Biblical Authority: Part VI

When we read the Bible, how do we see God exericising his authority?

...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 ibliterate all opposition.  He wants to reveal himself meaningfully within the space/time universe not just by passing it by tangentially; to reveal himself in judgement and in mercy in a way which will save people.   

God has given us scripture, but that scripture is a result of God speaking through human emissaries.  He did not dictate (at least in most cases) what was to be said.  Dr. Wright points to an interesting story in 1 Kings 22.  It is the story of Micaiah, a prophet who disagrees with the counsel of all the other prophets of his day.  The other prophets tell the king to attack his enemies and Micaiah insists that they are wrong.  These other prophets are quiting scripture, but their application is incorrect.  God spoke authoritatively through the mouth of a prophet who never wrote anything down (that we know of, that is). 

Bishop Wright goes on to speak of the authority that was given to Jesus.  That authority is now mediated through the Holy Spirit.  We are to be "the anointed ones through whom God still works authoritatively." Wright talks about how God equipped the authors of the New Testament to write the "foundation charter" of the church.  He believes, interestingly enough, that these authors were intentional in providing the "foundation documentation for the church of their day."  He believes that they intended their writings to be considered authoritative.

I have at least two questions, based on this line of thought:

1. How is God's authority mediated through the Bible?
2. In what ways does God continue to speak through people?

(All quotes in this post are from an article entitled How Can the Bible Be Authoritative? by N.T. Wright)

*********************************
Links to the rest if this series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IIIb, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIIb, Part VIII, Conclusion

Comments

[Bob Robinson]

Interestingly, this line of thinking runs parallel to what I blogged recently concerning the image of God and the "purpose driven life".
The image of God in man is all about authority.

As DJA Clines wrote, ""Whereas in the rest of the Ancient Near East the image of God was limited to the king, in Israel it was regarded as characteristic of mankind in general, without distinction between king and commoner, man and woman, or Israelite or non-Israelite. Likewise in Genesis 1 the concept of man’s rulership is connected in the strongest possible way with the idea of the image…‘let them have dominion…fill the earth and subdue it…’ (Gen 1:26-27). Man is not created in God’s image, since God has no image of his own, but as God’s image, or rather to be God’s image…he is the visible corporeal representative of the invisible, bodiless, God; he is the representative rather than the representation."

[ScottB]

Bob, those are some interesting thoughts on image and authority. I'm going to give that some thought; it does fit nicely in the context of Genesis.

Bill, this is an interesting question - I think it fits with Wright's concept of acts in a play and our responsibility, as he frames it, of shaping the current act in keeping with the acts that have come before. In that sense, we (the community of God's people) are the authorities of the current act but live within the bounds (authority) of the acts that have come before.