Response to David Wells
Robert Sloan
David Wells' presentation on May 15, 1989, to the Evangelical Affirmations consultation was substantially different from the paper he now presents for publication in this volume. Nonetheless, in keeping with the intended purpose of this volume, I have chosen, except for this prefatory statement, not to revise my paper in light of Dr. Wells' most recent deletions, revisions, and additions. I, of course, run the risk of having my paper appear to the reader who did not attend the conference, as a response to issues that were not raised. However, to the careful reader, I think Dr. Wells' original arguments regarding the nature of biblical authority can be understood from my summary of his views and my responses thereto. It is, I think, especially unfortunate for the larger readership of this volume that Dr. Wells has withdrawn many of the assertions upon which much of my response was based since, according to his original text, the kind of argumentation he used to substantiate both the divinity of Christ and, in a related argument, the inspiration and authority of Scripture "is, of course, a commonplace among traditional theologies." If that is true, then certainly this issue needs wider discussion.
In his revision, Dr. Wells now additionally (and rightly) bemoans the work of the literary deconstructionists who radically separate text from meaning. I had, however, already responded to his (to me) oversimplified treatment of the separation of text and
Page 178
meaning. What follows then, with very minor changes, is the paper I originally prepared for the conference.
Finally, I should like to emphasize once again my deep gratitude to the sponsors of the consultation on Evangelical Affirmations, recalling warmly what was, overall, a very edifying and stimulating experience.
* * *
Professor Wells' paper is, to summarize it briefly: (1) a lament over the loss of two of the three ligaments of Western civilization, tradition and especially authority, leaving only power; (2) a brief discussion of the terms exousia (authority) and dynamis (power) followed by (a) an argument for the divinity/legitimate authority of Christ, which is paralleled by (b) the inspiration of Scripture; (3) a plea for the engagement/coincidence of text and meaning for the hermeneutical enterprise as a conceptual bonding which is both (a) accomplished by inspiration and secured in the use of the word "inerrancy" and (b) necessary to meet the challenge of providing valid authorizations for theological proposals; and (4) the observation that modern theology, having given up any external authority (such as the Bible) whereby it is capable of speaking to both culture and academia will continue to lack legitimacy so long as it continues to reject the historic Christian view of biblical revelation, which alone can authorize and prescribe what is right for both life and thought.
I'm very appreciative of Professor Wells' paper on at least three accounts. First, I applaud his strong appeal for biblical authority. Secondly, I think he is correct in his desire to relate biblical authority to christology. Thirdly, I think he is correct in
Page 179
pointing to the problem of hermeneutics/interpretation/meaning as integrally related both to the authority of Scripture and the truthfulness/relevance of theological proposals. Having agreed with Professor Wells regarding the importance of these specific thought areas, however, I must admit that I find little to agree with in terms of his actual development of these issues.
To begin with, I think Professor Wells' argument regarding the divinity of Christ is historically faulty. His logic runs like this: (1) since the kingdom is God's kingdom, only God can exercise its rule; (2) God's rule was inaugurated by Christ; (3) therefore, Christ had to be divine. The logic seems impeccable, but I question the restrictive interpretation given assumption (1) above. The fact that it is God's kingdom and that, therefore, the rule of the kingdom is ultimately God's does not, it seems to me, necessarily rule out God's use of various other, nondivine, agencies to accomplish "what only God could do." Certainly Christ is divine. The New Testament affirms it rather strongly and Christians have historically believed it. But I would not myself hang the incarnation on this particular line of reasoning. Certainly long before the coming of Christ the Jews had expected a Messianic reign. That is, at least by the time of Christ the reign of God was in some sense conceived of as a Messianic reign. But there is no evidence that the Jews ever thought of Messiah as God. Why did they not make the connection between Messiah and divinity? Messiah was to be God's agent. Put simply, to say that one does the work of God, and/or does "what only God could do" does not make one God. The writing of Holy Scripture is something only God can do, but that does not make his agents divine. While there is no doubt that the New Testament authors make a rather extensive identification
Page 180
linguistically between Jesus and Yahweh, the warrant for this identification is not, as Professor Wells too generally argues with reference to the "authoritative words" and "miraculous acts" of Jesus, "because the 'age to come' was inaugurated in Christ and by Him. . ." The more specific New Testament warrant for the Lordship of Christ, where "Lord" is not merely a reverential title but is linked to Old Testament names for God, is the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God (Acts 2:33-36; Phil. 2:6-11). The exaltation of Christ, of course, culminates the initiation of God's reign in the teaching and miracle ministry of Jesus, but warrants for His divinity are grounded more in the former than the latter. Indeed, prophetic (divinely authoritative) teaching and the doing of miracles are elsewhere attested in Scripture, but nowhere, save in the case of Christ, and that for different reasons, is the agent of such deeds acclaimed as Lord.
Of course, Dr. Wells' point is not primarily to argue for the divinity of Christ but to establish the connection between function and ontology: that is, the divine identity of Christ is the only adequate explanation of his function in the Gospels. But his way of establishing the divinity of Christ is somehow also related (I think the connection is fuzzy) to his way of establishing the inspiration of Scripture, for Dr. Wells then proceeds to declare that this relationship between function and essence in Christ has a clear parallel with Scripture. I quite agree that christology and the doctrine of Scripture are integrally related, but I can see no basis for this particular parallel. In the first place, one need not point to the experience of Christ to establish what seems to me to be the rather sound metaphysical principle that says function is related to essence. If that is so, then I see no reason for Professor Wells' argument to begin with the divinity of Christ.
Page 181
I, myself, would argue that the connection between Christ and the inspiration of Scripture should be thought of in terms of the life (including the death and resurrection) and theology of Jesus as indispensably and correctly interpreted via what I would call the apostolic theology and preserved for us in those occasional pieces which the Church, in the providence of God, has preserved and collected into a canon of Scripture. That is, the authority of the New Testament is inextricably linked up with the truthfulness of Christianity and not Christ's divinity per se, though the latter is to be strongly affirmed. Put another way, since the earliest Christian preaching/theology preceded historically the text(s) of the New Testament, either collectively or individually (i.e., since the documents themselves were produced in environments of Christian confession and theology), then it seems likely that the authority of the New Testament, viewed historically in terms of its emergence in the life of the church(es), is a derivative of the normative apostolic theology/authority of the earliest Christian leaders and is best defended on these grounds.1
Professor Wells, on the other hand, seems to argue on two fronts. First, he argues that the Scriptures must be inspired because, parallel to the relationship between function and identity in Christ, there is a parallel between function and identity in Scripture. That is, because it serves "to reveal the character, will and deeds of God, thus doing only what God himself could do, Scripture must be inspired." But the warrant for this particular parallel between Christ and the Scripture, this parallel of identity and function, is never made clear.
Then, Professor Wells shifts arguments to state that Jesus viewed and used the Old Testament as inspired Scripture, and that it was "plainly his intention that the church would have in its hands
Page 182
the completed account of God's redemptive acts in history, and their interpretation, so that his people would have an objective authority to legitimate and correct belief and practice." I know of no Scriptural warrant to justify Professor Wells' assumption that Christ intended his church to have a completed account (presumably the New Testament) of God's redemptive acts in history. Certainly I am glad that we do, but Professor Wells' assertion in this regard is textually and historically unwarranted.
Professor Wells' next argument seems to be that Christ's commissioning of his apostles was for the express purpose of producing Scripture. Granted, Professor Wells never precisely says that, but that seems to be the clear impression of his words on page 6 when he writes, "Christ therefore (emphasis added) commissioned his apostles as his representatives so that John could boldly assert that they were 'of God' and whoever knew God would recognize this (1 John 4:6)." I may have misunderstood Professor Wells here, but I can see no other function for the "therefore" in this sentence, which immediately follows the one quoted earlier regarding our Lord's "intention that the church would have in its hands the complete account of God's completed acts in history . . . " In fact, Dr. Wells' general argument seems to be that (1) Christ the divine one exercised authority as God; (2) Christ commissioned and authorized his apostles to teach in his name, the clear implication being that this would involve the writing of Scripture; and (3) the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, "secured and directed this function."
