Just How Plain is the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture?

By Revd Dr Phillip Tolliday

A recent document posted by the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans notes that: ‘We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary to salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.’ Jerusalem Declaration – Article 2.

In this paper I want to inquire into what might be meant by the plain sense of Scripture. (1) One of my primary questions will be: just how plain is the plain sense? To anticipate my conclusion, I believe the answer can be stated both negatively and positively. Negatively, the plain sense of Scripture is plainer than a deconstructionist believes it can be, but not nearly as plain as a fundamentalist believes it is. Positively stated, the plain sense of Scripture is sufficiently plain. In this context ‘sufficient’ is a loaded term, referring as it does to the sufficiency of Scripture and thereby forming part of the complex of the so-called Properties of Scripture.

In a world where the plain sense of any text is under suspicion it may seem overly ambitious to assert that we must read, preach, teach and obey the Bible in its plain and canonical sense. Indeed a moment’s sober reflection might serve to show us that given the manifestly different, not to say contradictory, interpretations of Scripture within our various communities that the plain sense of Scripture appears to be anything but plain. To this situation there are at least two possible—though to my mind unsatisfactory—solutions. The first is to say that the plain sense of Scripture simply entails the abandonment of the hermeneutical task. If all believers can find Scripture clear in its meaning and application then perhaps we just have to live with a ‘conflict of interpretations.’ The situation invited by such a scenario is the same one dogging the Anglican Communion at the moment: how much conflict can be sustained while still remaining under the same roof called ‘Christian.’ The second solution is to say that Scripture is the Church’s book and must therefore be interpreted according to the rule of faith. On this understanding it is ‘The church to teach and define, the Bible to illustrate and confirm.’ But it is here that the Protestant critique of the principle of tradition begins to bite, because how do we know that the magisterium of the church is a correct interpreter of Scripture? Moreover what becomes of the church’s obligation to listen to the Scriptures? Are not the dynamics driving the various authorities within the church similar to those of the individual interpreters? In what follows I will suggest that an understanding of the plain sense of Scripture does not commit us to the elimination of ‘readerly activity,’ nor does it ‘suspend interpretation.’(2)

II

Kathryn Tanner addresses the issue of the plain sense of Scripture via a ‘theological investigation that is almost sociological in nature.'(3) She argues that the meaning of the plain sense is to be discerned from its function within specific faith communities. Thus the plain sense is the familiar, the traditional and hence authoritative meaning of a text within a community whose conventions for the reading of it have therefore already become relatively sedimented.' (4) By this I take her to mean that the plain sense is the sense which is immediately apparent within the community and is accepted as their ‘unselfconscious habit.’ It may also be her way of countering a suspicion that the plain sense consists of whatever the community might say any given text ‘means,’ but this is not her point. To say that the conventions for reading a text in a particular way have become relatively sedimented means that a reading which strikes the community as unfamiliar would, on Tanner’s account, be not according to the plain sense. But presumably it could become so, since the plain sense is not anything ‘in itself, apart from an interpretive practice of using texts’ by the community. (5 Since her discussion of the plain sense is formal, ie., she is looking for the plain sense as a function of communal practice, it follows that she does not attempt to ‘prejudge the material character of the plain sense as that is variously established in fact by different communities or by the same community at different times or in different circumstances.' (6) Consequentially the plain sense need not be always and everywhere the same.

A tangible and material example of how Tanner’s proposal works in practice is provided by Kathryn Greene-McCreight who shows how the literal meaning or plain sense of Genesis 1-3 has been variously interpreted and understood by Augustine, Calvin and Barth. Her conclusion, which is justified by comprehensive examples from all three thinkers is that ‘the intent to read the “plain sense” in the examples of exegesis examined…almost never amounts to a search for the single meaning of the text.' (7) Instead we find ourselves confronted with three discrete attempts to negotiate the plain sense by way of an engagement between the text and the rule of faith.

Augustine emphasizes the importance of the literal meaning of the text, claiming that allegorical meanings can only be favoured over the literal in those cases where the literal meaning would be contrary to the rule of love. Ironically, Augustine himself found the literal meaning of the text repulsive and it was instead the sermons of Ambrose, themselves based on allegorical interpretations of Scripture, which finally turned Augustine’s heart toward the Gospel. In his negotiation of the plain sense, Augustine is attuned to ‘both intra-communal and extra-communal apologetics.’ Augustine’s plain reading is limited in part by the verbal sense of the text as well as by the rule of faith. Significantly the latter not only poses a ‘limit to polysemy,’ it also ‘generates polysemy’—and it is able to do both because the text cannot be read in contradiction to the catholic faith. However, in the end it is ‘on the basis of the literal sense that one can and must authorize doctrine.' (8)

