An Appreciation for the Enduring Value of Scripture

How many translations of the Bible do you have in your home? How often do you read it?

According to LifeWay Research, “Americans treat reading the Bible a little bit like exercise. They know it’s important and helpful but they don’t do it.”[1] This has resulted in a significant decline in biblical literacy, not just in the culture at large, but also in many churches.

Kenneth Briggs, in The Invisible Bestseller notes, “Widespread ignorance and neglect of [the Bible] is a recipe for . . . distortion and abandonment of basic beliefs and practices . . . The future of Christianity seems dependent in no small measure on whether that bible storehouse of creation accounts, history, law, prophecy, morality, poetry, story, witness and miracle is the soil in which churches will be built––or not.”[2]

In contrast to our abundant access to God’s word, throughout Church History, Christians have sometimes struggled to gain access to Scripture. For some, especially around the time of the Protestant Reformation, access to the Bible was worth one’s wealth and even life itself.

Wycliffe

John Wycliffe first translated the New Testament into Middle English in 1380.

In 1408, with support from Archbishop Arundel, a synod at Oxford forbade people from reading Wycliffe’s Bible.[3]

Those who were caught reading the Bible were liable to forfeiture of their worldly goods. But the price of renting a Wycliffe Bible for an hour every day for daily reading was a load of hay–-a significant payment for a farmer living near subsistence. People would pay a high price for a privilege that could cost them everything.

A man named John Bale “as a boy of eleven watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord’s prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records. . . seven [disciples of John Wycliffe] burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.”[4]

These people saw the enduring value of Scripture and it cost them their lives.

Tyndale

On October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake.

Tyndale’s crime? Translating the Bible into English and importing it into his home land. His desire? That the King of England would allow the people access to the Bible in their own language.

He was arrested and executed by the King of England for having the courage to bring God’s Word from the original languages to the people. His hope was for their salvation and spiritual maturity. When a Roman Catholic scholar argued him at dinner, saying, “We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s.” Tyndale responded: “I defy the Pope and all his laws . . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”[5]

Tyndale died to bring Scripture into the common language. People paid big money to rent a copy, because it was so precious. People were starving for access to God’s Word.

But we have no such limitations. We have extra copies of the Bible to give away. That Bible is written in common language and offered at about an eighth-grade reading level. There are free translations of the Bible available online through Apps that you can download onto your mobile devices.

And Bible study tools? There are free websites that offer searchable Bibles that pastors and teachers could have only dreamed of in decades past.

We have an embarrassment of riches, but we don’t take advantage of them because we have Netflix and cable and podcasts and everything else that can keep us from God’s word. Our problem isn’t an access problem, it’s a value problem.

We often don’t properly act on the enduring value of Scripture. Even when we have Scripture, we don’t treasure it.

Enduring Value of the Content of Scripture

 One common dismissal of Scripture’s authority in ethical debates is that it is an ancient book that doesn’t speak to today’s problems. Why should we listen to a book that was written a few thousand years ago? Isn’t the Bible just a regressive Bronze Age Book?

 As an ethicist, this is one of the most common arguments I come across. Non-Christians make it to explain why they dismiss Christians without even listening. Theologically liberal Christians made the same argument when they ignore the parts of Scripture they don’t like and use other parts to support the sorts of ethics that they prefer. 

 And, lest I be unfair, I’ve heard people who claim to be theologically conservative skip or minimize the passages they find inconvenient while highlighting the stuff they like. Some like to celebrate that Scripture affirms private property rights, but they sometimes ignore the radical generosity toward the poor that Scripture calls us to. There is an impulse built into our self-justification to attempt to explain away texts of Scripture that disagree with our preferences.

 Most of the time, when people are dismissing the Bible as ancient and irrelevant it is because they are engaged in what C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery. This is the belief that the new and modern is always better than the old.

 It is on this grounds that people will argue that we have to reject the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality because of what year it is. Or, they might argue, “How can you possibly believe that God created the universe from nothing? It’s 2019, after all.” All of these arguments against Scripture are rooted in our particular cultural moment.

 People that make their arguments by the year on the calendar are missing the fact that culture changes. Many of the things that our culture accepts as true––often without argument––are going to appear foolish in two generations. Thankfully, God’s Word does not change. It offers a critique for every culture, because it is grounded in God’s character.

 To help people––those inside and outside the church––get through cultural challenges, Tim Keller writes,

 “I urge people to consider that their problem with some texts might be based on an unexamined belief in the superiority of their historical moment over all others. We must not universalize our time any more than we should universalize our culture. Think of the implication of the very term ‘regressive.’ To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive.”

 In contrast, God’s Word is permanent. Its truth is rooted in God’s character. It was God’s finger that wrote the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets, according to Deuteronomy 9:10. It is God’s Spirit that spoke through the prophets when they said “this is the Word of the Lord.”

