Abiding in What We Believe about Scripture

The second in a seven part series by Lora A. Copley

Dec 13, 2021

A Parable

Once upon a time, a ship floated in a bay. Her anchor cut deep into the rock. But the ship grew tired of the anchor. She cut herself off from it. And for a while, nothing happened. The winds were calm. She appeared to be exactly where she had always been -- within the boundaries of the bay called orthodoxy.

But then the wind picked up. A storm was brewing. The ship began moving where-ever the wind tossed her. There was no anchor. Nothing would stay that ship from crashing upon the cliffs.

Anchors are critical. Anchors save lives. Anchors even promote rest. (Ever tried to sleep on a boat that wasn’t anchored to anything? Good luck!) For the ship called SS Christian Reformed Church, our primary anchor is the infallible Word of God and its summaries in the three creeds and our three confessions. We are still an anchored ship.

Knives, Fire, and a Planted Foot

But what is happening in our day? Knives are working at the anchor’s ropes. The knife of “my truth, your truth.” The knife of “privileging experience and dialogue.” And the Great Ancient knife, first wielded in the Garden, the knife of “did God really say?” [1]

Even as knives go to work on the ropes, the way to blunt knives is through the anchor itself. We settle ourselves in the basics of what we believe. Remember Jane Eyre--when she faced the temptation to run off with the very married Mr. Rochester? Jane’s truth, her experience, her feelings, her “veins running with fire” were burning her to comply to Rochester’s heartfelt entreaty, but remember Jane’s response? Jane looked to an anchor, resolving:

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour… If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? … Foregone determinations are all I have this hour: there I plant my foot." [2] Jane did not yield to the fire of her feelings.

Winds and Anchors

In our creeds and confessions, we CRC folk made some “foregone determinations” and it’s there, like Jane, we plant our foot.[3]

What might that resolve look like, as it relates to the anchor of Scripture and the winds that push against it? A colleague emails[4]: “Appeals to the Bible are just power-plays. Bible-worship. It’s time to rely more on the new moves of the Spirit.”

Or another encourages: “Enter the Bible imaginatively. Dialogue with it as story. But any definitive statements about truth claims smack of Western propositional thinking.”

What will be our posture to these entreaties? First, we check our feet. We remember the “foregone determinations” that we, as Jesus’ branch of CRC people, have committed to, that we stand upon. Yes, we listen. Yes, we learn. Yes, we wrestle. But we do so tethered to that anchor.

Someone will say: “The words in 1 Thessalonians are not the word of God. It’s the word of Paul. We are not Paul-ians. We’re Christians.” Or again: “Leviticus is not for us. Moses is for people of another time. The true Word is Jesus.”

Another asserts in the same vein: “Everything in the Old Testament is archaic and metaphor. Everything in Paul’s letters is contextual. The thing we should pay attention to is the Gospels. The authority is in the red-letters. Full stop.”

I hear this sentiment enough (especially the dismissal of the Old Testament) that it’s worth a bit more ink. I find it helpful to work with the objector’s premise, saying, “Okay. Let’s only look at Jesus and his words. Since you accept Jesus’ authority, what does He say about Scripture? Look at Jesus saying: [5]

“Scripture cannot be broken”
“it’s easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for one dot of the Law to become void”
“Sanctify them in the truth: your word is truth.”
“You’re in error because you do not know the Scripture…”

And when Jesus quotes the Old Testament scriptures, whether narrative or poetry, law or prophecy, he does so most often identifying the quotation as originating from God.[6]

So if we want to take Jesus at His word, then the whole Bible becomes red-lettered. Jesus held it as all authoritative. All trustworthy. All good. All anchor. [7]

Last eve I paused beside the blacksmith’s door,
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

“How many anvils have you had,” said I,
“To wear and batter all these hammers so?”
“Just one,” said he, and then with twinkling eye,
“The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.”

And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s Word,
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The Anvil is unharmed – the hammers gone.

-attributed to John Clifford

Wind Trajectories?

As we consider the Human Sexuality Report, some folks call for new “hermeneutical frameworks” for understanding Scripture, suspecting dynamics of power and oppression are afoot in the HSR’s Biblical arguments. Some chastise the HSR for being more concerned with the what of faith and obedience, rather than the Who is to be believed and obeyed.[8] Still others question Biblical clarity on sexual matters. And then there are those that seem less interested in Biblical arguments than the sociological ones altogether.

