Mark Thompson has contributed the latest volume to this excellent series on the clarity (or "perspicuity') of scripture, and he analyses the issue with thoughtfulness, clear headedness and insight.
Thompson's thoughtfulness is shown in the historical perspective he gives, from the early church, mediaeval writers and the Reformation, as well as more recent times. He shows the contemporary relevance of the Reformers' debates with the Catholic Church over whether tradition and reason are necessary guides to reading an unclear scripture, and how we to be captive neither to a fundamentalism which denies the need for scholarship, nor a scholasticism which denies the need for faith.
The clear headedness is shown in his handling of Scripture. He is concerned to show that although perspicuity has frequently been attacked as an unbiblical imposition on the Bible, that is a misreading of both the explicit claims of scripture, and the implicit assumptions built into the way that biblical authors handle other biblical texts. By far the most important, of course, are Jesus' own assumptions, and that is summarised very helpfully.
The insightfulness is evident in the elegant way Thompson steers through contemporary thinking on hermeneutics, showing not just obvious perils, but more subtle and spiritual ones as well. Careful readers will be aware how much work has gone in so that we don’t just avoid the massive and anti-Christian errors of Derrida or RicÅ“ur, but are appreciatively nuanced with regard to Karl Barth, John Webster and Alister McGrath. This part of the book is a master-class in how to make the obscurities of contemporary linguistic philosophy both accessible and relevant.
This issue is of particularly pressing concern for us as Anglicans. The Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam, called for a "Hermeneutics Project", which looks like a dangerously open-ended concept. It might just be a reminder that we need to revisit the Biblical material dealing with homosexuality and check our interpretation once again.
That is a good and necessary task, and is the kind of self correction which evangelicals should continually engage in. However, I and I guess many others suspect that this project is actually an exercise in how to find a way of reinterpreting texts, such that the liberals can be seen to be engaging in a theological task, whilst rewriting scripture and tradition. Hermeneutics has then become a linguistic game, a typically ironic post-modern way of playing with words so that an alleged authoritative text is made to stand on its hind legs and dance to an alien tune.
Mark Thompson’s book will encourage us that we can engage in this kind of debate and win it, the Lord being our helper, because we are dealing with "the hermeneutic of a clear text in the hands of a good God" (p.140). But he would warn us as well that this is not a neutral matter of language and interpretation, but a spiritual battle with the one who is a liar and the father of lies.
Chris Green is the Vice Principal of Oak Hill College
Extract
Oh Sweet Obscurity: The Absurdity of Claiming Clarity Today
By almost any measure a bold and confident use of the Bible is a hallmark of evangelical Christianity. Whether it be the sophisticated socio-historical analysis of David Bebbington, who ranks "biblicism' as the third of his four characteristics of evangelical religion, or the simple and direct statement of evangelical leader John Stott, "It is the contention of evangelicals that they are plain Bible Christians', explorations of evangelical identity routinely acknowledge the decisive role of the Bible in shaping thought and practice. Billy Graham's insistent appeal to "the Bible says' is emblematic for many. Convinced that what the Bible says, God says, classic evangelicalism appeals to the Scriptures for an understanding of God and his purposes as well as for the shape of an appropriate response to the words he has spoken.
Underlying such an appeal are a number of assumptions about the origin, nature and form of that collection of ancient narrative, poetry, proverb, law, vision and epistle that is the Christian Bible. What authority"”if "authority' is the right word"”can such an anthology
legitimately exercise over the thinking and behaviour of men and women two millennia after its completion? What gives these texts a priority over the plethora of other religious texts in the world, even just the ancient world? How does their undoubted variety in genre and
historical perspective serve the interests of their message, if, indeed, we can be permitted to speak about "message' in the singular at all? These are all legitimate questions which have occupied many, especially in the last fifty years or so. Yet even if there are very good
grounds (and there are) for accepting the Christian Scriptures as the authoritative word of the living God, complete with a coherent story or meganarrative which appropriates rather than sublimates the genuine diversity to be found in these texts, there is still another question that
nags away at many: can we really be certain about what it says or what it means?
In many ways this would appear to be the question of the hour. A lack of confidence that we do or even that we can know for sure what the Bible says is apparent in Western Christianity. Theologians, it seems, are more comfortable asking questions than giving answers or seeking
to justify them. Ancient apophatic traditions with their appeal to mystery, to God's incomprehensible nature and his inscrutable will, are gaining a new prominence in mainstream denominations. Silence is proposed as a more appropriate response to the reality
of God's presence than bold proclamation. Those who persist in an appeal to the clear teaching of Scripture face charges of hermeneutical naivety, entrapment in modernist assumptions, a lack of epistemic humility, or, worst of all, an act of "communicative violence'. You can't be sure that's what it means and if you say you are it is merely a ploy to coerce me to accept your point of view.
Despite a number of sophisticated explorations of the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture in recent decades, this doctrine is either ignored or derided by many. It seems scarcely credible
and even absurd given two thousand years of Christian biblical interpretation let alone contemporary literary theory. What is more, it just doesn't seem to resonate with the experience of many Christians who struggle to make sense of what is being said at point after
point. Should this doctrine and the rhetoric associated with it (e.g. "the plain meaning of the text') be quietly retired from Christian use? Is it not simply an uncomfortable reminder of those long-gone days when we took words at their face value, oblivious to the leaps of logic
we made whenever we read the biblical texts? Berkouwer's forty-year old observation appears vindicated in the current climate: "No confession concerning Scripture is more disturbing to the church than the confession of its perspicuity'.
There is undoubtedly a contemporary flavour to these objections to the doctrine of Scripture's clarity. The phenomenon known mostly as "postmodernism' has reshaped old questions and generated new ones. Nevertheless, the debate itself is not new. Considerable ink has been
spilt over the centuries in attempts to challenge or defend the idea that Scripture, both in form and in substance, is clear. It is one of the many examples of our arrogance mixed with ignorance that we at the beginning of the third millennium consider responsible hermeneutics a relatively recent acquisition. Christian teachers have been exegeting the Scriptures since the day of Pentecost, if not before, and questions of interpretation, indeed of the relative clarity or obscurity of the ancient texts and their own were recognised and addressed from the earliest days. So before we explore a little more fully the particular
shape objections to this doctrine have taken in more recent years, it is worth identifying the reasons why some in earlier times found it difficult to accept that Scripture is clear.
