Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: inspiration

  • Sunday School Today: Authority and Truth

    1893729389I think I titled the next chapter in my book When People Speak for God rather pretentiously: Authority and Truth. That’s what we’ll be discussing today in my Sunday School class.

    As I was reading the chapter, I came across the following, which ties into several things I’m thinking about these days:

    There is, however, a deeper claim that’s involved in both the virgin birth and the resurrection. These doctrines state that God is fundamentally interested in communion with human beings. In the virgin birth we have the statement that God is prepared to share our form and our condition and to become a part of that history. In the crucifixion, God says that he is prepared to carry that sharing all the way, to experience death. In the resurrection, he states that despite his willingness to share it, he’s above it, and thus able not just to communicate with us, but to redeem us.… (pp. 135-136)

    I call my view of inspiration incarnational, because I see God’s Word, however it is expressed when it is communicated with human beings, as a form of incarnation. The problem with this is that I think the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation is not well understood. (There is, of course, the sense it which it will never be well understood and will always be a mystery!) But the way people often hear the term “incarnational” in connection with inspiration is as a claim that the Bible is a mixture of divine and human. When I call scripture incarnational, I do not mean a mixture. I mean that it is all divine and all human. We can sense aspects of divine and aspects of human, just as we can with Jesus the man, but we cannot divide.

    Inspiration is all-the-way incarnation as well. God’s power is contained in the finite form. What we need is ears to hear and eyes to see.

    I’ll have more to say about this over the next few days.

  • Speaking for God: Inspiration, Authority, and Interpretation

    1893729389In about a half an hour I will be leaving for church where I will teach a small Sunday School class. The class has chosen to go through my book When People Speak for God (wow!). I start my discussion in this book by looking at the human factor and the divine factor. It is not enough to claim that God has spoken. We also have to understand what it is that God has said.

    This came up in a helpful e-mail exchange with a friend this week, in which I discussed certain views of certain Bible passages and whether these would be consistent with inerrancy. The discussion led me to wonder if I was ignoring the human factor in looking at others. The human factor is most directly involved in our interpretation. I don’t accept the term “biblical inerrancy” as it applies to me. What I do believe is that if we discern the message God has for us, that message is true, and we should act on it. I think it should be our goal to discern this message correctly. A true message ignored is of no value. A true message wrongly understood can be dangerous. We never get away from the need to apply our minds.

    As I reread my own material, however, I was reminded of another distinction: inspiration and authority. Just because something is inspired doesn’t mean it’s necessarily authoritative for any particular person, congregation, or for the whole church. I may hear the voice of God leading me to some action. My hearing does not obligate others. This idea could be helpful for those who believe in the continuation of the gift of prophecy in the church. I’ve been asked how words received by a modern prophet relate to the Bible. Ignoring the issue of whether the modern speaker is, in fact, speaking for God, his or her words would only have authority of so discerned and accepted by the broader body, i.e. if they became part of the canon of scripture for the whole church.

    I do not mean that the church would make the words authoritative. Rather, the church would recognize that the words were authoritative, and the authority would become active in that way. “Inspired” does not mean “authoritative,” and “authoritative” in one place does not mean authoritative in another place or everywhere.

    I’m going to add an extract here that fleshes out some of the difference between inspiration and authority. I’m not saying precisely the same thing, but I am influence by this text. (The author is Edward W. H. Vick, and I publish the book, From Inspiration to Understanding.)

    (8) A further category mistake is to relate the notion of the authority of the Bible to the process whereby the books came to be written. The writer was inspired. So the writing has authority. No! These words do not have authority because, in  some manner, they issued out of a process of inspiration. They may have done so. That is a problem to be settled on the basis of appeal to the available evidence. But if they did they do not have authority because they did. They have authority because they are relevant, living words, because something happens of importance when they are read and interpreted. The event of revelation happens. These words provide the means. They are the vehicle of that happening. These words are caught up in the dynamic of God’s revelation. This means that inspiration is a less adequate and less important concept than revelation.

    Since they are not the only writings to function in this way, they are unique in that they are the only words which have a unique historical connection with the original Christ-event, with the coming of Christian faith into the world. They are for this reason primary. They are the words which have in the history of the church proved to be the means for God’s continuing revelation of himself. The church asserts the historical givenness of these and not other words. It also asserts the contemporaneity of the revelation of God these words mediate. ‘The Spirit breathes upon the word and brings the truth to sight.’ God revealed himself. God reveals himself.

