A look at Walter Brueggemann on biblical authority

From the outset I would like to add a personal note about Walter Brueggemann’s background. Brueggemann indicates that Psalm 119:105 is his life text: “Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Interestingly, it was handed down to him at his confirmation from his father, who taught him “the artistry as well as the authority of scripture”. What a beautiful legacy for a father to leave his son. Aside from his dad, an evangelical pastor who himself loved the Word, Brueggemann’s approach to Scripture was strongly influenced by a number of liberal theologians (of the German variety). His association with this latter group has nurtured in him both a special longing for unity in the broader body of Christ (including non-evangelicals), and a penchant for championing the cause of the underprivileged and marginalized elements of society. That association has also reinforced his love for the literary brilliance and divine nature of the Scriptures. All these formative influences are apparent in such statements as this one made in the address he gave at the particular conference on biblical authority under review: “The Bible is essentially an open, artistic, imaginative narrative of God’s staggering care for the world, a narrative that will feed and nurture into obedience that builds community precisely by respect for the liberty of the Christian man or woman.”

Now, enough background. Let’s move on to Brueggemann’s framework for approaching interpretation of the Bible. A base assumption, and two derivative “learnings” (as he labels them) vital to this discussion, are as follows: “How we read the Bible, each of us, is partly a plot of family, neighbors, and friends (a socialization process) and partly the God-given accident of long-term development in faith.” From that Brueggemann concludes that: “The real issues of biblical authority and interpretation are not likely to be settled by erudite cognitive formulation or appeal to classic settlement, but live beneath such contention in often unrecognized and uncriticized ways that are deeply powerful, especially if rooted (as they may be for most of us) amidst hurt, anger, or anxiety.” And further, “Real decisions about Biblical meanings are mostly not decided on the spot, but are long-term growth of habit and conviction that emerge, function, and shape, often long before recognized. And if that is so, then the disputes require not frontal arguments that are mostly exercises in self-entertainment, but long term pastoral attentiveness to each other in good faith.”[2]

Brueggeman’s six facets of biblical interpretation

Beyond these qualifying assumptions, Brueggemann identifies six “facets of biblical interpretation” which he believes are operative (or ought to be) among all those who would maturely attempt to unpack the bible’s meaning and application for today. These he captures in six “I” descriptors: 1) inherency, 2) interpretation, 3) ideology, 4) inspiration, 5) imagination, and, 6) urgency (importance). I will very briefly lay out my understanding of what he is implying with each of these facets, and then I will respond with some of my own commentary on the value and some dangers I personally observe in the application of these.

Let’s start with the first facet. This is not an easy one to articulate, but I’ll give it a try. By inherency, Brueggemann means God’s word is not fixed or frozen - it is the “live word of God.” That authoritative word is embodied in the text of Scripture, but refracted through many authors who were not simply “disembodied voices” but who were speaking the inherent faith into their given context and circumstances. Because of this refraction, and because of the living, active divine breath behind it, the locus of authority is the Bible’s good news and “main theological claims”, and these are what the church at large must base its unity upon. I get the idea that inherency is an acknowledgement that the divine is lurking within the text, but it’s not easy to pinpoint exactly where (beyond that gospel corpus & such main claims as creation, redemption, the consummation of all things, etc.).

With the facet of interpretation, Brueggemann argues that the Bible requires and insists upon “human interpretation that is inescapably subjective, necessarily provisional, and as [we] are living witnesses, inevitably disputatious.” Beyond the baseline of main claims or affirmations of Apostolic faith, we must attach only “tentative authority” to interpretations on almost all questions. He claims that Reformed interpretation too often has involved “a slight of hand act of substituting of our interpretive preference for the inherency of Apostolic claims.”

This process of interpretation that avoids absolute resolution on almost everything the Bible teaches (beyond the most basic of Apostolic claims) is self-evident, Brueggemann claims, in the Bible itself. For example, when God re-iterates the law given at Sinai for a new generation, Moses claims “Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today” (Deuteronomy 5:3). The original instruction from Sinai is applied in a fresh manner for a new circumstance. He claims that God actually overturns in some instances some decrees that were in their historic context binding for the people of Israel. He cites God’s original ban from inclusion in community anyone practicing distorted sexuality. In Isaiah 56:3-8 he claims this is overturned for a more inclusive, tolerant perspective. A similar dynamic is observable, he claims, in Deut. 24:1 where it is declared that marriages broken in infidelity cannot be restored. Later in Jeremiah chapter three, Brueggemann sees God actually overturning this original decree in light of new circumstances (where restoration despite infidelity is possible).

The third facet Brueggemann mentions is imagination. In seeking to understand and apply Scripture we ought to employ this faculty of creative imagining to envision “a movement of the text beyond itself in fresh ways.” It takes a measure of fantasy or imagination to “transpose ancient voices into contemporary voices of authority.” Brueggemann claims that we do this all the time in interpretation; for example, he says “those of us who think critically do not believe that the Old Testament was talking about Jesus [what?!!!], and yet we make the linkages. And we make “a huge leap to imagine that an ancient Purity Code in Leviticus 18 bears upon consenting gays and lesbians in the twenty-first century…” (although gay people find supposedly more sound argument in Brueggeman’s earlier idea of situational - perhaps, more accurately, evolutional – abrogation of earlier biblical decrees). I love (and fully concur with) the following summary statement of Brueggemann’s view on imagination in interpretation: “Imagination can indeed be a gift of the Spirit, but it is a gift used with immense subjective freedom which we would do better to concede, even if that concession makes it unmistakably clear that our imaginative interpretations cannot claim the shrillness of certainty but only the tentativeness of our best extrapolations.”

Ideology is Brueggemann’s fourth “I” which is operative as we approach the biblical text. By ideology he means the bias we all bring to the text out of unique design and experience. Our passions, self-interests, anxieties, fears and pains represent a complex filter through which an individual or a group or a culture, filter her/his/their understanding of the Bible. We are essentially context-bound by our unique individual and group filters that we are in some ways permanently marked or skewed in our comprehension and application of certain texts. This introduces a distortion in our perspective that can only be remedied by submitting our convictions to others who interpret out of a much different filter (i.e. a different context and life experience). “There is enough truth in every such interpretive posture and strategy….to make the posture credible and to gather a mass of constituency in order to maintain a sustained voice.” But no posture can rightly be given absolute veracity or claim. None of us can claim to be “innocent” (without vested interest) in this regard.

By the fifth facet of inspiration, Brueggemann does not mean the traditional view of the inscripturation of God’s revelation (i.e. recording in written form). What he means is that the Spirit of God actively breathes through the text and “blows past all our critical and confessional categories of reading and understanding…so that the text yields something other than an echo of ourselves.” This happens as we approach the Bible in prayer and study, or even in times when we may not expect it, when the living Word strikes a special chord in us, individually or corporately. “The script of the book is a host and launching pad for the wind among us that the world cannot evoke and the church cannot resist” - what a powerful statement!

The last “I” in Brueggemann’s hermeneutical repertoire is urgency, or importance (as he puts it, to maintain consistency). Biblical interpretation is not primarily done in order to seize control of the church, but rather to give the world access to the good truth of the God who creates, redeems and consummates. This truth is not to be reduced to formula or technique, or trivialized to solve certain problems or correct certain social inconveniences. We must keep in view that “reading Scripture is for the sake of the missional testimony of the church” - good news that is, first and foremost, for the world.

What I feel is to be gained (or lost) by adherence to Brueggemann’s view of Scripture

On this issue of inherency, the word of God is seen to be lodged within a text that sprang forth from fallible human sources. We are challenged to resist too much familiarity with that text lest we close ourselves to being surprised by what new things God might want to bring out through it. In the language of Karl Barth, it ought to be endlessly “strange and new” to those seeking to encounter God’s living voice through it. I really like that idea of remaining ever open to be surprised by the Word of God – for it to be “rhema” over and over again. But, beyond that, I find this concept an inadequate accommodation for the rigidity of inerrancy. It seems to me it creates more problems than it solves (in terms of helping the Church understand how to bring its life in congruence with sound doctrine).

