The Bible and Our Faith - Part II

As members of the United Church of Christ, what role does the Holy bible play in informing not only the faith, but also the ethical decisions we make as Christian people?

A great deal of mail goes across my desk. From time to time I get a letter in which one or more biblical references are used to substantiate a particular point of view about how we should believe or how we should act as Christian people. The inference is that the Bible is our sole source of authority and can be interpreted in one way and one way only.

While I appreciate the conviction of those writing to me, I am persuaded that as Protestant Christians we acknowledge not one, but three sources of authority that can witness to Jesus Christ: the Holy Bible, the Church community and personal experience.

It is in the Holy Bible that we read about the mighty acts of the God revealed in Jesus Christ and are instructed about the ways in which God's grace has been channeled and released in human history. This historical record, however, finds its living expression in the local Church community in the traditions, creeds, and deeds as they witness, through the church's members, to the active presence of Jesus Christ. However, it is in the personal experience of the God revealed in Jesus Christ that the words of the Bible and the teaching of the Church are given power and authority in human life.

Like three points on a triangle, the witness of the Holy Bible, the traditions of one's Church community and one's own personal experience all converge to shape our understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Conversely, one's faith or ethical stance can tell as much about the traditions of our local church/denomination and about personal life experiences as it can about what we feel to be the truth of the scriptures.

The great danger, of course, is that each of these three sources of authority can be manipulated to serve our own ends. It is extraordinarily easy to manipulate our personal experience and make it mean whatever we want it to mean. The history of the church shows how the gospel message can be twisted to serve other ends. There are many examples of people reading the Bible for what they want to find rather than for what they are afraid to hear.

Therefore, Protestant Christianity has a distinctive understanding that there is a priority among these three sources of authority. Standing first in line is the Holy Bible. In the words of Robert McAfee Brown, "it is through the relative authority of the Bible that the corrective power of the gospel has the best chance to manifest itself. It is more difficult to manipulate the content of Scripture than to manipulate the content of our own experience, and it is more difficult to manipulate the printed page than to manipulate the traditions humans introduce into the church, because the Bible has a given-ness that does not change from generation to generation. Its given-ness does not depend upon our momentary mood or upon the currents of opinion prevalent within the church." (Authority: The Achilles' Heel"

As we continue to shape our faith and act out our values, may we turn to the Bible to understand and interpret the presence of God we have experienced in our own lives and in the witness of the Church.