Some thoughts on the canon

Whenever anyone challenges me about the church's role in choosing the canon I still come back to a quotation I read in my first few years of being a Christian:

"the church did not select and authorize the canon but recognized it and sat down under its authority. When a patient returns to a doctor and says, 'Yes, that medicine is exactly what I need', the patient does not authorize the medicine but recognizes its inherent authorization." (p. 207, Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock)

One reason why I think Motyer's point works, even if it could be refined, is because it does not separate the Bible's authority from its purpose. You cannot know the authority of scripture apart from its saving work in your life, and the early church didn't try.

But how did the early church know that the purpose of any books claiming to be the word of God should be salvation of sinners? They could, and to some extent did, think of it as a political tool, a guidebook to life etc instead. However, from creation onwards the church has experienced the word of God and has known that it is characterised by the creation of life. The word of God and God's saving activity have always been inseparable.

So when it came to deciding the canon the primary question asked of any book was does this book bring salvation? Questions about historical reliability and apostolic authority are also valid, but are correctly understood as part of this question. The church cares that they provide historically reliable access to Jesus of Nazareth because he is our Saviour, and we care that their authority derives from Jesus because only he has the authority to forgive our sins.

But how do we know if a book brings salvation? We know salvation by the Spirit who gives life and freedom (John 6:63; 2 Corinthians 3:17). In this sense the Spirit authenticates the Bible. Not by a little voice in the head saying "yes that's true" or "no that's a fake", but by the new life that accompanies it (cf. John 3:8). Paul appeals to the Galatians experience of the Spirit ("Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?", 3:2) not just to verify the sufficiency of faith but to verify the Gospel of Christ he preached and they heard (1:6-7). God's word, God's salvation and God's Spirit are all inseparable. Our salvation is hidden with Christ, but we have the down-payment of the Spirit, so if we have the Spirit we can know we have life as an inheritance waiting for us (cf. 1 Peter 1:4-5).

But finally, how do we know if we have the Spirit? Paul and John both agree on one answer to this:

"No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3)

"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God" (1 John 4:2)

So to a degree, we can ask the question about the canon apart from our personal experience. We can ask, does the Bible confess Jesus Christ as Lord? Jesus thought the OT did (John 5:39) and I'm convinced all the NT does too. And if it does, when we can be sure that it is the Spirit-breathed, salvific word of God. But when I have come across non-canonical 'Gospels' I've been less convinced they confess the Jesus as Lord.

In Matthew and Luke I find that Jesus is confessed as the Lord who goes searching after lost sinners like a good shepherd (Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7). In the Gospel of Thomas I find a Jesus confessed as the Lord who who also goes searching for a lost sheep, but that sheep also happens to be the largest sheep and is never identified with sinners (saying 107). That seems like a different Jesus, and a different Lord to me, and it brings no salvation for a lost sinner.

Questions to ask of scripture

What are the questions we should ask when approaching a passage of Scripture?

The first question we must ask of every biblical text is simply this—what does it tell us about God? What does it say about who he is and about what he does?

The second question is: what does this text say about us human beings? What are we meant to be and what has gone wrong?

The third and final question is: what has God done about this and what does he expect of us in the light of what he has done? (source)

I quite like those, so will try and remember them. I may want to change it a little to emphasise that it is God speaking to us, but generally I think they're quite helpful. So like most helpful stuff I know I'll forget, I'll blog them.

The clarity of Scripture is found in Christ alone

Listening to: Regina Specktor: Far

Erasmus argued against Luther that some doctrines in the Bible are unclear, and you cannot make confident statements about them. He believed that the freedom of the will was one of these.

Luther, was having none of it:

This indeed I confess, that there are many places in the Scriptures obscure and abstruse; not from the majesty of the thing, but from our ignorance of certain terms and grammatical particulars; but which do not prevent a knowledge of all the things in the Scriptures. For what thing of more importance can remain hidden in the Scriptures, now that the seals are broken, the stone rolled from the door of the sepulchre, and that greatest of all mysteries brought to light, Christ made man: that God is Trinity and Unity: that Christ suffered for us, and will reign to all eternity? Are not these things known and proclaimed even in our streets? Take Christ out of the Scriptures, and what will you find remaining in them? (source)

He goes on to make a incredible statement:

If many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth.

