Chapters 4-9 frame out Part 2 and build from the content of Part 1 showing how authority is expressed. This section is arguably the most robust part of the book, so this post will be more lengthy than my sum of Part 1. Chapters 4-5 are dedicated to divine authority, chapters 6-7 zero in on Scripture and authority, with chapters 8-9 setting sights on human authority.
Chapter 4 focuses on the uniqueness of God’s executive imperative authority, which God shares with creation through mediation, or ‘ministerially’. This is seen in the opening chapters of Genesis where God says, “‘Let the earth put forth vegetation,’ … Instead of God being the one who is making the vegetation, now the earth is acting ministerially …. The land is invited to join in with the Creator” (p 83), to co-create or collaborate in the creation process.
Importantly, McKirland distinguishes between God’s power and God’s authority. While God is all-powerful he has executive imperative authority over all creation. Thus, divine power is necessary to God’s being, whereas divine authority is contingent. In fact, executive imperative authority only comes into play when creation comes on the scene (p 85), yet God is all-powerful apart from creation. This is a crucial theological point, since all Persons of the triune God share equally in all the necessary divine attributes. Authority is not a necessary attribute of the triune God, though power is. Within the immanent life of Godself, one Person does not have authority over another Person (contra the mistaken view of the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father). While McKirland does not make this point explicitly, it is nonetheless important as it grounds the ontological unity of the Persons within the triune God as well as highlights the ontological distinction between Creator and creation. That is, creation requires God’s authoritative and providential reign and rule, while Godself does not.
Chapter 5 illustrates how God’s divine authority and power is lived out in the life of Jesus. As the Son of God and God the Son, Jesus “instantiates [God’s] power and authority but in human form. We see the one with all power over and executive authority (by divine right) leveraging those privileges for humanity’s sake by giving power to others and modeling supreme nonexecutive authority both epistemically and as our chief example” (p 118). As the perfect exemplar of what it looks like to live in relationship with God, McKirland paints a portrait of Jesus in deep and complete dependence upon the Spirit of God throughout his earthly life. The same Spirit animating Jesus’s dependent earthly life is also given to us and is the divine agent by which the church is constituted and from which the church is empowered.
I wish every American evangelical1 would read chapters 6-7, as they deal with “Authority and Scripture” and “Authority, Translation, and Interpretation” (chapter titles respectively). McKirland argues (rightfully in my view) that Scripture is unique and primary, but is not divine. In fact, the written word of God is a “creaturely entity and a servant to the divine self-presence” (p 113). Written Scripture is instrumental in so far as it points to its divine author, though Scripture is not itself divine. True, God is holy, and “whatever God touches becomes holy,” yet what is used by God still remains creaturely. To illustrate she points to the tabernacle, “which was made entirely of creaturely things but was crafted especially for the divine purpose of encountering God. Thus, the tabernacle was unlike any other building because of how God had purposed it” (p 111). Likewise, Scripture serves as a pointer to God’s presence, but is not the presence of God in se. In so far as Scripture is accurately understood, it has “delegated executive authority” in and over the lives of believers. As McKirland insists, “we have a veracious text because we have a veracious God, [but] we are not always veracious interpreters” (p 122).
Chapter 7 directly confronts what chapter 6 alludes to, namely concerns of mixing the authority of Scripture with our interpretations of it. After some keen insights on the interplay between authority and interpretation, she beautifully sums,
God is our absolute authority and, by the Word and Spirit, has chosen to use the creaturely means of human authors, and the written word to reveal Godself to us. Revelation of God is bigger than written Scripture, but God has chosen to mediate God’s very presence in and through these written words. All of these written words are inspired, even if the human writers had some measure of freedom to be moved by the Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20-21) when capturing God’s communicative intentions in the written word. Because of what Scripture is and what it does, it is authoritative, both executively, and nonexecutively. Because God is the authority, when it comes to our interpretations of these Scriptures, these are authoritative only insofar as we have correctly interpreted them according to what God intended them to say. Consequently, our interpretations are always revisable because we can get these wrong, and thus these are best done with other Spirit-indwelt believers (pp 129-130, emphasis original).
What stood out to me from the above text is the proviso that Scripture interpretations “are authoritative only insofar as we have correctly interpreted them according to what God intended them to say.” If we fail to capture the intent of God’s words in their historical and cultural contexts, then we cannot expect that the words of Scripture will have any power to change our lives. God no more wants to be misunderstood than do we, and the quintessential task of every Bible interpreter is to do the homework and wrestle with the derivatively inspired text rather than import our own inspiration into it, however well-meaning it may be. Simply put, Scripture cannot mean what it never meant. See especially my post, “Interpreting the Bible, Nursery Rhymes, or Just About Anything Else.”