I see several problems here. First of all, the two or three Scriptural warrants given to support the authority of the apostles' writings — especially John 14:26 where the apostles are told that
Page 183
the Holy Spirit will "teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you" and the reference in II Timothy 3:16 to the inspiration of Scripture — are themselves very dubious warrants for the authority of the New Testament. Second, certainly the apostles are authorized by Christ, but (a) the New Testament by and large was not written by the Twelve, nor even mostly — even accepting a wider definition for the term "apostles" and accepting as well all the traditional authorships — by apostles; and (b) to say that Christ authorized his apostles as divine spokesmen is not yet to say that what they wrote is to be regarded as Scripture. I will readily admit, indeed I would strongly argue, that the words of, say, Paul were both thought of by Paul as authoritative and intended by him to be received by his audiences as authoritative. But the authority must be thought of as an apostolic/prophetic authority. That is, the Pauline letters are a substitute for the apostolic presence. As such, of course, they possess the authority of the apostle himself. But to say (1) that they are authoritative, or even to say (2) that their authority was on a par with either Old Testament Scripture or the words of the historical Jesus for both Paul and the original recipients — the latter statement being one which I doubt we can make — is still not yet to say that Paul's writings possess authority as Scripture. With the single exception of 1 Cor. 14:37, every example adduced by Professor Wells to support his notion that the apostles claimed "divine authority for their words and writings" are texts which illustrate the divine authority which they attached to their preaching. And the text in 1 Cor. 14:37 cannot plausibly be expanded much beyond the immediate context of 1 Cor. 12-14 and/or at best the context of 1 Corinthians as a whole. At any rate, while the authority
Page 184
of those referred to as "apostle," whether of the Twelve or not, is certainly explicit, their words are nowhere in the New Testament clearly designated as Scripture (1 Timothy 5:18 and 2 Peter 3:15-16 notwithstanding).2
All of which is certainly not, for my part, to deny the ultimate correctness of that designation in succeeding generations. But it is to say that I find Professor Wells' arguments regarding the divinity of Christ as integral (1) to a "function reveals nature" substantiation of Biblical inspiration, or (2) to establishing a chain of authority passing from God/Christ through the apostles and ultimately to our texts to be (1) logically unnecessary, (2) textually unwarranted at several points, (3) polemically unparalleled in Scripture (i.e., the New Testament doesn't argue that way), and (4) largely unrelated to the "hermeneutical quagmire" that Professor Wells so rightly laments. With this latter point (4) I am assuming that arguments for the inspiration of Scripture should not be separated from the purpose of Scripture — i.e., its theologically unified testimony to the crucified, risen, and exalted Lord Jesus. One should not make an appeal for the authority of Scripture without appealing to its central message, which means that hermeneutical decisions must be made about its theological unity and core.
In addressing the current "hermeneutical quagmire" Professor Wells observes the fact of the many jarringly contradictory theologies on the modern scene and attributes this fact to the disengagement between text and meaning. I would agree that the disengagement of theology from the biblical text is certainly a significant cause for the current plurality of theologies vying for the name of "Christian," but it is not the only reason for current
Page 185
difficulties. Even those who insist upon deriving theology from the text of Scripture differ in not insignificant ways.3 I would argue that some people have not learned how to read.