That is a radical statement. But its born out of a faith which sees Christ as all of Christianity. Do we think the same way? Luther argues that the test is whether we find things in the Scriptures unlcear.

The formal and material principles

Philip Schaff defines the formal and material principles of the Reformation thus:

the material of life principle (principium essendi) of the Reformation [...] is no other than the great doctrine, which is presented by Paul especially as the entire sum of the gospel - the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith [...]

the formal or knowledge principle [...] consists in this, that the word of God, as it has been handed down to us in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, is the pure and proper source as well as the only certain measure of all saving truth.

(italics original, p.80-98, The Principle of Protestantism)

Martin Luther may be everyone's go-to guy for the material principle, but would we point to the person who called James an 'epistle of straw' as a great exponent of the formal principle? A lot could be written about Luther's doctrine of Scripture, but I think Oswald Bayer gets to the heart of why Luther doesn't fit into the standard neat distinction of formal and material principles. For Luther the 'authority of Scripture is not formal but is highly material and is content driven' (p.69, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation). This means that we don't follow a two step plan to knowing the truth of God:

• Step 1: Establish source of revelation
• Step 2: From that source derive knowledge of God and how we relate to him

This is the way that many Protestant confessions seem to proceed (at least post-Reformation), and it is the way many systematic theologies are organised. Oswald Bayer certainly does not like to do things that way though:

one does not arrive at the solution to the question [of the authority of Scripture] "in the passionless calm of a knowledge which is in the element of pure thought alone" [Hegel]; instead, it includes a change in the existence of the reader and interpreter. The Holy Scripture verifies itself, in that it awakens faith. As has been stated already, it does not work for one to take the so-called scriptural principle and try to differentiate between a "Protestant formal principle" and a "Protestant material principle," which states the teaching about justification; one certainly ought not to treat them as separate. Both are one and the same: wrapped up in the event that takes place when the righteousness of God is actually given as a gift, at the moment the promissio is articulated, one encounters the authority of Scripture, its efficacy and clarity - its ability to enlighten - as well as its sufficiency: its power to bring one to salvation - if indeed Scriputure is given "for the salvation" of human beings (2 Tim. 3:15). The question about the significance of the reformational turning point in Luther's theology and the question about Luther's understanding of biblical authority are the same; they are one and the same question.

(p.75-76, ibid)

I think this is related to what Mike Reeves is getting at when he says when you treat revelation as 'the ladder to get you up into the actual playroom of Christian theology, you tend to treat revelation and scripture in a non-Christian way because it is outside the room' (beginning of talk 2 here). Mike Reeves concern here is with the relation between Christology and revelation, but one thing I have begun to see lately is that Christology, revelation and salvation are all so bound up together that you cannot really separate them without doing some serious harm. John Calvin's Geneva Catechism, 1541, exemplifies that:

1. Minister. What is the chief end of human life?

Child. To know God

[...how do we know?...]

C. By His Word, in which He declares His mercy to us in Christ, and assures us of His love toward us

14. M. Then the foundation for true reliance upon God is to know Him in Jesus Christ (John 17:3)?

C. That is true

(pp.5-7, Trans. and ed. TF Torrance, The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church - that is the beginning and end of the introduction section prior to the section on the Apostles Creed)

This may seem to be the height of obscure theological discussion, but if you think that just meditate a while on what this means for how you try and witness to the truth of the Gospel to non-Christians.

Is bibliolatry a valid criticism?

Bibliolatry is not a criticism often taken very seriously by Evangelicals. Partly this is because it can be difficult to understand how to distinguish it from a high view of scripture. I think this quote demonstrates what it looks like in practice:

Many who reacted in anger to the Bishop of Durham's remarks about the empty tomb in 1985 were not, I believe, interested in what he had to say about the resurrection as such, but much more with the fact that he was contradicting statements made in the New Testament. That, rather than any doctrinal question, was what worried them. The fact that it was the resurrection about which historical questions were being raised was really a side-issue, for from such a perspective the resurrection is really no more important than any other event recorded in Scripture; it is the factual accuracy of Scripture as such that matters. It is at this point that one begins to see why some people would describe fundamentalism as a heresy – that is, a kind of single-issue fanaticism which destroys the structure of the Christian faith.

(p. 40, John Barton, People of the Book? The authority of the bible in Christianity, London: SPCK)

It's a damning indictment (I think). But are we acting any different in current debates?