HOW IS THE SCRIPTURE USED IN MODERN THEOLOGY?

While modern theologians have continued for the most part to regard Scripture as the source of a specific revelatory content to be translated into theological concepts, their actual use of Scripture often belies the assumption.  The tension between the doctrine of Scripture and its uses that we observed to be already present in classical theology has become especially acute in modern times (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in ''Scripture and Tradition," p. 77).  

David Kelsey points this out very clearly in his "The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology." Although he distinguishes between seven different uses, the uses fall roughly into two main groups, possibly with one type mediating between them ("The  Bible and Christian Theology," Journal of the American Academy of Religion  (September 1980) pp. 385-402). 

At one extreme, Scripture may be construed as containing inspired inerrant doctrine. What is authoritative about Scripture, in this context, is its doctrinal content, and this content is considered revelation itself-of direct divine origin, inspired fully in all its parts, infallible with respect to to matters of doctrine or belief, to be translated without alterations into theological presuppositions.  Here we have the standard Scripture principle with one minor adjustment.  When offering reasons for adopting this view of plenary inspiration, what we have is an advancement of a functionalist argument: As used in the Church, the Bible is a holy or numinous object experienced as such by members of the community who bow and tremble before its awesome power and supernatural illumination (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit., p. 77).

In the second place, Scripture may be construed as containing distinctive concepts.  This is the position of the so-called biblical theology movement.  Here Scripture is authoritative because of the intrinsic revelatory power of its concepts.  Using critical methods, the task of biblical scholarship is to set forth the system of technical concepts that comprise the essence of the Hebraic and Christian Scriptures (Ibid. pp. 77-78). 

Third, Scripture may be construed as the recital of salvation history.  Revelation is understood no longer as contained in verbal deposits, but as consisting in certain distinctive "acts of God in history." These distinctive acts comprise salvation history, a subject of events within world history from which, when confessionally recited in Scripture, the concept of God can be inferred and then translated into theological proposals (Ibid., p. 78).  

These first three types hold in common the view that Scripture is authoritative by virtue of its content, a content in some sense identical with divine revelation.  However, in the second and third types, the content has been displaced from the actual words of Scripture, the writings as such to something that must be critically reconstructed from the writings, namely a system of of technical concepts or a set of distinctive events.  All three continue to understand the role of theology to be primarily that of translation and citation.  At best they allow for certain modifications in the Scripture principle but do not question its underlying premises (Ibid.).

The fourth type may be viewed as transitional.  What we have here is not a recited content, but rather scriptural narratives  that render an agent  by setting forth the distinctive patterns of intentions  and actions through which the agent's identity is constituted.  The whole canon of Scripture renders the same subject, Jesus Christ, whose identity is that of God with us.  This subject may be revealed through our encounter with the texts.  The texts are authoritative by virtue not of any inherent property they may have, but of a function they fill in the life of the community (Ibid.). 

Kelsey summarizes this position by saying the following: "To say that Scripture is 'inspired' is to say that God has promised that sometimes, at His gracious pleasure, the ordinary human words of the biblical texts will become the Word of God, the occasion for rendering an agent present to us in a Divine-human encounter (Kelsey, op. cit. pp. 47-48).

The final three types share a common perspective. They construe scripture as expressing a past revelatory event and occasioning its present occurrence. The expression may be in the form of poetic images having to do with a cosmic creative process or religious symbols concerned with the manifestation of the power of new being, or kerygmatic statements expressive of God's word of personal address by which a new self-understanding is evoked in the hearer.  The images, symbols, and statements  are not identical in content with the event, power, or word they express.  The actual authority of Scripture derives not from its content, but from its power to occasion new occurrences of revelation and new experiences of redemptive transformation when used in situations of proclamation, theological reflection, and personal self-understanding.  Finally, images, symbols, and kerygma may not be directly translated into theological concepts.  Theology, rather, has the task of "redescrbiing" what has been expressed biblically in symbolic or mythic language, employing a philosophical conceptuality (whether process, idealist, or existentialist) and an "imaginative construal" of what Christian faith is all about.  Only in that way can it be set forth intelligibly to the modern mind (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit. p. 79).  

Looking back over this typology, we realize that a full correspondence between the classic doctrine of Scripture and the actual theological use of Scripture is found only in the first type.  Already in the second and third types certain tensions appear as such to something that must be critically reconstructed from it.  In the last four types there is a clear disparity in which Scripture is actually construed as authoritative for church and theology and what Kelsey calls "the standard picture."  Theologians such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann espouse a doctrine of Scripture, and they do so primarily in terms of that standard picture.  They understand Scripture to be authoritative because it mediates in the form of narrative, image, and symbol, myth, and so on, a normative revelatory occurrence that in some fashion is to be occasioned anew and translated into modern conceptualities.  In other words, the doctrine of Scripture continues to be subordinated to the doctrine of revelation (Ibid., pp. 79-80).  

Under these circumstances what seems called for are fresh theological understandings of Scriptures that attempt to overcome the disparity between doctrine and use.  Several such attempts have been made recently, but for the most part, they represent modifications of the option we have just explored (Ibid. p.80).

For example, certain evangelical theologians such G. C. Berkouwer and Jack Rogers, while retaining the traditional principle of divine inspiration, are prepared to concede that the human instruments of this inspiration are finite and contingent, thus to qualify the doctrine of infallibility and acknowledge the legitimacy of certain forms of criticism.  But they still view Scripture as containing a divinely given revelatory content.  Another option is represented by Schubert Ogden, who proposes that the authority of Scripture derives in fact, from "a canon within the canon," the "Jesus-kerygma" of the earliest apostolic community, accessible only by means historical critical reconstruction (Ibid.). 

In his own constructive proposal, Kelsey develops an explicitly functional understanding of Scripture.  Scripture, he says, has authority to the extent that it functions in the Church to shape new human identities and transform individual and communal life (This view has an antecedent in S.T. Coleridge's Confession of an Inquiring Spirit. 1840).

It can be understood theologically to function this way because it is God who is active in Scripture-not God "saying" or "revealing" as we have it in the classic images, but rather God "shaping identity," using the uses of Scripture toward a specific end: the actualization of God's eschatological rule. This model is a product of creative human imagination, but it has the power to evoke fresh disclosures of the reality of God and the meaning of human existence (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit. p. 80).

So, I end this essay by posing the following questions:

1.  How does the function of Scripture in modern theology and in the contemporary Church compare to how it functioned in the earlier stages of theological construction?

2.  Is the function of Scripture in modern theology an antithesis to its function in earlier Christianity when the "Scripture principle" was being embraced and incorporated into the theology of the Church?

3.  Does the function of Scripture in the contemporary period constitute a departure or deviance from "the faith once delivered to the saints," or is it on a continuum? 

These questions remain with us as we continue on the journey of "faith seeking understanding."

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 EXPLORING THE FUNCTION, ROLE, AND FALL OF THE HOUSE OF AUTHORITY

Until now, we have seen how the Scripture and the tradition have constituted a "house of authority" in Christian theology.  In other words, Scripture and tradition (along with experience) have constituted the norms and standards of belief and practice.  The notion of "the Scripture being our only rule of faith and practice," or the transmitted tradition being the "guiding norm" for theology as it was in the early Church, come under question and scrutiny now.

