From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Limits to Criticism/3
Date: 26 Aug 92 05:46:01 GMT
Organization: Fermi Lab


 LIMITS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION TO 
                   PLENARY INSPIRATION

A.  LIMITS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION TO 
     PLENARY INSPIRATION
B.  THE IMPOSSIBILITY THAT A FALLIBLE MESSAGE COULD
     BECOME THE WORD OF GOD

*   1)  CRITERIA FOR DISCERNING THE WORD OF GOD
*   2)  ESCAPING THE TRAP OF SUBJECTIVISM
*   3)  MYTH-HUNTING
    4)  GOD WITHOUT GOD-GOD Is DEAD-MAN Is GOD
    5)  WHAT FINALLY REMAINS
    6)  ILLOGICALNESS

C.  EVANGELICALS SUPPOSEDLY NONSCIENTIFIC IN REGARD TO
     THE BIBLE

Excerpts from "The Inspiration & Authority of Scripture"  by Rene Pache,
copyright 1969, Moody Press.  Used by permission.


B.  THE IMPOSSIBILITY THAT A FALLIBLE MESSAGE COULD
     BECOME THE WORD OF GOD

     If the biblical text is so uncertain, its authors in all points fallible,
and its pages replete with legends and errors, in what way is a believer to
know the truth? This happens, they tell us, when God makes use of the text,
such as it is, to reach him directly, here and now. Then it is that this
message becomes "God's Word"; and the revelation is granted to a man in this
personal encounter with the Lord. John Murray sums up as follows the current
modern position, one which, we may add, is not his own:

     Scripture is authoritative because it witnesses to the Word of God; it is
the vessel or vehicle of the Word of God to us. In that respect Scripture is
said to be unique.... But what makes Scripture really authoritative, on this
view, is the ever-recurring act of God, the divine decision, whereby, through
the mediacy of Scripture, the witness of Scripture to the Word of God is borne
home to us with ruling and compelling power. The Scripture is not authoritative
antecedently and objectively. It is only authoritative as here and now, to this
man and to no other, in a concrete crisis and confrontation, God reveals
himself through the medium of Scripture. Only as there is the ever recurring
human crisis and divine decision does the Bible become the Word of God.
     Let us quote the remark which Theodore Engelder made about these
theologians: "They refuse to believe that God performed the miracle of giving
us by inspiration an infallible Bible, but are ready to believe that God daily
performs the greater miracle of enabling men to find and see in the fallible
word of man the infallible Word of God."
     If it is true that the Bible transmits the Word of God to me only in the
moment when I meet God by means of its truth or when its message touches me
personally, this is the same as saying that the authority of Scripture resides
in the one who receives its message. This concept is, in fact, a confusion
between the inspiration of the Bible and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.
     Furthermore, what is this text which "becomes the Word of God"? asks
Robert Preus.

     "It is the Word of God. It does not, and in the nature of the case cannot,
become the Word of God. It does not become the Word of God when the Church
recognizes it as such or when God acts upon a person to accept it as such. Just
as the letter of a friend expresses his views, so the Scriptures present at all
times God's plan concerning our salvation.... No matter how the Word of God is
viewed, it is the same, one identical Word of God. It may be viewed as the mind
of God, as in the minds of the prophets, as written by these men, or as
received into our hearts; but it always remains the same Word of God."

1) CRITERIA FOR DISCERNING THE WORD OF GOD

     When it is claimed that the Bible merely "contains" the Word of God at the
moment when a believer "discovers" it, an insoluble difficulty is actually
raised. J. I. Packer clearly spells out the dilemma which contemporary
theologians run into. How can we affirm the accessibility of revelation in
Scripture without committing ourselves to belief in the absolute
trustworthiness of the biblical record? How can we 
"  assert the divine authority of biblical revelation without foreclosing the
possibility-indeed, it would be said, the proved reality-of human error in
Scripture? . . . The aim proposed is, not to withdraw the Bible from the
acid-bath of rationalistic criticism, but to find something to add to the bath
to neutralize its corrosive effects. The problem is how to enthrone the Bible
once more as judge of the errors of man while leaving man enthroned as judge of
the errors of the Bible; how to commend the Bible as a true witness while
continuing to charge it with falsehood. One cannot help thinking that it would
be something of a "tour de force" to give a convincing solution of a problem
like this. However, such is the task attempted by modern theology. It is
proposed . . . so to refashion the doctrine of revelation that the orthodox
subjection of heart and mind to biblical authority and the liberal subjection
of Scripture to the authority of rationalistic criticism appear, not as
contradictory, but as complementary, principles, each presupposing and
vindicating the other."  ("Contemporary Views of Revelation,"  J.I Packer)

