From Inspiration to Understanding. Edward W. H. Vick
doctrinal approach. Every Christian community holds certain beliefs, and teaches particular doctrines. These teachings make that community different from others. Many Christian communities claim that their teachings are either directly taught in the Bible or are derived from the Bible. The claim is that there is a connection between the doctrine the church teaches and the words of the Bible. Often they will take the further step and claim that the teachings of the church have authority because the Bible, which is the source of those teachings, has authority. The authority of the Bible is, so to speak, transmitted to and represented in the doctrines. Or, it will be said that the teachings represent the church’s understanding of Christian faith and life, both individual and in community, as the New Testament accounts represent the understanding of the first century with respect to its faith and its life.
The third approach is the analytical approach. Here the questions we put to the text of the Bible are of an historical and literary kind. How did the writings come to have the present shape? How were they put together? How do they relate to the time when they were written? You ask who wrote the books and when they were written and want to find the appropriate evidence to give good answers to these questions. Further questions arise. How are the various writings related to one another? In particular you ask, as a Christian, How are the Old and the New Testament related? What constitutes the unity of the Bible? Such questions assume that we have appropriate methods to provide answers. What you discover in using this approach will have an important bearing upon the first two approaches. How does the believer and the preacher get the encouraging message from the Bible? How does the church formulate its doctrines by reference to the Scripture? What of the claim concerning authority in these matters?
A fourth approach to Scripture takes the text and seeks to render its meaning. This exegetical approach is distinct from the others. You must take account of it in giving a summary of the manner in which the Bible functions in the Christian community. Here it uses the text of Scripture as the basis for exposition. The meanings that result serve to maintain the distinctive life and understanding of the church and of the believer.
When you ask the question, ‘What did the authors of Scripture mean by what they wrote?’ you are asking an historical question. When you ask, ‘What do the words of Scripture mean?’ you are asking a different question. Some people would say that once you have found what the Bible meant, you have arrived at your goal. The Christian’s job then is to understand and to display that meaning. Please notice that this is a theory about how the Bible is to be treated. Other Christians would disagree and say that the Bible is a living book and its interpretation gives us meaning for the present time, and that this is what is important. You will, on this viewpoint, have the complex task of saying both what Scripture meant, and also of searching for its present meaning, what it now means. The task of grappling with the actual text of Scripture is called exegesis. Its aim is to render the meaning, to clarify obscurities, to present the message of the text. It is the work of the commentator, the task of exposition. As such it must be distinguished from the work of explicit theological construction, which may also sometimes refer to the text of Scripture.
We have spoken above of the ‘authors’ of Scripture, rather than the ‘writers,’ although that is not entirely satisfactory. There is good reason for this. For the books of Scripture, or at least many of them, were not ‘written’ in the way a modern book is written. Indeed Bible books were often not written by their ‘authors,’ if by ‘written’ one means first, that the author actually put pen to paper and composed the product, engaging in the physical process of scribing his words as he proceeded. A secretary, an amanuensis, or a disciple, might be entrusted with the task of actually scribing the words. Second, the modern author is responsible for the production of all that he ‘writes.’ Then the author was often more like a collector, compiler or editor than like a ‘writer,’ in our modern sense, that is one who has himself produced and so is responsible for, all that gets written and published. Indeed sometimes a well- known name was deliberately associated with a particular book.
2 WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BIBLE
To each of these approaches there corresponds an understanding of the significance, status and authority of the Bible.1 What is the primary reason for the status the Bible has in the church?
The Bible is not primarily and characteristically a textbook of doctrines, nor a book of edification, that is to say of building up the teaching and the piety or the church. It is not primarily and characteristically an historical source. The reason that Protestant churches have given the Bible the place of primacy is not because it edifies, ‘not because it builds up what is established but because it does the establishing.’2 The Bible has occupied the place of primacy in the Protestant churches because it is indispensable for the very existence of the churches.
Once the church existed but Christian Scripture did not. This is of course the very earliest period of the church’s existence. The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ. So we have the task of working out how the Protestant conviction of the primacy of Scripture, the ‘indispensable’ Scripture is related to the church’s foundation. What is the relation between Jesus confessed as the Christ and the written Scripture confessing him and serving as the means for continuing faith and confession? To each of the approaches we have outlined there are appropriate attitudes, appropriate questions and appropriate silences. Let us take them briefly, one by one.
When you read the Bible devotionally you are not questioning it. You simply make yourself available for whatever edification and help you can gain from it. Nor, when reading the Bible devotionally does the thought that it is infallible naturally occur to you, the reader. In the attitude of devotion, that is not the sort of thing that you would affirm or deny. When you read the Bible for devotional purposes you don’t think of that.3
It is when you become aware of the disputes among churchmen and the ideas which they discuss, that you begin to ask questions about the status of Scripture. And it is of course true that some ideas and discussions can be very helpful. Others can seriously waste our time and divert our energies. One of these is prolonged discussion of the idea of infallibility.
If you are an intelligent reader of Scripture you will be bound to have questions about Scripture when you begin to think about what you read. You will ask the ordinary questions you ask about any ancient book. These are questions about style, composition, worldview and about the transmission and preservation of the text.
One of the most important and interesting questions is about the church’s doctrinal use of Scripture.4
The word ‘doctrine’ has reference to what is taught in a particular community at a particular time. It is thus recognised teaching. How does such teaching come to be recognised? The answer is, quite simply, that certain people come to agree about it. Orthodox doctrine is doctrine agreed about by a group. The term ‘theology’ refers to the effort to understand the Christian faith and to express it discursively, that is to say, in words, concepts, systems of thought, arguments. Such faith can also be expressed in other ways, for example in liturgy, in art, in moral activity. The theologian serves the church by scrutinising the doctrine it professes to teach. Now our question is this: How is the acknowledged doctrine related to Scripture? How is the teaching derived from Scripture?
This is the question about the relationship between the Bible and the doctrine. How do you get from the Bible to the doctrine? What are the principles of interpretation which are used in the exposition of Scripture? What sort of frameworks are considered appropriate, and why?
There is no easy answer to this question, nor is there simply one answer to it. The different Christian churches derive their doctrine from Scripture in different ways. It is well that we are aware of this and ask how it is done. When we address the question: ‘How is the particular doctrinal statement derived from the Scripture upon which it is based?’ we shall discover that the answer to that question is complex.5
Let’s reverse the familiar advice, ‘Put your theory into practice!’ and adopt the slogan, ‘Put your practice into theory.’ That will guide us in what follows. Let us see what the church actually does in respect of the Bible and insist that the account (the theory) it provides properly represents that practice. So we ask as our basic