By John Goldingay
Eerdmans/The Paternoster Press
420 pages. £16.99
Goldingay's thesis is easily stated. The traditional categories used with respect to the doctrine of Scripture - authority, revelation, inspiration, word of God, infallibility, and inerrancy - are by and large not used by Scripture writers to refer to Scripture. Goldingay is not naive: he recognises that complex doctrines are often summarised under some non-biblical label (e.g. 'Trinity').
But he thinks that Scripture's silence is in this case so telling that we need to re-think the categories. What we fail to see is that our traditional words belong to a certain 'model' that holds us captive. If we go back to the Scriptures and work inductively through Scripture's self-references, we shall learn that the Bible itself deploys several models that will help us think more accurately about the Bible's form and function, and enable us to get away from the sterile debates between conservatives and liberals.
Four models
The rest of the book offers four models, including one (the third) with which most conservatives would ordinarily feel happiest. Goldingay's point is not that the traditional categories are entirely wrong. Rather, he argues that in the case of each model 'parts of Scripture are doing these various things, and all these models can still be illuminating with regard to some of scripture as they bring into focus the nature or function of specific sections of it' (p. 14, emphasis his). In other words, parts of Scripture are properly thought of as inspired, or infallible, or whatever; other parts of Scripture are best thought of in terms of some other 'model'.
The first model is 'Scripture as witnessing tradition' (chapters 2-6, pp. 19-82). Here Goldingay stresses the importance of narrative to biblical thought - not only the little narratives but also their contribution to the big narrative that moves from creation through the fall to redemption and consummation. Thus much of the Bible is witness borne to the events that constitute this narrative. Goldingay cannot align himself with those who want to make the Christian faith utterly independent of historical events, so as to safeguard its stability: because it talks about events in real space-time history, biblical witness opens itself to historical criticism, even while it provides an implicit critique of that criticism. This also means that where the evidence is weak or unavailable, believers must live with ambiguity. We must also recognise the fact that all witness entails an interpretative element. This leads him to assess the kind of 'history' that the Gospels convey, and to reflect on how later Old Testament historical books bridge the gap between the present and the past by showing how past events have an important if sometimes hidden bearing on the present.
Limitations of space forbid that I flesh out the argument of the other models. I can but list them: the second model is 'Scripture as authoritative canon' (chapters 7-13, pp. 83-197); the third is 'Scripture as inspired word' (chapters 14-19, pp. 199-283); and the fourth is 'Scripture as experienced revelation' (chapters 20-25, pp. 285-371).
The book is important, and frequently provides on biblical passages insightful observations that are worth pondering. Goldingay notes, for instance, the short shrift given to Psalm 119 by many contemporary mainstream commentators who dislike what they take of praise of legalism; Jewish commentators (and Puritans too, for that matter, though Goldingay does not mention it) delight in the authority of God's statutes and perceive them to be a gracious gift. Moreover, Goldingay is entirely right to emphasis that the Bible is more than, say, inerrant propositions. Here he is line with modern 'speech-act' theory (though he does not deploy its categories), which points out that different parts of the Bible do different things, they perform different things: warn, promise, ask questions, instruct, greet, encourage, and so forth. A category like 'inerrancy' is most easily thought of in terms of assertions of fact; one surely wants other categories to describe the nature of the authority behind, say, a parable warning that the coming of the 'bridegroom' might be long delayed (Matthew 25.1ff). So for opening up categories that some at least have not thought about, we should be grateful to Goldingay.
Profoundly untrue
Nevertheless, the book is a disappointment.
1. There is an edge in it against conservative evangelicals and their doctrine of Scripture. It is betrayed in countless asides that do not strengthen the central line of Goldingay's argument, but are clearly designed to score points. For example, referring to James Barr, Goldingay comments: 'It is a devastating criticism of people who emphasis the authority of scripture that they constitute a religious tradition that uses the form rather than the reality of biblical authority as a shield for their tradition - just what they attribute to Roman Catholicism - so that for them Scripture is the supreme religious symbol but is not actually preached or read' (p. 91). If he had said: 'It is a devastating criticism of people who emphasise the authority of Scripture but who neither read it nor obey it that they constitute a religious tradition etc.', the charge would have been both fair and important: religious hypocrisy is hypocrisy, regardless of which religious tradition displays it. But to tar all who emphasise the authority of Scripture with this brush is profoundly untrue. I have been in churches of many kinds all over the world. Despite all their sins and failures, I have found no group more interested in teaching Scripture faithfully and in encouraging and fostering thoughtful obedience than conservative evangelicals at their best (and is there any other way of assessing a formal position than that position at its best?). Two pages later we are told that: 'when we conceptualise Scripture as an authoritative canon we are but a step away from making it a written code which kills' (p.93). Somehow Goldingay has come to the conclusion that an authoritative canon is akin to 'laying down the law' without any grace, originality, freshness, obedience, or even any possibility of the Scripture standing over against us in confrontation. That is a mind-blowing antithesis that makes little sense historically or theologically.
