From an Australian netfriend, on the authority of the Bible :

1. It is naive, I think, to make any hard and fast distinctions between the authority of the bible and the authority of the church. It was the people of God who decided what was canonical and what was not, and, importantly, this happened in the context of ecumenical councils. In practice (even if we struggle to admit it), church and bible limit each other's authority in a relationship of 'mutually critical correlation' (David Tracy). The church is not the norm for the bible, nor is the bible the norm for the church. Rather, each are drawn into a mutually critical act of interpretation and discernment under the controlling presence of God in the Spirit.

2. This means, of course, that the one absolute authority is God in Christ. In the Reformed, Anglican and Lutheran traditions this is stated far more explicitly than Baptists are usually comfortable with. A recent example is the Uniting Church's Basis of Union, which talks about the "Word of God" as the highest authority and norm for the church's faith. But this Word is none other than Christ, a word spoken by God with the breath of the Spirit. The Scriptures are a 'unique and apostolic witness' to this Word, and should therefore be given the highest repect possible; yet they are not the Word itself. Rather, the Scriptures (along with the church) are subject to the authority of Christ.

3. It is certainly not the case that the Hebrew Torah has been simply done away with in Christ. Most recent Pauline scholarship, following the pioneering work of E.P. Sanders, argues that the Law remains important to God. What happens in the Christ event is not a doing away with the Law, but rather a fulfilling of the law through the vicarious work of Christ on our behalf. Palestinian Judaism, Sanders argues, was itself a religion of grace. It understood that where the Law condemned, grace abounded all the more. The real problem with Palestinian Judaism was not its respect for the law, but its reduction of the law to purely class-ethnic practices which excluded the participation of the poor and the gentile from participation in the Covenant.

4. Finally, a note about the relationship between 'universal, trans-generation' principles and particular, local practices. Clearly there is a relationship. Theologically, one can see that there is an incarnational principle at work here. The Word of the Father becomes flesh as the particular practise of Jesus of Nazareth. The Wisdom of God takes form in the child of Mary. But, precisely on that Christological basis, one must regard the relationship between the universal principle and the local, temporal, practise as dialectical. For, on the one hand, if we were to claim that the universal 'principle' can only take only form, we would be denying the transcendent properties of that principle, its divine capacity to be more than the work of human hands and minds. But if, on the other hand, we claim that the local practise is entirely arbitrary and changeable, then we would be in danger of denying the transcendent 'principle' its chance at being real and accessible, we would deny it the capacity for a human kind of existence at all. That is why the Reformation saw the law of the church as both necessary and changeable. We must makes rules in order to give the Word flesh and blood. But we must never make the mistake of collapsing the essence of that ethic into our rules. That would also be to deny the eschatological work of the Spirit, who leads us into a future as yet unimagined by any of us.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.