Joe Coalter, the acting president of Louisville Seminary, spoke of the
value of having a "plain-sense" meaning to the Bible - a consensus in the
church of what the Bible means, rather than "I read it different than you,
and my reading is just as good as your reading."
And Frances Taylor Gench, a new Testament scholar who describes herself
as a "card-carrying liberal," told of the frustration she feels when people
assume she has come to her position regarding the ordination of gays and
lesbians by simply disregarding the Bible rather than working hard
to understand what it says.
Eventually, the much-watched Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will have to make some decisions about what
it wants to say about what the Bible says about homosexuality. It's not there
yet - but it did spend some time at its recent meeting in Dallas talking about
what the Bible means to Presbyterians and how they should approach it –
what tools and standards they should use to make sense of what they read.
And they seemed to conclude that Presbyterians' longtime struggles about how
the Bible should be understood and interpreted, and about what Presbyterians
should confess publicly that they believe about God – debates that have gone
on for decades and at times have divided families and splintered congregations –
are full of potential for informing the PC(USA)'s difficulties today.
John Wilkinson, pastor of Third church, Rochester, N.Y., led a discussion
of what the confessions have to say about the Bible - acknowledging that
they don't all say the same thing. For American Presbyterians, the Westminster
Confession, which begins with a discussion of Scripture, has been seen as the
"gold standard," playing a central role in the faith formation of many in the
church, said Joan Kelley Merritt, an elder from Washington state.
But the so-called “northern” church's adoption of the Confession of 1967 and
the creation of a Book of Confessions that same year - at the same time when
a more contextual approach to biblical interpretation was taking root – added
new challenges. "The fact that the denomination now had a multiple confessional base,
composed of documents with somewhat different emphases and reflecting
diverse historical settings, stood as an implicit reminder that no one creed
could capture the fullness of the faith and that every creed was at least
in part a creature of its own time and place," wrote James H. Moorhead
in the Presbyterian Presence series.
Gench, a task force member who is professor of New Testament at Union
Seminary-PSCE in Richmond, led the discussion on biblical interpretation.
One of the reasons Presbyterians fight so hard about what the Bible means,
she contends, is that they are convinced through and through that the Bible is
holy - that it shows people who God is and how God works in the world, that
it brings them to salvation through Jesus Christ.
"We are held together as Presbyterians by the Bible," by the certainty that it's a
God-given book of power and truth, and that God's word revealed there has
the ability to change lives, Gench said. "I never met a Presbyterian who did
not share those convictions." And yet, disputes over interpreting the Bible –
about infallibility and inerrancy and the human stamp on the divine message –
have been "a flashpoint of controversy" through the generations, a source
of division and great pain. But Gench, who taught at a Lutheran seminary
for 13 years, said she learned there that what people argue about often is
what they are most passionate about.
The Lutherans argued about worship, Gench said, about whether grape juice could
be used along with wine at Communion to accommodate recovering alcoholics,
with the arguments so intense that she saw "faculty colleagues blue in the face,
pounding on the table" (a strange scene for a purely grape-juice Presbyterian).
And they fought about whether she could preside at Communion, "could I touch their
stuff," raucous arguments through which she came to appreciate how much worship
and the celebration of the Eucharist meant to the Lutherans, and how much Presbyterians'
arguments over the Bible reflected their own passion for Scripture.
Over the past 200 years, Presbyterians have had at least three different understandings
of biblical authority and interpretation - and Gench described them using terminology
from writings by Jack Rogers, a seminary professor and former General Assembly
moderator. The scholastic model, prevalent from 1812 to 1927, favored rational interpretation
and saw the Bible as inerrant. Neo-orthodoxy, which gathered steam from the 1930s
through the 1950s, viewed "the Bible as a witness to Christ, the Word of God,"
with the revelation of God coming not in an inspired book but in the person of Jesus Christ,
God incarnate.
And, starting in the 1960s, a contextual form of interpretation began to take hold,
which takes seriously the influence of culture and history in biblical interpretation.
In that view, "the Bible is certainly an inspired book," Gench said, but 'it is also a collection
of humanly written documents." Christians understand that Jesus became incarnate in
a certain time and place, take that setting into account, and also bring to the reading the
filter of their own experiences and background. Gench said she inevitably reads the Bible
as a white, female, middle-class, Calvinist, heterosexual baby-boomer, "a Southern,
a feminist, and a died-in-the-wool Democrat." That's who she is, and "I can't jump
out of my own skin" to see with different eyes.
