Systematic Theology: Chapter Three

The two previous chapters dealt with the subject matter of theology (what theology is) and the task of theology (what theologians do). This chapter and the next deal with the sources of theology. Traditionally, these are Scripture (sola scriptura; Reformation Protestant), Scripture and tradition (Council of Trent; Roman Catholic), Scripture, tradition, and reason (Anglican; Richard Hooker), Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (Methodism; the Wesleyan Quadrilateral; liberal Protestantism).

In terms of the three levels of knowing and being (ordo cognoscendi and ordo essendi), these sources of theology belong to the first level, the order of knowledge. Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience provide the sources and context within which Christians come to know what Christian faith is, and what it means to live as Christians. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between the first source – Scripture – and the other three sources in that historically Scripture has provided the primary source of the knowledge of Christian faith while reason, tradition, and experience are not in themselves independent sources of knowledge of Christian faith, but rather provide the ecclesial context in which Christians come to know and interpret Scripture.

Historically, tradition is not a separate and distinct source of knowledge of God, but the context in which Christian faith takes place. Patristic theologians like Irenaeus were expositors of Scripture, and the second century Rule of Faith is both a summary of the content of Scripture and a hermeneutical guide for interpreting Scripture. For theologians like Anglican Richard Hooker, reason was not a separate source for knowledge of God, but a hermeneutical tool to use in interpreting Scripture. For founder of Methodism John Wesley, experience did not provide additional knowledge about God, but was rather an ecclesial context in which the church appropriates the truth of Scripture.

At the same time, Reformation Protestants did not understood sola scriptura to mean that the church reads Scripture in an interpretive vacuum (nuda scriptura, “biblicism”). Protestants continued to recite the Creeds and to endorse the theological teaching of the ecumenical councils because they understood them to be summaries of and interpretive guides to the clear meaning of Scripture. Affirming sola scriptura did not prevent historic Protestants from endorsing confessional statements such as the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, the Reformed Westminster Confession, the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles or reading Scripture through interpretive guides such as the Lutheran Book of Concord or confessional catechisms.

In terms of the threefold level of knowing and being, Scripture has a unique role because of its place in the threefold structure. Although contemporary Christians read Scripture as the primary source of Christian knowledge and spiritual and moral formation (level 1), Scripture’s origins lie in the second level of the order of knowing and being – the level of history (level 2). The Bible is not a single “book,” but the collected writings of prophets and apostles who bear witness to the economy of salvation – the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the history of Israel, the incarnate Jesus Christ, and the New Testament church. As noted in the two previous chapters, this history of the economic Trinity (level 2) points beyond itself to the ontological reality of God’s nature in itself (the immanent Trinity, level 3). Our knowledge of God as Trinity thus follows from our knowledge of God in the history of salvation, and our contemporary appropriation of this knowledge in prayer, worship, and Christian ethics is dependent on this historical source of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Revelation

Although some liberal Protestant theologies have understood the Scriptures to play a role in the Christian community merely because they provide an important historical source for Christian believing and living (a “classic text”), the historic Christian understanding is that Scripture is necessary because of its unique subject matter as the definitive witness to divine revelation in the economy of salvation. Scripture is necessary because revelation is necessary. The Christian understanding of the unique relation between God and creation indicates the need for divine revelation for any substantially informative knowledge of God. As the Creator of the universe, God stands outside creation as an author stands outside his or her creation. Moreover, God’s unique nature as necessary and self-existing means that God is not one additional being in a universe of finite created beings. Since human beings are creatures who exist in the midst of fellow creatures, our primary knowledge is of those fellow creatures, whom we know through sensory experience. Since God is not a creature, not an item in the world in which all of our knowledge takes place, since God’s existence is unique and “Wholly Other” than the existence of creatures – God is not “a being,” but self-existent and self-identical “Being Itself” (ipsum esse subsistens) – and since God is not a body, God cannot be encountered in the way in which we encounter fellow creatures. Since God cannot be known in the way in which we know created things, there is no adequate epistemological path from creatures to God, and God cannot be known by human beings (who are creatures) unless God in some way “accommodates” his uncreated infinite reality in order to reveal himself to creatures within the limits of the finite structures of the created world and the limitations of the created structures of human knowledge oriented to know created realities.¹

General Revelation (Natural Theology): How God is known in creation

Nonetheless, given that God is the Creator of all else that exists, it has been claimed that in the same way that something can be known about an artist through his or her work, it must be possible to know something about God from creation in that effects have some resemblance to causes.

Claims for a natural source of knowledge of God are both cosmological and anthropological. Scripture itself bears witness to a knowledge of God from the existence of the natural world. According to the Psalmist, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1, ESV); the apostle Paul writes that God’s invisible qualities can be seen in what he has made (Rom. 1:20).²

Natural knowledge of God rooted in human nature includes both spirituality and ethics. If God has made rational creatures for fellowship with himself, it would seem to follow that humans would have a natural hunger for God that is reflected in human desire and (perhaps even pagan) religious experience. Augustine of Hippo begins his Confessions with the well-known prayer: “You have created us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”³ Anthropological arguments for the existence of God claim that moral consciousness points to an ontological ground of morality, and, again, Scripture points to moral consciousness as an evidence of (even pagan) knowledge of God (Rom. 1:32; Rom. 2:14,15).⁴

The Augustinian tradition has referred to knowledge of God made known through creation as “general revelation,” while “traditional” Thomists tend to refer instead to “natural theology.” “General revelation” refers to a kind of implicit knowledge of God made known through creation. It is often claimed that Augustine referred to the “two books” by which God could be known: nature and the Bible. For traditional Thomists, “natural theology” refers to intellectual (usually philosophical) arguments that claim to know something about God apart from (what is called “special”) revelation.⁵

The inherent limitation of general revelation/natural theology is that it can tell us very little about God’s own nature. To the extent that general revelation or natural theology is successful, it might tell us that there is a God who is the Creator or Ground of the universe, but not much about who this God is or what his character is like. For example, if the contingency of creation points to a God as the necessary First Cause of contingent created things, can it tell us whether this God cares for or exercises providence over creation?⁶ If human moral sensitivities point to an ontological ground of morality, a “Chief Good” (Summum Bonum), could this moral sensitivity tell us anything about whether this God is merciful or forgiving? Furthermore, a God of “general revelation” or “natural theology” would at most be a nebulous first cause of the natural world, not the triune God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such a God cannot save or become friends with human beings in the manner of the Savior who told his disciples “I call you no more servants but friends” (John 15:15).

