It looks as though the Protestant principle of sola scriptura might be compromised on two levels:
1 because of an acceptance of a definition of the limits of Scripture handed down by tradition, i.e. of an endorsement of the traditional pronouncements about the canon; and
2 because a non-Scriptural office or person or tradition may, in any given community, wield more effective influence and be referred to more consistently than the writings of the canonical Scripture, whole portions of which may be quietly left aside.
So a doctrine of Scripture cannot be isolated from the life and practice of the community which uses Scripture. Otherwise the doctrine becomes formal and the church’s claim concerning Scripture does not then correspond to its actual practice.
8 THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE CONSIDERATIONS
We conclude this chapter with a brief suggestion about the theological significance of these considerations.
1 That the books of Scripture have a history means that human elements play an essential part from the very beginning and throughout the whole process of the book’s production. It is necessary to say this only because (at times) there has been a misleading emphasis in the opposite direction, to play down, even to suppress, any reference to the human. We may then have to insist that the books are human productions because so much emphasis has often been laid on the divine.
2 It is then a matter of saying how to speak well of God’s revelation in and through the books whose history we can trace. Christians affirm that these are the books through which God reveals himself, as they recount how God revealed himself in the past. This book is the written Word of God because of its intrinsic relationship with God’s revelation to the church.
3 Authority means influence. These books have influence of a particular kind. Christians accept them for having had and for continuing to have such influence. We must then, in giving a theological account of Scripture in relation to the life of the church, carefully state what this influence is. This will require clear, unprejudiced thinking.
4 The context for discussion of the Bible is where the Bible is spoken of as Holy Scripture, where it is received as having a special status, where, if it happens, God reveals himself. The authority of the Bible is not a property which inheres in it and which can be demonstrated, for example by showing that it is inspired, but rather connotes a relation in which divine and human elements both play an important role. Hence our insistence that we observe what actually happens with regard to the Bible in the practice of the church.
We cannot do justice to the status of the Bible without dealing with the community, the church, in which the Bible is used, and in which judgments about the Bible are made and passed on, sometimes formally and sometimes informally. Only by speaking in relational terms shall we be able to do justice to the problem of the authority of the Bible.
10 Donald E. Gowan, Bridge Between the Testaments, p. 334.
11 Ibid. p. 331.
12 The Reformers decided that the so-called apocryphal books were to be read but not to be held as having authority. ‘The Roman Catholic church at the Council of Trent (AD 1545 - 1563) decided that the apocryphal books were to be included, since they had been long used in worship. So a difference arose among Christians.
13 B. W. Anderson comments: ‘These principles may strike us as being rather arbitrary. It would certainly not have detracted from Jewish Scripture, if for instance some reason had been found to substitute the Wisdom of Ben Sire or some of the psalms from the Qumran community for the Song of Songs or Esther. We must remember, however, that the question of the authority of most of the writings now found in the Hebrew Bible had been answered before the Academy of Jamnia, especially in the worship practice of the community. Those writings were preserved and used devotionally which spoke authoritatively to the community of faith.’ B. W. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 536-537.
14 It leads us into complex problems of interpretation. See below, chapters X and XI.
15 The evidence for this is presented in Robert M. Grant, The Interpretation of the Bible. Chapters III and IV.
16 II Peter 3:15,16.
17 Ibid.
18 II Peter 1:17-18.
19 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III. 3. 4-5.
20 Evidence for this is readily available. See J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius. pp. 144-146, 337-340.
21 Our list of twenty-seven books appears in the proceedings of the synod of Laodicea (AD. 363) and again in the proceedings of the synod of Carthage (AD. 397). A council held in Rome in AD 382 under Damasus agreed.
22 This is the language of Irenaeus. Cf. J. Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 97-98.
23 Christopher Evans, Is ‘Holy Scripture’ Christian? and Other Questions.
24 Ibid., p. 24.
25 D. H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology. pp. 105, The theological judgment that precisely these writings are canonical is an analytic rather than a contingent judgment. For historical judgments are contingent and uncertain. (Footnote 16).
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER III -
AUTHORITY
There is an important distinction between investing books with authority, and recognizing them as having authority. In the latter case, the book commends itself for what it does, for the function it has in the life of the Christian community. It thus has an intrinsic authority, whoever its author was. The Bible has historical priority in its connection with the Christ-event. The apostolicity of the New Testament books, for example, means their effectiveness in the church and their historical position as primary witness to the Christ-event. Authority and recognition of authority are correlative. Here it is not a matter of demonstration.
III. AUTHORITY: INFLUENCE AND ACCEPTANCE
1 STAGES IN THE FORMATION OF THE CANON
Christians call their Scriptures the ‘Holy Bible’. They also speak of God as holy, the ‘holy one’, and claim that holiness is a special attribute of God. They also claim that if creatures are holy, they are holy because they derive their holiness from God’s holiness. Whatever is holy has derived what holiness it has from its source in God. We are then to be warned at the outset, for good theological reasons, against the idea of a book which has an intrinsic holiness, that is a holiness in and of itself and independent of God. We shall be expounding the idea of a ‘dynamic’ authority. We shall relate Scripture to what goes on in the church and in the world. In this case the term ‘authority’ connotes something dynamic