In seeming distinction from Augustine, Calvin preferred the literal reading and disdained allegorical interpretation; a position which accounted in part for his criticism of Origen. In his commentary on Galatians he wrote: ‘Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and simple one [verum sensum scripturae, qui germanus est et simplex] and let us embrace and hold it resolutely. Let us not merely neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions, those pretended expositions which lead us away from the literal sense [a literali sensu].' (9) But what exactly did Calvin mean by the literal sense? Suffice it to say here that for Calvin the literal sense did not automatically rule out figural interpretation. Indeed literal interpretation turns out to be more complex than we might imagine because Calvin’s negotiation is between the verbal sense of the text and his doctrine of God. Whereas Augustine’s reading of the text was informed to some degree by his neo-Platonic background, Calvin’s is shaped by the cultural milieu of Humanism. Calvin, more than Augustine, interprets the biblical text according to the letter, ie., literally, but because of this, and not in spite of it, this means that he reads much of the text figuratively. In addition, the reason why a ruled reading necessitates a figurative interpretation of many texts is because for Calvin the purpose of the text is to expound doctrine and ethics.

Barth’s understanding of the plain sense of Scripture is controlled by his assumption ‘that the Bible’s central function is to witness to Jesus Christ.' (10) Barth distinguishes between the categories of myth and saga and reserves the term ‘saga’ for the creation stories. Since saga has to do with history, even if it is not limited to history, it follows that the creation stories considered as saga ‘call for reading a “deep” literal sense, one which “points beyond itself.”'(11) Since Barth regards the creation stories as saga he is able to make a very close connection between the literal or simple and figurative meaning in the text. Indeed for Barth ‘Scripture is read “plainly” in the inextricable conjunction of simple and figurative reading.’(12) Greene-McCreight provides an example of this
conjunction in Barth’s discussion of the work of creation on the third day.

‘The sea of which [the passage] speaks is, of course, literally and concretely the fluid element in all its earthly fullness, gathered and maintained in its place in relation to the earth, forming the natural western boundary of Palestine. But as such it is much more…it is a sign which points beyond itself…Similarly, the ‘earth’ is literally and concretely the terra firma on which, protected from the onslaught of the sea, man may and will have his being. But while it is this, it is much more. The miracle of its existence as such is also a sign…visibly and palpably it is a presentation of the grace in virtue of which God sustains and protects man for Himself and His purposes.' (13)

The polyvalence of the biblical texts means for Barth that a plain sense reading of Scripture must encompass the figural as well as the simple or surface meaning. In an example such as the one above, it is those elements of the story that point beyond themselves that signify no less than the simple, the proper and plain sense of the text.

Greene-McCreight’s conclusions from her study of Augustine, Calvin and Barth suggest that a plain sense reading of Scripture is based on more than its purely verbal sense. There is a constant negotiation between the text and the ruled sense of reading. Each of these theologians ‘comes to the Bible with an overall understanding of the “plot” of the story. (14) To be sure, that plot differs from person to person, but formally, as Tanner has already suggested, this means that a plain sense reading will result from ‘a conjunction of verbal sense and prior understanding of the subject matter of the text provided by the conception of the Christian faith supplied by the apostolic tradition. (15) Not only is it the case that the plain sense need not be always and everywhere the same; it is not always and everywhere the same.

Rowan Williams has suggested that we need to ‘re-examine and re-state the case for the primacy of the literal.' (16) The relation between the literal and the non-literal sense of Scripture is best understood as a tension between ‘diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’ forms of reading. According to Williams, a literal reading is diachronic, by which he means that we can read a text in a dramatic way, ‘by following it through a single time-continuum, reading it as a sequence of changes, a pattern of transformations.' (17) These transformations include ‘the movement of the text as it stands,’ ‘the deeper movements or rhythms within it…the way in which it can put itself in question,’ an awareness on the part of the reader of the writer’s goals ‘as they are enacted in the text.' (18) These considerations lead to a measure of flexibility in the definition of ‘literal’ that Williams readily acknowledges ‘may seem odd.’ However, his point is that a literal reading of the text will disclose a dissonance as well as a resonance between the time of the text and our time. Such reading, is, he says, ‘a way of resisting the premature unities and harmonies of a non-literal reading (whether allegorical, existentialist, structuralist or deconstructionist), in which the time that matters is only the present of reader…' (19) Those of us who have employed such hermeneutical strategies are fully aware of their usefulness. But have we moved to these strategies too readily, bewitched by ‘narrow and sterile definitions of the literal sense against which recent hermeneutics has so sharply reacted.' (20)

Thomas Aquinas insisted on the priority of the literal sense of Scripture and he interpreted this literal or plain sense as the intention of the author—in the case of Scripture, God. Aquinas did not believe the literal sense to be dependent ‘on a belief that all scriptural propositions uncomplicatedly depict real states of affairs detail by detail; it can and does include metaphor…'(21) Consequently Aquinas allowed for an understanding of the literal or plain sense that included a ‘plurality of genres within it.’ However, this wider sense was lost and the culprit, according to Williams, was a ‘more sophisticated literary hermeneutic, by way of historical and comparative criticism’ that led to the redefinition of ‘literal’ that we now associate with fundamentalism (22) Williams argues that fundamentalism linked the literal with the historical, but then assumed (incorrectly) that the historical can apply only to a univocally descriptive and exact representation of particular sequences of fact. In the light of this it is interesting to consider that neither Augustine, nor Calvin nor Barth was able to sustain this demand for a univocal and exact representation of ‘fact’ in order to justify their plain sense or literal reading of the Scriptures.

