Authority of Scripture

The ultimate, final authority is not Scripture but the living God himself as we find him in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and the message about him constitute the material norm for our faith just as the Bible is the formal norm. The Bible is authoritative because it points beyond itself to the absolute authority, the living and transcendent Word of God.

Donald Bloesch in Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 67.

Neo-Orthodoxy

Between the two world wars, the work of Barth and Bultmann spawned a new theological movement called neo-orthodoxy (or dialectical theology). Dominated by Barth and another Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, three basic assumptions guided the approach of neo-orthodox theologians to biblical interpretation. First, God is a subject not an object (a “Thou” not an “It”). Thus, the Bible’s words cannot convey knowledge of God as abstract propositions; one can only know him in a personal encounter. Such encounters are so subjective, mysterious, and miraculous that they elude the objective measurements of science. Second, a great gulf separates the Bible’s transcendent God from fallen humanity. Indeed, he is so transcendent that only myths can bridge this gulf and reveal him to people. Thus, neo-orthodoxy downplayed the historicity of biblical events, preferring to view them as myths that conveyed theological truth in historical dress. Third, neo-orthodox theologians believed that truth was ultimately paradoxical in nature. Hence, they accepted opposite biblical ideas as paradoxes, thereby implicitly denying that any type of underlying rational coherence bound the diverse ideas of Scripture together.

William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Dallas: Word, 1993) 48.

Neo-Orthodoxy

The neo-orthodox view is that the Bible is a fallible human book. Nevertheless, it is the instrument of God’s revelation to us, for it is a record of God’s personal revelation in Christ. Revelation, however, is personal; the Bible is not a verbally inspired revelation from God. It is merely an errant human means through which one can encounter the personal revelation who is Christ. In itself it is not the Word of God; at best, the Bible only becomes the Word of God to the individual when he encounters Christ through it.

Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody, 1986), 175.