hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (06/28/89)
I've been thinking about the three-legged stool. I'm sympathetic with what I see as the goal of Anglican theory, namely to avoid extremes of both Protestant and Catholic interpretation. But the analogy doesn't quite do it for me. I have two problems. First, it implies more parallelism between Scripture, tradition, and reason than I see. Rather than three legs, I see them as maybe a leg, an arm, and a seat. (No, I'm not going to say which is which.) Second, I think maybe there should be a fourth: the Holy Spirit. Expanding on this a bit: I agree that Scripture, tradition, and reason all have a part to play. However of these, I see only Scripture as being a real source of revelation. I go back to the concept of Christianity as a revealed religion. It is based on God's interventions in history. The Bible is an account of those events and of the teachings that surrounded them. (I'm thinking mostly of the NT. The OT follows this paradigm to some extent, but there is perhaps a wider variety of literature there.) Tradition and reason are for me not independent sources of revelation, but means used to appropriate what we see in the Bible. There's no way to inject the Bible directly into my brain. I have to use my understanding -- both deductive and intuitive. So reason is involved in appropriating the revelation that is present in the Bible. So is tradition, though in a different way. Under tradition I would include both scholarly investigations and other results that come out of the life of the church. These provide a check on my own reason: both informing it and allowing me to correct it. So my model is that I gain knowledge of Christ from the revelation reported in the Bible, which I appropriate using my reason, with the aid of tradition. To this formula I must insist on adding one more qualifier: under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is because I think the purpose of Scripture is at least as much existential as intellectual. That is, we use it not just to learn about God, but to encounter him. The Reformers emphasized that Scripture doesn't fulfill its role unless it is read in faith under the influence of the Spirit. 1) The canon. I think the most serious attack on the primacy of Scripture is the argument that the authority of Scripture basically comes from the Church because the Church decided what books were to be considered Scripture. My answer to that is something that many conservative Protestants may not be not happy with. It is that I see the basic authority as being not the book in itself but what we encounter in it, both intellectually and experientially. This includes both events, such as Christ's life, death and resurrection, and teachings sent directly by God, including God's message revealed to the prophets and Jesus' teachings. To me the Bible is important because it gives us access to those events and teachings. Indeed in the first Cent, tradition would have been a real source of such an encounter. When first or second generation Christians were around, hearing about Jesus from them would have been at least as good as hearing about him through a book. But we are now many generations away, and the written material is our only primary source. I am frankly not all that concerned about deciding which books are in the Bible. As far as I can tell, the books that were in dispute would not have affected our picture of the events in the Bible noticably one way or the other. If Jude and II Peter hadn't made it, does anybody seriously think this would seriously affect the Christian faith? As most readers here know, I don't believe in Biblical inerrancy. I believe that the Gospels are competent history, judged by 1st Cent categories of historical accuracy. But I still believe they should be evaluated by the same criteria we would evaluate any other historical reports. This means that I don't have to draw quite the clear, black and white line that some do between what is and what isn't Scripture. On the other hand, I have looked at a reasonable sample of the documents that aren't in Scripture, and I certainly haven't seen anything that looks like it should be in the NT. About the OT apocrypha I just don't see a big deal. I see it as similar to Jude. There are advantages each way. But it's hard to see that much damage is done whether it is included or excluded. Certainly the heart of the revelation to Israel is elsewhere. 2) Does Scripture interpret itself? The Catholic claim is that Scripture needs interpretation, and that the Church is the authorized interpreter. Protestant claims are that Scripture interprets itself, when read prayerfully through the Holy Spirit. Thus an authoritative interpreter is not needed. I'm still not sure whether I think the Reformers were being overly optimistic here. There is one sense in which I am convinced they are right. The Bible is a powerful book. I believe that anyone who prayerfully reads it will be confronted by the Gospel and by God's power to save them. They may come away with naive views about a number of subjects, but the basic themes needed for salvation are quite clear. I think it's very important to preserve this concept, and to encourage people to read it themselves and react to it directly. The question is how far to push that. Does sola scriptura mean that everybody should be able to read the Bible, and regardless of their education and other background they'll all come away with the same interpretation of everything in it? I can't believe that's what was meant. There is -- and even in the 16th Cent was -- too much evidence to the contrary. I don't think sola scriptura is about not needing assistance. Rather it's about encouraging people to grapple with Scripture directly. There's no problem with the Church providing education, and help in understanding the Bible. As long as each person still encounters the Bible for himself, help is always appreciated. It is when the Church tries to take the place of that encounter, or dictates its results, that we have problems. There is a cost to this. Perhaps the Reformers didn't realize what the cost was, since the experiment was new to them. But now we know. If we give up the concept of authoritative interpretation, we are going to have disorder. People are going to disagree. I believe this is a cost that is worth paying. I would rather have lots of groups who have encountered God in the Scripture and who believe they are being led by the Spirit in different directions than a group who all hold correct views but have given up the direct encounter. I'm inclined to think that sola scriptura should be taken more as an existential statement than an intellectual one. It's not that people don't need help in an intellectual sense to understand it, but that in their faith there should be nothing between them and the Scripture.
