Who says what the Bible
says?
The
keys to the kingdom, binding & loosing
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you
loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
“I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
--Matthew
Believing
the Bible is easy. It is applying it
that’s tricky.
Applying
the Bible to today is harder than stating we “believe the Bible and that
settles it. “ Take for instance the
Bible’s teaching, “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s obvious this applies to outright
premeditated murder, but does it also apply to War? Does it apply to killing in
self defense? How about abortion—does
the commandment apply to that? Does it extend to capital punishment? Who says what the Bible says on these
things? Or, take another example: what
does the Bible mean when it says “Your
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” It obviously explicitly applies to visiting
temple prostitutes but does it extend to anything else? Alcohol? Tobacco? Obesity? Sugar? Who can say how far the Bible applies in such
situations? You? Me? My
denomination? One more example: the Old
Testament teaches us to keep the Sabbath day holy. Is Sunday the Sabbath? Is going to the beach on Sunday wrong?
Cutting my grass? Making unnecessary
purchases? Is there no such thing as a
Sabbath at all anymore? How can I know
how the Bible applies in these situations?
Who can decide what the Bible means—obviously I can’t just decide for
myself—neither you nor I can be trusted to let the Bible mean whatever we
decide it means ourselves. So who can
we trust? Here are my answers to that
question for your consideration.
1.
In Jesus’ day the rabbis led this process.
The Jews of Jesus day had the
same problem. Thinking Jews immediately saw that the Ten
Commandments weren’t actually commandments at all in some cases but actually
“principles” that needed application.
The commandment on the Sabbath didn’t say specifically what it meant to
work—just don’t do it. Was building a
fire to eat “work?” A fire for
warmth? For fun? Is collecting sticks for the fire working on
the Sabbath? Feeding animals? Taking in the harvest before tomorrow’s
rain? God commanded Sabbath-keeping but
left the details up to us to figure out.
It is the same with “Honor your mother and father.” What does that mean? Does it mean a
Jew had to obey their parents even after they were an adult? Take them into their own house and care for
them when they are old? Merely give
parent them respect and admiration? How
was a devout Jew to know how this commandment applied? Who gets to decide?
That is where the rabbis came
in. Along with others, the Rabbis took up the task of applying the
Scriptures to daily life—answering the question “How far should I go?” and,
“How far is too far?” Each rabbi offered
a “yoke” –a collection of his applications of the Bible’s teachings—a church Discipline or Manual of sorts. To
determine the application of Scripture the Rabbis used a question and answer
approach. The two schools of Rabbis of
the first century (Hillel and Shammai) are the most famous. The rabbis examined the law and applied
it. Someone might ask, “If I find a fledgling dove and keep it have
I stolen?” The rabbi’s teaching then
established the application of the commandment “Do not steal” to the real
situation of a person’s finding a baby bird that had obviously escaped from
someone’s cage. In this case the
teaching was that if you found the bird within fifty cubits of the cage you had
to return it, otherwise “finder’s keepers” prevailed. All this of course sounds really
ridiculously legalistic to us until one examines our own church rules (and
personal ones) which attempt to make similar applications of the Bible to
today’s issues. Well, what is your answer? Ever found a wad of cash in a parking
lot? A quarter? A penny?
What did you do? Do you reimburse
for personal photocopying at work?
Telephone calls? Time sending
personal emails? Use of the ink in an
office pen for personal purposes?
See? We all have to make ethical
judgments every day that either bind us or loose us from “the law.” <1>
The rabbis used a particular
phrase for this process—Bind and loose. It was not a matter of
treating the Scripture lightly “loosing” it by tossing overboard, but rather
the process treated Scripture with gravity, carefully attempting to discern how
it applied to actual daily living. Any
pastor who knows real people knows the need for this sort of thing. First, there are some folk who are simply too
hard on themselves—their consciences are so tender that they’ll turn in a penny
they’ve found to the Wal-Mart counter and if they keep it they feel like they
are a thief. These people need loosed
from the their hard taskmaster. But
there are also others who are so liberal on themselves they will “loose” just
about every command in Scripture—including explicit ones—as they “consider the
circumstances” in their own life. They’ll be sinning boldly and pronouncing it
good. These sorts of folk could use a bit of “binding.” The bottom line: individuals can’t be
trusted to do their own binding and loosing—they needed a rabbi to help them and
this was the situation in the first century when Jesus spoke these words.
2.
Jesus Himself practiced “binding and loosing.”
In some ways the entire Sermon
on the Mount is an example of Jesus’ binding and loosing. (“You have heard it said…I say unto you.”) He binds murder to include anger. He binds adultery to include
divorce/remarriage. He binds/extends the
commandment on loving neighbor to loving enemies. But he looses Sabbath-keeping so that one
might harvest grain by hand and even heal people. He also looses the restrictions against
idolatry by allowing tax payments to Caesar who considered himself a god. Rabbi Jesus did what rabbis did—they took the
law and applied it to daily practical issues of morality—loosening the grip of
some rules and tightening and extending others.