Further, J. I. Packer inquires what the criterion for the revelation will be
then:
"     If there is no revealed truth, and the Bible is no more than human
witness to revelation, fallible and faulty, as all things human are, what
guarantee can we have that our apprehensions of revelation correspond to the
reality of revelation itself? We are sinful men and have no reason to doubt
that our own thoughts about revelation are as fallible and faulty as any; by
what standard, then, are we to test and correct them? . . . Historic
Christianity said that the biblical presentation of, and pattern of thinking
about, revelation-facts is such a standard. Modern theology, however, cannot
say this; for the characteristic modern position really boils down to saying
that the only standard we have for testing our own fallible judgments is our
own fallible judgment....
     The effect of following the modern approach has naturally been to
encourage a kind of biblical double-talk, in which great play is made with
biblical terms, and biblical categories are insisted on as the proper medium
for voicing Christian faith, but these are then subjected to a rationalistic
principle of interpretation which eliminates from them their basic biblical
meaning (e.g., a story such as that of the Fall is treated as *mythical*,
significant and true as a symbol revealing the actual state of men today, but
false if treated as the record of an objective historical happening). Thus
theological currency has been debased, and a cloud of ambiguity now broods over
much modern "biblicism." This, at least, is to the credit of Bultmann that,
having pursued this approach so radically as to categorize the whole New
Testament doctrine of redemption as mythical, he has seen, with a
clear-headedness denied to many, that the most sensible thing to do next is to
drop the mythology entirely and preach simply that brand of existentialism
which, in his view, represents the New Testament's real "meaning." (ibid.)

In regard to the story of Elijah (I Kings 17 and 18), in spite of the
confirmations given by Jesus (Luke 4:25-26) and by James (5:16-18), a professor
in one of our faculties of theology declared not long ago: "We might say that
this account is historically false, but spiritually true." What will this
professor's students think; and, especially, what will they preach about it to
a naive public which "believes" that the Bible tells the truth.

2)  ESCAPING THE TRAP OF SUBJECTIVISM

     If the Bible is not itself the revelation, if it is fallible and erroneous
in theology and in morality as well as in history and science, the so-called
"Word of God" which I receive by means of it will be eminently subjective; that
is, it will depend on my experience and my appreciation of it. In fact, who is
to decide what is true and what is of value in the text before me? How am I to
know if the events it relates are authentic, or if they are embellished, or
even invented? How can I distinguish between facts and doctrine and between the
essential message and the background, which, I am told, is not to be depended
on? In fact, it turns out that human reason is what inevitably makes the
decision, on the basis of certain criteria inherent in our own thinking. The
knowledge and understanding of man is, therefore, the supreme judge as to what
the Word of God is.
     Again, how can we discern any such Word of God? How identify it or
recognize it? This burning question haunts E.J. Young too.  One keeps coming
back to subjectivism, according to which man himself is the one to make the
judgments.
For all practical purposes, everyone who makes a distinction between Scripture
and the Word of God accepts biblical criticism, often in its most radical form.
With this, every word of the text can be, and is indeed, subjected to question.
All the knowledge which modern theologians have of God, the Trinity, Jesus
Christ, the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and that which they call "the Word of
God"- all of this comes from the very words of the Bible. But if those words
are not sure or are not worthy of confidence, must one then keep searching in
his own mind for certainty? How can anything definite be made out of this
nebulous communication, seeing it is not the words themselves which speak to
us? Moreover, the Word perceived will be variable from one person to another,
even from one great theologian to another. Just think of the fundamental
differences which sometimes obtain among Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Tillich and
Robinson. Where then is the truth?
     We have just been speaking about what we have called subjectivism, but we
could also use the terms "illuminism" or "mysticism." In *illuminism* the
believer claims that he receives a special light directly from God, some
communication from the Spirit which makes him independent of the written
revelation. We do indeed believe that the Lord can address Himself directly to
each individual among us. But in order to keep us from extravagance, He has
given us the indispensable touchstone of His infallible Word. Modem theologians
are without this norm, and the whole history of the church shows us the dangers
inherent in such a situation.
     *Mysticism* is a communication of the soul with God, which in its essence
remains inexpressible. This, for example, is what Brunner has in mind when he
speaks of the "personal encounter," in which God speaks to the individual. The
communication He effects by means of it is ineffable, and it cannot be
expressed by any articulated word. Once again, with no reference to Scripture,
the authoritative norm, what is this but an uncontrolled mysticism?
     In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries man was convinced of the
infallibility of human reason, which he did not hold to be at all tainted by
sin. Our contemporaries have been disillusioned on this point. They have seen
the collapse of many philosophies and ideologies; they are aware of the
influence of nonrational factors on thought; they have established the power of
propaganda and of brainwashing; and they see to what lengths the uncontrolled
use of human science and intelligence can lead. They are close to giving up on
the hope of acquiring objective knowledge of anything at all. Where are they
going to discover the certainties which their lives so much need? They are not
going to find them through men who, although confessing the failure of
rationalism, at the same time question divine truth put down in writing. Apart
from revelation, as a standard by which to evaluate and correct our fallible
human notions, sinners such as we are will be forever cast upon the shore of an
ocean of doubts and speculations. And when modern theology tells us that we
cannot trust either the Bible or ourselves, it turns us over to an uncertain
fate with no hope or respite. All this, taken literally, leads straight to
dogmatic skepticism. The situation at this point is only obscured the more if
we speak of paradox, or of dialectical tension. In reality, in the attempt to
reconcile two contradictory positions, modern theology simply condemns itself
to an indefinite succession of arbitrary oscillations between the affirmation
or negation of the trustworthiness of human speculations and the biblical
dictums. The closest it can come to any fixed principle is the guarded
conclusion that we can have no certain knowledge of God whatsoever. The only
way to avoid such a conclusion is by a return to the traditional position
concerning Scripture, identical with that of the Bible itself; namely, that it
is the written and infallible revelation of God.