Some might consider it "heretical" to even think of questioning the historical authority.  After all, they might say, this authority was handed down by God and who are to even begin to tamper with it?  I respectfully submit that our collective and individual insecurities lead us to need or want a secure and stable structure that we can rely on, instead of allowing our theology to go awry or disparate.  We don't want to have a "scatter brain" theology, which consists of "think as you please," or "it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere." We long for a secure structure that tells us what to believe without questioning.  In the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, adherents are expected to subscribe to the tradition simply "because it's been that way all along."  In Protestantism, there is the notion of "the Bible says so, end of story."  In either case, there has been no room for "razzle, dazzle." 

Now we come to a point when this structure of authority is questioned and challenged.  The question is "Do we have to be enslaved to a structure of authority that was handed down a long time ago "just because?" Is there any room for modifying or revamping that structure, so that in the end, we still have something to rely on rather than have a theology "at random" or "at whim?  Here we shall examine some levels of criticism and how they brought about the collapse of a structure that was already tottering from within.  

The first and still the most important is historical criticism in its various forms.  The beginnings of historical consciousness may traced back to the Renaissance, but they came to fruition in the Enlightenment and its aftermath.  Historical consciousness assumes that every entity occurs in a specific but ever changing context and is itself always fluid.  No exceptions to the principle of historicity can be allowed.  While this insight was fully grasped by Johann Gottfried Herder and others in the eighteenth century, its impact was experienced only gradually.  Criticism seemed to arrive in successive waves until finally all aspects of Scripture and doctrinal tradition were engulfed.  Because it was easier to assume a critical stance toward the Old Testament, methodological breakthroughs generally occurred first in Old Testament research and were only later applied to the Christian Scriptures (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in Scripture and Tradition, p. 73).

The first and most basic historical-critical level at which investigation was carried out was text criticism, developed already by such Renaissance scholars as Nicholas of Cusa.  It tested the authenticity of received texts and established the first principles of critical editions.  It was followed by literary and source criticism, which showed that the authors to which many of the books of the Old and New Testaments were traditionally attributed were not the actual authors, and that in most cases, a complex process of oral and written tradition underlay the writings in their present form.  The Documentary Hypothesis regarding the Pentateuch and recognition of the central role played by oral tradition in the formation of Israel's Scriptures led to similar discoveries in the area of the New Testament.  Concurrently, various forms of content criticism emerged.  The rationalists attacked the miraculous elements in the sacred history and attempted to replace them with a "purely natural" explanation.Then the so-called "mythical interpretation" came along to argue that these elements are ingredient to the structure of biblical mythology and cannot be removed without its meaning.  David Strauss in particular, advanced the thesis that much of the biblical material is actually not historical but mythical or legendary in character, reflecting the religious interests of the author or community that produced it.  With this went a challenge to the truth claims mediated by such material.  The effect of such criticism on the gospel history of Jesus was especially devastating (Ibid., p. 74). 

These three forms of criticism tended to predominate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In our modern era (twentieth and twenty-first centuries), tradition criticism has played a major role, beginning with the form criticism of Rudolf Bultmann, who showed a developmental trajectory of the units comprising the synoptic tradition can be established, permitting a reconstruction of the earliest forms of the tradition.  Bultmann's successors, the so-called "redaction critics," stressed the importance of understanding that  the function of the text in the literary and theological framework established by the editor or author.  Within current biblical studies, two new methods have come to be increasingly influential; structuralism, concerned with a depth dimension of grammatical and linguistic relations, and a second level of literary criticism, concerned with literary genres.  By attending to the function of symbol, myth, legend, narrative, poetry, parable, epistle, and other literary forms, critics have come to the realization that Scripture does not contain "doctrine" or "deposits" or revealed truth at all.  Biblical language portrays new ways of being in a world transformed by grace; its meaning is a function of symbolic and metaphorical uses of language that cannot be directly translated into conceptual terms (Ibid.).

Obviously, these various layers of historical and literary criticism seriously complicate the traditional way in which Scripture was understood to contain the content of revelation-as divinely inspired, infallibly expressed, equally distributed to all its parts, available for translation into theological concepts, immutably valid for all generations.  Similar types of criticism were applied to the history of doctrine.  The historical myths underlaying doctrinal legitimation of dogma and papacy were exposed, and the whole process by which an authoritative tradition originated and developed was grasped in a thoroughly historical manner.  Here the great master was Adolf Harnack, but he had many eminent predecessors, notably Johann Salomo Semler, and Ferdinand Christian Baur (Ibid.).

A second level of criticism is neither historical nor literary but social-phenomenological. It argues that the "Scripture principle" does not offer a vehicle of duration corresponding adequately to ecclesial existence.  This sort of criticism has rarely been advanced explicitly, but it is implicit in the ecclesiology and theological method of certain theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher. A community whose actual social duration is based on testimony to the Gospel, the experience of salvation mediated by the presence of the risen Christ, and the inauguration of God's promised eschatological rule cannot have literature construed as an atomistic collection of authoritative texts containing a deposit of revelation confined to a specific time in the past.  The ecclesial community, moreover, is non ethnic, universal, and culturally pluralistic, so that purely ethnic, provincial, and culturally relative elements of Scripture cannot be authoritative.  On this view it is altogether possible that features logically attending the form of social and religious existence represented by Christian faith have never been fully actualized or even perceived, and in their place, forms have been adopted that contradict Christianity's immanent ideal. The question of Scripture and tradition is therefore closely intertwined with that of ecclesiology (Ibid. pp. 74-75). 

The third level of criticism is theological.  It addresses the themes or presuppositions that underlie the Scripture principle, namely salvation history and the principle of identity.  While this theological critique has been widespread during these past  centuries, it has rarely been been perceived as undercutting the Scripture principle.  Yet clearly it does.  The patriarchalism, monarchialism, and triumphalism of the classical salvation-history scheme, for instance, have been widely discredited. Triumphalism in particular founders on the rock of theodicy, for it has proven very difficult to sustain the logic of sovereignty in the face of massive evil experienced during the past century.  If theology shifts from the model of causality to that of influence, and acknowledges the contingencies of world process-as in various forms of existentialism, process thought, and political theologies-then salvation history and the logic of triumph dissolve.  This is also the case with the principle of identity. Since the Adamic myth rules out an ontological identity between Creator and creation, this identity has usually been construed on the model of causal efficacy as an identity between what God wills to happen or make known and what in fact happens or is known in history.  Apart from the discrediting of the logic of triumph, the chief difficulty with the principle of identity is that of a literalized myth. In folk religion everywhere, God is represented mythically as thinking, willing, reflecting, and accomplishing in the mode of an in-the-world-being who intervenes selectively in world process.  There are enormous problems with this sort of mythology.  It mundanizes the divine and sacrilizes the non-divine. It violates finite human freedom and the contingency of the natural world.  And it is hard pressed to avoid attributing specific evils as well as goods to the divine will.  With the end of mythological thinking about God, the theological foundations of the Scripture principle evaporate (Ibid., pp 75-76).

The house of authority has collapsed, despite the fact that many people still try to live in it.  Some retain title to it without actually living there; others are antiquarians or renovators, attempting in one way or another to salvage it; others have abandoned it for new quarters or no quarters at all.  During this past century and a half, a spectrum of possible theological responses to this "shaking of the foundation" may be sketched as follows.  Clearly at one extreme are those who abandon the biblical writings as in any sense scripture, regarding them as obscurantist, provincial, no longer authoritative for life in the world. This was seen as an option in the Enlightenment, and was taken up explicitly by certain forms of historicism, modernism, and relativism.  At the other extreme are those who continue to defend the Scripture principle more or less uncompromisingly : Protestant scholasticism, Catholic orthodoxy, the Princeton theology, and modern evangelicalism (Ibid., p. 76).

