Does It Really?

When asked to summarize his theology, the renowned theologian Karl Barth reportedly responded with the words of the beloved hymn, “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” This was a surprisingly simple answer coming from the prolific author of, among other things, the voluminous Church Dogmatics; someone of whom it is written “is one of the few men who has ever begun a world-wide theological revolution while pastor of a local church. Generally regarded as the most influential theologian of the twentieth century, he may well be one of the most influential men in all Christian history. And his theological movement, now generally termed neoorthodoxy, began while he was pastor of a church in Safenwill, Switzerland.” (20 Centuries of Great Preaching, 1971, Word, Incorporated, Waco, Texas)

I often make mention of those who start out with a conservative/fundamentalist point of view and then evolve to the liberal/progressive vantage, so it is only fair that I would note that Barth’s movement was in the opposite direction. Beginning with the liberal school of thought, he eventually championed sola scriptura as the source of divine revelation, although “this does not mean that Barth had a fundamentalist view of Scripture; the Bible shows the ‘acts’ of God as he revealed himself in Christ. Barth recognized the humanity of the biblical authors; he believed that man discovers behind the fallible words the infallible truth. Barth believed in preaching as an explanation of the text of Scripture in order that man might have an existential encounter with the living Word.” (Ibid.)

Someone like myself has a great deal to learn from someone like Karl Barth. I am not a biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time must acknowledge that simply by virtue of my vocation I have had an above-average opportunity to study the Bible. There are many “laypersons” far more well-read in the scriptures than am I, and yet I also know that there are many who profess to be Bible-believing Christians that have not had as broad an orientation as I have had the benefit of. This subject is worthy of examination primarily because of the contemporary American infatuation with all things evangelical, not the least of which is the role that the authority of scripture plays in determining whether or not one is truly born-again, saved, “Christian.”

I am now satisfied that it is not just my personal paranoia which is discerning an unprecedented alliance between the political and religious Right in this country. It is daily becoming increasingly apparent that a purportedly Bible-based morality is being used to justify the imposition of a particular ideology upon not just our nation, but upon the world. For this reason alone it becomes necessary to identify the hermeneutics (1. the science of interpretation esp. of the Scriptures. 2. the branch of theology which treats of the principles of Biblical exegesis. [Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, 1994]) being employed by those who are making these moral claims, as well as those we are employing ourselves.

Is “God told me” and “the Bible says” the same thing? As we have seen, I think that someone like Barth would say that it is. But what are we to do with the element of human fallibility to which even Barth concedes? How do we justify taking a position on “homosexuality” when the word does not even appear in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (arguably the most accurate English translation currently available) while at the same time choosing to ignore the thirty-one times that “divorce,” “divorced,” and “divorces,” do? When God “tells” me two distinctly different creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:3; 2:4b-25), which one am I to believe?

The role of organized religion (the Temple, the Church, etc.) in originally making this determination is undeniable. Before Guttenberg opened the proverbial Pandora’s box by making the Bible available to all, the priesthood (both before and after the Common Era) was in the enviable position of selecting which lections were to be considered authoritative and which were not. But once commoners were in a position to “see” for themselves what had previously been privileged and esoteric information, the concept of authority itself was challenged.

Let me try to give an example of what I’m saying: “In 1985 the Jesus Seminar, a distinguished group of biblical scholars led by Robert W. Funk and John Dominic Crossan (co-chairs), embarked on a new assessment of the gospels, including the recently discovered Gospel of Thomas. In pursuit of the historical Jesus, they used their collective expertise to determine the authenticity of the more than 1,500 sayings attributed to him.” (The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, 1993, Polebridge Press) Ranked number one as the most authentic were:
But I tell you: Don’t react violently against the one who is evil: when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well. (Matthew 5:39 SV)
When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well. (Luke 6:29a SV)
When someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let that person have your coat along with it. (Matthew 5:40 SV)

Not wanting to be guilty of taking anything out of context, it needs to be noted that the Seminar ranked another twenty-two sayings as almost certainly authentic to Jesus, and an additional 166 as very probably something Jesus said. Nonetheless, utilizing a methodology that many evangelicals have dismissed out-of-hand without even knowing what it was, there is now overwhelming evidence to support that Jesus (if he is to be considered authoritative) never once took a position on gay marriage, abortion, Christian superiority, the right to bear arms or to preemptively attack a perceived danger.

Where I begin to take offense is when today’s “authorities” try to convince me that Jesus – per Scripture – did take an absolute and unequivocal stand on these issues, and that as a result God incarnate is “telling” these folks that they are “right” and that those who disagree or think otherwise are “wrong.” With all due respect to Barth et al., I must even challenge the notion that Jesus loves me personally simply on the basis that the Bible tells me so, because an earnest study of scripture informs me that I individually am not (or was not) chief among his concerns. What the Bible tells me was of paramount importance to Jesus is the understanding of God’s love of the whole, and of what a profound and sinful transgression it is to ever violate that love on behalf of one’s own selfish wants and desires.

We are living in the ever-unique present that does not allow us the luxury of believing in unexamined assumptions. I cannot disagree with Karl Barth that the Bible is foundational. But just because it is the first Word does not mean that it is the last. For the Judeo-Christian tradition Scripture serves as the point at which the journey of faith begins, but it is a spiritually fatal error to believe that it is an end unto itself. I personally do not consider it editorial oversight or omission that there is no record of the significant figures of faith – including Jesus himself – teaching Bible study classes or constantly citing chapter and verse to back up what they were saying. Indeed, the gospels are quite explicit that what astonished and amazed his hearers was that Jesus spoke from his own authority.

So, please, before you try to tell me that God “thinks” this way or that about something just because it “says” so in the Bible, do both of us the favor of finding out: 1) how it came to be there in the first place; and 2) how it fits in with the whole theological picture that has been developing from The Beginning to which both Genesis accounts attest. Let us enter together into a healthy skepticism of any claim to know absolutely the mind of God based upon scripture alone. Too much is at stake to blindly accept such simplistic, formulaic approaches. There’s too much to lose in terms of spiritual fidelity and theological integrity to reduce the wisdom of the ages to the opportunism of the moment. After all, don’t we owe it to ourselves to know the truth, the truth that will liberate us? (See John 8:32; in the opinion of the Seminar “Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition.”) Amen.