More on post-biblicism biblicism
A few more points in addition to yesterday’s reflection.
1. The odd thing about the post-biblicism biblicism phenomenon is not that there are people in the pews, raised to be Christian, who now find themselves lacking trust either in tradition or in Scripture. That’s a common enough experience today, one we ought to be exquisitely pastorally sensitive toward. No, the oddity is that it’s a phenomenon in people who have devoted their lives to the truth of the gospel, whether in the pulpit or in the classroom. But why would one give one’s life to the study and exposition of the Bible and/or sacred tradition if one believes that neither entity gives one divine truth, the very truth that sets the captives free and imparts eternal life?
2. Lacking a reliable source for divine teaching in either the church’s kanon or the church’s doctrina, where do post-biblicism biblicists go instead? Where do they look for authoritative wisdom and instruction regarding what to believe and how to live? Let’s avoid the ascription of false consciousness. It seems to me the simple truth that they look inward, they look outward, and they look forward. That is, they consult their own intuitive sense of truth and morals; they read books and listen to podcasts from trusted authors and like-minded thinkers; and they project onto the future where the culture (or “history”) is headed, thereby discerning the work of God in their time. Set aside whether this conjunction of sources is a trustworthy repository of truth. Even bracketing that question, one can understand why post-biblicism biblicist church leaders and church planters suffer a predictable twofold sequence. On one hand, there is an initial wave of enthusiasm and interest. On the other, there is a rapid loss of attention, buy-in, and commitment. The reason is obvious. What such persons and their churches are selling is just whatever the wider culture is already offering, only without the trappings of “church” or “organized religion.” Why not get the real thing straight from the source, rather than mediated by these still-attached-to-Jesus oddballs?
3. Perhaps the strangest feature of all that marks PBB (why haven’t I been using initials this entire time?) is a sort of rhetorical reflex. It goes like this. If fellow Christians are talking about X, the PBB is liable to retort, “The Bible doesn’t talk about X.” Now here’s why that is strange. First, often the Bible does talk about X. The PBB in question usually means something like, “What the Bible says about X isn’t so cut and dry, or calls for interpretation.” True enough, but then you should have said that initially.
Second, sometimes the PBB is right that the Bible doesn’t talk about X, but then even more bizarre implications follow. For does the PBB mean that Christians shouldn’t talk about anything the Bible doesn’t talk about? That would be a rather extreme biblicism, even more extreme than the most biblicist biblicist I’ve ever encountered. The bizarreness is amplified, though, because the one thing that unites PBB adherents is that they love to wax dogmatically about issues the Bible doesn’t talk about.
Now, anyone who is not a biblicist agrees that we, that is to say, Christians, must talk about things the Bible does not mention: social media, cloning, CRISPR, extraterrestrial life, nuclear weapons, marijuana, secularism, Kant, comic books, CCM, movies, blogs, the academy, evolution, Wordle—you name it. In fact, one of the principal nudges of former biblicists into a full-hearted embrace of Christian tradition (saints, doctors, martyrs, dogmas, councils, creeds, synods, social encyclicals, and the rest) is that the living church must have a living voice about ten thousand matters the Bible is silent about. So finding occasions and causes to speak about that the Bible doesn’t speak about is the most ordinary, the most Christian, the most intellectually justified thing in the world.
What doesn’t make sense is castigating fellow Christians for doing so while doing so oneself. More, how could it possibly be just to do so as a biblicist while criticizing fellow biblicists? It’s as though post-biblicism biblicists find themselves in rarefied air, from whence they are able to see which subjects unmentioned by the Bible are worth caring and talking about today and which are not. Put more bluntly, PBB affords its members an arbitrary standpoint or tribal identity by which to say who’s Good and who’s Bad, who’s In and who’s Out. And if that’s all it is, then to hell with it.
