Just to keep things interesting, I’m posting my response to JMR on the front page here. I thank him for his engagement on this issue, even if he is actually wrong about a lot of things.
I think the heart of our disagreement is the Bible and how to read it.
I think that’s unquestionably true.
I think the Bible is true and binding on a Christian. If it says a thing, we must do it.
I think this is also unquestionably true. However, for a guy who’s pretty concerned with how things get defined, I think JMR – especially in the light of his following comments – needs to be more specific about what he means here.
So in an effort to make sure we understand what I mean when I say, “If it says a thing, we must do it,” here’s what I mean confessionally:
The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. [WCF I.4]
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. [WCF I.5]
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word: and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. [WCF I.6]
All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. [WCF I.7]
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. [WCF I.9]
As these statement apply to this discussion, I’d summarize them in this way:
WCF I.4: Because Scripture God’s own words, it has an authority which is unlike and above all other modes of authority.
WCF I.5: While Scripture is beautiful aesthetically, and received historically, and internally consistent, it is because we are regenerate men that we receive it as divine and infallible.
WCF I.6: Scripture contains both explicit truths and implicit truths which are categorically necessary for man’s salvation, faith, and life. Because we assume all the parts of I.4 and I.5, we assume that there is a divine scope to Scripture which is greater than its human origins.
WCF I.7: There are mature matter in Scripture, and rudimentary matters in Scripture. The latter are plain enough for anyone to follow; the former may not be as plain to everyone. Turk’s correllary to WCF I.7 is that those who dismiss the former items present in Scripture which are implied but necessary are doing the same thing those who would dismiss the latter are doing.
I omit WCF I.8 only because the matter of translation of the Scripture is not relevant (yet) to LMR’s current iteration of his argument. We’ll see if he will go there on his own.
WCF I.9: Scripture is the best hermeneutic tool to unfold all the necessary meanings of Scripture. That means external contexts do not supercede the interpretations provided by Scripture for itself.
So when I say, “If it says a thing, we must do it,” I do not mean, “Only the things explciitly demanded which we have not ruled out because we are much more informed about the world than Paul was.” I mean instead: the Bible makes assumptions about the way the world ought to work, and we are therefore obliged to follow not only its explicit commands but also its implicit assumptions. I am pretty certain at this point JMR means no such thing, and I can prove it if he will let us know to what extent he would affirm or deny Section I of the WCF, especially the sections cited here.
Sadly, reading a book is not as easy as one might think. The Bible was written to a particular people and time . . . and has to be contextualized to be understood.
Let me say this about that.
It is simply no surprise that the first place JMR stops to justify the rest of his argument is the question of context. The reason he does this is that the context he would first choose is one which suits his ultimate argument.
No? Let’s see what he says himself:
Even then, of course, understanding what it means to “believe” can be difficult!
This statement is the reason I think it’s critical to start with a definition of what it means to “do what the Bible says.” It reminds me of a story D.A. Carson has told about a theological luminary who was speaking at length about the systematic riches to be found in the idea, essentially, that faith without works is dead. The luminary spoke for more than an hour on the subject, and at the end of his talk Dr. Carson had the opportunity to speak to this fellow privately. He asked the man to imagine that at his home parish, he gets a call late at night from an old woman who is dying, and he comes to be with her in her final moments. The woman was a marginal church attender in her life, but in good duty the luminary would of course go to be with her for comfort in her final moments. When he arrives, as he sits with the woman and her family, it is clear that her final hour is near, and she says to him: “pastor, I haven’t got much time in this life, and I know my life has not been a good one. What must I do to be saved?”
It seems to me that, like this luminary, who answered that this was a good and difficult question, and he wasn’t sure what to say if the time was brief, JMR has made context so transcendent a qualifier that, as he says, maybe we don’t even know what the Bible says when it commands us to “believe”.
The Bible is clear about some things — especially the rudimentary things. That anyone would be willing to say otherwise does speak to the question of what the Bible is and how to read it. The problem is that they are not giving us guidance toward whatever clarity the Bible has to offer: they are offering us the ancient and clever question, “Has God really said that?”
My answer is great things he has taught us; great things he has done. And by “great”, I do not mean “merely thrilling”. I mean “great to the scope and purpose of creation and salvation.” It seems to me that JMR thinks that God’s word is, at best, like an archived newspaper which is great for reference for what happened then, but is only a curiousity for us who live here and now.
