A Functional-Ecclesial Approach to Scriptural Authority

As Nancy Murphy (1994:30-31) appreciates, postliberal theology, as a form of nonfoundationalist theology, claims a recovery of the centrality of Scripture in Christian life from ‘the modern attempt to reduce Scripture’s content to propositions or history or religious meanings,’ and from ‘the Enlightenment project of attempting to know all things “objectively” and “from the standpoint of eternity.”’ As we have already noted, from the viewpoint of postliberalism, Scripture has a creating power of the community’s world. The biblical narrative is the most normative story shaping the primary world of believers. This is not to say that ‘believers find their stories in the Bible,’ but rather that ‘they make the story of the Bible their story’ (Lindbeck 1984:118). Scripture forms the cultural-linguistic world for the church and is ‘the only real world’ — to borrow Auerbach’s memorable phrase (1953:15) — for the community of faith. For the task of intratextual theology, Scripture plays the key role in the process of Christian culture formation and the contextualisation of the modern world, by means of its own stories, symbols, and categories. In this sense, one can say with some justification that postliberal theology’s proposal is to restore and preserve the authority of Scripture as sacred text for the life of the church.

Postliberal effort to recover the authority of Scripture is inevitably accompanied by its claim for “the recovery of the importance of the community,” which is marked by the so-called “cultural-linguistic turn to practice.” Certain functions of the community in relation to scriptural authority are recognised to be essential and irreducible. From this, the relation between Scripture and community/tradition comes to be recast in terms of a cultural-linguistic approach. Scripture must be seen as ‘the paradigmatic interpretative framework that the community uses to understand the world and its own identity’

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(Vanhoozer 2003a:161). Scripture, in turn, can be correctly understood only from within the faith community.

According to Darrel Jodock (1989:105-114), it is natural and necessary for a functional view of scriptural authority to take seriously into account the communal and contextual aspects of authority. That is, authority depends on the existence of an organised group of human beings and is always exercised within the concrete practice of the community (:105-106). A Christian community provides the context for biblical authority, that is, the community of faith, within which Scripture makes its claim on Christians to be taken seriously in their making decisions and to form their identity. Thus, scriptural authority is ‘the product of the text’s usefulness in mediating the presence of God’ (:107); scriptural authority is the by-product of a person’s existential transformation which takes place within the community of faith.

The authority of the ecclesial community is emphatically affirmed by an influencing theological ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas (1993:18) imputes the chasm and conflict between literalistic fundamentalism and critical approach to the Bible to the separation of the text of the Bible from particular practices of the Church. ‘By privileging the individual interpreter, who is thought capable of discerning the meaning of the text apart from the consideration of the good ends of a community, fundamentalists and biblical critics make the Church incidental’ (:26). Considering the Reformation principle sola Scriptura as an ecclesial and ecclesiological claim, Hauerwas argues that if sola Scriptura is used to the extent that the text of Scripture makes sense separate from the Church and its interpretation, then sola Scriptura is ‘a heresy rather than a help in the Church’ (:27). Thus, he contends that ‘The Bible is not

and should not be accessible to merely anyone, but rather it should only be made available to those who have undergone the hard discipline of existing as part of God’s people’ [Hauerwas’ italics] (:9). In other words, if we are to understand the Bible and to

acknowledge biblical authority, it is necessary that we stand ourselves under the authority of a faith community with a willingness to accept the disciplined practice of the church’s preaching — the gospel.

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The New Testament scholar Stephen Fowl, professor at Loyola University, also take seriously the centrality of Scripture in close relation to a community. According to Fowl (1998:6-7), to call Scripture authoritative assumes that a particular relationship between that text and those communities who treat it as authoritative. Without a community or communities of people who are struggling to form and transform their lives in accord with Scripture, ‘claims about the authority of scripture begin to look rather abstract and vague’ (:6). Christian’s relationship with Scripture must be multifaceted and ongoing because the Christian life per se is ‘an ongoing process of formation and transformation, a journey into ever deeper communion with the triune god and with others’ (:7). Such engagement with Scripture of Christians is part of the prior and ongoing life of a particular tradition. The point made by Fowl is explicit: ‘[T]he authority of scripture is not a property of the biblical texts…not something that has been inserted into the Bible which can then later be found, abstracted, analyzed, and either followed or ignored. Rather, scriptural authority must be spoken of in connection with the ecclesial

communities who struggle to interpret scripture and embody their interpretations in the specific contexts in which they find themselves’ [italics mine] (:203).

