on the problem(s) of scriptural authority

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On the Problem(s) of Scriptural AuthorityROBERT W. JEN SON

Professor of Systematic Theology

Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg

Attempts to explain the authority of Scripture by

theories of inspiration and inerrancy are futile.

The authority of Scripture resides in its several

actual functions, indispensable to Christian

worship, thought, and life.

THERE IS NO ONE PROBLEM of Scripture's authority; there are at least

four, which are routinely confused. Onc e sorted out, one of the four can be

seen as a mere blunder , and one a pseudoproblem. These two analyzed, the third

and fourth become visible as authentic theological problems. With respect to these

authentic problems, we are currently rather better off than with respect to most

theological problems. The agenda of this essay is the debunking of laments about

"lost" scriptural authority.

SCOPE

People ask worriedly, "But why should we take Scripture as authoritative?"

Usually, there is no more to the worry than an equivocation on "we ." If "we"

includes those who do not believe the gospel, there are no arguments at all why

such persons should bow to Scripture; nor should this lack bother anyone. But

the "we" who worry are in fact believers; and there are arguments why, if we

believe the gospel, we should bow to Scripture.

A. Th e position just taken does not mean that there are no arguments why we,

any "we," should believe the gospel. It may indeed be that if there are no argu-

ments why we should believe, it is irrational to do so; that is not here my subject.

But what draws the demand for reasons directly to Scripture is the fundamentalist

notion that the reason to believe the gospel is that it is in the Bible, which is

antecedently known to contain nothing but truth. This is a serious category

mistake.

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The authority of the Scripture, or its lack, is quite irrelevant to belief itself. It

is relevant rather to the believer's attempt in turn to speak the gospel; Scripture

is the norm of proclamation. The preacher' s appeal, "You may believe it be-

cause it is in the Bible," works only in a situation where Christianity and its book

are established as the religion of the culture, while actual faith in the gospel re-

mains an option; even then, the appeal may obscure the possibility of faith. It is

the preacher's work the night before the proclaiming of the gospel that needs

authoritative Scripture.

B. The gospel is proclamation of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus—if some

use "the gospel" for other things, there is no way to stop them; but whatever

they are up to has nothing to do with that for which the church needs authoritative

Scripture. It happened tha t certain persons, disciples or enemies of Jesus of

Nazareth, believed that he had met them after his death, so situated in reality as

to preclude his dying again. Thu s they found themselves with news of universal

import; for if Jesus has death behind him, then his intention for his fellows,

defined by his particular life and death, must utterly triumph, there being no

longer anything to stop him. The possessers of such news were under sheer

moral obligation to spread it; and they set out to do so.

At least some of them called their message "the gospel," since, Jesus being whohe is, it is a saving message that he will triumph. The epithet stuck as a label,

which we still use. Th e persons themselves we call "the apostles," whoever and

however many they were. "T he gospel" is thus a simple label for whatever the

apostles said in telling of Jesus' resurrection.

The carrying of the resurrection-news has continued, has reached us. If we

believe what we hear, for whatever reason, we find ourselves under the same obli-

gation as the apostles : We must turn from hearing the gospel—which the apostles

themselves did not—to speaking it. Th e enterprise of gospel-speaking, since it is

a continuing enterprise in history, can go wrong. Therefore we need ways to

check whether what we say and propose to say is indeed the gospel.

In every continuing historical tradition, when the question of authenticity thus

arises, we turn back to the deposited tradition. In the present case, when wewonder whether what we propose to say is really the gospel, we look back to those

from whom we heard it, selectively : to a respected teacher, or to Luther or Calvin,

or to some anonymous pamphleteer. We seek tried procedures and samples of

gospel-speaking. But, of course, any such authority can always be challenged by

some other—until we come to the apostles. For—tautologously-—if they did not

speak the gospel, no one did. Th e apostles' authority is as simple, and its basis

as trivia l, as that . We cannot get behind the apostles to the gospel, since they only

spoke and did not hear it. Therefore they are our last resort.

