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Spirit & Life
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version 4.0
•••"The
words I have spoken to you are spirit and life"
-- Jesus, John 6:63
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| Top Stories in BibleStuff |
| Getting Meaning From The Means | | Date Created: 26 Aug, 2005, 01:44 PM |
 GOING GONZO WITH GREEK
God bless the Reverend James Voelz, Master of Divinity, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of Exegetical Theology. I dub the man with great affection (and absolutely no offense intended) the Hunter S. Thompson of CSL, Gonzo Greek Exegete Extraordinaire!
From his many illustrations born of WWF's All Star Wrestling to the extra-curricular class trips to hear Stanley Fish at Washington University, I regret not one day I spent in that man's classroom. His happened to be the very first classroom in which I ever had privilege of being seated at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis during the summer of 1991's eight-week intensive "Greek boot camp."
So there I sat, graduate of a state college with a mind full of the best liberal arts degree in the humanities my modest means and beyond the syllabus efforts could obtain. I'd bought into more of it than I knew at that point, from the Hegel to Derrida, Kristeva and Kant -- pomo lit crit was my bit. English majors are taught how to read, not just what to read, you know. It's in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the very Leaves of Grass we deconstruct. But be that as it may, when we started doing a little deconstructing there to sacred text, something started ringing wrong. |
 BECOMING LUTHERAN, LEARNING TO READ
I've often admitted with more than a little shame that by the time I got to seminary, I honestly didn't know there existed such a thing as a Large Catechism, let alone a Book of Concord. I did still know my Small Catechism by heart, and that was theology enough to pass the multiple-choice Basic Christian Doctrine pre-test so that I needed no remedial coursework there. But my attendance in worship had been about twice a month, and I seldom went to Bible class, so I needed a pre-sem survey of the Old Testament and New Testament.
Before seminary, I prayed, read my Bible, believed. But I didn't know what confessional Lutheranism was, apart from the Small Catechism. And I didn't go to seminary knowing I was going to be a pastor. I went to 'check it out, see if it was for me,' figuring I might just as well head off to get my doctorate in English and teach and write and be a bohemian in Colorado. I almost did three times before I graduated and was Called. I'll tell you about that another day. |
 I took to the languages like Stanley Fish to a speech act. There I was on familiar ground. From the study of many books to the study of this one Bible, I've often been grateful for the preparation I did receive through my liberal arts state college. But on the other hand, I suddenly found I had to learn to read all over again. And how NOT to read: not to read past the text -- not behind the text or between the text. Not read looking at what was hanging over the text, casting it's shadow on it and darkening the words of the text. In all my learning how to read in a postmodern way, I'd never really been taught much about reading the text itself. The text was less important than the agenda manipulating it, back then. I had to learn to read the text, the words, The Word. |
 BACK FROM THE BLEEDING EDGE
Dr. Voelz pushed the churchy guys well out of their comfort zone out toward the bleeding edge of pomo, where they had to grapple and wrestle with postmodern thoughts they'd never run across before in their lives. Many of those fellas had been raised in churchworker families, schools, colleges, and now seminary -- a safe, presuppositionally Christian environment. Many of them had been drenched in the Word from the time of their youth, had read the Book of Concord through -- and Pieper and Walther too, before they ever stepped foot on campus.
When it came time for Hermeneutics, I parted ways with Dr. Voelz and went with Dr. Louis Brighton. My respect for Voelz' incredible mind remains tremendous, and I believe the character of his confession is as staunch as any in this synod today. But I needed to learn to read the Bible like a Lutheran. I wanted to learn to read the Bible like those old Lutherans did. I wanted to understand how they could be so certain about such things as they claimed to be, how they could confess and stake their very lives on such truth claims as they made. You see, they had something I didn't. Certainty. And they said they got it from the Word of God. |
 GOD'S WORD IS GOD'S MEANS FIRST
Too long had I separated the task of interpretation and the Christian use of the Word as God's own Means of Grace. While we may and sometimes must distinguish between the two intellectually, practically we dare never tear them asunder. For the Christian, the Word of God is first and foremost God's own Means of dealing with us: showing us our sin and directing us toward our Savior. That work is always going on while we are in contact with the Word.
