In a recent entry on his web page, Andrew Sandlin makes an important point about the incarnational nature of the Christian faith (“The Faith is What We Are”), but in my view misses the biblical balance dangerously. In rejecting an objectivity outside ourselves (that when detached from how we actually live should be rejected), I think that the position he is advancing ultimately loses all traction.
Andrew puts it this way: “The Bible in the hands of a Spirit-filled believer produces beauty and love and submission and patience and thoughtfulness. That same Bible in the hands of an antinomian produces antinomianism. That is to say, she will employ the Bible in an antinomian way. A legalist at heart will employ the law legalistically and harshly. He will find good, exegetical reasons to interpret the Bible legalistically and harshly, and the problem is that his Bible teaching will often look objective. But its objectivity is always his subjectivity.”
But if there are good, exegetical reasons to interpret the Bible legalistically and harshly, then wouldn’t that mean that God wants us to be legalistic and harsh? If our interpretations are always just our interpretations, then how do we sort them out? Why is legalism wrong? Why is antinomianianism wrong? Why is it beautiful and right to be Spirit-filled?
When Jesus admonished the Pharisees, He did not tell them that they handled the law rightly within the confines of their interpretive paradigm. When He rebuked the Saducees, He said that they did not know the Scriptures, or the power of God. He did not admire the internal coherence of their system. Rather, He kicked their system down the front steps of the Temple. The same thing can be said of legalists and antinomians. When Jesus was confronted with legalism, He said, “Go and find out what this means.” And He sent them back to a text they had mangled. He did not say that they had good, exegetical reasons for rejecting Him. I think this whole attempt to reconcile biblical thinking with postmodernism in any of its forms is misguided in the extreme.