The Word of God, Part One - September, 2009

Scripture’s Role

The Scriptures are both the witness to God's redemptive action in history and the interpretation of that action. Both the redemptive action in history in which God discloses himself and the interpretation or meaning which the Scriptures give of that action together constitute revelation. The Church sees in such revelation the glory and mystery of God who condescends to speak his Word through the words of men and finds in it a mystery which can be compared to the Incarnation of the Eternal Son in the Man Jesus. It looks upon the revelation, writing, gathering, and preserving of the Scriptures as a great work of God.

While the Scriptures address themselves both to the mind and heart, the proof of their authority is not determined ultimately by the tests of human reason but by God himself as he bears witness to the Word through the inward work of the Holy Spirit in our minds and hearts.
Because there is no other channel through which redeeming knowledge of God is now disclosed to man, the church is bound to the Scriptures. Only in and through them does it find the source of its life. Therefore, its faith, its worship, its conduct, its fellowship, and its freedom must all arise out of, be judged by, and be renewed by the Scriptures.

Because the Scriptures have arisen within history and are transmitted to us through historical processes the church in its educational task is obliged to use the best available methods of scholarly research to answer questions pertaining to text, authorship, circumstances of origin, content, and meaning.

Because the Bible is the Word of God the church is obliged to treasure its message, guarding against every temptation to obscure its plain teaching or evade its truth, and humbly submitting itself to responsive obedience in the Holy Spirit.

Covenant Committee on Freedom and Theology, Biblical Authority and Christian Freedom, (1963), pp. 5,6.

Our way into the Bible is to read, to understand, and to believe. It is possible to read but not understand. It is possible to understand and yet reject in unbelief. But to believe in the Bible is not the same as to believe in God. It is possible to believe the Bible instead of believing in God. The worst way to lose the Bible is to make it into an idol.

The Bible is God's book, but it must in a special sense be the Christ book. The Bible's meaning and unity is Christ, But the Holy Spirit needs to witness to Christ in our hearts. Hence to keep the Bible means at the deepest level that it becomes God's Word about Christ made fruitful through the Holy Spirit.

David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Let Us KeeOur Bible”
Quoted in Karl A. Olsson, Into One Body...by the Cross, Volume One (1985), p. 261.

Pietist Views

Spener's theology was...much more biblical than dogmatic. Herein lies one of his major differences with the Orthodox Lutherans, who had virtually equated the authority of the symbolical books (the Lutheran confessions) with Scripture. Disagreement erupted over both the Scriptures and the symbolical books. Regarding Scripture, Spener [1635-1705] was seen as undermining its authority. The question of scriptural inerrancy was a point where the battle was joined. Scripture, for the Orthodox Lutherans, was truly and properly the Word of God. The Bible itself was God's writing by the Holy Spirit. Its style and character were from God himself. If the Scriptures were infallible in teaching God's way of salvation, they must also be unerring in every other way.

Spener disagreed on several grounds. There was no uniformity of style among the biblical authors because the Holy Spirit had accommodated himself to each one's individuality. The Holy Spirit spoke now good Greek and then not-so-good Greek The Bible had more of a spiritual than a mechanical authority. There was also a higher form of revelation in the New Testament than in the Old Testament Fred Holmgren notes [ in The Covenant Quarterly, 1970, p. 53] that Spener actually counseled preachers not to proclaim the inerrancy of the Scriptures in such areas as history, geography, and chronology.

To be sure, Spener had a high view of biblical authority. God was the author of Scripture and the Bible has Christ for its heart and kernel--in the Old Testament as well as in the New. It is infallible in containing all that we should believe, do, and hope for our salvation. In matters of faith we are guided exclusively by Scripture. Here Spener's departure was clear. The Orthodox Lutherans insisted that the Bible was inerrant on all counts; he limited inerrancy to what the Bible said about human salvation....

