One of my research interests, and one I am currently writing on for publication for Eerdmans, is the origins, nature, and useful interpretation of Scripture. Well, I guess that is more like three research interests! But I like to contemplate them together, as they intertwine. Origins helps us to know what the Bible is and what it is helps us to know how to meaningfully use it. So, whenever possible I pick up books on the subject. When I found out a colleague, Dr. Joseph Gordon, associate professor of theology at Johnson University, was coming out with his book Divine Scripture in Human Understanding: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Bible, I knew I had to check it out. I have long appreciated and respected Joe’s theological insights since we were classmates at Marquette University.
Gordon is driven by questions related to the nature and purpose of the Bible. What is it? What role ought it to play in the Christian life? How do we best interpret it? He contemplates these in full awareness of thorny questions around the human fingerprints in Scripture–its difficult passages (e.g. depictions of slavery or violence) and the process of its textual production that has led to a variety of manuscript traditions and not a singular “original” text. What does it mean that the Bible is inspired if human involvement is so evident?
Since Gordon is approaching these questions as a theologian and attempting to articulate a systematic theology of the Bible, he naturally begins by defining systematic theology. Systematic theology is “the effort to understand and articulate the intelligibility of the mysteries of Christian faith at the level of the systematic theologian’s own time” (14). He draws this definition from the insights of one of his key influencers, Catholic philosopher and theologian, Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan acknowledged that we cannot escape human subjectivity–we are creatures immersed in particular cultures with minds that make judgments and interpretations. Our understandings of God, faith, and Scripture are particular to our own time. Yet for Lonergan this did not lead to relativism or a complete lack of objectivity. Rather, as Gordon summarizes Lonergan, “objectivity, or the correspondence of one’s judgments with the way things are, results from the cultivation and practice of authentic subjectivity” (10). (though what “authentic subjectivity” really means practically is not clear to me. It is technical Lonergan-speak).
In other words, Gordon is not pursuing historical theology in the sense of simple regurgitation of what past theologians, including the early church fathers and mothers thought, but seeking “an understanding of the doctrinal judgments presently held by theologians and their communities at the levels of their own times” (11). This does not mean Gordon ignores what tradition has passed down. He draws wisdom from tradition, particularly relying on the approach of Henri de Lubac, also a Jesuit theologian. For de Lubac, attending to tradition is not about rote recitation of dead texts and people of the past but revitalizing Christian tradition for the church today (12).
The goal then, of a systematic theologian is to try, even through a glass darkly, to articulate the mysteries of the faith, namely the work of the Triune God in history. And not only how God has worked in past history but how God is working in history right now. What we need is not just an awareness of what God did in the lives of saints that lived hundreds of years ago, but what God is doing at the level of our own time.
With this understanding of systematic theology, Gordon begins by discussing past articulations of the Christian faith as conveyed by the “rule of faith” in Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine (the basic creeds or doctrinal beliefs of Christianity). He does so not to simply repeat what they have said, but so as to build on them to find some tracks for articulating a general theology of the mysteries of God’s work in history. For example, he cites one of Origen’s expressions of a rule of faith:
“The Rule of the Truth [i.e. faith] that we hold is this: There is one God Almighty who created all things through His Word; He both prepared and made all things out of nothing, just as Scripture says: ‘For by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth” [Ps 33.6]. And again: “All things were made through Him and without Him was made not a thing’ (John 1:3). From this all nothing is exempt. Now it is the Father who made all things through Him, whether visible or invisible, whether sensible or intelligible, whether temporal for the sake of some dispensation or eternal. These He did not make through Angels or some Powers that were separated from His thought. For the God of all things needs nothing. No, He made all things by His Word and Spirit, disposing and governing them and giving all of them existence. This is the one who made the world, which indeed is made up of all things. This is the one who fashioned man. This is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor a beginning, nor a Power, nor a Fullness. This is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall demonstrate” (from Haer. 1.22.1 as cited by Gordon, p. 50).
Gordon goes on to point out that Origen, Irenaeus, and Augustine each have unique ways of articulating a rule of faith. They expressed their understandings of the mysteries of God’s work in history in a way that was influenced by their particular context. Yet there is also continuity as well. For Gordon and the early church fathers and mothers, “[t]he rule provides an account of the Christian understanding of reality in which Scripture can be rightly engaged and understood” (65). That being the case, having a rule of faith that can be widely used as a lens through which to understand the nature and purpose of Scripture is necessary. For this general rule of faith, Gordon settles on the Nicene Creed (81). It is this creed’s articulation of God’s work in history that he proposes frame a theology of the nature and purpose of Scripture. And such a rule of faith is the norm by which we can assess the validity of our use and interpretation of the Bible.
As an example, the first line of the Nicene Creed is “We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” What might it look like to consider the nature and purpose of Scripture in light of the reality that God has created all things? And particularly that God did so out of nothing. God is distinct from creation, even as God engages with creation. In this sense the Bible is creaturely. Gordon draws from theologian John Webster to understand the nature of Scripture as a created instrument written by sanctified creatures (i.e. authors) that God uses as a means of “self-communication” to us.
