Introduction

I submitted this paper to Mr. Scott Gustafson, on April 25, 1986, as part of a class entitled, “Introduction to Systematic Theology,” in the spring of my first year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.

Paper

In his preface to the work On Being A Christian, Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng writes, in almost free-verse poetic phrases, what he sees the goal of his book to be. Küng states the work will seek to expound, as regards “…the Christian program”:

what this program originally meant, before it was covered
with the dust and debris of two thousand years,
and what this program, brought to light again,
can offer today
by way of a meaningful, fulfilled life
to each and every one.
This is not another gospel,
but the same ancient gospel rediscovered for today. (Küng, Hans. On Being A Christian, trans. Edward Quinn. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1976., p. 20)

In ways sometimes alarming to the magisterial authority of the Roman Catholic Church, but in ways, at least on the surface, palatable to Protestants, Küng cites Scripture as his authority. But how does Scripture function authoritatively for Küng? And just what is Scripture for him? And further, what right does the Scripture have to claim to speak authoritatively in the lives of its readers? An answer to these questions lies in words along the lines of “Scripture is the inspired Word of God.” Working out understandings of these terms will simultaneously shed some light on the above-posed questions as well as summarize K&umml;ng’s position on the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture. First of all, as regards the documents themselves, Küng does not treat the Gospels of the New Testament as history. He says this in spite of these two observations: “Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be located”, and “Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be dated.” (p. 148) The historicity of Jesus is established; he is not a myth. And yet, the Gospels are not historical-biographical in our senses of the words. In fact, “…it is quite impossible to write a biography of Jesus of Nazareth.” (p. 150) The two observations above establish existence and little else. The Gospels themselves do not provide history of Jesus; the Gospels are “organized testimony of the Christian faith.” (p. 151)

As testimonies, the Gospels are, in essence, confessions of faith. By selection, modification, and arrangement of the various oral and written traditions, the writers of the Gospels created a testimony or confession of Jesus as the Christ, suitable to the needs of their community. As K&umml;ng notes,

The evangelists—undoubtedly not merely collectors and transmitters, as people once thought, but absolutely original theologians with their own conception of the message—arranged the Jesus narratives and Jesus sayings according to their own plan and at their own discretion. (p. 152)

Once the Gospel writers did this, their work did something. Their work sought “to proclaim him [Jesus] in the light of his resurrection as Messiah, Christ, Lord, Son of God.” (p. 153) That is, the Gospels are “committed testimonies of faith meant to commit their readers.” (p. 153) So the Gospels, and the other writings of the New Testament, as these “committed testimonies,” are Scripture for Küng.

And so, the first part of the claim “Scripture is the inspired Word of God” has been explicated. It remains to be shown, first, how Scripture is inspired, and second, how Scripture is the inspired Word of God.

First of all, to understand how Scripture is inspired, one must face the fact that the actual text of the Bible was written by people, some known, and some anonymous. According to Küng:

Thus it [the Bible] is unequivocally man’s word collected, written down, given varied emphasis, sentence by sentence by quite definite individuals and developed in different ways. Hence it is not without shortcomings and mistakes, concealment and confusion, limitations and errors. (p. 63)

This view, fostered by the findings of historical-critical research, precludes the reasonable individual from understanding inspiration in a “mechanical” way, as persons taking the “dictation of the Holy Spirit.” (p. 464)

Küng develops another way of understanding inspiration in connection with Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit. He writes,

Not only the recording, but the whole prehistory and posthistory of the writing, the whole process of acceptance in faith and transmission of the message, all these have something to do with the divine Spirit.(p. 465)

He sees the work of the Holy Spirit as overarching the whole event that is the communication of the Gospel. The adjectives he uses are “Spirit-pervaded and Spirit-filled.” (p. 465)

By these designations of the human words of Scripture as “Spirit-pervaded and Spirit-filled,” Küng recognizes the human words as inspired, as not at all arbitrary. But this does not say how Scripture is the inspired Word of God, but merely how Scripture is the inspired words of humans. Now, therefore, it is necessary to explore how Küng develops the idea that Scripture is the inspired Word of God.

Küng writes, ““The Scriptures are not themselves divine revelation.” (p. 466) If they were divine revelation, then they would themselves be objects of devotion. But, as developed above, Küng sees the Scriptures as testimonies to the divine revelation. For Küng, then, says,

My faith arises from Scripture in the sense that the latter provides me with external evidence in an authentic form of this God of Israel and of Jesus Christ. But my faith is not based on Scripture. It is not the book as such, but this God himself in Jesus who is the ground of my faith. (p. 446)

Thus, for Küng, Scripture has an authoritative or authenticating function, insofar as, and only insofar as it points to or witnesses to the one God who reveals himself in the history of Israel and finally in the person of Jesus the Christ.

At this point, Küng is close to revealing how Scripture is the inspired Word of God. Then, in one short, italicized passage, he makes the final step and states the way in which he understands the relation between Scripture and Word of God. He writes:

The Bible is not simply God’s word: it is first of all and in its whole extent man’s word, the word of quite definite individuals.

The Bible does not simply contain God’s word: there are not certain propositions which are God’s word, while the rest are man’s.

The Bible becomes God’s word: it becomes God’s word for anyone who submits trustfully and in faith to its testimony and so to the God revealed in it and to Jesus Christ. (p. 467)

The first observation precludes the mechanical inspiration point-of-view of Scripture and comes to terms with the full humanity of the processes by which Scripture came to be. The second observation, that “the Bible does not simply contain God’s word” disallows one from picking and choosing which passages one desires to follow or heed. Then in the third proposition, Küng makes the step in stating just how Scripture or the Bible relates to the notion of Word of God. He states “the Bible becomes God’s word” for the person entering into a relationship of faith in the One witnessed to and pointed to by the same Bible.

Küng is very quick to amplify this, saying

it is God himself, revealed in the history of Israel and in the person of Jesus Christ, who calls through these testimonies of faith and provides for the message—despite all human weakness and opposition—constantly to be truly heard, understood, believed, and realized. (p. 167)

Thus the power and authority of the Biblical witness to the one God lies ultimately not with the humanly weak witnesses, but with the revealed God, who works faith in God’s hearers through his Word in Scripture.

Küng notes, in passing, that the Word of God in Scripture does something even if the hearer rejects it; the Word of God condemns and judges. (p. 467) For Küng, these actions, as well as the more positive actions of raising up faith in the hearers of the Word, are from first to last the work of the Holy Spirit. On that positive side, the hearer

allows himself to be inspired by the Spirit of this Scripture, who is in truth the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ; the Spirit who in a wholly nonmechanical way turns the documents themselves into Spirit-filled and Spirit-pervaded testimonies. (p. 467)

Thus King unites all the various strands developed with regard to the authority and inspiration of Scripture. The Holy Spirit, who worked faith in the writers of Scripture, enabling them to fashion testimonies of faith, works faith also in the persons who hear the words of Scripture today. These persons have faith worked in them, again by the Holy Spirit, by means of the human words of Scripture become Word of God, by means of the Spirit-filling and Spirit-pervading actions of those human words.

In this way, Scripture is the inspired Word of God, and as such, Scripture claims all rights to speak authoritatively in the lives of those hearing it and believing in the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ. It is the work of this Spirit that makes the human words of Scripture have anything more than academic interest to the world today; it is the work of this Spirit that makes words of humans become inspired the Word of God in Scripture.