id="ulink_d6cfc864-b2c7-543c-967f-ae75bcc914b4">With his insistence on the concept of theopneustia Barth nullifies any purely philosophical hermeneutics. Pneumatology is from now on to afford him a specifically Christian tool of interpretation which corresponds to his trinitarian teaching and to his Christology.155
The Veracious Authority of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline
In response to enlightenment humanism, which granted supreme authority to the human intellect and moral conscience, modern theologians began searching for ways to define and establish a Christian understanding of authority, to establish that Christianity was indeed the highest form of rationality or the most rational system, and to determine the ultimate methodology in the determination of truth. Though many theologians attempted to employ the doctrine of the Spirit in their methodologies, they often became victims of “modern” reductionism. In particular, the Spirit’s veracious authority—his work with respect to the determination of truth—seems to be essentially reduced to a work of humanization (Schleiermacher), human or enlightened rationality (Henry), or personal encounter (Barth). Borrowing from Kantian philosophy—which divides the “noumenal” realm of spiritual knowledge from the “phenomenal” realm of experiential knowledge—Schleiermacher reduces the Spirit’s work to religious experiences, and particularly to the role of interpreter of religious experiences within the Christian community. The Spirit has authority only in that he helps the interpreter to get behind the printed words to the author’s wider social context, and then relate to that context as a manifestation of universal life. The Spirit’s veracious authority to inspire the written Word of God as a historical document, however, begins to be questioned. Schleiermacher’s “liberal” followers reduced the Spirit to humanity’s highest religious or moral aspirations and the Spirit’s authority to a moral authority that allows believers to enter the Church community and function as moral beings.
Barth is certainly to be complimented on his fresh attempt to portray the Spirit’s transcendence in the midst of modern reductionism. It is questionable, however, that this authority is indeed immanent, in that Barth seems to reduce the Spirit’s work to a merely noetic function, “pointing back to its role in the Trinity rather than forward to its work in the world.”156 Barth, as a result, seems reluctant to grant the Spirit a firm place in the “pattern of authority.” His tendency to blur the distinction between Spirit and Word makes the truth of the Bible seem dependent on encountering or hearing the Spirit’s voice speaking through it, and makes the Word seem as transcendent as Barth’s portrayal of the Spirit.157 The Spirit is granted a functional authority (to cause the Word to function as revelation for today) rather than a veracious authority (to inspire an historical, authoritative Word).
Unlike Barth, Henry refuses to make the authority and infallibility of Scripture conditioned on human response. Though Barth denounced bibliolatry and professed to exalt the Spirit, Henry accuses Barth’s “functional reinterpretation of inspiration” of promoting a “broken biblicism” in that Barth wants to “detach discussion of the doctrine [of inspiration] from any correlation of it with a cognitively valid and infallible text.”158 While Henry coincides closely with Barth’s emphasis on the Spirit’s sovereignty in relation to the Word of God, Henry also finds in the Spirit a veracious authority to inspire the historical Word.
The transcendent Spirit of God therefore remains no less active in the relation to the authority and the interpretation of Scripture than in its original inspiration. Prophetic-apostolic inspiration stands in the larger context of the whole process of divine relation involving the communication activity of the Spirit of God.159
Henry, however, seems to have reduced the Spirit’s authority to the authority of the Word of God. Henry is typical of “modern” evangelical theologians who tend to bypass the discussion of theological method—and the Spirit’s place in that discussion—and move directly to the task of constructing theological systems (as though the process of moving from the ancient biblical text to the contemporary affirmation of doctrine and theology was self-evident). According to Grenz and Franke,
Although [evangelical systematics] are written from a variety of different theological perspectives (Reformed, Wesleyan, Baptist, dispensationalist, charismatic, etc.) and arrive at strikingly different conclusions about issues of central importance in theology, on the question of method they are remarkably similar. For the most part these evangelical systematic theologies make use of a decidedly rationalist approach to theological method.160
Such an approach seems to look back to Charles Hodge, who derived his “propositional” approach from post-reformation Protestant orthodoxy and its rationalism. The Protestant reaction to the counter-reformation led second-generation reformers to adopt the methods of their adversaries, in essence trying to “prove the authority of the Bible using the same Aristotelian-Thomistic arguments which Roman Catholics used to prove the authority of the Church.”161 Thus, a significant shift in theological method occurred from the neo-platonic Augustinianism of Luther and Calvin to the neo-aristotelian-thomistism of their immediate followers—a shift that obviously led to a de-emphasis on the Spirit’s witness.
Whereas Schleiermacher neglects the Spirit’s inspiration of the Word, Henry reduces the need for the Spirit’s illumination of the Word. Such erroneous tendencies tend to neglect the history of theology as well as the Spirit’s role as teacher with respect to the Word of God and the historical Church. Ramm’s pattern of authority, once again, provides the needed balance:
If Christ has founded a Church and given it His word; if the Holy Spirit is the Teacher of the faithful; if the Church is “the house of God . . . the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15); then every generation of Christian theologians must be prepared to take seriously the history of theology (broadly interpreted to include symbols, councils, theologians, treatises) as possessing manifestations of the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.162
Ramm holds that “veracious authority” is spoken “not only of the one who possesses truth but also of one who aids in the determination of truth,” and makes a vital link between the Spirit and such an authority:
Here is the Spirit who is veracious within himself; and in his ministry he ministers the truth. . . . Here in the ministry of the Spirit is the ultimate credibility of the New Testament; here is the sufficient and necessary cause for the writing of the New Testament; here is the authority of the divine Scriptures traced to their executor; and here is the real source of our own inward certainty of the Christian faith. And the testimonium is an integral element in the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.163
The veracious authority of the Spirit, therefore, is demonstrated in both the inspiration and illumination of Scripture. Since a person possesses veracious authority on a given subject when “he would be more likely to possess the truth about the subject than most other men,”164 we can extrapolate this principle to the omniscient Holy Spirit, inferring that the Spirit of God possesses ultimate veracious authority.
In the history of theology, our pattern of divine authority is repeatedly demonstrated in terms of adherence to a veracious authority granted to the Word of God by the veracious Spirit. The New Testament carries the authority which Jesus delegated to his apostles and which the Holy Spirit held over the inspired writers.
Here as elsewhere, the mode of delegation of authority
