If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with mainline Protestants over the years, it’s that we’re really good at identifying what we don’t believe about scripture. Basically, the claim I have heard over and over again is that we don’t read it the way “fundamentalists” read it. Okay…. Fair enough. That, however, is a very uninteresting statement. It’s much rarer, and more difficult, to describe positively and specifically how we think scripture functions.
To be fair, some people have tried to do this. N. T. Wright, Marcus Borg, and Adam Hamilton, for example, haveall offered positive proposals about the inspiration and authority of scripture. There is an excellent book by Christopher Bryan on the subject called, And God Spoke: The Authority of the Bible for the Church Today. (Please note: by referring to “positive proposals,” I’m not saying that I necessarily think they are right, but that such proposals involve affirmations, rather than simply negations.)
Wright and Bryan, both Anglicans, will take more traditionalist positions on the Bible, though without affirming plenary, verbal inspiration. They will be popular among moderate evangelicals, conservative mainliners, and Anglicans. Borg’s proposals have been extremely influential in mainline congregations. In a nutshell, he sets up the assumptions of modernity as normative criteria by which to evaluate whether or not a particular claim is veridical. (See Fred Schmidt’s critique here.) Hamilton argues that the inspiration of scripture is the same in nature and degree as the inspiration of people today. The authority of scripture lies in two claims: (1) it was written closer to the events described, and (2) it reflects the normative decisions of the early church regarding the set of books that would be useful for Christian teaching.
In the United Methodist Church, our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith affirm the sufficiency and truthfulness of scripture for teaching what is necessary for salvation. In case you’re interested, I blogged about these passages from our doctrinal standards here.
For John Wesley, the Bible’s function was soteriological. It taught us about how we could achieve salvation. Wesley was at times drawn to what we would today call inerrancy or infallibility, though such affirmations depended upon his reading scripture through a particular theological framework, the “general tenor” of scripture. (See Scott Jones’s book, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture. I’d also recommend a book that Joel Green and I edited, Wesley, Wesleyans, and Reading Bible as Scripture.)
In addition to these positions, there are some mainline Protestants who have embraced doctrines such as plenary, verbal inspiration. In the absence of sufficient positive proposals from within their own traditions, they have taken on doctrines of scripture from traditions that they see as more stable, rooted, and dynamic.
All this is to say, there are some options for thinking through positive descriptions of the nature and function of scripture, but the denominations themselves don’t seem to have offered many clear proposals about what scripture is, what it does, or how we should approach it. Perhaps I’m simply misinformed about other traditions, but in The United Methodist Church we are at sea on this issue.
As a point of departure for further conversation, let me offer a few affirmations, based on our doctrinal standards, which might help folks articulate what we believe about the Bible:
1. Scripture is the primary source of divine revelation in our tradition. Other claims to divine revelation should be tested against scripture.
2. Everything we need to know to receive salvation is in the Bible.
3. The Bible is the true guide for Christian faith and practice.
4. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand and apply scripture to our lives.
5. Christian tradition, such as is found in the creeds, helps to interpret scripture for teaching the historic faith of the church.
6. Reason and the experience help us to understand scripture, but on matters of salvation, and matters of faith and practice related to salvation, they should not contradict scripture.
What do you think? Are these basic claims about the Bible the beginning of a workable doctrine of scripture?
David F. Watson 
The older I get (I’m 62), the more I believe the Bible is true. As a young pastor I thought of many passages as analogies or myths (in a Bultmannian sense). In the last 15 years or so, I have experienced some extraordinary, supernatural phenomena that have changed my perspective. I no longer need to demythologize exorcisms, miracles, or the supernatural. I certainly don’t understand everything about scripture, but I am still learning.
I have known a few people who would relate similar stories. Having been educated into a thoroughly modernist understanding of Christianity, they had experiences that were incompatible with that understanding and had to rethink their entire theological framework.
Oddly enough, this transition was inspired by reading the journal writings of John Wesley. I was a subscriber to the Bicentenial edition of Wesley’s Works, and I actually read each book as it was released (at least most of them). I have come to believe that an overemphasis on reading Wesley’s sermons in our seminaries is problematic. In order to understand the Wesleyan movement, we must look deeper into his journals and the accounts of what God did through him. As we seek renewal in The United Methodist Church, I think it may require us to revisit this aspect of the Wesleyan movement–part of our “Rethink Church” campaign.
With #6, one thing that I thought was really good is that Dr. Hal Knight taught us in our doctrine class about the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” His point was that it was not really flat, but really should be a pyramid with Scripture being the peak, and experience, reason, and tradition being lenses through which we understand scripture. This makes clearer, as do, I believe, the doctrinal standards and other parts of our discipline that these are not co-equal lenses to understand scripture or even soteriology. With this understanding scripture is always primary. I also am unsure that the problem is we don’t have a clear understanding of scripture as much as we have poor discipleship structures in many of our churches that fail to teach our new disciples a proper understanding of scripture so they end up falling into the “it doesn’t matter, I just want to experience God” or the “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it camp” since these are the most visible perspectives in American culture today.
Great points. Although I would say that we need to develop our doctrine of scripture more thoroughly, it’s certainly the case that we normally don’t make much use of the resources we already have.
Dr. Watson,
I have no issue with saying everything we need to know about salvation is contained in Scripture. But, my issue with #6 is that some believe anything but PSA contradicts Scripture, etc… Further, some believe the Social Gospel (extreme example) as a matter of faith contradicts Scripture.
I guess I would need some examples. For me, “salvation” is a concept like theosis (which some say contradicts scripture). It is the raison d’être of what we term Christianity and therefore, not fully defined in Scripture, etc… but Scripture is based on it. In other words, while we are told, clearly, Christ (in some fashion) is the only way to/for salvation, that is generally not defined well enough for us to say this or that contradicts Scripture.
The only thing I think would contradict Scripture is if we say another religion or non-religion is equal to Christianity in attaining salvation.
Again, I may be coming at this from a different angle. Nevertheless, I do enjoy the conversation.
Isn’t what we don’t and do believe about the Bible predicated on our belief of what life itself is? Specifically, as Christians do we believe that life is a gift from God or do we believe that life is a test from God? If life is a gift, then we aren’t required to believe the Bible “correctly” and we have more freedom in our beliefs. However, if life is a test we must pass in order to win salvation and avoid damnation, then what believe about the Bible is absolutely critical with little margin for error. Some might argue that life is both a gift and a test. To that, I’d argue that a test is not a gift – a test is a test.
Reblogged this on Strange Christianity and commented:
Some great thoughts about how we approach the bible. It is incredibly easy to live out a reactionary sort of faith where you define yourself against something or someone. I think Watson offers a solid Methodist perspective on biblical affirmations.
So far, a lot of wandering in the wilderness…