Christian Theologies of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction

9. Theologies of Scripture in the Nineteenthand Twentieth Centuries

9 Theologies of Scripture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries An Introduction John R. Franke The Christian tradition has been characterized by its commitment to the significance of the Bible for life and thought. Indeed, Christian communal identity has largely been formed around a set of literary texts that together form canonical scripture. As David Kelsey remarks, acknowledging the Bible as scripture lies at the very heart of participating in the community of Jesus Christ, and the decision to adopt the texts of Christian scripture as “canon” is not “a separate decision over and above a decision to become a Christian.”1 Yet the past two centuries have seen considerable change in the nature and function of the Bible in the Christian community. Commenting on the effect of these changes, George Stroup observes that “the Bible no longer exercises anything like the authority it once did in many Christian communities.And in those communities where the Bible continues to exercise its traditional role there is little or no serious engagement with the problems of the twentieth century.”2 The problems of the twentieth century and their relationship to the Bible and Christian faith can be traced back to the emergence of historical and critical consciousness connected to the Enlightenment. In its aftermath, Christian thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provided a variety of theological conceptions of scripture that sought to affirm its unique status in the Christian community while also taking into account the questions and challenges posed by the Enlightenment. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was plagued by the thought that ancient history and the shape of the Christian faith rested on historically 157 spurious and flawed documents. In response to concerns that historical questions about the biblical texts undermined the veracity of the faith, he asserted that Christianity was a religion and, as such, had to be understood on its own terms, beginning with a revised understanding of what constituted a religion. The essence of religion was formed not by outward practices or adherence to particular doctrines, both of which could both be assessed externally. Instead, true religion consisted of internal experience and the disposition of piety toward the divine. Christianity represents the expression of this universal religious impulse as it is mediated through the particular language and symbols of the Christian tradition. For Schleiermacher, this meant that the New Testament was to be viewed as a particular expression of the religious experience of the early faith communities. As such it could be properly subjected to historical and critical scrutiny without undermining its significance for the contemporary faith community. Schleiermacher’s approach to the Bible and Christianity is displayed in The Christian Faith, his theological magnum opus. In this work, religious experience or emotion is defined more precisely as “the feeling of absolute dependence” that describes the basic and universal awareness and orientation of individuals toward ultimate reality. From this starting point in religious feeling and experience, Schleiermacher expounds the distinctively Christian religion, which views all things in the light of the experience of redemption found in Christ. While all persons are religious in that all stand in relation to ultimate reality, for Christians this feeling or awareness is made actual and concrete only through a relation to the person of Jesus. Loyalty to Jesus is what defines Christian faith as Christian. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth is the one whose consciousness and awareness of God and feeling of absolute dependence were unclouded by sin. From this emphasis on Jesus as the focal point of the Christian religious experience, Schleiermacher turns his attention to reinterpreting scripture—and the whole body of classical Christian teaching—in light of the nature of religious feeling and its particular manifestation in Christianity. In Schleiermacher’s outlook lies the genesis of the modern hermeneutical endeavor.3 Having observed that the biblical texts arose as creative minds responded to particular circumstances, Schleiermacher argued that an interpreter must set a text in its context within the life of the author in order to get behind the printed words to the mind that wrote them. To this end, he differentiated between two aspects of interpretation: the grammatical understanding, which looks for meaning in the words and 158 j o h n r. f r a n k e phrases of the work itself; and the psychological understanding, which seeks to go behind the words to the mind of the...