The Centrality of Scripture, Part 1

All Christians who believe that the Bible is God’s word will affirm that the Scriptures are “central” in one way or another. That term is ambiguous and the fact that other spatial imagery, like “foundational,” is often used to say the same thing is of no help either. Those who tend to use those two concepts as synonyms would maintain a high view of Scripture by insisting that the word of God must “come first” in the study of theology. This is to treat the Bible in an epistemological way, in other words, as a norm over all of doctrine and life.

Another way to speak of scriptural centrality is to make it pervasive throughout faith and practice. This has been called a “dogmatic” way of viewing Scripture, as it envisions the word of God as the church’s book and focuses on the spiritual work that it does in that community. The latter of these is a Barthian emphasis.

Few theological trends are more potentially wide-ranging in effect, yet so little known outside of the academic seminary, as the appropriation of Barth’s doctrine of revelation in the economy of grace. One could even call some of the latest versions a “Websterian” mediation of the doctrine because of the influence of the late John Webster on a constellation of younger theologians. However, not all fit so well into anything like a “school” and each of them seem to have their own emphases. In fact, some are closer to a Thomistic influence with Barthian sensibilities.

Because this essay seeks to focus on the wider Barthian impact, Webster’s book on Holy Scripture (2003) will form a kind of spine, with other contributions being considered from Timothy Ward, Kevin Vanhoozer, Bruce McCormack, Daniel Treier, Michael Allen and Scott Swain only by way of application. The point is not to suggest that these thinkers are all of the same “school,” or even on a “spectrum,” but that these are the most prominent academic voices conversant in how Webster thought.

The proposal of Webster is what has been called a “dogmatic relocation” of Scripture. This is not to be confused with a simple change in order, as a few recent works of Reformed systematics have already done [1]. Rather it is a different role assigned to Scripture altogether.

Naturally those in a more explicitly Barthian vein will maintain that theirs is not the innovation, part of a story which we explain in due course. My own critical thesis here will be straightforward. For all that could otherwise be positive in this dogmatic relocation of Scripture, there are two basic problems: first, that it sets up a false dichotomy between the epistemological (or normative) and the dogmatic (or pervasive—that is, “in” the whole system); second, since the traditional attributes of Scripture are irreducible normative, the consequence of relocation will be precisely to undermine those attributes. 

Given the unfamiliarity of this issue to most, not to mention the propensity of Barthians to emulate their forebearer in the gift of obscurity, I propose that we follow the very elementary school order of asking 1. What? 2. Why? 3. How? 4. Where? in our sections on positively describing this perspective. In other words: What exactly does a dogmatic account of Scripture mean? Why, in their view, had the doctrine been reduced to epistemology in our prolegomena sections? How does Scripture function as divine revelation in human sanctification (and in a way that avoids what all parties involved would agree was wrong in Barth’s view)? Where is this “economy of grace” that the activity of the word takes place? Then, after these four positive sections, we will follow with my aforementioned two lines of critical evaluation. 

The “What” — Scripture’s “Dogmatic” Account

First we should ask what exactly the word “dogmatic” might mean in this setting. Although the lines are not always so cut and dry, in general a “dogmatic theology” is a more consciously churchly summary of Christian doctrine than is systematic theology. Due to the idealism that many theologians of the early twentieth century imbibed, Barthianism set the dogmatic concept within the metaphysic of being-in-act, which can sound Thomistic at first.

And though we must recognize that Barth, and those in his stream, like T. F. Torrance, did perceive that, ontologically, God is who he his in himself apart from the economy. Yet for our way of knowing him, such a meditation will not do. Hence the latter emphasis can be pressed and actually have more in common with Hegel, so that being is revealed in terms of what that activity becomes in and through history. Although Barth genuinely despised the liberal theology of the previous century in its capitulation to naturalistic criticism. So his understanding of church dogma is also to be distinguished from “scientific theology.” The Word of God has its own supernatural agenda. 

A crucial concept needs to be defined up front. For Barthians, revelation is “the self-presentation of the Triune God” [2], and that is especially the case in the economy of his works. Explicitly drawing back on Barth, Fred Sanders put it in this way: “the Trinity is in the Bible because the Bible is in the Trinity” [3].

However, since Barth was negatively inclined toward the sight of God’s truth in nature, the economy of works tends to get reduced to the economy of grace, or in other words God’s speech that creates and redeems his people.  