Spener readily admitted that the Scriptures were the Word of God, as the Augsburg Confession had said, but until they were used they were a dead letter. They were like Moses' rod, which was quite ordinary until it was used at God's command. God had filled his Word with heavenly power and in its use this power breaks forth. The Holy Spirit was with the written Word--just as the Orthodox had said. Still the Bible must be used, if its value was to be received.

K. James Stein (1929- ), PhilipJakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch (1986), pp.151,152.

When PhilipJacob Spener laid down his famous proposals for the renewal of the Church in 1675, his first concern was with the centrality of the Word of God in the life of the congregation. He wrote: “Thought should be given to a more extensive use of the Word of God among us. We know that by nature we have no good in us. If there is to be any good in us, it must be brought about by God. To this end the Word of God is the powerful means, since faith must be enkindled through the Gospel.... The more at home the Word of God is among us, the more we shall bring about faith and its fruits.” What was new in Spener’s proposal was not another doctrine of inspiration (there was general agreement on the divine inspiration of Scripture in his day), or a new recognition of the authority of Scripture (that was accepted by his fellow churchmen). What was new was his recovery of the living nature of the Word of God. The Word is the “powerful means” to the creation of new life through the Holy Spirit. For many in Spener’s day, the Word of God was simply information, or law, or rules; for Spener the Word was power–power to effect change in the life of the hearer through the Holy Spirit.

Covenant Doctrine Committee, Covenant Affirmations (Booklet, 1976), pp. 10,11.

Conscience and Scripture are the standards of the Christian life. The awareness of the sin of disbelief and the manifest sins to which disbelief leads is born in the individual through the reading and hearing of the Word. One is stricken in one's conscience and overwhelmed by the fact that every facet of one's life is ruled by sin. We only beg forgiveness (often with tears) of the gracious God who gave his only Son for sinners. But refreshment follows; the new person in Christ enters upon a path full of new life and hope.

Again, the Word of God becomes the measuring stick against which Christians gauge their performance, and conscience registers the difference. Although believers are aware that they are washed in the blood of Jesus, there still dwells in them a “childlike fear” and the need for self-consciousness. Where the unregenerate would dismiss a sin as minor because everyone does it, the Christian sees this error as as an abomination. Where the old nature is content to attend church, confession, and go its merry way, the new nature strives in every situation and always to be pious both outwardly and inwardly. As we have seen, self-examination plays a large role in the psychological life of the Halle Pietist. The heart, mind, and conscience are constantly plowed uand pored over, dissected under the light of Scripture and the Pietist understanding of the Christian life.

Gary R. Sattler, God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good (1982), p. 103.

The Covenant Church was born in the Pietist movement, and in the Scandinavian revivals of the 19th century. It found its source of vital spiritual life in a renewed appreciation of the Scriptures. The established church of the day honored the Bible and accepted its authority, but its concern was more often with the letter than with the spirit. Although it was rigidly orthodox, it often did little to meet the needs of the heart and made difficult a warm-hearted and vital relation to the message of Scripture.

The spiritual power of the Pietist movement lay in its recovery of a vital and dynamic use of the Bible. This early Pietist approach to the Scriptures was not new. Rather, it was the rediscovery of the living view of the Bible which characterized the early Reformation....

Because there is no other channel through which redeeming knowledge of God is now disclosed to man, the Church is bound to the Scriptures. Only in and through them does it find the source of its life. Therefore, its faith, its worship, its conduct, its fellowship, and its freedom must all arise out of, be judged by, and be renewed by the Scriptures....

If, as individual Christians and as a Christian community, we learn to listen to God’s voice to us day after day, and week by week from the pages of his chosen Book, we will discover a deepening of our love for him who saves us, a widening of our love for this sinful world, a strengthening of the bonds of fellowship and mutual trust within the Christian community, and a growing Christ-likeness in the lives of his saints.

Covenant Committee on Freedom and Theology, Biblical Authority and Christian Freedom, (1963), p. 5.

Covenant Understandings

The Evangelical Covenant Church is a community of people which “believes in the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, as the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine and conduct.”

What does this statement mean for the understanding of ourselves as a Christian community?

It means that we are a people of a Book. We believe that the Bible is the place where God is to be met, where his forgiveness is proclaimed, and where his will is made known. This is not to say that he is unable to speak through other means; but it is to affirm that he has chosen to speak to man through the Bible. The Bible is the means by which God has chosen to reveal himself to us. Accordingly, we believe that when God speaks through a sermon, it is because the sermon is the message of the Bible. When he speaks to us in prayer, it is because our prayer is prayer according to the Bible. When we hear him speak in the events of history, or in the world of nature, it is because we have learned through the Bible to understand what it is that he is saying in these areas. The Bible is for us a meeting place with God.

Our statement of faith also means that we believe the Bible stands in judgment upon our sinfulness. Its message is the story of God's love for the world, of his calling us men from our sin, and of his demand that we share in his redemptive ministry; as such it stands in judgment upon the Christian Church and condemns all thought and action which does not conform to the will herein revealed. The carelessness that would distort the Gospel out of concern for success or growth; the excessive concern for the comforts of life in a world of misery and need; the failure to live as persons accountable to God for all expenditures of money, talent, and time; the factionalism and exclusivism by which the members of Christ's Body are separated from one another; the sinful pride and prejudice which prevents loving of persons of other races, religions, and classes; the failure to understand appreciatively those in the Christian fellowship with whom we disagree; the unwillingness to extend to individualists and non-conformists the freedom required for creative spiritual growth, and the joylessness sometimes attendant upon the Christian community in its excessive concern for self and its neglect of the grace and power available in Christ--all these the Bible condemns, and in judgment calls the Christian to repentance and renewal.

This message of judgment, then, is only the context for the more positive function of the Bible. It is not only a book that judges. It is also a means of grace, and as such the Christian community has experienced it. Through its message God confronts men with the grace of forgiveness and the gift of new life, and through the reverent reading of it God's Spirit nourishes the faith, deepens the love, guides the conduct, and encourages the hope of the Christian man.

Clearly implied in our statement of faith is the conviction that a spiritually healthy Christian community must be sustained by a right use of the Bible. For the Bible, through which we hear God's judgment upon our sinfulness, is also the means by which there comes God's saving and healing Word of Life. To receive these words of judgment and renewal we must restore the Book to the place which our Fathers gave it. It must be the center of our life and worship. It must be the daily bread of every Christian; it must be the constant diet of every church.

Our times of Bible study are to be regarded as times of prayer. After using all our resources to determine the original meaning of a passage, our task is to turn its message into a prayer, marking its relevance for our lives as members of a Christian community in a world that needs salt and light.

Covenant Committee on Freedom and Theology, Biblical Authority and Christian Freedom, (1963), pp. 6,7.

In reviewing a hundred years of Covenant history under the banner of Psalm 119:63, “I am a companion of all them that fear thee and of them that keethy precepts” (AV), it becomes clear that the ever-blooming promise of the denomination has been this amplitude of community that seems to offer almost total freedom of thought and action within the boundaries of Scripture. It is equally clear, on the other hand, that the amplitude has posed a vexing perennial problem. Doctrinal spaciousness has not infrequently bordered on anarchy. A constant struggle has been required in order to establish and maintain a denominational identity.

...Covenant piety has emerged in a conscious communal setting where propositional truths and even traditional norms, though meaningful, have carried less weight than the process of living together as a family of faith and applying principle to life through shared reflection and day-to-day decisions.

...Scriptural faith has shaped the Covenant Church.... Covenant faith is based on the strong belief that the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, are the “Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.”

What this means for the Covenant Church is that its aims, and to a large extent its methods, are determined by the Scriptures. God’s design, as it emerges in the Scriptures, is to fashion the body of Christ through the cross and through the healing, reconciling, and unifying power of the Holy Spirit. Hence the ultimate nature of this church body in history (i.e. the Covenant Church) cannot be dissociated from God’s purpose.

