November 14, 2004

Glynn Cardy

Ordinary Sunday 33     Isa 65:17-25     2 Thess 3:6-13     Luke 21:5-19

The Bible is described as the "Church's supreme authority" [1] by the recent Windsor Report. It is a new phrase in Anglican terminology, and an unfortunate one.

Sometimes a child will ask me, "Are you the boss of this Church?" I usually say, "No, God is." God is the supreme authority of the Anglican Church.

In the 1800's John Burgon, dean of Chichester, proclaimed: "The Bible is none other than the voice of [God]. It is the direct utterance of the Most High." God might have been the supreme authority, but the Bible was God's dictation. The Church's duty was to obey it.

Although Dean Burgon's view, regrettably, lives on, it is quite antithetical to the normative Anglican understanding. To give you an example the 1922 Commission on Christian Doctrine, chaired by William Temple, held that the Bible may not be used as the sole source of authority in Anglicanism. The Bible must not be interpreted as pre-judging the conclusions of historical, critical and scientific investigation. Christian thinkers are not bound to the thought-forms of the Biblical writers. No historical proposition is beyond reformulation, including the 39 articles and the creeds.

In other words, while the Bible is a great, inspired taonga the Church must engage in interpreting it. The tradition of the Church, reason, and experience, all must be heeded when seeking to discern the will of our supreme authority, God.

Sometimes the Bible is wrong - like on slavery, and women. A blind adherence to the Bible often goes hand in glove with blindness to one's own prejudice. Or in Coleridge's words: "He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth, will proceed by loving his own…church better than Christianity, and … himself better than all." [2]

In the days ahead the Anglican Communion will wrestle again with this question of authority and all its ramifications. For the debate on homosexuality is not just about biblical interruption but also about the authority of the Bible in the Anglican Church.

This morning I want to take a brief stroll back into the Patristic Period, that time following the composition of the New Testament texts, to look at this question.

In this period there was no significant doubt about the authority of the Bible, but there was little agreement on what comprised the Bible, or what authority meant. A partial canon, or collection, of Christian writings had developed by the mid-300s, including the four gospels and collection of some Pauline and pseudo-Pauline [3] epistles. However a final list of what was or wasn't to be included was not agreed upon until the Council of Trent 1545-1563. [4]

So for the first 1500 years of the Church's life the authority was not in the literal words of what we now call the New Testament. Rather, while the Bible was generally held to be inspired, authority primarily was in the tradition of the community. The community's tradition preceded the collection of books and gave instruction how to read them.

No reading of the Bible was accepted within the community when it violated either human reason or common sense. The role of Scripture for most Patristic writers was to prove the accuracy of the living Tradition that had been handed down to them, but Scripture and Tradition could not be used to support each other in violation of human reason or the experience of the larger community.

Slowly the New Testament collection evolved from the combination of flexible textual interpretation, the preaching of the texts, developing creedal affirmations [5], common sense, and the consensus of the Christian community. Authority was located where these various elements intersected, and was generally to be guarded by the bishops.

Controversies over the interpretation of New Testament books developed while they were still being written. The method of allegorical interpretation, due to the influence of Philo of Alexandria, was very much in vogue. An example of allegory would be interpreting King Solomon setting a place for his mother on his right hand in 1 Kings 2:19 as a picture of Mary reigning with Christ in Heaven.

Such a method meant multiple meanings were possible. Irenaeus [130-200] was the first great Christian theologian-exegete. Aware of ambiguity, particularly when the plain meaning of the text was ignored, he generally preferred the authority of Christian tradition as guiding interpretation. He called this the Rule of Faith. He calls the fourfold gospel inspired, but seems not to grant the same authority to the Pauline writings.

Origen [185-254] was the most brilliant allegorist of the Patristic period, and Philo's most devoted student. He was also a champion of common sense. Common sense could protect the preached Gospel from being abused by improper and literalist use of the Scriptures. But the Spirit played the most important part in interpretation. Origen likened the Bible to a vast ocean or an overgrown forest, teeming with mysteries to be unravelled through discipline, with the guidance of the Spirit. Origen understood every biblical text to have three equally valid meanings: the literal, the moral, and the mystical.

St Basil [330-379] and the other Cappadocians continued using the methods of Philo and Origen. Ambrose [339-397] and St. Jerome [342-420] accepted Origen's three equally valid meanings. John Chrysostem [347-407] and Cyril of Alexandria [d.444] understood that the human agents through whom God delivered revelation were not freed from their human limitations and tendency to err. Yes, there could be errors in the Bible!

A chief opponent of Origen's allegorical approach to Scripture was Theodore of Mopsuestia [350-428]. He favoured a strict historical interpretation. He held that inspiration was both inconsistent and differentiated within the biblical texts. He also refused to recognize most Old Testament texts as directly referring to Jesus, and identified only four Psalms that in any way foretold the Christian revelation. [6]

Augustine of Hippo [354-430], who referred to the Scriptures as "letters from home", believed that the inspired Scriptures were true, but insisted that Truth could neither be limited to or by the Bible. He insisted, more strongly than most, on the importance of God's revelation outside of Christian tradition, an idea with strong precedent in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Basil. Like so many of his predecessors he thought every biblical passage could have multiple true meanings.

In summary then, the Patristic period located authority outside the Biblical text, applying to both Scripture and tradition standards of evaluation that emphasised the role of the believing community. Doctrine, Biblical interpretation, and ecclesiastical authority were understood as free to evolve in faithful response to unfolding new understandings within the community itself. [7]

On another day when a child asks me, "Are you the boss of this Church?" I give a different answer. I say, "No, you are. You are a part of us and God lives in you." Such an answer means there can be a lot of bosses in Anglicanism. But we have a time-tested formula: be tolerant, keep talking, value our taonga [like the Bible], try to understand others, and be open to Truth wherever it may be found. Then we usually find God is walking this way with us.

1. The Windsor Report, paragraph 53, p.27.


2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Aids to Reflection: Moral and Religious Aphorisms, XXV. 


3. Pseudo-Pauline refers to epistles that although bearing Paul's name under scrutiny were written by another.


4. Note that this was the Western Church's canon. The various Eastern Orthodox and Catholic denominations differs from ours. International Christianity has never had a universally agreed New Testament. 


5. The three historic creeds [one now relegated to the appendices of prayerbooks] are summaries of the inherited Tradition rather than New Testament faith, for their contents precede the New Testament.


6. Psalm 2, 8, 45, and 110.


7. I am indebted to the work of Philip Culbertson in his article Know, Knower, and Knowing: The Authority of Scripture in the Episcopal Church Anglican Theological Review 74:2 (Autumn 1991), 144-174.