If you’re that mythical “ordinary” evangelical Christian, biblicism isn’t the sort of word you hear much in normal conversation. So if I were to guess how most of the evangelicals I grew up with would react naïvely to the concept of biblicism, I would guess that their initial reactions to the term would have positive connotations. On further reflection, I would point out that people are either going to react to the Bible or –ism parts of biblicism. As we react to the Bible part, we might guess that biblicism is a positive thing; as we react to the -ism part, we might guess it is negative.
For some reason, I believe this term has made a significant resurgence in evangelical discourse over about the past five years. I believe properly discussing the definition of that term would be helpful. To that end, what I propose is that biblicism should not really be definitely described, because different people use the term in different ways, but rather the term should be viewed as referring to a spectrum of attitudes and instincts, not a methodology or ideology per se, but rather as an informal aggregation of phenomena.
Biblicism is one of those things that people seem to know when they see it. There are formal definitions; for example, D. B. Riker defined biblicism as “the rejection of everything that is not explicitly stated in the Bible, and the concominant dismissal of all non-biblical witnesses (Fathers, creeds, Medieval doctors, councils, etc.).” This is a fine starting point for us despite its problems (for example, what counts as dismissal?). The idea, however, of truly rejecting all non-explicitly-biblical terms and concepts in theology is really not a phenomenon that will ever consistently arise in evangelicalism. The doctrine of the Trinity is the cliché but obvious example. The Trinity is not explicit in the Bible; while it is biblical and there are exegetical arguments for it, it took the Christian church several hundred years after the time of Christ to develop and formalize the doctrine as we know it today. Tertullian coined the term in the third century, but really only after the Councils of Nicaea in AD 325, Constantinople in AD 381 were there consistent, formal, creedal summaries of the doctrine. Indeed, differences in the doctrine of the Trinity persisted and contributed to the East-
West split of the church into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox in AD 1054; doctrinal development unarguably continues after the closure of the biblical canon. Denying this doctrinal development is intellectually impossible.
Now most Christians probably aren’t deeply in tune with the doctrinal development of their belief systems over time. This is how biblicism in other forms can continue in evangelicalism. The reformation doctrine of sola scriptura is not usually formally or carefully defined. There are strains you may hear in evangelicalism that interpret sola scriptura as “no creed but the Bible.” And it is variations of this attitude in evangelicalism that seem to fall under the idea of biblicism.
My personal awareness of the phenomenon of biblicism grew primarily out of a couple interactions I had in college. I was definitely not a biblicist. As a protestant I like being able to make a biblical case for any theological position that I hold, but I also spent much of my time reading theologies like Calvin’s Institutes and Hodge’s Systematic Theology. I also loved reading works by Jonathan Edwards. These are all decidedly not biblicist theologies. All these writers love to point to human reason as an authority for certain points, cite numerous other human writers throughout church history in developing their arguments, ultimately subscribe to certain creeds and confessions as bases of their faith, etc. This is not a surprise to anyone who has read of these sorts of writings. But this ultimately put me at odds with some of my peers at church. In particular, I remember having some conversations with one of my roommates regarding supporting certain theological conclusions, in which I was strongly for allowing logical and reasonable extensions of principles from Scripture (as would Hodge or Calvin or Edwards); he was strongly insistent on being shown “chapter and verse” on where the Bible said it. That’s an example of a biblicist attitude. I had another encounter with biblicism when talking to a missionary from my church at the time about systematic theologies. I mentioned Hodge, and he criticized Hodge as not being as biblical as, say, Wayne Grudem (which is ironic because Grudem’s EFS Christology is not biblical or orthodox).
These experiences demonstrate that biblicism can’t really be reduced to a single method but really manifests itself as an attitude, a strong attitude that associates “being biblical” with being able to cite specific proof-texts to support theological or ecclesial assertions rather than relying more heavily on reason or tradition to extend biblical statements or themes into application. Perhaps, then, the assertion of my theology professor Dr. Mook at TMS that all theology must be based on biblical exegesis could be viewed as a form of biblicism. I’m not really convinced that this is the best description, though I understand identifying it with some biblicist leanings. (I so not recall, but it is possible Dr. Mook self-identifies as a biblicist.) In practice, however, the theology I learned at TMS involved interacting with the historical interpretive traditions of texts, studying the ecumenical creeds and understanding them as not authoritative in themselves but authoritative in as much as they were summaries of biblical truth (indeed, truly they are such summaries), and a sensitivity to understanding what other theologians past and future are really saying. This is far from a naïve “chapter and verse” mentality; it simply wishes to ensure that all conversations ultimately have a “chapter and verse” point of reference.
