The Rev. Dr. David P. Scaer is a mentor of mine. I have always looked up to him and continue to do so, but what he titles Excursus III in his memoirs Surviving the Storms does not describe “Working with the Gospels” but in my mind is working against them. He admits the he “shared a similar approach to the Gospels” (85) as Dean Wenthe, William Weinrich, and Arthur Just. The seeds I saw, but could not have identified in my seminary days (’79-83’), but which I saw take root and fruit in later years were there in Dr. Scaer. The fruit actually rotted in the case of James Volez.[1]
Until people wake up and see that historical criticism is the patriarch of Form, Literary, and Narrative Criticism, and that all undermine trust in Holy Scripture, this error will continue to pull any remaining confessional Lutheran synods, churches, and pastors into the abyss all the mainline churches are wallowing in.[2]
I’ll show you how the slide toward this direction first takes shape. How many of us from Baby Boomer pastors on down would do what you find the pastor in The Hammer of God doing? He is called on to settle a dispute about a man stealing a goat or cow. He calls the farmer in and has him place his finger on Revelation 21:27, and read “and nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” He then says something like, “No liar can enter heaven. Are you a liar?”
We heirs of newer, broader, more enlightened Bible exegesis would say: “Well lying there refers to false doctrine, and sense Revelation is all symbols, it’s hard to make a prosaic application of it.”
What you will find the New Critics trying to protect is against the proof-texting of the Reformed: The Real Presence can’t be true because Jesus says, “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Behold, here is the Christ,’ or ‘There He is,’ do not believe him” (Mt. 24:23). Or against Infant Baptism by saying, “Jesus wasn’t baptized as a baby, so nobody need be.”
I think trying to protect yourself against the errors of others often leads you into another error. When we respond to the latter error with, “Jesus’ baptism wasn’t established till after John the Baptist” we forfeit the all-important continuum and relationship between the Baptism of John and that of Jesus. Likewise, when we respond to those who attack the inerrancy of Scripture with, “The original manuscripts are inspired”, we concede the point since how can anyone know if this or that is the original?
We have to go to the Person of Jesus: If all the godhead can dwell bodily in Jesus without compromise or error, then it’s a much lesser to think God can inscripturate His Word without error in a human book. And we have to go to the Work of Jesus, i.e., “if it was reliable for Jesus, it’s good enough for me”.
Jesus says: Not a jot or tittle should fall from the Word. Jesus proves the resurrection of the dead from the tense used by the Lord in the Bush passage: He IS the God of the living not the dead. Paul proves the Promised Seed is none other than Jesus by citing that the Old Testament said seed, singular, not seeds plural.[3]
And surely we must accurately know what the text says or is God that capricious? He threatens with plagues and hell the person who either adds to or takes away from “the words of prophecy of this book” (Rev. 22:18). Go ahead say it: This is only about the Book of Revelation. Any commentary from liberal to conservative will tell you Revelation is rooted more in the OT than NT. You start adding and subtracting here and you are not pruning branches put cutting roots.
And what of Isaiah 66:2? “’For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,’” declares the LORD. ‘But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.’” Only certified originals? Only the text established by critics: good ‘luck’ with that. No two agree about squat. If you want to know why the Confessional Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod are fading into irrelevance and losing members to the Evangelical and Reformed, it’s not because they haven’t adopted Contemporary Worship. Indeed they have tried that with a yeoman’s effort. It’s because they deserted the simple authority of the Word. Seminary students from the congregation I served while they were at Ft. Wayne attracted other seminary students because they said ours took the Word of God as authoritative.
That was a digression. The third and is: And what about Psalm 12:6? “The words of the LORD are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.” Sure that’s figurative, but a figure of what? Of ultimate purity, of ultimate testing, of ultimate value.
The fourth and is: And what about when Jesus shows what’s happens to those who die on the foundation of the Word or off it at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Are we slower than David was at getting that truth: Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, What can the righteous do?” Criticism that places itself above Scripture, places God’s Word in the dock, and so destroys the foundation. It always ultimately does this.
One more final, “and”: And apart from God’s overweening grace a low-view, a critical view, an unsure view leads to dying as Thomas Acquaints is said to have, clutching Holy Scripture proclaiming, “I believe what’s in this Book.” That is no confession of saving faith but of the faith of devils. Luther said that if you believe nothing more than that you will believe yourself right into hell (12-12-2012 sermon).
Explaining where the Bible comes from to your, or anyone else’s satisfaction, is like trying to explain the Real Presence, the Two Natures of Christ, or where did God come from. You know when your child asks that last question, he is starting from a flawed premise. Do you think we might be as well?
[1] I only had Dr. Scaer for one class. I couldn’t follow him, but since then I have read most everything he has ever written. Here is an example from his memoirs where I am not sure of what he is saying but he appears to me to be making a false dichotomy. “Karl Barth operated from the divine to the historical without placing much, if any, value on the historical context. His oft-quoted phrase that the most important theological phrase was the children’s song ‘Jesus loves me this I know; For the Bible tells me so’ allows no place to the historical context in which the revelation is made. Inspiration replaces incarnation as the foundation of theology” (Surviving the Storms, 81). But it is precisely the historicity of the events that is called into question by narrative criticism. Are the Gospel writers recording events or telling narratives for catechetical reasons? Do the Gospels record the ipsissima verba of Christ or not? Dr. Robert Preus would not hesitate to answer, “Yes.” Ask this of many current seminary and college professors today and watch them hem and haw.
[2] You note I didn’t cite textual criticism. That is because in my seminary years that was not taught as higher criticism over the text but merely establishing the original or most authoritative text. You try making the distinction to lay people – and I don’t care what their secular education is – and their eyes glaze over. You see, it is all academic to them, and I think that ‘glazed over’ effect is like nictitating membranes or ‘third eyelids’ that protect them from the destructive effects of criticizing Scripture. God never sets out to prove His Word any more than He does to prove His existence. When you O lowly man try to do either, what does that make you?
[3] This blog originated after reading this line from The Cider House Rules: “They were dead even as the summer began” (463) was how I read it. This signaled the death of two protagonists. A shock in the storyline. But I had missed the hyphen. It really read “They were dead-even as the summer began” a reference to the height of the protagonists’ child and himself. This is on a par with those errors in telegraphs. This is from a February 1999 sermon of mine: Little things can mean a lot in communication. A comma once cost a man a fortune. His wife had cabled him about their stocks asking, “Should I continue to sell?” He cabled back, “Don’t, buy.” The telegraph operator forgot the comma and sent, “Don’t buy,” so the wife kept selling and lost millions. The comma meant a lot to that man. Christ says in the Beck Bible translation of our text that the Law’s “i’s” and dots mean a lot to God. “Not an “i” or the dot of an “i” will pass away from the Law.” He says.
