Who/What is the Word of God?
And how is the understanding in the Confession of
1967 being undone?
We recently received this note from Ruth M. Kratz, Newark, Delaware
Dear Doug,
I thought the recent copy of Network News
was really great, especially the article by
Paul Capetz, but in that article I was reminded of something that
I had discovered about a month ago and wondered if it had any
significance.
I wrote a couple of pages after attending a meeting
at our church where people expressed their feelings about Amendment A.
I talked about Jesus Christ as the "Word of God" with a
capital "W" and the Bible as "the word of God
written" with a small "w," with the same background
Capetz gave, but I discovered that a change had been made between 1970
and 1994.
Sincerely,
Ruth Kratz
Here's what she wrote:
Background on The Word of God
It grieves me today to hear people say that they
believe in the Bible and then equate that with believing in Jesus
Christ. It is not the same. Jesus taught and modeled a community with a
specific, consistent world view that was at odds with much of his
scripture and culture and with much of our culture. In the 1940s and
'50s the United Presbyterian Church, after considerable study,
completely revamped the educational materials of the church. One area
that received special attention was the way in which the bible was
defined. There was a concerted effort to undo the trend toward referring
to the bible as the Word of God, and to restore the radical nature of
Jesus' call.
Every teacher's manual explained that Jesus
was the Word of God. The first chapter of John talks of Jesus as the
Word, the Logos, God Incarnate, the Word made flesh. The bible
is a witness to the Word himself. It
is not the Word. The prophetic and apostolic testimony (the word
of the Lord to the prophets and later to the apostles) collected
together in the scriptures is called the word
of God written or spoken.
In these cases the capital "W" is dropped for a small one to
mark the difference. This custom was followed in the King James Bible
and the Revised Standard Bible.
In the process of writing the Confession of 1967
Edward A. Dowey commented that "the Westminster Confession called
the Bible the Word of God about thirty times but did not use the
expression even once for Christ. This probably contributed to the common
error of thinking that faith means to believe the Bible. It does not.
Faith means to believe and trust in Christ. The Bible is an instrument
through which faith's encounter with Christ may take place." [See
note below *]
All the efforts to undo the damage that Dowey thought
had previously been done - by not distinguishing between Jesus as the
Word and the word of God in the bible - were sabotaged sometime between
the 1970 edition and the 1994 edition of the Confession of 1967, in
which the capital "W" is used for both Jesus and the bible.
The official guidelines on interpretation add more
confusion. "No understanding of what scripture teaches us to
believe and do can be correct that ignores or contradicts the central
and primary revelation of God's will through Jesus Christ made known
through the witness of scripture." [See note below **]
After saying that, however, the rest of the guidelines go on to say that
we must "hear" Jesus through all the creeds of the church and
through the councils of the church. It is not enough, evidently, to take
Jesus at his word, as quoted by the biblical witnesses. The gospels and
the epistles all give different pictures of Jesus and differ as to how
he understood himself, but there is a remarkable consistency in what he
did and taught about God and about us and his vision for human
community.
Jesus respected and built on much of his tradition,
but he also rejected much or interpreted it in a way contrary to common
practice. He tossed out the entire holiness code, welcomed all kinds of
sinners and misfits. His ministry and message were so different from
that of John the Baptist, that John sent messengers to ask Jesus if he
really was the one John had earlier introduced to his followers. In
answer, Jesus told the messengers to tell John what they had seen:
"the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed."
John preached judgment and repentance. Jesus too
carried out the role of a prophet, but he also established a healing
community. After praising John as a prophet Jesus went on to say that
even the least in the Kingdom is greater than John. The prophetic word
will accomplish nothing unless it is spoken by a caring Christian
community which is demonstrating by its openness, inclusiveness, and
concern for the isolated and oppressed what the Kingdom is all about.
For some reason there is great resistance to
distinguishing between Jesus Christ as the Word of God, and the bible as
a witness to the Word. After the reformers rejected the authority of the
Pope, the bible became their sole authority, and Catholics claimed with
some justification that we now had a paper pope. Certainly the bible
gained increasing authority. In some areas the Holy Bible, the book
itself, was essentially worshiped. To lay anything on top of it was
considered irreverence, at best. I cannot imagine that we would go back
to that, but many current practices seem headed in that direction. I am
told that the Moorestown PCUSA now has a ritual in which the bible is
carried down the aisle.
The Presbyterian Church (all parts of it) has been
fighting a defensive battle from the beginning in trying to make the New
Testament fit into the Old Testament, instead of allowing the
"new" Word of God to speak a new word to our world. The
confessions all use the Ten Commandments as the basis of ethical and
moral teaching instead of the Sermon on the Mount, which is Jesus'
commentary on the Commandments.
We need to study the Old Testament as background, but
we really need to study the radical nature of Jesus' message, if we want
to preach a message that is relevant to our situation today. In the
nonviolent revolutions of the '70s and '80s, and in the amazing attempts
at reconciliation in South Africa, we have gotten glimpses of the
unexplored potential of Jesus' teaching. We have seen "people
power" at work in dealing with major crises in our world.
Is it ignorance or lack of courage that keeps us from
extending our fellowship to all, or from seriously exploring the
implications of nonviolence in the political arena, and from assuming
responsibility for our world ? We ignore the Word of God in Jesus Christ
at our own peril
Notes
* Commentary on the Confession of
1967, Edward A. Dowey, p 100, see also pp. 98-103
** Presbyterian Understanding and
Use of Holy Scripture, Office of the General Assembly, p 17. See
also Preliminary Study Guide for C'67, Adult Education
Committee, Philadelphia Presbytery, 1965; see Section E on the Bible.
