CHAPTER THREE THE NGK AND SCRIPTURE
The most foundational question this dissertation addresses is what view of biblical authority does the NGK adopt in Church and Society? If C&S denies a historic understanding of Scripture, it denies a foundational principle of the Reformation itself. If this is so, instead of paving the way forward into a new and more just society, is C&S not turning its back on the comprehensive freedom biblical Christianity brings? Is it not instead pointing the Afrikaner and other southern African ethnic and cultural groups back to an "Egypt" of human bondage (see Walzer 1985)?
The doctrine of Scripture is based on a two-sided presupposition. Either man has the necessary and sufficient Word of God and submits his whole being to its perspicuous and infallible authority, or rebellious man will inevitably grasp to himself another "word" and then put this self-made law, truth, and reality above God's biblical Word (see Rushdoony 1978a).
Our Lord insisted that man has only two foundations upon which he can build his whole life. Either he builds upon the Rock, Christ's Word revealed in the whole Bible, or he builds on the sand, his own word of wisdom (Mt 7:23-39). Thus, Christ implies that every man must not ask "whether" he has an authority upon which to build his life, but "whose" authoritative word he uses. If sola Scriptura is not the sole "source and norm of Christian doctrine, then it is not the source and norm at all; any violation of the sola scriptura principle is a violation of biblical authority per se" (Preus 1984, 125).
Summing up classic Reformed confessions, Anthony Lane concurs: "[The] essence of the sola Scriptura principle . . . is that Scripture is the final authority or norm for Christian belief" (Lane 1994, 323). Those who reject this, claim that the "interpreter is the final norm." However, the historic doctrine of "sola Scriptura asserts the supremacy of the text over its interpreter" (Lane 1994, 326), whether it be an individual or an institution.
Now certainly it is true that the doctrine(s) of "infallibility" (onfeilbaarheid) (BC, 7), and "inerrancy" (feiloosheid), must be deduced from relevant scriptural passages (see Feinberg 1980, 1984; Grudem 1983; Wenham 1994) and the meaning of the biblical words for "truth" (see Thiselton's article in Brown 1978; Thiselton 1980). However, this does not detract from the fact that this doctrine is inescapable.
The Lausanne Covenant, later expanded and nuanced by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and Hermeneutics (ICBI 1980, 1982), shows the inseparable connection between the two terms "infallibility" and "inerrancy."
We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written Word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. (ICWE 1974)
The classic Reformed perspective has always been that "infallibility" and the later technical term "inerrancy" are interchangeable synonyms (see Sproul 1978; Woodbridge 1982). This was the essence of the theological battle with Rome. The church, its synods, popes, and doctors have erred and will continue to err (BC, 5, 7). However, Scripture alone will not and cannot be erroneous (see ICBI 1980).
The NGK and its predecessor churches have gone through several periods of transition away from and back to an inerrantist view of Scripture. The NGK at present officially denies its former doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. The following citations are designed not to prove a consensus on any specific theory of Scripture but to demonstrate the pluralistic standpoint on Scripture in the NGK.
These citations are also designed to give examples of the almost universal rejection of the classic definition of sola Scriptura and infallibility within synods and theological leadership of the NGK. Many of these leaders participated in the agitation for, as well as the writing and revision of, C&S.
First of all, the historic verbal-organic doctrine of sola Scriptura with its corollaries has been much disputed in recent decades in various Reformed areas of the world. C. Heiberg, under commission of the NGK West Transvaal regional synod, documents in the NGK a completed paradigm shift away from the historic doctrine of Scripture. He liberally illustrates his contentions from inter alia, class syllabi and notes (Heiberg 1992). Secondly, a major new work edited by Ferdinand Deist, entitled Ervaring, Rede en Metode in Skrifuitleg, documents several decades of dispute and change in the NGK (Deist 1994).
The first change was in the Cape Colony during the first third of the nineteenth century. Only by 1880 and largely as the result of Stellenbosch Seminary was this liberal movement overcome (see Van der Watt 1980; Deist 1994).
The next major stand for the Reformed sola Scriptura doctrine of inerrancy was the church, and later civil, court case involving Johannes du Plessis, Professor of Missions at Stellenbosch (see Malan 1933; Van der Watt 1987; Deist 1994). Johannes Du Plessis claimed that the Belgic Confession allowed for several interpretations on inspiration. He used this defense to deny the inerrancy/infallibility of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
The charge against Du Plessis was that he taught "that the holy Scripture was not infallibly inspired in all its parts" (Malan 1933, 298). After quoting Articles 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the Belgic Confession, the charge of the church stated:
Not only do our Confessions know no distinction between errant/fallible and inerrant/infallible parts of God's Word, but the Holy Scriptures themselves struggle against such a distinction. 1 Thes. 2:13 . . .
