Black-Letter Christianity

There is a growing tribe within the larger Christian world today of what we might call “red-letter Christians.” There is, in fact, a US-based organisation that calls itself by that name, but there are many others who may not formally affiliate with the organisation, but who, in practice, emphasise the red letters of Scripture (i.e. the words of Jesus) over its black letters (i.e. the words of the other biblical authors).

I recently heard a Christian podcaster talk about his theological shift from complementarianism (the theological belief that the role of pastor is reserved for qualified, called men) to egalitarianism (the theological belief that all roles in the church are open to men and women alike). In describing this shift, he emphasised that, while he was raised with complementarian theology, he eventually came to the point where he struggled to make sense of the restriction in light of Jesus’ teaching, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. Eventually, because he could make no sense of the restriction, he embraced an egalitarian reading of Scripture.

Strikingly, his shift had nothing to do with understanding and interpreting Pauline texts that directly address the issue. For him, everything needed to be interpreted in the light of Jesus’ words, most particularly the Sermon on the Mount, where, incidentally, Jesus never addressed leadership roles in the church!

This emphasis on the words of Jesus, and usually on the Sermon on the Mount, is typical of red-letter Christians. The red-letter Christian organisation styles itself as a a group of Christians “taking the words of Jesus seriously.” “Staying true to the foundation of combining Jesus and justice,” its website reads, “Red Letter Christians mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings.”

While Christians should certainly be committed to living out Jesus’ countercultural teachings, there is something concerning below the surface of red-letter Christianity. Red-letter Christians tend to elevate the words of Jesus above other Scriptures. They may claim to affirm the authority of all Scripture (and certainly the podcaster referenced above would affirm Scriptural authority) but, in practice, they tend to sideline other Scriptures as if Jesus’ words carry more authority than, and perhaps even contradict, those Scriptures.

Take an extreme example. One article on the Red Letter Christians website is titled “Progressive Christians Can Embrace Paul Too.” The writer contrasts the “conservative” tendency to champion Paul with the disdain that “progressive” Christians often have toward him. While he tries to steer a line between these two extremes, he cannot help undermining Pauline authority. “Paul falls short of our current progressive demands,” he writes. While there is “still good to salvage in Paul,” and while his writings “can prove useful,” there is much in Paul that is alarming.

The writer dismisses several of the epistles (Ephesians and Colossians, for example) as probably not written by Paul, which removes the tension one might feel when reading them. Nevertheless, there are still “issues” that “exist in Paul’s genuine letters” and we must “remove some theological weeds that tangle Paul’s genuine message.” For this writer, Paul sometimes, though not always, “falls short,” and he concludes, “Paul is not perfect. But the Bible is filled with people who are learning to get it right. Some do better than others.” In other words, Jesus is perfect; the human writers of Scripture are not. (Note: The discussion of perfection here does not pertain to Christ’s sinlessness as opposed to human sinfulness. The discussion surrounds the inspired authority of the written words penned by the author.)

Another article openly rejects the notion of biblical inerrancy, claiming that the Bible itself rejects the doctrine of inerrancy. This is not to say that we cannot learn from the Bible. In the same way that children, who early in life think that their parents are perfect, discover, as they mature, that their parents are fallible, and yet can still learn from them, so maturing Christians will discover the flaws in the Bible and yet be able to learn from it.

This is typical of red-letter Christians, who are comfortable dismissing Scriptures that do not come from Jesus’ lips. (The irony, of course, is that even Jesus’ recorded words were written by imperfect humans. Jesus never left us any writings.) For red-letter Christians, Jesus’ words in the Bible are good and trustworthy, but the black letters are at least questionable and must be evaluated in the light of our modern understanding of life, the universe, and human morality. Since the Bible was written by men, not God, we can hardly expect it to speak without error. But since Jesus was more than a man, his words carry real authority.

We could assess the flaws of this reasoning from various angles, but I want us to see, from the red-letter words of Jesus himself, how this approach falls short.

Recently, one of the elders of our church read publicly from John 5. The red-letter words of Jesus at the end of that chapter caught my attention: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46–47). Notice Jesus’ logic here: If you don’t believe the black letters, how can you possibly believe the red letters? Jesus considered his teaching to be perfectly consistent with the human authorship of the rest of Scripture because, like him when he taught, those authors were moved by God as they wrote. It is impossible to divorce Jesus’ authority from the authority of the rest of Scripture.

St. Augustine had it right:

In other words, if you undermine the words of Scripture at one point, you can just as easily undermine it at any other point. If Paul was wrong about human sexuality, who is to say that he was right about the fruit of the Spirit? If you reject his teaching on church leadership, I can as easily reject his teaching on the primacy of love. If the Bible is not fully authoritative, it is not at all authoritative.

If we believe the red-lettered words of Jesus, we must affirm what he believed and taught about the black-lettered words of Scripture’s human authors. We must affirm, in short, that “all Scripture [black and red alike] is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The recorded words of Jesus carry no greater authority than the recorded words of the apostles and prophets. We are called to black-letter Christianity, which affirms, and submits to, the full authority and sufficiency of all Scripture.