The Sense of Scripture: Studies in Interpretation . . .
IN WHAT WAY IS THE BIBLE AUTHORITATIVE?
There is no authority except from God. — Ro. 13:1
If we start with the premise that there is no authority except from God, we are in a position to make some determination concerning all the claims for authority over our lives. Whether it be the state, the church, the family, the Bible, or even the "authorities and world rulers of this world's darkness" that we must struggle against as Christians (Eph. 6:12), we must bring all claims to the judgment of the ultimate authority over our lives, God himself.
That is what the apostle Paul does in Ro. 13 when he urges the believers in pagan Rome to be in subjection to the governing authorities. "For there is no authority except from God," says the apostle, "and those that exist are established by God," and he goes on to insist that if one resists the powers that be, he resists God himself, for the powers that be are ordained of God. He goes so far as to refer to the state as "a minister of God to you for good" (verse 4). But the power of the state is clearly a derived authority, for it has no authority except from God. This is what Jesus meant when he told Pilate in an hour of trial: "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above" (Jn. 19:11). Jesus admits to Pilate's authority over him, but only in reference to the ultimate authority from whom all authority is derived.
This conflict is evident when the rulers in Jerusalem ordered Peter and John to speak no more in the name of Christ. Their reply was "Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19). The apostles were confident that the rulers would acknowledge that God is the ultimate Ruler. "You be the judge" they could safely say. God comes first! And so when the showdown finally came the apostles could stand their ground: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).
Here we have our rule in all questions of authority: We must obey God rather than men. We all concede that a child may have to choose God over his own parents, a soldier over his commanding officer, a wife over her husband, a member over his church. And may we not add that a believer must put God over the Bible? He may, for instance, read in the Bible "Go sell all that you have and give it to the poor." That may or may not be for him. The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, decided that it was for him and acted accordingly, to the dismay of his family. But we are to ask if that is really what God wants us to do in our situation in this day and time.
In 1 Cor. 15:27 Paul reveals that God has put all things in subjection to Christ, but he adds: "It is evident that He (God) is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him (Christ)." If God is the head of Christ, as the apostle does not hesitate to say in 1 Cor. 11:3, then God is certainly the head of the Bible. Since we as Christians believe that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself," we see no conflict between God and Christ, for what Christ is and does God is and does, and so the authority of one is the authority of the other. But this is not true of anything that is the work of man, which includes the Bible, however empowered it may have been by the Holy Spirit. We cannot equate the authority of the Bible with the authority of God as we can the authority of Christ and God, for the Bible is an earthen vessel. God is perfect, infallible, and infinite. The Bible as a human product is not. And so we worship and adore God and not the Bible.
To be sure, as believers we obey the Bible, but always in reference to the authority of God. If the Bible was brought to us by an angel directly from heaven, having been dictated word-for-word by God himself, so that its contents would be nothing less and nothing more than the actual words of God, then we could equate the authority of the Bible and the authority of God. But the Bible is clearly not that kind of book, and it is evident that God did not intend it to be such. We must study it in the light of the fact that it is the work of scores of writers in different languages over a period of many centuries, and all this in the context of widely-diverse cultural and historical circumstances. And so there are various kinds of literature, including history, prophecy, apocalyptic, biography, poetry, personal letters.
Moreover, there is much that is abstruse and difficult, subject to varying interpretations. It is hardly a simple book. It is in fact many books or documents, which in any serious study pose many problems and difficulties. And yet the church has always insisted that the message it bears comes through clearly enough, and therein lies its authority. Like the old phonograph records marked with "The Master's Voice" that came through loud and clear despite the static, the Bible conveys that story that God intends, and the jars and conflicts only enhance the truth that God works through weak humanity in revealing his glorious purposes.
In determining in what sense the Bible is authoritative we need to decide what we mean by authority. We can do this by substituting other words for authority, such as that which we find impelling, necessary, or urgent. The authoritative voice is one we have to listen to for our own good. Take the Yul Brynner plea against smoking, which is the most moving thing I've ever seen on TV. While dying of lung cancer due to smoking, he made this tape for those who follow in his steps. He is now a voice from the grave, Don't smoke!, he warns. That is authority! Or take the exemplary life of Mother Teresa as she served as an angel of mercy among the untouchables of India. Her example impels us to show more love and mercy to those around us. That too is authority!
Or we can think of authority in terms of God speaking to us, which is the word of God. God may speak to us (in some general way at least) through nature and through our own conscience. He may speak through Mother Teresa or Yul Brynner. Or when you are tempted to sacrifice your integrity God may speak to you through poetry — "To thine own self be true" (Shakespeare). He might speak to you through song, art, or history.
But the church has always believed that God speaks to us in a special way through the Bible. It is not his only revelation but it is his special revelation, eclipsed only by Christ himself, who stands as the only perfect and complete revelation of God. As the wonderful Person of the Bible, Jesus Christ is the personification of the authority of God. Indeed, Jesus Christ is our authority, for he is the urgent, necessary, and impelling force in our lives. It is from Christ that the Scriptures derive their authority. They are authoritative only as they either directly or indirectly point to and reflect the Person of Christ, or as they (particularly in the Old Testament) reveal the will of God and bring us into closer fellowship with him.
Why is the 23rd Psalm the world's favorite portion of Scripture, whether to the Jew, the Eastern Orthodox, the Protestant and the Catholic, and even the inquiring skeptic? Because its lines have a commanding impact and a sense of urgent reality. These lines touch every life at one time or another:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff,
they comfort me.
This does not say that God will deliver us from such trials as tragedy and death, but that he will be with us in whatever happens, and that he cares when we are hurting. He will comfort us like a faithful and loving shepherd. This is the word of God to us because it reveals the nature of God and brings us into closer fellowship with God.
