In response to a posting on Bryan Berghoef’s excellent “Tomorrow’s Theology, Today’s Task” (http://tinyurl.com/q5vptko) at his blog www.PubTheologian.com.
Language is a slippery thing. Where once we spoke (or more
often wrote) about the perspicuity of scripture (of which more later), we now
speak of the clear teaching of scripture. The historical link between these two
concepts is relatively easy to trace. "The clear teaching of
scripture," is a phrase that sounds, well . . . more perspicuous than
perspicuity!
I fear, however, that the phrase has no settled, agreed upon
meaning that can serve as the basis for a discussion. In part it is because the
phrase "the clear teaching of scripture," is most often a polemical
one, used in arguments (say about Adam and Eve, or about homosexuality) to
strongly suggest that the person who doesn't agree with you is rejecting some essential teaching of Christianity. And for most Christians (unfortunately) when
you start talking about rejecting those teachings, you’re intimating things
about heaven and hell.
The phrase is also difficult to pin down because of the
influence that Fundamentalist ideas about the literal meaning of scripture have
had on the Evangelical psyche. That is, Fundamentalists speak as if Biblical
interpretation is easy, because all you have to do is read the Bible for its
propositions, as if it was a textbook or science report or newspaper. Many
scholars have pointed out that Fundamentalism, probably in reaction to the
rationality and linearity of the scientific method that was wreaking havoc on
traditional Christian belief in the nineteenth century, adopted the same sort
of methodology for themselves when it came to theology--turning it into a
science so they could examine its propositions. So Hank Hart (with many others)
writes, "To counteract the rational infallibility of scientific
propositions, Christians responded with the (equally rational) infallibility of
revealed propositions. But a focus on [rationalistic] propositions was common
to both sides." Hart is pointing out that the whole
Fundamentalist/Evangelical hermeneutic is based on a synthetic theological
framework that has less to do the two-thousand-year-long discussion in the
church about Biblical interpretation than it has to do with the unconscious and
unhelpful adoption of Enlightenment rationalism as the lens through which
scripture is understood.
Third, another aspect of this Enlightenment thinking,
following especially after Thomas Reid and the Common Sense school of thought
is the presupposition (not very Calvinist, actually, in that it doesn't give
much play to human’s depraved natures) that "all humans possessed, by
nature, a common set of capacities--both epistemological and ethical--through
which they could grasp the basic realities of nature and morality." Which
gets back to where I started—anybody with a little common sense can figure it
out. It adds up to a joyless, narrow, literalistic hermeneutic that is all
about facts and truths that one is supposed to get if only one would read the
Bible as if it were a junior high primer on matters of faith.
So I just don't like the phrase "The clear teaching of
scripture." It has too much baggage that isn't rooted in deep-church
tradition.
Is the word perspicuity any better? I'm not sure.
Historically, the phrase is used in our tradition to mean that the heart of the
gospel's message (note—not everything by a long shot) can be understood by
anyone--with the help of the Holy Spirit. The trouble is, for practical
purposes, the heart of that message in the Christian Reformed Church (for
example) turns out to be three creeds and three more confessions covering
things as obtuse as the ubiquity of Jesus at the Lord's Supper (which, though
it is found in the Heidelberg Catechism isn't something that even Calvinists
can agree on) the nature of the atonement (using Anselm's late substitutionary
model as its main peg), reprobation and so on. So much for a generous
orthodoxy!
Perspicuity--the notion that regular folk don't need the
(Roman) church to interpret the scripture for them because they can do it for
themselves--has ironically become imprisoned by the church's insistance on wide
and deep confessional subscription. The confessions are long laundry lists of
what people in certain denomination must believe, whether or not it seems
obvious to those people based on their own study of scripture. Ironically, most
Protestants can't agree on much of what is in the Confessions--baptism,
election, the role of the Spirit, the nature of Jesus' presence at the Lord's
Table, and so on.
The problem, then, is that in a Christian world where most
people can't agree on very much, we nevertheless try to multiply what adherents
of particular denominations must believe to be in good standing. And this is
doubly difficult when the real reasons most people belong to churches has nothing
to do with their teachings, but with their tribalism or community (two sides of
a single coin). My own view is that we ought to go light on confessional
demands, and focus on community—on loving each other as Christ loved us. Rather
than being collections of people who speak as if we know what God means, we ought to mean to follow Jesus in community. Even when we're not sure about
much else.
Of course, institutions need rules. They are voluntary
associations, so if you can't agree with their teachings you can leave (I did).
My bottom line on perpspicuity? Honestly, I think scripture
is a lot more obscure and difficult than most people give it credit for. And I
wish we could own up to that. From translation to the presuppositions of the
interpreter, from the strangeness of antiquity to our own radically different
worldviews, from the variety of theologies and points of view one finds in
scripture itself to the rich resource that modern science has become—there are
a hundred and one reasons for finding scripture hard to understand. It takes a
lot of study of scripture (which very few people do anymore), a lot of wide
reading of all the various opinions out there and in the history of the living
Catholic Church, and a lot of humility to come to "best guesses,"
about the meaning and import of even the most commonly written about themes in
scripture. That's why there are huge tomes on hermeneutics, or "The
Kingdom," or "Paul," out there. Huge tomes that often come to
radically different conclusions. Do we go with Augustine’s allegorical method,
borrowed from Tychonius the Donatist, as described in his "Christian
Doctrine?" I doubt it--though I do like one thing he says (earlier) there. “Whoever finds a lesson [in scripture] useful to
the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be
shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived, nor is he lying in
any way."
To me, Augustine was right. The heart of scripture is about
the building of charity in gratitude for God’s charity. But you may
disagree!