We refer to the Articles [3-7 of the BC] reported above. Based upon these articles, the history as it is prima facie taught by the Scripture must be accepted. This applies just as much to the historicity of the separate events, as to the order of occurrence that the Holy Scripture itself states.
This history is accepted as the truth by the Lord Jesus Himself. He establishes the historicity of Adam and Eve (Mt. 19:4); Abel and his murder by Cain (Lk. 11:51); Noah and the Flood (Mt. 24:37-39); Abraham, Isaac and Jacob . . . [and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, citing Mt 19:8; Mk 10:3; Jn. 3:14; Jn 5:45, 46, 7:19]. . . .
In contrast to the attestation of the historicity of the separate facts and events named above, as well as the order of the writing of the documents in which these and other events are described, the higher-critical school . . . [denies both]. Professor Du Plessis is in accord with this school. . . . (Malan 1933, 300-301)
In 1930, the NGK's highest court expelled Du Plessis from his professorship at Stellenbosch Seminary, and he was never reinstated, even though he won a subsequent civil court case. Ferdinand Deist claims that this synod decision showed the negative influence of Kuyperian fundamentalism and strengthened the hand of the "orthodox and fundamentalist majority" for years to come (Deist 1982, 37; see 37-39).
This Kuyperian consensus held on tenaciously until the late sixties. At that time a paradigm shift began to occur under the influence of theologians influenced by Karl Barth such as the later G. C. Berkouwer and H. Ridderbos (see chapter one).
In the 1950s under Barthian influence, Berkouwer and Ridderbos reversed their former orthodox views, introducing the neo-orthodox position on Scripture to Dutch Reformed circles worldwide, South Africa included.
Berkouwer's views are the most important for our purpose. He accuses Kuyper's inerrantist theory of inspiration of being a "mechanical," "dictation theory" (Berkouwer 1975, 18). At the same time, however, he acknowledges that "no one deliberately takes" this fundamentalist mechanical view (Berkouwer 1975, 153). Berkouwer assumes a docetic philosophical background for this theory. He accuses those who ignorantly hold to it of rejecting the full humanity of the Bible (Berkouwer 1975, 18ff).
In Holy Scripture, thus, Berkouwer correlates faith in the absolute trustworthiness of Scripture with the mechanical theory. Following Barth, who attacked bibliolatry, Berkouwer's antidote to such inerrancy teaching is not to link faith with Scripture but to link faith with God (Berkouwer 1975, 15). He thus emphasizes the leading of the Spirit through the church to find God's voice in the Scripture (Berkouwer 1975, 47-48). The Spirit is not directly tied to the careful, exegetically derived meaning of every word of Scripture.
Certainty of faith, then, is not necessarily linked to Scripture but is linked to the prior faith-commitment to God. Though he denies that this amounts to mystical subjectivism (Berkouwer 1975, 15), H. Berkhof names this as Berkouwer's third, "kerygmatic-existential" phase (Berkhof 1965).
Secondly, he made a sharp distinction between two elements. The first element is the "essential content," scopus, or intention of Scripture. This is infallible. The second element, however, because it is the "time-related form" or periphery, cannot be inerrant. Thus it is open to scientific analysis using higher critical processes (Berkouwer 1975, 175). Such a form-content (vorm en inhoud) distinction between "kernel and husk," "fact and clothing of the fact," rejected in his early work on Scripture (Berkouwer 1938, 129), was embraced in his later works (see critique by Buytendach 1972; Krabbendam 1984).
Each of these perspectives of Berkouwer has parallels in NGK synods' doctrine of Scripture and professor's scriptural critique. A major example to be dealt with later is Johan Heyns, who had a major influence upon C&S and the General Synod's doctrine of Scripture. He follows the lead of Berkouwer, his esteemed Th.D. promoter, in several works on Scripture, for example, Brug tussen God en Mens (Heyns 1976; chapter 4: "Die sentrum en die periferie in die Bybel"). Heyn's views are also paralleled in a moderate form in the NGK's official policy document on Scripture (S&S).
The same General Synod that approved the first edition of C&S (1986) passed this crucial document on the authority of Scripture. It is entitled, Skrifgesag en Skrifgebruik: Beleidstuk van die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, soos Goedgedeur deur die Algemene Sinode, 1986 (The Authority and Use of Scripture: Policy document of the NGK, Approved by the General Synod, 1986) (Potgieter 1990; henceforth S&S; see critique by Heiberg 1992).
