Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Hermeneutics as Biblical Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hermeneutics as Biblical Theology. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Peter Enns - The Bible as a "Human Book"


4 thoughts about the Bible as a “human book”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/06/4-thoughts-about-the-bible-as-a-human-book/

by Peter Enns
June 17, 2015

Christians confess the Bible as “God’s word,” which means (among other things) that God had something to do with the production of it – though, the honest person will admit, we don’t really know, nor can we adequately articulate, what that “something” is, and calling it “inspiration” or “revelation” is simply assigning a multi-syllable word to that unknown process.

Be that as it may, the history of Christian theology hasn’t been at all shy about providing various models of biblical inspiration and the Bible as God’s revelation.

But the Bible was also – and this is self-evidently true – written by people, real people, with personalities, histories, questions, perceptions, worries, fears, etc.

That brings us to a struggle a lot of Christians have with the Bible: thinking of the Bible, God’s word, as a human book?

To which I would like to offer 4 points.

1. Change “as” to “is.” The Bible is a human book, meaning there is nothing in the Bible that does not fully reflect the human drama and that cannot be explained on the basis of its “humanity.”

In other words, there is nothing in the Bible to which one can point and say, “Ah, here is something that is divine and NOT human.” “As” falsely suggests distance between the Bible’s thoroughgoing humanness.

2. Though the Bible is not merely a human book, it is nevertheless a thoroughly human book. That is a paradox, a confessed by faith.

The evangelical challenge concerning scripture can be summarized as the need to work through a true synthesis where the “humanity” of scripture is truly respected.

In other words, the Bible reflects various and sundry (not one) ancient (not modern Christian) ways of thinking about God and the life of faith, and these factors need to be thoroughly integrated into any discussion of the “nature of scripture.”

3. The evangelical system has not always done a good job of pulling off this synthesis. The thoroughgoing humanness of the Bible is often doctrinally uncomfortable, and so is adjusted, ignored, or neutered to protect theological statements about the nature of scripture.

Another way of articulating the challenge: true dialogue is needed between the Bible as a means of deep spiritual formation and “taking seriously” Scripture’s thoroughgoing humanity.

Of course, just what “taking seriously” means is the money question, and too often in evangelical formulations, at the end of the day, the diverse and ancient nature of Scripture is either tolerated or tamed rather than allowed truly to inform Scripture’s role in spiritual formation.

4. I offer three interrelated models for Bible readers today for engaging the Bible with greater attention to the Bible’s own character as a means toward, rather than impediment for, spiritual formation.

A dialogical model: Taking a page from the history of Judaism and much of pre-modern Christianity, the Bible is a book where God is met through dialogue rather than primarily as a source of doctrinal formulations.

Reading the Bible well means being open and honest about what we see there rather than feeling doctrinally pressed to corral all parts of Scripture into a logically coherent system. The dialogical model is woven into the Bible itself, e.g., Job, Ecclesiastes, and lament Psalms, which challenge the the status quo.

A journey model: Rather than a depository of theological statements disguised as a narrative, the Bible models our spiritual journey by letting us in on the spiritual journey of the ancient Israelites and first followers of Jesus.

This model allows the theological and historical tensions and contradictions to stand as statements of faith at various stages of that journey rather than problems to be overcome in preserving a “system” or “owner’s manual” approach to Scripture. (I focus on the journey model in The Bible Tells Me So.)

An incarnational model: I continue to think that an incarnational model of Scripture provides needed theological flexibility for addressing the realities of a Bible that is both located squarely and unambiguously located in antiquity and continues to be sacred scripture.

[This post is adapted from an earlier post from January 2014. Watch for the revised 10th anniversary edition of Inspiration and Incarnation coming out later this summer.]


Monday, July 15, 2013

Should Christians Resist the Pressure to Interpret the Bible Culturally?

 


Have you ever overheard comments that seem at first erudite - filled with great wisdom, learning and scholarship - but after some time of unconscious, mental gnawing in your heart-and-soul you begin to find such statements gnawing on you in a way that is no longer erudite? In fact, it has by then become one of those linguistic cankers you wished you never had heard, or ever hear again?
 