mls@cbnewsm.att.com (michael.l.siemon) (07/01/89)
In article <Jun.28.05.03.51.1989.23408@athos.rutgers.edu>, hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu writes: > > I've been thinking about the three-legged stool. I'm sympathetic with > what I see as the goal of Anglican theory, namely to avoid extremes of > both Protestant and Catholic interpretation. I'd say that is more a result, or a disposition of Anglicans, and not a goal as such. It's true that we have a certain skepticism about any extreme view. > Rather than three legs, I see them as maybe a leg, an arm, and a seat. > (No, I'm not going to say which is which.) Second, I think maybe there > should be a fourth: the Holy Spirit. Um... The idea is that the Spirit breathes through all three, that they are in fact indistinguishable except in theory. Scripture simply cannot be read without tradition (language and its history of usage are inherently a matter of tradition) and reason (which is to say, the evaluation of how scripture is to be taken in a present situation.) Leaving it at this sounds like _sola scriptura_ in drag; you should also see symmetrical points about the others -- reason is empty logic chopping (or other intellectual operations) when it does not address the issues forced on us by tradition and when it operates without the light of scripture. I leave it to the reader to make the parallel point about tradition. > However of these, I see only Scripture as being a real source of > revelation. I go back to the concept of Christianity as a revealed > religion. It is based on God's interventions in history. The Bible > is an account of those events and of the teachings that surrounded them. But the events are inherently communal events. Moses and the Israelites enter a covenant with JHWH; the prophets passionately confront the Israel of their day. Jesus writes no book, but leaves behind him a community of disciples. Out of the Israelite revelation we have a deposit of scripture, as again we do from Jesus' actions as the community responds to him. It seems to me to be paradoxical to say that once the community has written some part of its experience down, we can dismiss any other part of its witness. You go on to address this below as a matter of "primary source" -- but historians will use secondary sources when the primary ones don't speak to their concerns. Scripture is normative in that it is a *fixed* repository that tradition and reason must acknowledge to derive from the witness of the community that still had the apostles as living witness. Since everything human is changeable, we constantly revert to this fixed witness as a rein on excesses of reason (or of tradition.) But *to the extent that we can trust them* the witness in the Spirit by the community of the Church to what derives from that apos- tolic community has the *same* status as scripture. The tragedy of the Reformation is that half of Europe found that it could *not* trust this witness on many important points. Once the trust is broken, there is no chance at all that it can be repaired -- the Church's faith in apostolic succession has become a sacramental rather than a practical trust. > the basic authority as being not the book in itself but what we > encounter in it, both intellectually and experientially. But do we not encounter Christ directly in His Body? And do not the heavens proclaim the Majesty of God? Heavy rhetoric aside, I am really not certain what claim you are making for Scripture that is not equally valid for the Church itself, as community -- i.e. as tradition. I agree that reason is the most useless (for spiritual purposes) of the three legs in isolation; only in the revealed witness of scripture and church do we have any control on the self-indulgence of human intellect. > As long as each person still encounters the Bible for > himself, help is always appreciated. I dunno about that. I think Charley's point was quite sound -- the net is witness to lots of people reading the Bible in what amounts to isolation, and coming up with monstrosities. (Some readers here may think that I am guilty of that same charge in some cases :-) If we could imagine a hypothetical point midway between Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed readings (and in the academic realm, I think such a point represents the majority of scholarship) it seems to me that the more isolated an interpretation is from these specific communities, the more questionable it is -- on the grounds of tradition and reason -- as departure from the center of the revelation in Scripture. And the further away from that center, the less willing people are to consider proffered help that isn't already filtered through an isolated understanding. > It is when the Church tries to > take the place of that encounter, or dictates its results, that we > have problems. There is a cost to this. Perhaps the Reformers didn't > realize what the cost was, since the experiment was new to them. But > now we know. If we give up the concept of authoritative > interpretation, we are going to have disorder. People are going to > disagree. I believe this is a cost that is worth paying. I would > rather have lots of groups who have encountered God in the Scripture > and who believe they are being led by the Spirit in different > directions than a group who all hold correct views but have given up > the direct encounter. Thus far I