But the point is not necessarily the mechanics of inspiration per se but the broader question of what the Triune God is doing in history, or more specifically what the Holy Spirit is actively doing. In this way the activity of God is not something that merely involves how the Bible was first written in the past but what God is still doing with Scripture as we read and interpret it now.
Of course, Gordon recognizes the problem or challenge that as human beings our interpretations and use of the Bible are always subjective. “Our only access to the texts as intelligible is our own subjective constitution made up of our own experiences, our own linguistic apparatus, our own horizons of understandings, judgments, decisions, our own memories, and our own imaginations” (109). This subjectivity applies to the biblical authors as well, and he spends a chapter addressing human fingerprints of the Bible, attempting to make sense of that given Scripture is also located in divine activity. In doing so, he discusses theological anthropology and what it means to be human, including “that humans have as their supernatural telos the beautific vision” (122). Also we participate in the divine nature but “such transformation does not replace our created nature with divine nature.”
Gordon proceeds to discuss theological anthropology in-depth, relying heavily on Lonergan, including the philosopher’s understanding of “self-transcendence.” Gordon concludes that “[a]s a human work, the biblical text is a product of human self-transcendence in history” (130). Among other things this involves human “capacity for wonder and questioning” (137). It also involves God’s healing activity in sinful humanity. That is God’s transforming activity. In this way, his view seems to coincide with Webster’s view of the authors as sanctified.
Gordon in some respects demystifies the biblical authors by pointing out that “the human authors of the scriptural texts shared” capacities common to all human beings (145). As they were moved by the Spirit, the biblical authors “acted to communicate their experiences, understandings, and judgments about the work of God in their midst through writing” (165). Yes, Scripture is the result of God’s activity in history, but that did not override human subjectivity. God worked through creatures who were spurred to collaborate with God’s work as the Holy Spirit healed and transformed them (166). The authors were sanctified (but not uniquely so) and as such not restricted in their human freedom; rather they freely made “use of their own traditional, social, and cultural capital to express their own intentions under the initiative of the Holy Spirit” (219).
Gordon’s discussion of Scripture as it relates to human authors covers the reality of ancient text production, various manuscript traditions and divergent biblical canons. Different faith communities across history had access to different collections of scriptural texts, and within those different versions. Yet he considers this variety to be divinely purposed and not a problem to be solved. Certainly, God’s Spirit was and is active in each period of time with each Christian community through their versions of Scripture, but Gordon does not go into much detail about why God might have purposed that variety.
Gordon believes the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit: “To judge that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit is to make a statement about the relationship between the material texts of Christian Scripture in history and the work of the Holy Spirit who entered into that history” (213). Following Webster, the text is sanctified, set apart, as an instrument for God’s purposes (221). More specifically, Scripture is for our instruction. Scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16), which Gordon notes is left vague as to a systematic explanation of inspiration, but the verse does clarify what Scripture is for, namely our instruction and training in righteousness (222). The Holy Spirit takes what has been said before and revitalizes it for the contemporary reader in her own time. Yet this does not override the readers subjectivity, rather the Holy Spirit works through natural human processing (224).
As to the humble and creaturely nature of Scripture, Gordon quotes 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 that the Bible is God’s means of showing “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” He also quotes Augustine who saw divergent manuscript traditions as different instances of prophecy. Greek and Hebrew versions of a prophet’s oracle, even if different each portray what God intended to say.
As to what this all means for faithful interpretation, Gordon states “The fact that reading always takes place in cultural circumstances, coupled with the judgment that the Triune God addresses or intends to address and speak to all people in all cultures, requires the concomitant judgment that authentic readings are possible precisely from and within the particularity of specific cultures. The work of sorting out faithful and responsible interpretations that reflect and promote the redemptive economic work of the Triune God and those that oppose it remains an on-going task for the global and historical body of Christ” (257).
Ultimately, Scriptural text is not a frozen artifact, but rather the Holy Spirit works in the Bible reader to push her “beyond Scripture to the reality of the economic work of the Triune God” (262). This would suggest, but Gordon does not address, practical implications for how the Bible might speak freshly in ways that previous interpreters did not consider. I hope that Gordon will write another book that addresses these practical implications. As it stands the book is an overarching systematic theology that still needs to be “tried out” on the ground so to speak.
Gordon’s work provides much food for thought in wrestling with the tension of what it means that Scripture is the result of both divine and human involvement. I will say that I have greatly simplified his work. The book is highly technical and academic, a graduate level textbook that will be difficult for the average person to absorb without the help of a teacher trained in systematic theology and the work of Lonergan. For lay level folk who are intrigued by what is covered here, I encourage you to get to know Dr. Joe Gordon better through a few podcasts where he discusses his book:
I am grateful to University of Notre Dame Press for providing a copy of the book for this review.
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Want to learn more about the origins of the Bible?
Check out The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture
