If not inerrancy or tradition … then what?

Earlier this year I wrote a couple of posts about what I call Post-Biblicism Biblicism, or PBB, a phenomenon I’ve observed among professors in theological higher ed. Briefly described, PBB is the view that (a) the Bible is the church’s sole source and authority (to the exclusion of creeds, dogmas, sacred tradition, formal confessions, etc.) and (b) the Bible is at once historically, morally, and theologically flawed, such that it is not entirely trustworthy as a book (sometimes so much so that to call it “God’s word” full stop would be a “fundamentalist” mistake). Yet persons who hold this view not only (c) remain Christian in (d) low-church, evangelical, or non-denominational ecclesial traditions, but (e) spend their entire lives studying, teaching, and attempting to “accurately” interpret every jot and tittle of the biblical text.

You can go read the original posts for my confusion about and critique of this phenomenon. It seems obvious to me that one of those five aspects has to give way for the sake of any kind of personal or theological coherence. Mostly I experience PBB as a source of befuddlement.

Recently a friend made an observation about a similar trend, only this time from the perspective of the pews. And I think he’s right. This phenomenon, moreover, is more than befuddling. It’s troubling, saddening, and urgent in its pastoral need.

Suppose you’re a normie biblicist Christian. You partake of what scholars call a “first naïveté” in relation to the Bible. It’s an open book. It’s crystal clear. Any sincere literate person could sit down with the Bible and understand it for himself. And either (a) all Christian communities do thus correctly understand it, at least in terms of the basics, or (b) your community (your denomination, your congregation) has got the goods—i.e., the proper understanding of the Bible’s essential teaching about God, Christ, the gospel, etc. Let’s call this general posture Perspicuous Inerrant Biblicism, or PIB for short.

Now let’s say your PIB-ness gets complicated, by honest means. Either (a) you come to believe that the Bible isn’t so clear as you once thought. Not that it’s unclear per se; but you realize that you, the individual layman, are not in a position to answer some of the most pressing—and contested—moral and theological questions about which Christians turn to the Bible for answers. Or (b) you come to believe that inerrancy, understood as factual-error-free, documentary-style verbatim historical reportage, isn’t plausible as an account of what the Bible is or how it works. In short, having lobbed off the P and the I, the B goes with them: no more biblicism for you.

It seems to me there are only three or four routes to go from here. One is to lose your faith: if it’s PIB or bust, then you’ve just read your way out of Christianity. Another is to DIY it: Christianity becomes whatever you say it is, because the meaning of your unclear-cum-imperfect Bible is up for grabs, and no one else is in a position to say you’re wrong. A third route is to glom onto a charismatic, entrepreneurial, but ultimately arbitrary pastor or personal figure who presents a version of Christian faith that you find appealing. (Now is this person, even if sincere, also DIY-ing it? Yes. So options two and three are variations on the same approach.)

The fourth and final option is to turn to the church. On this view, the church is both mater et magistra: mother and teacher of all the baptized. She, in the person of her ordained leaders, is authorized by Christ to speak on his behalf, vested with his authority. She it is who has passed on the gospel from the apostles to you, down through the centuries. She it is who has kept inviolate the faith once for all delivered to the saints. She it is who stands as mediator between you and the apostolic preaching of the good news. Indeed, she it is who stands as mediator between you and Christ. (She is, after all, his body and bride.) And when, not if, you or anyone else has questions about the faith or about the teaching of Scripture, she is there to answer them.

The term for this role is magisterium, or the teaching office of the church. To turn or submit to this fourth option, beyond biblicism, is to recognize that the church has the authority, by the power and guidance of the Spirit of Christ, to speak decisively and definitively on matters of faith and morals, particularly when these concern disputed interpretations of Scripture and/or pressing questions of the day. This understanding of ecclesial authority was axiomatic for the church before the sixteenth century, and since then then has remained the majority view of the global church.

Leave to the side whether it is true. Here is the point I want to make.

Is there any serious option for someone who no longer affirms Perspicuous Inerrant Biblicism, but who nevertheless wants to remain a morally and intellectually serious Christian, other than this last, fourth route—i.e., submitting to sacred tradition and entrusting oneself to the Spirit-derived and Spirit-led authority of the historic magisterial church?

I don’t see how there is. Because if biblicism isn’t true, and/or strict inerrancy isn’t true, and/or strong perspicuity isn’t true—and remember, we’re merely stipulating these as possibilities—then either Christianity isn’t true, or Christianity can be whatever you want it to be, or Christianity is already something solid, defined, and given, and where you find it is in the authoritative church of magisterial catholic tradition.

I’m trying to be as ecumenical as possible here; at the very least, not only Rome but Constantinople and (I think) Canterbury could affirm the account so far. Perhaps others. In any case, I’m looking in the other direction.

I know countless books, together with countless friends, neighbors, pastors, and family members who’ve read said books, that suppose what I’ve outlined here so far is untrue. That is, they not only recognize but actively engender the loss of ordinary believers’ first naïveté in relation to the Bible. They want to rid lay Christians of their commitments to inerrancy and perspicuity. And yet, for reasons I cannot discern, they appear to continue to be bound by a sort of persistent or lingering biblicism—even though they have explicitly kicked out the legs of the biblicist stool. For biblicism doesn’t work if the Bible is not radically perspicuous and absolutely inerrant. Yet these writers offer their books for the edification of the faithful, only (apparently) to be surprised when their readers understand them perfectly well, and accordingly leave the faith.

Christians, in order to be Christians, have to put their trust in something. And that “something” must include what is intermediate and not only what is immediate. Obviously our ultimate hope and faith are in God alone. But we only have God through the work of mediation, and thus through concrete mediators. PIB-ers insist on that mediator being the Bible alone. Absent that extreme form of sola scriptura, the church is the only other candidate for such trust. That is, on this latter view, the baptized trust that the community to which they belong is the divinely appointed and preserved vehicle of the truth of Jesus Christ, kept and carried through the vicissitudes of history by the Holy Spirit. That is where the gospel is found, together with the scriptures, the sacraments, the saints, and all the rest.

I see no alternative. Further, apart from these two paths I see no way forward for the transmission of the faith across the generations. Either a biblicist church faithfully communicates a biblicist faith to its members and children (and it’s straightforward to see how laypeople might participate in that process); or a magisterial church faithfully communicates the teaching of sacred tradition to its members and children (and it’s likewise plain to see how such a process might work). But how is a typical Christian adult supposed to train up his children in the faith if his church simultaneously rejects sacred tradition and repudiates Perspicuous Inerrant Biblicism? He lacks tradition to hand down, and he lacks the-Bible-alone to hand down. He’s also hip to the fact that the-Bible-alone just isn’t going to get the job done for him, because he’s brim-full of vertiginous confusion regarding how to interpret the Bible in the first place—in other words, he needs someone to answer his questions. But his pastor is just one more dude; he claims no special authority. And normal-adult-Christian-parent here knows that even if he likes Pastor 1’s answer, Pastor 2 at the church next door will give a substantially different answer. So, again, he’s left to his own devices. What’s he supposed to do?

He knows one thing at least. Those pop-evangelical books hawking post-biblicism biblicism aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Whichever way is right, they’re not it.