September 29, 2011

For scriptural scholar and churchman N. T. Wright our culture is largely engulfed by a 'smog of unknowing"—not the mystical condition set forth in the 14th century spiritual classic, The Cloud of Unknowing—but a smog of unknowing, 'not even knowing what "knowing' itself might mean." For us, 'uncertainty about everything is a way of life." We accept a kind of skeptical background as a given, and try to muddle through, bumping about in the smog as best we can.

That same smog has settled around, and befuddled, the Bible itself. We aren't sure what to think of it, and this is largely due to our not understanding what the authority of the Bible is.

That we should be caught in such confusion is not an historical accident. As Wright points out, the authority of the Bible has been under attack since the Enlightenment. It is not so much that the Enlightenment wanted to eliminate Christianity completely—although that soon became its aim. Rather, it hoped to transform Christianity into something tame and useful for its own project: the remolding of the world according to its own social and political utopian agenda. In Wright's pithy words, the Enlightenment sought to 'kick "God' upstairs, make religion a matter of private piety, and then…organize the world to…[its] own advantage. That has been the leitmotif of the Western world ever since, the new philosophy which has so far sustained several great empires, launched huge and horribly flawed totalitarian projects, and left the contemporary world thoroughly confused."

In short, the Enlightenment project sought to make Christianity entirely otherworldly, so that we could be left alone, without the interference of religion, to remake the world in our own image, a secular image. To do this, the full authority, and hence power, of Scripture had to be undermined.

The problem, argues Wright, is that all too many of the faithful have accepted the Enlightenment view that Scripture is entirely otherworldly, rather than both-worldly. They have missed the point that Scripture is concerned fundamentally about 'God's saving sovereignty let loose through Jesus and the Spirit and aimed at the healing and renewal of all creation," (29) or more in accord with his native British idiom, 'God's project to put the whole cosmos to rights."

In this 'project" all of creation will be transformed in the new creation, the new Kingdom.  Therefore, God's authority, and hence the authority of Scripture, extends over this world and into the next. Wright thus roundly rejects the Enlightenment notion that Scripture has no authority in this world, but is only meant as kind of private source of pietistic consolation.

But of course, everything hangs on what Wright means by 'authority," and that is what he tries to spell out in his Scripture and the Authority of God.  His first, and most invigorating point is that the authority of Scripture does not rest in Scripture. The authority of Scripture rests in God. 'When John declares that "in the beginning was the word,' he does not reach a climax with "and the word was written down' but "and the word became flesh.' And 'that means that scripture itself points…away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God himself, now delegated to Jesus Christ."

Thus, the "authority of scripture'…must mean… "the authority of God exercised through scripture.'" That doesn't mean that Scripture is somehow second-rate. Jesus himself was the fulfillment of Scripture. He truly is the Word made flesh. 'Who he was and is, and what he accomplished, are to be understood in the light of what scripture has said. He was, in himself, the "true Israel,' formed by scripture, bringing the Kingdom to birth." Scripture has its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and therefore, it has its ultimate authority from and in Christ.

What Wright means here about authority can, I think, be gotten in a kind of roundabout, but scriptural way. In chapter 5 of Luke, Jesus is at Capernaum, teaching on the Sabbath. In the synagogue, 'there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon." When the demon cries out, Jesus rebukes him, saying these words, 'Be silent, and come out of him!" And immediately the demon was cast out. The crowd murmurs, 'What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out" (emphasis added).

Scripture, in this instance the New Testament Gospel of Luke, reports this real, primary event. In the actual event, the spoken word of Jesus, the Christ who is himself the fulfillment of Scripture, is completely and immediately effective. The authority of his word is revealed and recognized in its effective power. The Gospel of Luke has its authority, secondarily but truly, in this and the other primary events it reports or reveals. So it is that in the Rite of Exorcism, the reading of Scripture is itself effective in breaking the hold of demonic possession. Jesus himself is the ultimate authority, and (to bring us back to Wright's words) 'the authority of God is exercised through Scripture."

This authority is seen throughout the New Testament. Jesus claims the authority to forgive sins, saying to a paralyzed man, 'Man, your sins are forgiven you" (Lk 5:20)—something that only God can do. The Pharisees rightly understand that he's claiming the authority of God, for only God can forgive sins. Jesus's response is to show his effective power, as a sign of his authority to forgive and hence heal sin. Turning to the paralytic, he speaks these words, which immediately accomplish what he says: 'I say to you, rise, take up your bed and go home." And so he did.

This same power, this same authority, is exercised again by the apostle Peter, who says to a man lame from birth, 'in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk" (Acts 3:6). And so he did.

Peter's healing is the exercise of the authority of God through the authority of the name of Jesus, an authority we learn about from reading the Acts of the Apostles. The authority of the scriptural account we read about rests on the actual exercise of effective power by Peter, who in turn makes quite clear to the amazed crowd, that the effective power comes from God, not from him.

But that is most decidedly not to say that Scripture is merely a place where we read about long-ago events. 'It is enormously important that we see the role of scripture not simply as being to provide true information about, or even an accurate running commentary upon, the work of God in salvation and new creation, but as taking an active part within that ongoing purpose." 

We have Wright's two main points well represented in all of this. First, scripture has real and effective power from God: a real power to transform the real world, by healing both bodies and souls, transforming a creation marred by sin into a new creation, a new Kingdom. Second, it is our Christian duty, our mission, to take that power out into the world in our effort to transform it. The truth and hence the authority of Scripture, of its very words, will be seen in its effective power to heal and transform, to break the deadly hold of sin, to renew the face of the earth.

And so, says Wright, the '"authority of scripture,' when unpacked, offers a picture of God's sovereign and saving plan for the entire cosmos, dramatically inaugurated by Jesus himself, and now to be implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church precisely as the scripture-reading community."

Again, Wright does not mean a merely passive reading, a reading about far-off and exotic events, to which we, the orthodox, must assent, saying 'Yes, I believe these things really happened to someone else." Rather, we must understand that they are still happening, and they are meant to happen to us. We must grasp the fact that our incorporation into God's saving plan means our incorporation into the ongoing story of redemption that Scripture reveals. When we read the Bible, then, we must understand that, to truly believe it, we must accept the startling implication that we are commanded to enter the narrative ourselves, and help carry forth the story to its ordained conclusion.

To enter the narrative, Wright makes clear, is to put ourselves under its authority, to mold our lives by that story, to accept the divine drama as revealed in Scripture as definitive and hence defining, to have faith that living within and through this story will clear away the smog. The truth of the story will reveal itself in the actual healing and transformation of individuals, body and soul, the healing and transformation of marriages, the healing and transformation of socially self-destructive societies, and all else that is part of 'God's project to put the whole cosmos to rights."