In the middle ground, two groups may be distinguished. One seeks to modify the principle by displacing the locus of revelation from the canon of Scripture as such to specific events, figures, concepts, or subsets of texts-something like a canon within a canon.  An identity is no longer maintained between the written document and revelation, but the authority of Scripture continues to derive from its revelatory substratum, which might or might not be presumed to be beyond the reach of historical criticism.  The other group, without always acknowledging it, uses Scripture in relation to constructive theological proposals in such a way as to negate the presuppositions and axioms of the Scripture principle, and thus construe scriptural authority in a functionalist rather than revelational terms. This group may continue to espouse a rather traditional doctrine of scripture, yet clearly they are doing something quite different (Ibid., pp 76-77).

En fin, we are left with various options. Do we continue to subscribe, uncritically, to the notion of "biblical authority?"  Is our notion of "authority" one of the Scriptures themselves, or is it one of the one who inspired and speaks to the Scriptures, therefore making it a derivative authority?  Does the authority, as we asked before, extend to the divergent manuscripts, translations, and versions of Scripture, or does it only reside in the original autographs?  Do we equate biblical "authority" with the authority of our hermeneutics (interpretations), thereby creating "a canon within a canon?"  As we continue to engage in constructive theology, we will also continue to pose these questions as a challenge to how we do theology.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary  

 TRADITION AND THE TEACHING AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH

We now move on to explore how the traditions, both oral and written, came to occupy a central place of authority in the Christian Church.  There are those who believe that tradition should play no role in the construction and formulation of doctrine and dogma. The reality is, however, that it is the tradition that paved the way for both doctrine and dogma, as well as for the emergence of Scripture.  

The dichotomy between Scripture and tradition that many want to propose is a false dichotomy, which in turn rests on faulty premises. As our Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers will remind us, the traditions in the Early Church were in existence long before the Scriptures came to be.  If anything, the Scriptures were the result of the tradition, much to the chagrin of my Protestant sisters and brothers.

The fixing of the time of revelation to the past and the limitation of authoritative writings to that period meant that the Scripture was not self-sufficient, but required interpretation, synthesis and application. In fact, the Bible's own internal pluralism and historical determinacy rendered it ambiguous to subsequent generations. Thus a tradition of authoritative interpretation emerged in Christianity analogous to the Mishnah and Talmud of Judaism.  It took the form of the regular fidei (rule of faith) and later of the doctrina or dogma of the church, the standard of "right belief (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition," p. 70)." 

A dogma is an officially sanctioned teaching that articulates an article of faith and is considered to be free from error.  However, dogma consists not merely of individual dogmas, but also of an internally coherent set of dogmatic prepositions touching all the major moments of faith and organized according to the salvation-history scheme.  Truth is distributed in leveled fashion across the individual units of dogma and is construed in the sense of an ahistorical, immutable essence, free of error.  Dogma in the strict sense was propounded in a postscriptural period of definitive commentary, the period of the Church Fathers and the councils, from roughly the second through the sixth centuries. Eventually, almost all the attributes of Scripture itself were extended to dogma, which is not the theology or even the product of a theological process, but rather a material norm proposed by theology.  Although according to Catholic teaching new dogmas are occasionally promulgated, they in fact do not have the same authority as the old ones, and for all intents and purposes, the period of normative dogmatic formulation, like the time of revelation is long past (Ibid., p. 71). 

This, of course, raises the question of whether divine revelation, however it is conceived, is given "once and for all."  Is the "faith once delivered to the saints" unchangeable and fixed in time?  In the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, revelation is given for once and for all, and in Protestantism, the notion that "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever," permeates the mindset that revelation and dogma are not fluid, but rather static.  

What continues is the teaching authority of the Church and the theological work of individual theologians. The latter, according to the classical model, is done primarily in the genre of citation and translation rather than that of critical inquiry. That is to say, the theologian works from evidence in the form of authorities rather than immediate experience.  The primary task is one of "translating" the content of Scripture and dogma into appropriate modern forms, and the question of faith is limited to formal operations such as working out the internal coherence of the system of doctrine by constructing a dogmatics, a house of dogma, out of the bricks and mortar of Scripture texts and Church doctrines.  We hasten to add that this was the model of what the proper theologian was about.  The great thinkers of the Church-Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Luther, Calvin-transcended it, even though they may have accepted it in principle (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit., p. 71).

The Church, with its magisterial or teaching authority served as the institutional guardian of scriptural interpretation, doctrinal promulgation, and theological application.  The institution legitimated its claim to authority through the notion of apostolic succession, according to which a direct link was established by Jesus (more specifically, Jesus' intention to found a church), the original apostles, and their successors (the bishops of the Church, among whom the Roman bishop attained primacy).  Thus the episcopal college and the papacy became secondary representatives, vicars of God and Christ whose declarations expressed God's very will (Ibid.).

The extension of the principle of identity reached its logical culmination with  the dogma of papal infallibility propounded at the First Vatican Council, although the claim had been implicit for centuries. Ironically, its promulgation occurred at a time when  the claim had already lost much of its credibility. In fact, it was an overextension that could not be sustained and that called forth internal criticism demanding more authentic ways of understanding ecclesiastical authority in the Catholic tradition (Ibid., p. 72).

The primary issue of the Reformation concerned this third locus of authority in the classical theology: the institutional Church. The Reformers challenged certain external features of Catholic institutionalization, yet the Protestant churches generally believed themselves to be "providentially sanctioned" as the form of the Church willed by God, even when splintered into hundreds of rival sects. Furthermore, even though primacy was accorded Scripture as opposed to tradition, an authoritative interpretive key to Scripture was created in the form of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions, which took on the character of inspired, inerrant documents, a "magisterial" teaching in Protestant dress.  And of course the patristic dogmas were never questioned, nor was the authority of the Church Fathers, or the ecumenical creeds. Thus despite the norm of sola scriptura  (scripture alone), the difference between Protestant and Catholic versions of authority were more apparent than real, especially when viewed in light of the presuppositions and axioms of the classical criteriology operative in both. The negative impact of sola scriptura was to turn Christianity into a book religion-a logical extension of the Scripture principle not unlike the logical extension of institutional authority in the dogma of infallibility. The positive insight behind the assertion of sola scriptura (as well as sola fide, sola gratia, and ultimately sola Christus ) was the critical questioning of all authorities.  This insight did not, however, totally bear fruit until the Enlightment (Ibid.).

En fin, in the construction and formulation of Christian theology, we continue to wrestle with the question of authority. Who or what are the final authorities in determining the content and nature of the theology which identifies us as "Christians?"  Is it a book? Is it a leadership, supposedly appointed by Christ Himself?  Is it a consensus of the community of faith, consisting of both lay and ordained clergy? Where does authority ultimately reside?  What is the "Supreme Court (final court of appeal)" in Christian theology?  Is the claim to biblical inerrancy and infallibility making out of the Bible what Karl Barth called a "paper pope?"  These questions have and will continue to baffle and challenge us as we seek to construct a theology which is a witness to the liberating and salvific acts of God in history.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary  

 HOW DID THE CHURCH APPROPRIATE  THE "SCRIPTURE PRINCIPLE?" 

Because of the role that Scripture has played in Christian theology, we need to ask ourselves, "how did the Church appropriate the Scripture principle?" Did the Church just take over the "Scripture principle" from the Jewish faith?  Did the Church appropriate it because it felt that it was a necessary component of its witness and proclamation?  Did it adopt it because they believed that God wanted it to be part and parcel of its dogma?  

