The Sense of Scripture: Studies in Interpretation . . .

"NO PRECEDENT, NO USE": AN EXAMINATION  

A rule of interpretation was set forth in a recent issue of the Gospel Advocate by Stanley 3. Crowley that is worthy of consideration, especially because it summarizes a way of looking at the Bible that has for sometime prevailed among Churches of Christ. It is succinctly stated as "No precedent, no use," which means that if there is not an approved example for a given practice in the New Testament then it is not lawful. Use or practice requires a precedent in Scripture. The writer is addressing the question of the use of instrumental music in particular, and he sets forth his hermeneutics in these words: 

Playing instruments was not a part of the worship of the church in New Testament times. No precedent for the playing of instruments can he found; hence, they must he excluded. To abandon the simple principle of "no precedent, no use" in order to incorporate the playing of musical instruments in our worship assemblies is to establish the foundation for the abandonment of all regulation of Christian corporate worship.  

Brother Crowley refers to the principle of "no precedent, no use" as if this were a recognized principle of hermeneutics. I would question this.! would he surprised if even one textbook on hermeneutics sets forth any such principle. He speaks of "abandoning" this principle as if it were a recognized rule among us. While "No precedent, no use" has a motto-like ring to it, it is not a motto of the Stone-Campbell movement. Not only is it not listed in the hermeneutical rules set forth by Alexander Campbell, it is a rule that he would not accept.

But it is part of a rule of interpretation set forth by some in Churches of Christ in recent years, and I am not sure who first set it forth. It goes this way: The Bible teaches (or authorizes) by direct command, approved example, and necessary inference. While this is a well-known rule among Churches of Christ, I don't think you will find it anywhere else, and one wonders how it ever survived as a rule of interpreting the Bible for even a day. This must be where Stan Crowley picked up his principle of "No precedent (or example), no use."

This three-pronged rule is invalid in each prong, for there are some "direct commands" in the New Testament that are not ongoing in their application. The so-called Jerusalem decree in Acts 15:20 is an instance of this, for there are three commands that are generally conceded to be restricted to a given circumstance in that day and time. The command to wash one another's feet is another, at least among Churches of Christ, for we do not believe it is applicable to the modern church. So with the holy kiss, a "direct command" if there ever was one and one that is repeated again and again in the New Testament.

So with precedents or examples. Anyone following a "precedent, use" rule, or its converse "no precedent, no use," has to be very selective in his survey of primitive Christianity. Again, footwashing imposes itself, for it is a precedent as well as a command. Jesus plainly said, "I have given you an example that you should wash one another's feet." Why do we not follow that precedent? The church at Jerusalem practiced communal living by selling its possessions and distributing to each as he had need. Are we to follow that precedent in the 1980's? If not, what happens to our hermeneutics?

That the Scriptures mandate by "necessary inference" is as fuzzy as the first two, for there is no way for us to determine for sure when an inference is necessary and when one is not. I recall a book entitled Was Jesus Married? that argued, both resourcefully and reasonably, that according to Jewish custom and practice it would be unthinkable for a young rabbi like Jesus not to be married. His thesis was an inference" from Jewish tradition, but is it a "necessary" one? Similarly one might "infer" that if one is not baptized by immersion he cannot possibly go to heaven, but is it a necessary inference? Such an hermeneutics is worthless, for it only involves us in a welter of opinionism.

We would do just as well to forget the "direct command, approved example, necessary inference" bit and simply say what our best thinkers have said since the days of Alexander Campbell, that the Scriptures are to be interpreted by the same "common sense" rules that we use to interpret any other kind of literature.

The riskiest feature of Stan Crowley's "No precedent, no use" rule is that it imposes upon the Bible a position that the Bible does not assume for itself. Where is there the slightest implication in the Bible itself that its precedents or examples are necessarily applicable for all ages and all circumstances? Where is there even a suggestion that the New Testament is an exact blueprint or detailed pattern that sets all the precedents that the church will ever need for millennia to come? To argue that we cannot use some method or practice unless a precedent is found for it in the New Testament is to make the New Testament into a book that it was never intended to be. It also makes it an impossible book to follow, for how could a few first-century churches anticipate all the needs of the church for all time to come. "No precedent, no use" is a rule that no one can or does follow. One simply is not thinking responsibly who so argues.

How about a church having a publishing house, journals, TV and radio programs, owning property, electing trustees for said property? Most all churches have such things and much, much more, including Churches of Christ. A Church of Christ in Lubbock has a glass elevator! There may be a precedent for such in a Hyatt-Regency, but in the New Testament? And how about a minister of music, youth minister, pulpit minister, Sunday School superintendent (or the Sunday School itself for that matter)? Are there precedents for these things in the New Testament? If a church wants to have a youth camp or a singing school, must it find a precedent in the New Testament?

Brother Crowley's concern is instrumental music, for which he finds no precedent. But he has no problem with written music and song books with either round or shaped notes, for which there is no precedent. Rather than to make a law out of "no precedent," would it not be better to allow each church to decide such matters for itself, according to its own conscience. There are churches, for instance, that sing only from the Psalms, objecting to both written and instrumental music. No precedent, they say. All we have the right to ask of them is not to make a law of God out of their opinion. That is what I ask of my own Church of Christ people: Don't make a law where God has not made one! And "No precedent, no use" is a law that God has not made. It is also a legalism that no one can keep with any consistency.

The logic that makes the New Testament a detailed blueprint for the restoration of the true church has a fatal flaw. It implies that there was first the New Testament as we now have it, and that the primitive churches were patterned after that blueprint, precedents and all. But the opposite is the case: the church existed and functioned for centuries before the pattern (New Testament) came along! It was the church that produced the New Testament, not the other way around. How then could the New Testament be the pattern for the church?

Moses needed a pattern for the building of the tabernacle, and so Heb. 5:8 says that he was told, "See that you make all things according to the pattern." Moses had a pattern at hand and he built the tabernacle according to the pattern. But the church is not like that. The tabernacle was built by men, but Heb. 8:2 refers to the "true tabernacle," which is the church, "which the Lord built, not man." There is no "pattern" for the church, for the Lord built it and he needs no pattern. If men had needed a pattern for the church like Moses needed for the tabernacle, God would have given them one in the first century before the first church started. Then the New Testament churches would not have been so different from each other! When men build houses they need a pattern, but when God builds one no pattern is needed. And who pitched the true tabernacle, man or God?

But that doesn't make the New Testament any less important, it only liberates it from being a legalistic instrument. It is important because it points us to our living pattern, Jesus Christ our Lord. We are to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, not to the presumed blueprint of any book. But the Scriptures are extremely helpful in revealing to us the image of Christ to which we are to be conformed. And the New Testament discloses the great drama of people becoming the Body of Christ and living according to that ideal, even if falteringly. The New Testament is therefore more descriptive than prescriptive. And so their experience, their victories and their defeats, becomes the word of God to us in our resolve to be the Body of Christ in our generation. But this does not necessarily mean that we are to do precisely as they did and nothing but what they did, but that we are to do for our day what they did for theirs, hasten the kingdom of God into our troubled world.— the Editor