Like Berkouwer, S&S caricatures the doctrine of organic-verbal inspiration as a mechanical theory. It replaces this view with what it calls "dialogical inspiration" (S&S, 1.2), a term used by Johan Heyns, who was then General Synod Moderator, to describe his theory of inspiration (see Heyns 1976).
Furthermore, S&S, also like Berkouwer, has a strong tendency to dialectically limit the authority of Scripture to merely religious matters. In this regard, the General Synod seems to contradict itself. It wants to hold, in an orthodox manner, to the "reliability and truthfulness of everything that is proclaimed in the Holy Scripture" (see BC, 5), correctly claiming that "the whole message of the Bible is truly dependent on the reliability of the history of God's salvation-deeds that are proclaimed in it" (S&S, 2.3).
However, the Synod also claims that a "modern-Western" theory of truth is "abstract, rational and positivistic" because it does not "reckon with the unique character [eie-art] of the Scripture" (S&S, 2.3). It should be rejected as non-biblical because it does not take into account the central, limiting scopus of the Scripture, wisdom unto salvation. The implication is that inerrancy doctrines are based on an autonomous, humanistic concept divorced from the reality of the errors of the Scripture phenomena. The reason given is that Scripture does not "strive after scientific precision" (S&S, 2.3). Thus, S&S claims that the general redemptive history proclaimed in Scripture occurred, but not every detail is accurate.
The 1986 Synod's moderate neo-orthodoxy at this point is still much better than radical and consequent dialecticism. That is virtually indistinguishable from classic nineteenth century liberalism. However, the door has been opened to increased pressure to accommodate even theological error. This S&S, 2.1 implies: "The historical-critical method . . . puts the confession concerning the infallibility of the Scripture under severe pressure." This is true even though S&S, 2.7 ("Dangers") and the last section on interpretation (S&S, 2.6) attempt to warn against some of these errors:
2. The Nature of Scriptural Authority
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 The Horizons of Knowledge ......
Even those who do not in any way want to derogate the absolute authority of the Holy Scripture have found it necessary in a certain sense to speak in a more nuanced manner concerning the authority of the Scripture because of the general acceptance of the modern worldview and the broadening of the horizons of knowledge. The Bible is not a textbook [handboek] for science or history and is not given to us as a source of revelation for all sorts of affairs that lie upon the broad terrain of our knowledge. It has a limited religious scopus or goal. It is given to us in order to make us wise unto salvation, so that the person of God can be perfect, completely equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16). . . . (Potgieter 1990, 60-61)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.5 Concept of Truth. . . . Whenever one does not take into account the scopus of the Scripture, there exists a great danger that an objectivistic and positivistic concept of truth that is foreign to the nature and goal of the Scripture will be used in the dealings with the Scripture. This is true in the case of the Higher Criticism [Skrifkritiek] that has severely attacked the Bible since the 18th century.
Unfortunately, those who would take a directly opposite position and who wish to defend the Bible against such criticism, often proceed from precisely the same positivistic concept of truth. The common result of this is that people find it difficult to accept the human character of the Bible and that leads to a fundamentalistic and biblicistic attitude towards and handling of the Bible that does not do justice to the Bible's unique nature such as it is given unto us. This appears especially in the manner in which the Scripture is interpreted and used.
2.6 Interpretation. . . . It is necessary to take into account the scopus and purpose of the Scripture in the use and interpretation of the Scripture. We believe that the reformational principle that Scripture interprets Scripture remains valid. This principle comes under attack when the historical situation of the scriptural words, together with their salvation-historical context, the richly variable meaning that language symbols can be used, and the nature of the genre of literature that we are dealing with are not taken into account. Everything in the Scripture is then simply leveled and the words of Scripture are applied to the people of today in a capricious and selective way, directly and without interpretation. This principle of interpretation is attacked through those who would subject Scripture to the modern person's possibility of understanding, by means of a previously formed philosophical hermeneutic. The presupposition of the philosophical hermeneutic is often positivistic and ignores the authority that the Scripture has on our presuppositions. It is therefore necessary to begin from the standpoint that the nature of the authority of the Scripture is defined by the Scripture itself. (Potgieter 1990, 61, 62; bold in original)
The Commission on Doctrine and Contemporary Affairs (Kommissie van Leer- en Aktuele Sake)(KLAS-WK) of the Western Cape regional synod published Die Reformatoriese Sola Scriptura en die Skrifberoep in Etiese Vrae (The Reformational Sola Scriptura and the Appeal to Scripture in Ethical Questions).