The question about the authenticity of our gospel-speaking is therefore a ques-

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On the Problem(s) of Scriptural Authority

Interpretation

tion about whether we say the same as the apostles. The content of "the same"

in the last sentence is a genuine theological problem, to which I will come. The

apostles being dead, the checking of our gospel by theirs now depends on docu-

ments. As it happens, we have two sorts: their texts and some samples of their

work. The "Ol d Testame nt" is the first; the epistles are the second; the Gospels

are both.

The apostles' gospel-speaking, essentially, used texts. What they had to say,

for reasons I will come to, could be said only as exegesis of the deposited traditionof Israel. The ir gospel was intrinsically interpretation of Israel's book by wha t had

happened with Jesus. The apostles' texts are also available to us. In our effort

to say what the apostles said, one thing we can do is submit ourselves to the same

texts they did. If our talk of God does not seem to fit Moses' JH WH, if the

Exodus means nothing to the hope we hold out, if the psalms make uncomfortable

prayers, if Isaiah does not elucidate the difference between our Christ and the idols,

we are off the track.

The authority of the New Testament is different. The New Testament com-

prises the extant literary relics of apostolic gospel-speaking; these are norms as

samples of what we are to do. Th e New Testament is not entirely by apostles;

given the scarcity of such relics, we throw the net wider. The canonical list is a

commendation by the church to the church : Here are documents from which to

see how the church went about gospel-speaking during the years before its aposto-

licity became a problem rather th an a given. I will describe our use of these

samples in the next section.

The extent of the canon is a problem—but not for the Bible's authority. The

Old Testament is to comprise the authentic deposited tradition of Israel ; and the

New Testament is the useful relics of the apostolic church. If something is left

out that should be in, this is a loss; but it does not compromise the authority of

wha t is in. If something is in tha t should be out, we should put it out when we

decide this; but acknowledgment of this possibility cannot compromise authority

in advance. Nor can the circumstance that we must, over time, make these

decisions compromise the author ity over us of wha t is in fact decided to be in. Th ecanon-list is a dogma: a declaration by the community to its members con-

cerning the boundaries of the community. The canon-dogma says that author ita-

tive use of these documents is a line between church and non-church. But the

Bible itself is not a dogma or collection of dogmas; its authori ty-function is very

different and is unaffected by the necessary uncertainties of the canon-list.

This account no doubt seems simplistic. I can only plead that the mat ter may

in fact be simple. It is at least possible that this fundamental argument for

Scripture's authority is only customarily obscured by complexities dragged in from,

and best resolved, elsewhere. I turn now to some of these.

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OPERATION

We are after the authoritative function of Scripture for believers' speaking.

Here a second confusion threatens, of greater subtlety. The very form of the

phrase tempts us to suppose that the authority of Scripture is some one relation

between what is said in Scripture and what we say now. There is no such relation;

the supposition that there is, is the second factor that regularly deranges discussion

and has done so through the history of the church. The re are a variety of ways

in which the Scriptures function authoritatively in the church's life, and do so

even when all lament their failure to find the authority of Scripture.

A. Th e underlying confusion is of a type elsewhere and long ago exorcised by

Ludwig Wittgenstein. It appears most blatantly in the plaint that Scripture can-

not be authoritative for our proclamation, in general or on a particular point,

because Scripture, or the New Testament, contains so many different definitions

of the gospel. As a preliminary step, let me imitate Wittgenstein's exorcism with

a parable modeled on one of his.

Suppose that in a room containing several persons, I ask one of them to go

stand in the corner. Whatever tha t person does, the rest of us will usually be able

to decide whether or not he obeyed me. But now, suppose I draw an arc on the

floor in the corner and ask the group whether someone who stood inside the arc

would obey my request and they all answer yes. Next I draw a slightly larger con-

centric arc and repeat the question, and so on. At some point the group will

begin to disagree about whether someone who stood in the latest arc but outside

the one just previous would have obeyed my request. The n we may be tempted

to wonder where "the corner" is and to suppose something ambiguous in my

original instruction—when in fact there was nothing at all ambiguous about it.