Brueggemann gets into hot water when he takes this a step further and argues that some biblical witnesses succeeded more effectively than others in bringing out this inherent word. If that is true, then on what basis do we determine where the more authoritative material lies? (Although, if we’re honest, most of us do not attach the same authority to II or III John or even Jude, as we do to other NT epistles – which may well be a step toward the accuracy of Brueggemann’s point). I personally would put more confidence in God’s involvement in insuring that the distortion in transmission to written text was minimized[3]. Otherwise, it seems like the game of telephone, where God’s clear revelation gets all cluttered up in human fallibility; and the best we can hope to find when turning to Scripture is an authoritative gospel nucleus surrounded by a lot of spurious teaching and opinion.

As far as interpretation is concerned, Brueggemann makes a statement which I believe endangers (if embraced) any hope of finally resolving what is authoritative and what is not in the Bible’s teachings: “Interpretive humility invites us to recognize that reading in a particular time, place and circumstance can never be absolute, but is more than likely to be displaced by yet another reading in another time and place, a reading that may depart from or even judge the older reading…The Spirit meets us always afresh in our faithful reading, in each new time, place and circumstance.”

This is a slippery slope, obviously. There is no doubt some truth to certain older teachings being abrogated or overturned by later teachings. But, it seems to me that where there are clear cases of such abrogation, we must be very careful not to overextend that principle and let current political or ideological agendas overturn longstanding interpretations of the text. How Brueggemann actually applies the biblical examples of abrogation cited in his address I find questionable at best. For example it is true, as he argues, that foreigners among the Israelites were in Moses’ day excluded from worship, and then later in Isaiah’s day Israel were given a promise that this was to be overturned in the new covenant God was making. But it is a leap to suggest that this actually meant God was overturning this in Isaiah’s day, and that it might be changed even again in days to follow. This change is set within the context of the promises of the new covenant age, not necessarily that specific moment.

This idea of later biblical teaching replacing earlier teaching has apparently been used to justify arguments for inclusion and acceptance of gay lifestyles within the fold of the church. The Isaiah 56 text appears to be fuel for that justification (I’m not sure that Brueggemann himself espouses that, by the way). In that text eunuchs, a previously excluded group, are shown to now be included in the worship of Israel. What was earlier viewed as a “distorted sexuality” (being a eunuch) in Moses’ day is now to be embraced in Isaiah’s time. The homosexuality of old which was viewed as a distorted sexuality ought to also nowadays be embraced as being sanctioned by more current teaching in the Bible. These sorts of applications strike me as huge interpretive leaps, where certain Scripture is used to justify a present ideological bias.

Brueggemann’s quote above (the one about no reading in any time, place and circumstance holding absolute authority) makes me nervous. But I do realize that many postmoderns do not share my concern (i.e. they would not feel at all concerned whether particular parts of the Bible are authoritative in an absolute sense or not); And they might even honestly ask, why do we as Christians even need to have a text that is absolutely authoritative? Rather than deriding such thinking as naïve, we would do well to ask ourselves how much our quest for certitude is really in itself God-ordained. Having said that, I must confess that my personal motivation to make a stand for and strive to internalize certain Scriptural teachings is very much negatively affected when I perceive a given text or passage as not having a timeless authoritative ring to it. For example, the Apostle Peter urges us to “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” (I Peter 5:8-9). If I do not see this as an absolute command having authoritative sway over my life (e.g. maybe I think the devil is a dated concept), I am apt to drop my guard and act like we as Christ-followers really are not in a serious battle against evil. Or maybe I hear no absolute ring in Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God. I might believe it, but if another church does not, that’s acceptable because who is to say what is absolute? Absolute authority means it’s more than my truth, or only binding because I believe it’s important. It means it is true for anyone because God has revealed that general reality as an anchor in this stage of human history.

I think Brueggemann makes some excellent points on the operation of imagination in interpretation. Indeed, we would do well to own up to that faculty we all employ – and further, see the good in it. The Spirit can and does enliven our imaginations, and no doubt takes us farther than our familiar interpretations (if we apply our creative mind’s in the light of God’s Spirit). But, as Brueggemann rightly asserts, “we must regularly, gracefully, and with modesty fall back from our best extrapolations to the sure apostolic claims that lie behind our extremities of imagination…” This call to “fall back” is reassuring, but does Brueggemann have a sense of what those specific apostolic claims are? Don’t we get back to creeds and confessions, when we start talking in those terms (Were these not an attempt to determine that authoritative “main claim” pool Brueggemann cites?)?[4]

Ideology, or the power of those filters which are the product of our exposure and experience in life, is truly a powerful interpretive force. Brueggemann makes an excellent point here, as there are indeed many Christians who confuse their political leanings with biblical Christianity (e.g. I suppose consumer Capitalism would be a major one for too many American evangelicals, who have adopted this as the uncontested norm for societies). There is great danger in any segment of the body of Christ which allows itself to remain ideologically naïve’ in the face of technology’s shrinking of the world (with its associated easy dissemination of diverse cultural expressions). The consequences of an entrenched narrowness are detrimental to the cause of Christ, as nonbelievers end up rejecting an ideology (even with its merits as far as truth) rather than the gospel itself. As well, it is important to recognize that ideology can be “enshrined in longstanding interpretation” until it is [viewed as] absolute and trusted as decisive authority.

While I agree with Brueggemann’s general point about each of us (including our given group or culture) being context bound, resulting in some distortions in biblical interpretation, I am hesitant to fully embrace his belief that “every such ideological passion…may be encased in scripture itself”. On some levels this may indeed by true of the biblical writers, but how in the world we sort out where and with whom this is evident is certainly a highly subjective determination. Accepting that God has used fallible people (where specific word-choice is not necessarily Spirit-driven, but the inspired or revealed concepts put in the heads of the writers are), I believe we still have other clear didactic material in the NT to help us maturely decide what may have been ideologically-driven (and hence, not necessarily given as timeless truth).

On the point of inspiration as a key facet of interpretation, I think Brueggemann also has good insight. The Scriptures are indeed “the breath of God”, and we must have this overarching appreciation for and humility toward the Bible as we approach it. This posture enables us to catch the “shimmerings” of the text, so that at times we breathe in just what we need to sustain us at the moment. Inspiration helps me resolve the tension of not being able to determine the “good deposit” I am supposed to guard as a leader in the church (recall that the Apostle Paul urged Timothy to “guard the good deposit” – a deposit which Timothy had the prerogative of getting clarification on, but which I don’t). We may find it is impossible to know exactly what constituted the good deposit in Timothy’s mind back then (and what might constitute that exact deposit for us today). But, we can be assured that as we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, God will see that we come to greater and greater personal and corporate resolution over what that good deposit to be guarded means for ourselves and for our group.

This last facet Brueggemann mentions of urgency or importance is particularly relevant to our times. We see the text of Scripture dissected and trivialized in evangelicalism’s nauseating penchant for pragmatism. The Scripture is distilled down to a formula and proposition handbook, with “precious moments” theologies (God’s promise-a-day, like a one-a-day vitamin) and a Prayer of Jabez prosperity-driven Christianity. May we not let the missional thrust of the Bible get submerged under the avalanche of technique, systematic theologies, and whatever else aimed at mastering the text so that we can “use” it. But, equally, may we not let missional urgency drive us to a quest for more techniques alone; may it also inspire us to be persons who live out the missional testimony (making it visible, and in some cases, more powerful and visible than the stories and words we bring).

In summary, Brueggemann’s contribution to helping us better understand the place of Scripture in the community of faith is substantial. He helps us acknowledge the rallying point for unity in the body of Christ around a simple core of Apostolic claims; the reality of subjectivity in interpretation beyond those simple Apostolic claims; the presence and limits of creative imagination in drawing out meaning from the text; the power of our own ideological filters to distort as we come to the Bible; the all-important role of the Spirit in breathing freshly upon us through His living Word, time after time, as we look to God to help us sense that breath; and, finally, the importance of how all these sum together to produce a message that is crisply and clearly urgent for our world.

---

[1] All quotations attributed to Brueggemann in this paper are taken from the transcripts of his Address to the 2000 Covenant Network of Presbyterians Conference, which took place on 3 November, 2000, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[2] These three statements above are well-worth pondering, because they are so pregnant with insight!

