Thursday, November 8, 2012

Bible in the Life of the Church

It is a sign of where the Anglican Communion is at that great wariness is involved in moving beyond the descriptive to the prescriptive, in moving from talking about what we are doing to determining what might need to be done. An excellent illustration of this wariness is in the reception of the Bible in the Life of the Church project report, all 674 pages of it (downloadable from here).

Here is the resolution (15.19) passed at ACC-15:

"Resolution 15.19: Bible in the Life of the Church Project
  1. affirms the centrality of the Bible in the life of the churches of the Anglican Communion;
  2. affirms the importance of the continued study of the Bible in the parishes, dioceses and Provinces of the Anglican Communion and congratulates all involved in the Bible in the Life of the Church (BILC) Project on the work undertaken, in particular its smooth and effective facilitation by Stephen Lyon;
  3. welcomes the work of the Project, especially the Lent books (And it was Good, and Economic Justice), and the final report, Deep Engagement, Fresh Discovery and requests the Provinces to encourage their widespread use throughout their dioceses and parishes;
  4. notes with deep appreciation the collection of resources on the use of the Bible made by the BILC Steering Group, and commends them particularly to Christian Education bodies, theological colleges and Doctrine Commissions across the Communion;
  5. requests theological colleges and research scholars across the Anglican Communion to explore further the issues raised by the Project, especially as these relate to engaging with the Bible in local contexts;
  6. requests that the work undertaken by the BILC Project be continued and that, where possible, resources developed by the BILC be translated into one or more languages other than English; and
  7. requests that the Secretary General attempt to secure funding to enable an immediate publicizing and rolling out of the Project’s insights and resources across the Communion.
"
Might one demur at the thought of encouraging the widespread use of a 674 page report in dioceses and parishes? But the main demurral here is that the vision of further research is limited to "engaging with the Bible in local contexts." Might it not be more urgent to explore what "the centrality of the Bible in the life of the churches of the Anglican Communion" actually means? In terms of ++Rowan's final presidential address we might ask whether the authority of the Bible is merely enabling or is also corrective.

I like what ++Rowan says in his Foreword to the Report. This, indeed, is most worthy of widespread reading and discussion through dioceses and parishes. For your convenience I cite it here and follow that with the "Core Message" of the report. I have emboldened the ABC's words which I particularly agree with:

"Foreword
By the Archbishop of Canterbury

How is the Anglican Communion to be, in the fullest and most authentic sense, a family of
‘biblical’ churches? This question is at the heart of most of the tensions that have been in
evidence within the Communion over the last couple of decades, and it is not one that admits of a quick answer. The Anglican way in theology exists as a distinctive voice partly because of the Reformation impulse to make the Church once again a community in which people listen as directly as they can to what God is saying – a community, therefore, in which what the Church thinks or does is always being tested and judged in the light of what God says to his people in the Scriptural record of his historical dealings with them.

But it has never been a way of theology which has imagined that we can solve every issue by appealing to the plain words of the Bible and no more. The mainstream of the Reformation, including the Church of England, sought both to affirm the absolute authority of the Bible as God’s self-communication and also the crucial importance of training people in a discerning reading that drew on the history of interpretation and the intelligence of the whole community. It is a great mistake to think that the Reformers held the same views as extreme modern fundamentalists. Christians in this tradition knew they were always reading Scripture in company with believers of every age and place, and bringing to bear on their reading the perspectives and skills of their human culture. Yet Anglicans have consistently given Scripture the supreme role of deciding the limits of what can and must be believed; and they have tried to listen to Scripture in the expectation of being converted and transformed by the Spirit whose action underlies the words on the page.

This project, commissioned by the ACC, welcomed and encouraged by the Primates and the
bishops at the Lambeth Conference, is an attempt to let the churches of the Communion
reflect on the ways in which they actually use the Bible – how they read it, whom they read
it with, what they bring to the reading, what their experience is of transformation. It is not a
project that seeks to advance some agenda, ‘traditional’ or ‘liberal’; simply one that seeks to
help us understand ourselves better and so, we hope and pray, to allow the Scriptures to speak to us more powerfully and freely. It is an attempt to share across the Communion what people want to say about the importance of the Bible. One of our challenges seems to be that we do not often enough experience how Anglicans in another setting are reading and using Scripture, and so can fall prey to various caricatures. This project looks towards a future in which we can not only read Scripture with clearer eyes but understand each other’s reading with clearer eyes as well – with more love and patience and willingness to be taught and enriched by each other.

