The Media’s Secret Agenda

Some Sydney Anglican news...

Archbishop Peter Jensen’s address to the Access All Areas media conference, organised by Christians in the Media, is now available. In his address Dr Jensen tackled what he indicated were consistent distortions of faith messages to accomodate a secular mindset.

Dr Jensen says clear communication is important to a God who delivered his message in words.

“Christianity is a book religion that relies on language and words,” Dr Jensen says.
“God wants to speak to us in order to establish a fitting relationship with us. It’s no mistake that Jesus is referred to as the ‘word’ of God.” The Media’s Secret Agenda

This evokes the distinction some make between the "word of God" (the Bible, the Scriptures, the Biblical witneses, the Gospel) and the "Word of God" (Jesus, the Gospel). It can be seen in some interpretations of the Uniting Church's Basis of Union (para 5):

The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church has received the books of the Old and New Testaments as unique prophetic and apostolic * testimony, in which it hears the Word of God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated. When the Church preaches Jesus Christ, its message is controlled by the Biblical witnesses. The Word of God on whom salvation depends is to be heard and known from Scripture appropriated in the worshipping and witnessing life of the Church. The Uniting Church lays upon its members the serious duty of reading the Scriptures, commits its ministers to preach from these and to administer the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper as effective signs of the Gospel set forth in the Scriptures.

* A study I am doing with my small group at the moment, characterised by a mixed bag of helpful material, and what I see as a pretty heavy handed agenda.

See also Bill Loader's Approaches to Scripture (he is a co-author of the above study) and the response.

I am leaning towards something like this at the moment:

(1) Literary interdependence is not in any way a denial of inspiration; it is only a denial of mechanical dictation as the mode of inspiration. The nature of the Bible is such that it is both the Word of God and the words of men. To deny the first is analogous to Arianism; to deny the second is analogous to Docetism. Both are Christological heresies. And if the analogy between the incarnate Word (Christ) and the living Word (Bible) is one intended by scripture, then we could say with equal force that to deny either the divine inspiration or the full human involvement in the making of the Bible is heretical.

(2) The incarnation invites and even demands that we look at the Bible with the best of our historical-critical tools. If we do not, then our bibliology is really no different than the Muslims’ view of the Quran. I am persuaded that the closer we look, the better the Bible looks. Or, as an old British scholar of yesteryear said, “We treat the Bible like any other book to show that it is not like any other book.”

From The Synoptic Problem and Inspiration: A Response.

Plus, I take Peter Jensen's advice on where God you will hear (and won't hear) God, and apply to it those who worship ("experience the presence of God in") nature:

...[our] reception of revelation in nature is distorted. There is nothing wrong with the revelation itself. God is a great communicator, a perfect one. The problem is with us. When Adam sinned on our behalf he put himself and his family outside the Garden, where God spoke to him face to face. In the world outside the garden, free, so he dreamed, from the authority of the word of God, he became enslaved three times over: to his own fallen nature, to cosmic evil and to human communal wrong. He and his successors rejoice in a spurious freedom, a freedom marked by an unspoken addictiveness

.. and those who worship ("experience the presence of God in") multimedia/popular culture:

We cannot hear his message in this world, Instead we habitually take parts of the world and worship them. Our idolatry is a testimony to the need we have to be united with God and yet our alienation from him We would rather be in charge of our gods instead of submitting to the true God. Ironically, of course, we are in fact dominated by the gods we choose for ourselves. You only have to see the addictive, and spiritually crippling, power of money and of shopping.

THE PROBLEM IS US. Are we trying to see God's revelation in the works of our own hands? (art, music, drama). Isn't this a definition of idolatry? If not, someone, please enlighten me. There must be a separation between human inspiration and divine inspiration, otherwise I may as well follow a religion of my own making, and you yours, and let's forget about whether or not there is any ontological connection at all.

The empahisis of the Basis of Union on message of the being controlled by the Biblical witnesses when it preaches Jesus Christ needs to be taken as just that - control. Not "guided" or affirmed". By control I take it to mean being under the authority of Scripture, not the reader / interpreter controlling or having authority over it. We will find God (or rather, God will find us) in his revelation given to us in the Scriptures, illumed by the Spirit, and revealed in the person and work of Christ.