These considerations lead Williams to propose that we ‘reconceive the literal sense of Scripture as an eschatological sense.' (23)This grows out of his assumption that how we understand our own relationship to the time and place of the text is an important element in ascertaining the plain sense of the text. A key question is, how does our time fit within the ‘time’ of the narrative? One way of testing how this works is by using a lectionary that involves us in reading as public performance. ‘At certain times, above all the paschal celebration, this is intensified in a way evidently designed to bring our time and the time of the canonical narrative together.'(24) But to read our time into the history of salvation is to read it into a time which is not yet complete. It is to read our lives in the light of the eschaton and it is therefore to be ‘integrated into…a future we cannot but call God’s because we have no secure human way of planning it or thematising it.' (25) Consequently, the literal or plain sense of Scripture guards against the premature closure of meaning. Far from the literal being a source ‘for problem-solving clarity, as it might appear for the fundamentalist’ it is instead always growing out of and being shaped by a particular set of communal and individual histories. In summary, Williams, like Greene-McCreight and Tanner, sees the plain sense reading of Scripture as an invitation to broaden interpretation and not restrict it.

III

The previous section has explored the possibility that the plain sense of Scripture might not be always and everywhere the same—indeed, that given the eschatological imperative in Christianity, it cannot remain the same. It has become clear that whatever the plain sense(s) of Scripture there is always some sort of negotiation—more or less explicit—that takes place between the text and the so-called ruled reading, better known as tradition. In this section I will touch on the plain sense of Scripture under the headings of ‘clarity’ and ‘perspicuity.’ These headings are reminiscent of the Reformation and post-Reformation polemics about the authority of Scripture and in particular the principle of sola scriptura.

Famously, Luther debated with Erasmus about the clarity of the Scriptures, arguing that Erasmus’ skeptical view of the Bible’s perspicuity was wrong. During the Council of Trent the debate with Luther was subsequently taken up and sharpened by Robert Bellarmine. Growing out of this polemical context, and driven in part by the objections of Bellarmine, Protestant Dogmatics came to refer to ‘the properties of sacred Scripture.’ They believed that objections raised against the clarity of Scripture entailed an assault on the authority of the Bible. In an attempt to defend the authority of the Bible they proposed a doctrinal complex consisting of Scripture’s ‘necessity,’ ‘sufficiency,’ ‘perspicuity,’ and ‘efficacy.'(26) Within this polemical context the perspicuity or clarity of Scripture was not simply, nor even primarily, an epistemological principle; it was also an hermeneutical, Christological, ecclesiological and critical principle.(27)

Fundamental to an understanding of the perspicuity of Scripture, and arguably the driving force behind all plain sense readings was the confessional principle: the notion that the clarity of Scripture had to do with God, and more specifically, with ‘God’s communicative act.' (28) Thus John Webster gets to the heart of the matter when he states,

‘Theological talk of the clarity of Holy Scripture is a corollary of the
church’s confession of the radiance of God in the gospel…The clarity of
Scripture is the work which God performs in and through this creaturely servant [ie., the Bible] as, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God illumines the communion of saints and enables them to see, love and live out the gospel’s truth.'(29)

These are strong claims and against them are ranged significant objections, five of which Thompson notes. Firstly, the doctrine fails to take account of the transcendent mystery that is the subject of Scripture. Secondly, the doctrine fails to acknowledge the God-given role of the church as the interpreter of Scripture. Thirdly, the doctrine fails to take seriously the nature of the words of Scripture. Fourthly, the doctrine fails in practice given the reality of diverse interpretations. Finally, the doctrine fails by its own criterion, since Scripture confesses its own obscurity. (30) None of these objections were new. Robert Bellarmine had already rehearsed most of them in the sixteenth-century.

In relation to Scripture testifying to its own obscurity, Bellarmine drew readers attention to Acts 8 where the Ethiopian eunuch needed an interpreter before he could understand the passage he was reading. He also pointed to 2 Peter 3:16 where the writer referred to some things in Paul’s letters that were ‘hard to understand.’ This, thought Bellarmine was enough to show that there was something wrong with the doctrine of perspicuity. He also referred to Augustine’s observations in De Doctrina Christiana where Augustine had opined that the obscure passages in Scripture were useful as a way of ‘taming our pride and rousing our understanding from listlessness.(31)

The Reformers responded by saying that these objections did not affect the doctrine of perspicuity, since they had never suggested that the clarity of Scripture should be confused with transparency. The assertion of perspicuity was not a call for the abandonment of hermeneutics (32) Neither was it an attempt to give the Bible qua text some magical or occult quality. Yet something gave rise to contrary suspicions and that something was an over-anxious desire to remove the subjective or communal dimension of Scripture in favour of its objectivity. This desire, understandable in the polemical context of the times was to create its own problems.