...Throughout its history the Covenant Church has no doubt been tempted, in the midst of the embarrassment of its doctrinal freedom, to change the constitution and establish more precise theological norms. Some of the faithful have wanted to return to the Lutheran confessions of its origins. Others have argued for an evangelical alliance as reflected in the confessional statements of the National Association of Evangelicals or a number of cognate denominations.
Now undoubtedly there may be greater hearts ease and tranquility in such prescriptions than in the jangled tunes with which theological diversity assaults our ears... However, ...the hundred years of history under the guidelines of Psalm 119:63 and the present constitution have been preponderantly good and should be celebrated as to the greater glory of God.

Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), Into One Body...by the Cross, Volume One (1985), p. xii.

So it is...in this fellowship we share: this Covenant, these thousands of people, these hundreds of congregations, these institutions, this living web of relationships, visible and invisible. All that the Covenant has been, is today, and will be tomorrow, begins and lives on under the sovereign impulse of the Word.

First, is the Incarnate Word, the living Christ who came striding over the stormy waters of their disrupted lives to our fathers and mothers in the faith, bringing that healing, that meaning, that liberation we call salvation. The same living Christ whose coming to us has made us alive to serve, the same living Christ who will come to generations unborn, until the Father's loving work is completed and all is made ready for the final celebration.

Second, is the Inspired Word, the endlessly rich, the endlessly sufficient well from which thirsty creatures draw image, acquaintance, metaphor, story, instruction. This is the Bible, the whole Word of God, suffused so mysteriously with the presence of the Holy Spirit that believers and unbelievers alike testify to its power.

Beside Jesus and the Bible, I add a third word, hoping to be understood: the Word which we are, as persons, both in our creation and in our recreation. Imperfect as we are, we are yet, in ourselves, messages from God to each other, in that incarnated form we creatures most readily understand. The Word who created us, the Word who saves us, the Word who inspires and instructs us is also the Word of that great cloud of witnesses that intersects our lives both in recollection and in our daily work.

Zenos E. Hawkinson (1925-1997), “The Covenant: Being” (1985)
From Anatomy of the Pilgrim Experience: Reflections on Being a Covenanter, Edited by PhiliJ. Anderson and David E. Hawkinson (2000), p. 86.

The Covenant, despite its love for and commitment to biblical faith, has never been and probably never will be a fundamentalist church. In all likelihood it will continue, as uto the present, to welcome into fellowship those of conservative, even inerrant views, but it will also continue to safeguard the right of less conservative Christians to belong to this family of faith as long as they confess their belief in the Scriptures as reflected in the Covenant constitution.

Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), Into One Body...by the Cross, Volume Two (1986), p. 409.

‘Only Perfect Rule’

The format of the organizational meeting in Chicago was not unlike that of a typical “mission meeting,” so common among these early Mission Friends. Here were believers gathered to hear the Word of God preached. Then a discussion of its implications for their lives ensued in which they sought biblical guidance regarding the possibility of organizing their movement. The fellowship with Christ and with one another was attested to as being healing balm for weary pilgrims. Out of their several days of meetings emerged the Evangelical Covenant Church of America.

F.M. Johnson preached a sermon on the text, “1 am a companion of all who fear thee, of those who keep thy precepts” (Psalm 119:63). In that text alone you have en capsulated the heart of the Covenant. “All those who fear thee” clearly attests to their awareness that their salvation was from God. The validity of such an experiential faith rested on the authority of God's Word--"Those who keep thy precepts" Given the anti-denominational strife these Mission Friends had just experienced from the Free people, you can then clearly perceive their understanding of the doctrine of the church–“I am a companion of all those who fear thee.” They longed for the freedom to organize and structure their ecclesiastical life. That freedom they found in the Scriptures as they searched for a biblical warrant regarding the possibility of organizing and structuring. When they finally adopted a constitution they had officially dropped the references to the creedal statements of the Mission and Ansgar Synods which included the ancient symbola of the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the unaltered Augsburg Confession. In its place they had settled simply for this confession: "This Covenant confesses God's Word, the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as the only complete rule for faith, teaching, and life." There was no mistaking their authority for new life in Christ, for doctrine, and for a lifestyle of creative freedom.