One such popular, de facto, statement that seems to pop-up all-too-frequently is the one that states confidently, "You know, with today's issues and contemporary news events Christians must resist the pressure to interpret the Bible culturally." A statement which seems harmless at first upon hearing it, until it ruminates in your head all day long, ceasing to go away like a bad song that endlessly loops around-and-around-and-around. Until finally delivered to your soul, added with a little salt-and-pepper and a dash of smug self-assurance, as if there could never be, at any other time or place, disagreement with this homey dialectic.
 
It is at that point that I realized how excluding, how pompous, how short-sighted and delimiting, such a definitive statement like this can be. I was left wondering just what news items we are talking about? What ideas of man that might be challenging the Bible to cause it to bow down to the pressures of the day? Whether there might be a select group of Christians called by God to be His own specially endowed shepherds to guide us lowly masses into the Biblical lands of learned, revealed, truths? A special group of mystics and revelatorys who have liturgically conjured up the proper boundary waters in which to dive-and-play less God becomes angry with mankind's endless questions, searches for truth and justice, and spiritual restlessness?
 
If whether today's Christians must resist living within the hoary bounds of contemporary cultural pressures of interpretation and nuance? To withdraw to a monastery, or missions lands, or even nature's temples itself, if only to define the limitations of God's holy existence within this world. To somehow retrograde all human affairs and mindsets in order to hold on to the conjugations of the church's past generations of sanctified Christian writings? If whether it is fair play, or not, to ask the God of the Bible whether today's concerns might be His concerns at all? Or if whether He only spoke for yesteryear's more literately attuned generations in a specially adapted cultural language that has long since past? If whether my daily concerns, and my generation's excruciating scholarship, have become one of those "lost" Sodomistic societies visited by God's holy angels only to be excluded from the temples of His all-compassionate wisdom.
 
At some point I realized by the tone, tenor, and delivery, of the conscripted statement above, that I was being excluded from that hallowed body of Christians who alone are privileged to act as God's chosen Levitical priesthood maintaining all that is hallowed and godly. That they alone were the selected ones divined by God's call to determine what may be culturally biblical or not. And whether such events are news worthy or should be damned and judged with the soiled masses of mankind.
 
No less was the idea that there existed a preferred interpretation of the Bible. One that was learned in hermeneutically extricating the hallowed script of God's Word so that when all was said-and-done we had arrived in the holy lands of Jerusalem lying between the two realms of light and darkness in a justifiable manner that extracted the ends to justify the means. And without this sanctified method (or literal code) of biblical interpretation we may never be able to enter into the holy lands of God's rest and refuge.
 
And so my heart-and-soul debated daily within itself until at-the-last I arrived exhausted, confused, and not a-little-angered by the culturally-reflective statement designed to be self-sustaining to an exclusionary body of "proper" Christians who-only-themselves, could hold to the "correct(ed)" truths of God's Word. Become its select purveyors of truth and dissemination. They alone had attained to a preferred, self-reinforcing hermeneutic that disallowed anything but their own ideas and beliefs about cruciform ministry, interpretation, and outreach. Their epistemological corrollaries and systematically derived theorems, much like their arguments and beliefs, were self-propagating without remediation or onslaught. Here was were God resided, and to be of God I too must likewise reside within their conscripted congregations lest I be banned as unworthy of templed conversation.
 
Issues of evolution, homosexuality, gender equality, religious pluralism, cultural ethnicity, biblical literacy, literalness and classic statement, had long ago been decided in their minds by past generations of Christians steeped in blood, war, injustice, greed, unworthiness, oppression, and pride. Mere mortals such as myself were not allowed to question the revered likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Moody, or Piper. These are the sacrosanct men of record to whom we must bow allegiance. Not the Jesus of the Scriptures who questioned the learned of His day.
 
All then has become "Amen and Verily" in common cultural assent by dying religious traditions and denominations that even now, in their death throes, look blindly upon the moiling tempest seeds of humanity held not-unlike themselves, in epistemological turmoil, seeking a Redeemer lost from speech within the congregations of God's own churched people. Though holding onto the keys of their own assured redemption, they continue clutching to keys that cannot unlock the hearts-and-minds of those lost beyond their own cathedral walls of golden truths.
 
Unable to speak to the masses the church today speaks a religious language that heaps contempt upon any who may disagree with its "cultural" interpretations of the Bible. Making of the Bible an idol of the very book they would attest (known as bibliotry). And making a religious image of a sacrificed Savior meant to be received by all. This, to me, is the most egregious, contemptible form of Christianity. Making of itself an object and a religion, of the God whom seeks to love us as we would seek to love Him. Become closed to the needs of the world abounding around itself. Unable to speak to its needs because we are too threatened by our own fears of losing the truths we deem important to uphold if we are to be faithful. Speaking of God through a Christianity become closed, exclusive, and self-justifying. Unwilling to challenge itself in its own logics and self-perpetuating closed beliefs. A system where God will not reside so long as He has become quantified by our own religious reasonings and fallacies. This is neither godly nor God-like. It smacks of man, and of man's corruptible, proud, heart.
 
"If we must judge, let us first use the mirror on our own wall for practice."
 - anonymous
 
"Perhaps a greater tragedy than a broken dream is a life forever defined by it."
- Sheridan Voysey
 
R.E. Slater
July 15, 2013
 

(click to expand)

Monday, April 1, 2013

Working Towards a Biblical Interpretation that is both Relevant and Accurate




"Biblical criticism is perennially caught between the Scylla of interpretive freedom
and the Charybdis of irrelevance. Too much hermeneutic freedom and the tradition
disintegrates, losing its epistemological appeal. Too little interpretive freedom and the
Bible becomes merely an irrelevant historical artifact, rather than the living word of God."
Inherently, evangelical biblical interpretation is unquestionably caught between a need
for relevance and the need for textual validity.
 
- Brian Malley
 
This quote by Brian Malley back in 2004 is apparently still valid for today, and one that immediately drove me to produce Relevancy22 in the public forum of opinion as a way to reconsider the very old, and long enduring, position of biblical literalism against that of biblical accuracy. Realizing that my evangelical tradition held within it foundational folklores that trembled to considered any other biblical interpretation other than its own as the only right way to hear and obey God's Word. For if we did, we would then need to attend to the necessary reconstruction of evangelicalism's interpretive boundaries against its preferred dogmas where both interpretation and dogmas would fall as one.

And yet, I believed God to be larger than my own myopic view... larger than my epistemological or ideological ideas I had constructed about Him, His Word, and around my faith... and larger than the restrictive boundaries I had raised to wall off a disbelieving world out-of-covenant, and out-of-time with my idea of God and biblical faith. Or so I believed, until deciding that with what remaining years I had left I should at least attempt a small reprise to the doctrines I grew up with for the several years His Spirit might grace my soul with passion and discernment in this area. Allowing my mind and heart to reconsider each doctrine in reconstructive renovation within a broader interpretive range of ideas not only biblically-generated, but extra-biblically-generated as well. Not merely using the biblical hermeneutic of contextual, grammatical, historical interpretation as discourser to biblical anatomy, but by allowing non-biblical sources to inform as gained from the ideas and discoveries within science, philosophy, public opinion, and even from other religions. To me, God is within the world that He created. He has not been excluded from it. And by listening to this world it can better inform the biblical reader to God's incomprehensible heart and intent.

This does not mean that the Bible is less regarded. Nay, on the contrary. I wished to have a Bible that was richer, fuller, bearing the knowledge of the ages to its berth of wisdom and direction. Not just from my own branch of religious opinion, but from the many branches of insight and discovery left too long dormant upon the steps of the church in disregard, if not abject dismissal itself. Whether from the realms of the philosopher, the archaeologist, the behavioral scientist, the political scientist, the sociologist, the chemist, the Imam of Islam, the Rabbi of Judaism, the Buddhist monk of the East - even the man on the street in his wisdoms and observations. If God's Word was to speak to all of us it had to come from all of us - in all of our own settings, dispositions, reliefs, cultures, customs, traditions, and meaning. It was not the exclusive property of any one branch of the church or religious society. It had to tell us who we are by opening our minds and hearts to what we think and believe. The age of the Internet has caused this awareness. The age of travel, technology, and interlinked global communications is to blame. To do less is to refuse knowing God's gracious heart and mind. This is God's world that He has given to us to enjoy with one another as with Himself. As such, He has something to say about it and we must do better at listening to Him speak through ancient biblical records become irrelevant should we lock down its hoary words to our own stylistic preferences and biases.

