Perspectives on Reading the Bible Today

 

We must stop giving 19th-century answers to 16th-century questions and start asking 21st-century questions listening for 1st-century answers. -N. T. Wright (the Hermeneutical question 1)

We find that the way people asked questions in the 13^thcentury, 16^thcentury or 19^thcentury in the West were largely determined by the questions people were asking at those times and the way they asked them. And, of course, we too are in a particular philosophical, cultural setting that sets the questions we ask and the kind of answers look for from the Bible. Yet the Bible is ancient text and its teaching as declared and taught in those ancient ways and languages are supposed to guide and direct the life of God’s people. So it is crucial we do our best to hear those ancient words, passages and images as originally given in order to ask and respond to the questions of our age in a faithful way otherwise we will be asking and giving answers to the wrong questions in the wrong way if we allow our culture to determine this for us.

This is particularly important in presenting Jesus to our world. Our picture of Jesus was largely formed by images of the mild-mannered Jesus of the nineteenth century who teaches us how to succeed in living well and who wants to save souls for heaven. This responded to the question Martin Luther was asking in the sixteenth century. It remained the response till well into the 20^th century when we began to learn to read the Bible in light of different questions and in different ways. And in into the 21^st century we go with ever new questions requiring us to rethink and reform our presentation of Jesus to our world. And we can only do that faithfully for our time and place if we continue to probe the New Testament to see Jesus in his own historical context in 1^st century Palestine where he was announcing and demonstrating that the end of the world had broken in and how that should shape and form our lives in this 21^st century.

“If you aren’t reading the Scriptures allegorically, you aren’t reading them as gospel.” —Fr. John Behr (The Hermeneutical question 2)

Since the rise of a historical consciousness in modern era allegorical reading of the Bible has been verboten. We want the literal, historical truth and disparage other notions to claims of truth. But does allegorical or figurative reading of the Bible mean?

Christ himself tells us:

-When we accept Christ’s claim that “Moses wrote about Me” (John 5:46).
-When we see all that Moses, the Prophets and all the Scriptures say concerning Christ, how he must suffer and then enter his glory (Luke 24:27).                                                                                                            - John’s Gospel identifies Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of its figures. It presents the Jewish religious feasts and many symbols as types of Christ. Christ fulfills them in both words and deeds, explaining and enacting their significance. To read the Scriptures figuratively is to read them as John did: as gospel.

Thus, the Bible “prefigures” or “anticipates figuratively,” or “narrates allegorically” the life and ministry of Jesus. And Behr is correct, “If you aren’t reading the Scriptures allegorically, you aren’t reading them as gospel.” We don’t ignore or denigrate the historical reality the Bible describes; we just don’t restrict its truth to such description. In fact, we believe the historical truth delivers a deeper truth, the gospel. The historical truth matters in itself and as a bearer of this figurative or allegorical truth.

That the historical truth matters in itself keeps our allegorical reading from simply being something we impose on the Bible. Allegorical reading is a further reading of the historical narrative. Brad Jersak writes,

“So, of course, Bible interpretation is subjective, if by that we mean there is an inspired message for the reader that addresses and transforms their lives by the grace of the Holy Spirit. But is it a free-for-all through which we make the Scriptures say whatever we want? Of course not. The figurative sense is not derived from my personal whimsey, but from the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

The Bible’s authority is practical and ecclesial in focus. That is, it is intended to shape and equip Christians to be and function as God’s people in the world.

Paul puts it this way: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim.3:14-17)

St. Augustine puts it like this: “For, from the things which are found in the creature, the divine Scripture is wont to prepare enticements, as it were, for children.  Its purpose is to arouse the affections of the weak, so that by means of them, as they were steps, they may mount to higher things according to their own modest capacity, and abandon lower things.” (Augustine, The Trinity I.1.2 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), p. 5)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this: “The entire Bible, then, is the Word in which God allows himself to be found by us. Not a place which is agreeable to us or makes sense to us a priori, but instead a place which is strange to us and contrary to our nature. Yet, [that is] the very place in which God has decided to meet us.” (Meditating on the Word, p. 45)

Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis puts it like this: “The main business of the Bible is to challenge our ordinary conceptions of how things ‘really’ are—to call into question the necessity and even the reality of the limits we impose upon ourselves and others, and to show us that the cramped conditions of human existence are most often the result of misplaced fear or desire.” (Davis, Ellen F.. Opening Israel's Scriptures (p. 7). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition)   

The Bible confronts us with the reality of God in the community of faith so that divine reality takes on flesh in and through us for the life and salvation of the world.

The Bible tells the one story of the God of Israel’s plan for the flourishing of both creature and creation, achieved despite human ingratitude and rebellion. (The Canonical question)

A four-act drama with a prologue and an epilogue the biblical story lines out this way:

Prologue – Creation: God’s dream (Gen.1-2)                                                                                                                                   Act 1 -  Catastrophe: God’s dream derailed (Gen.3-11)                                                                                                      Act 2 – Covenant with Israel (Gen.12-Mal.4)                                                                                                                               Act 3 – Christ: the Covenant Fulfilled (the Gospels)                                                                                                              Act 4 – Covenant with the Church (Acts-Rev.20)                                                                                                                    Epilogue – Consummation (Rev.21-22)

This drama is “the” story of the world’s origin and destiny. An origin that is a free gift of a gracious Creator and a destiny achieved by that gracious Creator for his ungrateful human creatures and his creation they have damaged as their Redeemer.