Glenn P. Anderson (1923-1985), Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations, ed. Glenn P. Anderson (1980), pp. 7,8.

We consider it wrong and harmful to propound such doctrines as stand in open or indirect conflict with the clear Word of God. In those points where God's children, in a sincere searching of God's Word, come to a differing understanding because we see in part, there we desire to respect each other's convictions in a brotherly way. We consider it wrong and harmful if anyone so insists upon his interpretations that conflict follows with the tearing of the bonds of love between God's children. For that reason we see it wrong and harmful if such activity is not exposed together with all secret activity. All work which is of God will bear the light.

...We believe and confess that the Holy Scripture is the only infallible rule and guide for people's faith and conduct and we accept especially the New Testament as our Constitution or unchanging statute which we from the heart will obey and follow as long as God through his Spirit gives us understanding and grace to do so.

Organizational Meeting Discussion, 1885, Part of Report from the Kansas Brethren
From Glenn P. Anderson, Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations (1980), p. 34.

Give us any old, any new convincing interpretation of truth, and we have already adopted it by having adopted the New Testament faith. Besides offering the only workable formula for an all-inclusive unity of believers, the New Testament way is the only unassailable position of defense.... Without being a confession, and just because of that fact, the New Testament excels all written confessions by the number of truths expressed and implied, by the absence of errors, and by the fact that whatever truth it has in communion with any confession is more amply and more clearly expressed in the New Testament.

David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Covenant Ideals”
Quoted in Glenn P. Anderson, Covenant Roots (1980), pp. 189,190.

The supremacy of the Bible is a cornerstone in the structure founded by our spiritual [forebears]. The question constantly raised in pioneer days was: What do the Scriptures say? There may have been a tinge of ridicule in the epithet “läsare,” or “reader,” sometimes translated “readerists,” but the title was abundantly deserved. To our trailblazers; the Bible was the Supreme Court from which there could be no appeal. It is not by chance that the constitutions of our churches almost invariably begin with a statement that the Bible is recognized as the only adequate standard for faith and conduct, for individual Christians and for groups of believers.

Theodore W. Anderson (1889-1972), “Covenant Principles” (1935)
From Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations, ed. Glenn P. Anderson (1980), p. 206.

The Covenant Church believes in the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, as the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct. To our [forebears], the Bible was a supreme court from which there could be no appeal. Their watchword in regard to doctrine and conduct was “What do the Scriptures say?”

This means something more than making the Bible a static, inflexible measuring-stick. The Word of God is “spirit and life” and always meets us as such, and therefore requires of us a spiritual and living response. This is faith not as a frozen posture, but as an adventure of trust in God and his faithfulness to his Word. This is doctrine, not as a petrified proposition, but as an ongoing exploration in the Word, led by the Spirit of whom Jesus said, “He will lead you into all the truth.” This is conduct, not as a dull conformity to society’s pressures as “those who live like the Gentiles,” but as a radiant walk in the light and in the newness of life according to “God’s good, and acceptable, and perfect will.”

Clarence A. Nelson (1900-1971), from Covenant Principles (1965).

[An] important element in Covenant identity...is the Covenant’s confession of the Bible to be the Word of God, the only perfect rule of faith as stated in its constitution: “This Covenant confesses God’s Word, the holy Scriptures of Old and New Testament, as the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.” This confession has been sometimes misunderstood. To some it means that the Covenant has no firm beliefs. It is assumed that the Scriptures are like putty, which may be twisted to anyone’s preference. The opposite is the case. The Covenant believes that while the Scriptures may not be identically understood in all places by all believers, all things sufficient for our salvation are clearly taught. It is the creedalists that would seem to imply that the Bible is not sufficiently clear on those things important for salvation. Creedal requirements beyond that necessary for our salvation would undercut the Covenant’s commitment to be a church open to all believers.