2. The models that Goldingay identifies are no more cast in biblical categories than those he wishes to domesticate. Does the Bible ever talk about parts of the Bible as 'authoritative canon' or 'experienced revelation'? Even the category 'inspired word' is somewhat problematic in this regard.
3. There are profound definitional problems. According to Goldingay, what is central to something being 'God's inspired word' is it effectiveness and ongoing meaningfulness (e.g. p.253). Further the category 'God's inspired word'' understood in a way that extends all the way down to the individual words, may be appropriate to prophecy, 'where the human speakers understand themselves as mouthpieces for the God who speaks through them directly to their hearers.' They do not seem so appropriate to narrative, wisdom, psalmody, or epistle, which explicitly offer the words of human beings, so that one hears the word of God through these human beings speaking to other human beings (or, in the case of the Psalms, speaking to God). It is not immediately and directly God who says: 'Yahweh our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth' (pp. 253-254).
Whole nest of problems
There is a whole nest of problems here. In the history of the church, the word 'inspiration' has been variously used. In the patristic period the Fathers could use the expression loosely to refer both to Scripture and to, say, John Chrysostom's sermons. But this does not mean they confused the authority of the two, or ascribed inerrancy to Chrysostom's sermons (the way Augustine, in one of his celebrated letters to Jerome, can ascribe inerrancy to Scripture (82.3: 'I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.')). This side of the magisterial reformation, however, inspiration has in Protestant circles been connected with the result of God's work in bringing Scripture to pass: it is Scripture itself, however it came into being, that is 'God-breathed'. The means by which that came about are recognised to be diverse. In his treatment of Calvin, Goldingay implicitly recognises that this use of the term developed force at the time of the Reformation, but views it as a nasty innovation that cannot stand: linking inspiration and authority and applying it to all Scripture is a mistake. Admittedly this use of 'inspiration' is a theological construct. Nevertheless it is a theological construct that issues in the same result, or very similar result, so far as the Bible's truth claims are concerned, that one finds in Jerome: the 'high' view of Scripture recurs under different paradigms in the history of the church. But Goldingay seems to want to connect inspiration with a particular genre (oracular prophecy), without penetrating discussion of the history of interpretation and the various warrants that were deployed to back up this choice.
These sorts of definitional problems abound. They are not helped by poor or unsophisticated treatments of, say, inerrancy, unsophisticated treatments which Goldingay cites to discredit the position. To be told, in effect, that inerrancy is bound up with unrealistic precisionism, or necessarily flattens out every distinction in genre, is to be made to suffer a severe case of deja vu. For example, wanting apparently to trim down any notion of inerrancy having to do with the truthfulness of Scripture in all it affirms, Goldingay writes: 'J.W. Montgomery argues that there is an unacceptable dualism involved in the suggestion that scripture can be theologically true even if it is historically or scientifically false. But Calvin regards Genesis 1 as theologically instructive without being scientifically true, and it is difficult to categorise Calvin as a dualist' (p. 271). This sort of jump short-circuits the discussion. Any sophisticated inerrantist will want to make place for the discussion of the genre of Genesis 1, and the kinds of claims being made, Montgomery included. Montgomery's point is closer to the bone: there is indeed something dualistic about affirming the Bible's truthfulness in the realm of salvation and faith, and doubting it in realms more easily open to verification. Calvin, after all, is not saying that Genesis 1 is scientifically untrue, but that some people interpret it wrongly, because in some in-stances the language is (what we would call) phenomenological. As for the correlation between Genesis 1 and contemporary scientific theories, inerrantists come out on different sides: it does not directly affect the inerrantists' claim at all. It is as if Goldingay wants to paint some people into a corner from which they cannot escape, in order to destroy them. What he destroys is a straw man.
4. The treatment of the positions adopted by characters of historical importance in the church is frequently skewed. For example, Goldingay writes that Luther 'is untroubled by irreconcilable 'discrepancies' in Scripture: 'Let it pass, it does not endanger the articles of the Christian faith.' This quotation he assigns to WA 46.727, as he has culled it from the book by Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, p. 87. But Rogers and McKim have been taken to the woodshed for their persistent and frankly irresponsible treatment of texts, pulling things out of their context and frankly misunderstanding what they read. Worse, the full sentence from Luther, rightly quoted in this instance by Rogers and McKim, is not quoted by Goldingay. The sentence reads: 'When discrepancies occur in the Holy Scriptures and we cannot harmonise them, let it pass, it does not endanger the articles of the Christian faith.' In other words, by 'let it pass' Luther does not mean 'it does not matter', but that some cases we are not going to be able to resolve. That in principle they can be resolved Luther does not doubt: elsewhere he says, for instance: 'It is impossible that Scripture should contradict itself; it only appears so in senseless and obstinate hypocrites' (W2 9.356). Or again: 'But everyone, indeed, knows that at times they (the Fathers) have erred, as men will: therefore I am ready to trust them only when they prove their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred' (WA 7.315). Goldingay tries to give the impression that errors do not really matter to Luther. Far from it: they matter so much he invests a lot of energy in harmonisation and text criticism. All he is saying is that if a small residue of problems remain, one should not worry.