In the end, general revelation or natural theology tells us more about ourselves than it tells about our Creator, for example, that we are dependent on something greater than ourselves for our existence. More important, if we are made for a salvation that lies beyond natural human capacities, we would need God’s own self-communication to both inform us of and enable us to attain that salvation.⁷

Divine Acting and Speaking

What has been called “special revelation” or revelation in history is therefore necessary if human beings are going to know anything of actual significance about God. It is especially necessary if that knowledge includes an actual reciprocal relationship of knowing and loving with the Creator God. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are significant in this regard because of their integral relation to a claimed revelation of God at a particular place and time in history. Scripture is the record or witness to historical events in which God both acts and speaks. Again, apart from these historical events, we would know little or nothing about God. Certain historical events are thus inseparable from divine revelation.

In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the fundamental historical event associated with this revelation is God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel. In the words of Old Testament theologian Walther Eichrodt: “[T]he establishment of a covenant through the work of Moses especially emphasizes one basic element in the whole Israelite experience of God, namely the factual nature of the divine revelation.”⁸

In the New Testament, the crucial historical event of revelation would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Thomas F. Torrance emphasizes: “The resurrection is a supernatural or miraculous event . . . . It is comparable only to the act of God in the creation itself or in the incarnation”⁹ (emphasis added). At the same time, it would be pointless to use the language of “resurrection” unless God’s raising of Jesus from the dead was an event that actually took place in space and time. In the words of German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “There is no justification for affirming Jesus’ resurrection as an event that really happened, if it is not to be affirmed as a historical event as such.”¹⁰

Having made clear that the Scriptures witness to a divine revelation that has taken place through certain historical events, for example, the Exodus of Israel from Egypt and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, it must also be emphasized that in order for such revelation to be understood and appropriated by its recipients, revelation through historical events must be accompanied by interpretation – divine speaking as well as divine acting. Human beings find it difficult to communicate with one another without spoken words – although (apart from various forms of sign language) we can communicate some meaning through physical gestures, for example, hand-waving or pointing. Given however that God is not a body, and not a fellow creature in the universe, any revelation of God’s intentions to human beings, if it is to be understood, would necessarily have to be accompanied by divine speaking. As William Abraham has noted: “Incorporeal agents who do not speak are like invisible men who are dumb. . . . [W]e are to a great degree dependent on divine speaking if we are going to have any substantial account both of what God is doing in nature and in history and of His intentions and purposes in acting in creation and in history.”¹¹

References to divine speaking are so numerous in the Scriptures as not to need citing.¹² At the least, it should be evident that Christian faith becomes meaningless or is reduced to mere anthropological projection apart from a divine revelation that includes both divine acting and speaking. A God who cannot speak is a God who cannot promise or forgive. At the same time, despite modern and postmodern prejudices, there is no a priori reason that a God who is personal would not or should not communicate his intentions to humanity. As T. F. Torrance has stated: “I make no apology for taking divine revelation seriously. If God really is God . . . I find it absurd to think that he does not actively reveal himself to us but remains inert and aloof, so that we are left to grope about in the dark for possible intimations and clues to his reality . . .”¹³

Revelation in the Old Testament

Revelation in the Old Testament is associated with the four notions of theophany, prophecy, covenant, and election. What follows will focus on the notions of theophany and prophecy. Covenant and election will be discussed in the later chapter on Israel’s significance for systematic theology. Up to this point, I have referred to the canonical books of the pre-Christian era as the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. From here following, reference will be to the “Old Testament.” This is not to forget that, for Jews, these books are not the Old Testament, but simply the Bible. However, within the context of Christian systematic theology, confessional transparency makes the expression “Old Testament” necessary. For Christians, the “Old Testament” is not simply the “Hebrew Bible,” but the first volume of a two testament canon.

Theophanies are temporal manifestations of God to human beings involving visible and auditory elements that manifest God’s presence. Old Testament theophanies are characterized by the following: (1) the theophany is initiated by God, not the recipient; (2) the theophany is manifested as a temporal event with a beginning and a conclusion; it is not a permanent reality; (3) the theophany usually includes an identification of God’s name: “I am the LORD your God” (Ps. 81:10); “Be still and know that I am God (Ps. 46:10)”; (4) the theophany often indicates the sovereignty of God over nature and is accompanied by unusual natural phenomena, although there is never an identification of nature with YHWH; (5) the theophany is a personal self-disclosure of God who speaks as “I” to a hearer addressed as “you”; (6) theophanies can take a number of different forms: the kābōd (כָּבוֹד, glory), mal’āk (מַלְאָךְ, messenger or angel), pānīm (פָּנִים, face), šēm (שֵׁם, name). These appearances include a certain hiddenness; they are partial manifestations of God, which include an element of mystery; (7) theophanies include both visual and aural elements; the word of the theophany addresses a particular historical situation in which God’s “I” addresses Israel’s awaiting “you,” which expects an obedient response; (8) theophanies are associated with particular places, for example, Bethel or Sinai; (9) the theophany creates fear (awe) on the part of the recipient, but is also accompanied by a consoling word by God; (10) the way in which the theophany concludes is often portrayed as well. Descriptions of theophanies often follow a set literary structure which includes many (or all) of the above elements.¹⁴