    (Vick, From Inspiration to Understanding, p. 81)

    I think I place more emphasis on the recognition of the words by the church and less on their functioning. This is because I believe all inspired words will function, in their proper sphere, in similar ways. The question is whether a particular text was meant for the Church, a church, a small group, or a person, and whether it was meant for a moment in time or to have broader application.

    So I’m distinguishing inspiration, authority, and interpretation/application (hermeneutics). How important is the distinction?

     

  • Book Extract: Discerning Interpretations

    1893729389sMany teachers and preachers speak with great authority and then say, “This is not me speaking. I’m only telling you what the Bible says.” But that assertion is always dangerous. When we apply the Bible to any particular situation we are interpreting. This is another case when one’s words can seem very pious, but actually border on sacrilege. What could be more pious than simply speaking God’s words and never adding anything of your own to them? But there is the problem. You and I are not capable of speaking “just what the Bible says.” There is always something of our own thinking and interpretation in what we have to say.

    The honest thing to do is to admit that what we say is our interpretation, and leave the accuracy of our interpretation open to discussion and discernment. At the same time, no matter how
    forcefully someone says that what they say is simply God’s truth, whether they claim that they got it by hearing directly or by reading and interpreting sacred documents, discernment is always up to the individual hearer.

    A word of prophecy must be tested. An interpretation of scripture must be tested. Everything must be tested using the intelligence God gives you and the wisdom he promises (James 1:5).

    — When People Speak for God, p. 78

  • Respecting the Text and its Writers

    I’ve commented before that ignoring what the Bible actually is does not respect the text, whether God is the author in a direct sense, or the one who inspired it, we still need to see it as it is if we are to respect that revelation. And I suspect that respecting it is essentially to actually receiving the revelation intended.

    I have not, however, said it as bluntly as Mike Beidler, quoted by James McGrath.

    I would note that Mike Beidler is a contributor to the recent Energion title From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls.

  • Hebrews 2:6 and God Speaking

    I add some comments to those of another blogger over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. This passages speaks to our understanding of what inspiration and god-breathed actually mean in practice.

  • Hebrews 2:6 and Inspiration

    James McGrath brings up Hebrews 2:6, where the author introduces a quote by saying “somebody somewhere says.” Dr. McGrath uses this sort of as an argument against inerrancy, though primarily as an argument for human authorship.

    I have used the text in a similar way. It is not, in fact, a good argument against inerrancy, at least as generally defined by scholars who affirm it. It is not an error but rather a failure to state a fact. Is this rhetorical? One of the commenters on Dr. McGrath’s post seems to think so. I would suggest rather that the author either did not remember precisely or simply didn’t come up with a good way to introduce the passage.

    But the important thing about this, in my view, is that the verse sounds distinctly human. The problem with “distinctly human” is that we don’t really have a way of knowing how God might talk about such a thing should he choose to. But arguing about this particular issue and finding a way to make it more “god-like” in tone is not the issue.

    One key point I try to make in my book When People Speak for God is that we need to look at how Scripture actually was produced and how it functions in order to understand how it was produced and how it functions. Circular? Well, in a way. There’s nothing like looking at the actual object or mechanism to discover what it is and what it does.

    But the tendency in creating or producing a doctrine about Scripture is often to read texts in Scripture that say what the “Word of God” is, or texts that speak of what Scripture is (circular again, anyone?), then to imagine what this would mean in practice, and finally to force the texts to fit the definition.

    What does it mean for Scripture to be “god-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16)? The only way we have to really know that is to look at other things that are god-breathed, if we can find them. The difference between “All god-breathed Scripture” and “All Scripture is god-breathed” may be somewhat less substantial than people think. What we need to do is to fill in the definition of “god-breathed” by looking at Scripture, rather than concocting a definition and then imposing it on Scripture.

    Besides looking at how Scripture itself came to us, we have some interesting claims regarding what God’s breath might do, such as Genesis 2:7, when God breathes into the first human being. Interestingly enough, that first human became alive. He did not, perhaps unfortunately, become inerrant.

