Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has created a stir with his proposed amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution. He claims anyone who takes issue with the amendment is opposing biblical authority.
The issue is not biblical authority, but biblical authoritarianism.
The SBC is at a “breaking point,” Mohler says, over whether the convention will recognize women as pastors and teachers.
Stephen Shoemaker
Evidently the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message is not precise enough in forbidding women to be pastors or serving in pastoral roles. It seems some women are functioning as congregational pastors and teachers without official titles. So Mohler is proposing that SBC churches may not “affirm, support or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”
His condemnation of female podcasters indicates he also wants to prohibit women from teaching un-assembled congregations. The Holy Spirit can be a bit seditious when calling the ministers of the church. Authoritarian ecclesial bodies always are uncomfortable with the work of the Holy Spirit because it is so resistant to being controlled.
Mohler also loves to appeal to the “order of creation,” an old theological convention used to support male hegemony. The Apostle Paul centered the gospel in the declaration that in Christ, God’s “new creation,” was superseding the old creation with its divisions, oppressions and bigotries. In Christ, he wrote in Galatians 3:28, “there is no longer slave and free, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer male and female.”
As for church laws that place anatomical requirements on believers, Paul wrote in large letters as a postscript at the end of his letter to the Galatians, “CIRCUMCISION MEANS NOTHING! UN-CIRCUMCISION MEANS NOTHING! THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THE NEW CREATION!”
Earlier, in Galatians: 5:6, he had said something that is fundamental to our life together in church and in the world: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
“How do you read the Torah on this?” Jesus often was asked. And he returned the question. So, because Mohler is weaponizing the Bible against women, I offer in return 15 extended sentences on biblical interpretation. We might think of them as the legend to the biblical map.
How to read the Bible:
- The Bible is the human word of the eternal and living God. It is God’s revealed truth mediated through men and women over 2,000 years of the history of Israel and the church. The words are not dictated as on gold tablets straight from heaven.
- The Bible is a library of books, not one book. Each book of the Bible has its own context in history in the life of God’s people. There is no more a flat Bible, each word accorded the same spiritual value, than a flat earth. Think of 66 rolled-up scrolls on a rack like newspaper racks in old libraries. The Latin word for Bible is Biblia — books, not book.
- The Bible is a living word of God. Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes: “The Word of God
never comes to an end. No word is God’s last word.” Or, as Gracie Allen said, “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.” Yes, God is still speaking. - The key to the interpretation of the Bible for Christians is Jesus Christ. The1963 Baptist Faith and Message statement of faith reads: “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.” This was removed from the 2000 version. Accordingly, we should turn to Jesus, who called women into his circle of disciples.
- Sometimes the poetic meaning is the literal meaning. This statement by British biblical scholar Northrup Frye has become my own shorthand to say the Bible is composed of many kinds of literary forms —history, story, law, allegory, poetry, song, proverb, visionary prophetic, utterance, parable, gospel (a unique kind of story), epistle and apocalypse (literally, “an unveiling”). Each form is best understood if we know the kind of literary form we are reading.
- There is no verbal interpretation of Bible that is inerrant. However, we have many who want to be regarded as inerrant interpreters of the Bible. We should be careful around them, as we may become casualties of their interpretations.
- In the hands of authoritarian interpreters of the Bible, the Bible become a hammer, not living water. Throughout history, the dominant class has used the Bible to oppress. The Slave Bible, for example, was a carefully curated version printed and given to those held in chattel slavery. It included verses that made slavery appear acceptable to God and excised verses that might have inspired revolt. Why have so many people left and are still leaving the church? One reason: They’ve suffered the hammer of the Bible weaponized against them.
- We must focus on the parts of the Bible that increase our love of God. Not long ago, a white-collar criminal was sentenced to serve time in what was the last leper colony in the U.S., the Gillis Long Center in Louisiana. He would worship weekly with the lepers. One day he saw a leper with his Bible pressed right against his face. Why, he wondered to himself? Leprosy may cause blindness but also the loss of feeling in toes and fingers. Suddenly it dawned on him what he was watching: The blind leper was reading his Braille Bible with his tongue. “How sweet are thy words to my taste,” the Psalmist wrote, “sweeter than honey to my mouth.”
- Augustine’s rule of biblical interpretation still serves. He advised: If your interpretation of Scripture increases your love of God and neighbor, you are on the right track; if not start all over again. Richard Niebuhr wrote that the foundational purpose of the church and its mission is “the increase in the love of God and neighbor.” So too our reading of the Bible.
- The work of the Holy Spirit is essential to our reading of Scripture. The Spirit helps the written word become a living word. As we open the Bible, we begin with our consent to the presence of God and God’s Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit in the congregation is not uniformity but unity in reconciled diversity.
- The Word of God is greater than the written word of Scripture. Our Scriptures help us discern the Word of God let loose in the world.
- The uniquely Baptist way of reading the Bible is bound up in three 17th century phrases. These are “soul competency,” “soul freedom” and “local church autonomy.” Soul competency and soul freedom mean every person is competent to open the Bible and with the aid of the Spirit interpret it for their own life and faith, and if they are competent they also should be free. Local church autonomy means the congregation has the competence to open the Bible and with the aid of the Spirit interpret it for its life together in Christ, and if competent also must be free.
- “The letter kills but the Spirit brings life.” These words from Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:6 point to the danger of biblical literalism: It allows the Bible to be manipulated by those who want to impose their interpretation of the text upon others. This “manhandling” of the text (with an emphasis on “man”) is most apparent in SBC circles today.
- The Bible is best read as “an imaginative and controlled round-table conversation.” My beloved professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, J. Louis Martyn, taught me this. “Imaginative” helps us put ourselves in the shoes of the biblical writers and their ancient communities as we seek to translate their meaning for our lives today. “Controlled” means we must learn what the original writers wrote and what they meant by what they wrote. To leapfrog from the words of Scripture directly to our own interpretations for today can lead to fanciful and unfaithful interpretations of the Bible. “Round table” points to the importance of the communal reading of Scripture. We read together and across 2,000 years of Christian history
- Let us not ignore the spiritual reading of Scripture or devotional reading of Scripture. One historical form of such reading has been called Lectio Divina, which can be practiced alone or in a group.
Through the centuries, the church has succumbed to what could be called the “control disease.” It has sought to be the doorkeeper of what it determines the “truth” of God to be. And the church has, through the centuries, insisted they have their hands on the spigot of God’s grace. Think of rules surrounding the sacraments of the church.
But the grace of God is not a water line. It is the rain, the mists, the rivers, streams and rolling seas.
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.