If the theophany is at the heart of Israel’s understanding of the communication of God to humanity, (1) the prophet is the one who is sent to the people to proclaim the word of God. (2) Unique to Israel’s understanding is the notion of a series of prophets who succeed one another throughout Israel’s history; (3) the prophet is commissioned by the will of God, and receives a distinct direct calling to be God’s messenger; (4) prophecy has a transcendent nature; it follows from God’s desire to reveal his will to Israel, and not from the prophet’s own spiritual capacities or wisdom; (5) prophecy has a moral dimension; the message of the prophets expresses God’s moral demands to Israel; (6) Prophecy has a historical dimension; the message of the prophets is sent uniquely to the people of Israel; prophecy continues throughout Israel’s history; (7) prophecy has a universal eschatological dimension in the sense that through Israel, God will eventually be made known to the nations.¹⁵

Revelation in the New Testament

Each one of the four categories of theophany, prophecy, covenant, and election has its counterpart in the New Testament, but they are transformed in light of God’s unique revelation in Jesus Christ.¹⁶

The New Testament contains examples of individual theophanies similar to those in the Old Testament: the appearances of angels to Zechariah and the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:11-22, 26-38); the divine annunciation at Jesus’ baptism and the transfiguration (Mark 1:9-11; 9:2-8); the revelation to the persecutor Saul on the road to Damascus that led to his becoming the apostle Paul (Acts 9:3-9); the vision given to John on the island of Patmos at the beginning of the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:9-20). However, the crucial difference between revelation in the Old Testament and revelation in the New Testament is that in the New Testament, revelation is not limited to a word given to an individual prophet – “Thus says the Lord” – but that revelation is identified with a person, specifically with the person of Jesus Christ.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells his readers that previously God spoke through the prophets, but now he has spoken through his Son (Heb. 1:1-4). In the Gospels, Jesus is the Son who has a special relationship to the God whom he calls “my Father,” which he contrasts with that of those for whom God is “their Father” (Matt. 11:25-27). Unlike the prophets, Jesus speaks on his own authority: “You have heard that it was said . . . . . but I say to you” (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-34, 38-39, 43-44). Jesus calls his followers not simply to obey his teaching, but to give personal loyalty to and to follow him (Matt. 10:37-39; 16:24-26).

After Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, New Testament writers apply to Jesus exalted language drawn from the Old Testament. Jesus is the “Son of God” (Rom. 1:4, 9; Gal. 2:20, 4:4), identified with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 (Acts 7:28-35), and even described in terms implying that in some manner he shares in the divine identity: Jesus is the pre-existing Word, the one through whom God the Father created the universe (John 1:1-5, 14; Col. 1:15-20). Jesus shares the divine name of “Lord” (Phil. 2:1-11; 1 Cor. 8:6). Where the Old Testament describes revelation as occurring through divine theophanies, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ himself becomes the divine theophany. Jesus does not merely proclaim a revelation from God – as do the Old Testament prophets. He is identified as God’s revelation in his person.

Corresponding to the figure of prophet in the Old Testament is the figure of apostle in the New Testament. New Testament apostles are not, however, for the most part, recipients of theopanies, but witnesses to God’s unique revelation in Jesus Christ. The New Testament distinguishes the unique role of the “Twelve,” the apostles who were disciples of the incarnate Jesus Christ, from others who are also designated as apostles. All apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrection, but the Twelve, as companions of the earthly Jesus, provided an essential link of continuity between the events of the life of Jesus, and the post-resurrection church.¹⁷

From Event to Interpretation to Scripture

Crucial to the notion of revelation in both the Old and New Testaments is that revelation is connected not only with events, but with a sequence of events, is correlated with an interpretive word, that earlier events are included within later events, and that the interpretive prophetic or apostolic word is not only an interpretation of current events, but a reinterpretation and appropriation of earlier events now incorporated within the sequence of new events. The history of revelation is not then simply an adding up of a series; rather, previous events are reinterpreted in light of later events. Crucial to this interpretation is the role of prophets in the Old Testament and apostles in the New Testament, not only as eyewitnesses to the original revelatory event, but as mediators of divine revelation, and as interpreters of not only current revelatory events, but as re-interpreters of previous revelatory events. The interpretive word is thus just as much a part of the history of redemption as is the original revelatory event itself, and later interpreters can incorporate several preexisting traditions into a new perspective.¹⁸

The New Testament notion of “fulfillment” makes clear that the new covenant does not mean an end of the old covenant, but that the history of revelation and salvation in the Old Testament, as well as expectations concerning the eschatological future, are summed up in the one event of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The New Testament contains both a continuity with the earlier economy of salvation in a history of revelatory events accompanied not only by a word, but a continual reappropriation of and reinterpretation of previous events, but also something new. The event of the “Word made flesh” contains within itself the entire previous history of salvation, and aligns itself with this previous Old Testament history.¹⁹

In the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the history of revelation and the economy of salvation has a christological center. The apostles, as eyewitnesses of the earthly mission of Jesus (his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection), also provide an important continuity between the new event of the person and work of Christ and the church – the community not only of followers of Jesus, but the people of God in continuity with Israel as the Old Testament people of God.²⁰

The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit are crucial for the apostolic interpretation of the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection within the context of the New Testament church. The apostles were not only eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, but in light of the resurrection, the Holy Spirit given to the apostles makes clear that Jesus’ life and preaching were the decisive saving revelation of God – something not known to the apostles before the resurrection. As eyewitnesses, the apostles are guarantors not only of the previous history of the earthly Jesus, but that the risen Jesus Christ, who is present in the gathered church’s worship in the Eucharist, is identical with the Jesus of Nazareth who was the incarnate Lord.²¹

The church’s continuity with the Old Testament is not then a direct connection, but goes through the apostles as eyewitnesses to Jesus as the unique revelation of God, and from Jesus to the previous history of God’s saving history with Israel. The writings of the Old Testament have their distinctive significance as being the Bible or canon of the New Testament church. The New Testament writings have their significance as the written record and interpretation of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as provided by those who were eyewitnesses of those events. Not all New Testament books were written by apostolic eyewitnesses, but the connection of all New Testament books to the community of those who were definitive witnesses to the crucial events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is decisive for the later designation of these writings as canonical Scripture – the New Testament – in addition to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament.²²

