Dr Richard Barcellos writes in his Lecture Notes on Biblical Hermeneutics,
“Here we must be careful not to infuse later, neo-orthodox concepts of
Christocentricity into the historical data. The Christocentricity of the
Reformed and Reformed orthodox was redemptive-historical and not principial … But
we must still be careful with the term Christocentricity. Christology must not
be viewed as the central dogma of the Reformed orthodox.”[1]
What did he mean by this statement?
Barcellos asks, “Terms such as Christ-centered and
Christocentric are used often in our day. But what do they mean? The older way
of describing the concept these terms point to, the target or end to which all
of the Bible tends, is encapsulated by the Latin phrase scopus Scripturae (i.e., the scope of the Scriptures). This concept
gained confessional status in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy
Declaration, and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith in 1.5, which,
speaking of Holy Scripture, says, “. . . the scope of the whole (which is to
give all glory to God)…’”[3]
He continues, “The post-Reformation Reformed orthodox
theologians embraced a whole-Bible hermeneutic. This manifested itself in their
understanding of the scope of Scripture. Though scopus could refer to the immediate pericope, it also had a wider,
redemptive-historical focus. Scopus,
in this latter sense, referred to the center or target of the entirety of
canonical revelation or that to which the entire Bible points. For the
seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox and their Reformed predecessors, Christ
was the scope of Scripture, being the primary means through which God gets
glory for himself.”[4]
Thus, within the context of the “Scopus Scripturae,”[5]
where the entirety of Scripture points toward Christ as the “target” in a
redemptive-historical sense, this scopus
of Scripture was understood as the “Christocentricity” of the Reformed
orthodox. According to Dr Barcellos, “the relationship between the testaments
was seen in terms of a promise/fulfillment, figure/reality, type/anti-type
motif,” and all of revelation consummates in the coming of Christ.[6]
However, Neo-orthodox Christocentricity stands in stark
contrast to the loci method of the
Reformed orthodox.
What is the loci method of the Reformed orthodox?
Rehnman explains, “The loci method … resulted in works with
a sixfold pattern of topics, organised after the biblical and historical order
(an inheritance from Lombard’s Sententiae), where each locus was examined in
the light of redemptive history.”[7]
In this method, “Scripture, and not Christ the Mediator, is
a fundamental principle or foundation of theology in Reformed orthodoxy,”
writes Barcellos. In such a methodology, which uses Scripture as the principium cognoscendi (principle of
knowing), basic theological topics or categories discovered within Scripture is
organized according to loci theologici. These loci were “clusters of organizing principles that help determine
the focus of theology. Thus various biblical themes such as sin, redemption,
justification, grace, etc. furnish some of the loci theologici for systematic theology.”[8]
In other words, these loci theologici
were “major heads of systematic theology.”[9]
Now, having discovered the basic topics of Scripture using
these loci, the Reformed orthodox “reverses
the process and organize Scripture passages into their overarching categories,
thereby disintegrating their original contexts.”[10]
Therefore, Scripture is thereafter organized and understood according to the
theological topics (loci theologici) initially
derived from it.
The Reformed orthodox started with Scripture, and concluded
Christocentricity in terms of the historia
salutis or redemptive history. Considering the fact that Christ is the scopus (target) of Scripture, and He is
at the “soteriological center of the work of redemption” (pace Muller), the Reformed orthodox do not view Christology as the central dogma of Reformed theology.
As mentioned earlier, the loci method distinguishes several loci theologici (or theological
categories/topics) derived from Scripture, and Christology is only one of them.
Rousas Rushdoony worded the crux of the problem very well,
and I shall quote him extensively here. He writes,
“Another tendency which plagues
current Christology is the neo-orthodox thinking which ostensibly is
Christocentric because it considers the Christ of Scripture a higher universal
than the Father. Being indifferent to God-in-Himself and concerned with God-in-relationship,
and finding the deity exhaustively revealed in relation, neo-orthodoxy centers its focus
on Christ because it has no other focus. But the Christ it centers its
attention upon is hardly recognizable. The results of critical biblical scholarships
are fully accepted. The historical Jesus is separated from the Christ, and the
Christ becomes the universal, participation in whom constitutes the essence of
being a person and being saved. All men are lost and saved, reprobate and
elect, in terms of this correspondence. The essence of God is revelational
activity, and the essence of man is faith. Hence, God must reveal Himself and
is known in the Christ, in activity, while man must inherently believe, since
such is his nature. Neo-orthodoxy thus tends toward universalism; all men must
eventually be saved because all men are men only as they believe. Similarly,
God is God only as He reveals Himself in revelational activity, supremely in
the idea of the Christ. Thus God to be God must be fully involved in history,
become fully involved in contingency, lay aside all his incommunicable
attributes, if He has any, and become the opposite of Himself. From liberal
sources, neo-orthodoxy has been criticized as a St. Vitus dance in
no-man’s-land. Its Christology can be further described as a ladder in empty
space, reaching from nowhere to nowhere. Neo-orthodoxy can say God was in
Christ because there was then no God apart from Christ; in that revelational
activity, God was exhaustively present. The incarnation for Barth, for example,
was God’s complete humiliation and self-sacrifice, and he can even speak of God
suffering “death and perdition.’”[12]
What Dr Barcellos considers as excesses of the so-called “Christocentricity”
of Neo-orthodoxy is also founded upon the Neo-orthodox erroneous view of
Scripture.
Neo-orthodoxy teaches that the Bible is merely a medium of
revelation (contra the Reformed
orthodox view that Scripture is the infallible, inerrant, final authority of
the Christian faith).[13]
For neo-orthodox theologians such as Karl Barth, revelation depends on the subjective,
experiential, interpretative encounter of each individual with Scripture (that
is, the Bible).
The Bible “becomes” the Word of God when the Spirit uses Scripture
to direct a person to Christ. The truth value of propositions found within the
Bible is subordinate to, and inconsequential with regard to, the personal subjective
encounter one has with Christ through it. Hence, for the Neo-orthodox, there is
no objective truth.
Rudolf Bultmann even goes so far as to “demythologize” the
historical Jesus of the Bible. He writes, “The Christ who is proclaimed is not
the historical Jesus, but rather the Christ of faith and of the cult.”[14]
Here, Bultmann means that the Christ revealed to the reader when the Bible
becomes the Word of God through one’s mystical experience is not the historical
Jesus documented in the Gospel narratives. “For Bultmann there is “no question
that the New Testament conceives of the Christ event as a mythological
occurrence,” even though Jesus Christ is a historical figure. Thus “historical
and mythic are here peculiarly interlaced.” Next to the historical event of the
cross, “stands the resurrection, which is in and of itself no historical
event.’”[15]
In neo-orthodoxy, Truth is thus not founded upon a correct
hermeneutical process using Scripture as the inerrant, authoritative,
propositional foundation, but via a mystical experience which is subjectively
varied and variedly subjective. The student reads the Bible’s printed pages
(regarded as a mere medium of divine revelation), which then becomes the actual
Word of God to him in his mystical experience. As such, “Truth” is no longer
objective, but paradoxical and even apparently contradictory.
Christocentricity, then, becomes a hermeneutical and
theological necessity because such a low view of Scripture lends itself to no
other focus or dogma in theology other than Christ. And this Christ is part of
a Christology not founded upon objective propositional truths exegeted from
Scripture. As noted above, Rushdoony has aptly likened Neo-orthodoxy’s
Christology “as a ladder in empty space, reaching from nowhere to nowhere.” This
proverbial ladder is founded upon an erroneous view of Scripture that denies objective,
propositional revelation and truth. The ladder then reaches out into the
numinous heavens to an ultra-transcendent, unknowable God – a deity that can
never be known by mere human minds. To Barthians, God is ontologically unknown and unknowable even in his revelation of Himself. Neo-orthodox Christology is thus
based upon a mystical understanding of the Bible via subjective spiritual
experiences, and not upon objective biblical exegesis of revealed truths.
