Doctrine One and Hermeneutical Integrity
by Major Wayne Ennis
We believe that
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by
inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine
rule of Christian faith and practice.
- Doctrine
1
The TSA Doctrine Book states that
“Our first doctrine establishes the Bible as definitive
for Christian faith and practice. The inspiration of Scripture
( 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21) requires that its authority
supersedes all other sources of revelation as the primary
source of Christian revelation (Psalm 119:105-112). Its unique
authority reveals the thoughts and actions of God. The
authority of the Bible tests all other authorities. It is
therefore described as a ‘sufficient authority”. If we think
for a moment what we are actually saying in the doctrine when
we use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’, we must surely
acknowledge that what we saying is that, though all authority
belongs to God, God has somehow invested this authority in
scripture.
The Bible is different to every other
book because it is ‘inspired by God’ and is therefore true and
trust worthy., which means if this is a book written by men
inspired by the Holy Spirit then the ‘Divine rule of Christian
faith and practice’ and its warning and reprimands concern sin
do not fit into applied categories of cultural obsessions. If
God is good then his goodness
is unrestrained by time on the one hand which also
means the admonitions against sin are followed by offers of
grace ( Exodus 33:19 and following). The God of the Bible
deals differently with God when people deal differently with
him. To most people this is nothing more than an oddity and
can simply be ignored.
If, as the doctrine states, God is the
Creator of all things and if the Bible is the word God and
therefore has the authoritative seal of Truth and power it has
the right to interrogate our lives and culture and not the
other way around. When it comes to authority in our
post-modern world seeks to deny any higher authority other
than the authentic self.
Because the post-modern world along
with post-modern Christian (an oxymoron) have a problem with
authority they are only too willing to apply a hermeneutic of
suspicion and convivence when it comes to the biblical text
and the question
as to how the Bible can be such an authoritative book let
alone agree to proposition that it actually exercises
authority over our Christian faith and practices.
When we go down this stream, we wind up
belittling both the Bible and the doctrines. Such a position
goes even further by inferring that God has, after all, given
us the wrong sort of book by implying
that the real place where God has revealed himself—the
real locus of authority and revelation—is, in fact, somewhere
else, and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book
by engaging in these hermeneutical dishonest moves,
translation procedures or whatever.
Some even want to go so far as to say
the Old Testament with its sexual morality can be safely
denied, even abandoned. By doing so basically means we have
become Gnostic Marcionite heretics. I for one don’t want to
swim in that river.
The Scripture of both Testaments have a
unique job to do, as the doctrine states. A reader, regardless
of whether we believe it or not, is called upon to respect the
text and faithfully deal with then with a hermeneutic of
integrity.
Worldviews are basic stuff of human
existence, the lens through which we see the world, the
blueprint for how we should live in it,
and the sense of identity and place which enables us to
be what we are. Worldviews seek to answer four questions that
have to do with; who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What
is the solution?
The problem we face today is the
world’s worldview can no longer agree on what the important
questions are let alone truthful answers to such questions as:
Is there any such thing as knowable
truth? Are people accountable to truth even though they
believe, or feel it or not?
Is our personal identity subject to any
external objective truth or is it all solely subjective? Are
feelings more important than facts?
This, then,
brings us back to the Scriptures and where we actually
stand in relation to them and their authority
and the ‘we believe’.
Do we believe that both the Old and New
Testaments firstly, tells a story and they both seeks to
articulate that story truthfully coherently, and secondly do
we believe that this story is fundamentally an articulation of
God’s worldview and that they do in fact provide a set of
answers to the four questions all worldviews seek to answer?
Do we really ‘believe’, do we want to
understand God’s worldview from God’s point of view, or are we
only interested in arguing with him about his word’s truth
claims and his lines and boundaries? Welcome to the worldviews
war.
Sitting comfortably living within the
world’s worldview and taking pride in living independently of
God’s authority makes sense to way too many who fail to see
that by doing so results in the whole structure of the
doctrine, the ‘I believe’ and their faith deconstruct before
their very eyes.
Having deconstructed the doctrine and degraded its and the
Scriptures authority they feel emboldened to cross biblical
lines and boundaries with apparent impunity. I do believe that
Genesis 3 puts paid to that idea.
|