Revelation becomes not simply what God shows us about things, but in God’s act, all of those things are being done to us. We are “inside of” that being in act, not separable “objective observers” of facts that we can pick up and wield. Biblical truths and truths about the Bible are understood not measuring sticks for other truths (since that makes us the measurers), but realities that confront us. So, for example, “Reconciliation is not a truth which revelation makes known to us; reconciliation is the truth of God Himself who grants Himself freely to us in His revelation” [4]. Likewise, “inspiration is not foundational but derivative” (Holy Scripture, 32). On the surface this can all seem like nothing more than the admonition from texts like Hebrews 4:12 and its sword that pierces and discerns. We do not dissect the Scriptures on our lab table of academic indifference, but it reads our mail. Fair enough. As we look further, however, we discover that more is going on.

The “Why” — Epistemological Reduction

Before Modernity, Scripture was assumed by all Christians. Hence there was no elaborate “doctrine.” Certainly there was no doctrine of Scripture establishing qualities such as authority or inerrancy. Timothy Ward adds that since all doctrine emerges, polemically, in response to heresy or attack from without, a discernible, distinct doctrine of Scripture did not come until Modernity because the divinely authoritative Bible was not attacked until that period [5]. While we may not dispute the fact that Modernity assaulted Scripture in its particular anti-supernaturalistic fashion, we might ask whether Scripture had not been up for defense before in any respect.

Muller tells the tale, starting with Calvin, Bullinger, Bucer, and Vermigli [6], of an extensive treatment given to Scripture, prior to the era of Reformed Orthodoxy, not so as to combat the Enlightenment of course, but to reorient the Protestant flock away from the Roman magisterium. Muller does point out that Musculus was an exception, as he situated Scripture in relation to the covenants, and so here the Barthians may want to find a genuine precursor [7]. Even granting the Barthian casualties in the historical reassessment of Muller and others, their account is still intact and quite popular.

It is a narrative of prolegomena arising out of controversy and secular justification. The only reason we would treat the Bible first, they reason, is all of the hoops that its critics set up for it. Conservative theologians who follow suit are like so many trained seals barking after their agenda. This is the picture we are to have.

There is a pattern in the authors who argue that epistemological bibliology was a reaction to the Enlightenment. The alleged reactionary impulse tends subtly to be framed in descriptives like “anxious,” “nervous,” or a “need.” Thus, for Ward, this foundational location of Scripture “had been done by Evangelical believers who were nervous that the doctrine was under attack” [8]. Treier characterizes this opposite of Scripture-shaping-church-life as so much “epistemological hand-wringing” [9]. Webster imagines Scripture being summoned “before the tribunal of impartial reason” (Holy Scripture, 13), and goes on about “the pressure of the need for epistemological reassurance” (Holy Scripture, 32). When Scripture is a foundation, then, “problems of method have to reach a satisfactory conclusion before substantive discussion can proceed” (Holy Scripture, 114; cf. 125-26); yet another example of moderns “facing anxieties about method” (Holy Scripture, 114).

I am not usually in the habit of citing Freud for anything useful, but it does seem to me that these scholars are engaging in a bit of transference in all of this. This is but a small sample, however I recognized this trend years ago in other authors too numerous to chronicle here. We might even call this the “nervous norming” thesis. Whether or not it is a straw man would require a wider study for another day. Suffice it to say that academics whose only category for demonstration and criteria is the satisfaction of demands made by a secular elite—well, then, if Scripture is made a matter of demonstration and criteria up front, the rest follows like clockwork. 

This mirrors exactly the Van Tillian tendency to do with Reason and Nature what the Neo-Barthian camp here is doing with Scripture. That it is Scripture we are talking about might cause the Van Tillian to see a great chasm between himself and the Barthian. The Van Tillian seeks special revelation as the foundation, not general revelation. Indeed, that is so. However, both Barthian and Van Tillian sense a kind of “answering” to the “real teacher” in the very idea of rational demonstration. If the Christian theologian is demonstrating, then he must be responding to reason’s call, and God is being placed in the dock, so to speak. Apologetics and epistemology are viewed as some kind of damage control that should make us all do a lot sweating.

The practical upshot of all of this intellectual use of the Bible is what the Barthians call “commodification” or “objectification” of the Scriptures. The “foundationalist” Word does not act upon us in our weakness, but we seize it off the shelf in our strength. Inspiration, for example, is said to be objectified when it is “expounded after the manner of a worldly entity,” treated as a product “at hand” (Holy Scripture, 33). Whether one is doing battle with a higher critic or settling some doctrinal dispute in the church, it is human pride that sees the Bible as an inert tool or static sourcebook to be picked up and made to act in our cause.

As a further consequence of the epistemological Bible, the theologian alone is acting upon the Word, whereas the layperson and church at large now observes at a distance. It has no other use but as a proof-book. But the Word of God is living and active, and it is the way that all Christians are sanctified and transformed (Jn. 17:17; Rom. 12:2). This is what has always been appealing to those who are Reformed, on the one hand, but who have been given a sour taste by doctrinal disputes on the other.