[3] Brueggemann’s idea seems to suggest that God breathed into the minds of the biblical writers but left them to their own devices in expressing that. This feels a bit too loose - a hit and miss transmission process which lets some revelation through but obscures other aspects of it. I guess by faith I believe the Spirit was not so passive in that process of transmission of revelation to text.

[4] I think Brueggemann would acknowledge the value of an authoritative core of essentials binding for all churches that claim to follow Christ and His teachings. How much deviation should be tolerated on certain main claims, and how ought we to relate to churches that alter or ignore those main claims, is a subject for ongoing discussion in the Church. Teachers may well “incur a stricter judgment” where they as representatives of the Church permit too much freedom in belief and practice, or alternatively, where they make secondary issues binding essentials (and hence grounds for impeding fellowship with non-adherents).

A love letter? The Bible and C.S. Lewis

http:// article:

As I reflect on the place Scripture has had in my life and in the communities of faith I’ve been involved in, I come up with a wide spectrum of practices. I think back to my ordination exam and a phrase I used that grabbed one of the men sitting on the review board. I said: “I believe God’s Word is His love letter to the human race.” Some years later I still hold that to be a valid and telling statement of my view of Scripture. I think it has a significant bearing on what the place of Scripture should be in our communities of faith today.

I’ve seen Scriptures used as a doctrinal book to substantiate systems of theology; to take verses to show that God is leading one way or another; and, as a lab rat to be dissected and analyzed. Encouragement, empowerment, and exaltation have been ways that it has had a prominent effect in the communities of faith. One gentlemen I worked with referred to it as merely a history book and others have referred to it as a book of literature in the category of mythology. Communities have used it to guide their organizational procedures, to punish offenders of the book, as a template for doing church and on goes the list. Followers of Christ have been encouraged to have intimate time in the word, to memorize, meditate and master the Bible as a core part of the community of faith.

No mistake should be made many of these are viable ways of God’s Word having a place in the community of faith but many fall far short. I start this paper with the raw belief that Scripture is to be central in our communities of faith and that it is God’s inspired Word. What I want to wrestle with is HOW and to some degree WHY?

Let me share a handful of Scriptural verses that resonate in my heart as I prepare, verses that I memorized as a young man and which still impact me and ring in my soul to this day:

2 Timothy 3:16 & 17 – “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Ps 119:11 – “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Hebrews 4:12 – “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Joshua 1:8 – “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” 1 Timothy 4:13 – “Until I come, devote yourselves to the public reading of the Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.”

Acts 17:11 – The Bereans examined the Scripture to see if what Paul said was true…

The list could go on but as I look at these verses, they represent almost ever genre of Scripture. They help shape my thinking and action as I engage this Love Letter. It is given by God himself as He inspired people through the ages and saved it in written form for us today. He knows that our love, my love would be tested so he gave us His revelation and encouraged us to treasure it inside our hearts, minds and soul so that we wouldn’t be enticed to other lovers and so sin against Him, the greatest lover of all. This love letter is like no other love letter in that it isn’t just words on paper; it is alive and active somehow. Then again, if we were to go away from our lover for say a year and receive letters, they would also be very much alive I suppose. But, there is a uniqueness to the Scriptures in that it is also very penetrating and it will catch my tricky emotions and deceptions. It will expose me for who I am. It sounds odd to say it, but this is a good thing, a very good thing. Even more, when I’m really meditating on it often, like day and night, I begin to do what it says. There is a supernatural power to it that is changing me – I’m sure in concert with the Holy Spirit whom the lover has sent to be a constant presence and helper. Further, when I do what is written in it, I am prosperous and successful. That is never to be the reason for loving God or cherishing His revelation. Another unique thing about this love letter is that I’m supposed to share it, it isn’t just for me. I think if my wife would share love letters from our early days, I might be highly embarrassed. But we/I am to give it away and give public attention to it.

Most recently, having read John Eldridge’s book Waking the Dead, I am more convinced than ever about the need to guard our hearts. Prov. 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Keeping Scripture at the center of our lives and treasuring it in our heart puts us well along the way of taking care of our hearts.

C.S. Lewis and the inspiration of Scripture

I was encouraged down this thought of a love letter as I read C.S. Lewis on Scripture by Michael J. Christensen. I gained a lot from reading this work which is an evaluation of Lewis’ position on Scripture. Lewis never considered himself a theologian and deferred such difficult subjects to theologians but he comes at it from a literary perspective which is helpful in many respects. While I don’t necessarily resonate with all the conclusions either Christensen or Lewis arrive at, I find some of the thoughts beneficial.

Lewis held Scriptures as “human literature, divinely inspired and authoritative, but not verbally inspired or without error.” (11) He viewed some parts as “more Inspired” than others. “The kind of truth we demand of Scripture, Lewis remarks in conclusion to this letter, ‘was, in my opinion, never even envisaged by the ancients.’” (19) It becomes difficult to tell where Lewis fit in the debate over Scripture. Liberals and conservatives alike had problems with his views. “Lewis is sometimes charged with being an occasional friend of higher criticism.” (34) “It makes little difference to Lewis whether the story of Ruth for example, is historical or not. ‘I’ve no reason to suppose it is not,’ he says. Either way, the truth of the story is inspired and acts on us as the Word of God. Nor does he have any theological difficulty in accepting Genesis as ‘Derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical.’ But because the creation story has mythic qualities does not mean it is untrue. Myth can be truer than historical fact.” (34) “Lewis’ discovery of Christianity was plainly a rather momentous event for him. But he seems not to have been converted to a theological scheme at all, and he refused all his life to think that an understanding of Christianity would necessitate that he adopt an elaborate theology.” (41)

One area I was challenged to think differently in is the area of myth as Lewis talks about it. Myth as he defines it is “the primary mode of imagery, the highest form of symbolism.” (59) I think the word myth as understood by the common person today is that myth is not a true story but more of made up story or legend. He does not mean lie, error, illusion or misunderstood history. Lewis of course used myth quite extensively in his writing like the Chronicles of Narnia and “believes ‘we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.’” (59) We find that to be true today as imagery inundates us from all sides and virtually becomes reality for us. We should not shy away from that but draw heavily from the imagery that God gives us in the Bible.

Who are the best teachers/preachers you’ve ever heard? For me they are the ones that make the imagery come alive and make me feel like I’m involved in the story. It usually isn’t usually the one who gives me four propositions to leave with. As Lewis looks at myth he doesn’t see it as falsehood and even distinguishes it from allegory. “Far from being less than true or factual, myth puts us in touch with Reality in a more intimate way than by knowing what is merely true or factual.” (61) “Reality is received through the imaginative embrace of pictorial patterns made romantically and spiritually real… the images evoked through myth register beneath the surface of the mind, allowing us to actually experience Reality and grasp eternal truths which might baffle the intellect and confuse the mind.” (64) In Lewis’ own writing, he allowed truth to unfold mythically. As we embrace this love letter in its fullness of truth I believe we would do well not to simply see it as propositional or objective truth (not to lose sight of it either), but to see it as great divinely inspired literature which comes alive (Heb 4:12).

“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact, Lewis insists … to be truly Christian, Lewis admonishes, we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace we accord to all myths.” (pg 76) “It can be concluded at this point that Scripture for Lewis functions as myth, as well as historic fact.” (76) We mortals often suffer from an either/or mentality. This has been particularly evident in the rationalistic, reasoning, logical side of modernity. Is God not after all an imaginative and creative God?! Does God really want us to relegate Him or His revelation of Himself to proposition and systematic? Must it take away from the authority and inspiration of the Scripture if we allow the “myth” of Scripture to impregnate our minds? Yet, we must not remove some of the anchors that have been put in place by modernity. Can we not also benefit by studying from a systematic way? Does proposition and principle not come loudly through God’s Word at times? Have we not learned and experience much good in the Scriptures from the likes of Francis Schaefer and others. This should drive us to find a medium point rather than allowing the pendulum to swing the other direction. Strive to find the point of tension in this issue!

Scripture as Inspired Literature

“Lewis, though he never used the term, holds a literary view of inspiration. The Bible is inspired literature carrying a divine message. Human in its origin, biblical literature has been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him to serve purposes which of itself it would not have served.” (pg 90) Perhaps Lewis was very postmodern in his outlook when he “insists that the issue of inspiration is far less important than evangelicals often make it out to be. Our real task, Lewis would say, is not to focus on life’s “pointers” and “signposts” to God and His kingdom, but to get on with the journey at hand.” (91) Christenson uses Lewis for a case in point “that one can be a dedicated evangelical, accept the full authority of Scripture, yet disbelieve in inerrancy.” (91) Personally I get uncomfortable with tossing out inerrancy at this point but I think there is something to be said about some in the evangelical world making this out to be the whole point rather than preaching Christ.

I don’t want to be guilty of insinuating that Lewis did not hold a high view of Scripture for he did. He believed “the Holy Bible as we have it today, can be accepted as fully inspired, reliable and authoritative … The Bible is fundamentally a sacred book, and ‘demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms,’ says Lewis. ‘Stripped … of its divine authority, stripped of its allegorical senses, denied a romantic welcome,’ it cannot achieve its function.” (93)

This love letter has so much that inspires us and give us hope. We need only look a prophecy that has been fulfilled and those that are waiting to yet be fulfilled that we are perhaps right in the middle of. Scriptures give us hope that our creator, lover, and friend is coming back for us and will restore us to what he originally made us for – perfect and complete relationship with Him. Another detail that makes the love letter concept helpful to me; it’s about relationship, not a book.

We must keep in mind; God’s love letter is not confined solely to Scripture. He revealed Himself in Christ, He’s sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us, and He’s revealed himself in creation for which I am praising him especially today looking out at trees that are vibrant and alive with color. The hues of orange, yellow, red, brown and green are alive against the deep blue sky and bright sunshine. Wow, how God must love us to have revealed himself so magnificently to us!

Conclusion

I conclude where I started, the Bible is God’s love letter to us. Not a love letter conveyed in one systematic context but one that comes through a diversity of times, places, people, experiences and stories that make it so rich – something that MUST be treasured.

Some practical ways to cherish Scripture

Correction – restoration – I so often need restoration on my spiritual journey. Scriptures serve not only to correct me but to restore me and fill me up. In our grace oriented communities we must figure out how to allow Scripture to play a key part in the correction process of our communities thus keeping away from a primarily punitive approach. Treasure it in my heart and let it reverberate through my soul again and again. This takes time to really reflect and meditate even memorizing it so it sticks like glue. Allow the penetrating power of God’s Word to confront people where they need to be confronted. Don’t shy away where Scripture doesn’t shy away but do be creative and imaginative in presenting God’s Word. Lead people to appreciate the value of imagery used in The Bible. Somehow we move away from that when we get out of Sunday School and into the teen age years. All of a sudden the Bible becomes more objective, propositional, and something to be mastered rather than a story to find ourselves in or be engaged with. In public, use creative or dramatic readings, responsive readings, reflective readings, and congregational reading. Scripture comes alive through music and the church has only begun to tap this I believe. Lead people to examine Scriptures together and alone like the Bereans who were commended. It is a sad thing when people come to our church communities and only encounter the Scriptures on Sunday. Thought must be given to how we can provoke or stimulate each other to examine Scripture and probably more appropriately to let it examine us. Bible study is not bad though it seems we tend to shy away from that word these days.

Embracing Christian community as social agency

There is nothing new about the societal conflict which forms the backdrop for those attempting to be and do church in the inaugural years of the twenty-first century. What is new is its volume and intensity. Some social analysts go so far as to describe it as ubiquitous.[1] This level of conflict may or may not be the result of what Charles Taylor distinguishes as the “politics of difference,” but it no doubt explains the resurgence of tribalism that, in part, defines the postmodern situation.[2]

Such a situation has all the more serious implications when people of faith, particularly Christian faith, like to think of themselves as a “community.” In the midst of conflicting tribal loyalties, can the church truly be a community that adequately addresses the longings of people for personal and cultural identity? Can it honor cultural contexts, sustain individual distinctiveness, and promote unified goals and objectives all at the same time?[3] I want to suggest that it can if it can tap into the power of the embrace that is inherently its own when it conceives of itself as a fully social agency. In the end it is, once again, an ecclesial question that looms largest when faith and practice are taken seriously.[4]

Demonstrating Sociability

Various ecclesial models are not infrequently proposed as more conducive to the holistic concerns of authentic community. Feminist interpreters, for example, have recently argued against the patriarchal tendency to highlight “rule,” opting instead for the wholesomeness of a “household where everyone gathers around the common table to break bread and share table talk and hospitality.”[5] Other limiting factors aside, it seems to me that such a proposal plays into the very gender-biased stereotypes it seeks to eradicate. There is much more at stake on the social field than the pastoral image of home (soothing as it is) can account for.

Perhaps more encouraging is the renewed interest in trinitarian formulations as the basis of ecclesial communities of all shades and varieties. New queries into the communal implications of the doctrine of God have been prompted by Jurgen Moltmann’s seminal work, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, though it is inordinately occupied with issues of hierarchy and equality.[6] What is of greater importance is how sociability in broader terms is demonstrated within trinitarian distinctives.

Social analogies between the Trinity and the church have a longstanding history in the tradition of the Eastern church with its emphasis on triplicity.[7] Though not at odds with, it is certainly a healthy counter-balance to the priority of psychological analogies which seem to be the preference of the West. If nothing else, it might explain the exaggerated focus on therapeutic concerns that flow out of European and American ecclesial bodies that cannot help but promote a notable level of narcissism. Triplicity, on the other hand, is more concerned with the social arrangements within the Godhead and so gives primary attention to issues of person, role, partnership and relationship, among others.[8]

Scripture itself, it must be said, suggests as much. The high-priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 is as didactic as it is personal and daringly invites us (verse 21) into the very social fabric of trinitarian relationships. Jesus’ concern with “oneness” is at once ontological and eschatological and humanly communal if we treat the opening hina clause with any degree of seriousness. The final hina clause adds a compelling missional component as well. The correspondence between the Trinity and ecclesial communion is more than implied; it is direct, and suggests that “the relations between the many in the church must reflect the mutual love of the divine persons” if theological consistency is of more than casual interest to us.[9]

A trinitarian model of sociability, therefore, impacts key ecclesial notions in a number of ways. Defining and validating personhood is perhaps the most basic. It must be understood that “person” and “communion” in the ecclesial realm can only aspire to the analogous in their reference to the Trinity. This sets definite limits to what Gordon Prestige has defined as “perichoresis,” or reciprical interiority in which mutual internal abiding and interpenetration is affirmed.[10] At the same time, however, it does commend the complementary nature of persons in communion and is perhaps most visible in the acts of giving and receiving modeled in the Trinity. Moltmann offers that the “reciprical self-surrender to one another within the Trinity is manifested in Christ’s self-surrender in a world which is in contradiction to God; and this self-giving draws all those who believe in him into the eternal life of the divine love.”[11] In the simple acts of complementary giving and receiving the church confirms itself as the community where deindividualization and personalization can best occur.

Implications for issues revolving around questions of the one and the many grow out of the radical nature of giving and receiving when they are honestly entertained. Hence, a serious political theology also falls within the purview of trinitarian discussions.[12] Dominance of the one over the many is precluded when relations within the Godhead are deliberately modeled. (See Philippians 2:9, I Corinthians 15:28, and John 16:14 for examples of trinitarian non-dominance.) Since the one God is a communion of the divine persons, unity and multiplicity must be the preferred objective in a communal environment that prizes freedom and equality.[13] Inferences for dismantling strong distinctions between clergy and laity naturally follow, and while some would maintain that they ought to be retained for purely organizational reasons, I would suggest that even these are biblically suspect.[14]

Finally, it becomes all the more apparent how trinitarian theology can (and must) infuse the local community of faith with an eschatological edginess. Relationships within the differing styles of local faith communities should correspond (as far as possible) to the Trinity because they anticipate an eschatological community that more fully approximates the community that is God himself.[15] This demands an honesty and vulnerability that are graciously pushy and are demonstrated in a sociability that is far more significant and potent than that which merely empowers human beings to get along. Rather, its eschatological embrace is nothing less than a new creation in which the wolf dwells with the lamb (Is.11.6), and swords are hammered into plowshares (Mic.4.3), and every knee bows at the name of Jesus (Phil.2.10).[16]

Producing Social Agents

Although it is extremely helpful to consider the way in which social arrangements play themselves out in a trinitarian context, something more overt is needed when we are bounded in a communal context by the restraints of human limitations. Tinkering with social structures (although involvement in existing structures is noteworthy) is simply not enough when: 1) the postmodern option of radical autonomy is producing what Volf calls “wayward and erratic vagabonds, ambivalent and fragmented, always on the move and never doing much more than making moves;”[17] and 2) the historical tendency of such tinkering results in separatistic styles of community which increasingly distance themselves from the naked public square and so end up offering nothing worthwhile in terms of social structure anyway.