The title of the project is all-important. This is about the Bible in its true place – not in a library, not even on an individual’s bookshelf, but in the life of the fellowship of believers. It is a book read in public, read in worship; a book whose words worshippers make their own in prayer, private and public; a book whose purpose is to show what a human life looks like when it is lived in loving intimacy with and obedience to the living God, whose eternal Word became flesh to reconcile us to the Father and transform us by his Spirit. The inspiration of Scripture is the presence of this Spirit, moving us to be reconciled and renewed in the likeness of Christ.

Scholarship alone cannot do this; nor can a reading of the Bible as just a code of behaviour
which we can follow by our own effort. The Spirit works in Scripture to convict us of sin and
to open us to the grace of Christ. That is why we need to hear from each other in the Church
what it means to be judged and restored in the process of reading the Bible – or, to put it
more sharply, what it means to meet Jesus Christ the Word Incarnate in what the Thirty Nine
Articles of the Church of England call the ‘Word written.’

Often we, like other Christians, talk about the Bible more than we really listen to it; sadly, many churches will acknowledge that their people do not have the habit of familiarity with the Bible that they need, or that their Bible reading is restricted to the bits they like and know already. One of the things that I personally hope this project will help us develop in the Communion is a wider and fuller biblical literacy, in which the outlines of the one great story of creation and redemption will be clear. To be a biblical Church is surely to be a community that lives out this great story day by day and commends it to people everywhere as the most comprehensive truth possible about the nature of God and God’s world. May God use this work to further that end, in our Communion and in all communities of his people.

+Rowan Cantuar
August 2012

Core Message

Anglicans love the scriptures of both Old and New Testaments; these have a central place within our common life. For 500 years or more we have valued their availability in vernacular translation and treasured them in our worship. They speak to us, and the societies in which we live, in many ways - permeating our liturgy, Bible study, preaching, commentary, story-telling, song, scholarship, dance, music, and art. The nature of these encounters differs from context to context, adding to both the variety of interpretations and the complexity of the interpretive process.

The richness of these encounters was explored in this project by our investigation of how Anglicans around the world approach the Bible. This involved workshops in different parts of the Communion, a questionnaire survey, a literature survey of official Anglican statements and documents, and academic reflections by Anglican scholars.

A major finding of these investigations is that how Anglicans engage with the Bible turns out to be just as important as its content. This perhaps unnerving claim does not contest the unique place and authority which the scriptures have in Anglican life, but it does point up the significance, perhaps thus far overlooked, of the contexts in which and processes by which they are heard and read.

The Bible in the Life of the Church project, while finding some decline in biblical literacy, above all encountered the sense of excitement, discovery and challenge that comes from reading the scriptures together. This Report seeks to capture the work of the project and, through its narratives and the resources offered, invites us, as a Communion, to deepen our love of the Bible and the rich treasures its pages offer.

With this in mind this Report:

is NOT a total picture of what happens across the Communion – but a series of snapshots, a collage. Its value is in the stories it offers, the examples it shows, and the resources it promotes.

is NOT a set of answers to the question, “How do Anglicans engage with and interpret the Bible?” – but a mirror or checklist, a set of questions and encouragements to challenge us, as Anglicans, to think further.

is NOT a prescribed programme or way forward – but a toolbox or collection of ideas, approaches and resources to dig deeper into the process of our engagement with Scripture."

What do you think?

13 comments:

Father Ron Smith said...

"Might it not be more urgent to explore what "the centrality of the Bible in the life of the churches of the Anglican Communion" actually means? In terms of ++Rowan's final presidential address we might ask whether the authority of the Bible is merely enabling or is also corrective." - Dr.Peter Carrell -

I think the plain answer to your question, Peter, is that the Bible is already so integral to our understanding of God that we need to get down to the serious task of relating its essence to the place in which we dwell. Contextual use of the Bible is imperitive - if we are to allow its principles to be inculcated into the context to which God has called us.

We are not - despite rhetoric to the contrary - necessarily first and foremost, world-citizens; so much as citizens of the place where we 'live and move and have our being'. If we do not apply the wisdom of the Scriptures to our own context first, how can we possibly expect to help others to understand the place of the scriptures in their own culture and context?