The answer to those questions will depend on how one views the nature of Scripture and also how one views the importance or non-importance of Scripture in the formulation of doctrine and theology.  At some point, our answers will be based on retrospective reflection, i.e. examine and adopt what the Church did in the past.  At other points, our answers will be contingent on how open we are to ongoing revelation as opposed to a revelation that has been given and transmitted "for once and for all." 

Our answers can also depend on where we think the locus of final authority lies.  Does it lie in the Bible itself?  Does it lie in the authority of the Church and its leaders?  Does it lie in individual interpretation of the Scriptures?  Whose hermeneutic (interpretation) is the "correct one?"  

Although as an offspring of Judaism, the early Christian community inherited the Jewish scriptures and soon produced a collection of its own, it did not necessarily have to adopt the scripture principle.  In fact, through the first century and a half of its existence, a certain tension can be discerned over precisely this issue (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition," p. 67).

For one thing, the Scripture principle appears to have been modified in certain respects.

1.  Even though at first the Christian community faced a struggle to maintain its identity over against both Judaism and Hellenistic religious syncretism, the primary internal threat was not cultural assimilation but a multiplicity of conflicting interpretations within an already diverse cultural community consisting of Jews, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, North Africans, and the like. Thus what was called for was not community regulation and social maintenance, but community confession. Besides, scripture was not the vehicle of duration for primitive Christianity that it was for Judaism. The ecclesial community had a norm other than scripture, namely, the living presence of the Lord, and a nucleus tradition of early testimony to him (Ibid.). 

2. The functional genre of Christian scripture shifted from Torah to Gospel, and then to doctrine.  Its function was to witness to the Christ and announce to the world the salvation accomplished in Him. But given the controversy between rival Christian traditions, the writings came to function primarily in the settling of doctrinal disputes. Thus they served not to provide authority for regulating social and cultic life, but to authorize right teaching, belief, and confession, and their unity was not law, but a gospel message as true (Ibid.).

3.  In adopting the Jewish scriptures, as its own, the Church relativized them, for it recognized the law to be valid only for Israel and interpreted the writings primarily in terms of the motif of prophecy and fulfillment.  A reperiodization of salvation history laid the groundwork for a two-part scripture consisting of old and new covenants, with provisional validity being accorded the old covenant (Ibid.).

4. The new community of the Messiah was drawn from all nations to form not a new nation but a universal religious community transcending all provincial understandings of divine presence,  whether localized in a people, land, temple, book, or set of doctrines (Ibid., pp 67-68). 

Given these modifications, the axioms of the principle of identity would appear no longer to be valid.  The person-event of Jesus of Nazareth, who they believed to be the Christ, becomes the new focus of divine-human identity, which cannot be extended to any written representation, either primary or secondary.  A collection of scriptural writings could serve as a control on tradition running rampant, distinguishing between early writings produced by the community of faith and containing testimonies to the founding event, and later, extracommunal imitations where the historical referent exercises little or no control. But this is not yet the scripture principle, and it does not comprise a canon or official collection of sacred scripture.  In the second place, the focus on the Gospel with its referent to the Christ is incompatible with the axiom of leveling in which every literary unit takes on the character of a divine communication. Moreover, since the content of Christian scripture is authoritative only insofar as it is universalizable, contents appropriate only to specific social, cultic, or ethical situations cannot be accorded redemptive significance.  Finally, the fact that the Jewish scripture is retained as "old covenant," implying relative and provisional validity, rules out the axiom of immutability (Ibid.). 

Despite these modifications called forth by the essentially different character of the different character of the Christian Gospel itself, the mainstream of Christendom ultimately adopted the scripture principle and the apparatus associated with it: a canon of officially recognized authoritative writings, atomistic exegesis and proof-texting, and the establishment of revelation as the foundation of theology contained in human-historical deposits regarded as inspired and infallible.  Under the pressure of conflicts with heresy and in the context of the institutionalization of the new religion, it was all too easy to fall back into those practices.  Moreover, the Christian movement never abandoned the royal metaphor for God and God's relation to the world. The logic of sovereignty, which presumes that God employs whatever means are necessary to ensure the successful accomplishments of the divine will, eventually pervaded the total criteriology of Christendom. For the very Word of God to continue to be salvifically present in the Church, there must be a trustworthy reduction of the event and person of Christ to verbal testimony, a sacred deposit to be preserved and handed on by a succession of authoritative representatives (Ibid. pp. 68-69).

An account of the presuppositions and axioms of the scripture principle, and of their appropriations by the early Christian community, should in no way be construed as a history of the interpretation and use of Scripture during the patristic, medieval, and Reformation periods. This history is rich and variegated, with many high and low points, and we cannot summarize it (Robert H. Grant, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, and Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation).

We should attempt to uncover the theological and methodological presuppositions lying beneath the surface of the actual uses of Scripture in liturgy, piety, and teaching.  Often these uses, and the specific ways that scripture was appropriated in relation to theological proposals, stood in tension with the way in which scripture itself was intended as an authoritative deposit of revelation.  Frequently, a theologian's insight into the meaning of scripture transcended the formal scripture principle in terms of which that same theologian would have articulated the doctrine of scripture (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit., p.69).

Origen, for example, was a theologian of great imaginative and speculative insight whose knowledge of the Bible and contribution to its interpretation were unrivaled in the patristic period. His use of scripture in his systematic exposition of the Christian faith was richly textured, ingenious, and daring. But at the same time, he was convinced that every clause of the Bible is infallible, supernatural, and divinely dictated. Because the literal sense of many texts is demonstrably erroneous if not repulsive or unedifying, each passage must also be construed in moral and in mystical or spiritual senses in order to arrive at the divinely intended meaning.  This opened the way to allegorical interpretation with Origen and Clement of Alexandria as the first great Christian exponents (although they borrowed heavily from Alexandrian Judaism, notably Philo).  Allegory interprets all the details of a story or text as having a figurative meaning different from and encoded with the apparent literal meaning. The task of allegory is to "decode" a text by making explicit the higher meaning of each and every unit.  This procedure was necessitated by the scripture principle in order to save the principle of identity and its axioms, especially  the leveling and immutability, and it had the effect of reading extraneous, excessive interpretations into texts under the control of a theological norm such as Christology (Ibid., pp. 69-70). 

In Augustine, as in Origen, a tension is evident between a rich and imaginative use of Scripture in theology and an unsound exegetical method, allegory, which he applied in accord with two interpretative criteria: the law of love (the Christological norm for deriving the figurative meaning of texts), and the rule of faith (the universally accepted truth of the Catholic faith).  The same tension is found in most of the great theologians of the Church down to the time of the Reformation.  Martin Luther was perhaps the first seriously to challenge the allegorical method, replacing it with a "spiritual" interpretation that introduced a degree of critical freedom into scriptural interpretation, thus challenging, at least implicitly, the main elements of the scripture principle. By contrast, John Calvin, in many respects a more rigorous and brilliant interpreter of Scripture than even Luther, would not allow any challenge to the Scripture principle. There was therefore a considerable tension between his exegesis and his adherence to the principles of divine authorship, plenary inspiration, infallibility, supreme authority, and the like.  In the period that followed, Protestant scholasticism hardened those principles even further, so that what had been implicit in the Church Fathers took the form of explicit dogma (Ibid. p.70).

So, the questions for us today are as follows:

1. Does the Christian Church as a whole still follow the "Scripture principle?"

2.  Is adherence to the Scripture principle operative primarily in denominational and sectarian Protestant groups?

3. Is it still necessary for us in the 21st century Church to continue adhering to the Scripture principle for the formulation of constructive theology?