But granting the problem of separation between text and "meaning" (Dr. Wells does not, it seems to me, distinguish between what a text "meant" and what a text "means"; the best I can tell, by "meaning" he means something like "the proper theological meaning for us"), I still have a multitude of problems with Professor Wells' analysis of this issue. After lamenting Barth's attempt to derive meaning from "above," Bultmann's attempt to derive meaning from "within," Perrin's attempt to derive meaning from "behind" the text, and the World Council of Churches' attempt to locate meaning "chronologically beyond the text," Professor Wells then appeals to B.B. Warfield as arguing that the inspiration of Scripture secures the coincidence of words and meaning. Apart from the fact that it is difficult to see exactly how the fact of inspiration should dictate a particular hermeneutical method, or in what way it does so, if it does, this is not in fact, what Warfield argued. Warfield's point was not to identify text with meaning, but to identify the voice of God and the Scriptures with regard to their authority.4 The fact that "when the Scriptures speak, God speaks" meant for Warfield that the Scriptures speak with the authority of God; but not that, when God speaks in Scripture, a certain hermeneutical model is mandated and thus a more theologically accurate meaning is made possible. To say that the Scriptures and/or the voice of God is utterly authoritative does not mean that we will more easily or more accurately come by the meaning of either. One must still do the hermeneutical/interpretive task. Indeed, it is all very well to say
Page 186
with Professor Wells that meaning is "in" a text, but since text and meaning (either the original meaning or its ongoing significance) are not identical, and thus must be separated one from the other, I see nothing sacred in the preposition "in." Whatever preposition we use to define the relationship between text and meaning, we must maintain not only that the text exercises determinative control over the parameters of meaning which may be derived from it, but we must realize that the hermeneutical task is always unavoidable.
Meaning certainly is not only "in" a text, but is also "evoked" by a text, and I would also argue, can be "behind" a text, and even (I am thinking here of the parousia) in some sense "chronologically beyond" the text. One must never forget that our texts are both particular and universal. And while these two functions are inextricably related — that is, I quite agree that any non-particularist meaning falls under the controls of the particularist — they must not be confused. Our texts were written for particular people, addressing particular problems, at particular times in their history (I am thinking here especially of New Testament epistles). Once, for example, Colossians was read to the church at Colossae, and once it was passed on to the Laodiceans (4:16), there is a sense in which its particular meaning and relevance were exhausted. That is, for example, the instruction to send the letter on to Laodicea would not have had the same meaning upon a second reading — once the letter or a copy thereof had been sent to Laodicea — as it will have had upon a first reading. Indeed, since Colossians was apparently intended primarily for the church at Colossae, the meaning of that same phrase, not to say the entirety of the epistle, cannot have been exactly the same for the Laodiceans as it was for
Page 187
the Colossians. Almost immediately the text, once it is preserved and re-read, can no longer remain a particularist document — though it does become a document of abiding value, whose particularist meaning (i.e., that which I would tie to such things as authorial intention and original audience and setting) is still both to a greater or lesser extent (depending on all kinds of historical factors) recoverable and determinative of the ongoing and legitimate significance(s) the text will have for subsequent generations of devoted hearers and readers. From the very beginning, the interpretative "leap" from original intention and original audience to "on-going application and relevance" must be made.
Indeed, even the first reading of a text — I am thinking here of 2 Thessalonians — not only involves the normal hermeneutical processes of deciphering what is "in" the text, but must surely involve, for a proper understanding of its meaning, events and realities which are "outside" the text. Surely the Thessalonians' personal knowledge of Paul, their experience of him in Thessalonica, their knowledge of his theology, his voice, his personality, and the things that he had previously written and taught (2:56,15; 3:6-10) affected their hearing of his letter. Certainly their knowledge of Paul and the other above mentioned factors and indeed Paul's knowledge of their knowledge of him are factors that, though no doubt virtually lost to us in terms of our "universal" reading of the text, were not only "outside" the text, but relevant to the meaning of the text as intended by Paul.
One last series of observations. Professor Wells ends his paper by saying that we need an external, objective authority to legitimate values and belief. In fact, something of that sort is said throughout the paper. I want to inject, however, that what we
Page 188
"need" is not the issue. The real issue is what do we have. The fact that some people, indeed most of us, want various kinds of certainty tells us something about ourselves, but it need not tell us anything about the Scriptures that in fact we have. We simply must no longer argue that, since modern theology is in a mess, flailing about with no objective authority to regulate it, modern man must therefore posit the authority of the Bible as an epistemological way out of the mess. We can offer only what we have which also means we can neither avoid the question of what legitimates the Bible, nor can we expect the unbelieving world to refuse to ask the question.