Paul E. Larsen (1933- ), The Mission of a Covenant (1985), p. 13.

To believe the Bible is more than believing everything in it, from cover to cover. One can do that and yet be a stranger to the Bible's message and unmoved by the Bible's purposes. A living faith in the Bible as God's word is the same as faith in God. The Bible's promises and threats, the whole content of the Bible becomes real when God becomes real. It is possible to believe in the Bible instead of believing in God. That is not only possible but common in countries which have the Bible. The holiest objects are the first to become idols. Doubtless there are altogether too many in Protestant Christendom who imagine they that they believe in God because they never doubted the Bible and have a sure and comprehensive knowledge of Christianity, as there are Catholics who imagine that they believe in God because they believe in the church and the Pope. But no institutions and no book, no matter how holy it may be, can replace a living faith in the living God. And man cannot lose his Bible in a more frightful way than in this way: that it becomes an idol.

David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Let Us KeeOur Bible”
From Minneapolis Veckoblad, Article 5 (October 13, 1925).

Pastoral authority will be curtailed and compromised if two issues are not attended to, both of which relate to the use of the Bible. One issue has to do with maintaining a proper distinction between what is a command in Scripture and what is counsel. To treat counsel, warning, common sense, or wisdom as a command is misusing the text and misleading to people (cf. Proverbs). I recall past years as a camp counselor talking with young people who were often taught not to go to movies because it was worldly. Some were asked, “If Jesus were to return, would you want him to find you in a theater?” Then television was brought in and movies appeared in the living room. Gradually it came to be that movie-watching was not a sin and the eschatological threat no longer loomed. What was a sin one month ago was no longer. This confusion resulted because certain texts like 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 were treated as forbidding movies on the grounds that they were worldly. There is in this text a command to separate from unclean things. What “unclean” refers to in our culture, however, is not always self-evident and needs to be discerned. When counsel is treated as command and enforced with pastoral, churchly, and parental sanctions-without paying attention to common understanding-authority is curtailed and compromised.

A second distinction is required. In logic, there is a differentiation made between connotative and denotative expressions .42 If one refers to skyscrapers, one speaks connotatively--that is, to a class of things. The total significance of a word most likely includes more than a definition and reaches even to the emotive significance of that word or sentence. A denotative expression refers to the concrete, e.g. the Empire State Building. When “Empire State Building” is said, one thinks, “skyscraper.” When “skyscraper” is said, one does not necessarily think, “Empire State Building.” Some may think of Sears Tower in Chicago.

To be sure, some things in Scripture are denotative. An example is the missionary command: go into all the world and preach the gospel. The meaning and responsibility is explicitly stated. But does spreading the gospel include more than evangelistic work...? In order for the church to decide that, other less explicit texts need to be used. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 to outline the scope of his ministry. In Matthew 11:5, Isaiah 61:1 and 35:5 are used similarly. How do these texts shape the concerns and forms of the church's ministry? What tasks do they imply with regard to that which may institutionalize racism, foster poverty, or deny people health care? Are these issues that belong to the doctrine of creation? In the absence of command and/or denotative statements, one turns to connotative texts to determine meaning and responsibility. Or take another example. Medical advances have made it difficult to define death and have virtually necessitated the writing of living wills, stating personal choice regarding life supports and other “heroic measures.” Decisions in those cases are connotatively made because our generation asks questions not known to biblical writers. As with the apostles in Acts 15, multiple texts need to be read, adequate information regarding the issue at hand needs to be known, and prayerful discussion of texts and information need to proceed.