Turning to translations, McKirland affirms, “the act of translation is an act of interpretation” (p 130). She takes aim at the English Standard Version (ESV), showing how it falls short of meeting its own standards. First, it is impossible to claim a ‘word-for-word’ translation obtains greater accuracy and is a closer approximation of the original text, since none of the original manuscripts have survived and only copies remain. In fact, the sheer number of additional words added by the ESV to the total number of words in the copies of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are exceeded by more than 200,000 (see pp 135-136 for details. The number of words added in other popular translations is less)! Given differences between languages, a word-for-word/essentially literal translation simply does not exist between languages, “as every speaker of two languages knows” (p 130).
Second, the ESV claim of being superior to other translations because it is not based on “influences of contemporary culture” or “interpretive views of the translator” appears to be an instance of the pot calling the kettle black. As McKirland notes, of the 60 translators, reviewers, and editors of the ESV, none are female and most are complementarian (p 138). Moreover, she states that, “the main reason the ESV was published in 2001 was in response to the NIV translation seeking to be more gender inclusive” (p 136; the TNIV controversy was well-known at the time and a serious contender to complementarian readings of certain texts). This comports with my experience at the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) annual meeting in November, 2000, when Wayne Grudem (a lead advocate and editor) announced the ESV publication that January following. Free copies of the ESV were given to all ETS members and it was more than apparent in the room of hundreds of scholars that Grudem had a cultural agenda. Much has been written since regarding the bias of the ESV (and Wayne Grudem’s agenda), so I’ll leave it to the reader here to vet out those claims (see, e.g., Marg Mowczko ). McKirland’s main point is “not that translations avoid bias (as that is impossible), but that we should avoid elevating word-for-word translations over thought-for-thought translations under the presumption that word-for-word translations are purer conduits for divine authority” (p 137). Under their expressed claim of “transparency” per the ESV translation philosophy, McKirland insists that the ESV “should name their hierarchical bias” and include it in their published translation philosophy (p 139). I could not agree more.2
McKirland’s essential argument in Chapter 7 is this: “God’s own absolute authority is being mediated through Scripture” and “translations can be understood as veraciously authoritative” placing “translations in the category of nonexecutive epistemic authority.” To the extent that “translations accurately capture the divine intentions in the units of meaning from the earliest manuscripts, we ascribe to them a high degree of veracious authority,” which McKirland calls, “derivative authority” (p 141, emphasis original). Most importantly, she insists that it is the original manuscripts that are inspired by God and copies that remain derive their inspiration from the original text. The process of translation is not inspired in the same way that the human authors of Scripture were inspired, and neither is any interpretation. However, we should expectantly hope that translators and interpreters are Spirit-led as they seek to capture God’s intent.
As I read McKirland’s arguments, it seems there is a varying scale of inspiration and authority (if you will). From the most inspired and authoritative to the least, it appears that the movement is something like this: God inspires the authors of the original text such that what is written is what God intended to communicate > what remains from the original text are copies in the original languages > these copies are then the basis for translations, the process of which necessarily involves interpretation. Given that translations involve interpretation, and given that some (most?) interpreters do not use or possibly even know the original languages, then Bible readers and teachers (preachers) are many layers removed from the inspired text. This is not to say we don’t have responsible translations from the copies nor that we should be skeptical when reading our Bibles as if it has little authority. It is to say, however, that we must be careful to know and understand what we claim is inspired and what is not. We must confine inspiration to the original text and its human authors. These things be true, then it’s perfectly reasonable to claim that our Scriptures are derivatively inspired, insofar as they are responsibly translated from the earliest and best copies of the original text. Nevertheless, our interpretations of these translations are fallible and can (and occasionally do) err.
Closing out Part 2 chapters 8, 9 focus on human authority and power. Chapter 8 addresses male and female relations with respect to authority and power. One oft-repeated reading of Genesis 2 is “the man’s naming of creatures is an exercise of authority and power over creation (dominion)” (p 148, emphasis original). However, this reading of Gen. 2:19-20 is misleading for two reasons. First, it’s quite possible that the function of naming in the Old Testament was primarily a way of getting to know the named and “their special characteristics.” Thus, naming was “relational and bound to understanding” rather than a way of exercising power over. Second, this reading makes sense of the overall context and force of the narrative. McKirland brilliantly and beautifully shows that naming the creatures involves a teachable moment for the man. This is how she puts it.
God dignifies the man through experimental pedagogy, (learning by doing). God wants to show the man that no other creature is like him … so that when one is like him, he will value her as the equal partner she is. By bringing each animal before the man, God emphasizes not so much the man’s task of naming and enacting some form of executive authority as power over these creatures as God emphasizing the man’s own discovery that none of these creatures is like him. He needs someone like him. Thus, upon waking from a deep sleep and seeing the woman for the first time, he exclaims, “At last!” She is the partner, the come-along-sider, that he has been missing. Even what he calls her stresses their similarity. In Hebrew, “man” is ‘ish and he calls her ‘ishah (p 149).
After providing these and other substantive criticisms of gender-exclusive understandings of power and authority, Mckirland sums pages 144-153 by noting that
the man and the woman, as royal priests, were given executive performative authority in order to steward creation toward its flourishing as God’s representatives. They were to act on creation, both for creation’s benefit, and for their own, but never exploitatively. This form of authority is shared by the man and the woman, although with the entrance of sin an undesirable power differential of the man over the woman was one of the temporary consequences. While they were initially given power over creation, they were intended to have power with one another in order to give all creation the power to flourish (p 153, emphasis original).
Incidentally, many have turned Genesis 3 on its head and misread it. McKirland’s (along with my and many other’s) reading of Genesis 3:16 intimates that the power differential between man and woman is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, the ruling of the man over the woman is the way things will be (temporarily), rather than the way things should be. Male dominance is a result of sin, not God’s moral corrective to it.
There are other crucial theological points made in chapter 8 that pertain to human authority. However, at the expense of exhausting my readers, I will move on to the final chapter of Part 2.
Chapter 9 spells out human authority in leadership. For example, whenever Paul leverages his apostolic executive authority, he does so as a parent over a child, not as a boss over an employee. This unique apostolic authority is exercised when a) the gospel is being threatened or b) the unity of the church is under siege. Otherwise, Paul’s primary means of relating to believers is as a fellow believer, a sibling (pp 171-173). Kinship not only trumps role, office, or status in God’s kingdom, but serves as a filter through which every function rolls out in Christian community. This is no less true for those serving in leadership today.
Still, some biblical texts speak about submission to leadership in authority, and McKirland does not shy away from these (pp. 173-180). 1 Corinthians 16:15; 1 Thessalonians 5:12ff; Hebrews 13:17 receive special attention, as do the personal, pastoral letters of 1, 2 Timothy and Titus. She convincingly shows that some are recognized leaders because they are passing on apostolic teaching (epistemic authority), their lives are worthy of imitation (exemplary authority), and/or their authority is delegated by an apostle (Paul to Timothy, for instance). Surprisingly, she insists that local pastors are not entirely equivalent to Paul nor his delegates. Instead, pastoral authority is sourced in the canonical New Testament, not in the office, role, or person (p 178), and certainly not in the person holding such position. The only instance in the New Testament where interpersonal authority of one believer over another is clear involves sexual intimacy mutually shared between a married couple, which was [and remains] radical (1 Cor. 7:1-16; p 179).
She reiterates that some form of executive imperative authority is legitimate, and likely limited to the context of church discipline. Importantly, church discipline is exercised by “the whole community” discerning what the Spirit says, and not just by leader(s). (Matthew 16, 18, pp 183ff. See especially pp 206-207).
Leaders in the church do have executive performative authority, though it is primarily functional. Recall that executive performative authority is the power to act on or for someone else with a goal in mind. McKirland demonstrates that
those who had performative authority were appointed by the Spirit (Acts 20:28) and had the character to substantiate those responsibilities. Their role was always to achieve an intended end, which, according to Ephesians 4:10-16, is the maturation of each member so that the whole body grows in Christlikeness and lives into the shared calling of seeing all things brought into unity under the lordship of Christ (Eph. 1:10). They were also accountable to the whole community (1 Tim. 5:19-20). And the envisioned leadership is always plural … Further, whatever tasks they were performing on behalf of the body were not meant to keep the body dependent on them but rather were intended to move the community in closer dependence on Christ (p 186).
Based on my reading of the New Testament, I cannot think of a better narrative that captures what church leadership is for and what it is required to achieve.
NOTES
- I do not use the term ‘evangelical’ in any political sense. For another position sympathetic to McKirland’s views in these chapters, see my, “A Dialectic Dance: Scripture, Tradition, and Mike Bird“. ↩︎
- For a complementarian viewpoint that also identifies many of the same concerns with the ESV translation, see, “To Be Honest.. I’m Struggling with the ESV.” ↩︎