Seemingly, postliberalism is a movement that seeks to recover the biblical authority and its relevance for our contemporary situation. In spite of its initial appearance ‘to swing the pendulum of authority back to the biblical text,’ as Vanhoozer (2005:10) incisively points out, the postliberal proposal actually relocates authority in the faith community, which is the singular culture within which — and only within which — the Bible can be used in forming and transforming Christian identity. From a nonfoundationalist perspective, postliberalism has sought ‘an alternative to the modern extremes of the absolute objectivity of universal reason and the absolute subjectivity of personal preference’ in ‘a relatively absolute intersubjectivity, in a word, the authority of

communal tradition’ [Vanhoozer’s italics] (Vanhoozer 2005:10). The biblical texts are

authoritative not because of any intrinsic quality but only to the extent that they function in the church to form believers’ identities and to transform their individual and communal life. All things considered, the postliberal stance of scriptural authority can be marked by its emphasis on “functional-ecclesial authority.”

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2.3.6. Assessment

As we have seen so far, there are several philosophical bearings on a postliberal view of scriptural authority, such as an antifoundationalist epistemology, a Wittgensteinian- descriptivist view of truth and ad hoc apologetics, and the literary turn to narrative as a privileged mode of biblical language. Coupled with these impetuses, postliberal theology carries a number of significant implications on the discussion of scriptural authority. Above all, the strength of a postliberal position is in its claim that self-

engagement, practice, and community must be entailed in the talk of scriptural authority. With a recovery of the significance of narrative, postliberal theology draws

‘our attention to the practical effects of scriptural narrative, to its demand on our lives, and to the degree of self-criticism demanded of anyone wishing to assess its truth’ (Comstock 1987:709). In addition, such a postliberal communitarian turn reminds us that a proper location of theological reflection on scriptural authority must be primarily within the believing community. In spite of its strengths and fresh insights, a number of criticisms are levelled at the postliberal approach.

Firstly, many criticise postliberals’ antifoundationalist epistemology as relativist. With their commitment to antifoundationalism, postliberals deny the existence of any universally accessible criteria for defending Christianity’s truthfulness and accordingly are subject to charges of obscurantism, subjectivism, and relativism. Rather than a foundationalist metaphor of “building built upon the foundation,” the cultural-linguistic approach prefers the metaphor of human knowledge as “a web of beliefs,” in which no one belief is superior to any other and instead our beliefs can be supported by other beliefs. In this nonfoundationalist account of knowledge, the authority of any belief inevitably comes to be internal to our own beliefs. Although it is not to say that postliberal theology shares without reservation Rorty’s radical form of pragmatism, nevertheless, it seems that a form of moderate pragmatism is embraced in postliberal theology, even not entirely.

Employing somehow the pragmatic viewpoint of truth, postliberals give priority to the

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Christianity must depend on pragmatic grounds. Thus, the question of telling the truth of God in ontological sense has little to do with the concern of cultural-linguistic theology. The question of truth claims appears to be equated with, or more precisely reduced to, simply “intrasystemic or intratextual consistency” (McGrath 1996:36). In the similar vein, Hunsinger (2000:313) points out that Lindbeck’s postliberalism misleadingly makes the cognitive truth dependent on the practice, performance, or self- involvement of the community in its forms of life.

Concerning the relation between text and external reality, postliberalism is criticised as antirealism, especially by most evangelical theologians. The renowned American evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch (1992:17,30) holds that postliberalism tends to obscure the metaphysical implications of the Christian faith ‘by focusing on the analysis of the text as narrative rather than on the text as the bearer of intrinsic, quasi- metaphysical meaning.’ By jettisoning metaphysical realism with which theology needs to probe how the faith community is grounded in reality, postliberals’ descriptive- intratextual theology comes to be deprived of all grounds for a normative-prescriptive critique of both Christianity itself and the reality to which it refers (Bloesch 1992:133). Likewise, Francis Watson (1994:152) spots the danger of the intratextual theology to slip into “narcissistic self-referential” theology, insofar as, in the lack of acknowledgement of any reality outside the text, the epistemological situation — that reality is textually mediated and there is no independent to it — might be reducible to the ontological claim that there is nothing outside the text. Some may defend against a charge of antirealism and argue that Lindbeck and postliberalism do not assert a purely epistemic or antirealist account of truth.42 _{Nonetheless, in postliberalism, the connection}

between intratextuality and metaphysical realism appears still loose or obscure.

42 _{Stephen Fowl and Jeffrey Hensley are in opposition to such antirealist interpretation of Lindbeck. Fowl}

(1978:877-894) argues that Lindbeck neither denies the existence of extra-textual reality, nor gives up claims to truth. Rather, the gist of Lindbeck’s claim of intratextuality is ‘to contrast a theology which accounts for things theologically, using language and concepts that derive from scripture interpreted under the Rule of faith and the creeds, with a theology whose account is determined by general, non- theological accounts of “human experience.”’ Hensley (1998:24) also argues that Lindbeck’s point is ‘a denial of the possibility of a concept-free, God’s-eye point of view on reality’ on account of the necessary theory-laden character of human perception. Hensley thus concludes that Lindbeck is not asserting conceptual antirealism and not denying metaphysical realism, but rather ‘in principle open to metaphysi- cal realism’ (:80).

