Hermeneutical  Studies

World Council of Churches    Trends of Reducing the importance of the Bible

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

7 January 2012

 

         As if Rationalism of the post-Orthodoxy period did not enough to attempt to remove the inspiration of the Bible and to degrade it to a mere human production by many redactors with propaganda agendas, in the Middle of the Twentieth century, the World Council of Churches hopped on the bus as well. Impossible. No not at all.

           The orthodox churches has already done that in their theology over centuries. Bluntly put, orthodox theology was a similar tool than Rationalism in the hand of Satan to downgrade God's word. The canon of the Bible was enlarged to include apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, traditions of the Fathers, the decisions of the councils and the declarations of the papacy. In fact, they are claiming the church invented the Bible so the church could change it.

           World War II ended with a shift from nationalism to internationalism, from positivism to relativism, from poverty to increase in affluency. People began to think not only for their own country but for the whole world.

           Catholicism gives us a state of the art phenomenon as to what happened. No one could dream that the particularistic mono-recognized and mono-religion advocates would switch overnight in 1963 during the Vatican II meetings to ecumenism and pluralism and recognizing many religions. A note of caution would suffice. It is clear from closer scrutiny on this subject of the change of the Catholic church, that it did not change inside, although the outside appear to have changed. Catholics and Adventists should be compared on this issue. Catholics are ecumenical particularistic but Adventists are biblical particularistic. Catholics are willing to sit with anyone but operate on the conviction their religion is the only right one and all will eventually come back to them, those who departed in history.  Adventists believe in the biblical truths and hold that if Adventism is the exact replica of the biblical truths and the closest scrutiny of it, then all true investigators and seekers will eventually be invisible Adventists.

           Vatican II also engineered world systems and networks, alliances and councils, meetings and commissions to originate that would advocate and eventually assist their own catholic ecumenical particularistic agenda.

           In 1967 the Bristol conference for the World Council of Churches was on "The Significance of the Hermeneutical Problem for the Ecumenical Movement" (William Larkin, Culture and Biblical Hermeneutics: Interpreting and Applying the Authoritative Word in a Relativistic Age [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1988], 136). The mood of society at that time was to rebel against society, with the hippies, John Lennon and his fans, thus the idea to take the Bible as standard, was shaken. The attendants to the conference treated the Bible "not as unique, but as a collection of human writings. They emphasized the diversity of content in Scripture, including the possibility of contradiction" [RED CARD!].

           Ever since the inception of Adventism, the thinking was similar to the remnant through the ages, the Word of God cannot contradict itself, cannot contain errors, cannot conflict anywhere, in fact, if something appears to be one of these, they were to be explained by methods of harmonization, equalization, and unity of thought patterns. Literally thousands of scholars through the centuries did that and their arguments are very persuasive, very interesting, very appealing to the faithful and believers. However, a fox remains a fox even if they study theology. Thus, other scholars, and they were equally in the thousands, through the centuries has set themselves the task of degrading the Word of God to a mere human product. Now, in 1967, in front of our eyes, the World Council of Churches was doing the same. The fox has entered the church with sheep clothes.

           In 1971 a statement was made at Louvain by the World Council of Churches at their Faith and Order Commission and in the subject "The Authority of the Bible" they felt that the Bible's authority is in a crisis due to three roots: 1. society is rebelling against authority so the Bible should be treated hermeneutically as any other book; 2. the historical-critical method has uncovered errors in the Bible [hermeneutics of suspicion scholars were arguing] and their conclusions make it difficult, if not impossible to accept the Bible as authoritative; 3. the historical distance between the times of the Bible and modern day removes its relevancy for modern man (Ellen Flesseman-van Leer, ed., The Bible: Its Authority and Interpretation in the Ecumenical Movement [Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980], 43; op. cit. Larkin 1988: 137).

           The World Council of Churches rejected the evangelical churches insistence on the inspiration of the Word of God. They argued that the presupposition that the inspiration of Scripture serves as basis for claiming unique and final authority of the Bible, cannot be accepted. They insisted on a historical-critical method as the only scientific option. The report of the Louvain council "scoffs at those who fear that the methods of historical criticism may destroy the authority of the Bible and with it the Christian faith itself" (Flesseman-van Leer 1980: 45; Larkin 1988: 137).

