I'm relieved. I just finished my 4th semester of law school. Finals are over. The weight of all those textbooks has been lifted off my shoulders. I don't have to study a single page until August. All that brain power that I was using for school can now be used for more important matters.
With all this free time and energy, I've decided to make some summertime resolutions. The following are my goals for the summer, in no particular order:
1. Take some awesome pictures on my trips (I think I'll be traveling to New York, Nova Scotia, Colorado, and West Africa)
2. Lose 30lbs (It's time I walked a little lighter)
3. Help a certain friend of mine realize that free will is antithetical to salvation and a subtle form of heresy that, like fast food, tastes really good but isn't healthy and stunts your growth (If I can convince my friend, I think she can convince her husband (who's a little more stubborn than she is))
4. Read something interesting but not too intellectual
5. Do as much grilling as possible
6. Blog about the above
If I can accomplish those things, I think my summer will be a good one. I'm also working on a continual resolution to attend church more regularly. Anyway, I'm still thinking about where spiritual authority should come from for Protestants. Maybe there is not spiritual authority. That makes me uncomfortable though.
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3 comments:
Congratulations on finishing another semester of law school! Yay for you! I have been thinking about your question about spiritual authority, and well, I am still thinking about it. I think in some ways, that we take it by faith, and faith is the willingness to "not know" and "not have all the answers" and to be okay with that.
Well, I'm glad you're done with another semester. Maybe something to add to the summer is "come visit friends in Wheaton." Michelle and I really want to come and visit you, but we're not sure we want to spend our summer vacation in Oklahoma...it may happen.
Here is a thought about authority. The big problem with any authority is that there is an interpretive distance between us and the authority. You know this, you're a law student. The laws of our state or country are an authority binding on our lives. They are supposed to make clear what we must and must not do. Of course, the problem is, in actual practice, they must be interpreted on a case by case basis. We have an entire branch of government for this. Judges make calls on how the authority of the law actually is played out, what they actually mean. The problem is, even after judges make calls on the meaning of the law, future cases may cause us to go back and question their judgement, reinterpret the law, or even argue over the judge's original interpretation of the authoritative laws. There is always the distance of communication between us and the authority that binds us.
By analogy, in faith, the laws of the land are the Bible, and the judges are the Pope and Catholic magisteria. Protestants want to say, "Look, the law/Bible is what really counts, and it is ultimately binding. Just look at the source of the authority, and do what it says." The Catholics say, "You can't really understand the law/Bible without help from the judges/Pope. Listen to how they interpret it and do what they say." The problem is, we all, on either side of the Reformation, must interpret what the authority means in our case from our perspective, and we may or may not be clear on what was originally intended, either in the Bible's own statements or the interpretive proclamation of the Popes. We still have the same problem: interpretation. We are all lawyers, going back and forth with a bunch of past rulings and possible interpretations, arguing for one or the other, what this judge meant or how that law should be read or whatever...all of us.
Your issue is not authority and where it comes from. Your issue is communication and interpretation. Your issue is the fact that you are stuck to one perspective and that your bias and evil desires warp your interpretation. Your issue is that you are finite and sinful. Oh, and even if you were not sinful, you would still be finite, so Adam and Eve had this same problem. That's why they were tricked by the interpretive wiles of the serpent.
So yes, there is an authority on your life: It is God in Christ, communicating through the Bible. You can be confident of that. But, when it comes to interpreting that, you just have to embrace your inner postmodern and say I can't know for certain that my interpretation is right, but I can try and get a broader understanding to continually refine my interpretation.
Thoughts?
I suppose another way to say it is that the Bible maybe solid, but your thoughts about it will always remain a little "fluffy."
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