Our commitment to the authority of Scripture may be taken as a premise only in so far as we are prepared to accept the Christian tradition of Scripture as authoritative. I readily agree that the modern rejection of tradition is to be lamented, but I am nonetheless not prepared to insist upon the uncritical acceptance of any tradition. Martin Luther's rather radical, and correct, reassessment of the canon of Scripture is too recent historically for any of us either to be the slaves of tradition ourselves or to insist upon the authority of the Bible for others simply upon the basis of our tradition. The authority of the Scriptures for us/the modern world must derive, as it seems to me it did from the very beginning, from a patter and complex of reasons which themselves are subject to the normal canons of inquiry.
I would suggest the following as belonging to a complex of reasons whereby we may argue for the authority of the Scriptures:
1. Though never forgetting the example of Luther and others who dared to challenge the weight of tradition, we may accept (and the modern world ought at least to respect) the
Page 189
authority of Scripture because we receive it as such in our tradition.
2. The power of the Scriptures in the context of worship both to evoke and to authenticate the experience of the risen Lord attests to their divine origin.
3. Their primitive, historical connection to Christ and/or eye-witness testimony about Christ, argues for the authenticity of the New Testament writings as a true witness to the real Jesus.
4. The theological conformity of the New Testament Scriptures to the theology of Jesus (and his reading of the Old Testament) and the cross/resurrection (kerygmatic) theology of his immediate followers argues for the indispensable function (and thus authority) of the New Testament writings as the correct interpretation of both the Jewish Scriptures and all that God has done through the person of Jesus Christ. We must never forget that early Christian theology preceded the rise of both the individual New Testament documents and their collection within one binding. That is, the correctness and/or use of any given document may well have been decided by its conformity to the apostolic theology, that is, the core of early Christian thought, preaching, and worship.
As Professor Wells himself insists, Christian theology cannot fail to address the academy. But to do so, we cannot presuppose that the academy will accept either our tradition about the authority of Scripture, or our circular appeals to the self-attestation of Scripture. We will have to supply warrants for the Bible in much the same way as we argue for the truthfulness of Christianity: i.e., by the canons of history and reason. In this way, christology/soteriology are related to inspiration, and the doctrine of
Page 190
inspiration — because it relates to a particular and historical body of literature, and because the message of everlasting life contained therein must also be announced to the academy, and because the texts themselves are of a piece with the divine activity that has culminated in the person of Jesus Christ — must itself be subjected to the same kinds of historical scrutiny and, alas, even skepticism, that are applied to the message of salvation itself. The task is not easy, but our mandate is clear. And, though the academy may sneer to hear us say it, we live in the hope of ultimate vindication, for truth is on our side.
Questions for Discussion || Chapter 6 || Table of Contents
1. I am here assuming what must, in another context, be defended, i.e., that there is a theological center and/or unity which holds together these documents and thus becomes not only a guide to their interpretation, but also an adjudicating norm for competing theological proposals — proposals that in the modern era appeal to many different (e.g., non-cross/resurrection) construals of Jesus.
2. One occasionally sees these passages referred to as examples of one portion of the New Testament referring to another portion as "Scripture", see, e.g., Wayne Grudem, "Scripture's Self-Attestation and the Problem of Formulating a Doctrine of Scripture," in Scripture and Truth, ed. D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983) 46, 48; but the issues involved in each case are manifold and not easily resolved. In the case of 1 Timothy 5:18 the allusion to the saying contained in Luke 10:7 (assuming Luke's Gospel as the literary source for the saying) could well represent, taking the kai as epexegetic, the standard Christian interpretation (learned from Jesus) of Deut. 25:4 and not Luke 10:7. In the case of 2 Peter 3:15-16 the reference to "the rest of the Scriptures," an expression which seemingly includes the letters of Paul, may, but need not, be so understood. See Charles Bigg, Epistles of St. Jude and St. Peter (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902) 301f.
3. Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Presbyterians, and Baptists all affirm the authority of Scripture, but that fact has not prevented their extremely divergent ways of reading Scripture.
4. B.B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1970) 299.