When the Bible gives economic advice, things get trickier. For many of us the advice to own goats for milk would be counterproductive. We don’t get our clothes from lambs. Most of us have no problem with this, we contextualize the advice.
Since JMR hasn’t even given us which books of the Bible he is lifting this swell advice from, it’s difficult to see what and why he is actually saying — becuase, of course, context is everything. I would think that if this was true, spelling out the context would actually make his point.
I’ll admit it: I cannot find any commands in the Bible that we should personally own goats for milk. I can find the command not to boil a kid in his mother’s milk (Deu 14:21 among others), but the command that we must own goats I can’t find.
But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he means that since Deu 14 forbids the boiling of a kid in his mother’s milk, the implication should then be that the command is for everyone, and therefore everyone should own goats — especially goats which are making milk.
Maybe this is not JMR’s calculus here, but since he didn’t give it to us, we have to work with what we have. Let’s say “someone” would make this argument — some literalist who is not swayed by context. Are there other reason not to go here?
For example, does the interpretation of Acts 11 inform us at all about the scope of dietary laws? How about the interpretation of James 4 and the idea that there is a right way for the Christian to conduct commerce — meaning we don’t have to do things merely for subsistence but can do it for a profit? It seems to me that if “someone” wants to make the case for the necessity of goat ownership in the Christian life, he has many textual issues to deal with before he can flex his erudition and speak to the contextual issues.
To me it seems that way. How does it seem to JMR?
Proverbs warns about being lazy, but the signs of laziness in a farm based culture are not exactly the same as those in “word” based culture like our own. You can do a good bit of work from bed in our day!
It seems to JMR that Proverbs warns only about farm-laziness, as if the word for “work” does not appear in Prov 18:9 or Prov 22:29, or Prov 16:11.
This is itself a kind of laziness which, frankly, I suspect JMR knows better than. It is an inclination which is actually against what he says he is championing — namely, the leveraging of context to define broader meanings (or to narrow them as irrelevant to us).
But since we know laziness is a vice — that’s not in dispute here — I have to get back to work myself. Consider this part one of a series on JMR’s response, and I’ll be back tomorrow with more toward the rest of JMR’s reply.
March 11th, 2010 | 5:07 pm | #1
I really don’t know anything about this debate, but it is interesting to me that the Westminster standards are needed to provide clarity on the Bible. One could take that to mean that scripture really does not interpret scripture. I myself don’t really hold to that idea in the strict sense, but I do think that scripture is the central thread in the ongoing narrative of the divine economy. However, revelation is ongoing because the Spirit continues to speak in and through tradition (I’ll stick with a lower case t here). The reference to Westminster suggests that maybe the church (even with semper reformanda) is a necessary part of the interpretive act. Scripture as part of the fabric of the Spirit’s witness to Christ must be interpreted with the body that Christ has claimed as his own. Even a Reformed person would say this presumably because the elect just have the correct interpretation by virtue of their election. It’s just that church in the sense of the elect is an invisible body rather than a visible one. But it’s the invisible body that keeps the visible one honest.
March 11th, 2010 | 5:22 pm | #2
Dale,
“Even a Reformed person would say this presumably because the elect just have the correct interpretation by virtue of their election.”
Not quite, actually. Election means that God will ensure that we become Christians. (Elect equals Christian–or someone who’ll become a Christian before they die.) It doesn’t mean that he will ensure that all real Christians have the right theology.
March 11th, 2010 | 5:23 pm | #3
Dale said:
However, I explicitly said:
And then I said again:
Which is to say, “The WCF tells you what I mean when I say this stuff.”
Those passages of the WCF are not produced here to force any interpretation of the Bible out, or imply any interpretation of the Bible: they are provided so that I have clearly told you what I mean when I say something in particular.
JMR assumes we agree on his brief declarative about what we should do about the Bible. I would say explicitly that we do not. At least: not in this case.
March 11th, 2010 | 5:55 pm | #4
Dear Frank:
Here is some proverbial advice from, well, Proverbs 27:
Be sure you know the condition of your flocks,
give careful attention to your herds;
24 for riches do not endure forever,
and a crown is not secure for all generations.