As those views of biblical interpretation have shifted over the years - and Gench cautioned
that there is still not consensus, that different Presbyterians will lean more to one camp than
another - there also has been a shift in Presbyterian life from debating the nature and
authority of the Bible (for example, is it inerrant or not) towards debate over how it is
interpreted and used. Interpreting Scripture "is very hard work," but it's necessary, she
said, if Christians are to continue to view the Bible as a guiding force for their lives.
"The Bible requires interpretation - it is not self interpreting," Gench told the task force.
"It was written in a different time, a different place, a different culture and in different
languages - and requires interpretation because this ancient text is a living word
through which God continues to meet us and speak to us in our own particular
historical moment."
Gench quoted theologian Paul Achtemeier, her former teacher and Mark Achtemeier's father,
who wrote: "Scripture is not violated when it is treated as an entity capable of further interpretation,
a procedure quite in line with its origin and nature. Scripture is violated when its nature is
assumed to be static and closed, a condition which would logically imply that no further
interpretation is possible or useful."
That's not to say, however, that people can just read into the Bible whatever they want –
Gench also presented a list of principles Presbyterians historically have used in interpreting
the Bible, that they have agreed among themselves are the right way for doing the work.
The list is long, but includes these things: that when interpreting the Bible people should keep
in mind the centrality of Jesus Christ (all Scripture should be understood with reference
to the central revelation of God in Christ); the rule of faith (Scripture should be interpreted
in light of the historic Christian community's understanding of it); the rule of love (God's
command that people God and love neighbor); and the rest of Scripture ("Scripture informs
Scripture," meaning that other parts of Scripture can inform a particular text).
Knowing whether these and the other principles are followed – seeing what techniques
someone is using, and what filters from their own experience they're bringing their analysis –
is part of what Gench called examining someone's "exegetical underwear."
Coalter said he sees each of the historic approaches as having something to offer and some
weakness - with the scholastic approach stressing the "plain meaning" of the text, neo-orthodoxy
the mystery of revelation, and a contextual approach reminding Presbyterians that "you can't
just read Scripture alone," there also has to be an understanding of its context.
Coalter also said he does see the Bible as having a "plain-sense" meaning - and that sometimes
now there are so many diverse approaches that it's hard to find any sense of where the church
stands. "We have a book that's so available to multiple interpretations that people can't tell
what it says," he argued. "How are you in community then? Why should you be in community? . . .
I think people are arguing over right use (now) as much as they ever did over right doctrine,"
or over the nature of the Bible and its authority.
Several people on the task force spoke of the power of interpreting the Bible in community –
with the views and understandings of one person tempering or even correcting someone
else's interpretation. Gench also spoke of caricatures she contends "are not accurate or helpful"
but are often wielded in the arguments over ordination - that liberals shape their views
without regard to the Bible (the stereotype is that "they're much more interested in culture
and being relevant," Achtemeier said) or that conservatives just pick out passages to support
what they already believe.
Jack Haberer, a pastor from Houston, said he attended a conservative Seminary, where,
in lectures on biblical authority, he was taught to avoid the "slippery slope" of questioning
the plain-text meaning, to avoid undermining the Bible's authority. Yet in courses on the
New and Old Testaments at the same seminary, often the techniques of interpretation used
were similar to those he encountered later while earning his doctorate at a "slippery slope" school.
"The secret that we dare not say to one another" is that in the PC(USA) "there is an enormous
amount of shared consensus on process," for biblical interpretation, and "we are not nearly
the polarized church on the use of Scripture" that some would believe, Haberer said.
If Presbyterians do think the Bible is holy, "then we have to make a place for the moments
when its power and truth overwhelm us, not just individually but as a body," when what we
read takes us to places we don't expect, said Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary
in New York. Wheeler said she has been deeply moved by sermons from conservative pastors,
and said she knows from experience that it's possible to hear the Scripture rightly proclaimed
"by people with whom we do not agree at all."
Gench also raised questions about how Presbyterians who say the Bible is holy actually use
it in real life - quoting author John Burgess, who wrote that "Presbyterians are better at
asserting the authority of the Bible than at actually opening the Bible."
Do pastors preach from it - really preach from it, centering their sermon around Biblical texts
and an analysis of their meaning - "rather than using it as decoration or illustration," Gench asked.
And do Presbyterians read the Bible routinely, making it "part of our lives, a compelling force
that shapes our way of looking the world," Gench asked - prompting Coalter to describe the
impact of memorizing Scripture, of the words of the Bible entering a person's mouth and
memory and literally becoming part of the bones.
Coalter also said he wasn't sure he agreed with Gench that all Presbyterians see the Bible as holy.
Some people don't read it not because they're lazy, but because "they're not sure it's worth reading,"
he said. "Increasingly, people inside the church are wondering whether in fact reading the Scriptures
will help me figure out what I need to do about an issue in my life," or whether a self-help book
"will give me as much insight."
Martha Sadongei, a pastor from Arizona, said people from her church do want to understand the
Bible, but don't always feel confident they have the training to do the kind of biblical analysis
that preachers are trained to do. At the same time, she said, they try to understand how the Bible
can speak to them in their own context and lives, wanting to know how it fits with their Native
American culture.
Gench also led the group in an analysis of the 5th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, a study
of the passage where Jesus says, "Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the
right cheek, turn the other also," and "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
They talked about the challenge of trying to love Saddam Hussein, of deciding whether to give
to every beggar who asks for money on the street, of whether Jesus is calling Christians to nonviolence.
Later, led by Wilkinson, the task force studied the role the confessions have played in the life
of the church, both their forceful place in the denomination's life and the reality that, in
congregational life, they are not always front-and-center.
Barbara Everitt Bryant, an elder from Michigan, said she's been a member of four Presbyterian
churches over the last 25 years, and "the Book of Confessions is something we were introduced
to in the new member class" - she's been to four - "and that's about it. We do the Apostles Creed
in church. I've not spent the last 20 years wrestling with the Book of Confessions."
But for the denomination, the debates over which confessions to officially proclaim –
whether just the Westminster or a more comprehensive Book of Confessions - and whether new
confessions should be written periodically (some suggest that the denomination is in crisis and
now would be a good time, Achtemeier said) and what those confessions should say have
sometimes been the stuff of high drama. In the so-called “southern” branch of Presbyterianism,
the debate in the 1970s over whether to approve "A Declaration of Faith" and a Book of Confessions
was "a church-dividing issue" and "as bitter as any of the fights we're having now," Wheeler said.
"Families were divided against families . . . People really cared."
Even when there was a single confession - Westminster - "we just fought about it," she said,
and there were divisions and schisms based on interpretation. In the 1800s, in her town in upstate
New York, people chose their churches based on local covenants - agreements on how strict that
congregation would interpret the doctrine of limited atonement - and "even there in a unified society
where everybody was Scots-Irish and had a single confession of faith, there was all this differentiation
going on."
Vicky Curtiss, a pastor from Iowa, pointed out that the Presbyterian church has sometimes changed
its mind about what the Bible is saying - in deciding, for example, to ordain women. But "the kicker
was that a Community decided, finally" that a different interpretation was what God intended –
the denomination decided, Coalter said, not just individuals.
And Achtemeier made the case for balance, for taking into account both the holiness of the Bible, its
authority of the word of God, and for considering the context in which it was written and in which it is
being read. Theologian Karl Barth argued that "every single word is divinely inspired and every single
word is culturally conditioned," Achtemeier said, "and when you go sorting those into two separate piles,
you get in trouble."
Gench also introduced another insight from Barth, as presented by John Burgess in his book,
Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a Time of Church Conflict.
Barth argues that the church should not try to spare itself "relative conflict," because it's by faithfully
challenging one another's views that people discern God's way, Gench said. Burgess wrote that "Barth
argues, nonetheless, that each of us must represent the Word that we hear for ourselves, as best we can . . .
Barth notes that we may well come into conflict with each other, as we speak the different words that God
has given us. But he argues that this conflict will never become absolute if we remember that God's Word
is finally larger than any of us."
So Gench put forth five suggestions of her own for the task force's "rules of engagement."
1. That we work hard together.
2. Share our best insights.
3. Let those who disagree with us challenge and correct us.
4. Keep at it when the going gets tough and we are tired.
5. Seek ways to live with differences that cannot be resolved.