What is needed is communities of faith that empower individuals and groupings of individuals to become social agents capable of infusing light and salt into dark and tasteless environments. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, has argued persuasively for theological communities to envision themselves primarily as helpmates, whose purpose is to encourage economists and philosophers and scientists and artists and educators and homemakers and all the varied service providers, with all the theological resources at their disposal.[18] One critical role of faith communities of this kind, therefore, is to inspire and release a creative energy that is sparked in a trinitarian context. They become, in effect, social agencies that allow social agents to thrive.

At the heart of communities of this sort is a deep reverence for the level of solidarity that is divinely represented in the Cross. It is the extreme example of self-donation in the midst of not only violence, but rejection as well, and so is aptly termed in the gospels a “scandal.” But the scandal, as Moltmann has rightly emphasized, is not in the selfless self-donation of Jesus, nor even in his solidarity with suffering, but it is in the resulting abandonment; “abandoned by those who trusted him and by the God in whom he trusted.”[19] “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). The implications for Christian community, of course, are staggering. To become the kind of social agencies described above, we must not only be willing to identify with the abandoned, but to entertain abandonment ourselves. Our communities of faith must be willing, in other words, to become cruciform.

Further, the Cross has obvious bearing on the communal form in which Christian faith can be authentically received and effectively transmitted. That is to say, it directly implies a vibrant missional aspect that identifies, sustains, and expands the community in the interest of the eschatological objectives that belie its role as a social agency and apart from which the Christ-event as a whole is biblically meaningless. It cannot be a community, in other words, that is apologetic about the manner in which eschatology informs mission. But it must be so humbly, honestly receptive to what Paul Tillich called “reverse prophetism,” in which those around us are encouraged to inform our views, share our experiences, and call us to live up to the very ideals we ourselves espouse.[20] Those ideals are themselves informed, once again, by trinitarian doctrine, and so minimally include the validating of personhood, a political theology of unity and multiplicity, and the making of disciples in the fulfillment of Jesus’ own commission (Mt.28.19).

Examining an Embrace

The question remains, how can Christian community best adhere to trinitarian concepts in a socially and eschatologically productive way? A metaphor has recently been proposed that, in my opinion, brings the demonstration of sociability and the production of social agents together in just such a desirable symmetry: the metaphor of embrace.[21] It is an embrace that is so intimate and yet so large as to encompass both the inner-communion of the Trinity and the socially-provocative embrace that extends through the faith community to the world. It personifies a word of “welcome” that deliberately seeks truth, and justice, and beauty in others and for others.

Adding the setting of a drama, Miroslav Volf describes four structural elements in what he calls the “movement of embrace” that are helpful in understanding the power in both the physical and metaphysical use of the metaphor.[22] Opening the arms is a gesture of the body reaching for another with a sense of welcome and openness. It indicates that I have created space for more than myself alone. Waiting for a response from the other recognizes that reciprocity cannot be forced, but simply hoped for and possibly anticipated. It shows respect for the integrity of the other. The goal of the embrace is the closing of the arms. Gurevitch suggests that we envision how “each is both holding and being held by the other, both active and passive.”[23] It requires gentleness in which free and mutual giving and receiving take place. Finally, the opening of the arms again speaks of the transforming power of relationship and the release of that power in order to benefit the surrounding community. The other must be let go so that boundary-making does not preclude the embrace of yet others.

The metaphor of embrace, of course, seeks to confront the ugly reality of exclusion that is the more frequent experience of many. Anne Lamott reminds us that faulty theology is behind most forms of exclusion when she writes, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”[24] Weak theology, in fact, can often account for what Volf understands as the two critical transgressions that erupt in exclusion: 1) “Cutting the bonds that connect, taking oneself out of the pattern of interdependence and placing oneself in a position of sovereign independence;” and 2) “Erasure of separation, not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to the pattern of interdependence.”[25] A clear example is the biblical narrative of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4), in which Cain’s violent act is essentially anti-communal as it calls into question God’s intended design that human community reflect the trinitarian community by sharing a common social space and taking responsibility for the other.

The theology of embrace more fully requires a Hebraic hermeneutic (as opposed to Western readings that are situated in dominance) that naturally and happily reads the texts of Scripture from below rather than above. It is, moreover, only this approach to biblical texts that ensures an honest appraisal of the ugly dynamics of exclusion and generates a deep appreciation for the experiences of embrace. Latent within readings of texts in this manner is a strong current of grace that offers a new embrace to those who have been excluded and a forgiving embrace to those who guilty of excluding, so that mimetic violence need not be perpetuated.[26] It is the same grace that gives the Cross its power, not only to draw in the innocent, but even to embrace the wrongdoer.[27] As Volf concludes, it is the emblem of the Cross, in fact, that is center stage in the welcoming drama of embrace, for in it is depicted the mutuality of self-giving love in the Trinity (the doctrine of God), and the outstretched arms of the Savior (the doctrine of Christ), and the open arms of the father receiving the prodigal (the doctrine of salvation).[28]

It is only faith communities empowered by the Spirit that have the potential to so mirror the Trinity that they can become purveyors of sociability and agents of social welfare in the same context. Only then can the church be conceived of as a social agency in the fullest sense of the terms I have been using here to describe it. But in order for that to happen, we are invited, first, to embrace the embrace that is the welcoming of God into the community that he is in himself. We could argue that the successful transmission of faith depends upon it, for the entire tone of the community’s mission changes when it is pictured as an embrace. It is by nature welcoming. The arms open, they wait for a response, they encircle the other, and release them, transformed, to embrace another.

---

[1] See, for example, Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 5.

[2] Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25-73, discusses a political emphasis on equal dignity as opposed to that which focuses on individual distinctiveness. Michael Walzer suggests that the latter inevitably leads to an unhealthy form of tribal identity in the postmodern situation. See his, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 81.

[3] Derrida reflects on personal identity that is shaped by cultural identity by being fully “a part,” but not “in every part” of its own culture. See, Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, trans. P.A. Brault and M.B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 82.

[4] Ongoing debate about the ecclesial question continues to proceed out of the well-known dictum of Cyprian: “Regardless of where one begins, one always gets back to the church.” Quoted in G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: S.P.C.K, 1956), 34.

[5] Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 42.

[6] Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 200. Direct questions of sociability are better addressed in Pannenberg in which the correspondence between the Trinity and the church are overt. See, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991-97), 259-336.

[7] For a good examination of this history, see Soriu Dumitrescu, Dimineti and Staniloae (Budapest: Anastasi Press, 1992), 186 ff. It should be said that some Roman Catholic theologians have more recently been suggesting that faith is communally oriented because its object is the Triune God and therefore involves entering the “divine community.” See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 176.

[8] For example, John D. Zizioulas has suggested that God as father “is not constituted relationally; rather his fatherhood is necessarily expressed and confirmed relationally.” Thus, Zizioulas considers that human community is only effective as it draws on the Trinitarian personal communion. See his, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 42.

[9] Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 195. Volf offers further that “because churches, in the power of the Holy Spirit, already form a communion with the triune God, ecclesial correspondence to the Trinity can become an object of hope and thus also a task for human beings.”

[10] G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 296. The Greek idea of perichoresis suggests “co-inherence in one another without any coalescence or commixture.” The limits of perichoresis in human terms can been seen, as Volf suggests, when “even a relation as close a pregnancy does not involve the phenomenon of personal interiority. Although the child is a person (in the theological sense), it has as yet no subjectivity, and exists not in the self of the mother, but rather in her body (which she admittedly not only possesses, but rather is as well).” See Volf, After Our Likeness, 211.

