The way Scripture is used in this year’s Horizons Bible study seems to encourage the elevation of one’s own authority over the authority of Scripture as our “only rule of faith and practice.” One example on page 60 claims, “Some say that Jesus embodied the realm of God in concrete terms, and they simply acknowledge that he did proclaim a final judgment. Regardless of whether we hold to a literal or a figurative, a realized, or a future understanding of judgment and the resolution of the realm, the Scripture’s discussion of these issues provide us with some interesting glimpses into the nature of the realm of God, its inhabitant, and its ruler.” [italics mine] In most of Lessons 2 and 3, the Old Testament Prophets are voices for their own thoughts and judgments, rather than being those voices through whom God’s own thoughts and judgments, indeed God’s own Word, were spoken. The study material constantly portrays Scriptural characters as engaging in self-instruction and self-rule. And, throughout the lessons the learner is likewise instructed simply to decide for herself who God is, what God’s rule means, and what response to that rule is appropriate. Within the many examples that could be cited, what the Church confesses to be true about the issues explored is never mentioned.
This approach seems to advocate a utilitarian employment of Holy Scripture where one may pick and choose which texts are valid for one’s life and which are not. In such an approach, Scripture becomes not the Word of God having its own authority, but simply a compendium of ancient literary musings and interesting anecd… add to our personal collections of helpful or not so helpful information. T… theological relativism, a bell which resonates with a perception of the role of the Bible in our lives that is inharmonious with either Reformed theology or with the biblical witness itself.
As we approach the season of Christmas, we are compelled to recognize the impact this kind of theological thinking has on how we understand the Incarnation. Here the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus Christ become at worst fanciful storytelling and at best a subjective interpretation of events, rather than a faithful witness to the objective truth that God took “the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7); the truth that “Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1) was “Immanuel, God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Here the central Christmas affirmation that Jesus Christ was “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20), becomes solely a matter of opinion. Here our celebration of our God’s one sufficient self-revelation becomes only one of many possible parties of the same relative significance for life and faith.
None of this is to suggest that human thought, experience and decision have no place within the exercise of faithfulness. What is at issue is an approach to Scripture that is inconsistent with its own proclamation and with what the Church has confessed and proclaimed all along: that there is indeed a revealed truth beyond mere human opinion. This truth is none other than God’s own self-revelatory explanations and definitions of who our God is, what it means to be under God’s rule, and how we are to respond to that rule; none other than God’s own truth, none other than God’s own Word revealed to us in human language. Only within this truth can we confess with certainty that Jesus is the Christ, the Lord, “the Word … made flesh and dwelling among us” (John 1:14), and only then can we truly celebrate Christmas.
This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 1, No. 6 (Nov/Dec 1995).