In my opinion, this personal reconstruction lay long overdue while the more important operations of supporting and raising a family and business took my time and energy. Moreover, I overly relied on my evangelical faith to do the job for me with its bastions of scholars, academicians, preachers, teachers, missionaries and evangelists. But lo-and-behold after 35 years the evangelicalism I knew and loved had simply fortified its walls and laid waste upon the disbelieving world around it... proscribing a Jesus who served with conditions and threats of damnation lest any not abide to the evangelic doctrine trumpeted by my faith (however, and whatever, that has now come to mean in this day-and-age). And while I blithely, if not ignorantly, went about the business of living and supporting church ministries, the church in its structures and organizations drew away from the world in which I lived as if it were an evil thing, unholy and unblessed, by the God who created it. Who loves it. Who gave it life. Who died for its sins and daily death. Who seeks to bring to it healing, presence, blessing, wholeness, and life. As such, I believe its time to knock down a few religious walls and allow in heaven's celestrial airs of freedom and redemption, liberty and light, that move heavily around us though we know it not by our evangelical faith become too restrictive to comprehend. Calling for dismissal to those who dare speak up about violence in the OT; for removal to those evolutionists that dare breathe God's name into this unholy science; for anathema upon the heads of those advocating the rights of gays and lesbians; who might preach a gospel where God's love wins rather than a gospel of hell and electorial exclusion.

And after listening for-a-dozen-or-so-years to emergent Christians revisioning a Jesus faith of love and mercy, peace and goodwill, to local ministries and global missions, I thought I too should join in and try loosening a few bricks of the sturdy Berlin-like wall my insular faith had built around itself through its popularized books, media enterprises, missions, films, TV shows, pulpits, churches, and schools. And so, Relevancy22 has been produced to lay a groundwork for direction and discussion.... Probing with questions and statements ideas foreign to those doctrines and dogmas that I had grown up with.... Perhaps wandering towards neo-orthodoxy on the one hand, and liberal evangelicalism on the other hand. Trying to find that middle ground of faith expression that would allow in a brighter shaft of light, and the fresher air of the gospel, through the Spirit-window of inspiration and grace, illumination and mercy. A Spirit-window that could allow in a personal renewal of belief and re-commitment to the faith of the God of the Bible by first destroying all sure ground around it. Unconcerned with protecting God but more concerned with not protecting my windowless religion and faith. To allow in consideration of foreign ideas, thoughts and expressions without jumping in horror to every biblical fallacy and misdirection presented. To be wise enough to discern direction so that the Gospel of our Lord could be heard again by a foreign people reacting to my religion and not to my God. To destroy the evangelic walls of dissembly, its distance from society, its retrenchment from the world, and allow in the foreigner to the blessed lands we never were to hold for ourselves. This is the biblical faith. One that is shared but also one that communes with others in an amazing world much larger than our own constructs of it. To hear of God's Word from an Eastern perspective, a Muslim perspective, a Jewish, or scientific, or philosophic perspective, and not simply our Americanized, modernistic, secular perspective.

And well that it has... for once the foundation of biblical literalism was revisited I knew at once that a truer hermeneutic more-in-line-with my now reconstructed orthodox faith - and not my older evangelic faith - must be reconstituted as one that addressed postmodern societal angst and ideological deconstruction should ever Jesus be heard again from the Scriptures beyond the sieves of mine own dogmatic preferences. I needed a relevant Gospel that was more contemporary to societal needs. More accurate with the discoveries of surrounding scientific disciplines. More personalized to the human condition and narrative story of redemptive evolution occurring across all stratas of cultures and customs. And more receptive to the human story of defeat, sorrow, pain, destruction, woe and failure. A faith that when shared seemed reasonably attune with contemporary, global, society today - and less out of tune with the secular modernism and harsh judgmentalism I had been raised within. One that was in-time and in-place and not out-of-time and out-of-place. A gospel from God and not a gospel from man.

