I’m an Orthodox Christian, and Tony Jones sounds like he’s waxing Orthodox. I’m having a, “Well, duh. Of course authority is found in the action of the Holy Spirit upon the community of believers through time (read: Church).
http://www.scottbrightwell.org

Hopefully the following exerpt gives you a little background for my thinking in this.

Fr. Thomas Hopko, “The ongoing life of God’s People is called Holy Tradition. The Holy Tradition of the Old Testament is expressed in the Old Testamental part of the Bible and in the ongoing life of the People of Israel until the birth of Christ. This tradition is fulfilled, completed and transcended in the time of the Messiah and in the Christian Church.

The New Testamental or Christian Tradition is also called the apostolic tradition and the tradition of the church. The central written part of this tradition is the New Testamental writings in the Bible. The gospels and the other writings of the apostolic church form the heart of the Christian Tradition and are the main written source and inspiration of all that developed in later ages.
. . . .
Holy Tradition is, therefore, that which is passed on and given over within the Church from the time of Christ’s apostles right down to the present day. Although containing many written documents, Holy Tradition is not at all limited to what is written; it is not merely a body of literature. it is, on the contrary, the total life and experience of the entire Church transferred from place to place and from generation to generation. Tradition is the very life of the Church itself as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.
. . . .
Among the elements which make up the holy Tradition of the Church, the Bible holds the first place. Next comes the Church’s liturgical life and its prayer, then its dogmatic decisions and the acts of its approved churchly councils, the writings of the church fathers, the lives of the saints, the canon laws, and finally the iconographic tradition together with the other inspired forms of creative artistic expression such as music and architecture.
. . . .
All of the elements of Holy Tradition are organically linked together in real life. . . . All come alive in the actual living of the life of the Church in every age and generation, in every time and place. As the Church continues to live by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Tradition of the Church will continue to grow and develop. This process will go on until the establishment of the Kingdom of God at the end of the ages.” pp12-13. _The Orthodox Faith_, “Doctrine,” volume i, New York, 1981.

My “theory” is that they have authority and are applicable because they were written to share the story of God, who shared His message of a new covenant with a community of people who put that message into writing. And God led the community through those writings, and as certain writings stood out as authoritative to the community, God led the community to establish them as scripture.

The intervening years have little to nothing to do with their authority or applicability.

Of course, the community was the context in which it was created. But for me, it seems like you’re too easily ignoring the work of the Spirit in it’s creation.

I can easily agree that how things are interpreted, and what seems important, are contextual to a huge extent. Many theological arguments of the past seem utterly incomprehensible today — or even trivial.

[Even, say, the reformation arguments about faith and works seem to disappear today if you understand that when Catholics say "justification" they mean the same as most Protestants mean by saying "justification and sanctification". But I digress.]

So a lot of interpretation comes down to time and place. Is there any reason to be absolutist about this, and say that there can be no unchanging truth? Or, indeed, that we can know for sure.

An analogy with science seems to help. Newton’s laws of motion remain pretty useful, though 20th century physics shows that they by no means tell us enough to do, say, satellite navigation. Some other things that Newton and his contemporaries might have thought right will have turned out to be at odds with how we now understand the world, and will have been discarded.

So the way we interpret scripture will evolve over time (and place?) Sometimes that’s going to mean refining an understanding; for other things, it’s going to mean discarding one way of reading in favour of another.

Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think it is. But I’m not sure.

[PS for some reason, this put me in mind of an apparently famous quote from the first Chancellor of my university: "The functions of an angel are knowing and willing." I haven't a clue what he meant ... but that was 800 years ago. Yet, we happily claim a continuous existence of the University - with all its ideals of enquiry and study - over those eight centuries. The ideal of the university is bigger than the details of what we are studying right now. But I fear that I'm rambling.]

and i’m definitely not saying that scripture written 2000 years ago isn’t normative for our lives today. i’m not saying that there aren’t things that we learn from scripture. or even applicable today.

but my theory is that they are applicable because of the community’s (throughout church history) resonance with them and not because they are words on a piece of a paper.

more plainly said, the authority comes from the community. if they didn’t believe them and practice them, then they would have no authority in and of themselves. they would just be words. but because they have resonated with them throughout the years and practiced them, then this infuses them with authority for future generations.

for example, if my family didn’t pass down stories to me of my family history . . . i would live uncentered, unconnected, and on my own whim. but because my family tells me stories about our shared history, i live with roots. my proposal is that the authority is found in the roots and not in the pieces of paper.

bowling, movies, and card games is not what i’m talking about in being contextual. that’s not people being contextual. that’s just people being stupid and more concerned with boundaries and slippery slopes than gospel.