In Protestant Orthodoxy the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture took its place within a doctrine complex. Webster notes that within this ‘larger dogmatic ontology of the Bible’ such a complex provided a strategy against secularizing Scripture. By using this strategy the Reformers aimed to affirm that ‘these were not simply attributes of the subjective use of Scripture’ but were instead reflective of the ‘objective (though not, of course, non-natural) character of Scripture as divine communication.' (33) However, this push for objectivity did not come without its dangers and it is now evident that talk about the properties of Scripture could, and did, become disconnected from ‘talk of God’s reconciling and revelatory activity.’

Some attempts to defend the doctrine of perspicuity after the seventeenth-century fell into the trap of ‘talking of Scripture’s clarity in se and ante usum [so] that it became extracted from its proper dogmatic location and rendered as a natural property of the Bible qua text.' (34) And this in turn led to a situation in which ironically, the very thing that had been feared, ie., subjectivity, made its reappearance by way of ‘rational accessibility.’ Disconnecting perspicuity from its doctrinal and confessional setting meant that instead of its context being ‘the self-communicative presence of God to the community of faith’ it now became ‘the transparency of an historical report to historical reason.' (35) Thus a seemingly maximalist claim yielded minimalist conclusions.

IV

The second article in the Jerusalem Declaration is hardly making a spectacular claim in its demand that ‘the Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense.’ The tradition of the sensus literalis ‘is the closest one can come to a consensus reading of the Bible as the sacred text in the Christian church.' (36) Formally, therefore, I have no issue with the article as it stands; materially, however, I do have some reservations. I have tried to show the plain and canonical sense has varied from time to time. Yet the plain sense has been the consensus view and those who advocated it did not assume that their differences from previous readings entailed a diminution of the plain sense. It is more accurate to speak of the plain sense in the plural, whether we regard this as a consequence of eschatology (Williams), or communal life (Tanner), or multiple interpretations of the text (Greene-McCreight). Moreover, I have suggested that the post-Reformation quest to objectify Scripture and abstract it from its doctrinal setting which, being ecclesial, is at least eschatological and communal leads to a narrowing of the literal sense of Scripture, and this in turn suggests what all the defenders of perspicuity reject: namely, that the plain sense equals transparency.

1. For the purposes of this essay I shall regard the terms ‘plain sense,’ ‘clarity of scripture,’ and ‘perspicuity,’ a synonymous. Some would also include the ‘literal sense’ under this heading. For a recent attempt to distinguish the plain sense from other senses, i.e., the original, the intended, the historical and the literal, see John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism, Kentucky: WJKP, 2007. For a view that places the literal and the plain sense together, see Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram: How Augustine, Calvin and Barth Read the “Plain Sense” of Genesis 1-3, New York: Peter Lang, 1999.

2. John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Doctrine II, London: T & T Clark, 2005, 59.

3. Kathryn Tanner, ‘Theology and the Plain Sense,’ in Garrett Green, ed., Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987, 59-78, [60].

4. Tanner, ‘Theology and the Plain Sense,’ 63.

5. Tanner, ‘Theology and the Plain Sense,’ 64.

6. Tanner, ‘Theology and the Plain Sense,’ 65.

7. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 241, emphasis in the original.

8. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 80.

9. Cited by Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 97.

10. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 226.

11. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 186.

12. Greene-McCreight,Ad Litteram, 223.

13. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 223, emphasis in the original.

14. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 244.

15. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram, 244.

16. Rowan Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ Modern Theology, 7, 1993, 121-134 [124].

Williams, like Tanner, is indebted to the seminal essay by Hans Frei, ‘The “Literal Reading” of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?’ in Frank McConnell ed., The Bible and the Narrative Tradition, Oxford: OUP, 1986, 36-77.

17. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 123.

18. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 122.

19. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 123.

20. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 124.

21. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 123.

22. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 124.

23. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 132, emphasis in the original.

24. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 126.

25. Williams, ‘The Literal Sense of Scripture,’ 132.

26. Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 268.

27. Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons In Hermeneutics, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992, 180.

28. Mark D. Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture, Downers Grove: Apollos, 2006, 169-170. ‘The clarity of Scripture is that quality of the biblical text that, as God’s communicative act, ensures its meaning is accessible to all who come to it in faith.’

29. John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Doctrine II, London: T & T Clark, 2005, 33.

30. Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, 21-30.

31.Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, 15-153, for these and other examples and 153-157 for W. Whitaker’s response to Bellarmine.

32. Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader and the Morality of Literary Knowledge, Leicester: Apollos, 1998, 315-317.