Now read these lines from Ps. 91:
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand;
but it will not come near you.You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your habitation,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
Unlike Ps. 23 this psalm says that if one makes God his refuge he will never have to walk in the valley of the shadow of death. A pestilence like famine or cancer or AIDS may cause a thousand to fall at your side, but not you, if you trust in God. You can watch the wicked suffer but you won't have to. No evil shall befall you! No scourge will come to your house!
Would you read these verses to the godly couple whose child is dying of leukemia? Or to those Christians rotting in prison behind the Iron Curtain? Or to the man who has lost his job for standing up for a principle?
While the word of God does speak to us in other parts of this same Psalm, it is difficult to make the above lines a message from God. The lines simply are not true. No evil shall befall you, indeed! The truth is, as Ps. 23 makes clear, evil will befall us in this world, but God will be with us and see us through. It so happens that Satan quoted from these lines when he tempted our Lord. Jesus did not seem to believe that "the angels will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone" (the lines following those above) if one is fool enough to jump from a precipice. Such lines may have some poetic value in pointing up the providential care of God, but taken as they read they hardly speak to us in an authoritative way.
Are there not degrees to what is authority to us, if by this we refer to that which is urgent, impelling, and life-changing? While all truths in the Bible are equally true, they are not all equally important. And are there not levels of authoritative persons? While I respect the authority of Isaiah as a prophet, I take the authority of Paul as an apostle of Christ as greater, and I take the authority of Christ as greater still.
And within each of these there are degrees of authoritative impact. When Isaiah says, "This is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word" (66:2) it impacts my life far more that when he says, "God will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion" (10:32). And when Paul says, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor. 13:7) he speaks with greater authority than when he writes, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all," which is in the same letter.
This means that authority has to do with power, and these two words are often used interchangeably, such as when Jesus says, "All authority has been given unto me" in Mt. 28:18, which some versions render as "All power has been given unto me." Authority implies the power to act. A law is meaningless and has no authority if it has no power of enforcement. So, verses in the Bible are not authoritative simply because they are in the Bible, but only as they reach out to us in power and impact our lives as the word of God, for there is no authority (power) except from God. So, it is the power-packed Scriptures that are authoritative. If a passage does not "get our attention" by warning us, admonishing us, encouraging us, redeeming us, strengthening us, or giving us hope, then it has no power and therefore no authority. It is still Scripture when it only narrates, but it is the word of God only when God is in someway speaking.
I venture to add that what is true of Isaiah and Paul is also true of our Lord, that there are levels or degrees of authority (power) in what even he says in Scripture. Or to put it another way, while everything Jesus says is true some things are more significant than other things. Most of us are moved by the likes of "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" and not so much by "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house" (Mk. 6:4). The latter passage is, in fact, baffling, for surely we are not to conclude that a prophet (minister?, editor?, teacher?) cannot be respected in his own town and among his own kin. Was not Isaiah, who lived all his life in Jerusalem and was listened to by king and people alike, honored in his home town? And does that passage mean that a prophet will be honored other than at home? It would seem to be closer to the truth to say that a prophet is seldom honored whether at home or abroad!
That saying, purportedly by Jesus, is a good example of how a passage must be seen in its context and how cultural factors make a difference. There were similar proverbs among the Greeks and Romans to the effect that a great man is not appreciated by his own people, and if Jesus made that statement he too must have been using it as a proverb and applying it to that particular situation in his home town, Nazareth. Or it may be that Mark used the proverb as an explanation of why Jesus was rejected in Nazareth while being honored elsewhere — for the time being, that is!
But the authority of Jesus Christ stands apart in Scripture, for he is our authority (the power in our lives) not only for what he says but for who and what he was and is and forever will be. His very life and example is our authority. All others in Scripture derive their authority from him and from "the Father of lights." And all Scripture must be interpreted in reference to Jesus and the One who sent him to redeem the world, for the point of Scripture is to bring us into fellowship with God and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
Two more points should be made before closing this study. One is that the authority of the Bible is not simply subjective, that is, it does not have authority only in one's mind, however important that is. It has authority as it stands written. When Paul spoke these words to the pagans of Athens, "God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:31), he named the great truths to which the God of heaven holds all people responsible. It is God's great philanthropy: the call for repentance, a judgment to come, the fact of Christ in history, and all this centered in the resurrection of Christ. This is authority, and if men do not accept it they should, and they will be held accountable. So there is "the authority" to which all men are to be in subjection whether they acknowledge it or not.
The final point is that while the authority of the Bible is both subjective and objective, that is, it is both in Scripture and in the human heart (or should be), the final arbiter in reference to any question has to be our own conscience. Does the authority of Scripture mandate that I should believe in Christ and be baptized? Should I have an abortion? Should I quit drinking? We ourselves in our own conscience have to answer such questions, not a preacher or a priest or a church council. God speaks to us through Scripture, but only we can decide in our own hearts what he means by what he says and how it applies to us. Two people may look at the same authority — the example of Christ — and one becomes a pacifist and the other a soldier. And both could be right. In any event, we all have a Supreme Court in which the final ruling is made as to what God means by what he says, or what the spirit and example of Christ mandates in any given situation. One might follow his conscience and be wrong, but he must follow his conscience. It should be a conscience quickened, educated, and humbled by a sincere study of the Scriptures. When that is the case he will usually be right in his decisions, and when he is mistaken they will only be errors of judgment and understanding and not errors of the heart.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise. (Ps. 51:17)
Does that passage not quicken your mind and impose on you a sense of urgency, a truth that you cannot afford to ignore? That is what the authority (power) of the Bible means. — the Editor