He never disposed of the law, but applied
it to real-life through the process of binding
and loosing.
3.
Jesus delegated the authority to “bind and loose” to the church.
Jesus granted these keys to
the church. What else can it mean? The questions are: what are the keys and who got them? The keys seem obvious: they are
the authority to apply Scripture to daily life binding and loosing it when
applied to life. <2> If
these are the keys then who got them? Peter
and his apostolic successors? Every
individual Christian personally? Or, (as
almost all Protestants say) the church. I think the church got the keys. It is our
job to apply Scripture to today’s world—being strict on some things and more
loose on others. It is the church’s job
to start with God’s word then look at real-life situations and decide where to
bind and extend the meaning of Scripture and where to loosen up its application
and turn people free. I think it is the church’s job to tell the person who
feels guilty for the penny they stole from the parking lot that they’ve not
stolen it at all—they should put it in the offering plate and quit fretting.
4.
However our big question then is: “Who is the church?”
So if the church gets to bind and
loose, who is the church? Once we decide it is not an individual’s job
but the church’s responsibility to apply Scripture to daily life then we
Protestants run into a problem—we must ask, “Which church—who is the church?” Catholics say “the church” decides through
the Pope who is the direct apostolic successor to Peter who got the keys in the
first place. Protestants rejected this
idea 500 years ago. When the Pope
determines that the command to be fruitful and multiple means abstaining from
birth control pills the binding is done for Catholics (though the bind-ees
don’t always listen). For Protestants
it’s more complicated. If the church
does this binding and loosing who is the church? My local church? My denomination? Some sort of average statement from all
evangelical denominations? The
agreed-upon meaning of Scripture of evangelical bible scholars? If I am wondering if the extra 15 pounds on
my bodily temple is wrong what church would I ask? Who will loose me of this command or bind it
and command me to shed those pounds? Or,
more seriously, who will tell a person considering divorce that they are
justified in doing so, or are being selfish?
Or when a college student is plagued by sexual dreams and wonders if
these are sin—who will tell him the answer?
The church will. It is our
job—Christ gave us the keys.
5.
John Wesley might be a helpful example here.
I
know some folk could care less about what someone said or did in the 1700s’ but
perhaps he can be a test case of how a Protestant can get “binding and loosing
services” from the church. There are two
practices in the Methodist movement that provided the binding and loosing
service to individual Christians at that time. Perhaps we need to return to
them.
A. The “fourth question” in Wesley’s small
groups. John Wesley organized the church into small
groups of twelve people, called “class meetings.” In those groups four questions were asked
each week, going around the circle with each person answering them in
turn. The fourth question is of most
interest to us here but for context I will list all of them:
1.
What
known sins have you committed since our last meeting
2.
What
temptations have you met with?
3.
How
were you delivered?
4. What
have you thought, said or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
Wesley’s fourth question is a
glimpse at how he saw binding and loosing work in the church—in small groups.
After confessing sins and then temptations over which they had been victorious,
every member of the class was asked to report anything they were unsure
about—thoughts, words or deeds that they were unsure if they were sin or
not. This would not be hard to do—they
had just gone around the circle sharing personal sins and temptations
already! Once the member shared their
uncertainty the group helped them decide—applying
the Bible to their situation. They did
not have a short prayer and send the member out into the woods to “sense from
the Holy Spirit” if they had sinned or not.
They did not even send them off to study the Bible. They had them share and the group bound or loosed the Bible’s teaching to them. This small group “directing” avoided
individualized applications the person might make on their own that were either
too harsh on themselves or too easy. The
individual submitted to the “spiritual direction” of their class meeting under
the direction of a class leader.
Wesley’s answer to the question, “Which church?” would have included the
small group. They had the keys and were
to do binding and loosing. But Wesley
did not leave ultimate authority in small groups on their own—for even a group
of twelve can be mistaken. Wesley
wrapped the small groups up in a package of “Christian Conference.”
B. “Christian
Conference.” Wesley
did not gather the Methodists in their annual conference to discuss mileage
rates for District Superintendents or the deteriorating condition of the camp
meeting buildings. They discussed
theology. Reading the minutes of these
old conferences is something like reading the work of the first century rabbis
or the early church fathers. They are
honest attempts to hammer out theology and behaviors based on Scripture—in
short “binding and loosing” the bible for daily life. The “minutes” of these conferences were so
helpful and instructive that pastors eagerly waiting for them to be printed so
they could use them in local congregations in discipleship. The “conference” was a regional event for
the hammering out of theology and the application of Scripture—a grand “binding
and loosing convention.” Questions were
posed just as to the rabbis in the first century and answers were hammered out
and crafted into words that have endured.
The minutes of these conferences became guidance to class leaders and
small groups for helping individuals making ethical decisions on “how far to
go” applying the Bible to life.
Christian conference was so important in Wesley’s scheme of binding and
loosing that he listed it as one of the five means of grace in his famous
sermon on that subject—including conference along with Scripture, prayer,
fasting and the Lord’s Supper! (I know
of no person recently who considers their district conference to be such a
“means of grace.) Wesley’s approach was
to create an envelope of authority around the small groups with the conference
minutes. It worked.
Thus the Methodist in Wesley’s day knew
where to go to find “the church.” If they were wondering how the Bible applied
to their own drinking of alcohol, smoking tobacco, playing the lottery, getting
an abortion, joining a secret society or practicing homosexuality [anachronisms intentional] they knew whom to ask—they asked their small group. And around this small
group was the collection of the serious thinking of the Conference. Yet there
was more. In with the small groups and
the conference was the prolific writing of the movement’s leader, John Wesley
himself, who constantly bound and loosed scripture in application. In a way Wesley’s writings were (at least for
a time) a huge container into which the envelope of the conference and small
group was stored (though one could easily argue that Wesley himself may have
said that the conference minutes took a place of higher authority). These envelopes-within-envelopes all together
moderated error of interpretation—the small group correcting the individual,
the conference and Wesley’s writings correcting the small groups.
But there were also some important “ghosts”
at the table. To Wesley neither the class meeting nor the
conference was supposed to be doing all this applying of the Bible in a
present-day vacuum. He insisted that all
of the Christian thinkers through history get to vote on these matters
too—these were the “ghosts” at every class meeting in all the conferences (and
with all of Wesley’s writings). This is
Wesley’s emphasis on “tradition”—the historic teaching of the church on any
matter. Wesley gave special attention to
the early church fathers or “primitive church” to which he granted extra voting
power. See where this article is heading? Binding and losing Scripture in
community—small groups, large ones, all wrapped up in the largest community of
all-Christians down through history to the present.
When we “reverse engineer” Wesley’s actual
practice we see his own answer to our question, “Who
is this church with the keys to bind and loose Scripture?” His practice answers that with, “It is
your small group first of all,
surrounded by the teachings of Christian
Conference which are informed by all of Christian
tradition and especially the earliest church fathers. In practice the so-called “Wesleyan
Quadrilateral” <3> was NOT an tool for an individual to
determine how the Bible applied to today but for a group. Seeing the quadrilateral in Wesley’s own writings
may give a glimpse into his own thought processes but where the rubber met the road Wesley used community to apply Scripture.
And these present-day communities (class meetings, conference) were
joined by the great community of all time—“tradition” then they focused their reason and tested it in experience to determine how the bible
applied to “this present age.”
So, my questions for this Tuesday morning
are these:
1. Do most
Christians today believe they have the sovereign right individually to bind and
loose Scripture on themselves—no group or church has this right? If so, then if there is no authority above
the individual how can the church condemn any
sin at all?
2. What does all this say about church rules or
membership commitments?
3. Is there any church anywhere on earth with
small groups asking “the four questions” every week? And what is the result?
By Keith Drury November 21, 2005
Click
here if you’d like to see some comments on this article…or make on
yourself.
Click here if you’d like to read my personal response to this
article
1. CREDIT.
I am greatly indebted to Trinity Lutheran Seminary’s Mark
Allan Powell for his clear and helpful article Binding and loosing: a paradigm for ethical discernment from the Gospel
of Matthew published in the December 2003 Currents in Theology and Mission.
His article has gathered into one place the ideas on binding and loosing
and presented them in an easy-to-read writing style—so Luther(an)!—Kudos to you
Mark! I am also indebted to my colleague
Steve Lennox who sniffed this out from our library’s InfoTrack. Stave hearing from Ken Schenck that I was
interested in the “Binding and Loosing” matter spied Mark’s article and passed
it on to me knowing I had written about it the idea (less cogently) before –see
that here. The connection with Wesley is my own and it
is untested and not yet “peer-reviewed” by Wesley scholars who will certainly
tear it apart. But hey, this is a blog
designed for running things up the flagpole—have at it Wesley scholars.
2. OTHER INTREPRETATIONS OF
BINDING/LOOSING. In fairness there are
other interpretations to binding and loosing. Luther thought the process
applied to the power of the church to forgive sin—retaining or loosing a person
from their guilt for sin—but that authority is better derived from John 20 than
from this context. Others of a more
Pentecostal ilk have tried to made this verse talk about the power of Christians
to exorcism but as Mark Powell wryly remarks, “but why would the church ever
want to loose a demon?” However neither
of these approaches is as satisfying to me as taking this teaching in Matthew’s
context itself. The larger context (the
Rabbi’s practice of binding and loosing application during the first century)
and the narrow context of these verses themselves which clearly apply to some
authority Jesus is granting the church with the keys.
3. QUADRILATERAL. Wesley himself never suggested
he had a four way system for deciding things.
It was coined by Albert Outler in 1964 as an explanation for how Wesley
determined things—the model has four points (thus a quadrilateral)
–starting with Scripture Wesley then
went on to also consider Tradition, Reason and Experience in hammering out Biblical application and theology.