Inter-Varsity Press

CONTENTS

Author’s preface

1 Oh sweet obscurity: The absurdity of claiming clarity today

Traditional objections to the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture
The contemporary context of this discussion
A reason to think again

2 The effective communicator: God as the guarantor of scriptural clarity

The God of the gospel
The purposeful communicator
God and human words
God and this text
The clarity of Scripture and the character of God

3 It is not beyond you: The accessible word of the living God

The phenomenon of Scripture according to Jesus and the apostles
The Old Testament and the clarity of Scripture: the classic texts
Clarity hard won: Scripture acknowledges its own difficulty
Confidence and concentrated attention: the textures of biblical clarity

4 Engaging the hermeneutical challenge

Theology and the shape of contemporary hermeneutics
Taking Scripture and its readers seriously
The theological protest at the contemporary hermeneutical agenda
The hermeneutics of a clear text in the hands of a good God

5 The sharp double-edged sword: Restating the clarity of Scripture today

The classic exposition
A doctrine for the times
A clear and present word

Extracts from ... Chapter 1 - Oh sweet obscurity: The absurdity of claiming clarity today

‘Did God really say . . . ?’

By almost any measure a bold and confident use of the Bible is a hallmark of evangelical Christianity.Whether it be the sophisticated sociohistorical 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 that 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 that 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. ...

Traditional objections to the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture

Objections to any suggestion that Scripture is clear and that, as a consequence, a direct appeal to the words of Scripture is enough to settle controversy, came from various directions. Nevertheless, it may be helpful to identify five basic protests and deal with more specific issues under those headings. ...

1. The doctrine fails to take account of the transcendent mystery that is the subject of Scripture. This was one of the chief objections raised against the idea of Scripture’s clarity by the great early-modern humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). ...

2. The doctrine fails to acknowledge the God-given role of the church as the interpreter of Scripture. This objection lay close to the heart of the dispute about Scripture’s clarity at the time of the Reformation. ...

3. The doctrine fails to take seriously the nature of the words of Scripture. Whatever else we might say about the Bible, we cannot deny that these pages are full of words, human words, arranged according to the conventions of human language. ...

4. The doctrine fails in practice given the reality of diverse interpretations. This ancient objection points to the most glaring empirical counter-evidence against the clarity of Scripture. If Scripture is clear, its true and normative meaning accessible and intelligible to all, then why are there so many different and even conflicting interpretations? ...

5. The doctrine fails by its own criterion, since Scripture confesses its own obscurity. This final objection opens up the possibility not only that we could claim more for Scripture than it does for itself, but that we might be claiming what Scripture explicitly denies. ...