The Normative Theologians for the Church Are the NT Writers...

Another gem from Scott Hahn, former Presbyterian and now Roman Catholic, who presented at the Ft. Wayne Symposia on the Scriptures in the Life of the Church according to Benedict XVI.

The normative theologians for the Church are the New Testament writers... it sounds like a Scaerism but it came from the mouth of this very gifted and knowledgeable teacher. Wow. I almost do not know where to start my reflection upon this gem of wisdom.

A little background... Since the middle and late 19th century, Biblical criticism (the discipline of dealing with the Biblical text itself and its message) have taught us according to the creed of modernity -- that the simple precedes the complex. What this means in practical reality, is that the simplest, least complex message is ancient and anything more complex is later and added on to the Scriptures. By this perspective, Scriptures must be deconstructed from the additions, accretions, and complex theological statements added to it by later authors and eras. What you are left with tends to be simple all right -- simple, moralistic, and behavioral oriented. Instead of doctrine, you get talk about how to live. In the end, this distances the Biblical writers from the life and teaching of the Church, since we cannot know much about what they actually knew or saw or believed and because they had only a rudimentary theology at that. Such a "scientific methodology" has great a huge gap between the book and the people of the book.

Now, Dr. Hahn's precious gem of a quote suggests that this is completely backwards. The normative theologians for the Church -- even today 2,000 years later -- are these very New Testament writers and their writings. In other words, it is not speculative theology which is normative for the Church but Biblical theology. We begin not with what we think the text might have been originally but with the text that is there. It is this text and these writers who deliver to us what is to be normative for the Church -- that is, Scriptures set the boundaries for what the Church believes, teaches, and confesses. Scripture informs and defines these boundaries. On the one hand, Tradition is not above Scripture nor is reason. For certain, it is not the naked Scriptures -- ripped out of the living context of the faithful who first heard and read what it said and have, in every generation, been called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified by its Truth, and faithfully passed on this kerygma to those who would follow them. No, not some naked Scripture but Scripture surrounded by and speaking from within the assembly of those who hear it and believe it.

Well, so much for today...

A little bit more...

According to Dr. Hahn, the modern historical critical movement has distanced the book from the events of the book and this has had a crippling effect upon the the Christian faith and the Church. What Dr. Hahn has seen in Benedict XVI is a willingness to confront this destructive bent and present a thoroughly Biblical theology and a Biblical theology that has as its primary subject the God who has disclosed Himself in Jesus Christ. If the subject of theology is God's self-disclosure in Christ, then the Scriptures that tell of Christ and the Biblical authors are of primary importance in knowing Him who has revealed Himself in events.

What is so interesting in this is that Dr. Hahn sounds so very Lutheran in this approach. Of course, we would certainly have some disagreements about the extent to which reason and Tradition stand with Scripture (not as equals with the Word as sometimes it seems Dr. Hahn places them). But this is perhaps the most significant theological language to come out of the Bishop of Rome and one of his keenest theological minds in some time. He engages us on what we as Lutherans have claimed as our own soil.

On this soil, we have fought against the higher critics who would steal from Scripture its reality and replace it with conjecture, sentiment, and reason. For much of Protestantism, Scripture is no longer a book of historical events but of myth, story, and conflicting theologies. Faith has become little more than principles of behavior or pious feeling or uncertain hope. Now we find ourselves with another voice insisting that theology cannot be separated from historical event and that Scripture is not a book of competing and unconnected voices but one theology.

Those who would be theologians must be in constant dialog with the text of Scripture and conversant with its authors who serve as the primary normative theologians of the Church. You hear Dr. Hahn speak as a Lutheran (okay, my description and not his) saying "Scripture is its own interpreter" or another way "Scripture interprets Scripture."

In addition this is significant because it is ultimately an incarnational approach to theology -- we begin with what God has done in Christ and not with our definition of God, who Christ is or is not... but on the historical ground of Christ's own word and works as recorded and interpreted by those closest to Him. Further this ultimately deposits Christ (and His disciples) as the primary interpreters of the Old Testament. And this means that we read Scripture through New Testament eyes -- something the higher critics have refused and ridiculed for many years...

So much for now...