33. Webster, Confessing God, 34-35, emphasis in the original.

34. Webster, Confessing God, 35.

35. Webster, Confessing God, 35.

36. Frei, ‘The “Literal Reading” of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?’, 37.

Response to Barbara Messner

By the Revd Dr Phillip Tolliday

I really enjoyed this article about the Word of God and Human Presumption. The words ‘Penned,’ and ‘Pinned’ function as the negative pole to the ‘Freedom of God’s Word to Speak,’ and the ‘Dialectic of the Canon,’ respectively. Although I appreciated these oppositional headings from a stylistic viewpoint I was left wondering whether the nature of the interaction was sometimes a bit stark. For example, the first opposition between ‘Scripture Penned vs. the Freedom of God’s Word to Speak,’ suggests a model of ‘penning?!’ that virtually equates with scribes taking dictation. Perhaps some do believe that’s the way things happened but others, such as Barth, take the ‘penned’ with all due seriousness. The Bible, he says, is ‘always there as a sign, as a human and temporal word—and therefore also as a word which is conditioned and limited.’(CD I/2, 507). At the same time he can write, as you point out, that the Bible becomes the Word of God as it is recollected and expected by us in faith. Given that these two emphases are found in Barth it seems to me unnecessary to opt for such a mechanical interpretation as divine dictation. I think you are right however, to point out a tension between the facticity of the text and the freedom of God’s Word. This has raised the suspicion of some evangelicals that Barth is far from being an ally to their interpretation of Biblical authority. Faced with an alternative between claiming that the Bible is the Word of God on the one hand, and the sovereignty and freedom of God on the other, we might consider the following from Barth. ‘That the Bible is the Word of God cannot mean that with other attributes the Bible has the attribute of being the Word of God. To say that would be to violate the Word of God which is God Himself – to violate the freedom and the sovereignty of God. God is not an attribute of something else, even if this something else is the Bible…The statement that the Bible is the Word of God cannot therefore say that the Word of God is tied to the Bible. On the contrary, what it must say is that the Bible is tied to the word of God.’(CD I/2, 513). All this is by way of suggesting that you can get a stimulating interaction between these two poles without opting for what might be seen as an overly naïve approach to Scripture.

In your second section ‘Scripture Pinned vs. the Dialectic of the Canon,’ I’m wholly in agreement with your claim about the ‘plain sense’ and ‘consensual reading’ in their singular form. Their singularity is, I think, their particularity to a place and time, but it cannot be justified as a singularity across all places and times. I have a question in terms of the canon: what is the relationship between the internal difference that legitimize diversity and the unity which legitimizes dialogue? It seems that you might incline toward diversity and if so, then can you explain what sets bounds for the diversity or ‘countervoices?’ I guess I’m asking whether you think the canon is flexible or fixed, and if flexible, then how pliable? To mis-apply some words from Hans Frei, ‘Does it stretch or will it break?’

Thanks Barb. It provides a lot of food for thought.

Penned, Pinned, or Patronized – the Word of God and Human Presumption

By Revd Barbara Messner.

“We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.” (Jerusalen Declaration, Item 2)

Finding a Place in the Spectrum of Opinion on Biblical Authority
Presumably, for those who subscribe to the Jerusalem Declaration, Item 2 states why the Bible is held to have authority and what that authority requires in proclamation, study and life choices. Different understandings of biblical authority are central to present issues of conflict in the Anglican Communion, particularly those around human sexuality, and therefore it seems appropriate for me as a priest to reflect on what I understand biblical authority to mean, and how I seek to be faithful to that authority in my teaching and study, preaching and values. Labelling my own theological perspective as moderately progressive, I ask myself where my notion of biblical authority sits alongside the Jerusalem Declaration statement, and also alongside some of the more extreme progressive views in reaction to which the Jerusalem Declaration has been formulated. Where’s the rub at either end, and where’s the area of overlap for me?

Scripture “Penned” vs. the Freedom of God’s Word to Speak
At one end of the spectrum of views on biblical authority, I feel uncomfortable with a narrow focus on what is “written” and “plain sense” in drawing boundaries and putting up protection around perceived truth. I believe the mystery of the action of the Word of God is undervalued by what Rowan Williams calls an “appeal to what is commonly taken to be the ‘literal sense of Scripture’ (i.e. particular clusters of quotations)” (Williams 2000, 57). To some, the model of transmission implied by the phrase “the word of God written” is one in which Scripture is seen as being “penned” by scribes who are virtually taking dictation. Even if that were an appropriate model, human error in a fallen world would influence the accuracy of reception and recording of the message. I believe the process of inspiration, while a work of the Spirit of God, is mediated through flawed human beings and expressed in the thought forms of sinful human societies. I also believe that the Word God spoke and the Word of God continues to speak afresh through Scripture are works of grace, but that does not invalidate a hermeneutic of suspicion. Scripture itself records various calls to repent of distortions of emphasis, and to reclaim awareness of what God requires. Hosea 14:1, 2 suggests continual repentance and conversion for human words in relationship to God: ‘Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord; say to him, “Take away all guilt; accept that which is good and we will offer the fruit of our lips.”(NRSV 1989, 739) Ironically, this call to conversion of words follows what feminist theologians might call a ‘text of terror’ in Hosea 13: 16, a call to ethnic cleansing in Samaria in which “their little ones shall be dashed to pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.”(NRSV 1989, 739) Surely in the compassionate example of Christ we have authority to be suspicious of any claim that such sentiments are the word of God written! Another question about “the word of God written” is whether the word of God is primarily experienced as spoken and heard, or intuitively apprehended, in the dialogue of an “I/thou” relationship, with Scripture written in a secondary stage, to express for a wider audience what was revealed. Certainly, the Spirit guides both processes but the emphasis on what is written needs to be widened to include the influence of the aural/oral genesis and intended use of Scripture, but also to explore theologically how God speaks through Scripture. What God speaks is a unique event for each person and community, while also having universal implications. Karl Barth reflects on this aspect of God’s Word in a subsection entitled “The Word of God as the Speech of God”: God always has something specific to say to each man (sic), something that applies to him and to him alone. The real content of God’s speech or the real will of the speaking person of God is not in any sense, then, to be construed and reproduced by us as a general truth. As readers of Scripture and hearers of proclamation we can and must, of course, work with certain general conceptual materials, apparently repeating or anticipating what God has said to this or that man or will say to this or that man. There is obviously no other way in which we can remind ourselves or others of the Word of God that came then and will one day come again. We may do this in words of our own coining or in Scripture quotations. But in so doing we have always to bear in mind that these materials are our own work and are not to be confused with the concrete fullness of the Word of God itself which we recall and for which we wait, but only point to it. What God said and what God will say is always quite different from what we can and must say to ourselves and others about its content. Not only the word of preaching heard as God’s Word but even the word of Scripture through which God speaks to us becomes in fact quite different when it passes from God’s lips to our ears and lips. It becomes the Word of God recollected and expected by us in faith, and the Word which was spoken and will be spoken again by God stands over against it afresh in strict sovereignty. (Barth 1975, 140, 141)

Scripture “Pinned”, vs. the Dialectic of the Canon
One view of how we are to receive and obey Scripture seems to hold biblical truths pinned, like collected butterflies, accompanied by certified identifications of what is “plain sense” or “consensual reading”. Communal study and reflection involve a respectful understanding of the historic readings and canonical parameters of Scripture. However, because of the multi-valence evident in the canon itself and in historic readings, I take issue with the phrases “plain sense” and “consensual reading”. In their singular form, they seem to claim more than we have any justification to claim in our encounters with Scripture, and risk turning our particular understanding of Scripture into an idol. The power of the Word of God to connect with us whoever and wherever and whenever we are is manifested in diversity. We hear God speak to us through Scripture despite our preferred cognitive styles, our cultural conditioning, our history or ethnic roots. In Scripture we see different traditions given space and respect side by side; but we also encounter contrasting viewpoints, from conventional to radical, from legalistic to poetic, from royalist to egalitarian. Gerd Theissen comments on the dialectical nature of Scriptural variety: Now one might say the entire Bible varies the same message to suit the situation. Different circumstances demand different responses. But this (moderately) harmonizing approach cannot be sustained. In the Bible, every voice evokes a countervoice. The book of Jonah dissents from nationalistic prophecy, the pessimism of Ecclesiastes attacks classical wisdom, Jesus’ “But I say to you” in the Sermon on the Mount corrects the revelation at Sinai, the Gospel of Matthew criticizes the Gospel of Mark by depicting Jesus as an observant Jew. The Bible includes internal dialogue, the interpretation of which continues to this day in different denominations and schools of thought. Its internal differences legitimize the diversity of Christianity; its unity legitimizes ecumenical dialogue. (Thiessen 2007, 75)

Scripture Patronized
In the interests of even-handedness, let me express disquiet with voices at the other end of the spectrum of opinion on biblical authority. By entitling a book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Spong (1991, title) claims the Bible needs rescuing, which to me seems as presumptuous as believing the Bible needs protecting from purveyors of “false gospel” which “undermines the authority of God’s Word written” (Global Anglican Future Statement 2008, 1). For me, the authority of the Bible is upheld by its consonance with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and can be neither undermined nor rescued. I don’t agree with Spong that “the people of this twentieth-and twenty-first-century world of science and technology will not long take seriously a faith story that is proclaimed inside the fantastic symbols of a premodern world, especially if the popular voices of that faith story insist on a literalistic acceptance and interpretation of those symbols.” (1991, 133). While having some sympathy with the concluding clause in that quote, I believe Spong attributes too little significance to the universal meaning of archetypal and poetic spiritual symbols, let alone to God’s power to speak. I don’t believe the Bible can be explained without remainder as a “human product – the product of two ancient communities” (Borg 2001, 22). Borg dismisses the possibility that the Bible can be seen as “both divine and human” because “it only compounds the confusion” (2001, 26). Borg claims that “affirming that the Bible is both divine and human leads to an attempt to separate the divine parts from the human parts – as if some of it comes from God and some is a human product.” (2001, 27) Nevertheless, we have a precedent for the Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ being seen as fully human and fully divine, and disentangling which bits are which has been regarded as heretical. We create more problems than we solve by eliminating the divine dimension of inspiration: we can’t describe how revelation operates through Scripture or how the Word of God is heard in minds and hearts at a level that goes beyond human words written on a page.

