The demise of scripture in church

I am reading R. Scott Clark’s provocative new book Recovering the Reformed Confession. It is a great read, argued crisply with some fascinating historical studies along the way. If you know Scott and his Heidelblog you won’t be surprised to know that he pulls no punches (in one chapter he argues the revivalist tradition including Edwards, Lloyd-Jones, Packer and Iain Murray has subverted Reformed theology and piety!) I’ll comment on the book in the next few weeks. Now I want to take up one issue that reading it crystallised for me.

Lots of Evangelical churches in Australia with a reformed tradition (I’m thinking of Presbyterian, Anglican and some independent churches) have changed their patterns of worship  or  liturgy in the last generation. (Most of them  would not use the words worship nor liturgy but they are better than circumlocutions such a “what we do when we meet as a church”). That is no great news, though those of us who have grown up through the changes may not see how great they’ve been.Lots of those changes ‘had’ to happen, because older patterns reflected a culture of formality that has gone. However I’ve had a nagging sense that some valuable things are lost in the shift (and I’ve bemoaned the loss in class!)

In “Recovering the Reformed Confession” Clark argues for exclusive psalmody, which is something I grew up with. I am not going to join him in that (and I’ll explain why some time). I do agree that we have neglected the song book that God gave the church. As I thought about that again I had my moment of clarity. It dawned on me that this is part of a wider pattern in the change in worship. We have managed to remove almost all the points at which the church used to hear Scripture!

Think about a traditional Presbyterian service that you’ll find in the The Book of Common Order (Presbyterian Church of Australia, 1956). It would open with a call to worship, usually drawn from scripture. There would be a prayer of approach, often taken from Scripture. A pray of praise (which would have more or less scripture depending on the minister) and a prayer of confession which would often appeal directly to a promise such as 1John 1:9. Then there would be an Old Testament and New Testament reading and a sermon, the Lord’s prayer and a benediction and doxology often taken from Scripture. Even in the hymn singing churches there was often a pattern of having at least one psalm. In more recent years responsive readings were also used. If the Lord’s Supper was celebrated then the narrative of institution would be recounted twice and there might be a further Bible reading and reflection. There were plenty of things that could be done badly in all this, and the prayers and sermon could be drivel while the people had little heart for worship. But even in the worst case it was a form which gave the opportunity for extensive reading of Scripture. We could do the same analysis of the shift from a Prayer Book Service in the Anglican Church.

What happens in lots of churches today? The call is a welcome which runs along the lines of “a funny thing happened to me on the way to church …”. The prayers are brief and while perhaps (and only perhaps) more heartfelt than in more traditional services do not have any more substantial reflection on Scripture. In a family service there will be a kid’s talk, which is often an object lesson on a general theological or moral point including the words “the Bible says”, but with nothing read and certainly not a passage explained. The Lord’s prayer is not heard and there is probably only one (often short) reading. The service (meeting) finishes with the now traditional benediction, “please stay for coffee”.

I know that is a caricature and that it is not as bad as all that in all churches. Is your church very different though? (For my local friends, this is not a complaint about Springwood-Winmalee PC . We have some of these problems sometimes but often do better than I’ve described here).

The last generation has seen an encouraging resurgence of textual-expository preaching and an enthusiasm for small group Bible study. But we’ve lost something as well! We fret that people don’t read their Bible’s, but we don’t read them much when we get together, so people are simply following the example of church!

I don’t want a return to formalism or even formalities, but we need to work on how to infuse worship with Scripture. There’s the challenge.

Blogging the Confession 5 - hermeneutics

I’ve been looking forward to working on this installment of the WCF, since it is a chance to look at the principles of the Biblical hermeneutics in the confession.

The rest of the sections of this chapter deal with how we should read God authoritative and sufficient word. The most important theological assertion about hermeneutics is that the “inward illumination of the Spirit of God” is necessary for the saving understanding of Scripture (Section 5). The purpose of the Bible is to bring salvation (not simply to bring conversion but to lead the church in its pilgrimage) and it does this when the Spirit brings saving understanding. This is not a negative statement which portrays the Bible as an obscure book which can only be decoded by the enlightened few. Rather it is a positive statement that Spirit who inspired Scripture will lead his people to understand it. This confidence continues in section 7 which admits that there are parts of the Bible which are not easily understood but affirms that the central message of the Bible can be understood. It is sufficiently clear that the unlearned as well as the learned can grasp its message. The confession does not make this connection, but I think the implication is that the major obstacle to understanding the Bible is not its obscure or difficult message but spiritual deadness of the reader apart from the Spirit.

The framers of the Confession were confident in the clarity of the Bible under the work of the Spirit, but they were not naïve in their approach to interpreting the Bible. They recognised that readers did need to make use of ‘ordinary means’ (careful reading, using a knowledge of grammar and some awareness of the historical and literary context of Biblical texts). The church as a whole needs teachers who can study the Biblical text in its original languages for it is these which are immediately inspired and preserved by God. Today we are more aware of textual critical issues in the Bible than were the members of the Assembly; however we can agree that just as all we need to know from Scripture can be found “in some place of Scripture or other”, so no Confessional doctrine is dependent exclusively on dubious texts.

A further confessional principle of Biblical interpretation is expressed in section 5, that things which can be deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence are part of God’s counsel and have his authority. This assertion shows that the Assembly’s method was different to what we might call a more “biblicistic” approach. The most extreme version of this was Socinianism which would accept only doctrines which were explicit in Scripture and allowed no terms or concepts which were not in scripture. In contrast the Assembly was committed the normative authority of Scripture, but allowed that reason had a proper role in the understanding and exposition of Scripture. Rather than crowding this post with more material I’ll put up another post with an interesting quote from George Gillespie on ‘necessary consequences’. The section also allows that there are matters involved in the ordering of the church in which what we might call “common sense” should be applied.

Section 8 expresses two common Reformation hermenutical principles. One is that Scripture should be interpreted by Scripture. The flow of thought is that the Bible is God’s inspired word and so despite complexities and puzzles presents a unified message, which means that when the meaning of one passage is not clear we should expect other passages to illumine and explain it. The section also rejects the medieval tradition of allegorical interpretation of multiple senses of Scriptures and affirms that there is one sense. These hermenutical principles are an entry way into both Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology (but that would be the topic for another blog).

Section 8 affirms the need for translations. It expresses the Reformation view that the Bible belongs to the whole people of God and should be available to all in readable translations so they may be able to worship God and experience his care.