 Baptist, Methodist theologians debate ‘priestcraft’ of the clergy By Tony Cartledge American Baptist Press Volume 34, Number 7 Posted November 30, 2001 WAKE FOREST – The priesthood of believers is preferable to the “priestcraft” of clergy, a Southern Baptist seminary president argued in a recent debate with a Methodist theologian.
Hauerwas contends that the Bible cannot be understood apart from the church and that only those who have appropriate spiritual grounding can interpret it rightly. Thus, he proposes that the Bible should not be in the hands of those who might misinterpret it, including children. Time magazine recently lauded Hauerwas, a professor at Duke Divinity School in nearby Durham, N.C., as America’s best theologian, describing him as “a very Anabaptist Methodist.” His book, Unleashing the Scriptures, provided a starting point for the debate. The sense of the individual The invention of the printing press, the Reformation and the Enlightenment led to a sense of the individual in which people “assumed they could read and interpret text and in particular the Bible without spiritual guidance or moral formation,” he said. But reading the Bible apart from the church is dangerous, Hauerwas said, leading to a loss of Christian unity. Bible reading cannot be separated from the church, he added. “We must test our readings with our sisters and brothers in the church across time and across geography. No one has possession of the meaning of the text in and of itself.” Patterson acknowledged several areas of agreement with Hauerwas, but disputed the premise stated in the preface to Hauerwas’ book that the Bible should be available only “to those who have undergone the hard discipline of existing as part of God’s people.” Patterson raised several points in response. Not everyone can read the Bible with the same profit, he said. Those who have more education or a deeper church background might gain more from Bible study, he said, and Bible readers should also be familiar with the writings of earlier church leaders. Patterson said Hauerwas’ thesis had no prospect of fulfillment, however, since “it is no longer conceivable to take the Bible away from the people.” Interpretation of the Bible cannot be left up to the “priestcraft,” Patterson said, which “would allow the magisterium, the pope or the academy ultimately to tell us what the Bible means.” That, he said, could lead to a loss of religious freedom. Patterson acknowledged that errors in interpretation are inevitable, but the church should not be troubled by that fact. “So are there mistakes made?” he asked. “Are there heterodoxies? Are there errors in interpretation? Certainly so. Not to worry. They only point to the beauty of the accuracy and the truth of God’s Word.” “It is not the church itself that is the infallible teacher of God’s Word,” Patterson said. “It is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Word of God who is to be the great internal teacher. And it is that ability of the Holy Spirit to teach the one reading the book that makes it so very important that everyone have access to the Word of God.” |
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