4.  If we discard the Scripture principle in the construction and formulation of theology for our times, what do we then replace it with?  

We will continue this discourse in the pursuit of investigating the importance of the role of Scripture in Christian theology.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 Before examining  the way in which Christianity accepted and modified the Judaic understanding of Scripture, we should first attempt to uncover  the presuppositions and axioms in both the Judaic scripture principle and the developed criteriology of Christian faith.  We distinguish two basic presuppositions and a set of axioms ingredient in each (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition." Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994., p 64).

The first presupposition is salvation history, a comprehensive interpretive framework implicit in the religious thought of Israel, Judaism, and Christianity.  Salvation history interprets the past, present, and future of a particular people (Israel, the Church) as a sequential story whose development and outcome is determined by God. God, the transcendent world-maker, also exercises world-governance, construed on the political model of the rule of a monarch over a realm. God exerts causality over world affairs by means of specific and decisive interventions, including not only global historical events but also specific theophanies, miracles, acts of inspiration, and punishments and rewards of individuals.  The two themes of governance and interference are interconnected, since governance requires activities of governance, and thus some capacity to intervene-to punish, to correct, to maintain, and to inspire (Ibid.).

The salvation-history scheme yields certain axioms that prove indispensable to the scripture principle. One of these is described as the "logic of sovereignty," or the "logic of triumph."  God, the infinitely powerful world sovereign, is always able to accomplish the divine will either indirectly through the contingencies of nature and the finite purposes of human beings or, when necessary, by means of a direct causality that assures the attainment of divinely purposed ends. A second axiom has to do with the periodization of history and the fixing of the time of divine revelation. History unfolds through distinct stages, each of which has its place in the overarching teleology, while revelation is confined to a particular period in the past.  The latter claim would not seem to be required by the salvation-history scheme, since revelation, as a concomitant of divine redemptive activity, could be construed as an ongoing process. After the Diaspora, however, Judaism looked back to the pre exilic history of Israel as the time of the giving of the Torah, which made it normative.  Under the conditions of dispersal, there could be no new revelation to the people as whole since the people no longer existed as a landed nation, thus cultic and social life must be governed by a previously given law, now continually to be reinterpreted, applied in new circumstances , while waiting for the return of the people to the land and the coming of the Messianic king. Christianity adopted, uncritically it would seem, the axiom of a past epoch of divine revelation, although it had to reperiodize salvation history in light of its belief that the Messiah had appeared. It is said "uncritically" because the logic of ecclesial existence, oriented to the experience of the continuing redemptive presence of the risen Christ, would seem to require a different understanding of revelation (Ibid.)

The second presupposition may be described as the "principle of identity"- an identity that is, between what God wills to communicate and what is in fact brought to expression in the interpretive act of a human individual or community.  The locus of identity is sacred scripture along with the laws, doctrines, and teaching authority pursuant to it.  The qualities of inerrancy, infallibility, and absolute truthfulness are ascribed to both to its locus of identity and to its content.  A synthesis is presumed to have occurred between the divine communicator and human recipients, a synthesis brought about by the causal efficacy of God in the form of "inspiration." Thus an identity of content is assured between what is divinely willed and what is humanly asserted. The content is primarily of cognitive character, containing information about God's nature, activity, and purposes. Clearly underlying the principle of identity is the logic of sovereignty: if God wills to communicate information about divine things, God has the means to ensure that the information is correctly received and handed on (Ibid.). 

Three crucial axioms follow from the principle of identity. They are: (1) Secondary representation. Since definitive revelation is restricted to a brief period epoch of past history, a means must be found to ensure that the original deposit is preserved and handed on. The salvation-history scheme framework justifies giving secondary representatives authoritative status comparable to the original bearers, for it sets in motion an inexorable teleological logic of fulfillment which requires perpetuation.  Thus, divine providence oversees the transition from charisma to tradition, from oral tradition to written deposit, from written deposit to definitive commentary, from commentary to institution. (2) Leveling- Originally, the identity resided in the content of the message, but later the focus shifts from message to vehicle, and the distinction between vehicle and content collapses. Now the whole of the contents and the vehicle itself are regarded as divine.  Divine truth, in other words, is equally distributed throughout the vehicle, and all parts of the latter are accorded equal status.  (3) Immutability-The identity cannot be occasional or provisional; rather it is universally applicable.  What was given as true for the charismatic prophet or original apostle is immutably valid for all future generations.  Tradition consists in the application of an unchanging law, gospel, or teaching to new times and places, an application requiring great interpretive ingenuity, such as the work of rabbis, theologians, church historians, and the like (Ibid.).

In Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, the oral tradition, which gave way to an inscripturated revelation, is considered as authoritative, infallible, and normative as the Scriptures themselves, since the Church, in their theology, was brought into existence by the Holy Spirit, and since Christ, through the Holy Spirit was present, guiding the Church through its leadership (Magisterium and the consensus of the bishops) prior to the writing of the Bible.  To a certain extent, it can be said that the Magisterium in Roman Catholicism, and the consensus of the bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, are considered to be  the "locus of identity" which defines the Church and its life, ministry, and theology.

In Protestant Christianity, there is no direct claim to give the Sunday School lesson books, or the doctrinal and theological books of the respective Protestant denominations and their institutions (Bible Institutes and seminaries), the same divine status as Scripture.  These are considered, at least in theory, to be secondary or even tertiary sources of doctrine and theology, subordinate to Scripture.  The major problem with these groups claiming the "authority of Scripture," is that they, in essence are following the "authority" of their particular biblical hermeneutic.  In the case of the independent or so-called "non-denominational" Protestant or evangelical churches, is that it leaves room for private individual interpretations of Scripture, and then any "Joe Blow," or "Mary Jane" becomes the ultimate authority in the life of the Church because of some supposed "private pipeline to Heaven."  The historic and mainline Protestant churches do not have a Magisterium as such, or a "consensus of the bishops," but they do believe there should be a "consensus" of inquiry by both lay and ordained persons in the formulation of a biblical theology.  

One of the problems with the sacralization of Scripture in the Protestant tradition, as Swiss pastor and theologian Karl Barth pointed out, is the danger of "bibliolatry," i.e. worship of the Bible, rather than worship of the one who inspired it and speaks through it. Barth called those Christians who sacralized Scripture in this manner, of creating a "paper Pope," i.e. attributing to the Scriptures, what the Roman Catholic Church attributes to the Pope, i.e. inerrancy and infallibility. 

The other problem with the notion of "biblical authority" in Protestantism, is the question as to whether these attributes are to be ascribed to only the original autographs or to the translations and versions as well.  Protestant Christians who tend to go "by what the Bible says," ignore the history of the original biblical languages, the original autographs which have disappeared, the manuscripts (both earlier and latter), as well as the literary dependency of the translations and versions on those manuscripts. 

So the question remains for us, as Christians, regardless of our ecclesial affiliation: What is the locus of our identity both as individual Christians and as a Church?

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 I have previously stated that no one does theology in a vacuum. That is definitely an impossible task. Every theologian approaches the subject with a prior set of assumptions and presuppositions.  In other words, there is a baggage of premises and axioms that each theologian brings to the table of discussion. 

What I'v stated above is nothing new. Prior assumptions have always characterized the theological enterprise.  Since ancient times, theologians have always worked with a set of prior assumptions that undergird their work and outlook.

How did Christianity come to accept and modify the Judaic understanding of Scripture? In order to answer that question, we must first attempt to undercover the presuppositions and axioms  that are implicit in both the Judaic scripture principle, whose origins we have already examined, and the developed criteriology of Christian faith.  

