Where now is your authority (Part II)

Someday perhaps Jesus will be immediately available to answer all the questions we have, but until that time Christians must turn to other sources to answer our questions regarding basic beliefs on theology and doctrine (orthodoxy) and on practices and morality (orthopraxy).  Currently, evangelicals turn to the Bible for authoritative answers to these types of questions.  This is not to say that this is the only source we use to determine our beliefs and morality, but it plays the same role that the Supreme Court does in American law.  Where conflicting opinions exist, we appeal to this authority to settle the matter with finality.  Today a small but growing number of evangelicals (for varied reasons) are no longer satisfied with the authority of the Bible and so a question looms large, “Where now is your authority?”

My answer:  Love

I assume that any evangelical will acknowledge the importance of love.  God is Love.  It is the greatest commandment (and the second greatest too).  It is what inspired God to send Jesus to Earth.  It is the overarching principle which gives the other gifts of their meaning.  1 Corinthians 13: 1-4 tells us that without love we are nothing.  Jesus mocked the Pharisees for following the religious rules without love. 

But appealing to the Bible to justify love as the ultimate authority is a self-defeating argument.  Instead I will compare the outcomes of using Love to using the Bible as one’s final authority.  Let me first compare the Bible and Love regarding issues of morality.

Love as an authority for morality

I ask myself which of two choices better provides a sound foundation for morality,

            1) Determine what the Bible says by looking to Love (Love above the Bible).

                                                or

            2) Determine what Love is by looking to what the Bible says (Bible above Love). 

History is replete with examples of Christians reading the Bible without love.  The Crusades, The Inquisition, excommunications, shunnings, conquistadors, burning of witches, the genocide of native Americans, slavery, oppression of women, and homophobia have all been motivated and justified on Biblical grounds without Love.  The reputation of Christ and Christianity have been sullied and the totality of the suffering, injustice, and depravity caused by this way of reading Scripture is overwhelming to me. 

Yet history is also filled with examples of Christians reading the Bible though a lens of  love; Prison ministries, homeless shelters, famine relief, education, abolition, the suffrage movement, orphanages, caring for those with AID’s , charitable hospitals, Mother Teresa’s comfort to lepers etc.  The people engaged in these activities read the same Bible as those who committed the atrocities, but they read and interpreted the Bible out of love.  It appears they weren’t asking themselves “What does the text require?” they acted as if they were asking themselves “What does love require?”

The list of ills stemming from Christians (or others) loving without the Bible is fairly insignificant by comparison.  Though the Bible contains the definitive sacrificial love story, the majority of people in the world know love when they see it without ever having opened a Bible.  Many of them love their children/families/spouses more consistently and sacrificially than I love mine own.  I am not arguing against the fact that Jesus’ life and His teaching on Love were transformational to the world, but ultimately it is Love itself, not the teaching on Love wherein the power of God resides.  Many people suffer not from ignorance about what the Bible says Love is, but from a lack of truly being loved at all.   

So it becomes obvious to me that between Love and the Bible, Love is the higher moral authority.  The Bible must be read through the lens of love and not the other way around.  Love must be the final arbiter of morality.  I will seek the Bible’s counsel on all moral issues, but when I sense there are conflicting answers and I need an authoritative answer, I will ask “What is loving?” over “What is Biblical?”

Love as an authority for orthodoxy

How does appealing to Love help us know what to believe about God, life and the afterlife?  What does Love have to say about all the systematic theologies that have been carefully crafted based on the Bible?  It is here where the stark differences between the nature of the Bible and the nature of Love will be felt most deeply (much like the early Protestants must have felt the profound differences between the nature of the Church and the Bible).  The difficulty arises in that Love does not offer the religious scholar the particularity and specificity that Biblical texts do, and therefore Love will not be able to decide the winners and losers of certain theological debates. 

But is this really a reason to reject Love’s role as authority?  If I am feeling wronged by God because Love doesn’t speak to my “important” theological issues let me remember some history. Though today’s evangelicalism centers on “getting people saved” from hell, the truth is God’s people have only known about heaven and hell for about 2,000 years.  From the time of Adam until the writing of the New Testament, Yahweh did not tell His followers about life after death, and the Israelites generally did not believe in it or concern themselves with it.  The Old Testament makes no definitive statements regarding what happens after we die.  It vacillates from a denial of life after death to agnosticism at most.  The afterlife and conceptions of heaven and hell are thoroughly New Testament notions.  Did God owe it to all those people in Old Testament times to let them know about the nature of the afterlife?  Apparently He didn’t owe them anything. 

Therefore maybe I am misguided if I think that Love is a poor authority on issues of theology because it isn’t very detailed or specific.  Maybe specificity and details aren’t part of what God wants to provide to us.  Maybe if he wanted us to know the details of issues like His second coming or the exact nature of the Trinity He would have given us golden tablets engraved with detailed explanations.  Maybe God doesn’t want me to spend a lot of time trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, trying to systematize the unfathomable, and trying to reduce and categorize the infinite.  Maybe the most important thing I need to know about God is that God is Love, and the most important thing I need to know about myself is that God loves me.

So now when I consider the vast ocean of doctrines on man, creation, God, heaven, hell, salvation, justice, mercy etc., I will keep in mind first and foremost that God is a loving God.  All of God’s other attributes are brought under the subjection of God’s Holy and perfect Love.  From this foundation I will ponder the deep questions of God and through this lens I will read the Bible for further glimpses of who God is and who I am. 

Where now is my authority?  How do I know what to believe and how to behave?  There are many sources (including the Bible), but ultimately I believe in Love.