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Unity in Diversity
I know it’s long…it’s important…give it a read…gracias.
On the liturgical calendar, this coming Sunday is known as Reformation Sunday, celebrating the Protestant Reformation, which began 504 years ago when an Augustinian monk and Old Testament Professor, Martin Luther, invited the Church to debate a proper understanding of the Gospel.
One of the tenets important to the Reformation is the belief that sacred Scripture interprets itself (Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres). Though it’s a neglected doctrine today, the self-interpretative nature of Scripture was the normative view of Scripture for the Protestant Reformers. You can intuit what’s at stake in this doctrine by asking the question, “Do we interpret Scripture, or does Scripture interpret us?” Or try asking a similar question, “Who is the acting Subject when we encounter Scripture? Are we? Or is it the Spirit?”
How we answer is especially critical as we navigate conflict or discern controversial questions.
Too often the Church debates divisive issues in a way that does not allow Scripture to exercise its normative character.
The most common way of interpreting Scripture, in contemporary American Christianity, is to treat the reader as the Subject who stands over the text, which is the object to be interpreted. Notice the immediate problems with this method of interpretation. First, it treats Scripture as dead. Second, it makes Scripture vulnerable to the subjectivism and arbitrariness of the interpreter. The interpreter can point to another interpreter (Tradition, the Pope, et al.), but this does not ultimately resolve the problem of subjectivism: in the end, there is no interpreter with whom the buck stops. The result is that conflict continues with no prospect for resolution or conversation grinds to a halt under a repressive tolerance or exhausted malaise.
When the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spent time at Union Seminary in New York City, he famously commented that the Protestant Church in America was a Protestant Church without the Reformation. One way in which this is true is in how we think of Scripture.
A second way of understanding Scripture is less common today; nevertheless, it is the historic Reformation manner of thinking about Scripture, Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres.
Scripture interprets scripture.
This model for understanding Scripture reverses the roles of Subject and Object and who is the actual acting agent. Through the Holy Spirit, the Protestant Reformers taught, we—who think we’re the Interpreting Subject—become the Object. The scriptural word finds, exposes, establishes the very being of the hearer, that is, as creatures, as guilty sinners, as justified. This is what we implicitly acknowledge when we pray the Prayer for Illumination before the sermon.
Scripture interprets us.
We do not interpret Scripture.
The proper posture before Scripture—at least for Protestants—is not primarily to go to Scripture (with our preconceived convictions), asking “What does Scripture say about _____?”
The proper posture before Scripture is to lay ourselves open for the Word to have its way with us.
Notice, when we treat ourselves as the Subjects who interpret the object, Scripture, we remain in whatever ideological tribes we occupied before we approached Scripture. But when we treat Scripture as the Subject that interprets us, we discover Scripture delivering to us a unity we otherwise find elusive.
When Scripture is the Subject who interprets us, we are all left asking, “Who shall deliver us from this body of death?”
Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres.
Nowhere is this Reformational understanding of the nature of Scripture more apparent than in Romans 1 and 2. This passage is the most common “proof text” when it comes to the debate over human sexuality. However, to go to this asking, ““What does Scripture say about homosexuality?” is a profound misreading of the passage. In Romans 1 and 2 Paul is quite obviously preaching one, long Law sermon that crescendos with, “There are none who are righteous. No, not one.” When we pause our attempts at proof-texting (and progressives and traditionalists are equally guilty of this), we realize that Scripture like Romans 1 and 2 aims to catch us all up in its web. There are no loopholes for any of us. There is no escape for anyone from the wrath of God. There is only way out, the way God himself has opened up, Jesus Christ and him crucified.
When we allow Scripture to interpret us, we discover the Gospel itself creates unity in diversity. It does so because the purpose of Scripture is to drive sinners to Christ. And we are all sinners.
Let me put that a different way.
For the Protestant Reformers, the purpose of Scripture is not to show us how to live (the Law) so that we can then live in a way that God can’t help but accept us. The purpose of Scripture is to drive us to Christ by showing us the ways we do not live according to God (the Law). Obedience to the Law—whether that is a progressive or a traditionalist emphasis of the Law—does not justify us.
Only the Savior can save us.
This is what Scripture preaches to us when it proclaims, “Christ is the end of the Law.” As the Reformers liked to say, “Moses is dead.” They meant that because Christ alone justifies us, because no longer can the Law condemn those in Christ, no direct appeals to scriptural verses on any given issue can be taken as decisive simply on the grounds that it's biblical. At the same time, the Reformers also liked to say that just because Moses is dead that doesn’t mean Moses isn’t helpful. In other words, the Law can no longer condemn or justify— it’s met its end in Christ’s own obedience offered for us— but the Law can help guide us in how we care for one another and our community. Given that all of us are unrighteous, all of us fall short of the glory of God, all of us are vulnerable to the wrath of God apart from Christ, how do we now, as justified sinners, consult the Law to care for our neighbors?
To put it in the terms now before the United Methodist Church:
Given that, on account of Christ, this is not an issue of sin and salvation but care of neighbor, how do we best care for our LGBTQ neighbors, in and out of the congregation, and how do we think such care informs ministries like marriage and ordination?
It is in these terms that the church council and I recently decided to proceed in leading the congregation to discern and identify its values around the LGBTQ issue.
Rather than simply react to whatever does or does not happen at the next General Conference, we believe it’s both healthier and better leadership to be proactive and name who we believe we are as a local congregation.
We plan to engage this process in a manner that keeps ever before us and values above all the Gospel truth I highlighted above; namely, that the Gospel already gives us an ultimate unity in our diversity: we’re all sinners in need of grace.
What will this process look like?
- First, starting on Monday, November 8, I will lead a online study with the co-teachers from the Hebrews class. We’re calling Means of Grace: An Orthodox and Inclusive Understanding of Marriage and Ministry. It will be a theology class rather than a Bible study. The goal is to show, using the ancient Church Fathers, how we can think about these two practices in ways with which many traditionalists and progressives can find common ground.
- Second, after the new year, we will spend time surveying the congregation and conducting focus groups. This truly is about the congregation learning who it is. Because we tend to view the congregation in the image of our peer groups, we all have a siloed portrait of the church.
The goal of this process is description not prescription.
While I have my own convictions on these questions, because I am justified by Jesus alone not my convictions, I don’t have a need for anyone to agree with me.
The goal of this process is not unanimity but consensus.
- Third, from the results of the survey and focus groups, the lay leaders will seek to discern a mission statement that captures the congregation’s local values, and they will report back to the congregation, inviting individual committee’s how this might inform their own work and practice in the church.
Along the way, we will include leadership from both sides of the issue, and I hope to have an outside consultant lend wisdom to us as well.
Of course, none of this is binding and much of it is contingent on the larger denomination. However, after the 2019 General Conference, many members left our church because the Church they saw in the news is “not my church.” I pray we can navigate a hard issue in a healthier way if we enter it having more clearly identified who we are as a local church.
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