There are two basic presuppositions.  They are:

1. Salvation History- Salvation history is a comprehensive interpretive framework implicit in the religious thought of Israel, Judaism, and Christianity.  Salvation history interprets the past, present, and future of a particular people (Israel and the Church) as a sequential story whose development and outcome is determined by God. God, the transcendent world-maker, also exercises world-governance, construed on the political model of the rule of a monarch over a realm. God exerts causality over world affairs by means of specific and decisive interventions, including not only global historical events but also specific theophanies, miracles, acts of inspiration, and punishments and rewards of individuals.  The two themes of governance and interference are intertwined, since governance requires activities of governance and thus some capacity to intervene-to punish, to correct, to maintain, to inspire (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition."  Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, pps. 64-65). 

The salvation-history scheme yields certain axioms that prove indispensable to the Scripture principle. One of these can be described as the "logic of sovereignty" or the "logic of triumph." God, the infinitely powerful world sovereign, is always able to accomplish the divine will either through the contingencies of nature and the finite purposes of human beings or, when necessary, by means of a direct causality that assures the the attainment of divinely inspired ends.  A second axiom has to do with the periodization of history and the fixing of the time of revelation.  History unfolds through distinct stages, each of which has its place in the overarching teleology, while revelation is confined to a particular period in the past. The latter claim would not seem to  be required by the salvation-history scheme, since revelation, as a concomitant of divine redemptive activity, could be construed as an ongoing process.  After the Diaspora, however, Judaism looked back to the preexilic history of Israel as the time of the giving of Torah,  which made it normative.  Under the conditions of dispersal, there could be no new revelation to the people as a whole since the people no longer existed as a landed nation; thus cultic and social life must be governed by a previously given law, now continually to be reinterpreted and applied in new circumstances, while waiting for the return of the people to the land, and the coming of the messianic king.  Christianity adopted, uncritically it would seem, the axiom of a past epoch of definitive revelation, although it had to reperiodize salvation history in light of its belief that the Messiah had appeared.  We say "uncritically" because the logic of ecclesial existence, oriented to the experience of the continuing redemptive presence of the risen Christ, would seem to require a different understanding of revelation (Ibid., p. 65).  

2,  The Principle of Identity- The principle of identity is that which describes what God wills to communicate, and what is, in fact, brought to expression in the interpretive act of a human individual or community.  The locus of identity is sacred scripture, along with the laws, doctrines, and teaching authority pursuant to it.  The qualities of inerrancy, infallibility, and absolute truthfulness are ascribed both to the locus of identity, and to its content.  A synthesis is presumed to have occurred between the divine communicator and human recipients, a synthesis brought about by the causal efficacy of God in the form of "inspiration."  Thus an identity of content is assured between what is divinely willed and what is humanly asserted.  The content is primarily of cognitive character, containing information about God's nature, activity, and purposes. Clearly underlying the principle of identity is the logic of sovereignty: if God wills to communicate information about divine things, God has the means to insure that the information is correctly received and handed on (Ibid., p. 66).  

Three critical axioms follow from the principle of identity.  They are as follows:

1.  Secondary representation- Since definitive revelation is restricted to a brief period of past history, a means must be found to insure that the original deposit is preserved and handed on.  The salvation-history framework justifies giving secondary representatives authoritative status comparable to the original bearers, for it sets in motion an inexorable teleological logic of fulfillment which requires perpetuation.  Thus divine providence oversees the transition from charisma to tradition, from oral tradition to written deposit, from written deposit to definitive commentary, from commentary to institution (Ibid.).

2.  Leveling- Originally, the identity resided in the content of the message, but later the focus shifts from the message to vehicle, and the distinction between vehicle and content collapses.  Now the whole of the contents and the vehicle itself are regarded as divine.  Divine truth, in other words, is equally distributed throughout the vehicle, all parts of the latter are afforded equal status (Ibid.).

3.  Immutability- The identity cannot be occasional or provisional; rather it is universally applicable. What was given as true for the charismatic prophet or original apostle is immutably valid for all future generations. Tradition consists in the application of an unchanging law, gospel, or teaching to new times and places, an application requiring legal interpretive ingenuity, i.e. the work of rabbis, theologians, church councils and the like (Ibid., pls. 66-67).

In summary, I pose the following questions for you and your community, regardless of whether you are an ordained clergy person, or a lay person, whether in leadership or auxiliary positions.  

1.  What set of assumptions and presuppositions do you and your particular community of faith operate with relative to your theology?

2.  Do you and your community treat your theology as if it were "God-given"? 

3.  Do you ascribe to the doctrines of your church the same divine status as you ascribe to Scripture?

4.  Does your community allow for members to call into question the theology of the community, or would that be considered blasphemous and heretical?  

5.  What elements of your theology do you and your community consider as universally valid in all times and in all places?

6. What elements of your theology do you and your community consider "open to negotiation?"

These questions are not intended as "trick" questions, but rather an attempt to motivate you and your community to think critically and analytically about the implications of your faith.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE IN ITS CLASSIC FORMULATION 

Formation of the Scripture Principle in Postexilic Judaism

Scripture-oriented Christians tend to think that the "scripture principle" has existed in the Church since day one.  In other words, they believe that the Church has always held to the notion that "the Scriptures are the primary or sole authority for faith and practice." They believe that the Bible has always been the "final court of appeal" for Christian doctrine, theology, and practice. The notion of Scriptures being "the only rule of faith and practice" was a subsequent development in Christian history.

What is called the "Scripture principle" originated as a solution to a major crisis in Israel's history, the dispersion of the Jewish people following the Babylonian Exile.  This event significantly modified Israel's social institutions, separated a portion of the Jewish from those institutions, and brought about an acute threat of cultural and religious assimilation.  The Diaspora Jews, now lacking the land, temple, and priesthood, created two new institutions for preserving their socioreligious identity: the synagogue and the written Torah (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition, p. 63). 

Under these circumstances "scripture " came to mean a written deposit of the complete and definitive revelation of Yahweh to the people, functioning as the primary source of cultic and moral regulation for the community.  Three basic convictions came to be held about the Torah:

1.  It is the exhaustive location of a now past divine communication, relevant to all present and future times and places, containing at least implicitly an answer for every need and crisis (Ibid.).

2.  It is totally and equally valid in all its parts and details (Ibid.).

3.  It contains symbolic references to the nation, land, holy city, and temple, permitting the endurance of a people whose self-understanding remained that of a dispersed nation, a quasi-political and religious entity, having as its regulative law what was originally given for its life as a nation in possession of its own land (Ibid., p. 64).

Thus a written vehicle became the locus of revelatory divine presence.  Theologically speaking, this represents a tremendous advance over the localization of divine presence in natural objects, historical places, or heroic figures.  It represents a liberation and humanization of religion, which enabled Israel to survive as a distinct people.  Language, the most spiritual form of human creative imagination, is probably also the most appropriate medium for experiencing and and expressing God's transformative presence.  At the same time, however, it is a fragile medium peculiarly susceptible to distortion- to being reduced, for example, to a fixed code or set of doctrines, taking on some of the characteristics, of physical objects or fetishes (sacred things worthy of veneration, containing magical power).  The constant temptation of Judaism and Christianity has been to objectify their scriptures in this fashion, although the prophetic, critical power of both religions has also resisted this temptation and to some degree overcome it (Ibid.).  

