Disciples and the Bible: A History of Disciples Biblical Interpretation in North America

by M. Eugene Boring

From Campbell and Stone to Craddock and Keck, biblical interpretation in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has traveled a distinctive path. In search of a Disciples hermeneutic, this study looks intensively at the pattern of interpretation--and interpreters--from the denomination's beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present.

Genres: History, Church

Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Walter Rabon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended for those affiliated or interested in Disciples as a denomination. Excellent coverage of history across 150 years and many generations shows how Disciples have viewed the Bible and how this has impacted the denomination. Today, I agree with a major premise that Disciples have trouble describing how they view the Bible. We need to be able to describe who we are (not just who we aren't) and what the Bible is (not just what it is not). These are vital requirements to a church that claims to be centered in Christ, yet 1) the bible is our primary witness to Christ; 2) Christ was rooted in the bible of his people; and 3) the Bible tells the story well of the first followers of Christ (which we now claim to be). Excellent insights are offered as well as recommendations for the future from a globally renowned Scholar, strong theologian, and excellent church leader. Everything I've read from Gene Boring has been a joy and highly educational as well. This one is still highly relevant 20 years after it's publication.

[Jacob Hudgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and reasonably thorough study of how Stone-Campbell thinkers use and think about the Bible. Boring is a Disciples of Christ minister and scholar, so his work reflects a particular bent.

I was shocked by Boring’s paternalistic, condescending, and occasionally mocking treatment of thinkers who differ from his view. His general thesis is that the Disciples have changed from their roots. Campbell, Stone, Scott et al got biblical interpretation wrong because they relied on a simplistic rationalistic view of scripture. Only later did Disciples, responding to the advent of German higher criticism, discover that the Bible was not truly a foundation worth standing on. He views this as enlightenment. A denomination has truly “made it” when they finally emerge from such backward origins to begin studying in respectable universities and publishing biblical studies recognized by the wider world. He is especially critical of the other streams of Stone-Campbell (churches of Christ, Christian Churches/Churches of Christ) because they haven’t yet made it. He never addresses the core issue of why higher criticism and having “our people” publish works is an unqualified good.

This view means he makes no pretense to be objective:

“Phase III has also seen an academic broadening and deepening, which has positively affected biblical interpretation among Christian Churches/Churches of Christ”(386). Why is this positive?

“Disciples have rightfully abandoned an ecclesiology that regarded the kingdom of God and the church as virtually identical”(412). Is a history book the appropriate place to set everyone straight about the “rightful” interpretation?

“Disciples have properly abandoned an insistence on baptism by immersion for the remission of sins”(413). Why is this “proper”?


There is ample room for criticism of the Stone-Campbell paradigm, rationalism, and pattern restorationism. This book is a good, generally insightful critique of them. But it leaves no room for anyone who would dispute the value of the current consensus of critical scholars.

[David Blankenship · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an uneven but sometimes helpful book about the history of Biblical interpretation in the Stone-Campbell movement, with a primary emphasis on the Disciples wing. At almost 500 pages, it still feels something like an introduction to the subject, as told through mini-biographies of various preachers, editors, or scholars. A basic knowledge by readers of Stone-Campbell history is vital for making this book comprehensible.

The author makes the mistake of looking at past generations through his own particular lens of 'critical scholar' rather than seeing that for most of two centuries of Disciples history the need to serve the church and regular members is far more important than going down rabbit holes of scholarly theory that will do little good for all but the most focused of academics. Indeed, many of the writers whom he holds up as being mediocre scholars did not have the same purpose as himself when it came to Scripture, but likely did much more good for their churches by their respect of Scripture. I can't recommend this book because far too often the author's own biases get in the way of history; perhaps it would have been better written by an objective historian than a textual critic.

