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The Last Word

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

By Whose Authority?

In the prologue we looked first at the role of scripture in the historical Christian church and then at how today's understanding of that role is impacted by contemporary culture. In this first chapter we will look at the "authority of scripture" as part of a larger divine authority.

"Authority of Scripture" Is a Shorthand for "God's Authority Exercised through Scripture"

We now arrive at the central claim of this book: that the phrase "authority of scripture" can make Christian sense only if it is a shorthand for "the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through scripture." Once we think this through, several other things become clear.

All authority is from God, declares Paul in relation to governments (Romans 13:1); Jesus says something very similar in John 19:11. In Matthew 28:18, the risen Jesus makes the still more striking claim that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, a statement echoed elsewhere--for instance, in Philippians 2:9-11. A quick glance through many other texts in both the Old Testament (e.g., Isaiah 40--55) and the New (e.g., Revelation 4 and 5) would confirm this kind of picture. When John declares that "in the beginning was the word," he does not reach aclimax with "and the word was written down" but "and the word became flesh." The letter to the Hebrews speaks glowingly of God speaking through scripture in time past, but insists that now, at last, God has spoken through his own son (1:1-2). Since these are themselves "scriptural" statements, that means that scripture itself points--authoritatively, if it does indeed possess authority!--away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God himself, now delegated to Jesus Christ. It is Jesus, according to John 8:39-40, who speaks the truth which he has heard from God.

The familiar phrase "the authority of scripture" thus turns out to be more complicated than it might at first sight appear. This hidden complication may perhaps be the reason why some current debates remain so sterile.

This kind of problem, though, is endemic in many disciplines, and we ought to be grown-up enough to cope with it. Slogans and clichés are often shorthand ways of making more complex statements. In Christian theology, such phrases regularly act as "portable stories"--that is, ways of packing up longer narratives about God, Jesus, the church and the world, folding them away into convenient suitcases, and then carrying them about with us. (A good example is the phrase "the atonement." This phrase is rare in the Bible itself; instead, we find things like "The Messiah died for our sins according to the scriptures"; "God so loved the world that he gave his only son," and so on. But if we are to discuss the atonement, it is easier to do so with a single phrase, assumed to "contain" all these sentences, than by repeating one or more of them each time.) Shorthands, in other words, are useful in the same way that suitcases are. They enable us to pick up lots of complicated things and carry them around all together. But we should never forget that the point of doing so, like the point of carrying belongings in a suitcase, is that what has been packed away can then be unpacked and put to use in the new location. Too much debate about scriptural authority has had the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases. It is time to unpack our shorthand doctrines, to lay them out and inspect them. Long years in a suitcase may have made some of the contents go moldy. They will benefit from fresh air, and perhaps a hot iron.

When we take the phrase "the authority of scripture" out of its suitcase, then, we recognize that it can have Christian meaning only if we are referring to scripture's authority in a delegated or mediated sense from that which God himself possesses and that which Jesus possesses as the risen Lord and Son of God, the Immanuel. It must mean, if it means anything Christian, "the authority of God exercised through scripture." The question then becomes: What might we mean by the authority of God, or of Jesus? What role does scripture have within that? Where does the Spirit come into the picture? And, not least, how does this "authority" actually work? How does it relate, if at all, to the "authority" of leaders or office-bearers within the church?

Authority and Story

Before we begin to answer these questions, we must face another complication. Not only does the Bible itself declare that all authority belongs to the God revealed in Jesus and the Spirit; the Bible itself, as a whole and in most of its parts, is not the sort of thing that many people envisage today when they hear the word "authority."

It is not, for a start, a list of rules, though it contains many commandments of various sorts and in various contexts. Nor is it a compendium of true doctrines, though of course many parts of the Bible declare great truths about God, Jesus, the world and ourselves in no uncertain terms. Most of its constituent parts, and all of it when put together (whether in the Jewish canonical form or the Christian one), can best be described as story. This is a complicated and much-discussed theme, but there is nothing to be gained by ignoring it.

The question is, How can a story be authoritative? If the commanding officer walks into the barrack-room and begins "Once upon a time," the soldiers are likely to be puzzled. If the secretary of the cycling club pins up a notice which, instead of listing times for outings, offers a short story, the members will not know when to turn up. At first sight, what we think of as "authority" and what we know as "story" do not readily fit together.

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Excerpted from The Last Word by N.T. Wright Copyright © 2006 by N.T. Wright. Excerpted by permission.
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