The fruits of a skeptical mind. . .

I was reminded not long ago that some 36 years ago the then Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the modern world with its so-called religious scholars and the Biblical scholars within Christendom.  It was titled “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today.”  The voice came from Joseph Ratzinger later to become Pope Benedict XVI and he was, in many ways, laying out a needed course correction to those who had for several centuries used what has been called the “historical-critical” method of biblical interpretation. Note that this was about 15 years after this whole thing blew up within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Rarely have methodologies caused the kind of confusion among scholars and among the laity as this method of Biblical interpretation.  It was born of the distinction between the “The Jesus of History” and “The Christ of Faith” and began to sow seeds of doubt about the Scriptures and about what we could ever really know about Jesus Christ.  The first thing to be dispensed with was the inerrancy of Scripture -- something that had been nearly universal among both Roman Catholic and Protestants but was not summarily dismissed as naive and even dangerous.  Under the guise of clarifying what Scripture said and we could know, the veracity or legitimacy of passages within the canon and their meaning was attacked not simply by the skeptics outside but those within.  

By this time Rome had normalized the historical-critical method and it had long before dominated the universities and seminaries of Protestantism.  Though Christendom had been relatively united around the familiar words of St. Augustine, now the teachers took odds with him.  St. Augustine said, “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand; since, "except you believe, you shall not understand (as in Isaiah chapter 7: verse 9)".(Tractate 29).  All of this drew from the words of our Lord, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3).  Reason had become the master and Scripture merely the tool in its hand.

Now Rome openly mocks those who cling to the truthfulness of God's Word and Protestantism laughs at those who suggest the Scripture is without error.  The fruits of this skepticism have set us adrift from our moorings in the Word of God, the faithful catholic tradition, and the moral tradition born of this Word and tradition.  By their fruits we shall know them.  The fruits of the undoing of our confidence in God's Word have led us down the garden path of sin, wickedness, doubt, and fear.  Nothing is clear or without skepticism and doubt.  The Scriptures have become a book of thoughts which must be given legitimacy and authority by our own reason, acceptance, and experience.  What then Cardinal Ratzinger was critiquing is a genie out of the bottle.  It was profound but already too late for Rome and for most of Protestantism.  The little Missouri Synod has become the one and only group to turn back the advance of modernism and there are still some in our midst who believe that you can used the methodology without losing your integrity.  Without confidence in the truthfulness of the Scriptures, every person sits upon the throne of reason to decide what God said and what He meant by it.  This is not only attacks the Scripture but violates the very catholicity of the Church.