Any interpretation which ignores that work and refuses to receive it, take it into account, and finally confess it has not been born of that faith making right use of God's Means. This is what postmodernism cannot comprehend about Christian hermeneutics. It is grasped only by faith. |
 EXTRA! EXTRA! TRUTH STILL EXTRA NOS!
The second thing postmodernism cannot comprehend about Christian hermeneutics is this: the interpretation of Scripture is not given as a do-it-yourself nor a do-it-by-open-source-community-consensus exercise. Rather, this appointed Means, namely the Word, God has entrusted to an established and instituted, concrete office of teaching and preaching this Word. Through the preaching of the Word, by faith, God's Spirit acts as His own interpreter. Interpretation is not intuitive, nor inductive. The true interpretation of God's Word only has its origin extra nos, completely outside of us. God must deliver it, and He does by Means of the Word.
Nothing, I suppose, offends the postmodern thinker more than the fact he has nothing to add to the Truth, has no ubermenschian authority to define it, or really anything at all to do before God besides simply receive it in faith and add his "Amen." |
| The Abusable, Refusable Word | | Date Created: 31 May, 2005, 11:54 AM |
John 5:39-40
You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. Is the Word of God able to tell us what it says and means? With certainty? Is a human interpreter (such as a Pope or a Supreme Court) required for such authentic and authoritative interpretation of texts? These are the questions being kicked around over at Here We Stand. Atwood raises a fascinating philosophical question about texts generally, arguing from the whole to its parts -- that what applies to all other texts applies also to Scripture.
While his goal is laudable, the method of philosophically abstracting the question has the effect of causing us to step back away from the scandalous particularity of the Word of God and view it from a detached distance as but one member of a general class of things. In striving toward the perspicuity of Scripture, he attempts to establish the point at the expense of the particularity: Scripture is just like all other texts, and because none of them require an authoritative interpreter, neither does the Bible.
Oddly enough, this is the same sort of argument his 'opponent' makes in presenting Rome's case on the other side of the coin, though Rome has actually particularized it more than Atwood. For Rome, Scripture texts are are part of the whole of authoritative tradition, including the writings of the church fathers. Like the whole of authoritative tradition, it was given to the church and remains 'of the church.' So for Rome, Scripture is just like all other churchly texts, and because none of them may be authoritatively interpreted outside the Roman church, neither can the Bible.
Both arguments place Scripture as a part into a larger whole, so that Scripture comes to possess its properties more because of its genre than its very essence. In both arguments, the scandalous particularity of the Word of God is diminished.
The passage cited above from John 5:39-40 records the word of Christ about the essence of Scripture. "These are the Scriptures that testify about Me."
We behold what Scripture is because of what Scripture does, namely "testify about [Jesus]." The scandal lies in the resistability of its testimony. Though Scripture offers sufficient and authoritative testimony in and of itself, it's so terribly... deniable. And this is the scandal of the Word, the real stumbling block upon which some stumble and others are crushed entirely: "they testify...yet you refuse to come to Me."
You see, the problem is not that Scripture is unclear and unable to declare in an authoratitative, reliable and certain manner the very revelation of God's own Truth, Wisdom and will. The interpretive problem is US, our refusal and self-justified denial. We are not neutral recipients, but hostile. The old Adam ever cries out "It's God's fault! God's the one that fell short, not me!" Rather than confess our weakness and repent our refusal, we will instead project it upon and attribute it to a failing of the Word itself along with the God Who sends it.
There is nothing more scandalous than an abusable, refusable Word. How can God possibly make Him the single, only, exclusive means of our salvation?!
