Page History

PDF Version of this Document

My concern in what follows is to set forth, in outline, an understanding of the sources of religious authority that I take to stand in essential continuity with that of revisionary Protestantism. To do this I shall first develop the understanding of the sources of authority typical of classical Protestantism, or, if you will, the Protestantism of the Reformation. Against this background, then, I shall indicate the changes called for in this classical understanding by the typically revisionary Protestant approach and method, as well as by the results to which they may now be said to have led. Finally, I shall outline the understanding of the sources of religious authority that I myself take to be required of an adequate Christian theology today.

...

One implication of this understanding needs to be stressed, since it is important for a clear grasp of just what is meant by the phrase, "source of authority." Contrary to a widely prevalent misunderstanding, it is no part of the authority that classical Protestantism claims for scripture, or for any derived religious authority, to deprive those who are subject to it of their own rights and responsibilities. This is so far from true, in fact, that the right of any religious authority, including scripture, to control the self-understanding and life-praxis of those under it necessarily implies their right and responsibility, in tum, to control it -- namelyit—namely, by their own immediate experience of the reality that alone authorizes it insofar as it is or has any de jure authority at all. In this sense, any religious authority is by its very nature not only an authority that is authorized, in that it derives from a source beyond itself, but also an authority that is to be authorized by controlling its right to control through immediate experience of the still higher authority, or source of authority, whence it derives. In traditional terms, any religious norm is not only norma normata but also norma normanda: it is a "norm that is normed" insofar as it has already proved itself through the experience of those who stand under it and have thus controlled its right to control them; and it is a "norm that is to be normed" insofar as this right does not exclude but presupposes their continuing right and responsibility to control it through their own immediate experience of the source of its authority.

Because this is so, however, the phrase, "source of authority," is evidently systematically ambiguous in that it refers both to the objective reality that confers a given authority -- scriptureauthority—scripture, say, in relation to tradition and the magisterium, or Jesus Christ in relation to scripture -- and scripture—and to the subjective experience of this reality as thus conferring such authority -- sayauthority—say, the experience of scripture as authorizing tradition and the magisterium, or the experience of Jesus Christ as authorizing scripture. To be sure, the question has been raised -- notably raised—notably by Paul Tillich -- whether Tillich—whether experience is properly regarded as a source of authority or, rather, as Tillich himself proposes, as the medium thereof. But this distinction is not easy to maintain, as Tillich's own example makes clear, and there is nothing in the classical Protestant position on the question that seems to require it. Therefore, I prefer to distinguish, instead, between two different but closely related senses of "source of authority": an ontic sense, in which it refers to the preexisting reality that authorizes a certain authority; and a noetic sense, in which it refers to the immediate experience of that reality as authorizing the authority. That both senses of the phrase are, in fact, implied by the classical Protestant understanding of the sources of authority is evident from Luther's well-known words in his Preface to the Epistle of James: "All the genuine sacred books agree in this, that all of them preach and push Christ. That is the true test, by which to judge all books, when we see whether they push Christ or not, since all the scriptures show us Christ (Rom 3), and St. Paul will know nothing but Christ (l Cor 15). What does not teach Christ is not apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul taught it; again what preaches Christ would be apostolic even though Judas, Annas, Pilate, and Herod did it." Clearly, if the "true test" of scriptural authority is not simply Christ but our seeing that Christ is preached or taught, our own experience of Christ as authorizing scripture is itself a source -- specificallysource—specifically, the noetic source -- of source—of scripture's authority.