Inadequate Understandings of Revelation

Two inadequate notions of divine revelation have often been played off against one another in the modern era. For the liberal Protestantism that followed in the train of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the content of revelation has been identified in a reductionist manner with the structures of human subjectivity. Knowledge of God is co-given with the world of human experience.²³ In other words, revelation is what God is doing “everywhere all of the time.” Liberal Protestantism thus identifies all revelation with “general” revelation. As mentioned above, this understanding of revelation tells us more about human subjectivity than it does about God. Knowledge of God becomes projection, and it is significant that contemporary advocates of liberal Protestantism not only recognize, but insist on this.²⁴

As noted in the previous chapter, this understanding of revelation is accompanied by both a hermeneutic of discontinuity and a hermeneutic of suspicion. There is discontinuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, discontinuity between the apostolic and post-apostolic church, discontinuity between the followers of Jesus and the patristic Creeds. The merely human Jesus (the “historical Jesus”) who can be recovered through the tools of (liberal Protestant) historical-critical method is not the same Jesus as the Jesus of the canonical Scriptures, the Jesus of the Creeds, the Jesus worshiped by the Christian church throughout its history (the “Christ of faith”). Moreover, given that “history is written by the winners,” a “hermeneutic of suspicion” approaches the Old and New Testaments with the assumption that much of what they contain is detrimental to human flourishing, especially the flourishing of underrepresented minorities.

The “hermeneutic of suspicion” means that the text is read at two levels. On the one hand is the ostensible subject matter of the text. On the other hand, a historical reconstruction will point to some underlying agenda of the biblical author (or authors) that is not evident on first reading and this reconstruction becomes the “real” meaning through which the text is then read.²⁵ Robert W. Jenson points out that modern critical study of the Scriptures has often been obsessed with the “agenda” of the biblical authors: What was Mark up to? What was Matthew’s agenda in rearranging Mark? Jenson suggests that the more important questions “What are the Gospels up to with their story of Jesus?” or “What is God up to with the Gospels’ story?” have “disappeared behind the critical question – and this has sometimes been the deliberate intent.”²⁶

The second inadequate understanding of revelation would be that of “propositional revelation,” the position associated with Protestant Scholasticism and in particular with the (old) “Princeton School” of Charles and Alexander Hodge and B. B. Warfield. The position of “propositional revelation” identifies revelation with the direct propositional communication of doctrine. The Bible is identified with revelation as such, and the claim is made that divine determination extends to the very words of the biblical writers. Revelation consists in the communication of otherwise unknown truths from God to the writers of the Bible. Revelation is theoretically distinguished from inspiration in that revelation is the communication of previously unknown knowledge to the biblical authors, while inspiration preserves the writers from error in communicating those same truths.²⁷

In criticism of this position, “propositional revelation” is understood within a generally “theistic” framework. It is expounded without any reference to the positive content of Christian faith: God as Trinity, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology. Revelation is an arcane process whereby certain persons acquire supernatural knowledge. Its primary purpose is to provide epistemological warrants for doctrine.²⁸ In addition, the subject matter of revelation is reduced to propositional statements. This tends to ignore the great variety of literary forms and genres in the Bible – not only doctrine, but narrative, metaphor, history, poetry, prayer, law, prophecy.²⁹

“Propositional revelation” also fails to distinguish adequately between revelation as such – God’s acting and speaking in the history of revelation (the economy of salvation) – and the writings of prophets and apostles in Scripture as the witness to or record of those historical events. In theory, propositional revelation distinguishes between revelation and inspiration, but in effect revelation and inspiration are conflated. Propositional revelation is the communication of doctrinal truths. Inspiration is the written recording of those same truths.³⁰

Finally, propositional revelation is a doctrine about Scripture, an a priori theology of what Scripture must be that functions primarily as an epistemological guarantee of the certainty of church doctrine rather than a doctrine of Scripture, a doctrine derived from the careful reading of the Scriptures. Propositional revelation is an a priori deduction about what the nature of biblical inspiration must be based on the prior assumption of what it means for Scripture simply to be the Word of God rather than an examination of the actual nature of biblical texts.³¹

For example, the claim that the Bible is “inerrant” in its original autographs presumes that in its writing, each book of the Bible consisted of a single text (“original autograph”) given directly to a single author through divine inspiration. Given that many of the texts of Scripture are compilations from previous existing texts, the notion of a single original autograph with a single author becomes problematic. The complex history of the writing of biblical texts in many cases does not consist of single texts written by single authors in one setting; rather, the books of the Bible are often compilations of texts written by multiple authors over extended periods of time.

As noted above, the interpretation of particular acts of revelation within the history of salvation is often a reinterpretation of previous events accompanied by new interpretations. These new interpretations are themselves responses to and interpretations of new events of revelation within an entire series of events. It is thus misleading to speak of revelation in terms of the “original autographs.” Because the writing of biblical texts was often an extended process in which earlier traditions and layers of tradition were incorporated at various stages of the writing and compiling of biblical texts, any notion of the inspiration of Scripture should apply to this entire process of sometimes multiple authorship, interpretation and reinterpretation, and final redaction and collation.³²

Finally, the complex history of interpretation and reinterpretation in which the Scriptures came to be written means that the history of this process entails a kind of conversation. For example, the books of Job and Ecclesiastes challenge a kind of straightforward understanding of divine providence as the rewarding of good behavior and punishment of bad behavior that could result from a simplistic reading of the book of Proverbs. If the book of Isaiah is not the product of the single authorship of Isaiah of Jerusalem, but a composition that begins with Isaiah before the conquest and extends to disciples of Isaiah that extended after the release from captivity (including the community associated with the Suffering Servant), then chapters 40-55 of Isaiah not only reflect a different historical setting from Isaiah 1-39, but also represent a further engagement with and development of Isaiah’s theology.³³

Revelation in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century³⁴

Karl Barth’s Theology of the Word

Karl Barth was the most significant theologian of the twentieth century, and his theology of the “Word” marked a new approach in contrast to both liberal Protestantism and Protestant scholasticism. For Barth, revelation means that God speaks. Barth claimed that revelation is God’s speech as the “Word of God,” which has a three-fold form.³⁵

First, Jesus Christ is God’s Word revealed. In Christ, God reveals not merely information about himself, but since Jesus Christ is God incarnate, in Christ God reveals himself.