Barcellos concludes, “The method of Reformed orthodoxy,
then, started with the text of Scripture and its exegesis, went to the synthesizing
of Scripture in terms of interpreting difficult passages in light of clearer
ones and identifying its (i.e., Scripture’s) unifying theme or themes based on
its various levels of meaning, and then (and only then) categorizing the
exegetical and canonical-theological findings in the long-practiced loci method
of dogmatics.”[16]
Using Scripture as the cognitive foundation of our knowledge
of theology, the loci method finds
several foundational, theological categories within Scripture, unlike
Neo-orthodoxy which centers her focus upon Christ because it has no other
focus.
References
[1] Richard
Barcellos, Lecture Notes on Biblical
Hermeneutics (Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies), 92.
[2]
Forgive me if I am mistaken!
[3] Richard
C. Barcellos, “Scopus Scripturae:John Owen, Nehemiah Coxe, Our Lord Jesus
Christ, And A Few Early Disciples On Christ As The Scope Of Scripture,” Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist
Studies Volume 2 (2015): 5.
[4]
Ibid., 6.
[5]
See Barcellos, Biblical Hermeneutics,
under heading (number) 4, 89. Barcellos writes, “According to Reformed
orthodoxy, then, Christ is the scopus
(target) toward which the whole of Scripture tends. This view of the scopus of Scripture was closely related
to their view of the relation between the testaments.” Ibid., 91.
[6]
Please read Barcellos, Biblical Hermeneutics for more details of the Scopus Scripturae of the
Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy.
[7] Sebastian
Rehnman, Divine Discourse: The
Theological Methodology of John Owen, ed. Richard A. Muller, Texts and
Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2002), 156.
[8] James
T. Bretzke, Consecrated Phrases: A Latin
Theological Dictionary: Latin Expressions Commonly Found in Theological
Writings (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998).
[9] George
Thomas Kurian, Nelson’s New Christian
Dictionary: The Authoritative Resource on the Christian World (Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001).
[10] Timothy
Wengert, “Biblical Interpretation in the Works of Philip Melanchthon,” in A History of Biblical Interpretation: The
Medieval through the Reformation Periods, ed. Alan J. Hauser, Duane F.
Watson, and Schuyler Kaufman, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 326.
[11] “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
regarded as a subject not an object (i.e., 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, rather than read biblical reports of
events as in some way historical, neo-orthodoxy interpreted them as myths meant
to convey theological truth in historical dress. Critics, of course, pointed
out that the effect of this approach was to downplay the historicity of
biblical events. Third, neo-orthodox theologians believed that truth was
ultimately paradoxical in nature, so they accepted apparently conflicting
statements in the Bible as paradoxes for which a rational explanation would be
both inappropriate and unnecessary. By accepting apparently opposite biblical
ideas as paradoxes, critics noted, neo-orthodoxy in effect seemed to cast doubt
on the assumption that rational coherence underlies and binds together the
diverse ideas of Scripture.” William W. Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert L.
Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical
Interpretation (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 58.
[12] Rousas
John Rushdoony, By What Standard? An
Analysis of the Philosophy of Cornelius Van Til (Vallecito, CA: Ross House
Books, 1995), 165–166, emphasis mine.
[13]
For Barth, “Certainly, the Bible is “not itself or by itself God’s occurring
revelation,” but rather it testifies to the occurring revelation, as the
proclamation promises the future revelation. “This promise … rests, however, on
its manifestation in the Bible” (Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik, 1.1:114). For itself, the Bible does not
claim any authority.” Barth continues, “One therefore pays the Bible a
pernicious and even unwelcome honor, when one identifies it directly … with
revelation.” Henning Graf Reventlow, History
of Biblical Interpretation: From the Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century,
ed. Susan Ackerman and Tom Thatcher, trans. Leo G. Perdue, vol. 4, Society of
Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Study (Atlanta, GA: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2010), 391.
[14] Ibid.,
396.
[15]
Ibid., 403.
[16]
Barcellos, Biblical Hermeneutics, 92.