The instruction, "Go preach the gospel," can be perfectly clear and may be de-

cided on even if the several instructors give no agreed, uniform definition of what

the gospel "is."

B. How in fact, and in the complexity of all fact, does Scripture exercise author-

ity in the church's life? It is operations we have to consider.The gospel is any act of human communication in which two specific givens

meet and interpret each other. One of these is the claim that Jesus is risen) so

that this individual person, defined by his particular life and death, has death

behind him and must triumph. The other is the antecedent structure of hopes and

fears of those who at a time and place come to speak of this claim; history is but

the changing succession of such structures. In each mutual interpretat ion of these

two, there arise at once an eschatological promise and a founded ethic.

Thus, for example, to Americans still obscurely animated by the dream of

happiness pursued, but driven to despair and mania by the capitalist-individualist

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version of the dream, gospel-speakers may tell of the happiness that waits in com-

mitment to the community rather than in self-made independence from it—in that

Jesus will finally bind all lives into perfected community by his unconditional com-

mitment to all. In such discourse, the proclamation of Jesus' triumph is interpreted

as a political promise; an eschatological vision of the Kingdom is delineated by

the colors of Jeffersonian "publ ic happiness." And the antecedent longing for

happiness is just so fixed as a specific and pursuable ethical value. The gospel is

the actual proclamatory act of any such interpretation.The problem posed by the one pole of the gospel, the changing given of com-

mon hopes and fears, are the mat ter of the next sections. In this section, I try to

clear the way to see these problems by attention to the other pole, the claim that

Jesus is risen. For the actual functions of Scripture in the church can be laid out

by the parts of this claim.

1 ) In the sentence, "Jesus is risen," "Jesus," like every proper name at such a

grammatical location, functions to identify the one of whom a predicate, here

"risen," is to be taken. Upon this identification depends the gospel-character of

the gospel. It is the fact that this person lives to triumph that is a message of

salvation; "Stal in is risen" would be no such message. Th e problem in gospel-

speaking is often with the identification ; we may find we do not know what to say

because the work done by the word "Jesus" goes badly.

The problem is then of a sort regular with proper names: "Jones is getting

mar ried. " "But who is Jones?" Recourse in all such cases is necessarily to iden-

tifying descriptions. We must be able to say things like "Jones is the one who

graduated first in his class last year, and who fell down the chapel steps at bac-

calaureate, and who . . . ," continuing until people say, "Oh. That one ." The

Bible provides the possibility of such identifying descriptions for the risen Lord

Jesus.

This very process in the apostolic church created the new genre of Gospels. To

begin, the various streams of tradition about Jesus served various purposes of dis-

cipline, exhorta tion, and so on. But as the identity of the Lord, with increasing his-

torical distance, ceased to be obvious, all the different sorts of reminiscence cametogether for the one purpose. A Gospel is simply a long "Th e one who . . . , and

who .. .," with an abruptly stated "is risen" at the end.

Not only the Gospels provide for the identification of the Lord. Th e temporal

scope of the "the one who . . ." clauses, by which any individual may be iden-

tified, stretches indefinitely back from his death to encompass in principle all

previous history tha t is within his tradition-lineage. What is chosen from this

indefinite repertoire for any particular act of identification depends on the oc-

casion. Wha t enables identification of Jesus includes the whole tradition of Israel,

as it is in fact mediated by the Hebrew Bible.

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Only from Scripture can we know who is risen. This is the first of the functions

properly denoted by "scriptural authority."

This function lives in the church as scholarship. The question, "Which indi-

vidual does 'Jesus ' name?" can be dealt with only by study of the texts. Such

research has always been done in the church and has been central to the actual

pressure of Scripture on the church's life—whatever theories about its place may

have come and gone. With the advent of modern historical consciousness, the

enterprise changed profoundly, in ways that will concern us shortly; but this

change did not initiate the enterprise itself or alter its necessity and role. From the

gcspel-writers on, the Scriptures have provided the sole material of study to

ascertain which person is risen; just so, they are authority.

2) "Risen," like all morally potent predicates, works only within a certain

semantic and syntactic structure , only within its home language. When "P au l"

tried to speak of resurrection with Greeks on Mars Hill, they took him to be

promoting a new minor deity; for that was the only semantic slot they had for

something like Anastasis. When we try to speak of resurrection with the

bowdlerized technocrats who inhabit America, they suppose we are speculating

about resuscitation and adduce cryogenics or the later Kubler-Ross. To say " . . .

is risen," we have to speak Old-Testamentese ; "risen" is a predicate only withinthe language-tradition of Israel.

This is not a plea for Hebrew as against, for example, Greek thought or for

our conceptual metamorphosis into ancient Hebrews. We are Greeks, among

other things; and if we have to become pure Hebrews to believe, we cannot believe.

But language-traditions live and maintain their identity precisely by the endlessly

syncretic process in which they meet foreign tradition and in the meeting create

new language. Thus the language-tradition of Israel long since enveloped language

born of Greek religion and reflection and just so became our language. Missionary

proclamation is not an attempted sheer transfer of the proposition "Jesus is risen;"

it must be an initial experience of the communal tradition of such speech. Indeed,

a small event in the continuing syncretic growth of the tradition.

Thus a second necessary function of Scripture is to maintain the livelinessand authenticity of the language in which "Jesus is risen" can be said, to con-

tinually reestablish the church as a community whose common bond is the

language-tradi tion of Israel. This sort of biblical authority occurs liturgically. In

that Scripture is solemnly read, in that it provides the texts for preaching and

sacrament, in that its image and stories pervade prayer and praise and personal

meditation, in that its very words are regularly prayed, in that children are trained

in piety by its admonitions and stories, Scripture is authority. We read and hear

Scripture in order to learn to talk rightly.

In much of the church there has been a disastrous collapse of the liturgical life

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of Scripture. Seminary seniors have to ask the point of references to "the veil of

Moses" or "Jacob's ladder." In communities whose actual life and expression are

not fundamentally and continuously shaped by the stories and sayings and argu-

ments of Scripture, Scripture just does lack essential authority—and this cannot

be remedied by an act of will or by a theory. When Sunday school had a purpose,

it was to teach Bible stories—not their relevance.

3) Between "Jesus" and "risen" sits "is." Elucidation of this copula is the task

of theology in the more specific sense. Over against the changing hopes and fears

of history we ask again and again, "What is to be said because it is Jesus that is

risen? And what is to be said because he is risen and not dead or deathless?"

"Wha t sort of being is being risen?" There are at least two ways in which Scrip-

ture functions authoritatively in theological work.

First, theology is thinking about what to say to be saying the gospel. Since the

gospel is whatever the apostles said, the thinking of the apostles—insofar as they

needed to do any—was acceptable, by trivial definition. Thu s samples of apostolic

theologizing are guaranteed samples of authentic theologizing, though not neces-

sarily the best theologizing. They have the authority of paradigms. Th e most

notable samples are the epistles. But we have also the theology revealed by

tendancy- and redaction-criticism of the Gospels.We are neither to reproduce nor merely deductively amplify the matter of

apostolic theology. If we tried, our reflection would not lead to saying the gospel,

for their antecedent hopes are not ours. What we may and must learn from them

is method. Since theology is a directed activity, the only way to learn it is to watch

others doing it and to gradually mix in. The repertoire of importunate mentors

is in this case enormous, encompassing two millennia of genius; the apostles are

those who, although they may not be the smartest or most powerful, are for certain

actually doing what we want to do.

Since the authority of apostolic theology is methodological, the theological

pluralism modernly discovered in the New Testament is no difficulty. If we were

supposed to imitate the material theology of the New Testament, the discovery

that there is no one such thing could be an embarrassment ; since we are rather tobe initiated into an activity by the New Testament, the discovery is a relief. The

theology of the church has always been plural and presumably always will be.

If the theology of the apostolic church were not also plural, it could not be

paradigmatic for us. Only the discovery that the New Testament writers were up

to different enterprises, that some were not trying to interpret human concern by

Jesus' resurrection, would be a problem—but a canonical problem.

I may judge that Paul is a better theological drill-master than John; and you

may judge the reverse. If both of us are faithful, I will then judge my theology

better than yours, and you the reverse. If I cannot recognize your theology at

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all, as in fact terminating in the lively proclamation of Jesus' resurrection, one of

us is a heretic. If in my preference for Paul , I can recognize nei ther you nor

John, I am the heretic, or John must leave the canon. Th at last must be a com-

munity decision. Only so does New Testament theology set material boundaries

for ours.

Second, insofar as theology bears fruits, these will be propositions of the general

form, " To be saying the gospel, let us say \ . .' ( rather th an '. . .' ) . " Such pro-

positions must be tested against Scripture , for reasons stated under Bl and B2. But

we must be very clear how this testing works. It does not occur by our asking

globally, "Is this what Scrip ture says?" Indeed, it does not occur in any special

comparing that "theologians" would do. It is not in principle internal to theology

at all. It occurs rather in the actual course of preaching, teaching, praying.

Always in such work we are confronted with texts, from sentences to whole

writings—or we are if the church is rightly under Scripture's liturgical authority.

The test of my theology is whether it helps me to deal with actual texts without

pressing them. I deliberately use the vague "deal with" because the uses of texts

are as various as the contents of Scripture and the life of the church; the matter

of "pressing" is the mat ter of the next section. Given, for example, a parabl e of

the Lord, does my interpretation of God—or of eternal life or whatever—help orhinder my attempt to bring the parable to life as gospel in the church? "Theology"

tha t leaves daily exegesis unaffected is no theology; it is ideology. Theology tha t

regularly fights texts is in process of refutation. Right theology constantly liberates

us to exclaim that "Of course! That 's why Isaiah could say . . . ."

Moreover, most theological enterprises create some global slogan in which an

eschatological vision and an ethic coinc ide: "Jesus liberates ," or "Chr ist justifies

the ungodly," or "God is feminine," or whatever . Th e test of such a theology is

the practicality of its slogan as a hermeneutical principle for the whole of Scripture.

A proper theological enterprise has a sort of double-funnel structure, with the

whole of Scripture in one half, the most various speculations and interpretations

in the other, and a slogan in between.

C. In the actua l life of Scripture in the church, there occurs no general act of

comparing our teaching with Scripture to judge the former. Rather , the Bible is

essential to the church 's life of proclamation and praye r in several very different

ways which together are its authority. In all tha t follows, the internal differentia-

tion of Scripture's authori ty must be in mind. It is in the ensemble of scholarly

and liturgical and theological necessary use of Scripture for gospel-speaking that

Scripture actually controls gospel-speaking.

Here is the place to dismiss all theories of "inspiration," "inerrancy" and the

like, however attenuated. Such theories attempt to explain " the" authorit y of

Scripture; since there is no such one thing , they are all empty. If we look to the

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several actual functions of Scripture, we quickly see the emptiness: in each, we

will act just the same whether or not we believe Scripture is "inspired" or "iner-

rant ." Th e one possible exception is the scholarly use: if we allow a theory to

persuade us that Scripture is historically or scientifically inerrant, this use comes

altogether to a halt under the conditions of our time. We need neither "high"

nor "low" theories of Scripture; we need a clear grasp of what it actually does

in the church.

HERMENEUTICS

Since communal hopes and fears change through time, there are no unchang-

ing formulas of the gospel, and theological reflection can never come to rest.

Explicit awareness of this fact is itself the product of just such an historic change,

which like others poses theological problems: the problem th at concerns us here

is that modern historical consciousness makes it doubtful that any ancient docu-

ment can make serious claims on us. This is a true theological problem often

hidden under the puzzles just—I trust—dispelled.

A. If Scripture is to be read as authority, we must so read as to guard the texts'

distance from us, their independence of us. Of whatever ways a text is to be

authoritative for me, it is a necessary presupposition that the text may have some-thing to say different from what I already think. "What I hea r the text saying"

is indeed all I have to work with; but recognition of the text's authority is

recognition that the text may be saying something other than I hear and that it

is my job to keep listening.

In all modes of reading discussed above, Scripture 's fundamenta l distance from

us is tempo ral : the Scripture just is a very old book. Scripture identifies Jesus

by large chunks of ancient history; the language-tradition it attempts to maintain

is of hoary antiquity; its samples of apostolic theology are pieces of first-century

theosophy and myth. If, therefore, the texts themselves in their independence of

us are to say what they have to say, they must be so read as to preserve and bring

to influence in our understanding the temporal distance between them and us.That is, they must be read in the way we now label "historical-critical." This

has always been so; the birth of consciousness that it is so is the historic event

referred to in the first paragraph of this section. Scripture can now be authority

only if deliberately read historically-critically.

But this very requirement creates a profound problem for Scripture's authority,

so soon as it is an explicit methodological requirement, that is, so soon as modern

historical consciousness is present. Any reader of pre-Enlightenment writ ings is

struck by the way in which the stretch of time is experienced as continuity:

sixteenth-century princes are exhorted to imitate Marcus Aurelius with no thought

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that his solutions might be irrelevant to later problems; Aristotle is quoted on

"bein g" with no worry about conceptual slippage. In the eighteenth century,

the intellectual policy of "cr itique" broke this continuity and transformed experi-

ence of the stretch of time into experience of separation. The space of time ceased

to be the space in which we may live together and became distance, despite which

we struggle toward each other.

"Critique" named one whole aspect of the seventeenth century's new sciences,

that they are methodologically from Missouri: "I know that's what it looks like

is happening; but is it really?" "I know it looks like the sun revolves around the

ear th; but does it really?" The century's passion was the "crit ique of appear-

ances;" and the passion bore great fruit in history's single greatest explosion of

knowledge. Throug h the eighteenth century, the policy of critique was inevitably

extended to our knowledge of ourselves. This took several forms, among them

that critique of social and political appearances which led to revolution. In that

the humanity given us to know is past humanity, the crit ique of human appear-

ances is critique of the tradition in which the past presents itself to us: "I know

that's what Caesar's text says happened in Belgium; but did it really?"

As the tradition is cut, Caesar's time and ours separate. The point of his-

torical study is now to grasp Caesar in his own time—and indeed to grasp thevarious events tha t brought us the tradit ion about him in the same way. But

these times are by definition not our time. To switch the example, as we discover

what Jesus probably really said, from which the canonical parable of the rebellious

vineyard tenants developed, and that he addressed it to the Judean leadership

as a warning against unrepentance, the parable speaks less and less to us, who are

neither Judean leaders nor responsible for such. Historical study does not let the

tradition lay claims or promises on us here now.

The very first object of historical critique was the Bible; and the motive was

precisely thus to silence the Bible and let more recent wisdom be heard. Then

believing critics set out to silence just the apostles and let the historical Jesus

speak. But of course, eventually also Jesus-—or Locke and Hobbes—must besilenced by the same process once it is underway. Indeed, in tha t all apprehension

of human claims on us involves memory, and in that all historical memory occurs

by tradition, historical critique, once out of the way, must finally isolate each

human individual in utter ethical and religious deafness—or so it has seemed.

"Historical relativism" was experienced in its full weight already by the end of

the last century.