Calvin on Scripture
Goldingay similarly misinterprets the Genevan reformer. 'Calvin also indicates that he was aware of trivial inaccuracies in Scripture such as the 75 rather than 70 people in Acts 7.14 and the posture of Jacob in Hebrews 8.21, but he does not assume that this compromises belief in the writers' total honesty and the writings' full inspiration, which covers the facts as well as their doctrine' (pp. 263,264). But this gives a rather different impression from what Calvin actually says. Here is the reformer on Acts 7.14: 'In saying that Jacob came into Egypt with 75 people, Stephen does not agree with Moses, whose reckoning is only 70. Jerome considers that Luke has not given an exact amount of what Stephen said, but took this number from the Septuagint translation of Moses' account (Genesis 46.27), either because, being a proselyte, he did not know Hebrew, or because he wished to concede this to the Gentiles, among whom that was the accepted reading. Furthermore, it is not certain whether the Greek translators put down that number on purpose, or whether later on it crept in by error. And the latter was of course easy, since the Greeks are in the habit of indicating numbers by letters. In the 26th Book of The City of God Augustine thinks that Joseph's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are included, and so the word 'descent' means to him the whole of that time in which Jacob lived. But that conjecture cannot be countenanced in any circumstances. For many other children were born in the meantime to the other patriarchs as well. It certainly seems very likely to me that the Septuagint translators correctly translated what Moses had written. For it is not possible to say that their minds were wandering, seeing that Deuteronomy 10 (v.22), where that particular number is repeated, agrees with Moses, considering that in Jerome's day at least that verse was being read without any controversy; for those copies which are printed today have it different. Therefore I conclude that this discrepancy arose by an error on the part of copyists. But this was not such an important matter that Luke should have confused the Gentiles over it, when they were used to the Greek reading. And it is possible that he himself did write down the true number, but somebody erroneously changed it from that verse of Moses. For we know that the New Testament was handled by those who were ignorant of Hebrew, but were thoroughly conversant with Greek. Therefore, to make the words of Stephen agree with the verse in Moses' account, it is probably that the wrong number in the Greek version of Genesis was transferred to this place also. If anyone is to persist in disputing about this, let us allow him a superiority of wisdom. Let us remember that it is not for nothing that Paul forbids us to be troubled and curious about genealogies' (Titus 3.9).
That rather gives a different impression. Typically, Calvin has gone to great lengths to provide a solution to a perceived problem, in this case a double-layered text-critical solution. Whether it is the right solution is irrelevant. What is clear is that such matters were of interest and concern to him. It is not simply that he is 'aware' of them and thinks they are so trivial he does not care. Calvin offers another 'solution' in the case of Hebrews 7.21 that involves re-pointing the Hebrew. I am not entirely persuaded by his solution, but it is worth remembering Calvin's conclusion: 'There is no danger in this provided always that the readers are brought back to the pure, original sense of Scripture.'
No late innovation
What Goldingay is trying to establish is that the position of conservative evangelicals on Scripture is a late innovation in the history of the church, an innovation far narrower and tighter than that of the reformers. That position simply will not stand. Those interested in examining the relevant primary sources for themselves could usefully start by reading the book by John D. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority: An Evaluation of the Rogers/McKim Proposal; on Luther and Calvin, especially chapter 3.
5. Even the central thesis of Goldingay's book, as important as it is, has two things wrong with it. First, by and large it is right in what it affirms and wrong in what it denies. Second, even in what it affirms it would have been a far more useful book if Goldingay had scrapped the unstable and slippery category of 'model' and analysed the different speech acts of Scripture, or worked through the built-in interpretative clues cast up by different genres.
A proverb drawn from wisdom literature does not function like case law; the colourful mixed metaphors that abound in apocalyptic are not typical of genealogies; the emotional intensity of, say, Psalm 148 is very different from the dramatic intensity of, say, Esther. Why? I agree that many conservatives have fastened rather narrowly on one of Scripture's functions, viz. its truth-telling in the domain of fact. It would be charitable to acknowledge that one of the fundamental reasons for this focus has been to respond to the heavy insistence on the contrary position from 'liberal' scholarship for the last century and a half. Meanwhile, a confessional scholar such as Kevin Vanhoozer (to whom Goldingay makes one indifferent reference) has and is ploughing fresh furrows within an orthodox heritage by doing the sort of thing Goldingay wants done, but in a more sophisticated and controlled way, and without disposing of the baby with the bath water.