[11] Stephen Webb goes so far as to suggest that economies of exchange and excess can find their impetus in the giving modeled in the Trinity. See his, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[12] Copleston engages in a good discussion of how theology is made destitute whenever it attempts to be non-political. See Frederick Copleston, Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 13.

[13] Various studies have demonstrated the correlation between the rapid spread of Christianity and particular communions that extol the dynamics of freedom and equality. One of the better of these is Hatch’s examination of populism and Christian teaching. See, Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

[14] The German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, argues for the ongoing need of clear clergy/laity divisions in the interest of social order and harmony. See his, The Function of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 234.

[15] The subjunctive grammar here is intentional because we are still dealing in the realm of human limitations. Stephen Brachlow, for example, highlights the necessity of obedience within effective Christian communities, and reminds us that obedience is straightforwardly subjunctive. See his, The Communion of the Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 21.

[16] The compelling relationship between ecclesiology and eschatology is masterfully treated by Jurgen Moltmann in The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

[17] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 20.

[18] Wolterstorff goes on to suggest that when Christian communities fulfill this kind of mandate they are not simply adding a social component to an emasculated gospel, but they are emancipating the spark of creativity that is likewise at the heart of trinitarian concerns. Communities that appreciate the Trinity are exuberant about displays of creativity. See, Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Public Theology or Christian Learning,” Unpublished paper, 1996.

[19] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 101.

[20] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University if Chicago Press, 1967), vol.3, 214.

[21] The use of the picture of “embrace” was possibly first offered by Z.D. Gurevitch as a purely sociological metaphor in his article, “The Embrace: On the Element of Non-Distance in Human Relations.” The Sociological Quarterly 31 (2 1990). Charles Taylor alludes to it in “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25-73. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. However, the most extensive and helpful, and more than likely the only one to approach embrace as a theological metaphor, is Miroslav Volf’s, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996).

[22] Ibid., 140-145,

[23] Z.D. Gurevitch, “The Embrace: On the Element of Non-Distance in Human Relations,” 194.

[24] Anne Lamott, interview in World Magazine, September 20, 2003, page 28. Lamott offers insightful, and sometimes scathing criticisms of Christian community in her two best known books, Traveling Mercies and Blue Shoe.

[25] Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 67 (emphasis mine).

[26] Renee Girard discusses how God’s mark upon Cain is obviously a gracious gift to protect him from copy-cat violence and to potentially break the cycle of violence. See his, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 146.

[27] Thiselton maintains that the self-giving love as modeled in the Trinity is particularly brought into focus on the Cross. He suggests that it is necessarily projected into relations between the human self and the other. See, Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 153. Elaine Pagels argues that the Christian tradition is largely about the struggle between “otherness” as evil and Jesus’ example of divine reconciliation for all. While it is weak Christologically, it is worth considering on the social level. See her, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), 184.

[28] Exclusion and Embrace, 29.

Strange but true: the irrelevance of Scripture for the church today

A living language never stands still, and translators and rewriters of the Bible are always running to keep up with the latest shifts and mutations in the vernacular. We are highly conscious of the gulf that exists between these ancient religious texts and contemporary western culture, and instinctively we feel the need to reduce that gulf by repeatedly updating the Word of God so that it speaks more clearly to people today. Rob Lacey’s much acclaimed hip, edgy Street Bible is a recent example (see also this article at telegraph.co.uk):

Day three: God says, ‘Too much water! We need something to walk on, a huge lump of it – call it “land”. Let the “sea” lick its edges.’ God smiles, says, ‘Now we’ve got us some definition. But it’s too plain! It needs colour! Vegetation! Loads of it. A million shades. Now!’ And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers and fungi. ‘Now give it a growth permit.’ Seeds appear in every one. ‘Yesss!’ says God. (Gen.1:9-13)

It is obviously necessary to update our English translations: if we are going to read the Bible, we should be able to read it in a language that is transparent to us, not opaque like the grimy stained glass of the King James Version. But I suspect that what drives the production of these paraphrases is not so much the need to communicate clearly but the desire to be relevant. It is here that we may discern a peculiarly ‘modern’ failing: the extreme intolerance of ambiguity, contradiction, and irrelevance.

i) I would question the assumption that Scripture ought to be immediately accessible, easily intelligible, to the modern reader. The problem is that the Bible is not a modern text: it is an ancient text, written to address ancient circumstances, constructed out of the peculiar thought-forms of an ancient worldview, and it should seem strange and irrelevant to us. Although we may want to construe it theologically as the Word of God for his people today, always pertinent, always meaningful, this understanding of Scripture is unavoidably at odds with its intrinsic literary nature. In my view this contradiction between real identity and perceived identity accounts for much of the misinterpretation of Scripture – and indeed the bad theology – that has sustained modern evangelicalism.

ii) The modernizing approach reinforces the belief that form can be separated from content. It works on the dualistic premise that the Bible is made up of an abstract body of timeless truth, on the one hand, and a package of culturally determined words and images, on the other. On that basis relevance is achieved essentially by repackaging the timeless content.

This dissociation of form and content has serious consequences.

i) It discourages any reassessment of the content of Scripture. We assume that we know what the Bible teaches, we simply need to find a more effective way of enticing people into reading it: it becomes an exercise in marketing rather than understanding. In that respect, it is a form of denial, a way of not facing up to the problem of Scripture. The real need, I would argue, is to determine exactly what is this ‘story that we find ourselves in’. A jazzy respray and go-faster stripes are not the answer.

ii) The separation of form and content also underpins the modernist confidence in an overarching meta-narrative. The modernist instinct is to possess and control truth, to sequestrate meaning for ourselves. This is much easier to do if we can, so to speak, disconnect truth from the historical matrix in which it was birthed and assimilate it into our own unquestioned worldview.

It is also made easier by isolating the Bible from other contexts of reading: historical-critical, scientific, sociological, religious, etc. An awareness of the interaction between these various reading contexts may help us to resolve the basic problem of maintaining a proper tension between a more or less ‘authoritative’ reading of Scripture and a postmodern hermeneutic that insists on a plurality of readings.

It may be more consistent with a postmodern ethos, therefore, at least as a matter of principle, to reverse the persistent modernizing agenda and instead to de-modernize the Bible, to relocate it in its ancient context so that it surprises us with its strangeness. Primarily this is an act of the critical imagination – it has to do with how we recreate the world of the texts as we read; but there are some de-modernizing tricks that we might deploy in order to catalyze the emergence of such a method of reading.

Just as there are other contexts of interpretation that may call into question the prevailing modernist-evangelical reading, there are other means by which we may make Scripture appear unfamiliar. By adopting alternative contemporary points of view – feminist, Marxist, Islamic, for example – we will find that we see the Bible in a rather different light. But these positions are all extrinsic to the Biblical tradition. There is always the problem that we only have indirect access to a first-century worldview, but it is difficult to see how the struggle to recover an ancient reading can be denied some sort of hermeneutical priority over other readings.

How to make Scripture strange

i) It makes for an interesting thought experiment (see also ‘Can we teach an old dogmatism new tricks?’) to consider what would have happened if the early Jewish Christians had been driven from Jerusalem into the desert. What if, under threat of destruction from an invading Roman army, they had concealed their writings in caves and then, like the sectarians of Qumran, had disappeared off the screen of history? And suppose that nineteen hundred years later those writings were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy and fell into the hands of a culture that had never known the Christian church. What would that culture make of them? We can hardly subtract the influence of Christianity from modern Western culture, even from modern secular rationalism. But this is only a thought-experiment: how would people react to these writings and their claims about a Jewish teacher called Jesus without all the intellectual baggage of Christian tradition, without the preconception that this a definitive story about God, perhaps without much of an idea about God at all?

ii) The Bible might be published in a form more appropriate to an ancient text, without those physical and typographical features that mark it out as sacred Scripture: double columns, the numbering of chapter and verse (which reinforces the typical atomistic reading), cross-references, pious annotations, gold type, red type, the zipped leather jacket, and so on. What if the Bible had the physical appearance of a Penguin Classic? It will be interesting to see whether the use of Aramaic and Latin in Mel Gibson’s The Passion has this sort of distancing effect.

iii) We might break the books of the Bible apart – quite literally deconstructing the canonical form of Scripture, setting the documents on the same level as the writings of second temple Judaism (Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, etc.) and the early church, so that a distinctive and coherent narrative is allowed to reemerge, re-establish itself, from a complex and disordered body of historical documents. A strong case could be made for placing the synoptic Gospels at the end of the Old Testament; Paul’s letters and the Johannine writings might be published as separate collections.

iv) Here’s a really radical and irresponsible suggestion: why not take the Bible out of circulation for a while, forget about it? It seems to me that there is a lot of important ‘forgetting’ going on at the moment in the church.

