pilgrim people

(this post was originally posted on Monday, March 3, 2008 at 08:57AM)

Sola Scriptura can easily be misunderstood to mean, "me-and-my-own-interpretation-of the-Bible-is-authoritative." The question we must ask is: should the Bible be read and interpreted with the church or apart from the church?

American biblicism answers that question a little differently the Protestant Reformers. The early-American biblicists, for example, demonstrated their misunderstanding of Sola Scriptura by adopting a subjective method of interpretation. Creeds, confessions, and historical theology were thrown out in order to proclaim the primacy of the Bible and re-establish pure Apostolic Christianity. In the book I mentioned in the previous post, Nathan Hatch notes that “[a]ny number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices.”[1] The early-American biblicists held suspect doctrines and systems of theology developed by men, and viewed them as a likely perversion of genuine biblical truth. Men like Alexander Campbell, for example, vigorously sought to read the Bible as if he had no theological presuppositions whatsoever:

I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me…and I am as much on my guard against reading them today, through the medium of my own views yesterday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system or whatever.[2]

Likewise, the early-American biblicists encouraged all Christians to claim their inalienable right to read and interpret the Bible in the same fashion, and not subject themselves to any theological or ecclesiastical authority that might be contrary to their own interpretation. 

Such autonomous and subjective views of hermeneutics (i.e. the art and science of interpretation), however, are divergent from the Reformed dictum of Sola Scriptura. Recognizing the Scriptures as the “regula fidei” (i.e. rule of faith) for the church does not give individuals license to think and say whatever they want. The Bible was never meant to be interpreted apart from the pastoral guidance and teaching that Scripture itself prescribes (Eph 4.11-16; 1 Tim 5.17; 2 Tim 2.15; 4.1-5; Tit 1.9; Heb 13.7). Such radical individualization of interpreting the Bible makes error virtually impossible to avoid. For this reason, the Reformers denied the autonomy of the conscience in private, subjectivist interpretation. Said Calvin, “I acknowledge that Scripture is a most rich and inexhaustible fountain of all wisdom; but I deny that its fertility consists in the various meanings which any man, at his pleasure, may assign.”[3]

While the early-American biblicists sought to attain immunity from theological systems, that immunity was never  realized. Without theological guidance in biblical interpretation, any formulation of teaching inevitably made the biblicists guilty of the very thing they were trying to avoid. As J. Gresham Machen said in his 1923 refutation of Liberalism, “In seeming to object to all theology, the liberal preacher is often merely objecting to one system of theology in the interests of another.”[4]

Oddly enough, this kind of dismissal of historic theology actually does violence to Christ’s promise to his Apostles that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth (Jn 16.13) and bring to their remembrance all things (Jn 14.26) in order that Scripture would be preserved for the instruction of the church until the end of the age (Mt 24.35; 28.20). The early-American biblicists seemed to give no credit at all to the Holy Spirit’s work in history of gifting Christ’s church with pastors and teachers; rather, the early-American biblicists see the Spirit’s true work in ministry being that of immediate revelation[5] and privatized religion. Ironically, the biblicists’ seeking of direct revelation and a “tabula rasa” illumination compromises their claim of “no creed but the Bible,” as one's personal experience is inevitably elevated to the place of Scripture.

Tragically, however, things have not changed for the better. As Hatch chillingly points out, “Americans continue to maintain their right to shape their own faith and to submit to leaders they have chosen.” The result of eighteenth and nineteenth century biblicism has been a church that increasingly looks less like New Testament Christianity and more like the egalitarian culture in which she lives. Populist hermeneutics and privatized, experiential religion has continuously had wide appeal to the American individualistic ethos. The “chronological arrogance,” to borrow C.S. Lewis’ maxim, of disparaging tradition and centuries of theologizing persists with cavalier vigor.

It is in this tempestuous sea of autonomy that creeds and confessions act as an anchor to the ship of Christianity.

[1]Ibid., p.179