  • Ken Schenck Reviews Wayne Grudem

    I’ve been following Ken Schenck’s review of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, and starting with the second post (Word of God), he is discussing material that I find fascinating. I am not trained as a theologian. Despite having an MA in Religion, I must note that my concentration was Biblical and Cognate Languages, and practically all my courses involved language study and not theology. But one can’t really discuss the Bible as a Christian and not deal with the theology involved.

    I should further note that I am obviously much more likely to agree with Ken Schenck than with Wayne Grudem. I’m somewhere around the Arminian territory in theology, not Calvinist if nothing else.

    After describing Grudem’s discussion of the Word of God as “anemic” and “implicitly circular” (and I agree), he continues to discussing the Old Testament Canon and then the New Testament. I’m skipping discussion of the nature of the Word of God, even though it is extremely interesting. Ken Schenck provides some excellent pointers to questions that need to be answered if one is to cure the anemia and escape the circularity. (I outline my views on this in my pamphlet What Is the Word of God?)

    There is a basic issue here that has troubled me for some time, and that is the starting point. I grew up with a form of evangelism that started by trying to convince people of the truth of the Bible, at least whenever we weren’t just assuming that people accepted the Bible as true already and just needed either to get busy following it, or needed to have their understanding corrected. There was a certain arrogance in the latter part of this approach; we always had to approach people as though they couldn’t really read and needed us to find the texts for them. (I refer to my early experience as a Seventh-day Adventist.)

    But my observation is that many Christians have precisely the same approach, and often have very little success. They can revive the belief of someone who grew up with it, but are very rarely successful at talking to someone who is truly not Christian in either background or belief about the authority of the Bible.

    But when the early church starts talking to people, I don’t hear anything about the authority of the Bible. Rather, I see testimony to their encounter with the risen Christ. In the modern church we try to convince people of the reliability of the Bible, and get them to believe in the resurrection based on that. The disciples testified to the resurrection and all else followed from that.

    I’m sure someone will object that we cannot possibly testify to the resurrection personally. But we can testify to our own experience of the risen Christ and to our own incorporation into the Body of Christ.

    So what does this have to do with the canon? I sponsored a panel discussion a few years back that related to the reliability of the Bible. Two members of the panel discussed the topic based on dealing with the reliability of the texts and their transmission. The third started with the church’s creeds. At first that was hard for me to follow.

    But it seems to me that it’s difficult to have a robust theology of canonization without having a robust ecclesiology, and in turn this requires a robust pneumatology. I admit to really disliking systematic theology, but it is obviously critical if you’re going to discuss the Bible as a Christian, because the Christian Bible is defined by the Christian church.

    Now I don’t mean that the church gets to choose what is in Scripture. That’s where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in. The church recognizes the things which are to be of authority in the church. Without that connection, there is no canon of Scripture, because the canon defines what has authority.

    So I would suggest the order of discussion being one’s personal experience of the risen Christ, then the way in which that personal experience brings one into the community, and from the community to the role of the Bible as the community’s authority.

    (I discuss this further in my book When People Speak for God and I recommend the discussion of the same topic in From Inspiration to Understanding, [Edward W. H. Vick] especially chapter 2.)

  • Loosening One’s Doctrine of Scripture (Resources)

    I just completed a post on my Participatory Bible Study blog which includes a couple of pages from the book When People Speak for God.

    I’ve been connecting one’s understanding of inspiration and extended reading of the Bible for some time. In my view, we have tended to focus on inerrancy and simultaneously on the bits and pieces of scripture. A broader view of inspiration can go well with a broader view of scripture. This is not universal. Many advocates of inerrancy also view scripture broadly while many who oppose it tend to ignore what it says. The stereotypes tend not to work!

    From Inspiration to UnderstandingI’ve used these ideas in teaching and in publishing. I started a Bible study series, co-authored a book on how to study the Bible, and wrote a book on inspiration, for which this web site is named. Then as a publisher, I published another book, From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully. That book could serve as the big brother to mine, even though it was written later. If it had been written earlier, it could have provided many footnotes for my own book.

    In addition, I’ve written a few pamphlets, available in PDF format for downloading. You can print as many as you need free of charge.

    There are a few more listed on this page.

    Finally, I’ve had the idea of seeing the whole of scripture emphasized to me when editing a recent book, Creation in Scripture by Herold Weiss. What Dr. Weiss has done is look beyond Genesis in forming a scriptural doctrine of creation. It’s easy to say that one ought to go beyond Genesis, but the argument tends to stay in the first couple of chapters of Genesis even so. It’s interesting to see the broader commentary of scripture shape up.