The process of de-modernizing Scripture leads in two directions.

Deconstruction

In the first place, it offers an effective means of deconstructing the Bible as a modern cultural-religious phenomenon. The Bible has been so central both to Christian thought and spirituality and to Western culture generally that we are faced with a huge problem of over-familiarity. Paraphrases such as The Message and the Street Bible may have a temporary defamiliarizing effect: the reader accustomed to the elevated language of the King James Version or the blandness of the NIV is likely to be taken aback by the bold colloquialisms of these modernizations. But this impact is gained at the expense of further dissociating the reader – and the act of reading – from the texts and the narrative-historical context which generated them. The effect is somewhat iconoclastic and in certain contexts, such as corporate worship, may be highly appropriate; but it does not address the fundamental problem of how we develop a persuasive reading of the text in the face of a pervasive postmodern hermeneutic.

By recovering a sense of the antiquity of the text we subvert our easy notions of what the Bible is; we lose our sense of ownership; the process of understanding becomes much more difficult; we are forced to rethink what we believe and how we relate to the story out of which the church emerged. By loosening the grip of the meta-narrative on our hermeneutic, we bring back into view the multiplicity and diversity of the stories and arguments out of which Scripture is constructed; we see more clearly how biblical eschatology hugs the fractured landscape of distant history; we learn that this is someone else’s truth; we regain a sense of the incompleteness and open-endedness of Scripture; we find ourselves in a place where we need constantly to think and imagine and create because not all the answers have been given.

A critical-realist hermeneutic

Secondly, the de-modernization of Scripture opens the way for a consistent critical-realist hermeneutic, which I think will be crucial in the development of a theology that will sustain emerging church.

i) A critical-realist hermeneutic looks for a prospective rather than a retrospective reading of Scripture. It endeavours to read forward from within the world-view and time-frame of the texts; it does not read back into the texts from the position of the modern church. It looks, therefore, for an intrinsic rather than an extrinsic theology.

ii) A critical-realist hermeneutic would restore the priority of narrative and argumentation, on which the integrity of any reading of Scripture must hang. These are the structures of biblical discourse that principally connect the text with its ‘rhetorical context’ – that is, the conditions and circumstances directly addressed by the text. This stands in contrast to a hermeneutic that reduces Scripture to a compendium of propositions, promises and proofs.

An example of how a narrative hermeneutic can affect interpretation: we will often read the transfiguration story (Matt.17:1-8) according to an incarnational or trinitarian interpretative framework: the event is seen as a disclosure of Jesus’ true divinity. But it could also be read according to a narrative-eschatological framework as a visible representation of the promise that immediately precedes the transfiguration in all three synoptic gospels: ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom’ (cf. Matt.16:28). The transfiguration would then reiterate in physical form the conviction that within a generation they would see what it means for the Son of man to come on the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom from the Ancient of Days.

I put forward this de-modernizing approach to Scripture not because I think it will necessarily furnish us with a more objective and assured statement of the truth but because it minimizes the space between text and interpretation; it stops interpretation getting carried away with itself. There is less room to generate those grand modern ‘mythologies’ that seek to give a totalizing account of the world. We are less likely to mistake the metaphors and myths that we produce – the synthesizing meta-narratives that we construct out of Scripture – for objective truth. The text itself will always have the capacity to subvert our reductive, trivializing orthodoxies. We are forced to approach the question of God from a more fragile and human perspective.

Telling the Stories of Scripture

Historically the Bible has been told as a story. The Scriptures are the story of God and His relationship to creation and have been told as such throughout Jewish and even much of Christian history. Even within the Scriptures, storytelling has a powerful role. However, recently the importance of telling the stories of Scripture has been overlooked. The ability of the story of Scripture to affect people’s lives is too powerful to ignore. Telling Scripture as a story can evoke a deep and lasting transformation of the community of faith.

Story influences worldview

All communities have a worldview. All individuals have a worldview. A worldview is how people understand the world or what gives all phenomena around them an orientation (Wolters, 2). It can be analogized to the glasses that they look at the world through. However, everything—self, others, world, god, work – is seen through these glasses that cannot be removed. Although most people cannot articulate their worldview, it is how they answer the questions, “Who am I, how did I get here and why?” “What is wrong with the world?” “Is change possible and how?” For example, believing that people evolved from mud and are here to eat, drink, and be merry is a simplified example of worldview. Another simplified example might be that all of the world’s major problems, such as disease, crime, communication, famine, war, will be resolved by technology.

However, worldview does not stay deep inside of us, instead, it affects our beliefs, our values, and ultimately our actions. In 1997, B.J. van der Walt developed a “cultural onion” showing how culture’s many layers, like an onion, can be peeled down eventually to a core of worldview. Beliefs and values are the second layer of the onion and are based directly on worldview. Institutions, the third layer, are based on worldview and beliefs and values. Actions, the fourth layer, are based on all preceding layers. In other words, everything in a person’s life and culture is based on her or his worldview. For example, let’s look at a potential cultural onion issue of first century Jews. Assume Jewish people saw the world divided into two kinds of people: the blessed Jews and the wretched Gentiles. Because their beliefs and values are based on this worldview, they valued Jewish people and scorned Gentiles. They believed that Jews would mostly act in an honorable way and Gentiles were incapable of doing good. Their institutions, such as family, education, and transportation were set up in such a way as to separate Jews from Gentiles. Their actions followed suite; they attacked or avoided Gentiles and loved Jews. While a somewhat simplistic rendering, it shows how everything in life is based on worldview.

Most people join the community of faith with a broken worldview. We do not have a biblical understanding of who we are, who God is, and what gives this life and world meaning. As a result of our broken worldview, we also have broken beliefs, values, and actions. Although Christ penetrates deep into who we are as people, all the way to the core of our worldview, He often works through others in our community to be His agent of healing (Ephesians 1-4). However, as a Christian community we have not often been getting deep inside to worldview. George Barna writes

“The vast majority of Christians do not behave differently because they do not think differently, and they do not think differently because we have never trained them, equipped them, or held them accountable to do so. For years we have been exposing Christians to scattered, random bits of biblical knowledge through our church services and Christian education classes. They hear a principle here and read a truth there, then nod their head in approval and feel momentarily satisfied over receiving this new insight into their faith. But within the space of just a few hours that principle or truth is lost in the busyness and complexity of their lives. They could not capture that insight and own it because they have never been given sufficient context and method that would enable them to analyze, categorize, and utilize the principle or truth.”

Another possible explanation for why the “scattered, random bits” on Sunday do not evoke permanent change in Christians’ thought processes is because these bits only affect actions or beliefs – they do not challenge the worldview of these redeemed people. They are not confronted with the alternative worldview of the Bible. In order for people’s beliefs and actions to be deeply changed, their worldviews need to be changed. Jesus did not just admonish his Jewish audiences beliefs by saying Samaritans can be nice people too. He addressed the underlying worldview: who is my neighbor (Luke 10)? By transforming people’s worldviews, their beliefs, values, and actions will likewise be “taken captive for Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

In order to bring deep healing, we need to get at the source of the brokenness, at the source of the worldview. Just as with leukemia, healing the other sicknesses such as pneumonia will not heal the disease. Instead treatment needs to go to the source, the very bone marrow needs to be transplanted to heal the leukemia. N.T. Wright argues that one of the sources of worldview are the stories people tell themselves and each other (38). Scholars refer to humans as homo narrans because of their innate need to tell stories (Nielle). When stories are constructed to organize the experiences people have, these stories shape and reinforce their worldviews (Koki, 1). Not only do our own stories shape our worldview, but others’ stories are also powerful in reaching inside of who we are. First, stories engage us. They are immensely interesting and hold our attention (Koki, 2). Second, stories address the whole of human experience: emotion, thought, feeling, heart, head, action, imagination (Chronological Bible Storying). Third, empirical evidence shows that stories have a strong impact on judgments and understanding (Rughase). Also, cognitive research shows that memorable information is more like to be effective, and stories are very memorable (Haghirian and Chini, 6). Fourth, the use of stories in all cultures through all of history shows their power to affect humans. Finally, stories are used in all areas of the Bible to illicit change within people (c.f. Nehemiah’s leadership, Jesus’ parables, and Paul in Athens).