This was surely one of the problems faced by the early missionaries; where native women were forced to wear their hideous 'mother-Hubbard' bras - in order not to offend the missionary wives! Victorian morality was imposed upon tribal custom - not necessarily because of what is proclaimed in the Bible, but because it was considered 'proper' by the missionaries.

This legacy of notional purity, unfortunately, has persisted in some former British Colonial countries - simply because the new ruling elite thought that this was God's way for them, dictated by the Victorian missionaries., I have two clergy brothers-in-law who were former African missionaries, so I do have some idea of what i am talking about!

The Scriptures are not about the shibboleths of Old Testament Law, so much as the freedom promised by Jesus on the New - for Christians, that is.

If you want to resile to an O.T. legalism, when Jesus has offered us the substitution of Grace for Law, then by all means, behave as the Victorian Missionaries, who had no understanding of gender and sexuality - and how that impacts upon the humanity that Jesus came to rescue from the burden of legalism.

Yes, the Bible is corrective - so long as one takes into account the new emphasis of Grace over Law. I'm pretty sure that God had Justice in mind when he sent the Incarnate Son to transform The Law into the 'New Commandment'.

Just read the parable of the self-affirming & Righteous Pharisee, and the Acknowledged Sinner. "Who went away justified" asked Jesus!
This is the new paradigm that has transformed the scriptures.

Tim Chesterton said...

Anglicans love the scriptures of both Old and New Testaments; these have a central place within our common life.

Really? Then how come the majority of our Sunday churchgoing members rarely read the scriptures except when they hear them in public worship? And how come many of them would be hard pressed to decide which Testament the Book of Daniel is in, or in fact what is the major difference between the OT and the NT (fact: I've run into this over and over again in Christian Basics courses).

Sorry, but when the first sentence of the summary descends immediately into a romantic world of make-believe, I'm not inclined to read much further!

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Ron
The corrective authority of the Bible is precisely its authority to challenge us when we think erroneously. Errors include re-imposing the Law of Moses and acting injustly. I have no comment to make about Mother Hubbard as I cannot recall where in the Bible she is mentioned! I do not think I am much in disagreement with you in your comment here.

The question of 'context' is however full of nuances. Context may not have been observed when the missionaries imposed Western clothing customs but it was also not observed when they preached the gospel as the truth relative to the errors of other religions.

Bryden Black said...

Peter, my sincere thanks for posting this most important BILC material. I too loved the Foreword of ++ Rowan’s; your emboldened text highlights key bits nicely.

It is clearly a mammoth project; and the likes of Stephen Lyon, the coordinator, are to be seriously congratulated, as are all those who have participated - from North America to South Sudan; even our dear host, Rev Dr Peter Carrell, gets a guernsey! Yet as you yourself suggest, there are some shortcomings in the overall method. I’ll point out merely two for now.

1. Your own descriptive vs. prescriptive remark is a fascinating and major observation. For if we take only that beloved 2 Tim 3:16, we clearly have here a “prescriptive” role for Scripture, in the areas notably of both doctrine/theology and living/praxis. Referring also to the ABC’s Presidential Address, it is a classic method to NOT offset authority and freedom, just as it is also classic to propose both Negative and Positive Liberty. Where exactly Christian libertas fits into these schemas is debated of course! For the human autonomy now prevailing in Western culture is something else entirely from Christian ‘freedom’. The relevance of all this is made clear in Anthony Thiselton’s resource, “Can the Bible mean whatever we want it to mean?”, included in the voluminous “Additional material”. For in the end no amount of ‘contextualization’ may usurp either the created objectivity and reality of this world or the Reality of the Living God (pace the delightful Bible Studies on Creation etc herein, re the Fifth Mark of Mission). Which leads me to the second point.

2. In fact, the sheer Objective Reality of the Living God is that this God remains ever the Subject. Again and again these past decades - and many of those assembled scholarly materials in BILC exemplify this - it’s as if all one has to do is to have assembled all the necessary rational tools for the task: philological, textual, archaeological, historical, literary patterns, form criticism, redaction criticism, rhetoricism, reader-response theory, all coupled with a host of perspectival concerns, liberation theology, feminist theology, cultural contextualization, critical theory, post-colonial theory, reception history readings, etc.—you name it! The sheer bevy of (faddish) tools has become bewilderingly complex—and the gap between the Academy and the Preacher and the Congregation a chasm or series of chasms. But what’s far worse, the gap between the Living God, who Authors Scripture and is the Actor of the Theodrama it declares, is a gapping gulf. For the Scriptures are not there for us to nip and tuck with whatever tools we may devise. What is at stake is a basic attitude towards what the text of Holy Scripture is and what it conveys. Is it only an object before us, to be dissected at will by the reader? Is it in the final analysis under our control and whim? Or, in the final analysis, are we the ones being addressed here? Are we the ones being questioned - and down to our very roots? Once more, the story of Karl Barth’s discovery of “the strange new world within the Bible” is to be held up high [see The Word of God and the Word of Man, translation by Douglas Horton of Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (1925) (Harper, 1957), ch II, originally presented in 1917]. But those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, it seems...!

Chris Spark said...

Bryden Black, Karl Barth, God as subject, actually us being read and questioned - Amen.
There is a little poem by a friend of mine I like very much in this regard.
http://duncandrews.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/study/

Peter Carrell said...

From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, not people and what they are saying about them)

"Only Evangelical/Protestant theology teaches grace alone.

Liberalism is not about grace, but about twisting and perverting the Bible to force it to conform to Liberal dogma on sexual freedom. In fact liberalism is a form of legalism, as it replaces grace with the laws of political correctness.

Real grace frees people from their sins. It does not tell them to continue to indulge in them. That is neither grace nor Christian liberty, but a mere licence to sin.

Liberals love "contextualisation" because it allows them to silence Scripture. Once the culture determines what the Bible is allowed to say or not to say, then any cultural excuse can be used to silence the Word of God.

But culture does not determine what the Bible says. When this happens the Bible can no longer stand as a critique of all human cultures. It loses its power to speak prophetically into a culture.

This is why the Anglican Church in NZ is so weak and powerless. It has lost it's ability to act as a prophetic voice to the culture, because it has allowed the culture (both Pakeha and Maori) instead to critique the Bible, thus rendering it useless.

Context does not change the content of Scripture. Marriage as defined by God remains one man with one women for life. No amount of cultural context can silence God, no matter how desperate liberals are to keep the Lord muzzled.

According to [contextual hermeneutics] we should embrace polygamy in Africa, as that is the cultural context.

Or what about the cultural context in some places of killing baby girls in favour of boys? Perhaps we should, using [contextual hermeneutics], allow parents in some cultures to murder their baby girls.

There are many aspects of all cultures that are evil. Unless the Bible is allowed the freedom to speak to those cultures, then we have no way of determining what Christian justice is.

[It is a] straw man argument that conservatives and evangelicals are trying to re-impose the OT Law. That claim is utter rubbish.

Most of the teaching concerning marriage and sexuality is in the NT not the Old. The strongest condemnations of homosexual behaviour are in the NT.

Thus [invoking] the Marcionite heresy approach to Scripture, which pits the OT against the NT, is contrary to orthodoxy, and does not support his pro-homosexual argument anyway.

Biblical moral discipline is not about the OT Law, it is about the Gospel.

Grace frees us from sin so that we can live lives of holiness, not so that we can keep sinning.
"

Peter Carrell said...

From Shawn (moderated - please focus on issues, not people and what they are saying about them)

"Only Evangelical/Protestant theology teaches grace alone.

Liberalism is not about grace, but about twisting and perverting the Bible to force it to conform to Liberal dogma on sexual freedom. In fact liberalism is a form of legalism, as it replaces grace with the laws of political correctness.

Real grace frees people from their sins. It does not tell them to continue to indulge in them. That is neither grace nor Christian liberty, but a mere licence to sin.

Liberals love "contextualisation" because it allows them to silence Scripture. Once the culture determines what the Bible is allowed to say or not to say, then any cultural excuse can be used to silence the Word of God.

But culture does not determine what the Bible says. When this happens the Bible can no longer stand as a critique of all human cultures. It loses its power to speak prophetically into a culture.

This is why the Anglican Church in NZ is so weak and powerless. It has lost it's ability to act as a prophetic voice to the culture, because it has allowed the culture (both Pakeha and Maori) instead to critique the Bible, thus rendering it useless.

