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.

Westminster Confession of Faith

The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of counsels, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other than the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

The Danger of Theological Systems

In effect, the scholastic theological agenda meant that the ongoing task of reading the Bible as text was superseded by the publication of the skilled theologian's magnum opus. If the goal of the theological inquiry was to extrapolate the system of propositions the divine Communicator had inscripturated in the pages of the text, it would seem that systematic theology could--and eventually would--make the Bible superfluous. Why should the sincere believer continue to read the Bible when biblical truth--correct doctrine--is more readily at hand int he latest systematic compilation offered by the skilled theologian? Why read, that is, for any reason except to determine for oneself that the theologian's conclusions are indeed biblical truth--that this theologian had captured the one, true biblical system of doctrine?...In this way, theologians exchanged the desire to give voice to the text itself for the attempt to read through the texts to the doctinal system the texts concealed. Despite the well-meaning, lofty intentions of conservative thinkers to honor the Bible as scripture, their approach in effect contributed to the silencing of the text in the church.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 63.

Making the Bible Relevant

If the Bible has grown strangely silent in the church, we might follow the pathway suggested by commentators such as Hans Frei and lay the blame for this tragedy at the feet of theologians and biblical scholars themselves Of course, Christian thinkers did not set out to silence scripture. Rather, the Bible's loss of voice came as an unintended result of well-intentioned persons who sought to recover the Bible and save theology in the wake of the Enlightenment. The irony of this situation is that in a sense scripture caught laryngitis from its would-be physicians.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 58-59.

Wittgenstein

For Wittgenstein, meaning and truth are not related--at least not directly or primarily--to an external world of "fact" waiting to be apprehended. Instead, they are an internal function of language. Because the meaning of any statement is dependent on the context--that is, on the "language game"--in which it appears, any sentence has as many meanings as contexts in which it is used. Rather than assertions of final truth or truth in any final ultimate sense, all our utterances can only be deemed "true" within the context in which they are spoken. Further, viewing language as a "game" presumes that language does not have its genesis in the individual mind grasping a truth or fact about the world and then expressing it in statements. Rather, language is a social phenomenon, and any statement acquires its meaning within the process of social interaction.

Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2001), 42.

Allegory and Martin Luther

Even though he called allegorizers "clerical jugglers performing monkey tricks," Luther himself was known to engage in the occasional allegory.

His interpretation of the Good Samaritan:

the man going down to Jericho = Adam and all humankind
the robbers = devils who robbed and wounded us
the priest = fathers (Noah, Abraham) before Moses
the Levite = priesthood of the Old Testament
the good Samaritan = Lord Jesus Christ
oil = grace

from Robert H. Stein, "The Parables of Jesus in Recent Study," in Word and World 5/3 (1985), 249.

Plundering Culture

Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themeselves but dug out of the mines of God's providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These therefore the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men ought to take away from them and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also--that is human institutions such as are adopted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life--we must take and turn to a Christian use.

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine