Scripture as word of God: Evangelical assumption or evangelical question?

Trinity Journal, Fall 1999 by Morrison, John D

Within historical and modern evangelical orthodox Christian contexts it is all but assumed that when reference is made to "the Word of God" it is Holy Scripture that is intended; and that in spite of evangelical Christocentricity and the fact of "the Word made flesh." Modern evangelicalism, across the traditions, has consistently maintained the propriety of the claim that Holy Scripture is the written or, more recently, "inscripturated" Word of God, whatever else may rightly and more directly be identified as the Word of God. Indeed, much of evangelical theological identity, and its Christocentricity, is grounded in the confessional linkage whereby Scripture is the written Word of God.

Yet this contention cannot be regarded as confined only to modern evangelicalism. Historians of Christian theology have repeatedly pointed out, often with scorn, that this textual identification or connection of Word or revelation of God with Holy Scripture is the almost universal position of the church fathers and pre-Christian Judaism.l Historically, post-Nicene, medieval (East and West), Reformation, and post-Reformation Catholic and Protestant Christianity has held the same position-despite historical, ecclesiological, conceptual, and methodological shifts and developments. In fact, the often predominant position of church fathers and doctors, and on occasion the Reformers, was not simply that Scripture is or can be rightly identified as the written Word of God but that this very process meant essentially divine dictation of the books of Scripture. While such an extreme "docetic" view has been disavowed almost unanimously in modern evangelicalism, the central contention about the revelatory character of Scripture has continued to be basic. But it is this very point of identification that has in recent years been carefully and subtly denied by theologians who claim the label "evangelical."

In order to bring preliminary clarity to the claims, issues, questions, and criticisms, as well as constructive reformulation, several points regarding evangelical assessment of Scripture and contemporary developments ought to be made. By thus identifying Scripture as the written Word of God, the claim is then that God has revealed himself historically in acts, centrally and supremely in Jesus Christ. It also means that God has revealed himself personally to persons to redeem them; that God has revealed himself "content-- fully," i.e., that God's self-disclosure is not fully given in a bare Act of power (e.g., Exodus) nor in dramatic, but conceptually empty, "will-o'-the-wisp" personal encounters, but "content-fully" in ways effectually expressible in and as human language, even written language. The theological result is not merely a Scripture that points to the Word of God (Christ), like John the Baptist in the Grunewald altarpiece,2 nor a Scripture that "becomes" the Word and which the Word of God breaks through in order to meet us as "I to Thou,"3 nor a Scripture that "brings" or "conveys" the Word of God to us; nor even a Scripture "in which" the Word of God can be found somewhere. Instead, the evangelical position on revelation is an understanding of Holy Scripture as the inscripturated Word of God, whatever may be its other Spirit-effected roles in relation to the redemptive self-disclosure of God (cf. below). However we reckon Scripture's unitary connectedness to, in, and under Christ the Word, by the Spirit, the historic evangelical position emphasizes the reality of the participation of Scripture within the economy of God's gracious, condescending self-giving, to be known objectively and redemptively as he is in himself in the world. The point is that at some level Scripture-as-Scripture is (ontologically) Word of God. The evangelical position, like the historical position of the church, is not fearful of or repulsed by the participation of the divine in the human, the material, even in the linguistic (at the level of the text).

But within evangelicalism there is a subtle and nuanced move away from this identification of Word of God and Holy Scripture at any level, except perhaps in a formal "adoptionist" or "Arian" sense. Whether correct or incorrect, these recent attempts to cut the divine Word of God free from the written text of Scripture are conceptually and methodologically reflective of the re-entrenchment of dualistic thinking which, in theology, inevitably bifurcates the unity of God's redemptive-kingdom purposes by cutting off the objective knowledge of God in the world. It is the purpose here to present, analyze, and critique three recent evangelical discussions of Holy Scripture in relation to revelation/Word of God, and to present a Christocentric revelational model wherein participative place is found for written human language in and as Word of God.

1. THREE RECENT FORMULATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURE-WORD

OF GOD RELATIONSHIP

A. Donald Bloesch

Donald Bloesch has long been an insightful, intelligent, and effective evangelical theological light in the midst of mainline Protestant theology. A combination of theological acumen and humble, faithful, Reformed piety is found throughout his works.4 In recent years Bloesch has embarked on an extensive theological project entitled Christian Foundations, already well-known and much used in evangelical seminaries and colleges. In the second volume, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation, Bloesch endeavors to walk the via media between what he sees as the theological pitfalls of (inerrantist) fundamentalism and liberalism on the question of Holy Scripture. This dialectical structuring of what he perceives to be extreme against extreme is found on nearly every page of the work.