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The Reconstitution ofAuthority
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only possible if,
first,
the full content of that belief is put forward; and,
sec
ond,
the full principle of authority in Christianity is affirmed; and,
third,
the
full interpretation of Scripture is welcomed. These are the three
conditiones
sine qua non
to which I referred amoment ago. Let me speak to them in order.
First, I urge that the authority of Christian faith cannot possibly be
restored unless
the full content of that belief is put forward.
Let me try
to persuade you of this by asking some questions.
(i) Should we not be proclaiming the
God
whom Paul announced at Ath
ens and delineated more fully in Romans?—eternal, sovereign, and free;
wholly independent of his creation, though every creature depends on him
entirely for everything, in every moment of life; omnipotent, omniscient and
omnipresent; a just judge of sin, yet a merciful Saviour of sinners; a God of
holy wrath, who in love propitiated his own anger against erring humankind
through the reconciling death of his Son, Jesus Christ? If we suppressed any
of these notes, or projected instead the finite, limited, evolving God of pro
cess theology, would it not be a drastically reduced view of God that we
offered?—one that could not, in fact, support the expressions ofworship and
doxology with which both Testaments abound? Again, should we not be
proclaiming the ontological Trinity, which the great body of expositors
down the centuries have seen to be implied by what the New Testament says
of Jesus and the Spirit? If we settled for any of the brands of neo-Unitarian-
ism that our age has so plentifully brought forth, wouldwe not once more be
offering a drastically reduced theology, in which the mediating work of Jesus
and the new-creating work of the Spirit could not but be something less than
the New Testament says it is? And what authority could attach to such arbi
trary diminishings of biblical faith?
(ii) Should we not be urging the
incompetence
of our minds, partly
because of our creaturehood and partly because of our fallenness, to dis
agree with, or improve upon, the account of God that is given in the biblical
record and spelt out in the mainstream Christian tradition? Should we not
be saying, as classical Lutheran and Reformed theology said before us, that
apart from the enlightening of the Spirit, who illuminates to us the truth and
wisdom of the Scriptures, our twisted, darkened minds will never knowGod
at all? . . .
(iii) Should we not be insisting on the
supernaturalness
of the Christian
life and the Christian church? Should we not be challenging the all-too-
common assumption that there is no more to newbirth than newbehaviour,
no more to entering the new life than turning over a new leaf? Should we not
be echoing Wesley’s insistence that new birth is a dynamic, creative act of
God, not explicable in terms of anything that went before in a person’s life,
understandable only as an incorporation into, and thus an extension of, the
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resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ himself? . . . The manifesting of super
natural life carries authority in a very obvious way; the proclaiming of super-