PCUSA decline attributed to waning commitment to authority of Scripture
By Jeff McDonald, Special to The Layman, May 27, 2008
Dr. C. Hassell Bullock, recently elected president of the Evangelical Theological Society, is a pastor and professor. He holds his Ph.D. in Old Testament from the Jewish Institute of Religion at Hebrew Union College. Bullock has been a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College since 1973 and holds the Franklin S. Dyrness chair in Biblical Studies. He serves as pastor of Warren Park Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Cicero, Illinois. His published works include An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books and An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophetic Books (both Moody Press), and Encountering the Book of Psalms (Baker Book House).
Please explain how you became an ordained pastor in the PCUSA. Dr. C. Hassell Bullock
I grew up in a Pentecostal church, and then went to a Presbyterian seminary (Columbia Theological Seminary) because my denomination didn’t have one. While at Columbia I became thoroughly Reformed in my theology, and the gracious acceptance I experienced from my seminary teachers and fellow students was no minor factor in realizing that the Presbyterian Church could be a wonderful home for me. Yet, determined that I was going to keep my commitment to the denomination of my childhood, after four years in graduate school (Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati), I taught in the denominational college for four years, until I realized that my Reformed theology was not exactly compatible with my Pentecostal upbringing. So I was ordained in the United Presbyterian Church in 1972 in the Presbytery of Birmingham, Alabama.
My new home became a place where I realized a new freedom in the Gospel, and the grateful years of service I have spent in the church (now 35) have been joyful. After a brief pastorate in Alabama, I have continued to serve the church in some pastoral capacity during my 35 years on the faculty of Wheaton College. Relating to the people in the pew in a pastoral/educational role has kept my theological feet on the ground.
What scholars have influenced you the most?
John Calvin was the most influential scholar in my conversion to Reformed theology. In seminary, Felix Gear presented Reformed theology with genuine conviction and confidence.
Among recent scholars in my own field (Old Testament), Elizabeth Achtemeier’s faithfulness to church and Scripture has been an inspiration, and James Mays’ work in the Psalms and prophets has provided a model of good exegesis and theological interpretation.
Of course, there are so many positive influences, Presbyterian and otherwise, some of whom are not evangelical. Also, having studied in a Reform Jewish institution, rabbinic scholarship has become a part of my exegetical world.
What do you think of the current state of the PCUSA?
The current state of the PCUSA can be attributed to the waning commitment of the church to the authority of Scripture, a process that has been eroding our theology and life together for many years. Our generation, lamentably, is the one that must reap the sad harvest of this decline.
To illustrate this, a generation ago the predecessors of the PCUSA rightly began to emphasize ethnic and cultural diversity as the true social nature of the Church. But then ethnic diversity became theological diversity, and theological diversity has now become moral diversity. And in our post-modern world the future possibilities are endless, if we do not recapture and reaffirm the doctrine of Biblical authority.
Do you have any thoughts on how evangelicals can reform the PCUSA?
Yes. We can, by God’s grace, be faithful to Scripture and our call to speak the Word of God truthfully.
During my years in pastoral ministry I have never had any interference from church authorities in fulfilling this call. Yet, I realize that the situation is more complicated than that. Some are convinced that it is now a matter of conscience, and I respect their point of view, and even applaud them for acting upon their convictions.
Personally I’m not sure the PCUSA is reformable, although God specializes in things thought impossible. I feel somewhat like the OT prophets, who preached a stern gospel of repentance and reformation, while holding on to a tenuous thread of “perhaps:”
- “Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate;/it may be (“perhaps,” Heb. ‘ulai) that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:15).
Some can hold on to that tenuous “perhaps,” while others can’t. In fact, most of the prophets didn’t live to see the day when the Babylonian Exile turned Israel back to the right path and cured them of their idolatry, an accomplishment the prophets themselves never achieved, but it could not have happened if they had withheld their word of proclamation.
If God is in the “perhaps,” then some of us who are holding on may not live to see the day of reformation, which we hope will come. But the Lord definitely is going to judge us on our faithfulness (Matt. 25:14-30).
Now, having said that, some of us, at least at this juncture of our history, believe we are called to be faithful within the PCUSA, while others hear the Spirit’s call to faithfulness in another venue.
Although I am not involved in New Wineskins, I believe they are holding forth the opportunity to test that fragile “perhaps,” encouraging ways to be faithful within and without the denomination. If the PCUSA would be more cordial toward this dilemma many of us are in, some ministers and churches might be saved for the denomination. We desperately need a leadership that has some sympathy with our theological dilemma, whether they agree with us or not.
As a leading evangelical Old Testament scholar could you please explain the primary differences between evangelical and progressive approaches to the Old Testament?
The issue is still, and always has been, the question of Biblical authority.
Since I was trained by liberal thinkers on the Old Testament, I have a good working knowledge of the critical approaches to the discipline, and some are admittedly helpful. However, the question the exegete has always to ask is whether the method undermines the authority of the text. Or to put it another way, do the exegete’s presuppositions pre-empt the meaning and integrity of the text.
The evangelical will give the text of the Old Testament the benefit of the doubt, rather than give the method the benefit. Unfortunately, despite the sincerity of many historical critics of the Bible, we have sometimes misunderstood the nature of the Old Testament material.
For example, when I was in graduate school, the tendency was to disallow any hopeful words to a prophet like Amos and assign such words to a later prophet. The rabbis, however, understood the prophetic word to include both “words of comfort” and “words of reproof.”