 Scripture is permanent because it is rooted in God’s character and God’s character is good.

 Conclusion

 Our main problem with Scripture is not an access problem, it is a value problem. One of the chief tragedies of our age is that many people who claim to believe Scripture is the ultimate authority for faith and practice are derelict in studying it.

 Let us devote ourselves to the study of God’s unchanging Word. It is a gift and we have it in abundance.

[1] https://lifewayresearch.com/2017/04/25/lifeway-research-americans-are-fond-of-the-bible-dont-actually-read-it/

[2] Briggs, Invisible Bestseller, 57.

[3] B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed., rev. W. A. Wright (London: Macmillan, 1905), 22–23. Cited in Paul Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 283.

[4] “It is a dangerous thing. . . . as witnesseth blessed St Jerome, to translate the text of the holy Scripture out of one tongue into another; for in the translation the same sense is not always easily kept, as the same St Jerome confesseth, that although he were inspired . . . yet often times in this he erred; we therefore decree and ordain that no man hereafter by his own authority . . . translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue, by way of a book, pamphlet, or treatise; and that no man read any such book, pamphlet or treatise, now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe or since, or hereafter to be set forth in part or in whole, publicly or privately, upon pain of greater excommunication. . . . He that shall do contrary to this shall likewise be punished as a favourer of heresy and error.”  William Tyndale, The Obedience of A Christian Man, editd with an introduction by David Daniel (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 202.

[5] Daniell, Tyndale, 79.

Biblical Authority After Babel - A Review

In the year Protestants are commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, many tend to review the Reformation as either an unchristian schism or a tragic necessity. These sentiments tend to obscure a more positive view that the Reformation was a much needed liberation of Christendom from the hegemonic theological and doxological distortions of the Roman Catholic branch of Christianity. As a result, a common mood is for Protestants to wring their hands and confess to divisiveness while Roman Catholics wag their finger at the destructive individualism and doctrinal plurality they argue is the necessary result of the five solas Reformation and the theological recovery movement known as the Reformation. Liberal Christians, both those who claim continuity with Roman Catholicism and those who chart their course by revising other theological traditions, tend to see the interpretive plurality that resulted from the Reformation as an indication that the main principle of the Reformers—namely, sola scriptura—is a fundamental failure and that Scripture is an insufficient foundation upon which to build Christianity.

In Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity, Kevin Vanhoozer makes a positive case for Reformed Christianity built upon a robust development of the five solas. Vanhoozer unpacks his apology for Mere Protestant Christianity in five chapters with a separate introduction and conclusion. This book is a modified version of a series of lectures given a Moore College, the result is a more conversational and accessible volume than some of Vanhoozer’s other work, which is to say that this volume combined Vanhoozer’s academic rigor with clear, readable prose to create a much-needed tool and treasure for contemporary Protestants.

The body of this volume is comprised of five chapters in addition a substantive introduction and conclusion. Each of the five chapters highlights one of the five solas of the Reformation, though, as is clear from the title of the book, there is one sola to rule them all. Since sola scriptura is at the heart of true Protestantism, that idea functions as the glue that holds the entire volume together.

In the introduction, Vanhoozer begins by addressing the elephant in the room in considerations of contemporary Protestantism: Can separating from “The Church” ever be considered a good thing? He addresses some of the more common historical critiques of the Reformation, but remains confident that Protestantism was not fundamentally schismatic in its origins. Rather, Luther sought to reform Roman Catholic dogma because of severe errors in it and the Roman church forcefully rejected attempts at theological correction. Thus, Luther’s actions were not simply a protest against the error of the papacy. Instead, Vanhoover notes, “To protest is to testify for something, namely, the integrity of the gospel, and, as we will see, this includes the church’s catholicity.” (pg. 15) That catholicity includes more than the claims of Rome’s devotees to sole stewards of unqualified, universal truth. At the same time, Vanhoozer is critical of versions of Protestantism that have been divisive and individualistic in their interpretation, that is why he pursues the concept of “Mere Protestantism,” which is the sort of Protestantism that “encourages the church to hold fast to the gospel, and to one another.” (pg. 33). That vision, which Vanhoozer explores through his exposition of the five solas, is exactly why the Reformation was both necessary and good.

In Chapter One, Vanhoozer focuses on sola gratia, and by virtue expounds the gospel to his readers. Grace in the gospel is what ignites the Christian to God exalting praise, allows Christians to see the good in the world, and focuses the believer’s gaze eternally on the procurator and source of all grace—the Holy Trinity. It is God’s grace alone that enables fallible humans to have access to God’s infallible word and be able to comprehend any of it; the Spirit illuminates Scripture because of grace alone, which provides understanding of the path to salvation. Vanhoozer argues it is God’s grace alone to give Scripture and also to illuminate it that keeps the accusation of autonomous interpretation from being true among authentic believers.