Second, the Bible is the Word of God written. As prophets and apostles, the writers of Scripture are witnesses to the act of revelation, without themselves being revelation. As canon, the Bible is the prophetic and apostolic witness to God’s revelation in the incarnate Word.

Third, the Word of God preached is the Word of God proclaimed. In common with Scripture, the church points away from itself to Jesus Christ as the Word of God incarnate; however, the church is distinguished from the Word written in that the canonical Scriptures are always the church’s apostolic guide and normative rule. The Word preached is always subject to the Word written.

Thus, for Barth, the Bible and church proclamation are secondary forms of the Word of God, which become the Word when God speaks through these chosen witnesses. At the same time, and of most importance, for Barth, revelation has a trinitarian structure. This emphasis on the trinitarian structure of revelation is among Barth’s greatest contributions to modern theology.

Revelation as History (Oscar Cullmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Vatican II, mid-twentieth century “biblical theology”)

The notion of “revelation as history” was the dominant notion of revelation in the mid-twentieth century, and was associated with figures such as Oscar Cullmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, the mid-twentieth century “biblical theology” movement, and the documents of Vatican II. In brief, “salvation history” or “revelation in history” means that God has revealed himself through specific historical events in the history of salvation. These salvific events are accompanied by interpretation in the accompanying prophetic or apostolic word.

At the center of salvation-history is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ (Cullmann). The Incarnation looks forward however to God’s full revelation at the end of history, and Jesus Christ’s resurrection is the “proleptic anticipation” of the eschaton (Pannenberg). In “between the times” of the incarnation and Jesus Christ’s second coming, the church lives in the tension between the “already and not yet” of the incarnation and the eschaton (Cullmann).

Narrative Theology/Canonical Approach/Figurative interpretation

Beginning in the 1970s, the salvation-history school was criticized for focusing on events “behind the text” of Scripture. and neglecting the literary and narrative structure of biblical texts. Narrative theologians focus on revelation as the biblical “story” in which the triune God, Israel, Christ, and the church are characters in the plot.

Shortly afterwards (1980s-90s), the “canonical approach” (Brevard Childs and Christopher Seitz) focused on the “final form” of Scripture, understanding inspiration as the extended historical process through which both the Old Testament community and the early church brought Scripture to its final canonical form under divine providence. The canonical approach focuses on the interrelation between biblical texts, not only between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but also between individual biblical texts and one another, for example, the canonical relation between the epistles of Paul and the four Gospels.

Finally, in recent years, there has been a revival of “figurative/typological” interpretation of the Bible, echoing the canonical approach’s emphasis on the Bible as a two-testament canon. Advocates of “figurative” interpretation insist that the unity of the two-testament canon is found in a trinitarian figurative reading of Old Testament texts as fulfilled in the New Testament (Christopher Seitz; Ephraim Radner; Hans Boursma; Don Collett).

A Trinitarian Proposal (John Webster)

The trinitarian proposal of the late John Webster is not at odds with any of these more recent approaches, but focuses on the trinitarian structure of revelation correlated with the specific purpose of revelation – to create communion between the triune God and the church: “[R]evelation is the self-presentation of the triune God, the free work of sovereign mercy in which God wills, establishes and perfects saving fellowship with himself in which humankind comes to know, love and fear him above all things.”³⁶

Revelation is thus God’s presence for the purpose of establishing fellowship with humanity. God is present to the church as Savior in Jesus Christ, but the purpose of the knowledge of God is not merely cognitive. God reveals himself so that we might know, love and fear the triune God, who brings us into fellowship with himself. Revelation is thus reconciliation, salvation, and fellowship. A Christian doctrine of revelation cannot then be separated from the Christian doctrine of God as Trinity. Scripture serves as part of God’s saving economy of self-communication, and revelation is oriented toward sanctification.³⁷

Revelation and Scripture

A discussion of the relationship between revelation and Scripture needs to take into consideration the different genres (types of literature) contained in the Bible. If revelation proper consists of divine acting and speaking, the most typical examples of revelation would be the theophanies of the Old Testament: God’s call of Abraham, Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of the Lord, God’s revelation to Moses in a burning bush, the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Much of the content of the “historical” texts of Genesis through 2 Chronicles consists of narrative accounts that regularly make reference to such theophanies. The prophetic literature of the Major and Minor Prophets consists largely of firsthand accounts of divine speaking to their individual authors, for example, call narratives as well as accounts of visions and divine speaking.

The New Testament centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ, who, as the Son of God incarnate is both the fulfillment of Old Testament promise as well as the means through whom God brings salvation to sinful humanity. The heart of the gospel is that “Jesus saves.” Jesus Christ is himself revelation personified, not simply the revelation of information about God, but as the Word of God incarnate is in himself the personal revelation of God become human. The four Gospels are narrative accounts (theological “biographies”) of Jesus’ life and salvific mission. The book of Acts recounts the history of the church after Jesus’ resurrection, which includes the account of Paul’s Damascus vision – a kind of theophany – to which Paul also makes reference in the book of Galatians.

Much of the narrative and prophetic material in both the Old and New Testament thus records or witnesses to divine revelation in history as acting and speaking – revelation in the strict sense. But Scripture contains other literary genres as well. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament includes the prayers of the Psalms – human response to the God of revelation in worship. Proverbs consists of reflection on wise living within the context of God’s good creation. The letters of Paul, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Petrine and Johannine epistles address specific pastoral issues in the light of and while reflecting on the theological significance of the life and work of Jesus Christ. The books of Daniel (in the Old Testament) and of Revelation (in the New Testament) belong to the unusual genre of apocalyptic – reflecting on the providential significance of then current events in the light of the final outcome of human history using highly symbolic language.

