The Lordship of Christ and the Authority of Scripture

I have been reading from a book by a theologian named Wolfhart Pannenberg about Jesus. It's Enlglish title is Jesus - God and Man. His excursions through higher criticism have actually been very refreshing, though I can't always support his conclusions or his attitude towards the Scriptures.

Higher criticism is the biblical study of texts, comparing and contrasting to determine which texts are original and which are not. For a mainline Protestant like Pannenberg, the Bible is not an infallible document but a collection of ancient Hebrew and early Christian traditions. Because of this, higher criticism is for him (and for most biblical critics) the sifting of not only ancient texts but even individual passages to determine "authenticity." While this is at times entirely offensive to evangelical and Reformed convictions, the rabbit chase is exilerating and even enlightening. For Pannenberg, it has encouraged him to find the foundation of Jesus' authority and divinity not in His life and teachings, per se, but in His resurrection.

Because Paul's writings are generally accepted as some of the oldest documents in the New Testament, Pannenberg uses his sayings about Jesus as a good source for early Christian understanding of Jesus' life, mission, and meaning. In Romans 1, Paul says that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection. This, for Pannenberg, creates a criterion for understanding the source of Jesus' authority.

Because Jesus' ministry was as a Jew among first century Jews, Pannenberg assumes that Jewish apocolyptic thought runs as the backdrop of Jesus' entire ministry and mission. This means that Jesus was in agreement with the sentiment of the time that the End was soon, that the Kingdom of Yahweh was coming, and that the Messiah and the new aeon were at hand. It is fuzzy to determine whether Pannenberg really believes that Jesus understood Himself as the Messiah prior to His resurrection, mostly because Jesus seems to have refused the title for Himself. Jesus, as the Evangelists presented Him, was aware of His divinity and mission. I, for one, have to side with the Evangelists. Pannenberg heartily affirms Jesus' divinity, it seems, but gives a lot of weight to His having a truly human, and therefore limited, self knowledge. This is a debate that could run circles for eternity.

As a prophet, or someone who is speaking on behalf of Yahweh, Jesus' words would have needed to be fulfilled in the sight of at least some of His hearers. The fulfilment of Jesus' declaration, "the Kingdom is at hand," rests in the manifestsation of the Kingdom - not in His teaching or miracles - but in His resrrection. God's rasing Jesus from the dead is the vindication of Jesus. From the perspective of the Resurrection, looking back, all of Jesus' commands take on a proven weight. All of His declarations, promises, and teachings are proven true by Resurrection. For Pannenberg, this is the integral issue. In Bonhoeffer's words, "Verbal inspiration is a poor substitute for Resurrection." The litmus test of Jesus' authority is not in an infallible document but in God's historical vindication of Him in the Ressurection. It is by the Ressurection that Jesus can be declared the Christ and Son of God. This certainly accords with the apostolic preaching in Acts.

While the tendency to dissect the Bible to the point of nearly destroying its devotional and theological relevance stands as a dark specter over the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, the shift in authority from the text to Jesus Christ Himself - which is the obvious backdrop and/or conclusion that must be drawn from his view of Scripture when balanced with his belief in the Resurrection - is both refreshing and exhilerating. It places even the Bible under the authority of Jesus.

For someone with a higher view of the Bible, this is still good practice - not because the Bible may contradict Jesus, but because it places the Bible in its place as the transmission of God's Word through the prophets and Apostles, i.e. as the voice of God to and through His church. God is Himself over His church. It is a difficult position to keep correctly nuanced, however. The slippery slope of unbelief and disobedience looms large here. Despite this, if taught correctly we can use this doctrine to show that Jesus Christ, not the Bible, is God's ultimate and final revelation, and that the Scriptures are themselves a witness to Him - a witness that cannot be broken, but a witness nonetheless. It is devotion to and faith in Jesus Christ, not the Bible, that justifies the sinner before almighty God.