coming out and saying, "This is what my exposure to postmodernism has taught me"?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
