This has been such a thorn in the side of American Christendom. It is something caught between two polarities; that of the individual in relation to God and God’s revelation, and that of the Church, which obviously constitutes an “authority” in Scripture itself, and is called upon more often than references to some written authority. Many people assume that when The New Testament speaks of the “Word of God” that it is implying our present Bible, which is historically impossible. Then we have Biblical criticsim that posits later revsions to the present day Scripture from the source material, inserted and edited by the early Church fathers to emphasize the authority of the Church as preordained. When the authority of the Church evolved (in these cases, DEvolved) into abuses such as the selling of indulgences and the manipulation of innocent and trusting souls, then the Reformers (and Hauerwas says “rightly so”) were concerned with the Scriptures “act as a judge on the Church” (p.27)

Ironically, by freeing the Bible from the Church and putting it in the possession of the individual conscience, the Bible becomes, in the process, the possession of nationalistic ideologies. America becomes a Christian nation sanctioned by God.

I was schooled in Sociology at the University level, and hooked up later in theological studies with persons such as Tony Campolo (through his writings and several lectures on tape or video) enought to know that there is quite a slippery slope when it comes to theology and worldview; often the latter determining the former, but it seems that the element of “conversion” (and usually a very gradual one) happens as theological truths escape into the realm of worldview, so that these areas of life fall under a new authority; what Gordon Cosby calls “an alternate reality” (Cosby is the founding pastor of the Church of the Saviour, a community that over the years has become the closest thing I have known to a people who actually embody in the corporate life as God’s people a readily apparent “alternate reality”). I believe that this is much of what Hauerwas is trying to get across when he says that the Bible canonly be rightly understood by those already under transformation. (Hauerwas says this in many different forms during his articles and speeches, and I’ll have to run across another one of those and post it here in due time).