But if even scripture's authority is thus derived from ongoing Christian experience of Christ himself, what of classic classical Protestantism's claim that scripture is the norm that norms but is not normed? The answer, I submit, is that this claim is intended to distinguish scripture from all other recognized norms, not to deny that it itself is normed and is to be normed, in relation to Jesus Christ. Given the material principle of solus Christus, scripture is and must be like any other religious authority in deriving its authority from a source beyond itself. In this sense, it, too, is and must be a norm that is normed and is to be normed. But since what authorizes scripture, insofar as it is authorized, is immediate experience of Jesus Christ himself, there is also an important sense in which it is not normed -- namelynormed—namely, not by any other religious norm, properly so-called. Scripture is unlike all other religious authorities in that what authorizes it is not itself a religious authority in the literal sense of the words. This implies, of course, that, from the standpoint of Christian belief, experience of Christ, or of the God whom he decisively re-presents, neither is nor has a religious authority -- notauthority—not, at any rate, in the same literal sense, as distinct from such analogical sense as the same words may be given in speaking of the authority of the Son as sent by the Father or of the authority of Christian experience of Jesus Christ as empowered by the Holy Spirit. But this implication is to be accepted and insisted on for the reasons well expressed by Luther: "Neither doth Christ give grace and peace as the Apostles gave and brought the same unto men by preaching the Gospel; but he giveth it as the Author and Creator. The Father createth and giveth life, grace, peace, and all other good things. The self-same things also the Son createth and giveth." Although Christ, or God, is indeed the primal ontic source of all religious authority, it is misled and misleading to say in any literal sense that (as one recent writer puts it) "Christianity recognizes only one absolute authority -- that authority—that of God himself." Correspondingly, Christian experience of Christ, or God, although the primal noetic source of all religious authority, cannot itself be said to be such an authority in any literal sense of the words.

...

The question now is as to the changes called for in this classical Protestant understanding by the typical approach and method of revisionary Protestant theology. As much as revisionary theologians may legitimately claim continuity with the Reformers, theirs is a significantly different theology -- for theology—for at least two basic reasons, both of which derive from its own defining characteristics as a theological position.

...

This point needs to be stressed because it has frequently been obscured or denied. Thus it is often said that the underlying motive of the earlier revisionary quest of the historical Jesus was to avoid the decision of faith by providing a historical justification for faith's claims. But, as often as this objection is heard, the record, as I read it, calls for a very different conclusion. The real motive of the revisionary quest of Jesus was essentially the same as that of the Protestant Reformers in relativizing all other putative authorities to the real canon of the Christian church, which, for earlier revisionary theologians, was to be located neither in scripture nor in the New Testament but in the Jesus of history. Yet, so far from supposing that, having once discovered the historical Jesus, they would then be able somehow to avoid the decision of faith, most revisionary theologians, at least, were completely clearheaded about the unavoidability of that decision. They recognized that it is one thing to establish that Jesus actually taught and lived a certain understanding of human life but another and very different thing to affirm the truth of that understanding and to resolve to lead one's own life accordingly.

Moreover -- and Moreover—and this is the essential point -- they point—they realized that, in the nature of the case, no particular religious experience, any more than such authorities as may derive from it, can be a sufficient reason to affirm the meaning and truth of religious utterances. If such utterances are, in fact, meaningful and true, they cannot be so simply because it is historically the case that a particular person or group has actually uttered them. If they are meaningful and true at all, they are so only because, or insofar as, they are also warranted in some way by our common experience and reason, or, at least, our common religious experience and reason, simply as human beings.

So the typical method of earlier revisionary systematic theology involved a double appeal -- not appeal—not only to specifically Christian experience of ultimate reality, or to such authorities as are derived from it, but also to generically human experience of ultimate reality as both confirming and confirmed by specifically Christian religious utterances. There was a certain continuity at this point not only with Protestant orthodoxy but also with the classical Protestantism of the Reformers, both of which allowed that human experience and reason, as well as Christian experience of revelation, are to some extent a source of religious truth. And yet, despite their acknowledgment of so-called natural religion or theology, orthodoxy and classical Protestantism alike insisted on the strictly limited competence of human experience and reason to establish religious claims. The most they conceived them able to establish is such presuppositions of revelation as the existence of God, the freedom and responsibility of human beings, and God's universal demand for religious and moral obedience. Furthermore, even with respect to such præambula dei, to say nothing of the mysteries of faith itself, they insisted that it is scripture and revelation that must always confirm human experience and reason, never the other way around. The earlier revisionary theologians, on the contrary, typically insisted on the need for a mutual confirmation, on the ground that, even if Christian revelation and scripture are the decisive expression of human experience of ultimate reality, only a successful appeal to such experience as all women and men somehow have it can give sufficient assurance that this is so.

...

There are at least two basic reasons, then, why revisionary theology's understanding of the sources of religious authority is significantly different from that of classical Protestantism. Not only has its thoroughgoing historical approach led to relativizing the classical Protestant claim for the unique authority of scripture, but its characteristic method as a systematic theology entails the insistence, directly counter to that of classical Protestantism, that there is not one primal source of religious authority but two -- not two—not only specifically Christian experience of God as decisively revealed through Jesus but also common human experience of ultimate reality as originally revealed in our existence as such.

