ClarkeComments.com

Hello:

In my last post we talked about the existence of a Magisterium in Churches of Christ. In this post we’ll examine one of the main holdings of the Magisterium: The Hermeneutic of Command, Example, and Necessary Inference.

Direct Command, Approved Apostolic Example, and Necessary Inference, or CENI as many call it, has become “our” way of reading the bible. It was taught—and still is in a few—of our colleges for many years. It is the lens through which most of our members read the bible.

This teaching states that we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the direct commands given to us by God, his son, and his apostles, and follow those commands. Then we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the examples provided by the apostles, and follow those examples; and finally, again we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out those inferences that are necessary to be followed.

While CENI is the hermeneutical process, there is also a set of assumptions that sit behind CENI. Those assumptions include:

That the New Testament has been handed down as new law to replace the old law.

That the new law is basically a pattern that describes the worship of the church and what a person must do to be saved.

That God expects us to figure out the biblical worship pattern, and to adhere to it.

That lack of adherence to the biblical worship pattern is sinful.

That the sin of not following the biblical worship pattern is not covered by God’s grace and puts eternal salvation in jeopardy.

While I could attack each of these at length, I will at this point just state that there is no biblical evidence that backs up the hermeneutical assumptions of CENI.

As far as the method, it is flawed in many ways. Commands are usually easy to determine.

Examples, though, are far harder. Who approves the examples? What happens when we disagree on which example is approved? A common example that Pentecostal churches follow is the washing of feet. We reject this example out of hand. Is it wrong to wash feet? Is it wrong to not wash feet?

Necessary inferences are even harder. Who says the inference is necessary? Inferences depend totally on human logic. Being a fallen human myself, I don’t know that I want to trust my salvation to how great a job I do at deducting logic problems correctly.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time attacking CENI. Many others have done so, with great success. Brother (and bishop!)Alan Rouse has a great series on the topic if you wish to read further. What I will say is this: CENI is a snag, sitting silently on the woods, waiting to make a widow out of some unsuspecting churchgoer in our fellowships.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Allister McGrath claims that the central idea around the Reformation was that each man is entitled to read and interpret scripture for himself. This idea then explains the myraid of denominations that have formed over the last five hundred or so years since Luther nailed his theses to the door of his local parish.

This idea of each man interpreting scripture for himself was vigerously oppossed by the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed (as still does claim) that only the Magisterium of the Church, entrusted to Supreme Pontiff and his bishops, had the right to interpret Scripture.

Of course, this caused a major problem.

The Church of Christ, whether it will admit it or not, claims to have a magisterium on scripture. Only the church, through its bishops (journals, college presidents, prominent ministers), has the right to interpret scripture. Anyone who comes to a different understanding of scripture than the one advanced by the magisterium is in error, either intentionally or negligently.

This causes a major problem.

This is especially a huge problem when you determine that something in the magisterium is wrong. If one teaching is incorrect, what keeps all the others from being so? My good friend Mark has stated to me several times that everything that our fellowship has stood for has been debunked. While I don’t know that everything has been, I must state that I believe enough of it has that the magisterium has collapsed in the eyes of thosands of members of Churches of Christ, including myself.

And this causes a major problem.

What do you do when everything that you accepted as concrete suddenly vanishes before you?

For some, it means dumping Christianity altogether.

For others, it means joining another denomination; many are fleeing to The Anglican Communion faster than you can blink an eye.

For still others, it means looking around and trying to salvage what you can, and to attempt to find as much truth as you can. This is where I have been, and it is a scary ride. I have searched scripture, tradition, and history… a very “non sola scriptura” mix. Some of my thoughts and musings have been far from Orthodox from a reformed point of view. For now, though, I think I might finally be back in a normal spot. We’ll see.

In my next post we’ll look at the Magisterium in more detail.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post asking what people though about the apocrypha. Since then, I’ve done a lot more thinking on the subject.

The Apocrypha, or the Deutero-Canonical books as the Catholics call them, was included in the Christian canon until Martin Luther excluded them in 1534. Luther also excluded Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Luther stated that he wished Esther had never been written, and he called James “an epistle of straw.”

I am not saying that apocrypha is scripture…and I am not saying that it is not; I am saying, however, that I think we should re-visit the apocrypha, that we should read it, and that we should carefully and prayerfully consider whether or not these writings hold a place as sacred scripture.

Some questions I have:

What gave Luther the right to remove these books from the canon?

The apocrypha was included in the canon for 1500 years. Would God allow these books to be considered scripture for such a long period of time if they did not belong in the canon?

What makes Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation acceptable, but the apocryphal books unacceptable?

Shouldn’t we, as a group of churches that values “Restoration,” consider whether or not the apocrypha is in need of restoration in the Protestant church?

-Clarke

Hello all:

This quarter I am taking “History of the New Testament.” Part of the requirment for the class was to write an exegesis on a piece of scripture, and to present some sort of creative expression that goes along with our project. I had the idea of presenting a short exegetical sermonette on my paper, and my professor, a roman catholic exegete, was more than willing to oblige.

So I spent about 5 minutes preaching in a public school classroom, talking about the Holy Spirit. It was interesting. The most shocking part is that no one seemed to mind, even the non-Christians in the classroom. I was somewhat surprised in that, since the thesis of my paper and my sermon was on how you cannot understand spiritual things without having the spirit of God within you.

I figure I’ll give it another two weeks, and if I don’t get a letter from the ACLU, I’m okay.

I’ll post my paper after I do my final edit. If you’d done exegesis, you can poke holes in it!

-Clarke