Re: We have to go back, but not to square one

Peter, the dialogue is frustrating at times but it is invaluable. Thank you.

You say that the NT is no longer normative for the people of God beyond the 1st century. In what sense is the OT normative - given that for most people, the Christian faith sees the OT as fulfilled and defined by the NT? If neither the NT or the OT are normative, then in what way are they meant to be used in the lives of the people of God? Do they provide optional advice?

Did I say somewhere that the New Testament is no longer normative for the people of God? Possibly, but not in this conversation. Anyway, let me clarify.

The question is (or should be) not whether scripture is normative but how it is normative. My argument, which I think is an appropriate outworking of a realistic, historical hermeneutic, is that the people of God is defined in its life and mission by the whole biblical narrative. The story from Abraham onwards is ‘normative’ for us: it tells us who we are, why we exist as a covenant people, how we should behave, what we represent, how we should engage with the world, what we should hope for, and so on. Obviously that needs unpacking - these discussions have operated on a rather theoretical level - but I really don’t see that that would be a problem.

What I want to avoid is the flattening of the narrative and the loss of historical realism that occurs when we read scripture as immediately accessible, directly relevant sacred text. I think that there is plenty of content for us to be found in asking the question: What does it mean to be heirs of this particular historical narrative? What does it mean to be incorporated into a people that has been defined in this way, that has had its self-understanding filtered through the traumatic eschatological crisis of the early centuries AD, that has been forced to find life along a difficult narrow path. But I don’t have a problem with then asking how the historical narrative can be used indirectly and creatively to define our present, existential spiritual experience.

So, for example, I would argue that the New Testament by and large regards Jesus’ death as the means by which i) Israel was saved from its sins apart from the law and the promise to Abraham preserved from oblivion, and ii) Gentiles were brought into the restored community of God’s people. We are the historical beneficiaries of the fact that Jesus died for the sins of Israel. That seems to me to be a matter of good biblical interpretation - it allows scripture to say what it wants to say, not what we feel we need it to say.

However, if then take the narrative of Jesus’ saving death and apply it analogically or metaphorically to the personal experience of the individual who wants to say, ‘Jesus died for my sins’, that’s fine. There may even be some marginal New Testament precedent for that. What I object to is the prevalent habit of reading back the highly reductive, ahistorical, personal narrative into scripture. What I believe we need to recover is precisely the broad, concrete, political, corporate, social, historical scope of the biblical story, which calls us fundamentally not to know Jesus as our personal saviour but to represent the full extent of what it means to be God’s new creation.