If Scripture—or any body of tradition—is to be authoritative, we must read it

historically-critically. If we do, methodically rather than by undel iberated neces-

sity, it falls existentially silent. There is the problem.

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B. A notable line from Dilthey to Gadamer have striven with this "hermeneutical

problem," and not without result. Indeed , there is considerable consensus.

The heart of the consensus is that historical relativism cannot be escaped but

can be salvifically radicalized; by recognition that I, the historical critic, also be-

long to the stream of time and do not observe the past and its tradit ion from a

timeless vantage point. Even as I can explain, for example, Jesus' parables by

the circumstances of his time and place, so can my thought and word, includingmy explanations of Jesus' parables, be explained by the circumstances of my time

and plac e: I too am "historically conditioned." Conditioned by what? By that

very past of which Jesus is one item. Or alternatively, by that very tradit ion of

which the parable-text before me is one item.

In fact, therefore, no item of the tradition can fail to speak to me; for all my

apprehension and discourse is determined by the past and its tradit ion . But this

insight does not restore the old naive continuity; for now we see that the locus

of continuity with the past is precisely my prejudices, the patterns of thought and

language which are in me prior to any particular encounter with tradition, de-

posited in me by the whole tradition to date. Every particular attempt to under-

stand some part of the tradition is but an event in an antecedent and continuing

shaping by the tradition, which shaping is the intellectual and moral given sub-

stance of the one who seeks to understand.

This is the famous "hermeneutical circle." As we approach an item of tradi-

tion, we are led by some tradition-determined preunderstanding of its matter to

which it cannot but make some difference. The parable of the rebellious tenants ,

spoken by a Jew to Jewish leaders, was apparently preserved and edited by the

Gentile church because of anguish over its own all too exclusively Gentile character

-—it is Jewish stubbornness, the church cried out, that separates them from us.

All history since guarantees that their cry—alas—will echo in us.

Therefore, the necessary historical distance between the text and us, rightly

understood, is preserved by labor to bring our prejudices into play as prejudices :

to let them be questioned by the text, indeed, to bring them as questions seeking

reply in the text. Historical-critical work on our example-parable can and must

lead us to ask, "Is it really obvious and natural that Jews and Christians are two

different sorts of people, as we late Christians suppose?" Then we will hear

surprising answers that question us.

Finally, we ask by what prejudices/questions we are to be open to the tradi-

tion. Here too there is a general consensus. Th e question by which, despite his-

torical consciousness, we are connected to the past is—necessarily—that posed by

historical consciousness itself: "Are there any human claims on us?" "Is life

for anything?" "Is there meaning?" We are open to the past by "existential"

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questioning. What any text says to us if it comes to speech is, in some way, "Life

is for something." The tradi tion, when it speaks, "opens the future."

C. The consensus is, I judge, sound, if hard to pract ice. But just at the last

point we must go beyond it. Especially Christian hermeneuts have been not only

existential but existentialist. Although historical relativism and historical skepti-

cism by no means go together , many hermeneuts have been both. And in the

existentialism that taught them about existential questions, they have thoughtto find balm also for their skepticism.

For existentialism, authentic life is "open to the future" in a way to which

what is in fact coming is irrelevant; indeed, the very mark of authenticity is that

I open to whatever is going to happen, abandoning all assurances of what that

will be. But if this is so, the function of tradit ion is simply to pose a future, never

mind which; then no assertions of fact are necessarily involved in the tr adit ion's

address to us. And then the tru th or falsity of the assertions tradit ion does hap-

pen to make are irrelevant to its existential truth. It was a comfort to a whole

generation, shocked by the self-defeat of the attempt to make biographies of Jesus,

that the tradition about Jesus could be a word of claim and promise independently

of its historical value.

But the ploy will not do. It ignores the most primitive structure of any com-

munication-event . True existentialism would end as a sort of worldless self-

transcendence. In communication, persons come together in a world which is,

precisely to let this happen, not any of their private arenas, and which they identify

as such to each other. All addresses from me to you are simultaneously words

about the world that is neither I nor you, or they do not make it to you.