Seeking Middle Ground
Having begun from what I consider a patronizingly human perspective, Borg does try to reclaim the sacredness and authority of Scripture in ways that I find helpful. He speaks of the Bible as “Sacrament of the Sacred”, “a means of grace” (Borg 2001, 31). Grace is pure free gift from God, and for me sacrament implies an experience of the living presence of Jesus Christ, not just a memory of human interaction with Jesus in the past. Borg himself describes a sacrament as being “commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced.”(2001, 31) For me, this goes beyond a record of “the response of two ancient communities to their experience of God” (Borg 2001, 24). It is a relational experience of God here and now that we can expect in our encounter with Scripture, particularly as heard and reflected on communally when we gather as the body of Christ. Somehow, despite labelling the Bible as a human product, Borg arrives at an understanding of the Bible as “divine self-disclosure”, “the revelation of God” (2001, 34). He does so by reinstating an understanding of Scripture ‘as the Word of God (capital W and singular), not as the words of God (lowercase w and plural)’ (Borg 2001, 33). He suggests that ‘the use of the capital W and the singular suggests a different meaning. Namely, “Word” is being used in a metaphorical and nonliteral sense’ (Borg 2001 33). As he goes on to say, there are advantages to a metaphorical understanding, in that metaphors ‘resonate with more than one nuance of meaning’ (Borg 2001, 33). The metaphorical understanding is certainly vital to the ‘surplus of meaning’ which Borg rightly attributes to a ‘religious classic’ (2001, 51). Rowan Williams, on the other hand offers a complex and nuanced argument that reinstates the meaning of ‘literal’ in the sense of ‘diachronic’ styles of reading, experienced ‘as a movement in time’ (Williams 2000, 45,46). Rather than applying ‘literal’ to ‘a univocally descriptive and exact representation of particular sequences of ‘fact’ (2000, 48), Williams says “‘literal’ exegesis has a particularly strong stake in the realities of conflict. The movement of our canonical texts is frequently a quite explicit response to or rebuttal of some other position within the same canonical framework” (2000, 53). Although we need to take into account the human dimension, its cultural conditioning and its fallibility, I believe we also need to take seriously the work of the Spirit in inspiration, in the formation of the canon, and in the continuing and ever fresh event of the Word of God speaking to us through Scripture. I see both extremes of view on biblical authority being subject to human presumption, which seems to be trying to limit the transcendence and freedom of action of God’s Word. As Karl Barth says, The fact that God’s own address becomes an event in the human word of the Bible is, however, God’s affair and not ours. This is what we mean when we call the Bible God’s Word. We confess and acknowledge therewith that the recollection of God’s past revelation, without which the enterprise of Church proclamation would be impossible, is just as much God’s grace and gift as is the actualisation of our own proclamation needs. It is not in our own power to make this recollection, not even in the form of our grasping at the Bible. Only when and as the Bible grasps at us, when we are thus reminded, is this recollection achieved. If this takes place, if the Bible speaks to us thus of promise, if the prophets and apostles tell us what they have to tell us, if their word imposes itself on us and if the Church in its confrontation with the Bible thus becomes again and again what it is, all this is God’s decision and not ours, all this is grace and not our work. The Bible is God’s Word to the extent that God causes it to be His Word, to the extent that He speaks through it. (Barth 1975, 109) If there is one agenda to this paper, it is an appeal to seek that kind of humility in relation to the authority of the Word of God. We need to beware of our tendencies to grasp at the Bible to control it and own it. Let us allow God to speak to us through the Bible in God’s freedom and grace, without any presumptuous pre-empting of what it is we might hear.

Priestly Vows and Biblical Authority
The chief area of overlap between my views on biblical authority and that of the Jerusalem Declaration Statement 2 is in the phrase “to contain all things necessary for salvation”, a similar phrase to that which I accepted in one of my priestly vows. The Ordinal for priests asks us to state that we “are convinced that the Holy Scriptures contain all doctrine necessary for eternal salvation through Jesus Christ,” and that we will teach “nothing as essential to salvation which cannot be demonstrated from the Scriptures.” (The Anglican Church of Australia 1995, 794) So all we need is in there and nothing essential is missing, but that is not the same as claiming there is some one right understanding that is “plain sense” and about which there is a consensus across cultures and across history. In fact, the vows we take as deacons affirm a multi-faceted view of Scripture. As we agree that we “wholeheartedly accept the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments”, we are also encouraged to see them as “given by the Spirit to convey in many and varied ways the revelation of God which is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (The Anglican Church of Australia 1995, 786) I find the approach to Scripture advocated and agreed to in the Ordinal to have priorities that I fully endorse and nuances that open up a breadth of approaches. There is an emphasis on “the good news of God’s love” and “the transforming love of Jesus” (The Anglican Church of Australia 1995, 785). I see love as central to the revelation of who God is, God’s Word as seen in Jesus. The responses to be encouraged in ourselves and others are not in the form of certainties in the mind but that “hearts be opened to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly in the presence of God” (The Anglican Church of Australia 1995, 785). The indication of whether or not we are responding to God’s Word is not in some rightness of interpretation or in legalistic obedience, but in bearing spiritual fruit in transformed lives, in justice, mercy, humility, and an open heart. We are encouraged to “study the Scriptures wholeheartedly, reflecting with God’s people upon their meaning, so that your ministry and life may be shaped by Christ” (The Anglican Church of Australia 1995, 794). By such a communal process, the Word of God acts upon us.

