“The prevalent doctrine about Scriptural inspiration largely
determines the use men make of the Scriptures.” –Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision
Austin Farrer's Glass of Vision
I recently re-read a book that has meant a lot to me for
over 20 years. The book is Austin Farrer’s The
Glass of Vision, originally delivered as a series of lectures at Oxford in
1948. As I re-read the quote above, I remembered one of the many reasons the book has
meant so much to me: its ideas about how to read the Bible helped me find
a path between typical options on the Christian Right and Left, a path which
draws inspiration from the ancient church.
[The quote above is found on pg. 37 of the freshly published critical edition. I was recently asked to lead a faculty colloquy in a series of them at our seminary. Several faculty members were asked to share about a text that was formational for them – I eventually chose this text. My
frustration about not being able to find my old copy of The Glass of Vision quickly turned to
excitement when I discovered that a new critical edition of it has recently come out
– and that our library had it! It contains both The Glass of Vision and six fabulous essays on it by some of the
many people who have likewise found it to be a very generative text. Robert
MacSwain, ed., Scripture, Metaphysics,
and Poetry: Austin Farrer’s The Glass of Vision With Critical Commentary (Ashgate, 2013). Apparently The Glass of Vision has become a trusted
go-to text for the program in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the
University of St. Andrews – something that helped motivate this new critical
edition. In our faculty discussion, our President, Tim Brown, also shared how
Farrer’s ideas have meant a great deal to Eugene Peterson, a pastor
and theologian who has deeply influenced many at our seminary.]
For those who don’t know Austin Farrer, he taught at Oxford
from 1935 to 1968 and was friends with C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers.
He even delivered Lewis’ last Eucharist to him before his death.
Back in 1948, he wisely took an ancient path that diverged
in certain ways from two other paths that he labeled “verbal inspiration” and the “liberal
Enlightenment.”
Right
Many on the right in Farrer's day, and still today, understand
that the Bible was “verbally inspired” by God. While not everyone agrees
precisely what that phrase means, Farrer appreciated that when such a view was
[and is] held, “men nourished their souls on the Scriptures, and knew that they
were fed” (37). (A current influential version of verbal inspiration is found
in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Statement_on_Biblical_Inerrancy)
While I also appreciate the high view of scripture and its authority such a
view entails, I have a difficult time making it “fit” with all the different
ways that scriptural texts were produced. Nor does the flat picture of the
Bible that results from it seem to “fit” all that well with the contours of
Scripture itself – the way we seem to be closer to the center of revelation as
we climb up Mount Sinai in the Old Testament, and the Mount of Transfiguration
and the Hill of Golgotha in the Gospels.
Left
About the other end of the spectrum, Farrer writes, “Liberal
Enlightenment claims to have opened the scriptural casket, but there appears
now to be nothing inside—nothing, anyhow, which ordinary people feel moved to
seek ….” (37). When I first read that statement, Farrer gave words to my own
wonderings about historical methods of engaging Biblical texts. While they
interested me and I found much value in them and still do, I and many others
had difficulty making them “fit” with commitments to God’s providential
work in giving us the gift of the Bible and my own experience of being fed by
God in, under, and through the words of Scripture. Not that historical-critical work is "wrong" in principle—it is just insufficient for a full account of how and why these texts are Scripture.
Ancient and Future
But Farrer also showed me that those were not the only two
games in town. He writes, “In taking up the topic of Scriptural inspiration, we
should like to attach ourselves to the thought of the ancient Church …” (37).
While I do not have time to unpack Farrer’s view of
inspiration, the way that “images” and “master-images” feature in it, and the way this fits so well with the ancient “four-fold”
method of biblical interpretation —you should read the book!— I do want to point out two things.
First, the recovery of “ancient” ways of reading scripture, since
Farrer wrote in 1948, and since the time I first read Farrer more than 20 years
ago, has become what I think is one of the most significant theological happenings
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This recovery/movement goes by many names, one of them being "the theological interpretation of the Bible." To get a sense
of what is happening, this 2011 article by Timothy George in First Things is as good a place to
start as any:
In it, he points to a book my colleague, Todd Billings, wrote,
a wonderful book-length treatment of this recovery and movement into the future, The Word of God for the People of God. He
also points to a ground-breaking commentary series that I was privileged to
participate in, the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series. Here’s a
link to my commentary (and some reviews of it) on Numbers: http://www.brazostheologicalcommentary.com/volumes/numbers/
Second, in the midst of the fragmentation of the Church and constant fighting between Right and Left on the many issues that confront
us today, I think that recovering ways of thinking about the inspiration of Scripture and the resulting ways of reading Scripture, ways similar to what Farrer suggests, can be a tonic for the Church. I think that
this “ancient-future” way of reading scripture will do much to help us read the
Bible together and find greater unity. It, and the many movements
and figures associated with it or that fit well with it (“postliberalism,”
“postconservatism,” “narrative theology,” Lesslie Newbigin, Robert Webber’s
“ancient-future” vision, "the Scripture Project") are to my mind wonderful guides
for the Church into fruitful and life-giving paths.
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