The Perkins Lectures: "Christianity in the Crucible"

Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury
Wichita Falls, Texas

Friday, 12 May 2000, 11:00 am

In 1620, as you all know well, that shipload of Puritans, The Mayflower, sailed from Plymouth to escape the English Establishment, including the Church, and to breathe the pure air of freedom in America. As it happens, an one old Puritan divine, John Robinson, was there to see them off. As the ship moved slowly from the quayside, Robinson shouted across the widening gap an extraordinary statement: "Remember," he said, "God has yet more things to break forth from his holy word."

For both Robinson and those sailing to the New World, the 'holy word' was Holy Scripture, the Bible. Robinson and his hearers were one in asserting Scripture's truth and its centrality in the life of the Christian. It was, for the Puritans, God's Word, infallible and inerrant. It was to be trusted and obeyed. But what did Robinson mean by that mysterious statement that God "has yet more things to break forth from his holy word"? Did he mean that the process of interpretation was not yet completed? That there were still undiscovered truths in Scripture to be revealed? We shall never know, although I subscribe to the latter view: that Robinson meant that the Bible was a living treasure with unlimited truths to be known and experienced. As I said last evening, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to go on disclosing God's will to us through Christ.

I think the author of Ephesians would have understood that. In my first lecture we looked at that great passage of Scripture in Chapter 1:

"I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come, and he has put all things under his feet and has made him head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."

Although comparatively little is known about the Epistle to the Ephesians, we can imagine an early Christian congregation in Asia Minor somewhere, comprising no more than twenty or thirty people perhaps, reading this letter and taking it in. They were Gentiles and Jews - mainly enslaved persons - and through their baptism in Christ and dawning Christian experience they were being drawn into all the wonder and joy of faith in Christ. What Scriptures were they reading as their Bible? We don't know. Probably the Hebrew Scriptures were available, because later in the Epistle 'Psalms' are mentioned as part of the devotional diet of Christians. They are exhorted to be "filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to the Lord in your hearts." Informed scholarly opinion is that by this time, some 50 or so years after the death and resurrection of Christ, the isolated congregations had fragments of the Gospels and several of the letters of Paul. Indeed, Paul's letters were already beginning to be treated as Scripture, as God's Word.

And little wonder! Look at the majestic truths before our very eyes.

Note the heart of the pastor: "I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers." You who are pastors and leaders of congregations, do you pray like that and desire with such intensity the spiritual formation of those entrusted to you? It has often struck me that the New Testament has an astonishing indifference to numbers, but a great concern for quality. You will not find a reference in Paul's letters that indicates his concern for large numbers of people to find Christ, but what you will find is a great yearning that those who are Christian should grow in their faith.

And look at this section of Scripture for the content of this prayer. What does he pray for? Three things are governed by the word 'that':

"That you may know the hope to which you are called...
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints...
the greatness of his power in us who believe."

Do please note that the 'hope', the 'riches', and the 'greatness of his power' are all in us! They are God's gracious gifts to us. If you were to close your Bible for the rest of the year and meditated and soaked yourself in these few verses of Scripture, you would have enough food for thought to last you! Of course, I am not recommending that you close your Bible at all - but my point is that the treasures of these verses are almost matchless. They encourage us to aim high.

And this, you see, is the point of Scripture. Its job is to take us to God. We call it his Word because it is a faithful witness to his love. It is when its servant role is overlooked that Christians and Churches get it wrong.

Take, for example, the Puritan desire to leave the old world with its conformity for the new world with its freedom to pursue faith according to Scripture. Arthur Miller's shocking play The Crucible shows the way the Bible can be manipulated by superstition, ignorance and fear. And it was Donald Soper, that great English Methodist leader, who once said, "the Bible makes a wonderful servant but an intolerable master." Soper was not, of course, denying that the Bible is the Word of God, but he was questioning the way we sometimes use it.

So, then, allow me to offer you some reflections on how we should approach the Bible today.

First, it is a witness to Christ the Living Word. And it is important to make the distinction between the Bible as Word of God and Christ as the Living Word. The Bible's role is that of a signpost to point to Christ - not to usurp his place. As God's written word, the Bible's role is to declare what God has done, what he is like, what are the saving acts of our redemption, how we should live and behave.

It is therefore a very practical book. I rather like the words of a small boy who was asked to name the books of the Bible. He replied: "It begins with Genesis, goes on to spasms and ends in revolutions!" Well, he meant Psalms and Revelation - but he was half right - the witness of the Bible does revolutionise those who sincerely turn to God.

But does the Bible have limits? I believe it does. While Scripture does indeed "contain all things necessary for salvation," it does not necessarily have "all the answers" to the concerns of our daily life. Yet this does not reduce Scripture's importance or uniqueness any more than saying that Bill Gates is not the country's best baseball player reduces his significance to the development of the personal computer. Similarly, the Bible has very little to say about science but a great deal to say about scientists as people and how they should use their knowledge.

