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Both read the bible day and night
But thou readest black where I read white.
Blake
When we are discussing
authority we have to remember that there are 2 forms of authority, coercive
and influential. Coercive, I have a gun do as you are told, or the appeal
type authority which has the power to influence action opinion or belief,
like a moral authority or the appeal of parents or lovers. The bible is a
place of meeting, a book of meeting and such a meeting has a risk for God
and a risk for the reader. As we look at the interaction between God and
his people throughout the history of the Jewish nation and then in the NT
coercive power and authority is hardly ever used. We could say it was used
against Pharaoh to release the people of the Jews from bondage but
predominantly the interaction with God is through prophecy, the still small
voice, the wilderness, on the mountain top and certainly in the NT this God
is not coercive. All the scriptures point to Jesus and in the person of
Jesus we see a God who is anything but coercive. He takes the form of a
slave for the Son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his
life as a ransom for many.
As Primates of our
Communion seeking to exercise the "enhanced responsibility"' entrusted to us
by successive Lambeth Conferences, we re-affirm our common understanding of
the centrality and authority of scripture in determining the basis of
our faith. Whilst we acknowledge a legitimate diversity of
interpretation arises in the Church, this diversity does not mean that some
of us take the authority of scripture more lightly than
others. Nevertheless, each province needs to be aware of the
possible effects of its interpretation of scripture on the life of
other provinces in the Communion. We commit ourselves afresh to mutual
respect whilst seeking from the Lord a correct discernment of how God's Word
speaks to us in our contemporary world.
The Scripture itself
cannot decide the controversy, for the controversy is concerning itself: the
parties engaged in the controversy cannot decide it, for either of
them thinks his own opinion to be grounded upon Scripture. Now how can this
question be decided better or otherwise than by the whole
Church's exposition of the Scripture, which side of the controversy it is
for, and which side it is against?
The New is in the Old
contained
The Old is in the New explained
The New is in the Old enfolded
The Old is in the New unfolded
The New is in the Old concealed
The Old is in the New revealed.
Law and prophecy were
thus the primary agents of Yahweh's revelation of himself to Israel. Both
were at first given orally. Both carne to be collected in writing. This
fact is very significant. It shows that the history was not separated from
its interpretation as the record of Yahweh's word in the events ; so close
was the unity believed to exist between history and message. Thus were Law
and Prophecy assembled in authorative collections, and became the first two
elements in the Bible of the Jewish Church. The third collection -the books
known as the writings was made, at least earlier than the time of Jesus
Christ. This collection included (in the Hebrew 3b Canon) the Psalms ; the
three Wisdom books, Job, Proverbs and Ecciesiastes ; three books of
history, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah; and Daniel, Canticles, Ruth,
Lamentations and Esther. The inclusion of these indicated the belief that
God's revelation came through media of speech and writing other than the
law- and the prophets.
All this served and
witnessed to the action of the word of Yaweh in Israel, the word which not
only created the response of righteousness but also exposed and judged
failure : the word which is seen not only in Israel's struggles. The
inclusion of the writings shows how comprehensive was that action in Israel
of the word which prophecy interpreted.
The threefold
collection of books formed the Canon of Sacred Scripture. The assumption
behind the making of the Canon was that prophecy had ceased to happen ; and
henceforth it is in Holy Scripture that the people must find the word of
Yahweh. The source of the authority of scripture was held to be divine
inspiration, for the written Books had an authority no less and no different
from that of he prophets themselves. The Books were sacred. They were the
Word of God. To learn what is divine truth, it was necessary to inquire as
to ` what is written '. The scriptures ` cannot be broken
The NT books consisted
of unique writings the 4 gospels of which there is no equivalent in the
world of literature and letters from various apostles including Paul Books
that were read in the early Christian communities were those which had
apostolic authority Mark close to Peter Luke in relation to Paul. It
therefore gradually emerged which books had this authority and the first
list we have of the books in the NT as we know them was by Athanasius in his
Easter letter of 367. Note that this is nearly 400 years since the birth of
Christ.
As some stories in the
Acts remind us reading the scriptures was not an easy task It is also
certain from the gospels that Jesus gave some radical new meanings to the
scripture of his day summing up all his understanding in the maxim love God
and love neighbour. In Act there is the story of Cornelius who is used by
God to widen Peter’s understanding of membership of the church where the
Holy Spirit had gone on ahead of the contempory understanding of God’s
purposes.
Thus the scriptures
were settled until the reformation period and subsequently the 19th
cent. During this time we must remember that printing only came in during
the middle ages and secondly that the ability to read was confined to an
educated small elite often under the influence of religious institutions or
universities.
With the beginning of
scientific discovery and certainly under the influence of Darwinism and the
theory of Evolution the whole question of the authority of the scriptures
with its account of creation came under fresh scrutiny. For the first time
the scriptures were examined using critical methods. Questions were asked
about their authorship and purpose. What authority do they have in the
modern world. A summary has been given as follows.
1 Scripture yields
its meaning to persistent study;
2 All Scripture has
more yet to teach as generations pore over
3 No Scripture will
yield its truth in the face of a simple evasion of the need to discover
its original meaning (Ideally in its original language) in its original
setting for its original addressees
4 No Scripture will
be truly comprehensible if we overlook its literary genre;
5 No Scripture will
help us if we are blind to the limitations of our own generation and to
the blinkers with which we are likely to read the text;
6 No Scripture will
help us if we do not attempt to relate it to other Scripture so that a
consistent whole may be found;
7 No Scripture will
help us if we insist on grappling with it as an individualistic task
without reference to what others I have done with the text in the past and
are doing around us at the moment;
8 No Scripture will
help us if we are determined not to act on its teaching once discovered;
9 No Scripture will
help us if we do not hold to some provisionality in our understanding of
it, pending such further light as may affect our understanding.
This scholarship also
raised another huge debate. Did the church form the scriptures or did the
scriptures form the church?
1 The Church
preceded Scripture and has authority over it;
2 Oral tradition
conveyed the Gospel from the start - and it was a random, or at least
selective, matter as to which parts of the oral tradition happened to find
written expression in Scripture; plenty did not, but, orally
conveyed, they are no less apostolic;
3 The Church itself
then defied the canon of Scripture:
-
The word of God in
the Old Testament (and in live testimony to Jesus) created the Church;
-
That word, written
down as the New Testament writings, much an urbane product of the
Church's internal teachings as God's fiery prophetic word to correct,
continue and establish the Church, which his word had
originally formed;
-
The Church did not
arbitrarily define the canon, but rather finding the apostolic corpus of
writings within itself acknowledged the canon's authority and submitted
to it.
The difficult onus of
proof is on any unscriptural latter day belief which claims to have come
unwritten from the apostles.
In conclusion the
authority of scripture is likely to be more of the appeal type of
authority rather than coercive. The understanding of scripture is to be
found in the mind of the whole church and not just part of it.
Each generation has the
task of interpreting the scriptures for its own day.
If we never read the
scriptures they will never become that meeting place where God meets his
people and it is risky on both sides.
We are not meant to
read the scriptures with blinkers on. As Anglicans we have 4 basic
ingredients to our faith scripture, tradition, reason and experience.
Both read the scriptures day and night
Thou readest black and I read white.
Tom Leary
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