The Draft is a draft. Like all drafts it is a tentative, flawed work. From my personal perspective one of the most serious flaws is its christology, that is its understanding of the Person of Christ.
Section I, "God's Word: the Sole Authority for Our Confession," under the chapter entitled, "Essential Tenets," begins with a sentence that reads, "The clearest declaration of God's glory is found in his Word, both incarnate and written." The sense of this sentence is that God's Word takes two forms, Christ and the Bible. Further on in the same paragraph, the authors state that God's "authoritative self-revelation" is found "both in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and also in the incarnation of God the Son." Again, the sense is that God's Word takes two forms, the Bible and Christ. The paragraph closes with the observation that, "The Holy Spirit testifies to the authority of God's Word and illumines our hearts and minds so that we might receive both the Scriptures and Christ himself aright." One more time, the sense of this sentence too is that God's Word is in two forms, the Bible and Christ—the written Word and the incarnate Word.
At no point does the Draft blatantly claim that Second Person of the Trinity and the Bible are co-equally the Word of God, but any fair reading of the contents of Section I leaves that impression. And if one looks at the word order, above, often enough the Bible is listed before Christ, which reinforces the sense that they are both equally the Word of God. One can only ask how it can be that the Bible is co-equal to the Second Person of the Trinity, the divine Son of God? If Jesus Christ is who the Draft itself later affirms him to be, namely the Second Person of the Trinity, how can the Bible stand as co-equally the Word of God? That is certainly not the sense of the classic biblical chapter on God's Word, John 1, where Christ alone is the Word.
Apart from the sheer impossibility of the Bible being co-equal with Christ, there is a real danger that the Draft's view of God's Word will take Fellowship Presbyterians in the direction of asserting that the contents of the Bible are everywhere equally authoritative. It would make still less sense to say that some parts are more "the Word of God" than other parts. The consequences is thus that if, for example, certain sections of the Old Testament repeatedly portray God as commanding genocide in clear contradistinction to the teachings of Christ and the New Testament, the Draft can be read to mean that we may not allow see those commands as wrong or simply mirroring a much more violent time than ours. We are required to believe that God is genocidal. This is not mere theological nit-picking. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Southern theologians made a strong biblical case for the South's brutal, inhumane form of chattel slavery. They quoted numerous biblical passages demonstrating that slavery is a part of God's providence. Their arguments were cogently stated. According to the draft, we must accept that judgment in spite of the fact that the model of Christ convinces us that slavery is evil—which it obviously is, Or, again, the New Testament contains passages that clearly put women in a subordinate status in the church and forbid them any authority in it. The evidence from the gospels, however, shows that Christ took a much different attitude toward women, Samaritans, lepers, tax collectors, and marginalized folks in general. Still, a theology that insists that the Bible is in its entirety and its every part God's Word requires the subordination of women in the church.
Now, Fellowship Presbyterians have themselves affirmed in any number of places the equal status of women in the church, which suggests that they may not pursue the Draft's view of the Bible as the Word of God to its logically literalist end. Let us pray not. I hope, instead, that they recognize that they can affirm the authoritative role of the Bible without assigning it a status virtually co-equal with Christ and reshape the wording in Section I. We frequently speak of the church as the "Body of Christ," without claiming that it is co-equal with Christ. We have historically affirmed the authority of our councils and ordered ministries over the church even though we do not see the church as co-equal to Christ. This is to say that we can best see both the church and the Bible as human products born out of the faith of the first generation of Christians. For those who are not blinded by ideology disguised as theology, there is no question but what the Bible bears all of the marks of something written by humans, edited by other humans, transcribed by still other humans, and translated by still other humans—and, yes, the Bible has the marks of inspiration, but then we experience inspiration in other places and ways without claiming co-equal status with Christ for inspired prayers, services of worship, small group sharing encounters, or those rich moments in nature that touch us deeply.
The nature and status of the Bible is surely one of the things that divide evangelicals and progressives most deeply from each other. For me as a theological progressive this section, "God's Word: The Sole Authority for Our Confessions," clearly demonstrates why. My reliance on the authority of the Bible is grounded on my faith in Christ just as is my membership in the Body of Christ. Neither church nor Bible are perfect. Both require a critical attitude because they are products of human minds and human faith, but the purpose of the critical attitude is not tear either one down. The purpose, is to keep our own minds and hearts open as best we can to the ways the Spirit uses both church and scripture for the benefit of humanity and the building of God's Kingdom. That is, we exercise a critical attitude toward church and scripture in order to discover again the inspiration that led to their creation in the first place. Christ is the measure of both scripture and the church, not the other way around. The Draft thus rightly states that, "The revelation of the incarnate Word does not minimize, qualify or set aside the authority of the written Word." The reason this sentence is correct is because the authority of the written Word is itself subordinate to Christ and derives its authority from him just as the authority of the church and its ordered ministries are derived from and subordinate to Christ.
If the purpose of this Draft is to honor Christ and better serve him as Lord and Saviour, I would humbly urge a careful rewrite of Section I. Christ alone is the Word of God. The Bible is God's word written.
For another critical appraisal of the Draft that makes some of these same points and others see the Rev. Steven Kurtz' posting, "A Response to the Fellowship of Presbyterian’s recent draft paper on Theology – on Scripture."