Second, not only is the Bible a witness to Christ the Living Word, it is an indispensable witness. That is to say, we cannot do without the witness of Scripture. It is incomparable and unique. This statement, however, is not without its difficulties, because we are immediately challenged to justify the claim.

In what way, then, is the Bible unique and indispensable?

Simply put, the Bible is the record - inspired by God - of his saving activity in human history. It is worth us remembering that the Bible is perhaps one of the most studied and researched books in the world. For the last 250 years, it has been the subject of exhaustive and critical investigation. It has been rubbished, vilified, scorned and denigrated - yet it remains central to all Christian traditions. It is loved and revered and continues to lead men and women to the Living Word. All mainstream Churches agree that to depart from the Bible is to depart from the Christian faith - so pivotal is it to us all.

In the Episcopal tradition - and I believe the Methodist tradition is similar - every clergyperson has to assent to this Declaration whenever a new charge is taken up:

"The Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It proclaims the faith uniquely revealed in the holy scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the church is called upon to proclaim afresh in every generation."

In that interesting affirmation three voices can be distinguished: Scripture, tradition and reason. And none of us can escape the three. If Scripture is the indispensable norm of our faith, tradition is that 'habit of the heart' as the Church experiences its encounter with Jesus Christ and as it enunciates its faith in creeds and in doctrines. Likewise, Reason is our encounter with a living stream of knowledge as we encounter new insights, new knowledge and information. But HOW are we as a Church to go about "proclaiming the faith afresh in every generation"?

This can be a very difficult and taxing task. Let me offer you two American voices who speak to this issue - and believe me they are very distinctive and very controversial!

First, Jerry Falwell:

"The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without errors in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc." (From Finding Inner Peace and Strength)

It is worth noticing that Jerry Falwell has already introduced several theological ideas into the definition of Scripture. Where have words like 'inerrant' and 'infallible' sprung from? They are not biblical words. Rather, they spring from a theological tradition which is trying to 'protect' the Bible. These words tell us what the Bible is not. It doesn't err, it is not fallible. "Defend the Bible," growled the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon in the last century, "I would sooner defend a lion." For Spurgeon, the power of the Bible lay in its power to reveal God, not in defending itself.

If Falwell's approach has its difficulties, then we might find Episcopal Bishop Jack Spong's approach equally controversial:

"The suppositions that underlie the Bible are today held by no one, not even those who define themselves as 'Bible believing Christians'. Their value is only historic. The Bible relates to us the way our ancient forebears understood and interpreted their world, made sense out of life, and thought about God. Our task is the same as theirs. We must interpret our world in the light of our knowledge and suppositions." (From Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, 1991, p.32)

Spong's conclusion is the radical opposite of Falwell's. For Falwell, the Bible hedges us in on every side. It is God's total truth about everything. It must measure everything we believe and everything we do. We cannot escape it and thus we must embrace it totally.

For Spong, on the other hand, the Bible is merely history. It has as much relevance to our formation as Aesop's Fables. Modern Christians cannot look to it as a source of guide to contemporary truth and behaviour.

Well, it is clear that those two worlds are not exactly on good speaking terms! I am reminded here of a story attributed to that rather infamous American institution, Woody Allen:

"A man came in to see a psychiatrist. When the psychiatrist asked him what the problem was, the man said, 'Well, it's my brother. I think he's crazy.'

'Why do you think that?' asked the Doctor.

'Well,' said the man, 'he thinks he's a chicken.'

'Hmmm,' the doctor replied. 'That does sound sort of strange. Why don't you bring him in?'

'I can't,' said the man.

'Well, why not?' asked the doctor.

'Because I need the eggs,' the man replied."

Each thinks that the other position is unreasonable, and polarisation results. Yet neither comes across as particularly 'reasonable', does it? In the case of Falwell vs. Spong, I have to say that I have problems with both approaches. The first makes the Bible more than a witness. It becomes for Falwell the actual voice of God and God himself seems subsumed by the BOOK. However, for Spong the Bible is merely a witness to the past. It points back, but it has little to say to us today.

And yet, curiously enough, both writers sound very similar. Each in his own way sounds like a fundamentalist - reducing complexities to satisfactory simplicities. It is 'nothing but-ery' again. For the former, the Bible is "nothing but the pure voice of God"; for the latter, the Bible is "nothing but the bygone voice of the Church."

There must, of course, be a middle way. We cannot abandon Scriptures to the dogmatic voices of either the fundamentalist literalist or the fundamentalist radical. Sanity must prevail!