[Jeremy Crump · Rating 3 out of 5]

M. Eugene Boring traces the theology of the Restoration Movement through five generations of written material produced by its prominent figures from 1804 to the late 20th century. Since one of the distinctive features of this movement is its antipathy to theology, this historical survey amounts to a history of biblical interpretation among restorationist scholars (3). The story of the restoration movement as told by Boring is a story of progression towards a more critical, scholarly understanding of the Bible from the intellectual heights of the first generation to a worrying provincialism to a “renaissance” of learning in the fourth generation. Boring highlights the education and intellectual gifts of the “Big Four” of the first generation (1804-1866)—Stone, Scott, and the Campbells—but notes how their overall reluctance to seriously engage with scholars outside their own circles ultimately set the stage for the “provincialism” that overtook the movement in its second and third generations (161). He notes how Alexander Campbell did not consistently apply the principles of biblical criticism that he at times championed and notes how modern Disciples have embraced it in later years (ch 10). Indeed, Boring sees a real incompatibility with the pattern restorationism that came to be identified with the restorationist movement in the first generation and the practice of biblical criticism (393). Boring clearly has a bias towards higher education, viewing the development of restorationist schools and academic scholarship as an unquestioned good and as greater evidence of sophisticated Bible reading than is often found at the lay level in restorationist churches, particularly in the Churches of Christ (306). He is quick to point out the scholarly contributions of restorationists, while exposing the naïveté of those within the movement who weren’t well read or self-reflective enough to understand that their anti-traditionalism and common-sense approach to biblical interpretation were evidence of an unacknowledged tradition that they themselves were part of (20). Boring believes this “academic broadening and deepening” has significantly aided biblical interpretation among Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (386). On the other hand, he argues that the restorationist vision will inevitably be undone by criticism. According to Boring, biblical criticism is part of our origin story and it is not the enemy. Nor is the rejection of pattern restorationism the result of a rejection of biblical authority, but it is a logical consequence of applied biblical criticism (363).

Boring’s survey calls into question serious cornerstones of restorationist identity. Many of the restoration movement’s foundational assumptions do seem suspect from a modern vantage point. For instance, the hermeneutical principles outlined by Barton W. Stone can be summarized as 1) scripture is clear, 2) the interpreter is free and capable, and 3) the method of interpretation is common sense (16-25). All three of these principles seem to many today to be demonstrably wrong and thus call into question the entire restorationist project. Appeal to thousands of years of bitter disagreement and division over central biblical doctrines and theology is all that is needed to disprove Stone’s claim that the Bible’s message is “transparent” to all (16). The Bible doctrine of sin as well as modern psychology’s insight into man’s ability to deceive himself render the second principle suspect, and the pluralism of our own time makes one despair of the existence of the notion of “common sense.” The role to which tradition and eisegesis shaped biblical interpretation throughout five generations is also made clear throughout the historical survey, contrary to our identity as anti-traditional or non-denominational. Though a history of biblical interpretation, Boring makes a convincing case that the restoration movement essentially constructed its unique identity from sources other than the Bible, unbeknownst to them. The principles that formed the pattern hermeneutic are in fact not drawn from the Bible but from the unexamined assumptions of the readers foisted upon the biblical text as they were reading from their own contexts (244). For example, the early restorationists assumed that there was in the Bible “a consistent, uniform entity in the apostolic age called New Testament Christianity” (82). This assumption served their interests in constructing a unity movement that would further their postmillennial eschatological hopes. However, biblical criticism would demonstrate that such uniformity is not true to what is observed in the NT and diversity of practice and theology might have been a better foundation for unity. Moreover, when combined with Stone’s insistence on the absolute clarity of scripture, “patternism” encourages us to think that those who do not see it are either “lazy, dumb, or evil” (286), which will continue to hinder good faith efforts towards unity. This book makes a powerful case that the only path forward for the restoration movement is to embrace biblical criticism and apply its conclusions to our investigation of the Bible but also to examine our own situatedness as interpreters and as inheritors of a tradition.