I noted in an earlier post that the phrase “obey the Bible” is an extraordinarily inappropriate generalisation, although that doesn’t stop people using it. In fact, whenever people start invoking the concept of “the authority of scripture”, I can’t help feeling that this idea of “obeying the Bible” lurks somewhere in the background.
Law and commandment provide a genre in which language of authority and obedience find an appropriate place, although even then, a contextually judicious application of law, and a sensitivity to literary features are needed. Law, especially collections of laws promulgated and collated over a period of time and in a variety of contexts, presents its own complexities of interpretation, as my post on the Decalogue illustrated. It is also true that some teaching cast in the form of commandment is not in fact intended as legislation. No-one, for example, takes this verse as law: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away” (Matthew 18:8). Obedience is itself an interpretative activity, and authority, even in terms of law, lacks any absolute and universal clarity.
But when it comes to other genres, which make up the majority of the canonical texts, authority is increasingly understood by analogy or metaphor. It is not innate to the models by which we read and appropriate fiction, myth, history, poetry and prayer. In so far as these exercise authority in our lives, they do so in complex ways, of which I note only one characteristic way for each (and group fiction, history and myth together as narrative). Each of my characteristic generalisations is also a simplification.
Narrative invites us to enter a different world, whether the real world of the past, the imagined world of the past, or some imagined world of present and future, which may bear strongly realistic and recognisable features hardly differentiating it at all from the everyday world. By entering the sweep of the narrative, we are invited to see our world differently, or see some different possibility in how we might live in our world. In so far as we may speak metaphorically of the stories “authority” we are speaking of the story’s power to evoke new ways of seeing and being: to “author” new possibilities for and in us.
Poetry tends to evoke feeling as well as perception, fulfilling many of the same functions as narrative (and as far as we can tell, has been, historically speaking, one of the primary forms of narrative). Its power and “authority” have much in common with that of narrative, but it does perhaps give greater emphasis to the affective, seeking to open new ways through appeal to the mind through the heart.
Not in this category, but, I think closely related, is the attention we might give to the carefully worked arguments of the letters, written for public performance, where appeal to the heart walks hand in hand with appeal to the mind, and the careful crafting of rhetoric fundamentally seeks to persuade. It is, in fact, distinctly at odds with their genre to ascribe “authority” to Paul’s letters in any way which circumvents people hearing them as persuasive. If rhetoric does not persuade, and its fresh interpretative performances do not persuade, then a fall back on a type of “the Bible says” demanding authority goes against the literary genre and intent of the writing. In claiming extrinsic authority for the epistle, this actually works against the intrinsic authority exercised by the argument.
Finally, there is prayer, which is most often in scripture also poetry. Here, as with much extra-canonical liturgical material, the prayers of scripture shape our praying, and give us words which we may use to articulate our own relationship with God. By authoring prayers for us, scripture also authorises us to pray our own prayers. In this sense its authority is permissive rather than constraining, as we learn both a language to speak, and are encouraged to an honesty that is free from many of the negative prohibitions of scripture and tradition. Jesus may say, with the full authority of both Torah and his Spirit-empowered mission “Love your neighbour as yourself” and extend that command also to the treatment of enemies. But even if we manage to do that, we do not feel like that, but rather that we would like to see their heads dashed against a rock.
In this case, the “authority” = “authorization” of the psalms to articulate rather than hide our feelings, allows us to express both resentment and acknowledgement of the authoritative command. We experience ourselves addressing God, and not simply being addressed by him. If, from that conversation, we come to a place of obeying the command, we do so not simply because it comes to us with authority, but because we have been persuaded of the rightness of what is commanded so that we may begin to desire it.
I have, I hope, by metaphor and analogy demonstrated ways in which we can ascribe authority to non-legal texts, as, for example, authoring and authorizing. However, this kind of genre-sensitive exploration of what the concept means does suggest, I think, that we may have taken a model that applies to a minority of the scriptures, and used it carelessly of the whole. It may be better to acknowledge that, and make the concept of authority subsidiary or complementary to one of empowerment, which fits a broader range of genre. Even that largely goes beyond the words of the text, when (implied?) Paul says to (implied?) Timothy “All scripture is … useful.” Of itself, the Bible without an interpreter does nothing. But if it is to be useful, then it is primarily because its poems, narratives, and prayers empower us to shape our lives in obedience to God’s demands, some of which may be read from the same scriptural texts. But the empowering utility of scripture may be a more biblical concept than its authority.
