The Bible is not another Christ. It did not die for us nor was it raised from the dead. (Dr. Charles Price, former professor at Virginia Theological Seminary)

In Jesus alone do the divine and human appear in complete hypostatic union. Jesus is therefore the Word of God absolutely. The Bible is the Word of God relatively. Yet the only vehicle possessed by the church for knowing the Incarnate Word is the written Word of the Bible. Church and Bible are found to be in a continuous and never ending dialogue whose purpose is to discover the character of the Word of God with ever more faithfulness. (Dr. Charles Price)(3)

The word isn't just what Jesus says, but the word signifies his whole person. If we make our homes in Christ -- just as Christ through Scripture and the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, seeks to "dwell in us as we in him" -- then we will truly be disciples. That is, we will be teachable and available to the insistent motions of the Spirit who leads us and forms us over time through the events and experiences which accost us and demand to be lived. (Former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold)(4)

All four of these quotations, in one form or another, make a distinction between Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ the incarnate Word. As a result, at least in the case of the last three quotations, Scripture is supplemented by other factors which become authoritative alongside Scripture. For Bishop Robinson, this other factor is "Christ's continuing action in the world through the Holy Spirit." For the former Presiding Bishop, it is "events and experiences which accost us and demand to be lived." For Charles Price, it is the Church, in dialogue with Scripture, discerning the Word of God as distinct from Scripture. What are we to make of this, and what relevance does it have for biblical interpretation? Let me restrict myself to Charles Price, since his position is the strongest, theologically and intellectually. Further, for the sake of simplicity, I will focus on the four gospels.

Let me begin with some theological considerations, taken from Richard Hooker. In Book Five of his Lawes, Hooker discusses the Holy Eucharist. In order to rightly understand the Eucharist, he first did theology, seven chapters of trinitarian and christological doctrine. He began with a succinct statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, and then observed that the second person of the Trinity, God the Word or Son, became incarnate in Jesus Christ. He then described how Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, together with the heresies that deny Christ's full divinity and humanity as one person. Once that was in place, he claimed that the eternal Word is forever joined to the body of Jesus Christ. Since God the Word is now united with the body of Christ, the Word forever works in a two fold manner, as God and man joined together in a personal union.

And that Deity of Christ which before our Lord's incarnation wrought all things without man, doth now work nothing wherein the nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle. Christ as Man hath all power both in heaven and earth given him. He hath as Man, not as God only, supreme dominion over the quick and the dead, for so much his ascension into heaven, and his session at the right hand of God do import.(5)

Since God the Word never acts apart from his human nature, this means that in Eucharist, God the Word not only acts as God, but as man since God the Son "doth now work nothing wherein the nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle." For that reason, Hooker believed that the humanity of Jesus was active and present as he received Holy Communion. Therefore he will say,

... the very letter of the word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very Cross, that by them we draw out, as touching efficacy, force, and virtue, even the blood of his gored side, in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for ever quenched; ... what these elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, his promise in witness hereof sufficeth, his word he knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this, O my God thou art true, O my Soul thou art happy.(6)

Of course, Hooker does not believe that the bread and wine are the original body and blood of Jesus, but he does believe that they are instruments of Christ's divinity and humanity, united in one person, and that one person Jesus Christ is active and present in his divine and human natures. The bread and wine, by their very corporeality, set forth his body and blood, the very body that once lay upon the cross, so that in Eucharist believers dip their tongues in the blood of his wounds. In other words, there is no disincarnate Word active behind the bread and wine of Eucharist. Rather, the divine Word is always connected to the body it assumed in the Incarnation, and further, this ascended, glorified body, still bearing the marks of its wounds, is set forth and made concrete, active, and present in the eucharistic elements.

What is true for Eucharist, is true in general. Wherever Jesus Christ works, he works in both his human and divine natures. This applies as well to the witness of the apostles. From the biblical point of view, the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ does not set forth a disincarnate Word, but rather, the whole person of Jesus Christ in both his human and divine nature. Let me elaborate further, starting with the idea that the apostolic witness not only sets forth Jesus Christ, but is Jesus Christ in the form of proclamation.

Arnold Come, in his brilliant book, Human Spirit, Holy Spirit, describes how the gospel proclamation could be Jesus Christ by placing the matter in a wider biblical, Hebraic context. First, Come points out that, in the Hebrew perspective, the words a person speaks are an extension of the person across space and time.

A crucial example is found in "the strong power of the word." Its power lies in its being the "bodily expression" of the "mental essence," of the "whole soul which created it," and it is considered to be one of the most typical and most influential extensions of human personality, across space and across time.(7)

Further, again reflecting a Hebrew understanding, a person's self is not only extended across space and time by their own words, but even by the words of others. That is, if person B witnesses to person A, and person C receives B's witness, then C has encountered person A. In this way, the apostolic witness to those who never personally met Jesus Christ conveys Jesus Christ to them as an encounter with the very person of Christ.

In what sense, then is Christ (or the Spirit) present according to these passages which do not seem to speak of immediate personal encounter? We would suggest that herein Paul is reflecting his Jewish background and an ancient Hebraic way of thinking. Accordingly, perceptions are not mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind. Rather, they are imprints of the thing or being perceived, and they carry some of the actual substance of the perceived into the perceiver. Or, from the other perspective, the imprint that one makes upon another carries something of one's very self into the other. And even after the immediate contact is broken, the one is still in a sense present and operative upon the other. Indeed, a man is in truly significant contact only with that which actually enters into his soul. It is that which he really knows, it is that which really affects him and which he can act upon.(8)

As Jesus lived, his words and deeds were not "mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind" by those who heard and saw him. Rather, the apostles received "imprints of the thing or being perceived," something of his "very self." They, as bearers of these imprints, carried Jesus Christ within them, and when they spoke or wrote of him, they conveyed Jesus' "very self" to those who heard their message because their words were not "mere images received from the senses and retained by the mind." Rather, their words carried "some of the actual substance of the perceived into the perceiver." This does not mean that their message conveyed the physical body of Christ into believers. Rather, their words were an extension of Jesus Christ. They were his "human personality, across space and across time." Nor could it be said that the apostolic witness mystically connected hearers to Jesus Christ, as if the apostolic message were a mere trigger to a mystical experience beyond the message itself. No, the words themselves were Jesus Christ in proclaimed form. They were imprints of his person, and when received into the body and soul of believers, enabled Christ to live in them and they in Christ. In its article on the word "gospel," the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible puts it like this,

But Jesus is more than the first recipient and the propagator of the good news. In his ministry, he is himself the good announced. He is God's power and wisdom (I Cor. 1:24); our peace (Eph. 2:14); the end of the law (Rom. 10:4); our righteousness, consecration, and redemption (I Cor. 1:30). The great "I am" statements in John (6:35; 10:7, 11; 14:6; 15:1) have the same function. In his whole ministry, Jesus himself is the gospel.(9)

Jesus himself is the gospel, his words and deeds proclaimed his very self. They were him as words and acts. Further, when the apostles proclaimed the same gospel, they did not simply say things about Jesus, they set forth Jesus himself, his very person, so that Jesus will say to the apostles, "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me" (Mt. 10:40). When others heard the apostolic witness, those in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome, they received Jesus Christ himself, in his human and divine natures, in the form of proclamation. In this way they encountered Jesus Christ who became their power and wisdom, their peace, the end of the law, their righteousness and redemption. These phrases have their meaning in the humanity and the divinity of Jesus Christ. The word "peace," for example, means peace with God, something that God did in Christ on the cross, a human and divine act.

The four gospels are the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. When the early church preserved this witness, they did not simply record words and deeds about Jesus, they set forth the person of Jesus Christ so that those who received the biblical words received Jesus in his human and divine nature. Similarly, following Hooker, when believers receive in faith the bread and wine of Holy Communion, they receive Jesus Christ in both his human and divine natures as one person.

Further, from a biblical point of view, the body belongs to the essence of a person.(10) Human beings are objective, speaking objective words, doing observable deeds, things perceived through the senses and located in space and time. To know a person is to receive imprints of their person as communicated through their bodily existence. Therefore, if the person of Jesus is conveyed by language in his inseparable human and divine natures, the human nature requires objective, specific language, language setting forth the objective words and deeds of Jesus. This implies that the person of Jesus Christ is set forth "as" the gospel words in their historical specificity, and not "through" the gospel words, as if there were a mystical person or disincarnate Word behind the person of Jesus. (I will say more on this in my next essay which considers an approach that is neither fundamentalist nor liberal.)

Price, however, is not thinking in these terms. For him, there is a Logos, God the Word, the second person of the Trinity, who is manifested in every time and place, but supremely in Jesus Christ, the only hypostatic union between God the Word and a finite reality. Since the Bible is not the original Jesus, it is not in hypostatic union with the divine Word, nor are the gospels seen as extensions of the hypostatic union across space and time. Rather, the Bible is simply one of many manifestations of the divine Word, surely of great importance, but different only in degree from the Word as manifested throughout creation. In other words, for Price, the gospels belong to creation rather than Incarnation as its extension. As a result, the task of biblical interpretation is to discern the divine Word in the midst of the biblical words, and this alongside other manifestations of the Word, namely, contemporary experience. In light of the foregoing, Price states that: 1) The divine is "discerned" in, not read "as," the biblical words. 2) Scripture is not a "textbook of ethics," literally proscribing right and wrong behavior. 3) Scripture is to be read for its "thrust," its general trajectory rather than specific statements. 4) Words, and this includes the biblical words, "mediate the divine," rather than the divine becoming words as in the "Word became flesh." 5) God the Word speaks "through" human words, rather than "as" the human words of Scripture. 6) One discovers the Word of God in Scripture, and is then "formed and illuminated" by the Word, rather than directly addressed by the Word. 7) Scripture "shapes" our minds and wills, as opposed to addressing them directly. 8) Older interpretations of the Word can be revised and reformed, and in the end, the living Word of God can be "finally liberated" from the biblical words.(11) All these are ways of leaving the biblical words behind on the way to new insights given in contemporary experience which guide the church to discover God the Word with "ever more faithfulness."

Statements such as "God's Word is a Person, not a book," the "real 'Word' of God is Jesus himself," the Bible "did not die for us," and the "word isn't just what Jesus says, but the word signifies his whole person," are true by reason of semantics. A person is not a book, nor is a person identical to what a person says. This is a commonplace observation. Statements that the person of God the Word "transcends all books, even the Bible," or that the Bible does not take "precedence over Christ's continuing action in the world through the Holy Spirit," or that the "Bible is the Word of God relatively," or that the Spirit "leads us and forms us over time through the events and experiences which accost us and demand to be lived," are profound theological and hermeneutical statements. The revisionists have taken semantic distinctions based on commonplace observations and turned them into theological and hermeneutical claims of profound significance. Jesus Christ does not transcend the Bible as the Episcopal bishops claimed, because Jesus' humanity was and is an integral part of his person, and the biblical witness is that person in written form.(12)

I will say more on this in my next essay, but in the present period before Jesus' coming again, Jesus Christ has limited himself to the apostolic witness. As a result, he does not go beyond or transcend that witness, nor are there new revelations given by "Christ's continuing action in the world through the Holy Spirit," but continued repetitions of Christ's original words and deeds set forth as Scripture. There are no normative "events and experiences which accost us and demand to be lived,"(13) but there is a revelation of the person of Jesus Christ who encounters us as Scripture and demands our absolute obedience. The Bible is not identical to Jesus in the flesh, but as the rendering of his life in the flesh, it is of absolute authority. Of course, the Spirit is required to receive Jesus Christ as Scripture, but Price and the revisionists are claiming other norms, experiences, and insights along with Scripture, and this on the basis of bad logic and faulty theological presuppositions.

For orthodoxy, God the Word became incarnate, and following Hooker who follows the orthodox tradition, forever works as the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ in one person. The biblical witness conveys the person of Jesus Christ in his two inseparable natures, using objective, historical language to render his human nature, and such things as his divine titles and deeds of power to set forth his divine nature. These are rendered as a seamless whole, one person in two natures. There is no disincarnate Word active behind or through the biblical witness, allowing space to insert other norms, processes, and circumstances as norms alongside the gospel witness.

Endnotes

1. This statement was from a resolution passed by Episcopal bishops in Spokane in 1983. See Frederick Houk Borsch, ed., The Bible's Authority in Today's Church, (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1993), p. 40.
2. http://episcopalmajority.blogspot.com/2008/01/civil discourse part 2.html.
3. Borsch, pp. 80, 71.
4. http://www.episcopalchurch.org/pb25_1324_ENG_HTM.htm

5. Hooker, Lawes, V,lv,8. Unlike Hooker, who believes that God the Word operated apart from his body prior to incarnation, Barth believes that God the Word always, from eternity, worked through the humanity of Christ. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1958), IV:2, excursus pp. 33-4 and I:2, 1956, p. 50. I think Barth makes the better case.
6. V,lxvii,12.
7. Arnold Come, Human Spirit, Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), p. 61.
8. Come, p. 116.
9. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, George Arthus Buttrick, ed. (Volume II, New Work: Abingdon Press, 1962), pp. 445-6.
10. See Come, the section entitled, "The Bodily Dimension of Man," pp. 38f.
11. Borsch, 1) pp. 71, 83, 86. 2) p. 72. 3) p. 72 4) pp. 74, 78, 89. 5) pp. 74, 80, 84, 87. 6) p. 83. 7) pp. 88, 93, 96. 8) p. 85.
12. This is not only true theologically, following Chalcedon, but true from a biblical perspective as referenced in footnote 10.
13. By this the former presiding bishop means that experience is a norm alongside Scripture. See my essay on the former presiding bishop in the theology section of my web page.

----The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D. is VirtueOnline's resident cyber theologian. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida. His website can be accessed here: www.rsanders.org