MYTH-HUNTING

     It is quite in style to talk about the myths of the Bible.  A myth is not
a legend or a fable, but "a story by which the events in the spiritual world
are described in terms of earthly occurrences, or earthly events are shown in
relation to their spiritual roots."  Professor Rudolf Bultmann of Marbourg has
obtained a great deal of notoriety and an immense influence through his
attempts to "demythologize" the Bible, especially the New Testament. Let us sum
up the evaluation which P. Hughes makes of this in his "Scripture and Myth":
Bultmann's idea is that if we purge every element of myth from the biblical
text, the irreducible core of the gospel-the kerygma (the proclamation, the
truth to be preached)-will remain. We have already mentioned, on pp. 62-63,
some "mythical" elements which, according to him should be eliminated. Whatever
is miraculous is synonymous with the mythological and thus is foreign to modern
man, whose mind is overwhelmingly "technological."(One book often mentioned in
regard to "demythologizing" is "Kerygma & Myth, edited by Hans Werner Bartsch.)
     According to Bultmann, Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary man whose person
and work are divested of any supernatural character.  He was, however, a
concrete figure in history; and His crucifixion did really take place. As for
the rest, Bultmann declares that the miraculous birth, empty tomb and ascension
are stories and the resurrection a nonhistorical event that ought not to be
taken literally. The doctrine which makes of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, a
preexistent Being is simply mythological. Those elements of the New Testament,
and others with them, are rapidly (and conveniently) dispensed with as being
most certainly ulterior embellishments of the primitive tradition.  As for the
expiatory death of Christ, that mythological interpretation is a pile of
sacrificial and juridical analogies which have ceased to be tenable today.
Death as punishment for sin, Bultmann goes on to say, is revolting to
naturalism and also to idealism, since death, as seen by both, is simply a
normal process beyond which there is nothing at all. Thus the Christian hope is
pointless.

     "All our thinking today is shaped by modern science. Now that the forces
and laws of nature have been discovered, the miracles of the New Testament
world of demons and spirits; the mythical eschatology is untenable; we can no
longer look for the return of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven, or hope
that the faithful will meet in the air; and, thanks to modern man's
understanding of himself, it can now be asserted that human nature is a
self-subsistent unity immune from the interference of supernatural powers." 
(Rudolf Bultmann, "Scripture and Myth")

     P.E. Hughes concludes: Bultmann poses the principle that the knowledge of
"modern man" and "modern science" is determinative of what is and what is not
possible in our world. Thus he attributes authority to this knowledge of man
and so pronounces against the knowledge and the authority of God. "Can he not
see that the logic of his own position cries out for him to take the one last
step of declaring 'God' to be the ultimate myth to be eliminated?'' The whole
brochure is well worth pondering.


NOTE:  apparently some of you are experiencing problems in getting EMail to me.
 You can do it by addressing  REXLEX@FNAL.FNAL.GOV

Next: 
     4)  GOD WITHOUT GOD-GOD Is DEAD-MAN Is GOD
     5)  WHAT FINALLY REMAINS
     6)  ILLOGICALNESS