A tale of two roads: Homiletics and biblical authority

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2000 by Allen, David L

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler . . .

Robert Frost--"The Road Not Taken"

I. INTRODUCTION

The issue of authority has been the quintessential issue of the Enlightenment and especially of the twentieth century. This is true for the very simple reason that the Enlightenment, by its very name, celebrated the autonomy of reason and humanity. Until the Enlightenment, philosophers and theologians traveled a single road: Authority Avenue. In the eighteenth century, however, these travelers came to a fork in the road. The old road was marked with the old sign "Authority of Revelation." The new road sign, marking the new fork, read "Autonomy of Reason." Many travelers who passed that way were so busy practicing their art that they never noticed the fork. Others were confused by the lexical and grammatical similarity of the signs. No doubt many merely assumed that either road was an equally viable route to their ultimate destination.

The result was politically, socially, ethically, philosophically, and religiously momentous. The Enlightenment witnessed the rise of the democratic state, resulting in the mitigation of political authority, humanism, resulting in the mitigation of moral authority, and religious liberalism, resulting in the mitigation of religious authority.

Enlightenment modernity distrusted authority. Radical postmodernity dismantles authority. Edward Farley's oft-repeated statement sums up the late twentieth-century scenario: "the house of authority has collapsed."' For many, great was the fall of it.

Listen to Lyotard as he refers to the Bible as fable with its "despotic deposit of divine utterance."2 Deconstructionist Mark Taylor said, "Everything inscribed in the divine milieu is thoroughly transitional and radically relative."3 Homilete Scott Johnston tells us that "to be postmodern is to be post-- certain."4 Furthermore, the rebuilt house will look radically different from the old one. Sallie McFague tells us how to reconceive Scripture after the collapse of the house of authority:

The reformation of Christianity coming out of Enlightenment and recent liberation theologies is an attempt to return to the roots of the faith. Those who insist that a canonical view of Scripture is not possible; that a dynamic rather than a static view of God is appropriate; that stress on the work rather than on the person of Christ is right; that hierarchical, patriarchal models of God's relationship to the world are oppressive and destructive; that other religions . . . offer a needed corrective to Christianity. All who emphasize these points do so because they believe that the essence of Christianity demands such emphasis.5

Notice that it is not postmodernity demanding such emphasis according to MacFague, but the "essence" of Christianity which demands it. In other words, the previous conception of Christianity by the apostles, Fathers, medieval and reformation Christians, orthodox scholastics, some Enlightenment liberals, and all evangelical Christians was flawed.

In light of this, it should come as no surprise that the question of Biblical authority has been the burning issue of the century. This issue has been at the heart of the rise of neo-orthodoxy and American evangelicalism. It is also the reason why these two have been at each other's throats for the past half century.

Every sermon preached presupposes a certain theology and a concept of authority. David Buttrick highlighted the essence of the authority problem for homiletics when he remarked that "conventional notions of Biblical authority . . . are no longer tenable"s and that "we shall have to rethink the nature of authority."7 There is certainly a need for more work to be done in the overall area of a theology of preaching as Ronald Allen in a paper at the Academy of Homiletics pointed out: "Preaching is preeminently a theological act, yet there is a near lacuna in our literature: we give little attention to theological analysis of the preaching event."8

Lately, the field of homiletics has begun to wrestle with the authority issue and, like Jacob, refuses to let go without some blessing of authorization. Recently, Charles Campbell has shaken the homiletical house with his book Preaching Jesus, where he seeks to demonstrate that the New Homiletic remains dependent upon the modern liberal paradigm. Campbell's solution is to infuse homiletical theory with Hans Frei's postliberal theology which he considers to be much superior to the old and now defunct liberal paradigm.9 But more on this later.

Il. ON THE ROAD WITH BARTH: THE SINISTER DICHOTOMY

Wilbur Marshall Urban began his 1939 volume Language and Reality: The Philosophy of Language and the Principles of Symbolism with the words, "Language is the last and deepest problem for the philosophic mind."11 Sixty years later, Urban's statement still stands and could be modified to include virtually every discipline, including theology and homiletics. But the story is best told by beginning one hundred years ago, for the theological and homiletical harvest which we have at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the result of seeds sown at the beginning of the twentieth century.