So that, in Brian Malley's opening quote we find a truism that in order to grow in Christ and in His Word we must learn to reopen our minds and hearts in how we would read the Bible and understand its authority for ourselves within not only our own daily lives, but for the world at large. If not, we are left with a religion-of-walls like Jesus had encountered in His day... with Scribes and Pharisees that held the bastions of religion so legalistically and fearfully tight that they neglected to see in Jesus God's imprimatur of Himself as the Son of Man, their Savior - who was their Life, their Light, their Law, and their Lord.

Let us not repeat this same mistake made so easily (and repeatedly) over the past 2000 years of church history by allowing the monarchs and civil magistrates of our faith to decide for us. Nay, let us bear some responsibility for it's pronouncement in ourselves by questioning our assurances and being more willing to reassess what we have heard with what we know. Not in displacement of the Bible but in replacing our misdirected ideas of the Bible with ones more accurate and less filled with personal dread and fear. And for any who wish to join with me, I submit all past articles written over these past several years, as various testaments to my pained questions, renewing vision, and restorative faith, for examination. It has been a long journey that required a newer, meatier gospel than the one I followed. Thank you in joining with me on this journey of faith and enlightenment, prophetic announcement and spiritual healing to the One who has come to heal the wounds of our lands, the rifts between nations, the dark hatreds we hold with one another. It was never meant to be ever so, even now in this Age of Grace and Mercy, Love and Forgiveness, Peace and Assurance.

R.E. Slater
April 1, 2013
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
Tim Keller on Homosexuality and Biblical Authority: Different Crisis, Same Problem.
”Large numbers of evangelical Christians, even younger ones…will continue to hold the view that same-sex marriage runs counter to their faith, even as they increasingly decide they either support or do not oppose making it the law of the land.”
 
As he often does, Keller has his finger on the pulse of evangelical culture. My own experience is admittedly more limited than Keller’s, but my ear to the ground picks up the same sort of distant rumbling.
 
In the world of public prominent evangelicals voices, there aren’t many like Keller who seem genuinely interested in finding a third way between a polemical theological tradition and practical realties of contemporary life. Some, I know, call him a compromiser, but that is an unfair assessment. He is trying to work things out, and is often called to do so in public settings.
 
But what really caught my eye was Keller’s observation concerning evangelical biblicism, which has far wider implications than for homosexuality:
 
“If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot, … [y]ou’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.’”
 
Here, too, Keller is right. To change their views on homosexuality will require evangelicals to “disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority.”
 
This raises two questions: “What’s wrong with some disassembling?” and “Why does disassembling have to be tied to having or not having faith?”
 
Leaving aside the specific issue of homosexuality, Keller’s observation about evangelical notions of biblical authority is correct but also concerning. In my opinion, Keller has, perhaps unwittingly, put his finger on the entire problem evangelicals face when confronted with any issue that runs counter to evangelical theology: “You’re asking me to read my Bible differently than my tradition has prescribed, and so I can’t go there. If I do, my faith is kicked out the door.”
 
What drew my attention to this comment is the fact that I regularly hear the very same response with respect to many other issues–like evolution. The big impasse for evangelicals is that accepting evolution requires them to rethink how they read their Bible, specifically the story of Adam and Eve. Reading that story as fundamentally historical is “the way in which [evangelicals] read the Bible” and to ask them to do otherwise “complete dissemble[s] their whole approach to biblical authority.”
 
To me this raises an obvious question: Maybe the way in which evangelical read the Bible and conceive of its authority is the problem in the evangelical system that needs to be rethought, rather than being the non-negotiable hill to stand and die on for addressing every issue that comes down the road?
 
This isn’t about evangelicals accepting or rejecting the Bible. It’s about thinking self-critically about how they read it and their approach to biblical authority.
 