We encounter this tendency to engage in what 20th century pastor and theologian Karl Barth referred to as "bibliolatry (worship of the Bible as opposed to worship of the one who speaks through it)."  In essence, we find that the notion of the Scriptures as the "Supreme Court" of Christian theology came later on in the historical development of Christianity.  We must never forget the role of the pre-biblical traditions in both Judaism and Christianity in the construction and development of Judeo-Christian theology.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE ROLE OF SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION IN THE FORMULATION OF THEOLOGY 

I begin this essay by intimating as I did in the previous one, that Christian theology did not emerge in or was constructed in a vacuum. There were historical antecedents that gave way to the formulation of theology.  For those who insist that theology must be based on "what the Bible says," I will point out that the theology of the Early Church was not based on "what the Bible says."  Granted that the Early Church was primarily of Jewish background in the composition of its membership, and therefore, relied to a large extent on the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) as well as their own oral traditions in order to construct a theology. 

It must be noted that the notion of an "inerrant and infallible Scripture" was not even alluded to in the initial stages of the Early Church's theological construction.  This was a much later development.

Up until recently, almost the entire spectrum of theological opinion would have agreed that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, together with their doctrinal interpretations, occupy a unique and indispensable place of authority for Christian faith, practice, and reflection.  But this consensus now seems to be falling apart (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in "Scripture and Tradition."  Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 61)

For one thing, biblical scholarship, increasingly influenced by history-of-religions approaches, has questioned the uniqueness of biblical writings as compared with other ancient texts.  By insisting that the  meaning of texts can be properly construed only in their specific linguistic and historical contexts, biblical criticism complicates the use of such texts as authorities in preaching and theology.  In the second place, systematic theology has most freed itself from the impact of the neo-Reformation movement that dominated Protestant thinking for half a century and that subscribed to the principle of scriptural authority with great intensity. Catholic thought, meanwhile, has experienced a similar liberation from the authority of doctrinal tradition since Vatican II.  Thus we are able to acknowledge that scriptural authority, while it may be indispensable to Christian theology, also has a dark underside in it potentiality for obscurantism, resistance to science, authoritarianism, and "book religion"-veneration of "the book" as a holy object.  Finally, and perhaps most important, we seem to be passing through a new wave of critical consciousness in which all authorities are being questioned, especially those associated with the dominant Western cultural and religious tradition.  For example, the more radical wing of the liberation theologies has raised disturbing questions concerning the ideological abuse of Scripture and tradition by the Church, and some critics have wondered whether these authorities are not in fact patriarchal, sexist, indifferent, to the realities of oppression, and class-oriented to the point of being no longer usable.  If we are to recognize scripture and tradition as authoritative, it will apparently have to be in a much more relative sense then before (Ibid., pps. 61-62).

Just what does recognizing something as "scripture" entail?  An ambiguity emerges  that may account for some of the confusion surrounding questions concerning the "necessity" and "authority" of Scripture for Christian faith. In the history-of-religions, "scripture" refers to to the existence of a normative collection of writings, and their function in the origin and perpetuation of a religious faith.    In this sense, there are Hindu scriptures, Buddhist scriptures, and so on, with no particular theory of their inspiration, authority, or validity implied. On the other hand, a more determinate sense of "scripture" is associated  with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In  this view, the collection of writings called scripture contains a unique deposit of revelation-a deposit whose special qualities are due to the inspired origins, and which is to be handed down through the ages by an authoritative teaching tradition. This second sense can be referred to as the "scripture principle," in order to distinguish it from "scripture" in the first generic sense (Ibid., p. 62).

While primary attention is given to the theme of Scripture, we do not neglect tradition, since in both classic and modern formulations the way that Scripture has been construed as authoritative in the life of the Church has been applied to tradition as well.  This may be appear surprising in light of the commonly perceived rivalry among Christian confessions over the primacy of scripture in relation to traditions, but the issue as so stated is misplaced (Ibid., p. 63).   

 

SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN ITS HISTORICAL FORMATION 

It is very easy to assume that Christian doctrine and theology have come down to us "prepackaged" from Heaven in all its neats forms and nuances.  Christians may find it hard to believe that there was a time that there was no such thing as "theology" or "doctrine" in the Church.

I contend that the Early Church did not have the luxury of constructing theology as we know it today. The Early Church was a community "on the run," if you will. In addition to its internal battles with heresy, the Church had to contend with persecution by the Roman Empire.  Though it has been said that there was "religious toleration" in the Empire similar to what we have today in the U.S.A. and other Western European countries, as soon as the Church began to proclaim that "Christ is Lord," that was, in essence, the end of religious liberty.  The notion was, you can believe and practice anything you want, but don't put the authority of Ceasar into question."  

Even with its battle with heresy, there was the possibility of physical injury and even death. As the second and third centuries dawned, and the Church became more numerous and more powerful, the doctrinal and theological "status quo" was not looked at kindly. Being banned or excommunicated from the Church was not the only punishment for deviation from the "faith that was once delivered to the saints."  As the Church became more powerful, the death penalty, just like in the times of ancient Israel, became an option for castigating those who tampered with its theology.  

We will look in vain for anything in the first century of the Church remotely like a fully articulated theological system.  The literature of this period primarily takes the form of letters and occasional treatises answering the critics of Christianity.  It does not include any major work of a comprehensive or systematic sort.  Still there is to be found within these "confessional" and "apologetic" writings, the beginning of systematic reflection upon the central content of the Christian faith (Robert H. King, "Introduction: The Task of Theology," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks. Peter C. Hodgson, Robert H. King, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 3). 

Systematic theology, as we have come to know it did not spring forth full-blown at the beginning of the Christian era.  It was built up gradually over time. Only with Augustine in the fifth century did the key elements come together to form what with justification can be called the "classic paradigm."  Its most distinctive feature was its historical framework: the attempt to view the whole of Christian doctrine from a "history of salvation" perspective. The result was a powerful teleology, one which has penetrated deeply into the Western consciousness, yet which in the modern period has been met with severe criticism (Ibid, p. 24). a

The Enlightenment challenged the feasibility of any kind of teleology.  In particular, it exposed the mythic character of the history of salvation teleology.  The creation story might be symbolic of God's relationship to the world; it could not be taken as a literal account of the actual formation of the world.  Likewise the fall could be regarded as expressive of the human predicament, but not as an actual historical occurrence. Even the Gospel accounts of Jesus came to be seen as having "mythic" elements, so that there was no longer one sure point on which to fix the history of salvation. The disintegration of this long-established framework is clearly one of the major factors in the present theological crisis, though not the only one (Ibid.). 

Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, on which Thomas Aquinas relied for much of his systematization of Christian belief, has also been largely discredited. The hierarchy of being, the pattern of emanation and return, and the ideal of perfection implicit in his system would be challenged by most of not all contemporary philosophers. Indeed, even the possibility of metaphysics has been questioned, so that looking to any metaphysical scheme to provide backing for a theological system would seem to be a dubious undertaking.  If Christian theology is to achieve coherence and comprehensiveness, it must be on some basis other than metaphysics or history (Ibid.).  

The early nineteenth century was a major turning point for theology not only because most of the critical issues had emerged by then, but also because the construction of an alternative paradigm was well under way. The distinguishing features of this "new paradigm" included: the prominence given to subjectivity, the acceptance of historical criticism, a developmental view of human nature, and the presumption of a close alliance between religion and ethics. The key figure in the transition was in the transition was undoubtedly Friedrich Schleiermacher, for he both accepted the challenge of the Enlightenment and sought a constructive reformulation of Christian theology that would be faithful to tradition. Along with G.W. Hegel, he recognized the need for a unifying principle that would hold together the disparate assortment of beliefs held by encompassed by traditional theology: beliefs about God, the human condition, Christ, the Church, the ultimate end of life. He found that principle in the religious self-consciousness. Because the Christian self-consciousness, as he understood it, was profoundly shaped by the community and its history, he was able to incorporate into his new paradigm many elements of the old paradigm, including the teleology of redemption. In light of the massive shifts in assumptions, came the question of what was to provide Christian theology with its overall unity, coherence and meaning (Ibid., p. 25)?  