The document, though still moderate, shows a strong tendency towards reducing sola Scriptura to "narrower" personal sanctification issues because social ethics must deal with the intimidating verities of the physical and social sciences.
The problem concerning "sola Scriptura" comes clearly to the fore if we go further into the salvation question and ask whether the Scripture is also perspicuous [duidelik] and sufficient [genoegsaam] and necessary [noodsaaklik] whenever we seek light in all the various areas of our lives, such as science, politics, economics, culture, and ethics. Is it really true that we can and must allow ourselves to be led in all these areas through the Scripture alone? Is that the purpose of Scripture. . . ?
The commission is convinced that the Scripture offers the final and complete/finished answer for all religious questions (in the narrower meaning of the word) whenever it proclaims Jesus as the only Way, and Truth and Life. . . .
Even so we believe that the Scripture is a light for our path and a lamp for our feet whenever it speaks about the various ethical questions with which we are confronted in our modern times. Yet the commission would point out that with reference to the ethical questions it is markedly more complicated than in the case of the specific religious questions. In the domain of personal ethics, which is concerned primarily about the sanctification of the individual in his personal life, it is not so difficult to receive the light of the Scripture and to make direct conclusions from it for the walk of life that is required of us Christians. As soon as it deals with the social ethic, in which the sanctification of the society in its various contexts is dealt with, it becomes more difficult because such things as science, culture, politics and economics are introduced. [See conclusions, 5.2, 5.3 , 5.8]. (KLAS-WK 1980)
As was discussed in the first chapter, several internationally respected scholars have noted a shift by important NGK theologians in the doctrine of Scripture. Others agree.
For example, Deist approvingly states that
the fact that younger ministers and lecturers now stand up publicly and claim that contradictions and even errors occur in the Bible, that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible, that Isaiah wrote only a part of the book of Isaiah and another part of the book came into being only after the Babylonian Captivity, that the book of Daniel came into being only in the 2nd century B.C. and that such a book as Jonah probably is not based on historical material (to only use Old Testament illustrations)�such things are experienced by the younger generation as a necessary contribution to the understanding of the Bible. The older generation, on the other hand, felt that all these teachings were an attack on the authority of the Scripture and upon the faithfulness, infallibility and inspiration of the Bible. In short, it was seen as an attack on everything that was believed and proclaimed about the Bible up to this point. (Deist 1986, 1)
Deist has written other volumes on the doctrine of Scripture and the relationship of Scripture to society. He claims that Scripture gives no certain, unambiguous answers for the basic questions of contemporary social theology, inter alia inter-ethnic relations, economics, and political difficulties.
J. J. F. Durand, from the NGSK theological faculty in Cape Town, also recognizes that there has indeed been a paradigm shift in the understanding of Scripture among NGK theologians. He states that the Barthian theology and social analysis was kept at bay until the late 1960s by a strongly inerrantist Kuyperian theology and its "sphere sovereignty" social analysis.
In "Church and State in South Africa: Karl Barth vs. Abraham Kuyper," Durand claims that hermeneutic principles have changed in the adoption of the New Hermeneutic by younger NGK theologians:
From the beginning of the 1930s to the end of the 1950s, Barthian theology had such a formidable opponent in Kuyperianism that it was never able to obtain a firm foothold in the field of Afrikaner theological thinking. . . . .
First, Barth's theology was regarded as suspect because his views on Scripture did not conform to the orthodox Reformed standpoint generally accepted in South Africa during those years. . . . It was only as late as the 1960s, and particularly in the early 1970s, that the Barthian resistance . . . began to take hold among young Afrikaner theologians and new thoughts with a definite Barthian flavour made significant inroads into the debate on church and society. . . .
During the same period a further development in theology compounded the problem. A new awareness of the hermeneutical problems involved in interpreting a text within a given situation came to the fore � in this case the question of whether theologians drawing on the Bible can make meaningful pronouncements about any subject, given the historical gap between biblical times and the present. Any attempt to compare and evaluate the respective influences of Barthian and Kuyperian theology on the issue of the relationship between state and church in South Africa must therefore take this hermeneutical problem into consideration. (Durand 1988, 122)
Pieter Potgieter followed his father, F. J. M. Potgieter, as professor of Theology in the NGK. However, unlike his father, Potgieter equates inerrancy with the mechanical theory of inspiration. This he caricatures as the doctrine of absolute faultlessness (foutloosheid) in the original manuscripts.
His account of how errors are explained demonstrates that he has not understood much of the extensive evangelical and Reformed, inerrantist literature on the subject:
The advocates of the mechanical doctrine of inspiration do not want to recognize that the human writers of the Bible have any independent role in the inscripturation of the Word. They were merely instruments in the hand of the Holy Spirit, through whom He literally caused to be written word for word that which He spoke to them. . . . The implication of this is clear: In the Bible, there can be no single fault [fout] of whatever type due to the human factor. As the Word of God, the Bible is, in the original autographs . . ., not only infallible but without fault. Where there are apparent errors such as different accounts of the same event by different Biblical authors, it must be explained as a transmission error in the later copies of the original manuscripts. Such "faults/errors" in the autographs would mean that the Holy Spirit made an error and that, naturally, can not occur. (Potgieter 1990, 19)
Potgieter falsely equates infallibility as inerrancy with a sectarian fundamentalist dogma:
It is indeed ironic that the fundamentalist, who glories in his faithfulness to the Bible, brings the very inspiration of the Scripture into danger with his pretense of the untouchable surety of his own view of Scripture (Barr 1984:124; cf. Van Huyssteen 1982:36). A fatal fundamentalistic approach is to make the infallibility of the Scripture equivalent to a Bible without factual error in the sense of scientific exactness. (Potgieter 1990, 31)
As mentioned, another example of the influence of Barth through Berkouwer is that of Johan Heyns. He was Professor of Theology at Pretoria, moderator of the NGK's watershed 1986 General Synod, and member of the commission which wrote C&S.
Though he rejects Barth's terminology, Barth's influence can be seen in several of Heyns' works such as his volume on the doctrine of Scripture, entitled Brug tussen God en Mens (Bridge between God and Man) (1976) or his later Dogmatiek (1978). A concise example of this neo-orthodox view of Scripture is found in "Bible, Church and Proclamation" (Heyns 1973).
Because Heyns was such a powerful leader of the change movement in the NGK, this last named article, along with references to his other works, serves as a commentary on relevant sections of C&S (see C&S, 13-23).
First, Heyns rejects verbal inspiration and the Reformed organic theories because they show "mechanical traits" (see Heyns 1976, 48, 55; 1978, 19, 21). In contrast to these and other theories, his is a "dialogical inspiration theory": Scripture is a dialogue between God and man (Heyns 1978, 21).
According to Heyns' theory, the first dialogue was between the seers and the Divine Spirit. They reacted with obedience to that revelation as best they could. In the process of obedience, the prophets have irrevocably changed and sifted the word in their act of receiving and writing it. Thus we do not receive a pure inerrant word in the Bible but a human interpretation of the original revelation: "God's first pure and naked Word which he gave these writers and which they alone heard, we do not possess, for the simple reason that we are not the writers of the Bible." The Bible, then, is merely the writers' response ". . . to God's Word and their answer has become God's word to us" (Heyns 1973, 38).
The result of this dialogical view of inspiration is that the Bible merely contains words of God mixed with the fallible interpretations and culturally bound fallacies of men: "the words of the Bible remain the words of men, sought by men, and found by men. However, in and among these words which remain words of men, the Word of God is present" (Heyns 1973, 38).
The Holy Spirit never "violently overwhelmed" the prophets so as to eliminate "all typically human characteristics and activities." Hence Scripture authors wrote in thought patterns and limited pre-scientific images of their day. They were not "changed from pre-scientific observers of the world around them to the [sic] scientific researchers" (Heyns 1973, 39).
Instead of being scientific researchers, the Scripture writers made fallible "use of certain naive, contemporary and thus limited conceptions about the world, . . . [with which] they gave . . . testimony to God." This testimony is "unmistakably characteristic of the time of its origin and inevitably influenced by the cultural and spiritual life of the East" (Heyns 1973, 39).
Because of this "dialogic structure of the origin of the Bible," the issues of infallibility and truthfulness are beside the point: "It is clear that the Bible is a book of purpose and destiny; . . . the matter of non-authenticity or untrustworthiness is irrelevant" (Heyns 1973, 40).
He further states that the central message (scopus) of the Bible is the kingdom of God. The scopus of the Kingdom is God's revelation in Jesus Christ. The consequence is that the peripheral data, that is "the historical and cosmic information in the Bible is not in itself . . . of any importance" (Heyns 1973, 42).
That peripheral information can be erroneous, but that does not effect the truth of the message, he claims. "The Bible, then, has authority, yet it is not directly normative to us in all matters" (Heyns 1973, 44). In other words, Heyns claims that only the central "spiritual" message is truly normative. The peripheral subjects, therefore, cannot provide clear and unchanging models or standards with respect to science, sociology, psychology, history, political science, nor inter-ethnic relationships except for spiritual principles related to the central scopus, the kingdom.
When [the Scripture writers] . . . wrote about people they did not do so as an ethnologist or a sociologist or a psychologist would write, and when the theme was truth they did not approach it in the manner of a philosopher. Generally speaking, one can say that the writers were not primarily interested in the nature of things but chiefly in their relation towards God and His relation towards them. (Heyns 1973, 40)
To deny inerrancy and its corollaries, biblical objectivity and perspicuity, is to devastate any attempt at forming a truly biblical missiology, social theology, or social ethic.
Professor Andrie B. Du Toit, NGK New Testament professor at the University of Pretoria, published a highly inaccurate article in the Afrikaans press entitled "Fundamentalism."
In the beginning of this article, he states that both liberalism and fundamentalism are problematic and are causing confusion among Christians. Fundamentalism, he reports, was a reaction to the "flood wave" of liberal theology and that the leaders "defended a number of convictions which they considered to be fundamental." Among these "were the inspiration of Scripture, the divine nature of Christ, the virgin birth, redemption from sin, creation not evolution, etc." (Du Toit 1991, 12).
According to Du Toit, it was the manner in which the fundamentalists expressed the concept of infallibility (onfeilbaarheid) that made "fundamentalism here . . . controversial and which obligated sound (behoudende) theologians to take a standpoint against it" (Du Toit 1991, 12).
He further claimed that fundamentalists
force a self-constructed concept of Biblical infallibility upon the Bible, that doesn't do justice to what the Bible is . . . namely a religious book in which God speaks his perfect Gospel word through fallible people in their specific historical
situation and in a truly human manner.
To fundamentalists, infallibility means that the Bible contains no errors at all and that the Bible books are timeless documents that place everyone on the same level and from which the dictums can be immediately applied to our situation. The historical situation as well as the unique character, and the special defined kind of literature of Biblical books are never earnestly taken into consideration. (Du Toit 1991, 12)
Du Toit continues by saying this is the reason that inerrantists explain away historical errors in the Bible. Differences between the Old and New Testaments and the various authors of the Bible are ignored. There is no account given of the growth in insight in the divine revelation of both the Old and New Testaments and even within the two testaments themselves. The Gospels are forcibly harmonized, and so forth.
Du Toit's comments summarize a common viewpoint among NGK leaders.
Compare the following as proof of C&S' noble attempt to see the Bible as relevant for all of life and as "the church's sole yardstick":
1.2 The Bible is the church's sole yardstick. We believe
and confess that Holy Scripture is the complete revelation of God, authoritative revelation for all time. Thus for us it is the sole yardstick by which all standpoints, attitudes and actions in the South African situation must be tested.
This means . . . that consistent with our articles of faith, we need to study Scripture carefully and correctly, in order to determine what message and mandate comes to us out of the Word and how we must apply it in our own situation.
We must constantly be on our guard that no other voice, however appealing or beguiling � be it that of a particular ideology, school of thought, political trend, tradition, personal bias, national sentiment, or whatever � speaks decisively to us above or alongside the truth of the Bible.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The new covenant proclaims that through Jesus Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. Furthermore, that he has brought together in his church all those who believe in him and have accepted the message, giving them the vocation to serve him as king in all spheres of life, and to be a blessing to the world until that day when he brings all things to consummation. (C&S, 13-15, 20; emphasis in original)
Read in the light of classic sola Scriptura doctrine, these paragraphs appear accurate. However, these words sound like an empty shell of the once robust NGK affirmations of biblical authority when several factors are taken into account.
First of all, the emphasis on the "humanity" of the Bible and the New Hermeneutic within the NGK should be recognized as the underlying premise behind the following words: "specific nature, context, style, purpose and historical situation" (C&S, 17). This passage would then presuppose the neo-orthodox and classic liberal emphasis upon the errors and fallibility of the packaging around the central scopus of the Word.
Because of that fallibility, an interpreter cannot make a "superficial interpretation or application of biblical statements" (C&S, 17). It is because the Bible is a fallible human witness of God's word that "one may not read into the Bible our own
circumstances and problems, thus reducing the Word of God to a contemporary recipe book with instant solutions for all human problems" (C&S, 18).
This would imply that the text of Scripture is relative. In other words, it is only a witness of the dialog between God and man. Because it was recorded in a pre-scientific context, it contains an erroneous worldview of a long lost era. Hence there is a major gap between the cultures of that day and today. A further implication is that human interpreters cannot take any of the truths of the Bible at face value. Presupposing error in the packaging of Scripture truth must also cast grave doubt on the doctrinal truth surrounded by the packaging. "He who is faithful in little can be trusted in much."
Secondly, dialectical theology leads to confessional ambiguity. This ambiguity is also true of C&S. This is one of the biggest complaints of inclusivist theologians (see e.g., Villa-Vicencio 1986; Van der Merwe 1989; Kinghorn 1990c) and traditional "apartheid" theologians (see Faith and Practice [F&P]). All agree that C&S is ambiguous and even contradictory in several key paragraphs (e.g., C&S, 274-288 on apartheid; 13-15 with 19-23, etc.).
Neo-orthodox or dialectical theology, thus, inevitably leads directly to a dualistic dilemma: the Bible is both authoritative in all areas but yet is an exclusively "spiritual message of spiritual redemption," and thus is "not a political manual from which specific political models can be deduced" (see C&S 1990, 19, 274).
This teaching makes the Bible merely a vague book with non-specific "principles and norms" into which theologians can read a man-created ecumenical agenda. C&S purposefully disallows specific models, blueprints and unchanging practical standards derived from the Word. These are necessary to help struggling modern men out of the morass into which humanist-influenced theology has caused them to sink.
C&S therefore denies that the Christian exegete can ever find a solid socio-political or even ecclesiastical model valid for all times and all places. "Scripture is not a political manual from which specific political models can be deduced" (C&S, 274) and
The structures in which this unity ["one church bond" between NGK family of churches] are to be expressed, is at this stage not clear", but will be determined through discussions with the parties concerned. (C&S, 236)
In other words, the synodal-presbyterial form of government for church and civil orders, deduced from Scripture by an earlier generation of exegetes, is no longer trans-culturally valid. C&S, 275 continues the thought:
Scripture proclaims norms and principles such as love, justice, human dignity and peace which must be embodied in society. Therefore the church may not prescribe political models to the government, but by virtue of its prophetic function the church will continue to test every existing and proposed political model against the Biblical principles and norms. (C&S, 275)
This seems to be self-contradictory. Abstract principles and norms can be deduced from Scripture, but not specific models. A vivid contrast to this approach to Scripture is biblical orthodoxy's firm and unwavering "Thus says the Lord God of hosts." Orthodoxy's humble, yet clear trumpet call to obedient action is based on the presupposition of a clear Word (perspicuity) that hears the commands of God in the inerrant words of Scripture and the logical deductions from these words.
The above statements from C&S, thus, seem to assume a drastically limited scopus of Scripture. Second, C&S seems to reject the logical deductive method of classic Reformed theology. One major consequence of this dialectical reduction of biblical authority is that C&S seems to indicate truth cannot be directly expressed in propositions and deductions from propositions. One can only experience biblical truth as a sense of awe and reverence. That awesome feeling, however, can never arrive at any real objective comprehension of truth, in any exact form.
C&S, 8-12 must be read in the light of this neo-Orthodox theological background. In this passage, at least superficially, C&S seems to be teaching a truly biblical humility. However, taking into account the dialogical and dialectical war on certainty through the New Hermeneutic and so forth, these paragraphs give a justification for a complete paradigm shift away from the older logical-deductive method of finding truth:
In this seeking after God's will we cannot afford the luxury of regarding our reflections as final at any particular stage. The reasons are as follows: . . . believers have to keep on growing in a better understanding of God's will; . . . we live in a dynamic situation which is continually changing; . . . the validity of previous pronouncements has to be continually tested; . . . . the insights . . . of other churches . . . induces us to think again and so to come to a richer and deeper understanding of God's will. (C&S, 8-12)
Contrary to C&S, Reformed theologians, synods, and confessions have classically claimed that the doctrine of sola Scriptura results in a Bible of certain truths. Scripture, they historically taught, can be carefully searched and analyzed with the purpose of reaching certainty on many areas that it addresses. These certain areas have indeed included such social and physical science subjects as origin biology, economics, political science, social ethics, and inter-ethnic relations. The catechisms and confessions are full of socio-economic, political and cultural applications of biblical laws. For example, the Anglo-American Puritans, correctly deduced from Scripture the ideal of a Christocratic, Republican form of government (using e.g., Dt 4:5-8; Jdg 9; 1Sa 8-12; Hos 10:3-7,13-15, 13:4,9-11; see Wines n.d./1980; Smyth 1843; Breed 1876/1993).
This is explicitly denied by C&S (1986), which states that the Bible is a virtual spiritual-platonic form with no direct and specific relevance to the details of modern culture:
As the Book of God and His kingdom, the Bible is exclusively a "religious" book. . . . This means . . . that the Bible, because of the decisive spiritual character of its message, may not be used as a manual [handboek] for solving social, economic or political problems. Consequently all present and previous attempts to read into the Bible a particular social or political policy . . . must be emphatically rejected. (C&S 1986, 42-43; bold in original)
This paragraph in C&S (1986) so limits the scopus of Scripture that C&S (1990) removes the offending words. However, a de-particularizing of very earthly Christianity seems also to be described in the following correction in the 1990 C&S:
The Bible focuses on God and his Kingdom . . . The Bible as proclamation of God's Kingdom is not a textbook [handboek] on, inter alia, sociology, economics or politics. The Bible is the Good News that God in his grace seeks out human beings, alienated from him through their sin. He then redeems them, makes them his own, and entrusts them as his chosen people with a supreme calling. (C&S 1990, 19, emphasis in original)
This is true if C&S means by the words "manual" or "textbook" (both editions use, "handboek"): "a systematized textbook of information on political or socio-economic models." Of course, the Bible is not that. Much systematization and exegesis must be done to discover biblical models and blueprints. However, as the words "manual" or "textbook/handbook" are so often used to mean "having no specific and practical relevance to a subject apart from general, spiritual principles," it is possible this is the meaning here.
However, the context of the statements about models imply something different. Assuming the rejection of sola Scriptura, as discussed above, C&S seems to imply a "blueprint-less," "model-less" Christianity. C&S, however, nobly tries to escape this non-reformed dilemma (see C&S, 13-15, 20, 222-224, 227-228).
C&S thus correctly denies that the Bible is irrelevant. However, it again contradicts itself in C&S, 21 and 22, using language virtually identical to C&S (1986), 43, cited above. It rejects, without any attempt at exegesis, some of the very relevant passages needed for developing a transforming social-theological ethic for southern Africa:
This means . . . that the Bible, because of it's [sic] own nature and character may not be used as a manual for solving social, economic or political problems. Consequently all present and previous attempts to deduce a particular social or political policy from the Bible, whether it be apartheid or separate development or a policy of integration must be emphatically rejected; . . . that portions of the Bible such as Gen 2:18, 10-20, 11:1, 7-9, Deut 32:8, Pr 22:28; Matt 24:7, John 17:20-23, Acts 2:8, 17:26, 1 Cor 12, Gal 3:28-29 and Rev 21:3, 24 may therefore not be used as a Scriptural basis for political models. (C&S, 21-22)
A basic question remains. How can Jesus exercise kingship over every sphere of life (C&S, 20) if he does not have specific, just and wise words through which to rule therein? If we excise many relevant passages of the Bible, as paragraph 22 does, how can we say that a "policy document" (beleidsdokument) is in any way based on the sola Scriptura doctrine?
C&S wants to maintain the sola Scriptura principle that accepts Scripture is relevant to all of life. However, C&S is not consistent due to anti-biblical presuppositions coming from the rejection of sola Scriptura. These presuppositions reject the principle that "no other voice, however appealing or beguiling . . . [must] speak decisively to us above or alongside the truth of the Bible" (C&S, 15).
To be fair, C&S genuinely desires to escape from the non-biblical rationalizations for coerced racial separateness that helped justify the Apartheid system. However, even granting this, dialectical dualism still must do its leavening work of gradually destroying consistency, specificity, and certainty.
It is for this reason that C&S does not seem to be listening to the historical consensus of theologians, creeds, and synods concerning what the Scripture says about itself. Instead, in interacting with the contemporary and ever-changing critique of modern theologies, C&S syncretizes many of their presuppositions into itself. Does this not imply an opposite form of syncretism from that of the older apartheid social theological paradigm?
Thus the beguiling voice of humanism's "particular ideology, school of thought, political trend, tradition, personal bias, national sentiment," with its politically correct agenda, seems to be a grave danger implicit within C&S. This will be progressively clearer as each chapter unfolds.
Therefore, in rejecting sola Scriptura, the NGK has not followed the voice of the Spirit of Christ. In this rejection, is not the NGK running the danger of returning to an institutional infallibility, in a synodocracy, against which some clearly warn? A new priestly class, as an enlightened elite, would then mediate Scripture to the laity. The consequence will continue to be the overthrow of doctrines accepted by the consensus of the church throughout its many eras of existence. Overturning the prohibition of females in church offices is merely one example of this overthrow. The doctrine of creation and created design-norms are other examples very relevant to this study.
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