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Secondly, one of the major challenges to postliberal theology concerns its view of religious language. By drawing a devastating distinction between a performative and a propositional utterance, Lindbeck fails to acknowledge the extent to which ‘all

performative utterances have propositional content’ (Vanhoozer 2005:279). Postliberal

non-cognitive description of religious language would possibly make relative any conceivable propositional content in theological reflection. With respect to the emphasis on narrative as a central form of biblical literary, postliberal preoccupation with “story” might be disposed to obscure the normative dimension of Scripture.

Moreover, it is pointed out that postliberal theology privileges one literary genre, narrative, as the dominant interpretative framework at the expense of the significance of the diversity of biblical literary. Obviously, no other literary form of the Bible is better relevant to describe Christian’s identity than narrative and, in this sense, biblical narrative has a uniqueness to represent things that can be efficiently done in no other way. However, it is not to say that narrative is all-inclusive or all-sufficient. The category of narrative is insufficient to account for ‘the whole range of temporal structures underlying biblical writings’ (Ricoeur 1995:246).43 In this regard, narrative theology succumbs to the temptation of reductionism in which the contents of Scripture are narrowed into the “Christian story.” The subject matter of Scripture is, as Bloesch (1992:188) says, more than ‘the story of the struggle of the soul of the aspirations of a people’ because it involves ‘the Word of God addressed to the soul.’

Thirdly, with respect to ethics, postliberal theology has been criticised for its “tribalistic,” “fideistic,” and “sectarian” tendency to retreat from public debate into a Christian ghetto (Gustafson 1985). Postliberals’ endeavour to preserve the church’s identity and particularity in the radically secular world is often reproached by critics for ‘endorsing a

43 _{Ricoeur (1996:72-80) draws our attention to the complexity and difficulty of biblical narrative in its}

relation to narratives in general: (1) Biblical narratives are ‘“sacred” stories as opposed to “mundane”

stories’ in their function of theological discourse and hence traditional, authoritative, and liturgical

(:243); (2) such discrepancy between biblical narratives and ordinary stories pertains to ‘the complex

relation between story and history in biblical narratives’ (:244); and (3) no biblical narrative functions

merely as story; rather it receives its theological meaning ‘from its composition with other modes of

discourse’ (:245). Nonnarrative modes such as laws, prophecies, wisdom sayings, and hymns, contribute

to the full meaningfulness of biblical narratives, and in so doing they bring about the transition from

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kind of cultural isolationism and political quietism whereby the church effectively abdicates its social responsibility’ (Fodor 2005:241). This critique raises a question about how ecclesial identity can be preserved without the loss of social relevance and political influence in postliberal theology. Furthermore, one may cast the question as to whether postliberalism does justice to the Christian claims about the experience of God’s activity and presence in our world. Postliberal ‘polarity of intratextuality versus extratextuality’ inevitably tends to restrict the experience of the Spirit’s work within the cultural-linguistic boundaries (Stell 1993:691-693). By so doing, it fails to do justice to the cosmic activity of the Spirit beyond the boundary of the community.

Lastly and more critically, while admitting that postliberalism provides, in a broader sense, a vantage point from which to affirm the comprehensive authority of Scripture, however, our consideration of several aspects of postliberalism — such as its turn to community, its suspension of the question of ontological truth, and its lack of recognition of cognitive propositional significance of Scripture — might raise the question as to whether it serves fully to restore scriptural authority. Eminent evangelical theologian Carl Henry doubts it. He (1987:13,19) argues that postliberal narrative hermeneutics, by removing any text-transcendent referent from the interpretative process, obscures the relation of the biblical narrative to a ‘divine reality not exhausted by literary presence,’ and thereby ‘eclipses transcendent divine authority and revelatory truth.’ It seems that there is little room in a postliberal view for a way of guaranteeing the otherness of Scripture as the Word of God. Furthermore, Kelsey’s emphasis on the life-transforming function of Scripture does not seem to do full justice to Scripture’s objective cognitive authority. Observing Kelsey’s distinction between de

jure and de factor authority,44 Fiorenza (1990:359) criticises Kelsey’s functional

account of scriptural authority for the deficiency of an adequate explication of the de

jure authority of Scripture. In other words, a postliberal view of Scripture lacks a

44 _{According to Kelsey (1995:236-248), while de jure authority of Scripture is grounded in its relationship}

to God, de facto authority is an acknowledgment by the community that Scripture has authority de jure. Kelsey seems to ground de jure authority of Scripture in God as ‘sanctifier and transformer of human identity’ — the Third Person of the triune God — rather than in God as ‘self-revealer, traditionally appropriated to the Second Person.’

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dogmatic ontology of Scripture, which would prevent the biblical text from disappearing into the activity of the interpreting community.