Any account of the relation between revelation and Scripture needs to be consistent with this wide variety of genres in Scripture. Scripture is not only straightforward communication of information about God (as propositional revelation would demand) although some genres of Scripture, for example, the major and minor prophets, come close. Scripture is not simply an account of general religious experience (as liberal Protestantism imagines), although the Psalms and Proverbs come close. Scripture is not only an account of the history of redemption, although much of Scripture consists in accounts of God’s saving acts in history. Scripture is not only an account of the “Christian story,” although much of Scripture is written in the genre of narrative, and, finally, Scripture is not only New Testament figurative interpretation of Old Testament passages, although the New Testament contains numerous examples of typological interpretation of Old Testament figures.

The relationship between revelation and Scripture is best seen as reciprocal. The writers of Scripture witness to and record accounts of divine revelation through historical events, primarily in the firsthand accounts of prophetic literature, but also in the historical narratives of the Old and New Testament. The writers of Scripture also respond to divine revelation in prayer, spiritual and moral counsel, and theological reflection (Psalms, wisdom literature, epistles). The Scriptures are not a single “book,” but a collection of books, originating in God’s historical revelation in specific concrete events, witnessing to and recording the history of that revelation, and responding to that revelation in prophetic and apostolic word, but also in responsive worship, the moral and spiritual reflection of wisdom literature, and typological reflection on the relation between earlier and later revelatory events and persons.

Crucial to both witness and response is the distinct role of prophets and apostles, those who are primary witnesses to revelation because they have either been directly addressed by God (Old Testament theophany) or witness to God’s revelation in the history of salvation (Old Testament historical books) or have firsthand knowledge of God’s full revelation in Jesus Christ or have received it from those who were such witnesses (New Testament Gospels and epistles). The Scriptures thus originate in divine revelation – God’s acting and speaking through specific historical events – but over 2,000 years later, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are also the church’s distinctively normative access to revelation. The Scriptures are the product of revelation, they witness to revelation, they record responses to revelation, and they encourage subsequent readers to include themselves within that community of both the Old and New Testament that were the original recipients of divine revelation.

Of crucial importance is the unique role of prophets and apostles as recipients of and witnesses to God’s distinct revelation in the history of his covenant with Israel and the saving mission of Jesus Christ. Revelation means that God actually acts and speaks, and that God has spoken through distinct witnesses. These witnesses are not significant because of their spiritual or moral astuteness, but because of the divine Word that they have heard and to which they bear witness. This means that Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles are not religious “geniuses.” They have no contribution of their own to bring to the table. Apostles and prophets speak God’s Word, not their own.³⁸

The Unity of Scripture

In a world of printed and digital texts, contemporary people tend to think of the Bible as a “book,” a printed text bound within some kind of cover or available as a digital text. The Scriptures (plural) are, however. not a “book,” but a collection of texts written over a period of centuries, consisting of different genres, distinguished into two testaments. What is their source of unity? Why are they a Bible? After all, these books have not always been thought of as a single text. There are differences between the Hebrew canon (recognized as “the Bible” by Jews) and the so-called Alexandrian canon of the Septuagint (LXX), consisting of Greek translations not only of the Hebrew texts, but of a handful of additional books not recognized as authoritative by Jews, but recognized by some Christians and not others.

Jews do not consider the Hebrew Bible as the “Old Testament,” and do not recognize the New Testament canon as Scripture. Notoriously in recent decades, there has been discussion of “Gospels” and texts about Jesus recognized by “Gnostic” Christians such as the “Gospel of Thomas,” but not recognized by orthodox Christians. For the first several centuries after the age of the apostles, the boundaries of the New Testament canon were somewhat “fuzzy” around the edges. There was doubt about the Letter to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation for the first several centuries of the Christian era. The Shepherd of Hermas was considered canonical by some early Christians.

That various books were brought together to form a “Bible” makes it clear that the Scriptures do not exist outside the church. As an originally Jewish movement, the earliest Christians recognized as authoritative the same texts that Jews already recognized. Thus the writers of the New Testament regularly cite the books of the Hebrew Bible as “scripture.” As early as the writings of the “apostolic fathers,” the four Gospels and the writings of Paul were cited as authoritative witnesses to the church’s faith. The first reference to the combined writings of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures as the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament” occur in the writings of the second-century theologian Irenaeus. It was the “Catholic” church of the second century that recognized specific books and gathered them together to form a “canon” for a specific purpose. To put these books together in a “canon” is to imply that they are in some way related to one another. Outside the church, then, there is no reason to call this collection of books “the Bible.”³⁹

At the same time, it needs to be emphasized that the second-century church did not impose or create the unity of the Scriptures of the New Testament, but recognized a prior existing unity.⁴⁰ The “Rule of Faith” summarized by writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian provided the clue to reading the Scriptures as a unity because this unity was already a triune unity witnessed to and responding to divine revelation. The Rule of Faith summarizes Scripture, but it is also an aid to interpreting Scripture. Calling certain texts “Scripture” is not then a matter of imposing an artificial unity on texts that is lacking in the texts themselves, but of recognizing an intelligible unity that exists within the texts already.

