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<\/p>\nI have been thinking a lot about the Bible lately. I’m preparing for the upcoming NNU Wesley Center conference, “The Bible Tells Me So.” H. Orton Wiley has been helpful for my preparation.<\/p>\n
I am an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene and professor at a key educational institution in the denomination. The denomination has about 2 million members; most reside outside the United States.<\/p>\n
The conference I am leading will explore a Wesleyan view of the Bible. This is vitally important to our denomination, in particular, and the Wesleyan theological tradition, in general.<\/p>\n
Being a young denomination — 100 years old — the Church of the Nazarene has a short history. Few authoritative theological voices exist from which to draw.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most important theologian in the Church of the Nazarene’s history is H. Orton Wiley. Wiley’s magnum opus is a three-volume work titled Christian Theology. <\/em>It was commissioned by the denomination and first printed in the 1940s. I am finding Wiley’s work pertinent to the upcoming Bible Tells Me So conference.<\/p>\n Wiley often writes in his section on revelation that an important relationship exists between the Bible and Jesus Christ. He is eager to argue Jesus Christ is not identical or equal with the Bible. Jesus Christ – not the Holy Scriptures – is God’s supreme revelation. <\/p>\n In the opening segments of his discussion on revelation, Wiley employs the classic categories of general and special revelation. By “general revelation,” he means the revelation God gives in the natural world. Wiley says, for instance, “Nature is filled with the Divine Spirit and reveals God as the atmosphere is filled with sunlight and reveals the sun” (127).<\/p>\n By “special revelation,” Wiley means the redemptive purpose of God manifest in Jesus Christ and revealed most explicitly in the Bible. Wiley says Jesus Christ is “the personal word” and the Holy Scriptures are the “written word” of God. Interestingly, the Free Methodist denomination uses this kind of language in its article of faith on the Bible.<\/p>\n Given my interest in science and theology, I was intrigued by Wiley’s view on nature and the Bible. The revelation of God in the Bible was not meant to supersede the revelation God gives in nature, he says. “The Earth and the Bible are God’s two texts, each having its place, time, and function in progressive revelation.” Wiley even goes so far as to say, “Without the Bible, the universe would be a riddle; without Nature, the Bible would be meaningless” (140). I will be using Wiley in my future work on science and theology!<\/p>\n Some of the most interesting material comes when Wiley worries about he calls “false concepts” related to revelation. These concepts undermine the supremacy of the Living Word – Jesus Christ – as God’s primary revelation.<\/p>\n One false concept is the belief that the Church is more important than Jesus Christ. Here, Wiley shares the Protestant worry that the institutional Church might trump the revelation of God in Jesus.<\/p>\n The third false concept is the belief that reason can become more authoritative than Jesus. While Wiley praises reason, he also says it can be used as a “legalistic defense of the Scriptures.” Such defense “depends on logic rather than life” (143).<\/p>\n Wiley devotes an entire chapter to the issue of biblical inspiration. He defines inspiration as “the actuating energy of the Holy Spirit by which Holy men chosen of God have officially proclaimed His will as revealed to us in the Sacred Scriptures” (169). He doesn’t give much attention to the idea that God continues to inspire us as we read the Bible today.<\/p>\n A number of what Wiley calls “credentials” support the Christian claim that God inspired the writing of the Bible. Those credentials include miracles, the presence and fulfillment of prophecy, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Bible itself is evidence God progressively reveals more and more truth over time.<\/p>\n Wiley outlines three theories of biblical inspiration: 1) mechanical\/dictation, 2) intuition\/illumination, and 3) dynamical\/mediating.<\/p>\n Wiley rejects the mechanical\/dictation theory. It is narrow and insufficient. Scripture itself often talks about the role the writers play in writing the Bible. The authors were not robots whose hands God controlled unilaterally.<\/p>\n He also rejects the intuition\/illumination theory. This theory is too rationalistic, and it implies that natural human insight was merely lifted to a higher plane. It doesn’t emphasize God’s activity enough.<\/p>\n Wiley likes the dynamical\/mediating theory of inspiration. It “preserves the scriptural truth that God speaks to human agencies,” he says “but insists that the agent is not reduced to a mere passive instrument” (176). Throughout these sections, Wiley mentions the role of “plenary” inspiration of the Bible. By this, he means “the whole and every part is divinely inspired.” Plenary inspiration does not require the mechanical theory of inspiration, says Wiley, “only that the results of that inspiration give us the Holy Scriptures as the final and authoritative rule of faith in the Church” (184).<\/p>\n The final segment of Wiley’s exploration of the Bible addresses what Christians call the biblical “canon.” Questions about the canon typically pertain to the decisions Christians made about which ancient writings to include in the Bible. The Bibles read by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians have writings not included in Protestant Bibles. This is an area contemporary biblical scholars have explored in much greater depth than what Wiley offers here.<\/p>\n I was particularly interested in the way Wiley talks about biblical inconsistencies, ambiguities, and\/or errors. As I read Wiley, I thought about Michael Lodahl’s little book describing Wiley’s writing of my denomination’s article of faith on the Bible.<\/p>\n Wiley never addresses the topic of biblical inerrancy in a direct or thorough way. But he occasionally makes statements pertaining to the subject.<\/p>\n For instance, Wiley says, “only as we are convinced that the writers were aided by a supernatural and divine influence, and this in such a manner as to be infallibly preserved from all error, can the sacred Scripture can become a divine rule of faith and practice” (173).<\/p>\n In this quote, Wiley surprisingly claims the writers themselves – not the text – are “infallibly preserved from all error.” This is a strong claim, given that he rejects mechanical\/dictation theories of inspiration!<\/p>\n Perhaps more importantly, Wiley says infallibility is important insofar as the Bible becomes “a divine rule of faith and practice.” This sounds like the line he wrote for my denomination’s article on the Bible, because it emphasizes the importance of the Bible revealing what is necessary for salvation.<\/p>\n A few lines in these long chapters sound like Wiley affirms absolute textual inerrancy. He says, for instance, that “God so guides those chosen as the organs of revelation that their writings are kept free from error” (171). While statements about the inerrancy of the text are rare, and the casual reader might conclude that Wiley believed in absolute textual inerrancy.<\/p>\n In the final segment of his long discussion of revelation, however, Wiley addresses the “integrity of the Scriptures.” By this, he means, the Bible has been “kept intact and free from essential error, so that we may be assured of the truth originally given by the inspired authors” (212).<\/p>\n Notice that Wiley inserts the word “essential” in this sentence. The Bible is free from “essential” error. In the same discussion, he writes, “No proof has ever yet been furnished of essential alterations” (212). He even makes the bold claim that proof of essential alterations could never be found in the future!<\/p>\n Of course, there is an important difference between saying the Bible has no “essential” errors and saying the Bible has no errors at all. Its the difference between some and none.<\/p>\n At the end of his discussion, Wiley addresses the textual differences in the oldest biblical manuscripts. The Bibles we read today come from these ancient documents. Scholars in Wiley’s day had fewer ancient manuscripts than are available today. But he knew that many differences exist in the oldest Bibles.<\/p>\n Wiley says that our Bible has integrity despite inconsistencies in the ancient manuscripts. Part of his argument is that Jewish copyists working prior to the printing press would “reduce to a minimum any errors in transcribing” (213). Notice Wiley never says copyists would make no errors whatsoever. He even quotes a scholar named Dr. Kennicott as “having found many variations, and some grammatical errors; but not one of which affected, in the smallest degree, any article of faith and practice” (213-214).<\/p>\n Wiley does not address in his work any specific discrepancies or errors. He is more interested in general theories than rooting out specific texts. But he realizes Christians have no access to the original biblical autographs. And he knows discrepancies exist among the manuscripts that are available to translators. His main claim is the Bible expresses the essential Christian message without error.<\/p>\n As I finished reading Wiley’s thoughts, I wondered what he might say about the Bible today. His book was first printed seventy years ago. A great deal has changed in biblical scholarship. And much has changed in how we interpret the Bible.<\/p>\n My conclusion is that Wiley’s basic intuitions are still helpful. He doesn’t give the last word – or even the first word, for that matter – on how we ought to think about the Bible. And contemporary Christians must listen closely to the best biblical and theological scholars today.<\/p>\n But Wiley proves a valuable resource – especially for Wesleyans and especially for my own denomination. His writing remains helpful as we affirm the authority of the Bible in our postmodern world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been thinking a lot about the Bible lately. I’m preparing for the upcoming NNU Wesley Center conference, “The Bible Tells Me So.” H. Orton Wiley has been helpful for my preparation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[349,7262,7263],"yst_prominent_words":[2608,2617,2616,2615,2614,2613,2612,2611,2610,2609,1121,2607,2606,2605,2570,1268,1261,1259,1137,1132],"class_list":["post-1940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john_wesley_holiness_and_the_church_of_the_nazarene","tag-h-orton-wiley","tag-orton-wiley","tag-bible-and-nazarene"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1940"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}REVELATION: JESUS, BIBLE, NATURE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
FALSE CONCEPTS<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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The second false concept is the belief that the Bible is more important than Jesus Christ. Wiley says sometimes humans “unconsciously substitute the Written Word for Christ the Living Word” (142). Those who substitute the Bible for Jesus have their priorities wrong. The result is that “the views of God attained are merely those of a book, not those of the Living Christ which the book was intended to reveal” (142).<\/p>\nBIBLICAL INSPIRATION<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nERRORS<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nCONCLUSION<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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