Scripture is the only source of theology that evangelical Christians all accept. As a result, the methodology of evangelical theology is to argue deductively from premises of a single source: the Bible. Excluded from theology are philosophy, empirical science, and literary imagination. Accordingly, evangelical theology is functionally biblicist.
If a theologian introduces a premise that is not biblically-derived but is based in experience, that theologian invites suspicion that his premise is unbiblical. “The earth is 4.5 billion years old” (open.substack.com/pub/joelcar...) - unbiblical. “Sexual orientation is a real feature of human psychology” (open.substack.com/pub/joelcar...) - unbiblical. “Christianity is at least socially useful, even if this does not prove its truth” (open.substack.com/pub/joelcar...) - unbiblical.
People who reject these “unbiblical premises” are led to specific theological conclusions: “The earth was created in six 24-hour days.” “A Christian may not describe himself as ‘gay.’” “We should believe in Christianity only because it’s true, independently of its fruits.” With a narrow range of theological sources, our theology itself narrows.
But theologians who utilize experience in addition to the Bible have a greater wealth of resources on which to draw in their thinking. What is more, their thinking takes into account human nature itself, resulting in a humane theology, rather than one that feels foreign and unsympathetic to who we are.
The eminent Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar is an example of a theologian whose theology draws on human experience in addition to the Bible.
In a perfect case study of theology from experience, Biggar questions the Christian pacifist conclusions of Richard Hays by transcending his Bible-only method, and introducing a premise from experience: Human violence is not always motivated by hatred, vengeance, and anger. A theology that takes into account the full breadth of human experience cannot condemn all violence.
Biggar’s argument is a perfect case-study in Christianity’s need of the theological source of experience.
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The Bible-Only Case for Pacifism
A long-time New Testament scholar at Duke Divinity School, Richard Hays made the case for Christian pacifism in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Hays argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out the ethic of a new kind of community, radically different from ordinary human communities. This radically new ethic is “one in which ‘anger is overcome through reconciliation … retaliation is renounced … and enemy-love replaces hate’. … In sum, ‘the transcendence of violence through loving the enemy is the most salient feature of this new model polis’” (36).
To this Hays adds Jesus' frequent refusal of political violence, desired by the zealots of his time, and his injunction to “turn the other cheek.” Hays also appeals to Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, when he draws a sword in Christ’s defense; Hays “takes [this] to be ‘an explicit refutation’ of the justifiability of the use of violence in defence of a third party” (36-37).
The Bible also condemns the motives that inspire violence. The rest of the New Testament “forbids anger, hatred, and retaliation-and the violence that issues from them” (47). Hays concludes, from appeal exclusively to the biblical text, that Christianity supports non-violence.
In the following section, Nigel Biggar introduces a premise from outside the Bible that calls Hays’ argument into question.
But even Bible-only interpreters have reason to question Hays’ Christian pacifism. Both Christ and the apostle Paul speak about soldiers without condemning their calling; Jesus’ words for soldiers are, “Do not take things from anyone by force, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be content with your wages.” Likewise, Paul in Romans 13 recognizes civil government as appointed by God and having the right to bear the sword against evil. Biggar raises these biblical counter-arguments.
Even if Hays’ biblical argument is not airtight, there is something appropriate about the Bible-only perspective being a pacifist one. Bible-only theology is a facet of what what Richard Niebuhr calls (open.substack.com/pub/joelcar...) the “Christ Against Culture” perspective.
This school of Christian thought, which includes everyone from Tertullian (“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”) to Tolstoy, argue...
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