The Significance of the Canon

In speaking of canon, it is crucial to distinguish between two uses of the word – canon as a group of prophetic and apostolic texts recognized and cited as authoritative by the church and canon as a defined list. In the former sense, the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) were recognized as authoritative by Jesus and are regularly cited in the writings of Paul and throughout the other New Testament writings. The Hebrew Scriptures were the “canon” of the first century church. The four Gospels and Paul’s epistles are regularly cited as authoritative by the apostolic fathers (the first writings after the New Testament writings themselves) and (as pointed out above), Irenaeus’s arguments against Gnosticism presume a two-Testament canon of the Old and New Testaments. Although somewhat “fuzzy” around the edges – books like Revelation and the epistle to the Hebrews remained controversial – the functioning authoritative canon of the second century church was essentially the same canon as recognized by Christians today. Formal lists of recognized canonical books (such as the Muratorian fragment) do not appear until the fourth century, but to claim that there was no functioning canon until the fourth century is to confuse list with functioning authority.⁴¹

The canon itself is thus that collection of books written by prophets and apostles that witness to divine revelation in the history of redemption. The distinctive role of prophets and apostles in bearing unique witness to God’s revelation in history – a revelation that culminates in the incarnation, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – logically implies a crucial distinction between the age of the apostles (the period of the New Testament church) and the history of the church that follows – the age of the post-New Testament church. The members of the second-century church down to the time of today’s church are successors to the apostles, but we are not ourselves apostles.⁴²

There is thus a crucial distinction between the “primary tradition” of the apostolic era and all post-apostolic tradition. Given the crucial distinction between prophets and apostles and their successors, the existence of the canon itself places apostolic authority over the subsequent post-apostolic church, which is bound by but cannot itself speak with the authority of the canonical texts, an authority that is not its own. As the writers of the canonical texts do not point to themselves (they are prophets and apostles, not geniuses), but to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, so the post-apostolic church does not point to itself, but receives with gratitude and humility the prophetic and apostolic witness to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.

What About the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books?

Given that the post-apostolic church did not create, but rather recognized the canon of Scripture because of its prophetic and apostolic witness to divine revelation, what should we make of the uncertainty that the church has had about some books? Puzzlement about the limits of the New Testament canon were eventually resolved by the fifth century, and all historically mainline Christian churches recognize the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical. The epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation to John are part of the New Testament canon. The Shepherd of Hermas is not.

A long-lasting and continuing disagreement concerns the canonical limits of the Old Testament. The patristic church read the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint translation (LXX) or the Latin Vulgate, which, in addition to the books of the Hebrew canon, included translations of several other books not later recognized as canonical by the Jewish rabbis. Most early Christian writers read these books as Scripture, although some church fathers did not consider them to be authentically canonical (for example, Jerome and Athanasius). In 1545, the Roman Catholic Council of Trent recognized seven of these books as canonical, as well as additional material in the two books of Daniel and Esther. The Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books in their Old Testament as well as an additional five books and an additional Psalm 151. In contrast, Reformation-era Protestant churches accepted as canonical only the thirty-nine books corresponding to the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Tanakh. Protestants refer to the additional books of the so-called Alexandrian canon as the “apocrypha,” while Roman Catholics use the term “deuterocaonical.”

Theologically, the crucial point concerning Old Testament canonicity is that from its beginnings, the early church simply accepted the Hebrew Bible as its pre-existing canon, which, in conjunction with the apostolic writings of the Christian Scriptures (Gospels and epistles, and the possible book of Revelation) were referred to as the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament.” The Christian Bible is thus composed of two Testaments: The Old Testament both promises Jesus Christ, and is re-read in light of Jesus Christ as its fulfillment (figurative interpretation). Disagreement about the extent of the canon concerned not those books in the Hebrew canon that were recognized by all, but whether certain additional books should be included in the Old Testament.

Without resolving the continuing disagreement, it is important to recognize that in the last century or so, an ecumenical consensus has arisen that the apocrypha/deuterocaonical books serve an important but subordinate role to the books of the Hebrew canon. The apocrypha/deuterocanon includes helpful historical information about the intertestamental period, for example, the period of the Maccabeean revolt. These books also include wisdom literature similar to the book of Proverbs (Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon), and New Testament scholars (both Protestant and Catholic) recognize that some of this wisdom material may have influenced New Testament typological interpretation of Jesus Christ as the “Divine Wisdom” through whom God created the world.⁴³

Modern ecumenical biblical translations often include the Apocrypha (either between the Old and New Testaments or as an appendix), and modern biblical commentaries often include it as well. Reformed Christians have historically been more suspicious of the Apocrypha (the Westminster Confession 1.3), while Lutherans and Anglicans do not regard the apocryphal books as canonical, but nonetheless do consider them of spiritual and moral value. Anglicans include the Apocrypha in the lectionary: “Let us now praise famous men” (Sirach 44, All Saints Day). The 39 Articles state: “And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (art. 6).

The Clarity of Scripture

One of the Protestant Reformation’s most fundamental assertions was the “perspicacity” or “clarity” of Scripture. The Scriptures are not obscure, but can be understood by competent readers. If God is in himself who he is in his revelation, and if that revelation is to be understood, the Biblical record of and witness to that revelation must be inherently intelligible.⁴⁴

This is not simply a Reformation emphasis, but an affirmation of the church since its beginnings. Irenaeus appealed to the “Rule of Faith” as providing the key to biblical interpretation in contrast to Gnostic speculative readings, which he regarded as equivalent to taking apart a mosaic that portrayed a king and reassembling it to become a picture of a dog.⁴⁵ Hilary of Poitiers insisted that the key to biblical interpretation was to understood the text in the light of the realities to which it referred rather than imposing preconceived interpretations on the text: Non sermoni res, sed rei sermo subiectus res (the word is not subject to the reality, but reality is subject to the word).⁴⁶ Thomas Aquinas insisted that the purpose of the “articles of faith” (the historic creeds), was not to add anything new to the teaching of Scripture, but to draw up a concise clear summary of the teaching of Scripture.⁴⁷ More recently, evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has made the same point about the clarity of Scripture in response to contemporary postmodern skepticism about whether language can be used to communicate meaning.⁴⁸

The clarity of Scripture does not mean that every single passage of Scripture is easily interpreted, nor that there is nothing in Scripture that is obscure or difficult of interpretation, but that what is “necessary for salvation” can be understood clearly. In the words of the Thirty-Nine Articles: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation” (art. 6).

Finally, the clarity of Scripture means that the text of Scripture has a single subject matter or “scope” (skopus). That scope is literary, historical and ontological. The literary scope of Scripture consists of a combination of symbols and narratives that recount the “Christian story.” The historical scope of Scripture centers in God’s covenant with Israel in the Old Testament, the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit in the church until Christ’s second coming in the New Testament. The ontological Scope of Scripture means that the God who is revealed in the history of redemption as the economic Trinity of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, must be triune in himself. The ontological scope of Scripture is God’s triune identity.