The world is the totali ty of facts. Existential address may not seek to lift

itself above refutation by factual untruth, lest it undo itself as communication.

Even direct first-person "I love you," must meet objections of the sort, "But how

then do you explain what happened this morning?" The gospel, which is a

declaration of love in the name of a third person Jesus, who is either an historic

person or nothing at all, simply is, in this respect, factual narrat ive .The question that joins us to any piece of tradition is, we saw, "How does this

text open the future?" But we may not so interpret this question as to prescind

from assertion about the world. The form of utterance tha t is both assertion and

future-evocation is promise; the interpretive question's more precise statement is,

therefore, "wha t does this text promise?" With the large par t of tradition that

is itself narrative, the narrative will determine the description of what is promised

to happen. Over against the Bible, the global interpretive question is, therefore,

"What is promised by the fact that Jesus, the one who . . ., lives?" About our

parable-example, the interpretive question is, "What is promised to Jews and

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Interpretation

Gentiles about each other because Jesus, the one who spoke the first version of this

parable , lives?"

In thus insisting that tradition opens specific, narratable future, I do not

reject the true existentialist insight that authentic openness to the future means

abandonment of all attempts to secure ourselves against it. But abstract futurity is

not the great challenge. Whether the promise of a specific future abets or over-

throws our self-securing depends on what is promised. What the gospel promises,

the love of the Crucified, is the one absolutely uncontrollable future.

METAPHYSICS

I have at various points said that one instance of putative gospel-speaking says

or should say "the same" as some other instance. When we set out to speak the

gospel, we want to bring the same message as the one we heard, that is, as one

now deposited somewhere in tradition—if that is not what we want, the question

of authority does not, of course, arise. And the norm of both our at tempt and

those to which we respond is that they are to bring the same message as did the

apostles. A second real problem is, wha t is the content of this "the same?" What

is the gospel's self-identity through time?

The methodology discussed under "OPERATION" was in fact an operationaldescription of the identity, so that all I have now to do is state the metaphysics of

the matt er. The self-identity of the gospel through time is not any sort of lin-

guistically stipulable identity: There are no formulas which must always appea r

or deductive continuities which must always be preserved. Th e self-identity of

the gospel is the risen Jesus' personal self-identity through time. Th e gospel is

always about and in the name of the same person, which is all the self-identity

it needs.

The intention of a person's life is defined at and by his death; only then has

his definition been writ ten to completion. Jesus lives—not deathlessly but—with

death behind him. Who and what he is has therefore been settled for all eternity,

just as with any dead man.

Insofar as the gospel is about Jesus, therefore, its self-identity is its historical

memory of Jesus' life and dea th. The gospel provokes us to study, and just so

remains one with itself.

That Jesus—with death behind—lives, means that he can and does now surprise

all our plans and calculations about him, all our Christian religion, that in our

discourse about him, "the gospel," there is an initiative that is not ours. Theology

can never come to rest; the gospel both drives and pursues the changing visions

that make history be history, unpredictably speaking hope to each new constella-

tion of dilemmas. If Jesus lives, he is the agitator of this chase.

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Insofar as the gospel is Jesus' own word, therefore, its self-identity is that it

does to its hearers what Jesus does. My putative gospel is "the same" as Augustine's

if our words do the same in the lives of hearers. Of course, every att empt to say

what that is, is a particular theology, with its slogan: For example, "Jesus

liberates;" which slogan is then an attempted definition of the anthropological

continuity of the gospel. This is not circular; each such slogan can be tested

by Scripture.

Finally, the possibility of the gospel's self-identity through time is the unity of

these two criteria : Part of wha t we remember is that Jesus is risen, to be the free

agitator of our lives. Th at we can thus remember the Eschaton, is, of course, the

Christian mystery.

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on the problem(s) of scriptural authority

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