Barthianism can claim a Reformed pedigree at least by sentiment. God is sovereign as the Word is sovereign. The Word cannot be “controlled” or “domesticated” [10]. It is free, and not called forth by any mere mortal. One gets the imagery of the Bible as a genie in the lamp of the objective theologian.

Webster’s lesson derived from this is that the doctrine of revelation has been distorted in modern theology. It has been reduced to an apologetic on the critic’s terms, a minimalist account of revelation, or “an arcane process of causality whereby persons acquire knowledge through opaque, non-natural operations” (Holy Scripture, 12), rather than as the triune God’s life-giving communication among the assembly.

The “How” — Trinitarian, Sanctifying Self-Disclosure

Webster does not simply recapitulate Barth’s view of Scripture. For example, he does not suggest that the words of the text are merely a witness to the Word. On the other hand, when he moves from revelation per se, to that special revelation that is the Bible itself, he offers this very expansive definition: “Holy Scripture is a shorthand term for the nature and function of the biblical writings in a set of communicative acts which stretch from God’s merciful self-manifestation to the obedient hearing of the community of faith” (Holy Scripture, 5). 

Indeed there are two elements that still parallel the most crucial parts of Barth’s doctrine of inspiration. First, the Scripture texts and processes of reception are two distinct objects and are both “subservient to the self-presentation of the triune God.” So too are those “practices of reading” (Holy Scripture, 12). We still are left with two historical events: the inspired authors receiving revelation and the church reading. The second thing to see is that the text that stands in between those two events, while not called a “witness” to the Word, is nevertheless called a “servant” of revelation Webster, Holy Scripture, 31; 46). While placing it under the more Reformed verbiage of “strong triune authorship,” Vanhoozer appears to retain all of these main pieces as well [11].

What Webster does to avoid the radical duality [12] in which Barth marginalized what was human in the Scriptures, is to employ the concept of sanctification. In one sense this term will have its normal connotation. It means to make holy that which is common, and not simply to consecrate it for special purposes, but to activate it to become more like what it was meant to be (Holy Scripture, 17-18; 26-27).

There must be divine acts, but also creaturely acts. Scripture’s “sanctification” is its holiness, analogous to the sanctification of the sinner; and Scripture’s “inspiration” is its proceeding from God. The initial aim of this sanctification of the Scripture is to resolve a duality. It seems to me that this is Webster’s strongest point and where there is no need to pit him against Warfield’s doctrine of inspiration, for example.

Vanhoozer explains that there are naturalist and supernaturalist accounts of God’s interaction upon Scripture: the former excludes divine agency from explanation, and the latter exaggerates divine agency to the exclusion of human instrumentality [13]. In fact a zero-sum fallacy begins to emerge on either side of that duality. The more free God is to speak, the less humanity is thought of as being called into the act, and vice versa.

Even the allusion, if not direct analogy, to the incarnation is maintained at a profound level in what is called double-agent discourse. The locutionary agency of the human author performs the divine illocutionary act [14]. There is the divine element, very Christological, but in the economy of the Trinity. Then there is the human element: Scripture as servant of revelation, or sanctified human texts. All of this adds to the meaning of a “dogmatic” account. What makes Scripture “central,” that is, pervasive, is that the triune God is doing these things by means of his Word.

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1. cf. Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology, Volume One (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2008); John Frame, Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2013); Robert Lehtam, Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019).

2. John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13.

3. Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 44.

4. Barth, quoted in Webster, Holy Scripture, 16.

5. Timothy Ward, Words of Life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 97.

6. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: Volume Two (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 70-78.

7. Muller, PRRD, II:76.

8. Ward, Words of Life, 97.

9. Daniel Treier, “Scripture and Hermeneutics,” in Kelly M. Kapic & Bruce L. McCormack, Mapping Modern Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 68.

10. Ward, Words of Life, 62.

11. Kevin Vanhoozer, “Holy Scripture,” in Michael Allen & Scott Swain, ed. Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 49.

12. Webster diagnoses a wider “dualism” in the Modern era that resulted from the loss of realism. Nominalism further exacerbated the naturalistic tendency even in the doctrine of Scripture. To overcome what he calls naturalism and supernaturalism dualism, or what Gordon Spykman called “two-factor” theologies (22), what is needed is to show “how creaturely entities may be the servants of the divine self-presence” - Holy Scripture, 20.

13. Vanhoozer, “Holy Scripture,” 32.

14. Nicholas Wolterstorf is described as the one who sketched this out both by Vanhoozer, “Holy Scripture,” 43 and by Scott Swain, where he draws out its details in more covenantal terms: cf. Trinity, Revelation, and Reading (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 36-44.