A century and a half after Schleiermacher, is still with us. The major theological systems of the modern period all address it in one way or the other. The Christocentricism of Karl Barth, with its elevation of of one of the traditional items of belief to the status of chief organizing principle for the system as a whole, offers one kind of solution. Paul Tillich's method of correlation,with its appeal to the exisential situation of the believer as a constitutive element in the structuring of theology, provides a different kind of solution. Yet important and influential as these proposals have been, none has prevailed. If there can be said to be a single overriding task for theology at the present time, it is to recover a sense of wholeness, the unity, and integrity of the Christian witness. The factors that mitigate against this effort are probably as powerful now as they ever were.  In some respects, they may now be even more powerful for they have penetrated more deeply into our thinking. In addition, there are new factors present that challenge not only the classic paradigm, but also its modern successors (Ibid.).

One of these new factors is the encounter with other religions on a global scale. Traditions that were only theoretical alternatives at one time, are live options for many present-day Christians-even traditions as far removed from Western experience as Hare Krishna and Zen Buddhism. These religious traditions challenge some of our most firmly held beliefs and assumptions. Traditions with their origins in India, for instance, are singularly indifferent to all issues relating to history. Their "theological systems," if we may speak of such, bear no trace of a historical framework-cosmological perhaps, but not historical.  Zen, in particular, is very radical by our standards, challenging any sort of teleology and even calling into question the substantiality of the self. We have scarcely begun to respond to this challenge (pp. 26-27). 

Closer to home there have been a number of events in this century that have served to undermine confidence in the Christian interpretation of history and the teleological framework on which it is centered. The Holocaust is one of them, the ecological crisis another. Can we assume divine sovereignty over history when history issues in the mass extermination of innocent men and women? Can we assume that all things are ordered to human good when the relentless pursuit of human goods leads to the destruction of the environment and disruption of the ecological balance in nature? Even the theologies of liberation offer no real answers to this challenge, for though they are critical of fall forms of social oppression-and of the complicity of the theological establishment in that oppression-they rely for their criticism to a large extent upon a theology of history that is itself problematical (Ibid., p. 26).

So we may after all be in the midst of another paradigm shift. If so, the task of systematic theology will be more than a constructive task. The responsibility of the theologian will be to help us discern what is essential to our faith and to express it in ways that are both comprehensive and comprehensible (Ibid.).

En fin, as my theology mentor and professor, the late Dr. Paul Fries would always say, "Theology is tentative."  We can never claim to have it "all together."  Since it is a human endeavor and construction, we can never claim that theology is "infallible" or "God-given."  Indeed, we seek to comprehend God's self-disclosure in history, but given the human condition, and what Fries would call the "noetic effects of sin," we can never pretend that we have God "in our pockets."

I close by reiterating what I said at the beginning, i.e. that we cannot treat theology as if it were something that came pre-packaged from Heaven and given to the Church "for once and for all."  Theology is a human construct, reflective of our condition, including our arrogance, flaws, quirks, and propensity to sabotage God's self-disclosure to suit our own ends.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen. 

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

WHY THEOLOGY? IS IT REALLY NECESSARY?  

As we encounter different claims regarding doctrinal and theological perspectives, we can't help but ask if it is really necessary to have a theology in the life of the Church and of the individual believer.  We might ask "What is the use?"  Many consider theology a total waste of time, and others consider it something that is totally unnecessary. 

As I continue to hear of and witness so much atrocity, suffering, and tragedy in the world, though I have always loved the study of theology (God-talk), I sometimes become discouraged and disillusioned, and even adopt the attitude of "what the hell?"  I say to myself "let's just focus on suffering, and the hell with all this theological razzle dazzle." I ask myself, "Does God even care whether or not we have a theology?"

Some would say that theology is in a state of disarray. There are no commanding theological figures on the level or order of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, etc.  But I wonder if that even matters, given the issue of the relevancy or non-relevancy of theology in our time.  

While there have been battles in history surrounding certain issues such as fundamentalism vs. liberalism, biblical literalism vs. biblical criticism, etc. it appears that there is an apathy, not only in the world, but also in the community of believers, towards things theological. It appears that the average person sitting in the pew does not know about or even care to know about these theological controversies.  The attitude is one of "let's prepare ourselves for Christ's second coming," or "let's commit and dedicate ourselves to eradicating social ills."  

I personally, see the importance of the role of theology.  The reason for this is because I believe that we have to be clear as to what we believe and why.  Indeed, there is suffering going on in the world, but I think that having a well-thoughtout  theology, will enable us to deal with that suffering in a manner which is both effective and faithful to the message of the Gospel.

There are some advantages in the present situation. For one thing, there is greater ecumenicity (interfaith relations among Christians of different orientations and traditions).  A person beginning the study of theology now is free as never before to draw upon the resources of many different traditions-Catholic as well as Protestant, Calvinist as well as Lutheran.  Even the Eastern Orthodox tradition has become accessible to theologians from the West, as it was not in earlier times. In fact, if there is any one characteristic that sets the present situation off from all previous ones, it is the manifest pluralism of religious traditions.  Christianity is conceived far more broadly today than at any time in its history, and traditions outside Christianity are taken more seriously than they once were.  It is not inconceivable even that a Christian theologian should learn from a Buddhist, Hindu, or Islamic thinker (Robert H. King, "Introduction to the Task of Theology," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks., Peter Hodgson and Robert H. Kings, eds.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 1).

Another positive feature of the present time is the increased recognition that theology, for all its reliance upon tradition, is a constructive undertaking.  What has previously been set down cannot simply be taken for granted.  The tradition we have received has evolved over time, and we ourselves contribute to its further development by the way in which we appropriate and apply it. We had therefore, best take responsibility for what we say and in the way we say it.  That is especially true if what we seek is a "systematic theology," for whatever else that term may mean, it surely connotes a deliberate ordering of ideas, the self-conscious articulation of a theological position (Ibid., p. 2). 

Still there is no real consensus about either the substance or the task of Christian theology. The tendency is rather toward a kind of laissez-faire eclecticism, with theologians pursuing various thematic interests, but no one undertaking a genuinely inclusive, unified approach to the exposition of Christian doctrine. Even a serious and sustained critique of traditional positions is difficult to mount, because it is not at all clear from what stance or on what grounds such a critique would be carried out.  We are, for the most part, uncertain even  as to what the options are (Ibid). 

So perhaps the best approach would be to review how we have arrived at where we are: to examine what have been the paradigms for systematic articulation of Christian faith in the past, and the ways in which these paradigms have been challenged, transformed, and replaced in the modern period (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) 

We are, in other words, called to tell the story of Christian theology, with a view to better understanding the present exigency.  This approach ought not to be expected to resolve the outstanding issues, but it should put us in a better position to appreciate what those issues are and to take the measure of the task before us (King, op. cit., p. 1).

In summary, the task of theology, if I may say so, is to retrieve to the extent possible, "the faith once delivered to the saints."  Theology is a hermeneutical task, i.e. seeking to effectively and faithfully interpret the experiences, traditions, and scriptures which shape and form it. 

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen!

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary