But this means that the New Testament is not merely a true commentary on Christianity. It has been pointed out in relation to B B Warfield’s theological position that Warfield was always in danger of saying that Christianity would be totally true and would totally work even if there weren’t a Bible to tell us all about it (but that it so happens that we have set an authoritative book which does precisely that, from as it were the sidelines) [See D H Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (SCM 1975) esp, eg, 21 f.]. But, according to Paul in Romans 15 and elsewhere, the Bible is itself a key part of God’s plan.
Interestingly, the late Cornelius Van Til got an entirely different impression of Warfield’s view:
Scripture is a factor in the redeeming work of God, a component part of the series of his redeeming acts, without which that series would be incomplete and so far inoperative for its main end.
The difference in Van Til is that his reference comes not from a secondary source but from Warfield himself (“The Biblical Idea of Revelation,” collected in The Inspiration & Authority of the Bible, p. 80).
Warfield writes that revelation is for the sake of knowledge, “though not, of course, for its own sake, but for the sake of salvation.”
No bare series of unexplained acts can be thought, however, adapted to produce knowledge, especially if these acts be, as in this case, of a highly transcendental character. Nor can this particular series of acts be thought to have as its main design the production of knowledge; its main design is rather to save man. No doubt the production of knowledge of the Divine grace is one of the means by which this main design of the redemptive acts of God is attained. But this only renders it the more necessary that the proximate result of producing knowledge should not fail; and it is doubtless for this reason that the series of redemptive acts of God has not been left to explain itself, but the explanatory word has been added to it. Revelation thus appears, however, not as the mere reflection of the redeeming work of God in the minds of men, but as a factor in the redeeming work of God, a component part of the series of his redeeming acts, without which that series would be incomplete and so far inoperative for its main end. Thus, the Scriptures represent it, not confounding revelation with the series of the redemptive acts of God, but placing it among the redemptive acts of God and giving it a function as a substantive element in the operations by which the merciful God saves sinful men.
I suppose if one went searching through Warfield’s work one might find him saying something different at his worst. But I don’t want Warfield or Wright or anyone else to be portrayed at their worst.
In any event, what Wright is highlighting (I think), and what has been perhaps the most important theological advance in the last few decades, is the primacy of the notion of biblical revelation as STORY over against the view that it is a philosophical or doctrinal system.
One idea I’ve liked from Stan Hauerwas is that people today are really in need of feeling that they are part of some adventure, and that biblical Christianity provides that by way of placing us with a story.
I just wanted to say welcome back Mark. I hate it when you’re gone Garver.
I don’t disagree that Wright is trying to get at the story aspect of our faith, but I really don’t understand the need to set these ideas over against each other. Christians should certainly agree that God has, in the Bible, been incrimentally revealing the story of redemptive history, and that we have been offered a part in the story, but why ought that to preclude us from finding philosophy and science and doctrine in the story? I don’t so much mean to disagree with Paul as to lament the fact that serious arguments go on over things like this as if we have to pick: do we have a narrative faith, or do we have a doctrinal faith? I think the testimony of men like St. John is that we have both and our job is to figure out how to hold on to both in such a way that they aren’t pulling in opposite directions.