Context does not change the content of Scripture. Marriage as defined by God remains one man with one women for life. No amount of cultural context can silence God, no matter how desperate liberals are to keep the Lord muzzled.

According to [contextual hermeneutics] we should embrace polygamy in Africa, as that is the cultural context.

Or what about the cultural context in some places of killing baby girls in favour of boys? Perhaps we should, using [contextual hermeneutics], allow parents in some cultures to murder their baby girls.

There are many aspects of all cultures that are evil. Unless the Bible is allowed the freedom to speak to those cultures, then we have no way of determining what Christian justice is.

[It is a] straw man argument that conservatives and evangelicals are trying to re-impose the OT Law. That claim is utter rubbish.

Most of the teaching concerning marriage and sexuality is in the NT not the Old. The strongest condemnations of homosexual behaviour are in the NT.

Thus [invoking] the Marcionite heresy approach to Scripture, which pits the OT against the NT, is contrary to orthodoxy, and does not support his pro-homosexual argument anyway.

Biblical moral discipline is not about the OT Law, it is about the Gospel.

Grace frees us from sin so that we can live lives of holiness, not so that we can keep sinning.
"

Bryden Black said...

Thanks Chris; and thanks too for that piece which the Welsh Bard wld probably appreciate as well - as succinct a summary as your own!

Bryden Black said...

Your selection of actual Scripture, Ron (the parable of “two men who went up to the temple to pray”), is interesting - at least, in light of your emphases upon “context” and others. For firstly, the literary context carefully crafted by Luke places it parallel with Lk 11:1-13 by means of the vast chiasm that constitutes Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem; i.e. it prompts the question, what IS Luke’s overall theology of Prayer? And how does it fit into his understanding and praxis of sonship/discipleship? Then secondly, the contrasting scandal set up by Jesus’ parable is not exactly one of Law vs. Grace - at least, not in Jesus’ social context of 1st C Judaism. That is to impose criteria upon the text derived from later - much later - church history. His initial point is as stated in 18:9.

Nor, might it be clearly said, are we to try to extract any deemed “essence” from the Scriptures. The entire enterprise of 19th C theology attempted that and found the process doomed to failure and mere reductionism, the legacy of which still haunts us westerners. Nor are we to extract abstract “principles” from the Scriptures, as if such modernist ethical methodologies would actually enable us to become conformed to Christ’s Image.

Yes Ron; we’ve indeed to learn to ‘read’ our very own contexts in the light of Scripture’s far richer and denser text of the Theodrama that is the triune God’s Economy of Redemption. But that reading, I suggest, is rather different to the ‘grammar’ of your own comment ...

Father Ron Smith said...

"The sheer bevy of (faddish) tools has become bewilderingly complex—and the gap between the Academy and the Preacher and the Congregation a chasm or series of chasms." - Bryden Black

Modern hermeneutic, I, am aware, can be a problem for people schooled in the 'old' way. But, hey, the Spirit is alive and active TODAY, even in the interpretation of the scriptures!

Jesus had to correct the current understanding of the Bible for the Scribes and Pharisees. I guess that's an ongoing task for today's Living Church.

"Where the Spirit of God is, there is Freedom!"

MichaelA said...

That is a good point. The Living Church in the Anglican context is the whole of the Communion.

It has had a great deal of work to do to correct the "current understanding" of minority western liberal Christians, which is after all not really a current understanding at all, but just a re-hash of discredited 19th-century German critical method.

"Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplatethe Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." [2 Cor 3:15-18]

Anonymous said...

1. The Church wrote the Bible and the Church can rewrite the Bible.

2. The Bible means whatever an interpretative community says it means.

3. The real or true message of the Bible is found in these parts which promote doctrine A, and not in those parts which promote doctrine B.

Those are the three hermeneutical principles that Tec *explicitly follows (think Bennison, Spong, Schlussler Fiorenza) and are accepted by Tec sympathizers in NZ. They do have something in common with "19th-century German critical method". Even more, I think, with 2nd century Marcion. They have nothing to do with the catholic understanding of Scripture of Cranmer and every Anglican teacher of the 16th and 17th centuries. But these principles certainly resonate with 17th century Socinianism.

Mr. Mcgranor said...

Its obvious that Calvinist ideals have failed.