Science, Scripture, and the Church: The Search for Genuine Authority (Part III)

At the time of the Reformation the Catholic church was a corrupt disaster.  The Reformers were distressed about the state of the church and they appealed to scripture as a source of authority by which to critique the church of their time.  They took this so far as to claim a doctrine of sola scriptura which more or less posits the authority of scripture over-against the authority of the church.  A basic statement of the doctrine would be that everything we need to know about Christian faith is contained in scripture and that scripture is sufficiently clear in what it has to say that we can read it and understand it for ourselves, independent of the church.  The Anabaptists took this to its full conclusion by attempting to abandon every part of Roman Catholic tradition that they deemed unbiblical.  They performed only adult baptisms.  They rejected the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church.  They rejected the use of visual art or any ordornment in places of worship.  They affirmed the separation of the church and the state.  They did these things, among others, claiming sola scriptura as their guiding principle.

This used to be a point of pride for me as an Anabaptist but it turned into a problem.  It seemed that by asserting the Bible’s authority over-against the church, the Reformers ended up separating the Bible from its legitimate context and source of authority.  After all, it was the church who had decided which books made it into the biblical canon and which ones didn’t.  God didn’t dictate the Bible verbatim to the church in the way that Muhammad claimed to have received the Quran.  There were a variety of books and letters in circulation before the Bible was canonized and it was the church (through the guidance of the Holy Spirit) who decided which books to keep.  In an ultimate sense the Bible gets its authority from the fact that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it was the church who had to discern which books were true to the faith.  The canon of biblical texts was established by the authority of the church, through which the Holy Spirit was working.  The authority of the canon was established by the authority of the church, not vice versa.  By attempting to separate church authority and scriptural authority the Reformers left scripture unsupported.

I remember writing in my final exam essay for Ted Davis’ class that perhaps the young earth creationist mindset was the result of a sola scriptura doctrine played out over several centuries.  From where I stand now, the young earth creationist movement looks like an attempt to validate the Bible’s authority in the absence of the authority of a unified church.  For Catholics the validation of the Bible’s authority is internal to their tradition.  They grant the Bible authority in their lives not because they can demonstrate the scientific validity of Genesis, but because it’s their book.  It is a collection of writings by the Church, for the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and canonized by the Church through the work of the Holy Spirit.  It doesn’t stand on its own apart from the Church and it doesn’t need any external validation.  The myriad, lowercase “c” churches of Protestant Christianity can’t point to a unified Church as a source of authority in the same way that Catholics can.  And that's just the beginning of the problem.  An even deeper issue is the authority of competing interpretations of scripture.

I have found it increasingly ironic that the Protestant tradition which prides itself on sola scriptura has fractured into thousands of denominations because people can’t agree on how to interpret the Bible.  I will grant that rigorous biblical exegesis can eliminate patently bad interpretations.  Nevertheless, biblical scholars and theologians making good use of exegetical techniques can still come to very different conclusions about the meaning of particular scriptural texts.  This is because everyone brings an interpretive framework with them to the table.  Our beliefs color the way that we interpret what we read.  A Calvinist and an Arminian will never agree with each other about how to interpret Romans chapter 9.  They both claim scripture as their authority and yet they vehemently disagree with each other on something as central as their doctrines of salvation.

Having grown up in America, I’m used to this kind of division in the church.  I’m used to seeing five or ten different denominations of churches represented in every town, all with different commitments and beliefs.  I’m used to being part of a minority denomination whose unordained lay founders baptized each other, started their own church and claimed to be following scripture as their sole authority.  I’m used to Calvinism versus Arminianism debates ending with people throwing up their hands and then attending two different churches.

There was a time when I had mostly given up on resolving these kinds of tensions using resources from within my Christian faith.  For instance, with respect to Calvinism versus Arminianism, I had decided that biblical evidence was inconclusive.  Therefore, my reasons for being an Arminian were self-consciously external to the Bible.  They had to do with things like free will theodicy, philosophical commitments to the idea of free will, and a general repulsion to the ideas of Calvinism.  I didn’t claim to derive my Arminianism directly from scripture because I was fully aware that Calvinists could make compelling scriptural arguments as well.  I couldn’t appeal to the authority of my church because my church didn’t claim to have any authority other than the Bible.  I began to have hope for resolution again when I encountered an idea from Judaism.

The Jews have been known as “the people of the book.”  On the surface this might seem like the Jews are a kind of sola scriptura community, but that's not accurate.  The Jews recognize both a Written Torah and an Oral Torah.  The Written Torah is the Pentateuch.  The Oral Torah is the oral tradition passed down from Moses on how the Written Torah is to be interpreted.  The Jews understand that the Written Torah does not interpret itself so in addition to preserving their sacred texts they have also preserved their tradition of interpreting those texts.  A great deal of that oral tradition has been compiled in written form in the Mishna, Talmud and Midrash.  These writings are indispensable for properly understanding the Written Torah.  You can’t have one without the other.

