Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XIX)
There are several additional areas that are relevant to the
larger discussion of reform, the application of Scriptural authority and
especially the question of Scriptural Sufficiency. These are all issues that
have been visited throughout this larger body of writings. Not all require a
hard-line stand, not all are what we might call gospel issues but given the
scope of today's problem and since the ideas surrounding the question of reform
and its implications are on the table, they're worthy of consideration.
First there is the issue of the New Testament text. The doctrine
of the Providential Preservation of an infallible text has been abandoned and
replaced by the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy has become a confusing and
even deceptive term because it sounds like those who adhere to it are holding
to a conservative position. They believe the Scriptures are without error. All
well and good. However, the modern meaning of the term means something slightly
different. Adherents of the view do not believe the texts we possess are
inerrant as a result of being Providentially preserved. In other words they
reject the view that the Church possesses (through its thousands of surviving
manuscripts) the true text of Scripture. Rather, they believe that by means of
textual criticism we are to continuously labour toward the reconstruction of the inerrant text which is found only in the
autographs – the actual manuscripts penned by the apostles. This represents
a serious departure from the historical view of infallibility and relies on the
canons of textual criticism – canons largely developed by unbelievers at work
within the academy.
Embracing the late 19th century textual
discoveries (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), the main basis for today's Critical
Text, this now dominant group in Evangelical and Confessional circles has
rejected the centuries old textual testimony of the larger Church (Catholic,
Byzantine, Protestant etc.) and have instead lionised the ideas of theological
liberals like BF Westcott and FJA Hort. These wolves in sheep's clothing are
sometimes erroneously presented by contemporary Evangelicals as heroes that
laboured to preserve the text from the assault of liberalism. Nothing could be
further from the truth and sadly the likes BB Warfield (also held up as a
stalwart and defender of orthodoxy), in recasting the doctrine of the text and
of the Scripture, opened the door to textual criticism, allowing it to make
inroads into the Evangelical world.
Today, these same churches are teetering on the edge of a
cliff as they are nigh to embracing the Coherence Based Genealogical Method
(CBGM) which attempts to 'reconstruct' the text by means of probability driven
algorithms. What was already an assault on Scripture in the form of Critical
Text-based translations such as the NASB, NIV, and ESV is about to leap off a
cliff and rely on textual elements that have no historical and manuscript
witness. Confessionalists who have gone down this road have done so in defiance
of their tradition and would be decried as atheists (rejecters of Providence)
by their scholastic forebears – men such as Owen and Turretin.
Sadly this discussion is further confused by the rise of the
King James Onlyism which in many instances represents another error, a belief
in Double Inspiration, that the Holy Spirit inspired the English Bible in 1611
and it now replaces the autographs. This heretical view which arose in the
1970's and 1980's in response to the Evangelical embrace of textual criticism
is usually (but erroneously) attached to anyone who questions the Critical Text
and the now dominant view of Neo-Inerrancy – for that's what it should be
called. This issue is not about the King James Bible which is actually a less
than ideal translation – and yet at least it's based on better Greek texts
which belong to the historic body of manuscripts.
It's bad enough to sit in 'conservative' churches and listen
to passages in John and Mark be assaulted and criticised from the pulpit – we
are now on the cusp of a new era wherein texts that have no basis apart from a
computer computation will be preached authoritatively and in some cases have
the potential to change the meaning of a passage.
This is theological liberalism coming in by means of another
door and will certainly undo the testimony and potency of the Church. The
Sufficiency of Scripture (already under withering assault) will have little
meaning in such contexts.
Related to the issue of sufficiency is the alarming growth of
psychology in terms of not only 'counseling', but doctrinal construction and
presentation – even in the realm of piety and questions of sanctification. The
materialist assumptions which undergird modern psychology are leading to
behaviour being cast not in terms of the spirit, soul, and consequences of sin
but rather biology. As such a growing embrace of psychosomatic medications is
inevitable and we're seeing it play out even in circles where it would have
once been unthinkable. Issues that were controversial twenty years ago have
been mainstreamed not just in Evangelical circles but increasingly in
Confessional ones.
Biblical anthropology has been affected (along with basic
concepts of piety) as the struggle with sin has been tainted by behaviourism
and is dealt with by therapeutic means that soften or cancel out the call to
repentance and the now largely abandoned concept of self mortification. I have
been genuinely shocked to see how this Sufficiency-rejecting paradigm has been
embraced by not just Confessional institutions and bodies but in some cases
among those that were considered 'conservative' and 'traditional' even in those
already somewhat narrow circles.
The Scriptures in the hands of Church leaders are no longer
sufficient to deal with the struggles and travails of the Christian life. Now a
cadre of paid 'professionals', hirelings, and profiteers are granted
authoritative standing within the Church even as their basic assumptions
undermine the authority of Scripture and the Spiritual nature of Christian
epistemology. This area represents one of the most egregious, rotten, and
dangerous applications of so-called Christian Worldview over the past
generation. Along with the text and other issues like feminism, it is one of
the proverbial 'elephants' in the room – issues that represent grave and
existential threats to the Church but are for the most part happily embraced
and invited within its confines.
And these forces (if I can speak of them in such terms) are
not idle but aggressively work to destroy foundations – primarily Biblical
ones. The efforts of charlatans such as James Dobson and Tim LaHaye brought
these teachings into the Church – or at least mainstreamed them by the late
1970's. And today the efforts of men like Jay Adams have been marginalised and
his counter movement (Nouthetic or Biblical Counseling) has been hijacked by a
form of compromise. And while those associated with his movement pay lip
service to the idea of the Scriptures being supreme and superior to the
psychological academy, the functional result and real-world practice amounts to
something quite different. The real voices of dissent (while still viable in
some quarters twenty years ago) have been effectively silenced. Today, to
oppose psychology in the Church is akin to dragging your knuckles and carrying
a club.