...

The argument thus merely outlined can be indefinitely corroborated by a closer analysis and interpretation of scripture and of the understanding of sources of authority implied by the specifically Christian experience that scripture attests. But if this is correct, there is this second fundamental reason for maintaining that there are and must be two primal sources of religious authority that mutually confirm one another -- an another—an explicit primal source in specifically Christian experience of God through Jesus; and an implicit primal source in common human experience of our existence as such. This position commends itself as the only adequate systematic theological position for us today not only for the logical reason adduced by a general philosophy of authority, but also for the theological reason that it is the very position required by the explicit primal source of all specifically Christian authority.

...

The main theological issue today, however, has to do with how one is to go about determining the specifically Christian experience of God through Jesus that is the explicit primal source of all authorized Christian utterances. Of course, for classical Protestantism as well as for orthodoxy, the answer is simple: the experience in question is the apostolic and prophetic experience of Jesus as the Christ directly attested by the New and the Old Testaments respectively. But, as we have seen, it is impossible for us today, given results of historical criticism that by now seem assured, any longer to concur in this answer. We now know not only that the Old Testament is not prophetic in the traditional sense of the word but also that the New Testament is not apostolic in the same traditional sense. We know, in fact, that the New Testament canon, both as such and in its individual writings, itself belongs to the tradition of the church, as distinct from the original witness of the apostles as which it has traditionally been identified. Therefore, if we are still to speak of a canon at all, in the sense determined by the early church's own criterion of apostolicity, we have no choice but to locate it, not in the New Testament as such, to say nothing of the Old, but in the earliest layer of Christian witness accessible to us today by way of historical reconstruction of the tradition of witness lying behind the New Testament writings. My conviction is that we must indeed speak of a Christian canon in this sense, lest there be no way of adequately determining what utterances are and are not appropriately Christian, and that it is precisely the earliest stratum of the church's kerygma -- the kerygma—the so-called Jesus-kerygma of the earliest synoptic tradition -- that tradition—that is its locus.

The question may certainly be raised whether the Jesus-kerygma is, in fact, the earliest form of Christian proclamation, and hence the one that the early church's own criterion of apostolicity warrants our recognizing as canonical. But even if the answer to this question should prove to be negative --becausenegativ—because, say, a proto-form of the so-called Christ-kerygma is at least as early -- the early—the Jesus-kerygma would still retain the only priority I have any intention of claiming for it. For it is in this kerygma that the Jesus who is the subject-term of all Christian witness, and hence the explicit primal ontic source of all specifically Christian authority, is attested without explicit christological predicates-the Christ-kerygma, as Willi Marxsen argues, being merely implicit in the "that" of the Jesus-kerygma, as distinct from its "what." Because all explicit christological predicates not only interpret their subject-term but are also, and more fundamentally, interpreted by it, it is the meaning to be discerned precisely in the Jesus-kerygma -- in kerygma—in the Jesus to whom it bears witness -- by witness—by which the appropriateness of all explicit christology and, consequently, all other Christian utterances must finally be detennineddetermined.

This means, however, that the postliberal position I am here proposing is itself significantly different not only from the positions typical of classical Protestantism and orthodoxy, but also from both of the positions taken subsequently during the two earlier phases of revisionary Protestantism. As was noted above, the canon typically recognized by the earlier liberal theologians was located in the Jesus of history, whose life and teachings as retrievable by historical inquiry were taken to be the real norma normans, sed non normata. But, aside from the doubts one must now have, given the nature of our sources, about any attempt to recover the historical Jesus, the decisive objection to this earlier liberal position is that, from the very beginning of the church's existence, the explicit primal source of Christian authority has been, rather, the Jesus experienced by the earliest disciples and attested by their witness of faith, which itself, therefore, is the real Christian canon. It was only because, or insofar as, the writings of the New Testament were -- as were—as we now realize, mistakenly -- identified mistakenly—identified as this earliest witness that they were themselves ever taken to have apostolic and, hence, canonical authority. Consequently, even if we today can no longer make this identification, where we must relocate the canon, if we are to apply the same criterion of apostolicity, is not in the socalled so-called historical Jesus, but in the Jesus-kerygma of the earliest church.

...

Such, at any rate, is the essential position of revisionary Protestantism, and the conclusion argued for here is that this position, more than any other, belongs to the future of Christian theology as well as to its past.

n.d.