25 When the hay is removed and new growth appears
and the grass from the hills is gathered in,
26 the lambs will provide you with clothing,
and the goats with the price of a field.
27 You will have plenty of goats’ milk
to feed you and your family
and to nourish your servant girls.
Taken literally I need do nothing. Many of the clothes in my closet contain threads that nature never dreamed existed (blended with cotton and other non–animal things). I have no slaves.
The images assume an agricultural community. I don’t live in one . . . never have lived in one . . . and have no desire to live in one.
To understand what is being said (the intent), I must decided what is being said (generally) and apply it to my own situation. Since much of my own situation (what I get paid to do) did not exist at the time Proverbs was written, I will have to use rational skill in doing so without direct help in how to do so from Scripture.
March 11th, 2010 | 5:59 pm | #5
Frank says:
I mean instead: the Bible makes assumptions about the way the world ought to work, and we are therefore obliged to follow not only its explicit commands but also its implicit assumptions.
I say:
Knowing those “implicit assumptions” will require skill, because we will need to know the mind of both the divine and human author. We will have to separate the two, no easy trick. We might make mistakes.
Frank you will to tell us a good bit more about “implicit assumptions” and their limits (and how we find them) before I will be able to agree or disagree with them.
Here is one simple rule I follow: When God tells X to do y, I don’t assume I am X.
I am not, after all, David or an ancient patriarch. I am going to have to contextualize who is being talked to and what is being said.
When I read Paul’s letters, I am reading his letters to particular churches (in some cases) . . . reading their mail . . . and have to keep that in mind. What might be good for one congregation under persecution might not be good for all.
The Bible interprets the Bible for forming a theology of what the Book (as a collection of books) says. First, however, we must understand what the author meant within his individual book. How does Paul use a term? How does John?
Finally: Am I bound by what the human author might have thought as he wrote? Does his authorial intent count?
March 11th, 2010 | 6:08 pm | #6
I have tried to divide my comments into parts to make them easier to read.
Apparently, Frank Turk thinks my view of Scripture is like Satan (“Has God said?”) though I would prefer being compared to the Boreans. Just because someone says the Bible says something (or what it means) does not mean it does.
What do I think? Scripture is binding on my doctrine and whatever else it speaks on. It speaks on many things, but knowing what it intends is not always easy.
I don’t think the intention of Israel’s sacred history was to teach me about politics (which did not exist in the modern sense in the ancient world). It does teach me about politics, but on the way to its main message.
This does not make Scripture of (only) archival value. I have no “king,” but I can gain wisdom about how I should view rulers from admonitions to honor my regional Roman puppet. Scripture limits sexual relations to a man and a woman in the context of creating a family. I must honor those ideas . . . but I am not bound to the varied courtship schemes found there.
If Frank thinks there is a consistent governmental structure advocated in Scripture, I would like to know what it is . . . after he tells me the consistent courtship structure!
Scripture gives me timeless principles for both, but in stories (mostly) and literary forms where these ideas must be found by the thoughtful reader.
This is not always easy, as disagreements between traditional Christians proves.
March 11th, 2010 | 6:24 pm | #7
Finally, and I do mean finally, before Frank posts again (so it does not look like I am dodging his comment), I probably will not post more on this thread.
I have expressed my view . . . and I doubt there is general interest in my further explication of it.
So (as with the torture debate), I rest my case where it is.
March 11th, 2010 | 6:51 pm | #8
Well, I guess my interpretation of your initial post was a bit off. I was assuming that you were using the WCF to talk about how to interpret the Bible over against JMR’s (and I don’t know who JMR is) way of interpreting the Bible. But I see now that you were not attempting to claim any value to the WCF for the interpretation of scripture beyond establishing your own perspective. Is that right?
As to Jugulum’s claim, well, yes, let me be more specific here. When election is realized at regeneration, then the elect person has the proper interpretation insofar as faith requires cognitive content supplied by the gospel message in addition to assurance. The elect individual cannot be wrong about this content otherwise s/he would forfeit election.
As I understand the early Reformed thinkers, this is precisely how scripture stands in judgment over the visible church. The invisible church holds the correct interpretation and thus the church can be always reforming in light of the regenerate among her. Since there is no possibility of falling away because of perseverance of the saints, then I cannot see a time when a regenerate individual would ever be wrong about the gospel. This is not the same thing as saying that a regenerate person can fail to live out the gospel, but in terms of the cognitive content necessary for faith in the first place, which must be given in and through the Spirit’s regenerating activity.