The problem, though, is that the evangelical view of the Bible as God’s inerrant authority for the church is its ground floor raison d’etre. Evangelicalism exists, at least intellectually, to defend and promote this view. To ask evangelicals to do a critical self-assessment of how they read the Bible is in effect to ask them to assess the entire system.
 
Here is where I feel Keller’s ear should be closer to the ground. I see this sort of re-assessment happening now all over the place–evangelicals looking for an alternate “explanatory paradigm,” other than an tradition that rests on an inerrant Bible, for how to live on this planet.
 
The only real question I see is whether this process will continue as part of the evangelical experiment or will have to move wholly outside of it.



Monday, November 26, 2012

5 Approaches to Biblical Theology (Barr, Carson, Wright, Childs, Watson)


When is Theology Truly “Biblical”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/26/when-is-theology-truly-biblical/

BT As A History Of Redemption
November 28, 2012

How does one read the Bible “biblically,” that is how does one read it right? That word “biblical” has some options and it is not quite as simple as some suggest. Some theologians study a theme hard and then run the whole Bible — or much of the Bible — through that theme and sometimes they discover some parts don’t fit their framework so they ignore those elements of the Bible. Very, very few “biblical” theologies or Story-approaches to the Bible know what to do with the Wisdom literature, which reading then ironically is a revelation of an “unbiblical” reading of the Bible!
 
How do you respond to the “salvation historical” approach to biblical theology?
 
What Edward Klink III and Darian Lockett, in their Understanding Biblical Theology, do is sketch five types (reminds one of Niebuhr’s types) of “biblical” theology, and they grade them from the historical to the systematic theological. The historical approach is typified by James Barr and in this post we want to look at the second type, “Biblical Theology as History of Redemption,” and they use D.A. Carson as their prototype. One of the highlights of this section in their book is the discernment of three “schools” in this approach, and when I began reading this chp I wondered if they’d factor in the various approaches — and I’m delighted they did. Furthermore, while Carson is the prototype here they use Graeme Goldsworthy throughout their sketch, and I would argue his many writings might even be a more forceful example because of his many writings directly on their theme.
 
What is not mentioned is that this “salvation history” approach to biblical theology is a species of Reformed, covenant theology. More needs to be said about this, but it would take us away from their sketch of this kind of biblical theology.
 
Here are the major elements of type 2:
 
1. The aim is to discern the historical progress of God’s work of redemption.

2. In the Canon of Scripture, all of Scripture, but tied together in the sweep of Scripture. Progressive revelation of the progress of redemption.

3. Themes discerned inductively are a major avenue to find this history of redemption.

4. Scripture is a revelation of God; Scripture is the source though other texts clarify contexts.

5. History is the arena in which God reveals himself; so history is fundamentally important.

6. Scripture is a profound, sometimes typological, unity revealing this history of redemption, and this biblical theology influences exegesis.

7. But exegesis builds into biblical theology and always has priority over systematic theology.

8. The church is the place where this theology is expressed — not just an academic exercise (as in Barr’s proposal).
 
The contribution of this chp entails their breakdown into three schools:
 
The Dallas School which focuses more on biblical books (Isaiah) and sections (Synoptics) as the arena for biblical theology, with larger syntheses being more systematics.
 
The Chicago School, which they use for Carson and his series of books in New Studies in Biblical Theology, extends the Dallas School to a larger synthesis of the Bible’s history of redemption. So the focus is a thematic coherence of the Bible.
 
The Philadelphia School, which is the Reformed tradition behind and at Westminster, with his great christocentric hermeneutical reading of the Bible — from the very beginning. I see this School as the origin of the second and which was countered by the more original forms of the Dallas School.
 
To continue the meme I began in the first post. What about the Image of God in Gen 1:26-27. Dallas might emphasize the meaning of “image” in Genesis 1 and Genesis and the Pentateuch; the Chicago School might focus on how Image becomes Image of Christ so that there is a progression in revelation leading to even fuller insights into the meaning of Genesis; the Philadelphia will begin in Genesis but will know that it needs fuller interpretation in light of Christ as the Image — leading them perhaps to say Adam, as Image, is made in the Image of Christ. Each of these will involve understanding Image in its Ancient Near East setting as the king representing God.
 