In rabbinic thought they belonged together – the rabbis understood the true nature of the material – just as they do in the preaching ministry of the Church. A word of grace loses its edge when a word of reproof is never forthcoming.
What thoughts do you have on Old Testament scholarship that emanates from PCUSA seminaries?
I have mentioned two Old Testament scholars, both of whom taught in the Presbyterian seminary system, who have had a positive influence on my work. Presently, however, I don’t know of any prominent Old Testament scholars in our seminaries who are having much of an impact on Old Testament studies, except perhaps in the area of Biblical languages.
Unfortunately the PCUSA has lost control of its seminaries, and, while they still see themselves serving the church, they do it their own way. That is a major reason so many of our candidates for the ministry attend Fuller and Gordon-Conwell and Trinity, and other seminaries that still have a strong commitment to the authority of Scripture. In fact, I doubt that we have any Old Testament faculty in our Presbyterian seminaries who consider themselves evangelicals. Admittedly that is not the only label that orthodoxy wears, but it is a valid one and represented strongly in our membership and ministry.
I believe that, given our commitment to diversity, if it is indeed genuine, we ought to give attention to the representation of evangelicals on our seminary faculties; this is not to suggest, of course, that there are none, but there are certainly not enough.
The truth of the matter, as I see it, is that we as a church are committed to diversity within a theological spectrum which we ourselves have defined, and it is often not wide enough to include evangelicals. The fact is, however, that some of the finest scholars today are found among evangelicals, many of these committed to Reformed theology, even if they are not Presbyterians. So in Biblical studies, at least, there are highly qualified evangelicals available.
How would you explain your current work with the Evangelical Theological Society?
At the November meeting in San Diego, I was elected president. My present status is much like the Moderator of our General Assembly – the office is largely honorary, even though the president, like our moderator, can exert some influence here and there.
The administrative authority of the Society is vested in the secretary-treasurer (much like the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly) who is Dr. James A. Borland of Liberty University; but when the Society is not in annual session, the Executive Committee (E.C.), composed of nine persons, operates as the administrative authority of the Society.
As president, I prepare the agendas for the E.C., moderate the meetings, and act as a spokesperson of the Society, as I am doing in this interview. But as president, I would not and could not make unilateral decisions on matters that pertain to the Society’s purpose and objectives, except as they are outlined in our constitution, and as they are dictated to me by the E.C.
For example, when our president resigned last May after he had returned to the Roman Catholic Church of his youth, the statement issued by the EC was hammered out in a mutual exchange among the members of the EC, and we designated one of our theologians on the E.C., Dr. Craig Blaising of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, as our official spokesperson. When my year as President has expired, my swan song will be the presidential address at the November meeting in Providence, R.I. Then I will continue on the E.C. for four subsequent years.
Why do so many PCUSA scholars and pastors oppose the Evangelical Theological Society and what can be done about this?
It would be presumptuous of me to say why many PCUSA scholars and pastors are not amiable toward the ETS: I’m not aware of any active opposition as such. If there are, however, one of the reasons could be that they don’t know much about the Society.
We have launched a new Web site where one can find information and even apply for membership online. One of the strengths of the Society is that we have many members who are pastors and want to keep current on Biblical and theological developments, as well as to learn what is happening in the evangelical world at large.
I would also suppose that some scholars and pastors associate the ETS with fundamentalism and consider it a reactionary alternative to the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). It is true that the liberal trends in the SBL were most likely a factor that spawned the ETS in 1949, but when you read some of those early papers that arose out of the first few years of its history, the founders were obviously trying to lay a firm foundation for a scholarly society that could be an actor in the academy and church, not merely a reactor. We all do the latter sometimes, and so we should, even in the best of academic circles.
I think a good antidote to a negative attitude toward ETS would be examining the 2007 program of the San Diego meeting, which included world-class scholars from Great Britain and the United States, like Wheaton College’s Douglas Moo, Langham International’s Christopher Wright, Penn State’s Philip Jenkins, Gordon-Conwell’s David Wells, and the University of St. Andrews’ Richard Bauckham, to mention only a few of the five hundred presenters. The attendance of more than 2,200 participants in San Diego and a current membership of over 4,500 are indicators of a growing and vibrant ETS.
Why is the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy rejected by so many within the PCUSA?
I want to be fair to those who do not espouse the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and not misjudge them, since I don’t know their thinking on the matter. So again I have to speak theoretically and assume that many in the PCUSA have bought so deeply into the methods and conclusions of historical criticism, that they find the idea of an inerrant Bible to be outside the bounds of reason.
Obviously there are historical and theological issues that any interpreter of Scripture must deal with, and even the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy allows latitude for resolving those difficulties. Biblical inerrancy is not the equivalent of the dictation theory, as some may assume. Yet the Scriptures have to be treated with respect as the interpreter realizes he or she is dealing with God’s Word to humanity through the written Bible and ultimately through the Incarnate Word.
The Westminster confessors saw this quality inherent in Scripture itself: “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God” (The Westminster Confession of Faith, I:5). Sadly, many in the PCUSA have distance themselves from this view of Scripture.
The modern verbalization of the doctrine of inerrancy was an attempt to “build a fence around the Torah.” This latter phrase is used in rabbinic thought to express the view that the Masorah, which surrounds the Hebrew text (both the Large and the Small Masorah), was a means to insure its accuracy and authenticity. Analogously the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy was intended to serve as a protective measure for both the Biblical text and Biblical theology, not protecting the text from itself, but from human inventions and misunderstandings.
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