The second chapter covers sola fide, which Vanhoozer uses to counter the argument that the Reformation begat skepticism. This accusation seems a bit strange, since the meaning of sola fide is “by faith alone,” which is used in reference to the sole necessary response to God’s gracious offer of salvation. In its original context, the term was meant to differentiate the gospel faith of the Reformers from the myriad of religious duties foisted on believers by the Roman hierarchy. Returning to the central theme of the place of Scripture, Vanhoozer is careful to show that the reading of Scripture encouraged by the Reformers was not one of skepticism, but of faith. Vanhoozer then considers several different hermeneutical methods and epistemical failures that are not consistent with biblical faith. Instead of subverting the authority of the church through private readings of Scripture, Vanhoozer argues the faithful reading of Scripture requires the authority of the God, working through the historic community of believers. It is God and his gift of Scripture—not the hierarchy of the Church—that are ultimately affirmed by faith alone. As Vanhoozer sums up, “True faith has to do not with anti-intellectual fideism or private judgment, then, but rather with testimonial rationality and public trust, the trust of God’s people in the testimony of God’s Spirit to the reliability of God’s Word.“ (pgs. 106-107)

Chapter Three digs into sola scriptura. Vanhoozer notes, “Sola scriptura is perhaps the most challenging of the solas to retrieve. Even many Protestant theologians now urge its abandonment on the grounds that in insisting on Scripture alone, it overlooks or even excludes the importance of tradition, the necessity of hermeneutics, and the relationship between Word and Spirit.” (pgs. 109-110) It is in the reliance on Scripture alone that those who regret the Reformation find the root of division. As Vanhoozer points out, however, divisiveness is driven more by solo scriptura rather than sola scriptura. The distinction is clear and obvious for those willing to consider it. Sola scriptura refers to relying on Scripture only as the primary authority in theology. There are other sources that inform theology, but those sources must be normed to the overarching authority of humans. This, of course, presumes the clarity, sufficiency, and coherence of Scripture. Vanhoozer discusses these, then he surveys other understandings of authority, but concludes that a robust understanding of sola scriptura brings Christians together, even simply in conversational disagreement, and that rejection of the concept through naïve biblicism and covert traditionalism is what leads to division.

The fourth chapter interprets solus Christus, which is the affirmation that Christ alone is the only mediator between God and humanity. In all practicality, this has sidelined the parish priest in Protestantism, since a sanctioned representative of the church is no longer needed for forgiveness of sin or receipt of grace through the eucharist. However, Vanhoozer argues that the priesthood of all believers has not minimized the significance of the local Church, as some claim (and as some flawed interpreters have posited). Rather, it has sanctified the lives of the lowly congregant, giving him or her a part to play in the divine drama coequal with ecclesial leaders in community with Christ. This means that local congregations have the right, privilege, and responsibility to rightly interpret Scripture and minister as the local instantiation of the body of Christ.

Chapter Five celebrates the final sola: soli Deo gloria. This is a fitting climax to the volume as Vanhoozer notes, “Soli Deo Gloria, like the other solas, is partially intended to exclude an error. In this case, what is excluded is not human works but the end for which we work: human glorification.” (pg. 182) The failure of the Reformers and their spiritual heirs is partially explained by the loss of unity around this concept, and the sometimes unwillingness to unite or work together due to human turf wars. Vanhoozer does not decry denominations; rather he rejects divisiveness due to human pride. Instead, he commends legitimate, gracious division of matters of interpretation, with an ongoing dialogical argument toward truth. Such dialog, conducted for God’s glory alone is a recognition of the authority of Scripture and the unity of the one, holy, catholic church. According to Vanhoozer, “The glory of mere Protestant Christianity is the conference and communion of holy nations, itself a gift that glorifies God in magnifying Jesus Christ.” (pg. 212)

This volume is just the sort of book needed for our present time. The term “evangelical” is quickly becoming meaningless as progressives deny the doctrinal content of the term and reject biblical authority. At the same time, it is being used as a vague political label that refers to a supposed conversion experience, but represents right wing politics. What Vanhoozer presents is a positive case for a properly evangelical, Mere Protestant Christianity, that rejects the divisiveness of the Roman Catholic tradition and pursues unity in the core of Christianity, which is the gospel.

Biblical Authority After Babel may be, without exaggeration, one of the most important books to be released in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Though Protestantism is not perfect, Vanhoozer explains the beauty and necessity of standing for truth against error and preserving the gospel for the sake of all.

Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity

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By Kevin J. Vanhoozer

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Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.