But it is often still in finer, yet important, points of Trinitarian theology or Christology, in matters of church polity and practice, in matters of specific applications to real world situations, that the limitations of a biblicistic attitude dramatically manifest themselves. The Bible will always have priority in the Christian tradition as the ultimate theological authority from God, as it is God’s Word, and it will always be sufficient for our needs in the Christian life. But this does not mean that all of life or theology is explicitly addressed in Scripture, and so necessary consequences must be admitted to theological discussion. But then, understandably, more surety is found when the logical consequences are expressed in a broad tradition of many believers wrestling with revelation and truth over centuries. There is a “me and my Bible” undertone to evangelical Bible study, dispensational theologies, and other evangelical phenomena that somehow privilege the mythical idea of an unbiased reader of Scripture approaching the text “without any theological pre-understanding.” This is biblicism. It is attitudinal, not really a method; for the method would really on any scrutiny be demonstrated to have quite a few theological pre-understandings, and often Enlightenment or post-Enlightenment metaphysical presuppositions as well.
In other words, there are no “pure” biblicists, and biblicism as a phenomenon really proclaims to be something it is not. Everyone in evangelicalism is operating with some sorts of creeds and confessions as pre-understandings for how they read the Bible. But some traditions are honest about what these creeds and confessions are and point to them, and they pick historical, proven creeds and confessions as their stated pre-understandings. Other traditions claim to have no pre-understandings but simply leave their presuppositions unstated. That lack of statement breeds environments where an individual church’s effective confession of faith is not a document but a person–the senior pastor, a celebrity preacher, etc. Having a person as a statement of faith is a risky business.
Some Points of Confusion
I’m not the only person to be critical of biblicism as an attitude in evangelicalism. Since the late 20th century movement of ressourcement started in the Roman Catholic tradition, similar movements have been emerging within protestant and evangelical traditions as well. Today through the work of various institutions patristic, medieval, and reformation era sources are more widely available in English for church and seminary consumption than ever before. This has driven a resurgence of classical theism, confessionalism, and other historic expressions of protestant Christianity. It’s from this wing that attacks against biblicism usually come.
Unfortunately I think how biblicism gets talked about can lead quickly to confusion. The rather advanced, academic nature of the theology that gets talked about on finer points of the Trinity, classical theism, etc., is not immediately accessible to modern American listeners. The result is this theology can seem far afield from what we learn each day we read the Bible or each week from a sermon. When the people who engage in this theology attack biblicism, this can then sound like an attack on being biblical. This is an unfortunate and unnecessary point of confusion. This academic theology is still biblical; it still has biblical texts as point of reference, and it works out necessary consequences from special revelation. There is no attack on being biblical or on doing exegesis.
Another confusion, I think, comes from some perhaps overzealous attacks on biblicism. Patrick Abendroth, for example, said that “biblicism is cultic.” By this he points out that many cult leaders in history have based their whole cult’s teaching on biblical proof-texts (often grossly misinterpreted), and they have claimed that orthodox Christians did not rightly understand the texts because of their theological pre-understandings. This is a method of biblicism. And in that sense, that is, the biblicism gets used by cults, biblicism could be called cultic. Likewise, the phenomenon of person serving as statement of faith in certain biblicist-leaning contexts also supports this claim. However, this should not be read as biblicist tendencies necessarily causing cult-like tendencies. This should not be read as an accusation that any church that leans biblicist in attitude is a cult.
Likewise, a common accusation against the biblicist attitude is that the progressive Christian liberals used the argument of “no creed but the Bible” to push progressive change in Christian churches and to argue for changes in confessional documents and doctrines. This is sometimes expressed as saying that “biblicism is an acid,” but that’s because in a very real sense this is actually true. I already wrote about how biblical studies ruins everything. The reality of doctrinal development means that naïvely going back to the Bible unaware of the interpretive tradition built upon a passage would mean the undoing of that doctrinal development. This does not mean there’s no value in going back and attempting to reconstruct original contextual interpretations of the Bible, but that does mean for the church’s doctrine that the accrued interpretive tradition that, for example, associates Isaiah 53 with Jesus Christ or Isaiah 7 with the virgin birth cannot be just wiped away in an individual’s reading of the Bible without doing severe damage to other things we care about as Christians.
The final confusion to point out is back where I started: biblicism is not really a method or ideology. It is a spectrum of attitudes and phenomena. Ultimately, however, this point of confusion stems from the importance of sola scriptura in the protestant tradition. Christians are people of the book! We will always be Bible people. And that creates a natural degree of biblicism as an attitude in all protestant Christians simply from affinity to the Bible and exegesis. We want to be biblical. And while the interpretive tradition of the creeds and confessions is biblical (by virtue of it being an interpretive tradition of the Bible), many evangelicals struggle to recognize what is biblical when it is not explicitly so. This is the sort of attitude that will not just disappear easily; various strains of biblicism in evangelicalism will likely continue for a long time to come.
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