Lyle offered a very insightful comment to a recent post. Many do not read the comments. There are times when I am glad for this. Like when someone gets on who intends to use the site for personal advertisement – other websites offering interesting assistance. I try to monitor these closely. In my recent reading through the comments to recent posts, I found the following and thought it excellent.
What do you think about Wright’s statements on Biblical authority?
Beginning, though, with explicit scriptural evidence about authority itself, we find soon enough–this is obvious but is often ignored–that all authority does indeed belong to God.
What is he doing? He is not simply organizing the world. He is, as we see and know in Christ and by the Spirit, judging and remaking his world. What he does authoritatively he dots with this intent. God is
not a celestial information service to whom you can apply for answers on difficult questions. Nor is he a heavenly ticket agency to whom you can go for moral or doctrinal permits or passports to salvation. He does not stand outside the human process and merely comment on it or merely issue
you with certain tickets that you might need. Those views would imply either a deist’s God or a legalist’s God, not the God who is revealed in
Jesus Christ and the Spirit. And it must be said that a great many views of biblical authority imply one or other of those sub-Christian alternatives.
How does God exercise that authority? Again and again, in the biblical story itself we see that he does so through human agents anointed and equipped by the Holy Spirit. And this is itself an expression of his love; because he does not will, simply to come into the world in a blinding flash of
light and obliterate all opposition. He wants to reveal himself meaningfully within the space/time universe not just passing it by tangentially; to reveal himself in judgement and in mercy in a way which will save people.
-N.T. Wright
He states on his website that “biblical authority” should probably not be used due to it’s misuse. Which I believe is what you were stating as well. All authority is God’s authority and by us standing on biblical authority we put ourselves as the authority too often.
Thanks Lyle for the input. Keep commenting and keep posting over on “Divine Conspirator.”