A Hermeneutic of Transformation

A key assumption of liberal Protestantism is that the ostensible subject matter of the biblical text is problematic. For liberalism, the true subject matter of the biblical texts must be perceived beneath the surface of the text in something else that may well be in tension with the plain sense meaning of the text. For “experiential-expressivist” versions of liberal theology, this something else is an “experience” that resonates with a prior experience that I bring to the text with me. The extent of that correspondence between the text and “what I already know” is the extent to which Scripture can be received as liberating, but also provides a kind of hermeneutical filter that prevents the text from challenging the a priori self-understanding that I bring to the text.

To the contrary, to allow Scripture to challenge my preunderstanding means that reading Scripture properly demands conversion. An Evangelical Catholic hermeneutic recognizes that the question of interpretation is not about continuity between the subjective intentions of the authors of Scripture and my own subjective appropriation, but rather concerns a question of the continuity between the objective subject matter of the text — the triune God’s revelation in Jesus Christ— and the conformity of the self to that subject matter. Proper reading thus demands conversion, not just “interpretation.”

The Ecclesial Context of Scripture

If revelation is understood as the self-communication of the triune God, then the Scriptures in turn must be understood as oriented toward the transformation of created, fallen, and redeemed human beings through the body of Jesus Christ, the church. As noted above, the Scriptures are the primary vehicle through which Christians learn about and participate in the drama of salvation.

Although certainly Christians should read the Bible as private individuals – a primary assumption behind the Reformation affirmation of the “priesthood of all believers” – the primary setting for the proper understanding of Scripture is the Christian community gathered in worship. The church is a community of disciples of Jesus Christ who learn to interpret the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as part of the ongoing process of entering into deeper communion with the triune God. Reading Scripture is an ecclesial practice that is tied to spiritual formation through reading and proclaiming the Scriptures in worship (through lectionary and liturgy), and to respond through truth-telling and truth-seeking, through bringing all thoughts captive to the mind of Christ.⁴⁹

What is at stake? God is Love

What is at stake in the claim that the doctrine of Scripture is correlated to and dependent on the affirmation of divine revelation – that God has acted and spoken in a particular history, and that this history has been witnessed to and preserved through human writers in the various texts that the second-century church came to recognize as Scripture, that the Scriptures have a clarity that enables them to be understood – that they contain everything sufficient for salvation?

Throughout the last two chapters, the claim has been made that the doctrine of the Trinity is the central doctrine of Christianity. The notions of the economic and immanent Trinity are correlated in that the triune God (the immanent Trinity) simply is the love between the three persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that in revelation and redemption, God has communicated this love to fallen humanity (the economic Trinity).

This claim is not tenable apart from what has been affirmed above about the relation between divine revelation and Scripture. If God is not in himself who he is in his revelation, or if God’s nature is essentially unknowable, or if God does not speak intelligibly in revelation, then this personal dimension of love is lost. What is at stake in Christian affirmations of the correlation between divine revelation and Scripture is that God is love.⁵⁰

This affirmation that God is love is not however simply a proposition about the nature of divine reality in itself. As noted in the previous paragraphs, in recent decades, there has been a strong affirmation of the connection between church doctrine and church practice. This new focus on community practice in particular is a recognition that theology is inherently personal, and demands a personal response. If God’s revelation in history witnessed to in Scripture is not a revelation of God in himself, then there can be no personal response in love.

The Inspiration of Scripture

For the last half century, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has been a point of contention particularly in evangelical Protestant circles, specifically the doctrine of inspiration as “propositional revelation” referred to above, and the associated understanding of inspiration as primarily doctrinal and tied to theories about the unique inspiration and inerrancy of the “original autographs.” On the other hand, the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has been largely ignored in non-evangelical theology.⁵¹

Looking back on the rather fruitless debates of this discussion, a few key observations might be helpful. First, inspiration is best not understood along either deist (liberal Protestant) or “deductivist” lines (evangelical propositional revelation). That is, the liberal Protestant approach does not believe that God actually acts or speaks in redemptive history in a manner distinct from the manner in which God acts in history in general, and the Bible is thus read as an entirely human document. At the opposite extreme, “propositional revelation” understands inspiration in light of a priori assumptions about what the nature of Scripture must be if the Bible is to be the word of God.

Neither however is inspiration well understood in a manner popular in recent decades, along incarnational grounds. That is, in the same manner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation means that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, the claim is made that inspiration means saying similar things about Scripture – the Bible is a completely human text, written by human authors, but it is also (because inspired) a fully divine text. This analogy will not work, however, because the writings of the Scriptures are not God become a human text in a manner similar to the way that the Son of God became a human being. Orthodox theology affirms that the second person of the Trinity became incarnate as a human being, not that God became incarnate as a book.

The inspiration of Scripture is rather best understood along lines parallel to the understanding of sanctification, the spiritual transformation and formation of human beings through the presence of the Holy Spirit. John Webster notes: “Sanctification establishes and does not abolish creatureliness.”⁵² In contrast to deism (liberal Protestantism), sanctification does not overlook divine influence, but in contrast to the deductivist approach, sanctification takes seriously the history of the biblical texts as the work of actual human beings written, edited, and compiled, over an extended period of time.

It is also important to affirm that the inspiration of Scripture is both derivative from revelation, but also distinct from revelation. In the economy of salvation, God has redeemed sinful human beings through the person and work of Jesus Christ. The message of the Scriptures is not that the Bible saves, but that Jesus Christ saves. At the same time, it is uniquely through the Scriptures that God addresses the church with the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Finally, the inspiration of Scripture is not best understood as a “one off” event tied to no longer existing “original manuscripts.” Inspiration is better understood as a divine Spirit-directed providence over the entire production of the books that form the canonical Scriptures so that they fulfill the divine purpose in the self-communication of the triune God in order to restore fallen and redeemed humanity to communion with God.⁵³