I seek to listen and understand these opposing beliefs. Yet in this task, may I tell what gives me pause? When I take a step back, I notice a similar trajectory of where these arguments go to where the broader culture has gone and wants the church to go.

The world gusts, "Follow your heart." The Word settles, "Your heart is deceitful.”

The world gusts, "Strut your stuff." The Word settles, "Bow the knee."

The world gusts, “Express.” The Word settles, “Repent.”

The world gusts, "Many ways." The Word settles, "One Way."

A Choice

I have found that the basic distrust of the world’s messages that Scripture calls us to,[9] and the flipside, abandoning myself to trust God’s Word, is always the path of wisdom.

When my own life has not gone according to plan, the world said to me, “Assert your rights, Lora. Live your truth. Trust your power.” But the Word contradicted: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to Him, and He will direct your paths.”[10] To give my ears to the latter word and not the former has comprised joy and life for me.

Yet I know the pull to cut the ropes is strong. It may be more than strong; it may be coercive. I’ve heard of ultimatums—either cut the ropes or I cut you out of your grandkids’ life.[11] (Kyrie, elison!)

So I acknowledge these not just theoretical issues. But please hear me, if we cut off the anchor (or so relativize the anchor that it has no real weight), we lose its ability to speak contrary truth in our lives. I’ve never seen this with more clarity when, this past year, I held the hand of my sister-in-law (and dear friend these 25 years) as she suffered from a brain tumour, and dementia, and then she died. The world and my feelings shouted: “Despair. Despair. Curse God and die.” If I allowed those winds to carry me, I would be sunk. Shipwrecked and sunk.

The Word, however, contradicted me. God’s words, trustworthy and true, pointed me beyond myself to the cross: “No. We are yet more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” And no, “even though I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I will not fear; for You are with me.” [12]

“Certainly, this is the real test of our faith,” said Calvin, that we “refuse to alter course with every wind that blow, and thus remain fixed on God’s truth as on a sure anchor.”[13]

The doctrine of the trustworthiness of Scripture is not a scholar’s game. It’s not a question of palatability for modern audiences. This doctrine is about our being able to hear confrontational, yet life-giving, truth. From God. To save us. “These are not just idle words for you; they are your life.” [14]

SOS, Lord. Keep us anchored.

Citations

Genesis 3:1
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre, ch 27.
That’s not to say the confessions are perfect. It is to say that a shift of the foot takes a pivot we call a gravamen.
All four of the following quotes are summarized interactions with four different influencers within my CRC circles.
These quotes are from John 10:35, Luke 16:17, John 17:17, Matthew 22:29. (Mt 5:18-19 is important. Jesus says “heaven & earth will pass away before a dot or the least stroke of a pen will ever pass away from the Law” & “whoever sets aside one of least commands will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” )
Check out Matthew 22:31-32, Mark 7:8-13; Mark 12:36; John 6:44-45; Mt 4:4; Mt 15:6; John 5:44-47
Could we say that Jesus tethered himself to the anchored authority of God’s Word? Absolutely. “For how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled?” Mt 26:54, John 17:12; I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Fathe2r taught me.” John 8:28; “I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father commands me what to say and speak.” John 12:49
This dichotomy does not and cannot work. If there is a “Who” of Someone to be believed and obeyed, then the “what” of belief and obedience follows. Scripture does not allow us to separate the Who from the what: “by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar…By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him walks in the same way in which he walked.” 1 John 2:3-6
1 John 2:15 “Do not love the world or the things of the world” James 4:4 “You adulterous people, don’t you know friendship with the world is hatred towards God?” Romans 8:7-8 “For the mind of the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” John 17:14 “The world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
Proverbs 3:5
Many in our Native communities of faith could teach Anglo disciples about this, for they have had to walk this difficult path before us. Their commitments to Jesus have sometimes meant losing a place at the family reunion.
Romans 8:37; Psalm 23:4
2 Tim 3:14, Calvin’s Commentary on 2 Timothy.
Deuteronomy 32:47

Lora A. Copley is blessed to be a wife, a mother to four children and an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church. She serves as a director for Areopagus Campus Ministry, a ministry of the CRC classes of Iowa at Iowa State University.