Because worldview is shaped and reinforced by telling stories, one of the most powerful ways to challenge and transform the worldviews of the community of faith will be by telling the stories of Scripture. When the community hears and tells stories that are different than their own interpretations for experiences, they will wrestle with the truths in God’s living word and in time change their understanding to match His (Chronological Bible Storying). Jesus’ stories would often challenge His audience’s worldview. For example, when He tells a story about a man who has been seriously injured lying on the side of the road He calls into question the Jewish understanding of piety and who qualifies as a neighbor. The most pious of the community are unable to carry out simple care and the most “un-neighborly” are the religious leaders. Instead, the social outcast or enemy provides care. Jesus allowed His listeners to draw their own conclusions in telling a story that seriously challenged their worldview (Luke 10).

The overall story of the Bible and the individual stories all provide a God-honoring holistic worldview for people. For example, the creation account and the story of Job tell the story of a God, who created, loves, respects, and upholds this world, including human beings. The stories of Noah and Abraham are about a world that has turned its back on its Creator, but is being pursued by Him nonetheless. The Kings and the Prophets are heart-wrenching accounts of a jilted Lover who never stops seeking those He loves and is willing to take any measures to bring them back to Himself. The Gospels tell of the true measures He was willing to go. Within these broad-stroke stories are all the small stories that make them up; like Hosea acting out God’s desperation by taking Gomer the prostitute as his wife, or Jesus crying over the city of Jerusalem. Scripture stories tell the community of faith about the character of God, about where this world and its meaning comes from, about who humans are and what their purpose is on this earth, and about what happens after it all. These are stories that shape worldview. As the community of faith hears these stories, their worldviews will be impacted by the truth being presented to them.

Another Biblical example of how story can challenge worldview and so affect beliefs and actions is when Peter is presented with a vision of animals in a large sheet (Acts 10). Although Jesus already told him two years earlier that it is not what goes into a man, but what comes out that makes him unclean (Mark 7:15), Peter’s worldview has not yet changed. Now he is given a vision, a story, that makes it clear. “Kill and eat these animals.” God is telling him that this world is not divided into clean and unclean, whether they are discussing animals or people. Now that Peter has this story, he visits the Gentile Cornelius, agrees with Paul bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, and tells his story to the other Jewish believers, thus challenging their worldviews (Acts 11, 15). The transforming of worldview initiated by a “new” story soon affects beliefs, institutions, and actions. Peter had a new worldview, so he no longer believed in the separation of Jews and Gentiles, he wanted the church to be inclusive, and he acted by going to Cornelius’ house.

Stories creating community

In addition to the important work of transforming worldviews, stories also preserve people’s connection to history and to each other (CISA). Stories are never known or told in isolation, they inherently involve a group, a community. In the television series Friends, the stories the group shares are very important (Series 5). When five of them go to London, but the character Phoebe isn’t able to, she cannot stand to listen to the London stories, because it makes her feel like an outsider. Stories are shared by a group of people and often stories define the group. An acquaintance of mine recently said, “You can’t really become friends with someone, until you’ve shared an experience with them.” It’s these shared experiences that provide the basis for friendship and community. When the story of Scripture is told, it becomes the shared experience of the people listening—their history. They are now connected to each other and the church through history by these shared stories. Similar to the process in which a person feels a part of their family by “knowing how Grandpa and Grandma met,” or “this is what it was like when you were born,” people feel a part of God’s family by knowing how the church began or what happened when Jesus was born.

Stories reinforcing values

Stories can also be used to convey and reinforce the values of a group of people (Dunnery). By telling the stories of Scripture, the community of faith learns the values of the biblical community. For example, from the stories of David, the community learns about the value of being a people after God’s own heart. They can hear about when he crept up to his enemy Saul in the cave and only cut the hem from his coat instead of killing him showing his trust in God’s timing or when he repented of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. When the story of Ruth gleaning from the fields is told, the community learns the value of providing for the poor. When the story of Peter having a dream about animals in a bed sheet and going to the Greek Cornelius’ house, we learn the value of embracing diversity. Telling these stories connects the community “to what was most essential about being [them], what was most essential to them as a people, and that rooting allow[s] them to develop positions and make choices that clearly aligned with the values that they hold” (Korton).

Stories allowing meaningful faith conclusions

Finally, storytelling Scripture allows people to have a deep faith in God’s love. By hearing about God’s love as a story, the listeners are allowed to draw their own conclusions and people will trust their own conclusions more than others (Simmons). Stories allow for different interpretations or different understandings, so people do not feel manipulated, but can take time to come to their own conclusions (Wright, 77). Once people hear a story and begin to take it as their own, they will have faith in the story that will outlast logical arguments. Simmons writes, “Faith needs a story to sustain it – a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your ideas, do indeed, offer what you promise.”

Here is an illustration of the difference between hearing a belief statement and hearing a story. Larry might tell Tara “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Tara must then decide whether or not she believes this statement. Or Larry might tell Tara the story of Joseph. Through hearing the story, Tara might continue to think about the story and conclude that God loved Joseph, was with him through all the hard things in his life, and had an amazing plan for saving his family and ruling Egypt all in one. Maybe another time Tara hears the story of Jacob and might conclude again that God had amazing plans for Jacob, but Jacob often seemed to sabotage them by trying to do his own thing. Over time and by thinking through these stories, Tara comes to the conclusions that God loves people and has amazing plans for their lives. She will now believe these conclusions much deeper than if she had just decided to believe the statement that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

Storytelling Scripture in the community of faith can be a powerful tool. It will evoke deep change in the worldviews of the community and so result in transforming their beliefs, values, and actions. Storytelling will allow Scripture to become deeply rooted in people’s hearts as they accept these stories as their own and allow them to form their identity as individuals and as a people.

 

Works Cited

Barna, George, The Second Coming of the Church, Waco: Word, 1998.

Chronological Bible Storying, A Description of Chronological Bible Storying with Missiological Considerations, 29 Oct. 2003.

The CISA Storytelling Festivals and Symposia 2003-2004: Building Cultural Bridges, CISA: California Indian Storytelling Association. 19 Oct. 2003.

Dunnery, Steve, Alicia Korten: Core Value Stories. Introduction by Steve Denning, Smithsonian Associates. 21 Oct. 2003.

Friends, “Series 5” Warner Bros. Television: 1998.

Haghirian, Parissa, and Tina Claudia Chini, Storytelling: Transferring Tacit Corporate Knowledge in Different Cultures. European Academy of Management. 13 Sept. 2003.

Koki, Steven, Storytelling: The Heart and Soul of Education, PREFL Briefing Paper, Nov. 1998. 13 Sept. 2003.

Korten, Alicia, Stories & Values, Smithsonian Associates. 21 Oct. 2003.

Nielle, Caren, Storytelling for Peace, International Storytelling Center. 22 Oct. 2003.

Rughase, O. G. (2002), “Linking Content to Process,” in A. S. Huff, M. Jenkings, Mapping Strategic Knowledge, Sage Publications, London.

Simmons, Anne, The Six Stories You Need to Know How to Tell, excerpt from The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through Storytelling. International Storytelling Center. 22 Oct. 2003

van der Walt, B. J. (1997), “Afrocentric or Eurocentric? Our task in a multicultural South Africa”, Potchefstroom University, South Africa; Institute for Reformational Studies

Wolters, Albert M. (1985), Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview.

Wright, Nicholas Thomas, The New Testament and The People of God. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press (1992).