What is interesting, of course, is the division between Chicago and Philadelphia, and it illustrates the whole problem of “biblical” theology: a hermeneutic is formed, always on the basis of how the Bible is read, to the level that it becomes the guiding theme for reading each passage. The Chicago School focuses on redemption (salvation) while the Philadelphia School focuses on christology (though one might say their approach is also redemption history with a christocentric emphasis). The issue here is Who decides which theme guides our reading? I am convinced that all “soterian” and “history of redemption” readings are rooted more or less in Romans 5:12-21 or more broadly in Pauline soteriology (often enough justification theory). Other themes rise their hands asking for attention: like election, or the People of God, or missio Dei in a wider sense of redemption, et al.. But I want to emphasize that a cheap postmodern critique of this approach won’t work; the chp discussing Carson’s theory is laced together with his awareness of the issue of presuppositions, et al.
 
The authors provide what I think is an important reminder by way of critique: “Carson (and BT2 [this second type] in general) seems to underplay the abstracting character of history alongside that of reason and philosophy. History is not as neutral as Carson’s implicit construction suggests” (89). It is because NT Wright does deal with this “not as neutral” element that he is actually farther along the theological line for these authors, and yet one could make the case he is closer to the history end for the same reason.
 
 
BT As A Worldview-Story
November 30, 2012

In a spectrum from history to systematic theology, where does someone like NT Wright fit? Is he closer to the history or the systematics end? Edward Klink III and Darian Lockett, in their fine new book, Understanding Biblical Theology, put Wright smack-dab in the middle of the two, but they put D.A. Carson’s history of redemption approach closer to history and Wright closer to theology. More of that later.
 
In their spectrum there are five types: history, history of redemption, worldview story, canonical and theological construction. BT1, BT2, BT3, BT4, and BT5, and today we look at BT3, worldview story. The big idea is learning to read each passage of the Bible in light of the worldview story/narrative of the Bible, however that might be constructed — and the commentary series of which I am the General Editor (now called “Story of God Bible Commentary”) will offer commentaries in light of this worldview story approach to the Bible. Had we had this book we would have asked each author to “subscribe” to BT3!
 
Where would you place NT Wright on the spectrum from history (left) to theology (right)? Is he more historical or theological than the History of Redemption/Carson?
 
Some major theoretical issues:
 
1. Narrative is both a literary and philosophical category.
2. Worldview story inherently critiques historical criticism in the direction of Hans Frei’s famous Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.
3. The way to read a passage is to see its location in the overall plotline of the Bible’s narrative/story.
4. This narrative speaks to modern readers/Christians.
 
This worldview story, in their view, is more connected to academy than to church, and here I would contend the pre-2oth Century church especially did not carefully distinguish church from academy so that appealing to anything before the (early?) 20th Century church is not much of an appeal.
 
Big for this approach is how the NT uses the OT; the sources for this approach are both canonical and non-canonical. The subject of the this kind of “biblical” theology is the narrative structure at work in the texts to which the author/s appeal, including both canonical and non-canonical authors.
 
Their sketch of NT Wright’s works is adequate, though it is more than difficult to read, let alone put together, all of them. My read of their sketch is that it is adequate. They focus on two words, story and worldview, then combine them into Tom’s approach being a worldview story. (I don’t know that Tom ever uses that expression.) But his “story” brings into concrete reality a worldview that is a set of assumptions. More important, NT Wright reads the NT in light of a “historically reconstructed ‘story’ of Israel’s Scriptures” (112). That’s dead-on. NT Wright’s method is critical realism. His worldview story is tied into Judaism’s story and stories and worldviews. The NT “continues” the OT story.
 
Well, what about the “image of God”? As I have said, I want to see if I can flesh out how each kind of biblical theology would explain “image of God” in Gen 1:26-27. NT Wright, connecting to folks like John Walton, sees the expression in light of the Ancient Near East and in the context of the role given to humans in creation: as those who represent God. We/they are, in other words, both kings and priests. This theme is unfolded in the Story of the Bible — to Abraham and Israel and to David and then to Jesus, as the priest-king, who is King/Messiah, and then as the Temple itself as well. And on to Paul’s use of Christ as temple and king and priest, into Hebrews, and with the people of God as kings and priests … to the new heavens and new earth. In other words, it’s not so much about progressive revelation as the continuation of an idea as the Story unfolds, a Story that gives meaning to the Bible and shows where humans fit in God’s Story, but also provides meaning for us today.
 