This story is told by many voices, some known, many unknown. It is told in many moods and modes, each voice a part of the overall drama, none independent or sufficient without the others. Some parts are harmonies, some are stand alone, and some are dissonant. This story coheres because it reflects the will and way of the author with his people to his good end for them. The author even becomes an actor, the key actor, in the story. Thus the Bible is finally about God before it is about us; but because it is first about God it is also about us. As Karl Barth put it, “God has chosen not to be God without us.”

Thomas Torrance on Reading the Bible

The esteemed Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance developed a way or path for reading and interpreting the Bible that essentially involves what I calling a "Lifestyle" of Biblical Interpretation. These are not the technical skills we use to better understand scripture but an approach that contextualizes the use of these tools into a living relationship with God.

 

This Lifestyle of Biblical Interpretation according to Torrance involves a fourfold movement of Following, Penetrating, Indwelling, and Listening. It strikes me that, though Torrance does not mention this, this process is very similar to that of Lectio Divina (Reading, Meditating, Praying, and Contemplating). This encourages me to believe this process has great potential to integrate heads and hearts in a seamless way not possible with other approaches.  

 

-Follow

the biblical storyline which establishes and governs its meaning; and allow the text to lead us to the divine realities toward which it points and on which it rests

-Penetrate

interpretation moves through the signs in the text to grasp what is behind them

-Indwell

This is how readers get an overall sense of Scripture’s meaning and the condition for discerning that scripture is a coherent if complex unity that yields itself to careful and meditative reading

-Listen

God speaks through the scriptures; we must listen for his living voice that comes through the biblical witness but is not generated by them.

Torrance takes scriptures claim that in and through the Bible speaks to humanity and call for our response to his word to us. God establishes a relationship with us through this speaking and expectation for response. Thus his proposal outlined above pushes beyond whatever methods we use to explore the text and asks us not to stop until we have encountered the reality beyond the texts which is mediated by but not generated by them. Textual reasoning can bring us to the threshold of this encounter but not into it. That requires, for Torrance, the following, penetrating, indwelling, and listening that reality. We might say, though Torrance doesn’t put it this way, textual study gives us knowledge, following, penetrating, indwelling, and listening gives us understanding. And that, finally, is the point of it.

 

The Bible is written for us but it is NOT written to us. (The Historical question)

The Bible is written for us (i.e., we are supposed to benefit from its divine message and expect that it will help us to confront the currents in our cultural river by transforming us), but it is not written to us (not in our language or in the context of our culture). The Bible was written to the people of ancient Israel in the language of ancient Israel; therefore, its message operates according to the logic of ancient Israel and the world in which it existed. The authority of the text is found when we read it in terms of what it meant to those original hearers interpreted in light of the questions and struggles of our time. This is what the Bible “means” for us today. Thus we are called to embark on the best effort we can manage to hear what the Bible “meant” when it was written (that it was not written to us) before we try to determine what it “means” for us today (that the Bible was written for us).

How the Bible says what it says is as important as what it says. (The Literary question)

Form and content together carry the Bible’s meaning. A simple example are the nine acrostic psalms in the Psalter. In these psalms the first letter of each verse is a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This device complements and embodies the message of the poem in three ways:

-it adds beauty and form to the psalm.

-it suggests the topic is covered comprehensively (from A to Z as it were).

-it encourages retention and memorization.

Many other and more sophisticated and subtle literary devices significantly and substantively carry and complement the Bible’s message. Attention to these techniques is necessary to understanding the scripture. A good study Bible will usually give a summary of the most significant of these kinds of literary techniques.

Improvisation: Responding to and Carrying on the Faith

The fourth Act of the biblical drama is unfinished. We have a number of specimens of the life of the early church in it – the Acts and epistles to various churches. We see the gospeI in action, Christ reigning over and leading his people in the world through scripture. It is, of course, impossible for these texts to address every situation a church will face throughout history. But they do show us the key convictions and dynamics the early church learned from Jesus used to live faithfully in its time and place. We might say they improvised on his teaching to extend and amplify the way of Jesus in the Greco-Roman world in ways faithful to and going beyond what Jesus explicitly taught. Improvisation is a matter of doing the same thing differently without lapsing into doing a different thing.    

Sam Wells in his fine book on improvisation as the form of faithfulness required of those writing new scenes in this unfinished fourth act of the biblical drama says there are “two important moments in improvisation -- the moment of formation and then the moment of decision.” (https://faithandleadership.com/multimedia/samuel-wells-improvising-leadership) He cites the Duke of Wellington’s famous comment that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The regular and intensive training at Eton inscribed the traditions and practices of the British military into the bones these trainees such that they were able to rely on it to deal faithfully and effectively when encountering the inevitable adversities and emergencies that called for decision and action in the moment of battle.

The heroism of Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed in the Hudson River when his plane was hit by a flock of geese, is a classic example of improvisation, according to Wells. Sullenberger has just taken off from New York with 150 people on board, and his engines go out. What does he do? Drawing on what he has practiced innumerable times before in training he addresses this never before experienced crisis. In short, he improvises. In this new situation he relies on the formation that’s taken place over decades. He looks around, he sees the Hudson River, and he thinks, “I can dip down in there. I might hit something, but it’s less of a problem than landing in the middle of Manhattan. I’m going to give it a try.” In the moment of decision he does not depend on virtuoso skill but on all of that shaping over a long period of time. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about, and that’s what churches do when they face ghastly situations.”

Ghastly or not, the new situations we face as a church in the world must be dealt with through such kinds of improvisation. Discipleship is not a rote repetition of what we have always done nor a free-flowing, spontaneous “whatever seems best” to us at the moment. Rather, in this highly ruled and ritualized practice, we learn to live out the central convictions of the gospel found in scripture faithfully with flexibility and courage.