March 11th, 2010 | 6:53 pm | #9
OK, so I took about an hour or so to compose the previous post (dinner, baths for the kids, etc., intervened). I just learned the identity of JMR so I retract that claim.
March 11th, 2010 | 7:03 pm | #10
Something I rarely hear people talking about is this principle: think with the mind of the Church. Novelty, while not necessarily always wrong, ought to be looked at suspiciously. Since I am Anglican but very Orthodox-oriented, I have a deep love for Tradition and the authority of the Church. When confused about an issue I often ask myself: “On what do Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all agree? Whatever that is, it must be right.”
March 11th, 2010 | 7:12 pm | #11
I, for one, want to think with the church and do believe in tradition. I just don’t hold that tradition is infallible and I am still wrestling with the differences between Tradition and traditions.
March 11th, 2010 | 7:17 pm | #12
Frank,
I think you’re being disingenuous regarding your claim that the WCF is not in your view authoritative, but that it just so happens that your view precisely aligns with it. Quite the coincidence, eh?
March 11th, 2010 | 7:18 pm | #13
Orthodoxdj: “When confused about an issue I often ask myself: “On what do Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox all agree? Whatever that is, it must be right.””
If you have the inclination, ask Perry Robinson about the Filioque and what that portends for an understanding of Christology and/or the Gospel.
March 11th, 2010 | 7:22 pm | #14
Dale Coulter: “I just don’t hold that tradition is infallible”
You’re not a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, are you?
March 11th, 2010 | 7:32 pm | #15
[...] levels (1)David Strunk: I always love it when the atheists/secularists go at the pantheists and… Modern Man [1] (13)Truth Unites… and Divides: Dale Coulter: “I just don’t hold that tradition is… Modern [...]
March 11th, 2010 | 7:34 pm | #16
TUAD, and by the way, it took me a few minutes to figure out that TUAD was Truth Unites. . .and Divides. I know, I’m slow, but I just kept thinking “TOAD, TOAD, no that’s not right.”
In any case, how did you guess? However, I have great, great, great respect for those traditions. Did I say great?
March 11th, 2010 | 7:51 pm | #17
Regarding comment #4 from JMR:
It seems extraordinarily-odd to me that you will in this case say, “well, this is about goats so I have to make some sort of general application if it means anything to me at all,” but when we approach the parts of Scripture which (as you say in #6) tell about politics “along the way” to telling you about “main message”, suddenly this mode of interpretation — which is a far shorter walk than applying good husbandry to good stewardship in general — has been in this discussion rejected by you. That is: you have explicitly said (as you did in #6) “I don’t think the intention of Israel’s sacred history was to teach me about politics (which did not exist in the modern sense in the ancient world).”
The parenthetical opinion aside (my counter-parenthetical being, “I guess that’s why everyone was so happy under Caesar, so free as you have previously asserted”), the problem, of course, is that Paul disagrees with you. 1 Cor 10 makes it very clear that the history if Israel was given to us “as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” Certainly: Paul is speaking there to the question of idolatry in particular, but are you really willing to say, “Sure: examples against idolatry evil, but not political evil like the wars between Solomon’s sons, or the sin of Absalom, or how people did what was right in there own eyes when there was no king in Israel?”
What you want is for Scripture to be a minimalist guide: you should just admit this. If you did, there would be no sense in arguing with you about the Biblical basis for your political opinions — because you didn’t seek a biblical basis. Politics isn’t goat-herding, after all — because goat-herding means limiting the freedom of the goats.
March 11th, 2010 | 7:57 pm | #18
Mark –
That’s kind of you to ask.
If the cart is actually before the horse, should he push, or do himself a favor and get in the harness? I ask because your comment indicates that somehow it’s the WCF which taught me these things — rather than, after having studied and wrestled with my church and my Bible, I found the WCF and found I agreed with much of it, was unimpressed by some of it, and reject whole-cloth some of it.
It’s odd that using a historical document to show that the definitions I’m using are not idiosyncratic is now somehow a false appeal to authority. It’s a historic protestant confession; I’m an actual protestant. I agree with it.
How’s that disingenuous?