Church History and Biblical Authority
Surely, the desire to pin Scripture down to one acceptable meaning has been demonstrated by church history to be presumptuous, in other words based on presuming a particular human viewpoint or preconception. Consider the differences of opinion about Scripture on different sides and among different strands of the Reformation. The Catholic Church claimed that the Holy Spirit as teacher and guide and the unbroken transmission of apostolic authority represented in the papacy and the magisterium sanctioned the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible as the one and only consensual reading. Erasmus, inspired by the classical scholarship of the Renaissance, returned to a range of early sources for his Greek version. Luther and other Reform leaders, influenced by a nascent nationalism, translated and printed and popularized Scripture in vernacular languages. The meaning of passages shifted through all these permutations, and anyone who could read was suddenly empowered to encounter the Bible without the mediation of a Church-authorized expert. People from Anabaptists to Catholics were martyred for their refusal to recant on an interpretation of key passages which defined their particular understanding of who Jesus was in their lives. When given a choice between death in authenticity and life compliant with an opposing authority, many saw the Jesus-inspired choice to be dying true to their understanding of revelation. They were victims of those who believed themselves to have authority to protect the Bible from how people read it by enforcing some consensus, or by killing off as heretical any challenge. Historic readings have done an about face on some issues of social justice. Over the centuries, plain sense and consensual reading of some passages were used to justify slavery and the subordination of women, although other passages supported those who demanded social justice in those two areas of concern. I believe a similar engagement with different voices in Scripture needs to be undertaken with respect to the issue of homosexuality. As a woman whose right to follow my sense of call into the priesthood would once have been (and by some still is) regarded as a violation of plain sense and of an historic and consensual reading of Scripture, I am particularly grateful to those Biblical scholars whose readings challenged the way the Bible was once read, reclaimed those passages which portrayed the leadership and ministry of women, and encouraged a hermeneutic of suspicion towards parts of Scripture enshrining patriarchal attitudes.

The Vicious Circle of Reacting to One Another Defensively
It seems to me that both extremes of opinion on biblical authority are reacting to a caricature of the other. If only we could stop fighting about what truth is, and judge it by its fruit in people’s lives, as the Bible encourages us to do, then we might find common ground in the revelation of the God of love, shared in stories of transformation. For instance, I believe that Spong is genuine when he says: “I love the Bible. When I was a parish priest, I used an adult Bible class to excite and empower my congregation, and as the primary means of evangelization….This love of the Bible was a gift to me from the fundamentalism of my Presbyterian mother. I honour fundamentalism’s demand that the Bible be taken seriously.” (1991, 247) This is the sort of respect for one another’s views that we need to hear, a respect based on story. We also need to hear each other’s pain in encountering the anger of the other extreme. Spong writes: ‘One irate reader of a newspaper article wrote that he was praying that the next plane I took would crash, carrying me to my grave. The next time I boarded a flight I felt I should stop at the front of the plane and say, “Folks, there’s something you need to know before this plane takes off.” If I did so, it might result in a wider seat selection.’(1991, 4) Can we avoid such dangerous polarization on both sides? Surely, biblical authority means that the Word of God will be heard in Scripture and recognized in the good news of Jesus Christ, despite us, as well as in partnership with us. Our human desire to protect and control by the building of outraged defences and signing of legalistic declarations will ultimately be as ineffectual as our rescue attempts based on patronizing anthropocentrism, blinkered rational materialism, or sceptical superiority. Maybe we all need to listen to a biblical pronouncement on human presumption in Deuteronomy 18: 21, 22: ‘You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?” If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, do not be frightened by it.” (NRSV 1989, 153) Barbara Messner March 2009

References
Barth, Karl. 1975. Church Dogmatics. Vol. I, The Doctrine of the Word of God. Part I, ed. and tr. G.W. Bromiley, ed. T.F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Borg, Marcus. 2001. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. HarperSanFrancisco.

Spong, John Shelby. 1991. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. HarperSanFrancisco.

The Anglican Church of Australia. 1995. A Prayer Book for Australia. NSW: Broughton Books.

The Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version.1989. Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan.

Theissen, Gerd. 2007. The Bible and Contemporary Culture. tr. David E. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Williams, Rowan. 2000. “The Discipline of Scripture”, in On Christian Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.