“This is the only book I need,” says the evangelical, holding up his Bible. “We don’t recite creeds at my church,” says another, pointing to hers. Anyone who has spent much time in low-church Protestant circles will be familiar with these Bible-only sentiments. But how well do they square with the Reformation idea of Scripture alone? Is this what the Reformers meant? (more…)
Biblicism: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
If the modern scholarship is to be believed, Biblicism has died. It has been buried and never shall rise again. In Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible, he argues that Biblicism is not truly an evangelical reading of Scripture. Smith asserts that we cannot expect the Bible to be something it was not intended to be. He defines Biblicism as “A theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority…self-evident meaning, and universal applicability.”
According to Smith, you cannot make coherent statements about texts since this process produces variant forms of interpretations. Therefore, divergence in interpretation and applicability disprove the evangelical assertion that the Bible is true and authoritative.
Author Rachel Held Evans summarizes Biblicism as “perhaps best reflected in the old adage, ‘God said it, I believe it, that settles it.’” But is this Biblicism? Or is it just another modern attempt to deviate from the orthodox claim to Biblical authority? We ought to be aware of the isms, but has Biblicism been properly understood or too easily dismissed?
Professor John Frame, a philosopher and theologian, argues for a form of Biblicism that avoids the simplification of Smith and Evans. Frame elevates the theological discourse to a more nuanced conversation in his essay, In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism. He concludes:
“Scripture, therefore, must be primary in relation to history, sociology, or any other science. It is Scripture that supplies the norms of these sciences and which governs their proper starting points, methods, and conclusions.”
While the Bible may suffer at the hands of leaders and laity, proper Biblicism establishes the primacy of the Bible in relation to all other endeavors. Divergence in views will continue until the Second Coming, but only Biblicism properly understood can provide comfort to the Christian interpreter of the first century and today. God has unmistakably spoken in His revelation and what He says is the basis for all reality.
Three Kinds of Biblicisms
Biblicism needs to be distinguished accurately. It seems wise to make a distinction between three forms of Biblicism. Here is the basic outline and perhaps it may be expanded in another article. I propose three types of Biblicism within evangelical theology: 1) Fundamentalist Biblicism (FB), 2) Pietistic Biblicism (PB), and 3) Ecclesiastical Biblicism (EB). (more…)
