.
"It needs to be restated forcefully that the idea of 'the right of private interpretation' is not a Reformed principle. This alien notion supposes that any individual Christian has the right, privilege, and duty to interpret the Bible as he or she sees fit.... The Bible was not given by God to private persons but to the church of Jesus Christ, his Son.... To categorize Reformed theology as individualistic, with no doctrine of the church, is an error of monumental proportions.
The error of equating the classic Protestant and Reformed doctrine of Scripture the later [private interpretation] is committed repeatedly by the Orthodox in discussing Protestantism. Evidently they are best acquainted with fundamentalist and evangelical sects with their highly individualistic and non-ecclesial slant. Stylianopoulos makes this mistake many times. They need to come to terms with the fact that the Reformed faith is an ecclesial faith, as the plethora of confessions published in the century and a half after the Reformation attest. There is simply no excuse for ignoring the strong stress the Reformers had on the Fathers.” Robert Letham
"It needs to be restated forcefully that the idea of 'the right of private interpretation' is not a Reformed principle. This alien notion supposes that any individual Christian has the right, privilege, and duty to interpret the Bible as he or she sees fit.... The Bible was not given by God to private persons but to the church of Jesus Christ, his Son.... To categorize Reformed theology as individualistic, with no doctrine of the church, is an error of monumental proportions.
The error of equating the classic Protestant and Reformed doctrine of Scripture the later [private interpretation] is committed repeatedly by the Orthodox in discussing Protestantism. Evidently they are best acquainted with fundamentalist and evangelical sects with their highly individualistic and non-ecclesial slant. Stylianopoulos makes this mistake many times. They need to come to terms with the fact that the Reformed faith is an ecclesial faith, as the plethora of confessions published in the century and a half after the Reformation attest. There is simply no excuse for ignoring the strong stress the Reformers had on the Fathers.” Robert Letham
4 comments:
Fr Neuhaus, former Lutheran Pastor, draws this distinction between the "churchly" model of discipleship and the so-called "fundamentalist" or "sectarian" model. Perhaps this corresponds to Nevin's famous insight into American religion that these two ways were so much opposed that, "The Bench is against the Catechism, and the Catechism against the Bench."
Yet there are degrees. I was raised as a Pentecostal, a revivalist religion to be sure, but one I would argue was justified in the face of "ortho-dusty." My earliest experience of God was through the technological decedents of the anxious bench, the alter call and the slain-in-the-spirit phenomenon. Yet it was more "churchly" in degree than in contemporary Pentecostal churches and other Baptistic movements. We understood authority and discipline, we valued our pastor and took our beliefs seriously. Today, there is no discipline I can see in new-wave charismatic and non-denom communities, authority is despised, and having a pastor is exchanged for a vague leader-less-ness. Being connected to anything larger than your own small group or letting that group have any form of leadership is seen as backward, old-fashioned, or even "pagan". In places where doctrine still persists, such as the Assembly of God 13 fundamental beliefs, it is more of a moral compass or an un-important historic relic.
The downward spiral into spectacle and new-age spirituality such as "dreaming the dreams of God" is what lead me to question my presuppositions in the first place putting me on the path to a more "churchly" understanding of Church and salvation.
Dr James Walker wrote this about the ecclesiology of theologians of Scotland:
"The visible church, in the idea of the Scottish theologians, is catholic. You have not an indefinite number of Parochial, or Congregational, or National churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic, of which these various organizations form a part. The visible church is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. It is thus you may think of the State, but the visible church is a totum integrale, it is an empire The churches of the various nationalities constitute the provinces of this empire; and though they are so far independent of each other, yet they are so one, that membership in one is membership in all, and separation from one is separation from all... This conception of the church, of which, in at least some aspects, we have practically so much lost sight, had a firm hold of the Scottish theologians of the seventeenth century."
Again, Letham here misses the point.
On what basis did Calvin interpret the bible over against the church, seeing that he was a layman?
If Calvin's conscience can't be bound except by his own judgment, then his judgment trumps that of the church.
Letham doesn't seem to grasp what the concept of private judgment entails. If no church judgments are infallible, then no church judgments can't be revised by an individual. Doctrine is a reconstruction, a purely human product, and so a provisional approximation. Therefore no judgment of the church can bind the conscience as God can. Only the judgment of the individual can be normative for that individual and no one else.
Consequently Stylianopoulos' criicism is justified.
See the Problem of Authority in the Continental Reformers by Rupert Davies.
I look forward to reading that and the other book. At the moment, however, I have put all buying of books on hold until I find a job (the Letham book I am borrowing from my pastor).
On what basis did Calvin interpret the bible over against the church, seeing that he was a layman? The basis is that the Bible is the supreme authority and the church is a subordinant authority, and so the former can overule the latter. My understanding is that he claimed it was not his own private interpretation of scripture but getting back to what Augustine and the fathers had taught but which the church (meaning for him the Western church) had departed from.
Saying that church judgements are infallible still leaves open the problem how to interpret those judgments. There are different ways of interpreting the church councils just as there are different ways of interpreting the Bible. So one way or another, private judgment rears its ugly head.
Hey Robin,
This was a good quote. I am regularly reminded how much the reformed world has changed from what it looked like in the theology of the 16th and 17th century reformed theologians. I think that many of us would not even recognize our heritage even if we were plopped back in time to the general era of the Reformation. We might think it a different church and a different theology altogether.
What Letham book are you reading? His "Holy Trinity" is outstanding. I appreciate his interaction with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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