Our primary hermeneutical difference with Rome is not linguistic, but rather anthropological and Christological. Rome is scandalized by the abusable, refusable Word. God must provide *someone* who cannot, will not refuse the Word, otherwise it's His own fault for giving us a deniable Word. For Rome, that *someone* is the indelible, infallible pope.
For the Lutheran, that someone is Christ! |
| Thinking Walther's Theses | | Date Created: May 27, 2005, 04:31 PM |
 In further considering the Lutheran approach to interpreting God's Word, I think this list of theses from C.F.W. Walther's 1866 volume, "The Evangelical Lutheran Church the True Visible Church of God on Earth" ought also be kept in mind. When one asks the question what sorts of presuppositions do Lutherans confess and hold, particularly at least among those churches with a Waltherian heritage, this list comprises a rather thorough set of them.
Sadly, I've lent my copy of this volume out, so I can't readily consult the scriptural references and confessional arguments Walther makes for each thesis. By the way, does one of you happen to have my copy? Danny? Anyway, here's some arguably significant Lutheran thinking on interpreting the Bible. His are not the first, or necessarily the very best, thoughts on the subject, but they are certainly relevant and worthy of consideration, particularly in a time and place where the perspicuity of Scripture is too rarely taught and confessed -- and too swiftly dismissed or denied. |
THESIS XIV
The Ev. Lutheran Church holds fast to the clearness of Scripture. (There are no "views" and "open questions.")
THESIS XV
The Ev. Lutheran Church acknowledges no HUMAN interpreter of Scripture whose interpretation must be received as infallible and binding on account of his office; 1. not an individual, 2. not an order, 3. not a particular or general council, 4. not a whole Church (nicht eine ganze Kirche).
THESIS XVI
The Ev. Lutheran Church accepts God's Word as it interprets itself.
A. The Ev. Lutheran Church lets the original text alone decide.
B. The Ev. Lutheran Church, in the interpretation of the words and sentences, holds fast to the usage of language.
C. The Ev. Lutheran Church acknowledges only the literal sense as the true sense.
D. The Ev. Lutheran Church holds the literal sense has but one sense.
E. The Ev. Lutheran Church, in interpreting, is guided by the context and the intention. Otherwise the Scripture is garbled.
F. The Ev. Lutheran Church acknowledges the literal sense may be the improper sense as well as the proper; but it does not depart from the proper sense unless forced by Scripture itself either the circumstances of the text itself or a parallel passage or the analogy of faith.
G. The Ev. Lutheran Church interprets the dark passages by the clear ones.
H. The Ev. Lutheran Church takes the articles of faith from the texts constituting the seat of doctrine and judges all obiter dicta accordingly.
I. The Ev. Lutheran Church rejects out of hand every interpretation not in harmony with the analogy of faith, Rom. 12:7.
THESIS XVII
The Ev. Lutheran Church accepts the whole written Word of God (as God's Word), deems nothing in it superfluous or of little worth but everything needful and important, and also accepts all teaching deduced of necessity from the word of Scripture.
THESIS XVIII
The Ev. Lutheran Church gives to each teaching of God's Word the place and importance it has in God's Word itself.
A. It makes the teaching concerning Christ, or justification, the foundation and marrow and guiding star of all teaching.
B. The Ev. Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between the Law and the Gospel.
C. The Ev. Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between the fundamental and the non-fundamental articles of doctrine contained in Scripture.
D. The Ev. Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between what God's Word commands and what it leaves free. (Things indifferent [adiaphora], church government.)
E. The Ev. Lutheran Church distinguishes as sharply as cautiously between the Old and the New Testament.
THESIS XIX
The Ev. Lutheran Church accepts no teaching as an article of faith which is not contained in God's Word and is therefore not absolutely sure and certain.
THESIS XX
The Ev. Lutheran Church prizes the gift of interpreting Scripture as given by God to individuals, 1 Cor. 12:4, 7, 8, 10, 30; 14:32; 1 Thess. 5:20. |
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