ne famous statement of a classical Protestant understanding of Scripture reads
"The supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined,
and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and
private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can
be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the scripture."
This statement, taken from a larger statement on Scripture in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1649), assumes that Scripture is clear, at least clear enough to stand as an objective judge over all other contenders. Of course, such a statement stands directly at odds with an Eastern Orthodoxy that holds that the Church alone has the authority to interpret Scripture with authority.
Part of the Eastern Orthodox defense of Church authority involves objections against the sufficiency of Scripture to serve as a judge apart from the explanation of the Church. These objections are very interesting and revealing, not only for the dispute over Scripture, but also for the assumptions about interpretation, language, and meaning which they share with a wider subjectivist, postmodernist onslaught against public meaning.
In Eastern Orthodox thinking, the primary objection against a Protestant doctrine of Scripture runs like this: "if we believe Scripture is self-sufficient, the interpreter becomes the reader, whoever that may be. And the interpretation cannot but be subjective and arbitrary, so that Scripture is divorced from its sacred source. No wonder there are multiplied sects and cults throughout Christendom, the number growing every day, with each dependent upon some new interpretation." [1]
A quick response to this type of objection is to show that it leads to absurdity. If it is true that an individual reader's interpretation is always arbitrary, then no reader could properly interpret the objector's own criticism. Our response could also run in other directions. If we run it back in time, we would have to say that even the original hearers of God's voice would have misunderstood even God's explanations. We can also run the response forward in time. If individuals can never get to objective meaning, then we wouldn't even be able to understand the explanations given by Church Tradition. We would need traditions to explain the traditions, ad infinitum. For such reasons, Eastern Orthodoxy can't take its own objections seriously.
Note, though, the underlying links in the "subjective interpretation" objection. It strongly connects whatever is involved in interpretation to a resulting subjectivity and arbitrariness. Now why would anyone imagine such a link in the first place? If the objector thought that interpretation involved minds that connected up with timeless and objective meanings, then the inference to subjectivity wouldn't work. Instead, the objector assumes, perhaps unreflectingly, that interpretation involves only subjective, particular, mental items, varying from person to person. Our interpretations are trapped in our heads, as it were, and they can only come out by squeezing through a thick veil of cultural and individual biases that distort anything going in or out. And so in assumptions such as this, "Ancient" Eastern Orthodoxy embraces a picture of interpretation and language promoted by recent postmodernist drivel.
Postmodernism started on this subjectivist course by believing that all thinking is linguistic (which it isn't), and then noticed that language symbols were conventional and arbitrary. So soon, all thinking appeared to be culture bound and arbitrary. We were soon trapped in language, and interpretation could only be subjective. Now, of course, Eastern Orthodoxy isn't postmodernist, but it is no coincidence that hostility to God's Word follows similar patterns. If Eastern Orthodox thinkers were to abandon their subjectivist assumptions about hermeneutics, then the sufficiency of Scripture wouldn't loom as an insurmountable problem.
Instead of abandoning their subjectivism, they sometimes extend the original objection by arguing that the Church rids us of the chaos of interpretations, like the Supreme Court: "As the founding fathers of the United States established the Supreme Court as the authorized body to interpret the Constitution, so God established the Church as the Body of Christ to interpret the Scriptures authoritatively. Imagine what chaos we would have if everyone began interpreting the Constitution for himself!" [2]
Quite apart from a wildly misconstrued understanding of early American history, we should reject the analogy for reasons that even Jefferson recognized, when he argued that the Federal government "was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers." [3] If sole interpretive authority resides in an exclusive body, then the text becomes superfluous, unnecessary. If whatever that body says is normative regardless of the governing text, then why do we need the text at all? Such a procedure makes whatever the governing body does legitimate by definition. The Supreme Court couldn't act unconstitutionally, and the Eastern Orthodox Church could never introduce false traditions. How convenient. How unbiblical. Nowhere in Scripture does God grant non-accountable interpretive authority to His subordinate authorities.
Nonetheless, we Protestants are rightly condemned for our present interpretive
chaos. Our current shameful atomism stems from an infection of democratic leveling
opposed to any authority -- familial or ecclesiastical. Classical Protestantism,
reflecting biblical faith, recognizes the genuine, though subordinate authority
of the Church. Its creeds, confessions, and discipline ought not to be dismissed
lightly, but only when they force us to oppose the King's commands. Our hope
for a healthy Church is grounded in the text, for there we read that Christ does
preserve His Church and will purge it of atomism, subjectivism, and tyranny.
For that we long.
