Authorized conflicts: the Bible in church conversations

Abstract

Although Christians may think of the authority of the Bible as something that will resolve our arguments, we continue to argue. The authority of the Bible is primarily one of authorizing: giving us our identity. The Bible itself is full of arguments, and we who live in its heritage continue those arguments and also use the Bible as a model for arguing about in areas that were not contentious in biblical times. Christians can recognize one another as sisters and brothers in Christ while continuing to argue.

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It was an argument with one of my most treasured colleagues. We had reached the end of our respective ropes. Each could see the other's point, but it seemed much smaller than our own concern. Finally I said, "This is what is so interesting about working with you. I think we have nearly identical convictions, but opposite instincts."

We knew, both of us, that life, even (or especially) life in Christian community, is precarious: a narrow pathway between cliff and abyss. I thought my colleague's instinct was to defend against chaotic forces, mine to defend against imperial power. And yet: I am hardly eager for chaos, nor is my colleague insensitive to empire: both of us are aware of twin dangers, rocks hurled by imperial forces above, or a misstep hurtling us into the chaotic depths below. The difference is the immediate, instinctive fear. As we walk that narrow pathway, my colleague is more likely to watch our feet lest one of us slip, while I am more likely to keep an eye out for rocks thrown from above.

That story offers a clue about why biblical authority is a problem in the church. The church (with Christian denominations and congregations and families and individuals) turns to the Bible both for reassurance of divine order in a world we experience as chaotic and as promise of deliverance from powers we experience as imperial. When we think about it, we probably recognize both aspects. But as we are living our everyday lives, walking the narrow path between cliff and abyss, some of us will be more alert to imperial imposition and others of us to chaotic irruptions. As we live our common life, sometimes we will be at odds.

How is the Bible Authoritative?

The Bible authorizes Christian communities and individual Christians: it gives us our identity as Christians. Oh, I know, sometimes we back off from this formulation. Some would say: it's not exactly the Bible that authorizes us; it's the Gospel, God's gracious word of love to a needy world. Others would say it's what God has done in the world, things like the Exodus, establishment of the covenant and faithfulness to it, and most especially the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's something to those claims--and yet, the Bible remains central. After all, events don't have much meaning for us until we are able to talk about them. It is the Bible that gives us the language in which to talk about God's work in the world, that shapes the events into a story, that begins to interpret the stories of Israel and Jesus as relevant to our identity, and provides a basic fund of images with which we can talk about that story.

In addition, in lived experience, what authorizes is sometimes a specific biblical text. I am comforted when feeling lost by remembering the words from the second part of Isaiah: "I have called you by name; you are mine." When I am certain I am not good enough, I am reassured by Paul's insistence that people "are justified by faith, not by the works of the law." When I am angry or hurting I turn to the Psalms of complaint for permission to turn to God with my pain and language in which to do it.

Once the relationship with God is not only private but communal as well, it becomes important that there be some common understanding of who we are as community, of what the story is that shapes us, of how to talk about it with one another. Within and between denominations, the use of the Bible in liturgies and in preaching helps to provide the family resemblance that enables us to recognize one another as church, as sisters and brothers in Christ. ("God brought us out from the house of slavery, the land of bondage"; "Now Christ is raised from the dead.") This particular way in which the Bible functions as identifying authority has a harsh edge to it. We Christians have used the Bible not only to recognize other Christians as part of the family; we have also used it to decide who is not part of the family. So in this way the authority of the Bible has been a kind of boundary-setting authority, which sets the limits on just who can be recognized as one of "us" and who is instead described as one of "them." But it must be remembered that the core of the Bible's authority is its authorizing function, and that excluding outsiders is secondary and derivative.

This is not obvious. While thinking about this article, I asked some friends and colleagues how they had experienced biblical authority in their lives. I was surprised to receive negative answers: how the Bible doesn't function primarily to restrict or convict them.