Interestingly, Richard Hooker, one of the greatest architects of Anglicanism in the later 16th century, had to raise his voice against a tendency similar to Falwell's to iron out the complexities of Scripture. Hooker made a distinction between the knowledge we know by study of nature and science, and knowledge revealed by Holy Scripture. Hooker wrote:

"We are to know that the word of God is his heavenlie truth touchinge matters of eternal life revealed and uttered unto men.. .We therefore have no word of God but the Scripture." (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V.21.2)

Scripture, therefore, makes claims of heavenly truth - and it leaves it to us to work out with God what those claims are. God has given us minds to think and to see his handiwork in the natural world.

But no Christian who believes that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life fears the truth. If we are to proclaim our faith afresh to our generation, then we must evaluate our faith in the light of human knowledge, and assess human knowledge in the light of Scripture and the faith received from the saints and scholars of the Church.

And most Christians of intelligence are not surprised to discover that although the Bible is in many respects a simple book which speaks directly to the human heart, it is also a complex and deep book over which generations of scholars have pored with delight. It was St.Augustine who said of Scripture: "It is like a vast ocean in which the lambs may gambol in the shallows and the elephants may swim to their hearts content!"

So let us be elephantine this evening and let's have a swim together! The word 'Bible' is actually a plural word - meaning 'books' or 'library'. And so it is. A library of 66 books - comprising poetry, history, parables and legends, a songbook, Gospels, letters and apocalypses. And whenever we read the Bible, let us recall that there were at least three original languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek - and those 66 books were written over a period of 1200. Yet, let us also bear in mind what Hugh of St. Victor wrote many centuries ago: "The whole of Scripture is one book and that one book is Christ" (Omnis scriptum unus liber est, et ille unus liber Christus est).

But as we swim further, we find undercurrents which tug away with their questions. Why do we have four Gospels, each with different emphases, stories and sometimes apparent contradictions? Matthew, Mark and Luke are very alike but John is quite, quite different, with different stories entirely. If the Last Supper was so important as Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us, why does John ignore the breaking of bread and replace it with Jesus washing the feet of the disciples?

What do we do when we are presented with issues which challenge us? Well, remember we are swimming now - we have to use our muscles. We cannot simply rely on the currents to carry us on. God expects us to use our insights and to make his truths our own.

Let us take the example of Christ in the Gospels. He himself often avoided the direct question. He is asked a question about eternal life; he tells a story about a pearl hidden in a field. He is asked to define 'neighbourliness'; he tells a story about a Samaritan, a hated neighbour of the Jews who came to the rescue of a badly beaten Jew. When asked about the nature of God, he tells a story about two sons and a Father whose heart was broken when the younger son - of all things - left home with his suitcases and crossed the road.

It is almost as if Christ is saying to us: "Now use your muscles. Think. What spiritual lessons come across? What are the principles that should guide your action?"

To appeal to Scripture and to the Church's tradition is to be part of a living stream of reflection, argument, struggle and change. The twentieth century witnessed so much of this process of dialogue. The Anglican tradition, to take one example, has always given way to the authority of Scripture in the light of reason. This way of doing theology means hard work, constant prayer, and dialogue with those who disagree with us on the basis of respect and toleration.

And it is never easy and Christians will not always agree with one another's interpretation. I think of the issue of slavery. Across the river from where I live, there is a monument to William Wilberforce, the Anglican layman who spent most of his life in Parliament trying to eradicate slavery. Yet there were many sincere Christians who believed that slavery is justified by the Bible. They quoted verses from the Old Testament to prove so. Why was Wilberforce so adamant that slavery was utterly wrong and indeed a great evil? He could not point to as many verses in the Bible as his opponent could. But what he could do was to point to theological ideas which were rooted in Scripture. For example:

- We are all made in the image of God;
- All who are baptised into Christ are members of his family;
- And, especially, that great verse from Galatians 3.28: "There is neither Jew not Gentile, male or female, slave or free - but you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Theological ideas such as these proved to sound the death knell to slavery in the long run.

For many of life's questions, there are no simple answers. Yet there is a Person who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and when we come to him and stay with him, he leads us into his truth - when we choose to stand under the authority of Scripture. Rejecting both extremes - that of literalism and that of liberalism - we are invited to see the world through the framework of Scripture. This enables us to look at the world in a fresh way. Things look different when viewed through the lens of Scripture! Beware of treating the Bible as a phone book or a reference book, which we use merely to get information. Rather, it is a rich resource that can inform and shape our perceptions and our world-view.

So in this transient age, where there are so many conflicting so-called authorities who claim to lead us to certain knowledge, we can be guided by what Prof. John Macquarrie called "God's indispensable signpost to his revelation in Christ." And that signpost, of course, is Holy Scripture.

We have a saying, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." And, similarly, the God given-ness of Scripture is in its influence in our lives and how we use it in Church life. Samuel Coleridge, the famous writer and poet, once said that the power of the Bible lay in its ability to 'find' us in a way that no other book can. No wonder it has transformed societies and people down the ages. It can do so today.