           The Louvain report censured those who assume "almost unquestioningly an attitude of contemporaneity with the Bible and feel no need to attach any great importance to its historical character" and furthermore, they also censured [Adventists] those who would use the Bible "as a standard to which we must conform in all the questions arising in our life" (Flesseman-van Leer 1980: 45, 46). Of course they were reacting against liberation theology, materialistic theology's political interpretation of the Scripture, feministic interpretations, all aspects of contemporaneity. Adventists also react against Liberation Theology of any kind, feminism, anti-colonialism, socialism, marxism, and that has been dealt with in one of the doctoral dissertations from Andrews University in detail. A number of papers and books appeared on many of these subjects by Adventists.      However, despite the reaction against liberation theology, Adventists do feel that the Bible is a standard for modernity, albeit not a liberation theology one. Prophetic charts and periods, spiritual appeals, existential anecdotes find strong links with modern man. It is very relevant. In similar vein, the Bible has to be read literally and at face value for its principles that it wants to present. Culture was just a vehicle for these higher principles to operate in during past history but it did not mean to swallow up the principles and to place a time limit on them. Therefore Adventists cannot endorse the Louvain report at all, even for different reasons than the opponents whom they may have had in mind.

           Of course the scripture is a norm imposed on the church from the outside. The objection of the Louvain report is very insightful here. They complain about this. Why? Because they claim that the Bible is a product of the church and therefore it cannot prescribe to the church in future what it should or should not do. Adventists do not agree at all on this point. The remnant is the product of God's revelation and not the revelation a product of God's remnant. The horizontalism and humanism of the World Council of Church participants are not shared by Adventists, no matter how prestigious, honored, appealing, and useful it may sound.

           The biblical standard of Adventists makes them the modern Reformers in the class of Calvin and Luther, Zwingli and Wesley in contrast to most seminaries of Protestants which have endorsed and support higher-criticism and conclusions of the World Council of Churches.

           For the Louvain participants in 1971, the Bible is only inspired when it inspires the audience. Errors in the Bible and contradictions is seen as a "collection of diverse interpretations of God's action in history, each addressed to a particular, historically conditioned situation "(Flesseman-van Leer 1980: 50; op. cit. Larkin 1988: 138).

           As to the role of the Bible in modern times, the Louvain report realized that some are claiming the Bible as valid content but others want to seek a dynamic role for it, discarding it as invalid and sometimes contradicting, but not rejecting it since it may not be relevant today but tomorrow science many change and it will become valid again:

"Some hold that, as God's Word, the Bible has a timeless claim on every generation and that its message can speak directly to the men of all times provided it is set free from the historically conditioned forms in which it is clothed. Man with his questions remains fundamentally the same and since the Bible answers his deepest questions, it is still relevant for today" (Flesseman-van Leer 1980: 46). This part is as Adventist as you can get. But then there is a twist and the report of Louvain favored the second position:

"But others believe that God's action in history to which the Bible bears witness continues further and that the present situation is primarily to be understood not as analogous to that earlier time but as its fruit" (ibid).

"Only by constantly renewed interpretation does the one message remain a living Spirit and not a dead letter" (Flesseman-van Leer 1980: 57). "How can we interpret the message of the Bible in such a way that, at one and the same time, its authority is respected and it sets us free ot understand the demands and opportunities of our present time?" (ibid). What it did not state is that they wish to understand the demands and opportunities in contradiction to the understanding of the Scripture. For example Creationism and Evolutionism. It is here that Adventists cannot go along.

           Adventists understand the dynamic of meant-mean very well. In fact, contrary to preteristic models of lock-up histories of the Bible trends, Adventists view God as the dynamic one who from the beginning can see the end and thus even us were in His scope when the scripture was composed and written. Thus, meant was mean when it was originally written. So history had not tight walls through which data failed to leak to other generations. It is not just the smell of the data of those days that reach us, like the smell of nice food in study room coming from the kitchen, no, God actually designed his prophetic charts to provide navigation from A-Z, from the Fall to the Eschaton. Nothing was left out in between. At one point He stopped composing in 97 CE with John and his book Revelation of Jesus, but that was only because what was sufficient and efficient for us to know solving the big three philosophical questions, was contained in it: Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where do I eventually go?   

           The new understanding will thus not make the Scripture as canon obsolete, it will understand it in a fresh way more correctly than before since it had us in mind in the construction thereof. A better understanding of Scripture, Histories of the Ancient Near East, Ancient Near Eastern linguistics: Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, Aramaic, Egyptian in all its phases, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew in all its phases, Ugaritic, Hurrian, Amoritic, will all be able to bring from the deep pits the hidden meanings and proper understandings that will be relevant for us today.

           The World Council of Churches ended their report in hoping the ecumenical movements and those who wish to participate in it will understand properly that the Bible is a unity but with diversity to the point of errors and contradictions. Futhermore, it was a norm in the past for them in those days but we are living in changing modern times and renewed interpretations, even contradictory ones, are acceptable. Adventists can only raise their eyebrows to these non-biblical assertions.

 

If you want to be biblical, you cannot embrace deviations from it