C. John Weborg (1937- ), “It Seemed Good to the Holy Spirit and to Us: Clergy and Laity in Interaction,” from Servant Leadership, Volume One: Authority and Governance in the Church, James R. Hawkinson & Robert K. Johnston, editors (1993), pp. 132,133.

The most important content of the Bible is neither law nor history but matters of faith and salvation. And it is these we threaten by our manifold legislation in the name of the Bible. We hold so many clubs over the heads of people that there is little time and less passion to speak the gospel to them. But it is the gospel and not the law that is a power unto salvation.... Where the Bible is concerned, our worst enemies are not outside but within the walls.... There is only one place where the Bible is certainly ours. And that is neither in laws nor in schools nor even in churches, but in our hearts.

David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Let Us KeeOur Bible,” quoted in Scott E. Erickson, David Nyvall and the Shape of an Immigrant Church (Acta Universitatis Upsallensis, Uppsala, 1996), p. 217.

[Human beings] need an objective standard by which [they] can gauge [their] thoughts and emotions. In the Scriptures and the Christ they present our [forebears] found such a norm. The Bible therefore became their creed. Above all man-made statements of faith, however valuable, they placed the Bible itself. They were convinced that every truth in any human creed is found in purer form in Holy Writ.

This does not mean that a cold, dead orthodoxy was accepted as the standard for the Christian life. Our [forebears] had seen the hopeless inadequacy of such an attitude. The Bible was to them a living message from the heart of God, vibrant with the love of the heavenly Father. It came to them with the freshness of the morning dew. While other books often are obsolete before the ink is dry, the Word of God is perennially new, an unfailing spring of spiritual life and light and power. The pastor was wise who, when asked for the best book on the Holy Spirit, sent the Bible.

Theodore W. Anderson (1889-1972), Covenant Memories, 1885-1935 (1935), p. 9.

Behind our predecessors' serious intent of telling the biblical story to the next generation, there was a recognition--sometimes with hesitation and even reluctance--that it could never be done only once or by a single method or experience, or even only in one's own mother tongue. Likewise, it was a matter of utmost urgency that there be new participants in telling the story, so that in moving to new times and places each new retelling would be an event of saving, transforming significance.

What moves one in Salem's story is the undeviating fidelity of earlier generations in telling the old, old story. And with it, there was always the continuing struggle to find better ways of telling it and so reenter the primal event of the story again, each time with “more discernment and awed mystery.” If the gospel remains a compelling passion among those telling it now in ways that impact every aspect of contemporary life, both personal and communal, the next generation will catch on!

Glen V. Wiberg (1925- ), This Side of the River (Published by Salem Covenant Church, New Brighton, Minnesota, 1995), p.113.

What was Waldenström’s [1838-1917] concern? It was that the Bible be used rightly and effectively in the Christian community.... Since the Bible is the source of all spiritual life, it should be in the hands of all the people and be read by all.

In God’s Eternal Plan of Salvation this concern is a basic theme, played with many variations. The Scriptures are to be read “to learn the reason for and the purpose of God’s coming into this world.” When you approach the Scripture:

Read in a humble disciple-spirit, in prayer believing, in order that you may “walk in the light.”

Read willing to learn the truth, not confirmation of your opinions or those of others. Place yourself under Scripture’s judgment, testing your life and thought again and again by its norm, willing to forsake everything not in accord.

Read prepared to give unconditional obedience, whatever it costs.

It is clear that Waldenström is calling for a radical biblical piety in which the Word is to shape and rule all aspects of our lives as individuals and in community. To that end, says [he] quoting Paul, let the Word dwell among you rightly. It [the Bible] is not to be a stranger, or an occasional visitor, but “the light, the life, the spirit, the all-penetrating and ruling power in one’s house.” The Word of God is the spring to which you turn for living water, the table at which you are nourished, the element in which you move, the power which sustains you. Hence, “reading the Word is not a service which you do for God, but a service he wants to do for you.”

Donald C. Frisk (1911- ), Covenant Affirmations: This We Believe 1981), pp. 26,27.