In Search of the Face of Christ Fr. Stan Chu Ilo Originally published in Issue XII of Vulgata, February, 2003.

“It is too little to describe Jesus in terms of ‘sola scriptura’, for he also transgressed the letter of the Law of Moses; he criticized even the most holy part of the canon –or , more correctly, he claimed to interpret more purely than was none in the written word the will of God that was hidden therein. We can say, then that he regarded as normative the collection of traditions attributed to Moses and the prophetic tradition even while he recognized that they were transmitted through a living community and had to be reinterpreted in terms of the new claims it makes on her” [1]

The Christian community faces no greater challenge from biblical fundamentalism as she faces in our times. A study of some of the teachings of the Church and the writings of some theologians lead us to make some conclusions on the meaning of biblical fundamentalism:
 

I- According to fundamentalists, the bible is materially sufficient in teaching and directing the Christians on what to believe and how to act so as to attain everlasting life.

II- They have a literal understanding of scripture; this literalism also extends to customs, laws and ethos of the Qahal Yahweh (the people of God) in the Old Testament.

III- Their understanding of inerrancy (that is that the Scripture contains no errors in it) extends to even historical and scientific matters and accounts related in the bible.

IV- According to the document of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States of American, on fundamentalism, the basic characteristic of biblical fundamentalism is that it eliminates the Church from Christianity as the Lord Jesus founded it; it eliminates and denies the authority of the Magisterium (the teaching authority of the Church), and the place of tradition as communicating the word of God.[2]  Biblical fundamentalists thus hold on to one source of revelation and this univocal source is the Bible. They also do not accept the cultural diversity of times and the inculturation of the Gospel.

VII -Biblical fundamentalists also hold that salvation is not to be discovered in the present mainline churches and that salvation is a personal thing and not one mediated through the Church or the sacraments.

VIII -There is also a very narrow and restrictive understanding of salvation that allows no room for ecumenical dialogue since fundamentalists hold that only Bible-believing Christians would go to heaven  They also emphasis on an apocalyptism that emphasizes the imminence of the Parousia. Eschatology is perceived in the categories of hell and the irremediable punishment that awaits those who are yet to make a personal submission to the Christ or rather to those who have not ‘been born again.’

IX -Bibical fundamentalists interpret the Bible based on their subjective life style, thus they adopt a somewhat minimalistic understanding of Christian teaching based on their subjective and limited judgement. This explains the eruption within the last decade of a kind of watered down theology that interprets the Bible from the point of view of individual’s perspective and morality.

Brigid Frein has shown the poverty of fundamentalism in its narrow understanding of biblical narratives.  She argues that even though Biblical fundamentalism has a certain kinship with narrative critics in their mutual suspicion of historico-critical method, the power of the text to speak in itself and the centrality of the whole message, biblical fundamentalism by its rejection of scientific approach to the Bible and the simplistic acceptance of the truth as inherent in the text and not in the reality that the text communicates, makes it impossible for it to communicate the Word of God in its richness and diversity as a revelation that came in the fragile vessel of human words.

Perhaps the best scientific treatment of the dangers of biblical fundamentalism is the works of James Barr and Thomas O’ Meare.[3]  James Barr defines fundamentalism this way;

“Fundamentalist ideas grew up in, or go back to, a time when the real author of the Bible was God. God revealed what he pleased of himself by giving such and such information to each of the human writers; but the whole hangs together because it all comes straight from him. It pleased him to channel all his knowledge through a variety of human writers, but the knowledge is all equally valid because it comes from him…. the conception that God himself is the source, and therefore the guarantor of the unity of the whole, continues to act as an obstacle blocking all arguments that proceed from diversity of viewpoint to the recognition of different sources.” [4]

“Its way of presenting these truths is rooted in an ideology which is not biblical, whatever the proponents of this approach might say. For it demands an unshakeable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as only the source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research.” [5]

Applications to Contemporary Issues

Fundamentalism is the attempt to flee from the rigour and effort that faith demands on us. We do not discover religious truths in a passive way, but in an active sense. fundamentalism no doubt attempts to understand the central content of the Christian faith, but there is the need to fully understand the Incarnational principle through which God communicates himself to us through the Jesus Christ. The missing link in contemporary Christianity is the loss of the Christological basis of the faith. Indeed, many people who turn their back on the Church do so more out of the distaste with the institutional Church and not out of dislike for the person of Christ. In the face of the greatest scandals of sexual abuse and the clear poverty of leadership on the part of some bishops; in the face of conflicting teaching on sexual morality and homosexuality, we need to have a turn towards Christ. Like Pope John Paul 11 teaches in his encyclical inaugurating the New Millennium, Novo Millennio Ineuente, we must begin afresh from Chrst. A Church that presents more of Christ in her teaching and life and less of herself and her authority; Christians that present more the face of Christ than show mere zealotry about the glory of the faith, would appeal to more people today. There is not better way of presenting Christ than by encountering him in his Word and the Eucharist in his totality. As Fr. Lagrange has noted early in the 20th Century, we go to the Scripture to search for the face of Christ and the mystery of his grace and salvation. This search does not start and end in the text of the Scripture; it is a search that finds expression and full meaning in the Church, especially in her liturgy and in the authentic witnessing of Christians.

 The human and divine are always at play in the economy of salvation. The Christian in his humanity shares in the divinity of Christ, just as Christ in his divinity shares in our humanity. There is a mysterious interplay between our woundedness and God’s gracious and benevolent condition and accommodation of our broken humanity in to the mystery of his love in Christ. A Christian faith that ignores the complexity of faith or fails to wrestle with the challenges of the day by fixing its gaze on Christ may become like any other religion or even become an ideology that admits of mutually exclusive standpoints.

Also to be avoided is a certain fundamentalism that absolutizes tradition or the historico-critical methods, or the insular mentality, which is witnessed, in contemporary society whereby individual practices and life-styles are used as a mirror to interpreting the Bible. This approach tends to bend the Bible to the fashion of the day and refuses to allow the Bible to speak for itself. When for instance the Episcopal Church of the United States of America approves the ordination of an openly gay bishop, it minimalizes the interpretation of the Word of God. The argument proffered by those who support this ordination is that the Lord Jesus welcomed the marginal people in society like prostitutes, thieves and sinners of all kinds, but the Lord did not welcome them to keep them marginal or locked up in the revolving chain of personal weakness. Even if like some say the condition of some gays are genetic, the question is yet to be answered as to whether everything genetic is good for the species. We do have many genetic diseases but humanity has not stopped seeking for solutions to some of these diseases. What is at issue here is not the love of God but the human response to that love which often challenges us to go beyond our self-imposed and subjective blurring of our vision to the wider picture of the divine comedy that transcends us.

However, it is in the Word of God that we find the true meaning of life and the appropriate response demanded of all Christians especially in matters of faith, family life, sexual morality, human dignity etc. In Jesus, we see the full dignity and splendour of our humanity and the height and breath of God’s call and invitation to each and all to take the narrow road that leads to life.

Life in the final analysis can only be found not in the personal turn towards subjective moral judgements and personal whims whether it is historical or incidental, but in the turn towards God in whom we find our true home and personal identity and purpose.  Thus in accepting the ordination of an openly gay bishop, the Episcopalians have made a choice that is fundamentally unbiblical in both its conception of the individual and ministries in the Church as per qualifications and more fundamentally in terms of our response to God’s love, which is often at issue in our contact with God. God loves us, but do we love him enough to make the appropriate response to his love, which is an invitation to make a radical and ongoing conversion of life to be more like him? This is the difference between the grace that is costly and lasting and the grace is that is cheap and temporary. When we shape our lives outside the compass of the Lord’s commandment or when we shape the message of Christianity to suit our narrow perspectives like fundamentalists both morally and biblically, we create a god that is too compartmentalized in each individual’s  little world that is definitely not the Transcendental God that is wholly above us and still intimately involved in our history as the Word-Among-Us.  In the former sense of seeing reality as the one made by us and chosen by us, the Word of God no longer directs our lives rather is arbitrarily employed to justify our life styles.

The Word always transforms from within and it grasps us by the power of the Spirit through which divine communication comes alive to us not because the Word has changed but because the Spirit always makes us renewed receptacle of the Word, as we approach the Word in openness.

Finally, we note that the normativity of extra biblical traditions for divine instruction is an ecclesial framework, which obviously rejects sola scriptura.  The Scripture then when properly studied and humbly meditated upon, is a spring of living water that nourishes and energizes the Christian life; it is a source of life, light and vitality for the Church and the biblical foundation for any theology that is not insulated within the reified field of philosophical abstractions nor fossilized in the narrowness of biblical fundamentalism. A deep reading of the biblical passages is the only cure to fundamentalism, because the Word takes us beyond limits, which our arrogant and stubborn fanaticism places on us. It opens our eyes to see the glory of God.

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Notes:

1-  Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, Trans MaryFrances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 79.
2-  A Pastoral Statement for Catholics on Biblical Fundamentalism, Ad Hoc Committee on Biblical Fundamentalism, (Washington: United States Catholic
     Conference, Inc. 1987), 5-6.
3- See James Barr, Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978) James Barr treats of the origin of the movement, the historical root of their
     movement, their doctrine, ecclesiology, eschatology and their understanding of inspiration and inerrancy and finally the effects it has on biblical scholarship and
     how they could be met theologically by addressing the philosophical and theological roots of their erroneous thinking. Indeed, the problem of fundamentalism is
     common to all religions, but in Christianity fundamentalism is not really the attitude to the Bible, but a certain form of religious beliefs that yields a certain attitude
     to the Bible. See also Thomas O’ Meare, Fundamentalism: A Catholic Perspective (NY: Paulist Press, 1990). He argues that fundamentalism (78) is borne out
     of  liberalism within Christianity which if unchecked would lead to no faith and worship at all. Without some liberalism the Church goes into entropy, but unlimited
     liberalism, which Protestantism gave the world after the Reformation and after the two wars, gave birth to some kind of exegesis that placed the Christian faith to
    the changing liberal minds of theologians. The uncritical faith of the fundamentalists cannot advance the cause of the Gospel.
4- James Barr, 65.
5- See Joseph Fitzmyer, The Biblical Commission’s Document, ‘The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church’ Text and Commentary (Roma: Editirice Pontificio
     Istituto Biblico, 1995) 101-107.