March 11th, 2010 | 8:02 pm | #19
Regarding comment #5:
One implicit assumption of Scripture is this — God is a triune God. You must believe this to be of orthodox faith. Yet this is simply not stated explicitly in any one passage.
Please use that as your example are you work forward on this question.
March 11th, 2010 | 8:39 pm | #20
I do not think moving from the genre “sacred history” to application in modern times is a shorter work than from a proverb for ancient times to a proverb for modern times. Proverbs by their very nature are less complicated and easier to understand . . .
I have not said we can draw NO political implications from Scripture or Israel’s sacred history. One is that we should “not do what is right in our own eyes” in the sense of finding our own gods or making our own morality. There are other implications . . . but then I bet our readers are weary of a discussion that amounts to this.
I don’t think you are reading the texts well following normal rules of reading. You think I am reading the texts badly and have shown us your method.
I don’t think I am a modern or anything like a modern . . . as I don’t think the bulk of the early Church (for example) would have read the text in just the manner you are proposing and they had no taint of Locke.
March 11th, 2010 | 8:42 pm | #21
Orthodoxdj,
There is much sense in your words!
John Mark
March 11th, 2010 | 11:09 pm | #22
It seems to me that this discussion is not primarily about how to read Scripture, but about how to read in general.
A text can contain multiple truths, and those truths can be at varying levels of significance. To say that a given truth is not the main truth of a passage is not to deny that it is true or important.
Yes, the history of Israel gives us examples of right & wrong behavior regarding politics, but this is not incompatible with recognizing that such a use (for examples) is not the primary purpose or message of a text.
In fact, it is essential when reading any complex text to keep the higher-order message in mind. If we mistake a second-order truth for the primary message, it distorts our understanding of the whole (for any text, not just Scripture.)
So, I would agree with Mr Turk that indeed the story of salvation history includes lessons that we can draw about politics, but I would also agree with JMR that such lessons (though real, as he does indicate in context, in #6) are not the main point.
By taking this approach, it doesn’t make Scripture into a minimalist guide at all; in fact, I would say that such an approach challenges us to extend it to all areas of our lives.
If we make the mistake of taking all secondary truths to be primary truths (for example, suggesting that politics is a primary focus of salvation history — which, by the way, is not what I think Mr Turk is saying, but is an error that could come out of his approach), then we run several risks.
First, we can fail to distinguish higher-order truths when we do see them.
Second, we can assume that all truths, because they are equal in value, should be interpreted in the same way. This can lead to favoring those passages of Scripture that are easier to directly apply.
Such an approach can lead to a truly minimalist approach to Scripture — that is, looking only at those passages that can be immediately understood for their application, or looking only at the most immediate application that can be drawn from them, without considering cultural context.
In contrast, JMR’s approach challenges us to apply ALL of Scripture to our lives — even the parts that involve herding goats.
Such an approach requires more interpretive work, since (fortunately) I do not herd goats (though perhaps goats might be more cooperative than college students) but it will ultimately end up challenging us to apply all of Scripture to all our lives.
March 12th, 2010 | 12:28 am | #23
Frank,
after struggling and wrestling within a church shaped by the WCF and similar confessions … why do you deny its authoritative stamp on your beliefs? I think your notion that you arrived at this later is what is disingenuous.
March 12th, 2010 | 9:17 am | #24
Holly,
As far as I can tell, we totally agree.
I hope that does not frighten you!
Good post,
John Mark
March 12th, 2010 | 2:04 pm | #25
I agree with the person who said this was a two-bag of popcorn discussion. It’s making my brain hurt, in a good way. And it’s also making my heart glad, because I’m reading a bunch of very articulate people argue passionately about important things without resorting to name calling, invective throwing, or post and comment editing. As refreshing as an ice-cold Coke Zero on a hot day.
At some point I’d sure love it if you folks would weigh in on how this issue of Biblical and constitutional hermeneutics relates to the upcoming brouhaha with the census, and what our obligations are before God,our authorities, and how they seem to interpreting our own system of laws. Justin Taylor has something about it today, and, quelle surprise, it’s causing a stir. :)
March 12th, 2010 | 4:19 pm | #26
Mark:
I think you should consider at least a second time that I was brought into the church through the Southern Baptist Convention. Ask around to your SBC friends how formed by the presbyterian WCF their beliefs are.
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