  • Reading the Bible Frequently and Thoroughly

    I love it when someone famous says all the things I like to hear about Bible study. One thing I regularly say to Sunday School classes or to groups I’m invited to teach is that if they were looking for a five minute a day method, they invited the wrong person. It takes more than that to become acquainted with that.

    I found this video by N. T. Wright via RJS on The Jesus Creed. It’s excellent:

     

    Some of my notes include the lines:

    Read it frequently and thoroughly …

    We have cut the Bible down to size (referring to our methods of looking at short passages and dissecting them)

    Listen in order to be swept along … (using listening to a symphony as an analogy to reading the Bible)

    Until we wrestle with scripture like that we’re not honoring it.

    The additional comments in the post regarding the doctrine of scripture to “… hold loosely to our particular theological commitments and our doctrine of scripture.” I would probably be more likely to say to loosen our doctrine of scripture, than to hold our doctrine loosely, though both options head in the right direction.

    In my book When People Speak for God, I put it this way (pp. 13-15):

    Typically, Christians have found proof texts in scriptures that make comments about inspiration. “All scripture is inspired (or God-breathed) . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). “No prophecy of the scripture came by human will . . .” (2 Peter 1:21). These texts are not only used to prove the inspiration of scriptures, ignoring the circularity of using a Bible verse to prove that the Bible is inspired, but they also provide the foundation for an  understanding of how inspiration worked. I most commonly hear 2 Timothy 3:16 quoted in this connection. I ask someone what inspiration means. “All scripture is  God-breathed,” comes back the answer. “God-breathed” is supposed to be obvious, but somehow the passage doesn’t enlighten us as to what God breathes and how. Another answer, that prophets speak as they are carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), doesn’t really answer the question either.

    The process of inspiration is important not only in terms of how we understand God to behave in connection with people, but also in telling us what we would expect to result. For example, those who believe that God dictates the precise words that a prophet or other inspired writer puts on paper must in turn believe that those words, and not just the message they express, are important, and that they must always be the best words for the  purpose. On the other hand, someone who believes that people receive impressions from God and then express them in human words will place a greater emphasis on the human side of the equation. The message is important, and it may be illuminated by knowing the person who speaks along with his or her cultural background and spiritual experience.

    As the author of Hebrews expressed it:

    1In  old times God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets in many portions and in different ways. 2In these last days, however, he has spoken to us through a Son, one whom he has made heir of everything, and through whom also he created the universe.  3This Son is the brightness of his glory and the exact representation of his real essence. He sustains everything by his powerful word. He performed a cleansing from sins and sat down at the right hand of majesty in the {spiritual/heavenly} heights. — Hebrews 1:1-3

    God’s message came at different times and in different ways, a process that the author of Hebrews states culminated in God’s message coming through a person, Jesus. In Hebrews 4:12 he continues by calling the Word “alive and active” again referring to the Word of God as portrayed in Jesus. Those who place a heavy emphasis on the words, rather than the message, should give serious consideration to the view of revelation expressed in the book of Hebrews. According to this one scriptural author, whom most scholars leave unidentified, inspiration doesn’t always work the same way.

    I would suggest that instead of looking for statements about how inspiration works in the scriptures, we should look at the scriptures themselves. There is no good reason to assume that those who experienced inspiration would also feel it necessary to define it. In fact, when we look at the scriptures we see no real effort to provide us with a theory of inspiration. There were simply people who claimed that they had a message from God, and they expressed it with some force under their various circumstances.

    Reading the Bible as a whole, or reading whole books (Wright suggests the Gospel of John, which should only take a couple of hours), will help you see inspiration in action. Then perhaps, rather than deciding on a theory of inspiration and trying to make the Bible fit, you can see how the Bible was inspired, i.e. inspiration in action, and form from that your understanding of inspiration.

    (I do some commercials on resources from my company here.)

  • Joel Watts Quoting Edward Vick

    From Inspiration to UnderstandingJoel Watts is quoting from a book I publish, From Inspiration to Understanding. I’d like to get more involved, but for now, check out his quote.

    My company (Energion Publications) will be releasing a new book by Dr. Vick, Creation: The Christian Doctrine, taking the approach of systematic theology. This will be released some time in May.