This Jewish understanding of scriptural interpretation (along with a number of other things) motivated me to look for a Christian counterpart.  I fully intended to start my search with the Catholic church and felt that there was a good chance I would end up there.  As it has actually played out, I have found myself digging into Eastern Orthodoxy instead.  One of the first times I visited an Orthodox church I met a man who nearly converted me on the spot because he showed me how Orthodoxy resolves the problems of scriptural authority and church authority that are inherent in Protestantism.

To put it very briefly, the Orthodox church claims to have preserved not only the text of the Bible but also the interpretive framework of the Apostles through which the Bible must be understood.  The Apostles were taught by Jesus Christ himself how to interpret the Old Testament and they are responsible for writing the vast majority of the New Testament.  They are the people who established the first churches.  They also rebuked those churches when they got out of line on the basis of their authority as Apostles.  They also appointed bishops to continue teaching the faith that they had received from Christ (in much the same way that Protestant denominations ordain pastors).  Through these bishops, through the writings of the church fathers, and through the living tradition and liturgical life of the church, the Orthodox church claims to have preserved the teaching of the Apostles up to the present day.  It is on the basis of that authority that they interpret the scriptures as they do.

The condemnation of gnostic heresies is a prime example of how this authority plays out.   In the second century there were gnostic groups trying to claim authority in the church and they were re-interpreting scripture to back up their position.  In writing against these heretics St. Irenaeus (who was a bishop at the time) introduced a metaphor.  He said that scripture is like a mosaic picture of a king.  What the gnostics did was to disassemble the mosaic and rearrange the pieces into a picture of a fox, and then tell ignorant people that this was actually what the king looked like.  Who is to say that one way of putting the pieces together is better than another?  Who knows what the real king looks like?  Irenaeus said that we get the pattern for the true image of the king from the faith of the Apostles and their corresponding interpretive framework.  This faith was passed on to the bishops of the church who were charged by the Apostles with teaching and protecting it.  Irenaeus rejected the gnostics because their image of the king did not match with the image of the king that had been passed down to the church by the Apostles to its bishops.  It was on the authority of this interpretive framework that the gnostics were rejected.  This is the very framework that the Orthodox church claims to have preserved.  It is the key to interpreting scripture properly.

The first time I heard about these things I was giddy.  This is what I had been looking for: a principled and authoritative way to judge between competing interpretations of scripture using resources internal to the Christian faith.  This is what was lost in the Reformation when the Protestants separated the Bible from the Church.  The Reformers can only partly be blamed.  The Orthodox Church would be quick to point out that they were reacting against the heretical Roman Catholic Church of their time and not against the Eastern Church which had remained true to the faith.  However, the Protestants never returned to the one true Church.  They continued to fracture into increasing numbers of denominations all while championing the doctrine of sola scriptura.  But history would suggest that the real upshot of sola scriptura is that instead of securing the authority of scripture, it leaves the interpretation of scripture up for grabs and generates a vacuum of authority.  This vacuum has been filled with hundreds of competing ideas about how to understand scripture – there are hundreds of ways you can put the mosaic together.  In the worst case scenario, it results in each person becoming their own authority, interpreting scripture as they see fit.

I've met with an Orthodox priest twice now to discuss various aspects of the Orthodox Church.  The last time I met with him I mentioned that I probably had more biblical knowledge and training than most Christians my age (after all, I was a Bible quizzer).  And yet, I have had very limited exposure to the church fathers.  He looked at me and said, “I don't even know how you can begin to interpret scripture without reference to the church fathers!”  I'm starting to take his point.  The interpretive tradition of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is the Orthodox analog to the Oral Torah in Judaism.  Scripture cannot properly be understood without it.  Furthermore, in the absence of an authoritative framework of interpretation, scripture loses its ability to be authoritative.

In my own journey I tried to invest scripture with authority by interpreting the Genesis creation accounts as science, but I never consulted the church fathers to see how they interpreted these passages.  St. Augustine wrote volumes on the interpretation of Genesis which I have never read.  I have only recently discover one particular quote (via a lecture by Francis Collins) which is painfully relevant to my own journey.  In his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, he says:

“In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred scripture.”

This sums up a great deal of my journey.  In attempting to provide a solid foundation for my faith, I tried to conform scripture to a very specific and historically recent pseudo-scientific theory.  When my theory fell, my faith fell with it.  Augustine could have predicted this.  He could have warned me.  I had arranged the pieces of the mosaic all wrong and created a picture of a fox.

My faith in the authority of science has never wavered.  It is an incredible tool for discovering truth about this physical world that God has created.  I do not question the authority of scripture.  It is the inspired word of God in which God reveals himself to us.  But I do question the authority of the interpreters of scripture and I seek to reclaim the unity of the scripture with the church.  I am looking for a tradition that knows the pattern for the image of the king and I think I may have found it.

-David