Phill Sacre

Tag: scripture

  • Positions on Scriptural Authority

    A few days ago, after the news about women bishops had broken, I had a very interesting discussion on Facebook about the decision. One of the interesting things to come out of that was the positions that people had on Biblical Authority. It seems that this is an area where people have major disagreements: do we treat the Bible as a relic of a previous time, which we can safely ignore now (or at least, we can ignore the bits we disagree with); or is it the literal word of God – was it basically dictated by God from heaven, and do we have to obey every last word of it to the last letter?

    There is a huge spectrum of belief within the Church of England – and even within ‘evangelical’ circles. When I say ‘evangelical’, I’m referring to the dictionary definition: ‘belonging to or designating the Christian churches that emphasize the teachings and authority of the Scriptures’.

    For example, the Evangelical Alliance – an organisation which would encompass a broad spectrum of evangelical belief – has as point three on its statement of faith:

    The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.

    (Other organisations hold to a similar view – the Baptist Union has a similar statement, for example, as does the FIEC.)

    Notice that phrase ‘the written Word of God’ – essentially evangelicals are saying that the Bible, although written by humans, is the written word of God himself. It’s not just an ‘old book’ which we happen to love because we like the language (which, I do admit, annoyed me with the KJV anniversary celebrations last year: people seemed to love the language, not what it actually meant.) I came across 1 Thessalonians 2:13 yesterday, which I think sums it up quite well: “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.” The Word of God – not something which is dead and irrelevant, but something which is at work in believers. As Hebrews 4:12 says:

    For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

    Well, this is all very interesting… but what does this have to do with the debate I was having? The key question we were talking about is: what does the Bible being the word of God actually mean when we come across passages which are seemingly difficult, such as 1 Corinthians 14 or 1 Timothy 2? Are we free to say “Paul was wrong” or “Paul was writing into a cultural context which is no longer relevant?”

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  • Jehovah’s Witnesses and ‘Sola Scriptura’

    Sola Scriptura was a term that the reformers – such as Martin Luther – used to determine what they believed about scripture: it means ‘by Scripture alone’ – the doctrine that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation, in contrast with the Roman Catholic understanding of tradition. Essentially, as I understand it, Roman Catholics understand Scripture and Tradition as two independent strands which contain the same truth. Anyway, how does this all relate to the Jehovah’s Witnesses?

    Well, recently Mrs Phil and myself have had a few conversations with them. One of the things which they have said in response to our appealing to church history is, “Why do you appeal to church history when you have the Bible?” In other words, they believe that their understanding of the Bible is correct, and there’s no need to look back as to how it’s been understood historically by the church. (In fact, they believe that the church fell into apostasy after the time of the apostles, so they can’t trust what the early church said.)

    The reason I’m mentioning all this is because it’s a topic we looked at in our Doctrine lecture yesterday. Why is it that we can’t just say that we have the Bible and forget about traditional understandings of scripture?

    The reason is partly because by putting faith in the Bible, you are putting faith in the people who compiled it. Now, I’m not saying here that the Bible was compiled in the sense that a bunch of people sat down in a room one time over a cup of tea and decided which books to put in the Bible out of hundreds of options. I don’t want to go into that discussion now! But the early church did seek to authenticate the books which we now have as part of the New Testament.

    Anyone who sees the Bible as authoritative – as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are claiming to do – are implicitly putting faith in the early church for the purposes of the New Testament canon. It becomes a very difficult thing, therefore, for them to claim that the early church were apostate – BUT they were right on with the Biblical canon.

    I’d never thought of this before, but it struck me yesterday. I put it up here as an awkward question to ask if you are ever involved in dialogue with the Jehovah’s Witnesses 🙂