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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Scripture is the book of truth authorised by Jesus Christ (?)

A commenter (Rhys) on an earlier post about Jesus and Scripture asks, “does ‘the book of truth authorized by Jesus Christ’ hint sufficiently at the dynamic quality you want?”

Perhaps not. A book, for example, is not as dynamic as, say, a ‘vision’ or ‘manifesto’. Yet Scripture is a book, and I am loathe to give away the concept of truth, static though it may seem in post-modernist shaped contexts. Grace and truth come from Jesus Christ, as John the Evangelist tells us (John 1:17). Of course for the Evangelist ‘truth’ is dynamic in the sense that it has power to lead to belief which leads to eternal life, even when written down (20:31). And, maybe ‘authorised’ sounds a bit heavy.

Perhaps then I could say, ‘Scripture is life-giving truth, communicated through Jesus Christ’.

What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. I think the definition works well for a sympathetic audience, but a hostile audience will raise all sorts of questions about literal truths of history, about ethical truths, truths of wisdom, of dogma and so on. I suppose these are actually hermeneutic issues.
    I think we should not forget the brilliant pieces by Oliver O'Donovan, the fulcrum sermons, which seem to me a wonderfully sustained and largely unanswered orthodox view of the issues in the Windsor Report. He describes scripture there (perhaps more cumbrously than usual); "Scripture is, we may say, God's administration of his self-announcement, the record he has authorised to it and the seal he has set on it to confirm that it is true".

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  2. That is a bit cumbersome of Oliver O' Donovan's, Rhys!

    The issues a hostile audience could raise are not readily dealt with in a one sentence definition ... but need careful working through, issue by issue.

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  3. Peter,
    Well it does come at the close of a closely argued line of thinking!
    I don't think we can construct a summary statement without a sense of its potential audience, friendly and hostile, and there is a challenge to contain within it the principles which will unfold to deal with the hostility.
    For this reason I think it needs to hint at a solution to the two testaments hermeneutical issues.

    Rhys

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