Verses versus Verses

Lately, I have been exploring options on where God wants me to go from here. I was once an Anglican priest and let the Anglican world over 10 years ago. I had hoped when I left that I would be allowed to discern some form of ordained ministry in the Catholic Church, but it has become clear the Catholic Church never had any interest in having a serious discussion about that with me. They never wanted to discuss priestly ordination.

For a time, they let me discern through the training program of another Diocese becoming a permanent deacon. My current Diocese has never had permanent deacons, so it was sort of an experiment to begin with. That process largely ends because I voiced dissent at the flippant way preaching and homiletics was being taught (and having taught seminary level preaching, I did know what I was talking about.) After a horrendous bout of verbal abuse by the archdeacon for voicing such concerns to which I had to file a formal misconduct complaint, I was summarily expelled from the program. My own Diocese wouldn't challenge any of it or work with me for any alternative training. So, long story short, after 12+ years of trying to discern some path to ordained ministry in the Catholic church, I have washed my hands of ever wanting to attempt another ordination process of any kind.  I just can't go through another ordination discern process. It is too painful, and I have far too many battle wounds and PTSD from my previous ordination processes to ever want to attempt any such thing again.

I share this not because I want to throw a pity party or need your sympathy. All this was over a year ago, and I have moved on. Sometimes you just have to say, "I forgive you..." and move on with your life. Forgiveness is not a magic bullet where everything magically turns out right in the end with happily ever after and all that. Forgiveness is also not a matter of "forgive and forget." That's not a Christian principle, despite what people say. We have to forgive. We are not called to forget and pretend like nothing ever happened, nor should we. This is true of forgiving ourselves and forgiving others. We must always "proclaim the day the Lord has made, for let us rejoice and be glad in it." We cannot rejoice and be glad if we pretend everything has and always was hunky dory.

Part of the miracle of forgiveness is moving on. The matter is closed. The matter has no further power over me. God has delivered me from whatever chains and shackles that holding a continual grudge had over me. But, again, that is quite a different thing that forgetting. If we forget what God has done through this act of forgiveness and salvation, we are failing to proclaim and rejoice in the day of the Lord.

All of this is really neither here nor there. Where I was going with this story is that even as disappointing as this whole process has been, it is a new day. I have moved on, and in in that discernment of moving on, I still feel God is calling me to do something. It's apparently not ordained ministry, but over the last several months, I have been trying to discern what that is. I am still not sure what this new day is leading me to, but I have some interesting prospects.

Another of the things that did not go far was that I was looking into perhaps getting certified as some sort of lay Biblical Counselor. I have no idea how I would work that in to my life as a lay Catholic, but it was suggested to me to explore. There are certain national organizations that do such certifications. I won't name names, but you can probably figure out which groups I am referring to if you do a quick Google search. 

I took a few initial online classes with this one particular group. I should have guessed immediately when I applied to this particular program that it was an extremely Protestant based association. I somehow managed to get through the initial screening process to the point I could take a few online classes. I should have followed my instincts and said, "Thanks, but no thanks" after a few of the online sessions as they were pretty clearly advocating theology from which I do not ascribe, but as I was under the impression they were a more ecumenical group and that we were all on the same side (you know, Jesus and stuff...), I thought I could agree to disagree. It was otherwise good clinical information if you could parse it from the doctrinal overlay, at least from the beginning intro classes I took online.

As the class became more and more focused on Biblical interpretations based on a very specific Biblical interpretation theology, I was largely no longer agreeing with the process. Basically, if I don't agree with how you are interpreting the Bible, then we are not going to agree on how to use that Bible to counsel others. If you are saying I have to believe X about the Bible, and then having to apply X about the Bible to counseling to get Y result, I really have to get off the intellectual train at the X because I will never get to Y if I don't believe the X.

After my flap with the deacon formation process, I was a bit gun shy about questioning the methodology, but ultimately I queried the powers that be and asked to see what sorts of the theological position papers I would have to submit to ultimately get approved as a Biblical counselor with this organization. I finally got hold of the essays and final exams that I would have to pass after taking several more classes. I knew I was in trouble when I got to the second question (of 44!), which was framed as:

    2. Describe the sufficiency of Scripture. Relate the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture to the
    practice of biblical counseling. Research and respond to the arguments of at least one
    integrationist or Christian Psychologist regarding the insufficiency of Scripture for
    counseling.

I knew what they were looking for, having heard references to such in the online class. While they did not reference Sola Scripture here, I am virtually certain that is what they were wanting me to enunciate and affirm. While I have a very high reverence for Scripture, Scripture does not usually interpret itself. Occasionally, Jesus in the Gospels will tell a parable and then explain what he means by the parable to the disciples, but that is not too often. But the whole Bible does not have a commentary on itself in a second volume called The Bible 2.

In fact, we have to rely on the interpretation of the Church to tell us what is in 'the Bible' and what is not. There was a long discernment process that choose books like Mark and 1st Corinthians but excluded things like the Epistle of Barnabas or bizarre gospels like the Gospel of Thomas, almost all of which we still have extant copies of. Some are actually quite good, like the Epistles of Clement or Ignatius of Antioch. But there was a long discernment process to determine what was and what was not in the Bible. This is something that Protestants and Catholics still have no worked out entirely. There are some Old Testament books that Protestants removed from the canon that the Church had had in the Bible for over 1000 years.  

So, that does beg the question: are the Scriptures sufficient? Turns out, it is far more complicated than that.

Is it the sufficient and unique revelation of God to His Church? Yes. There will be no further revelations. There won't be a new Gospel of Jenkins that finds a new 4th person of the Trinity. 
Is it sufficient to interpret itself? Actually, no. The Bible does not give a definitive bibliography of itself or even tell us what should or should not be in the Bible. If the Bible does not define itself, how can it interpret itself?

We logically only have a couple of options. We can either rely on the teachings of the Church and generally stay in line with Holy Tradition or we can go rogue and interpret it ourselves, at which point you end up with Dr. John Bergsma refers to as the phenomenon of "verses versus verses:"
In other words, Christian group 1 says the Bible is properly interpreted this way and cites a set of verse. Christian group 2 says the Bible is properly interpreted that way and cites another set of verses. Christian group 3 says you are both wrong and the Bible is probably interpreted this third way and cites even more verses.

And very quickly you realize that Christians of good faith can honestly interpret the same Bible differently because the Bible is not an exhaustive commentary on itself. Once you unmoor yourself from any historical interpretation like the Church has provided, you basically set yourself up as your own interpreter and you go find verses to support your interpretation and then rinse and repeat when the next Christian comes along. 

In any event, needless to say, I removed myself from pursuing any further certification as a Biblical counselor for the aforementioned group I was taking a class from. I know what they wanted to hear. I probably could have finessed it to suit them and not totally told them what they wanted to hear. That does not really do much for either of us, so I left of my own recognizance this time and was not kicked out this time.

My search for what sort of ministry God wants me to pursue continues. I have some other irons in the fire. I keep hoping to find an ad in the paper with the headline: Help Wanted: experienced Troubler of Israel. 

Not sure it works that way usually, but it did for Jeremiah...