Author Interview
Donald Bloesch
Donald Bloesch, author of Holy Scripture
IVP: Don, you say early in your book that you want to defend the orthodox evangelical faith from its friends as well as its enemies. What does that mean?
Donald Bloesch: There are many conservative evangelicals who defend biblical authority, but do it in such a way that the criterion for determining the truth of revelation is actually human reason rather than divine revelation itself. Through an apologetic aimed at reaching the cultured despisers of religion, they have gone too far in trying to establish points of contact with the world. So they determine the truth of the Bible by evidence or by logic rather than letting the Bible impress its own truth upon the human mind through the power of the Holy Spirit. This evidentialist approach is problematic because it takes away the mystery of divine revelation. It allows the truth of revelation to be placed under human control or subject to human verification.
IVP: That's an interesting comment because, as you know, one of the things the defenders of inerrancy say is that they want to be under the authority of Scripture. They see others who are not inerrantists as giving human judgment precedence over the authority of Scripture. But you're suggesting that the evidentialist's more Protestant scholastic approach might itself turn into a way of controlling Scripture.
Bloesch: Yes. I support the idea that the Word of God is free and remains God's own possession--even in the act of revelation.
IVP: At least in comparison to the seventies, there is not now a lot of talk about scriptural authority, among either mainliners or evangelicals. What's going on?
Bloesch: There is a lot of discussion on theological authority in the liberal and mainline world, only they don't locate authority in Scripture as such but in universal religious experience or in the religious consciousness. This is what Lindbeck calls the experiential-expressive approach. It is true that the issue of authority and even the idea of scriptural inerrancy isn't occupying a central place in contemporary evangelicalism. It's hard to explain, but I think many evangelicals are fearful of opening up the subject again for fear of creating division.
IVP: So you don't think that it's a matter of the debate over scriptural authority being settled?
Bloesch: By no means. It's definitely an open matter. It requires a new articulation of the old problems, which I have tried to give in this book. I try to retain older terms in reference to biblical authority--terms such as infallibility, authority and inerrancy. But I give them a new interpretation, one very close to the historical Reformation position.
IVP: You and I fussed some over your largely negative response to narrative theology, which is one of the ways that some people have tried to work with what meaning and power Scripture has in a contemporary setting. Summarize the core of your objections to narrative theology.
Bloesch: The core of my objection is that narrative theology subordinates scriptural truth to the category of narrative or story. I see scriptural truth as transcendent truth that breaks into the narrative history of this particular people, Israel. The Bible does have a narrative and mythopoetic form. But the content is supernatural, transcendent. And narrative theology doesn't grasp this. It tries to find the truth of the Bible in the narrative itself. That's why narrative theologians emphasize entering into the story empathetically. In my theological perspective we need to get beyond the story to the reality.
IVP: Some people will be surprised that you include a chapter on Bultmann. Why is he still important?
Bloesch: He's important because of the issue of theological and biblical language. What kind of language is this? Is this literal, straightforward language? Is it figurative, poetic, dramatic language? More and more I see the widespread influence of Bultmann. Recently, we had an applicant for a position at Dubuque. I was struck by how much he referred to Bultmann in a lecture. And he's a young Roman Catholic from India. So the whole area of biblical study is still dominated by the questions that Bultmann raised. Theologians and biblical scholars in dialogue with these questions include Schubert Ogden, N.T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan.
IVP: You spent a lot of time on your chapter about the Bible and myth. What do you see as the main contribution of that chapter?
Bloesch: I would say that in the strict sense there is no myth in the Bible because the stories of the gods and goddesses have been demythologized and redefined. But in the loose sense we can speak of myth in the Bible because of the imaginative, poetic language associated with an ancient worldview. This imaginative, poetic language is made to serve the divine revelation of the history of a particular people, namely the Jews. The term mythopoetic can be guardedly applied to much of the language of Scripture for two reasons. First, Scripture's language is akin to the dramatic, figurative language of ancient mythology. And second, many expressions in the Bible actually have a mythological source. But the crucial difference is that the scriptural language is oriented toward the unfolding of sacred history, not the repetitions of nature.
IVP: In a day when many people have ceased to think truth matters much, I found your final chapter on the nature of biblical truth especially helpful. Some, when they respond to the widespread indifference to truth, react into a strongly rationalistic faith. But you affirm biblical truth while distinguishing it from philosophical truth. What's the nature of that distinction?
Bloesch: Biblical truth involves some decision and commitment for its perception and understanding. Strictly philosophical truth is truth that is there waiting to be recognized. It is rational, cerebral, logical, accessible to the human mind irrespective of the religion that the person adheres to. A biblical truth is personal truth. There is a dynamism in the biblical conception of truth that simply isn't found in philosophy.
IVP: The final question, Don. Some years ago you wrote Evangelical Essentials and there talked about your understanding of the Bible and of biblical authority. What are you able to do in Holy Scripture that goes beyond anything you've written before?
Bloesch: I go deeply into the question of hermeneutics, which I did not do in Essentials. My understanding of revelation and inspiration is basically the same. What makes this new work different is that I interact with more recent theological movements, such as narrative theology, feminist and Third World theology, and the theology of religions.