Another substantial issue that has already been touched upon
but needs a separate mention is the basic definition of the Kingdom of God or
its synonym the Kingdom of Christ.*
Is the Kingdom understood as being heavenly in not just its
origin but its orientation? Is the Kingdom cast in terms of Earthly progress
and thus tied to political and cultural power and thus by extension to money,
one's earthly occupation and the like?
The importance of this issue cannot be overstated. Rather
than rely on the deductive theologians and the tradition of Christendom, the
New Testament needs to be our guide.
Related to this is the difficult but needed discussion
surrounding the difference between doctrine and theology, the willingness to
treat Scripture as oracular and authoritative as given and allowed to function within its contextual modes as
opposed to taking it and re-casting its words and ideas into a coherent system.
In other words this is a call to resist the temptation of the theologians who (by
employing the philosophical toolkit) seek to form a grand unified coherence.
Understanding they believe this to be
their God-appointed task, the Biblicist position advocated in these essays
sounds a note of caution, and would limit coherence to a framework of internal
Biblically-formed logic and as such is willing to relegate much to the realm of
unelaborated concepts, accepted tensions, and even mystery.
Logical deduction is necessary as relation and
differentiation are basic to communication, but such tools cannot be used to
cancel out other texts and what they reveal in their context. Meanings attached
to words, ideas and perceptions limited by our space-time conceptual framework
cannot be used to sideline or negate divinely revealed truths and concepts.
This is why a sheer and narrow reliance and propositionalism is bound to
restrict and reduce the scope of what is being revealed and in every case eventually
falls into error. The key to understanding the Bible is not to master logic –
which any lost person can do – but through the Spirit to come to a confident
apprehension of what is being revealed, the analogical nature of this knowledge
and how it relates, both in terms of the already and not yet and in terms of
the eternal interacting with a fallen and thus temporal world.
Theology too often strays into the realm of the scholastic –
the method itself becomes an end. This is not to protest the use of extra-scriptural
terms and concepts which are at times helpful and even necessary – but they're
not a blank check.
Doctrines (if defined distinctively) as opposed to being
placed within the expansive grid of a system or meta-system (as in the case of
certain orthodoxies and Confessionalism) can stick closer to the text and while
some of these ideas being expressed here are accepted (to a point) in the
context Redemptive-Historical (or Biblical) Theology in its debates with
Systematic Theology, a step further is required or the further reformation of
Biblical prolegomena (so needed in our time) will certainly be arrested.
Not to oversimplify these issues for they are quite
complicated, doctrines also rely on definitions. In no way would we want to
deny that and yet in many cases to be faithful to the text, we must prefer to
leave the revealed doctrines as undeveloped, even if the result generates a
seeming ambiguity, results in constructs of equal ultimacy, and even mystery. This
does not make them any less authoritative. And like it or not as we live almost
two thousand years after the New Testament was written we must also be polemical,
interacting with existing and historical theologies and thus relying to some
extent on contrast in order to define what the Scriptures say. We cannot start
from scratch. It is necessary to engage and interact with historical and
experiential reference and in many cases to contrast Scriptural teaching with
these (what are often) historical errors. In other words to define what we are,
it is necessary to contrast with what we are not. Rival theses must be reckoned
with.
We hear a great deal of criticism with regard to dualism in
our day. Other essays written by this author have argued that some of these
criticisms are invalid and misguided and do not reckon with either the
apostolic teaching in the text or the actual historical record. In many cases
the enemy being presented is a straw man being read into the text. As a result
there's a real danger because it means that in many cases the warnings within
the New Testament text are being missed.
The New Testament (and indeed all the Scriptures) is replete
with dualities. These are different than the caricatures of absolute dualism
that are frequently called out and denounced from contemporary books, radio
microphones and pulpits. Absolute cosmological dualism as seen in something
like the Zoroastrian system is an error and unbiblical. Likewise an absolute
cosmological dualism that sharply contrasts matter and spirit and views matter
as inherently evil and the result of evil action is also a grave and unbiblical
error.
And yet though they are frequently accused of it, the
Christian critics of Right-wing politicking, sacralism and Constantinian Christendom
are rarely if ever advocating the aforementioned positions.
In terms of defining the Kingdom, our understanding of
duality will (due to what is revealed in the Scriptures) range further than
most. While the Scriptures present us with a Sovereign God before whom the
nations are but a drop in a bucket, a God who numbers the hairs of our head and
nothing is able to resist His will, at the same time the Scriptures also
present us with a cosmology in which elohim (or angelic) entities rule as
thrones, principalities, and powers and Satan is revealed as the prince of the
power of the air, the god of this present evil age. It also presents scenarios
in which angelic emissaries are resisted and hindered.
In other words there is presented to us what can be rightly
called a mitigated dualism or a dualism under God. The nature of this has
changed somewhat with the inauguration of the Kingdom, a point often emphasized
within the apostolic writings. However, the dualism remains in some capacity
for the duration of this End Times age.
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*There are still a handful of Dispensationalists that insist
on making a distinction between the Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. They
insist they represent two different entities or orders even though a basic
exercise in cross-referencing shows they are used interchangeably in the
gospels. This is a case of the Analogy being used rightly, to reconcile
narrative.