Scripture as the Ground for Theology

In this last year, I came across two quotes that I found complimentary to one another. While I cannot give credit to the "authors", I cannot take that credit for myself. The first was, "The Bible is the soul of all theology." And the second was, "Theology is the wall that protects the Bible." The two must be paired together; they are mutually informative of one another. In giving serious consideration to how one reads scripture and how one works out theology, we must be careful not to fall into the modernist trap of artificially separating the two from one another. We must read the scriptures, understanding that they were written in a certain context, to a certain people, at a certain time, by certain men. And yet, we must realize that they were written down at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But what does that mean? Does it mean, as some would say, that this means that every last word was carefully chosen, essentially dictated by the Holy Spirit to men who merely acted as stenographers? Say it ain't so! The Bible, its content, though divinely inspired, was written down by men, and incorporated by men in its current format, what we call the Canon. We should rightly believe this all to have divine inspiration behind it. But we should not remove the humanity of the authors from our understanding either. After all, what is it to say that one Gospel writer's Greek was better than another writer? Was one more divinely inspired than the other? Can you see the rabbit trails and red herrings that open up to waste our time?

Instead, let us consider that the scriptures are man's divinely inspired words about God. I point to Barth's 3-Fold Word of God, whereby we know and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the eternal, living Word of God incarnate, the first and true Word of God. Scripture is the second Word of God, that which records God's and God's people's faith, struggles, successes, failures, and histories, not to mention plain old instructions for living out of that faith, but is only and truly the Word of God when read with the eyes of faith. And the third Word of God is the proclamation of the Word of God, rightly done - not every sermon can be said to be this third tier - it is ultimately up to the workings of God's Spirit to bring that about. But all three of these are some how or another integrated. We must acknowledge that any and all revelation of the three comes solely from God alone. Any understanding that we can lay claim to, cannot be misunderstood as to be from our own insight - consider Peter's testimony as to Jesus' identity in Matthew 16; Jesus Himself told Peter that he was able to proclaim that truth only because it was revealed to him by the Father. And so it is today. What we claim to know or understand about God is not through our own shrewd study of scripture, but through the Holy Spirit's work of leading us into all truth.

But this can only happen as we read and learn the scriptures as our frame of reference. We cannot make any faith claims on scripture without first letting God lay claim to every part of our lives (not in a sense that we can become perfected through our own force of will). We must prayerfully read the Bible, asking God to make known to us what it means. This is not accomplished through personal interpretation per se. It relies on a mix of proper exegesis, understanding the historical context, and whole-book context that verses and chapters fall into. This is to say, we must go beyond simple proof texting, and look for what God wants to tell and reveal to us. And, we must do this beyond ourselves. That is, we must work collaboratively, as much as that's possible, to insure that we our not forcing our individual aprioris onto the message of the text, and therefore into our theological statements. At the same time, we must allow the scriptures to critique our aprioris, for as the Word of God, it stands apart from the work that we are trying to synthesize from it. And this is important for each culture and each generation, as our contexts are different, so will scripture's critique be different, and so will our understanding. That is not to say that we should reject the theological workings of the past. But it is to say that just as Martin Luther and John Calvin were required to respond to the challenges of their days, so are we called to step up and biblically and theologically address our age.

What do you think???