agree ... > I'm inclined to think that sola scriptura > should be taken more as an existential statement than an intellectual > one. It's not that people don't need help in an intellectual sense to > understand it, but that in their faith there should be nothing between > them and the Scripture. But here I'm not sure I really understand what you are getting at. It will defeat the purpose of your existential encounter if one comes to Scripture with a preformed agenda, or a guide that lays out all the answers (with the implicit presumption that it knows all the questions!) The Church *can* get in the way there, as can secular or other-religious programs; but everyone approaches Scripture already guided by *some* tradition, at the very least the tradition that teaches whatever language conveys the translations. It's ultimately a question of WHICH tradition, and what critical tools of reason, we will bring with us to this existential encounter with the Spirit. And in default of a better answer (I did note the breach in trust that wounds this) it would seem that a tradition continuous with the community that wrote the books is highly desireable. Failing that, I still see a responsibility to read *externally to* but with as much understanding as possible of that base tradition. -- Michael L. Siemon Psalm 82:6: "I say, 'You are gods, contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories sons of the Most High, all of you; att!mhuxu!mls nevertheless, you shall die like men, standard disclaimer and fall like any prince.'"
mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (07/01/89)
Our Fearless Moderator writes: >I've been thinking about the three-legged stool. [....] But the analogy >doesn't quite do it for me. I have two problems. First, it implies more >parallelism between Scripture, tradition, and reason than I see. I don't think that this is intentional beyond the notion of each as "essential". THe idea is that if you try to go without one of the legs, the stool (representing theological "truth", whatever that is) does not stand. >Second, I think maybe there should be a fourth: the Holy Spirit. I would think of It as more like the floor. :-) Seriously, I'm not really sure why the notion doesn't mention the Spirit. I think I might say two things here. First, my comment about the floor; if the Spirit doesn't uphold *any* of the legs, the stool falls. Protestantism has tended to emphasis the Spirit in Scripture explicitly, in Reason implicitly, and in tradition not at all. But if Scripture is uninspired, or the reader is uninspired, or the church is uninspired, then theology departs from His face, whithers, and dies. Second, the Stool is simultaneously a theory of theologizing, and a standard. The Stool claims to describe *how* people theologize, whether or not there is any substance of Truth to what they say; in this wise the Spirit need not be present (and what we get is bad theology). On the other hand, as a standard, it insists on turning to reason, to the scriptures, and to tradition as references. We cannot turn to the Spirit in quite the same way. The Stool does not say that a particular doctrine is true or false; it only establishes a model of theological reasoning against which any particular doctrine can be tested-- not to see if it is True, but to see if it merits consideration as Truth. I don't think the model which OFM presents in the passage which followed is inconsistent with the Stool. It seems instead to subsume the Stool by explaining out the functions of the four elements in greater detail. I think the main point of dispute is in the following: >2) Does Scripture interpret itself? The Catholic claim is that >Scripture needs interpretation, and that the Church is the authorized >interpreter. Protestant claims are that Scripture interprets itself, >when read prayerfully through the Holy Spirit. Thus an authoritative >interpreter is not needed. The anglican answer is in two parts here. First, the Roman claim: we've been around before how it is inarguable. Anglicans simply don't believe it. However, we are forced to accept some of it by the historical observation that the extreme protestant claim is not borne out in practice; indeed, if one accepts the notion that (for example) Nicea and Chalcedon were "right", it seems that heterothodoxy is in direct proportion to one's commitment to individual, unadvised christianity. Hence, we are essentially forced to two negative conclusions: against the Roman church, that reason must be brought to bear on both scripture and tradition, and against Protestantism, that tradition is necessary as a tutor to reason as it reads scripture. It think it is plain that this leads straight to a lack of the kind of authority that the other two views cited offer us. I'll be frank: I don't think such an earthly authority exists. I think we will just have to learn to live with the risk of believing wrongly about theology. SUrely we must cry to the Spirit for guidance, but just as surely, we must never make the mistake of identifying our voice as the Spirit's voice. If you want to reduce this to a slogan, I would say it thusly: "Not `scripture alone', but `not just scripture.'" C. Wingate + "The Peace of God, it is no peace, + But strife closed in the sod. mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu + Yet brothers, pray for but one thing: mimsy!mangoe + The marv'lous Peace of God."