I have some issues with how the authors sketch the spectrum, and after reading the two chps on History of Redemption and Worldview Story I am less confident of their ordering. Here’s why:
 
1. NT Wright calls himself a historian; none in the History of Redemption self-identifies as historians. I find it odd then that they place Wright closer to the theology end.
2. Both read each passage in light of a “worldview” or “theology,” so this point applies to both: each reads each passage in light of a theology.
3. NT Wright is criticized in both of their chps for being too tied into a historical method; the BT2 History of Redemption approach is not criticized for its historiography.
4. Hovering over this entire set of chps is what the authors mean by “history,” and a good study of historiography shows that NT Wright’s approach to History is much more in tune with what history is — the creation of a story/narrative out of facts, sometimes conceived of as discrete facts, which is what NTWright does in his book. BT2 seems to me to be more in tune with theology and less in tune with this theory of history.
 
 

In the late 80s and early 90s perhaps no Old Testament scholar had built around him a way of Bible reading more than Brevard Childs at Yale. Childs resisted two approaches to Bible and theology — the historical-critical method that all but ignored theology and the “biblical theology” approach because it was too historical-critical in approach. He proposed what is often called a “canonical approach.” Childs knew his Bible well, and not just his Old Testament — so much so that he wrote an The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction, which I read as a young professor and then reviewed in TSF Bulletin. I sent my review to Childs, and he wrote back a long response which TSF Bulletin also published. I often greeted Childs at the SBL meetings and was saddened to hear, years later, that he was not physically well … a full study of Childs has been published by Daniel Driver, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian.
 
Today our concern is how Edward Klink and Darian Lockett, in their Understanding Biblical Theology, sketch a fourth type of biblical theology: Biblical Theology as Canonical Approach. The big issue here is to call attention to biblical theology as something involving decisions by the church on what constitutes its Bible. Bible is not just a document; it is a church’s book, a canon (as list and as norm for its theology).
 
But the big point is this one: the place for determining meaning is not the original setting or the original author but the text in its final form in the context of the canon. The task then for biblical theology is to affirm importance of canon.
 
What do you think of the “canonical approach” to biblical theology? What happens to our study of the Bible if we recognize canon as an important theological approach?
 
It looks more specifically like this:
 
1. The goal is not to find the original event, etc but to examine/explain the final “construal” of the event in the Scripture. The problems with the “find the original event/text/history” approach: history determines truth not the text; hypothesis makes all conclusions speculative; the Bible as the church’s text is denied; history trumps theology. Childs himself embraced the hist-crit method but it was swallowed into his canonical approach.
 
2. OT and NT are interwoven in this approach because they are unified. The Hebrew Bible becomes the Christian Old Testament, and Jesus Christ becomes the substance — though this does not mean the OT is swamped by NT theology. The OT is the initial hearing that is heard more fully in Christ.
 
3. The Bible as canon means the Bible is the church’s theology.
 
4. The substance and scope of the Bible is Jesus Christ. [This cuts a bit into BT2, the history of redemption approach, which makes redemption the substance of the Bible.]
 
5. I add this one: the canonical approach also asks what a given text — say John — now means in light of its inclusion in the canon, and might even ask what its ordered location (fourth Gospel, just before Acts) in the Bible means for how to read that text. My point here is that the canonical approach shapes each text in light of its placement in canon. As with BT2′s salvation history influence and BT3′s worldview-story influence, so this approach sees the decisive influence from canon. One might say BT2 and BT3 are “canons” within the canon influences — they ask what is driving the canon while the canonical approach asks that from a wider angle.
 
His approach has three “steps”:
 
1. Begin with the ancient text and its “plain” sense.
2. Dialogue between ancient text and canon.
3. Dialogue between subject matter and ancient text.
 
Christopher Seitz, a disciple of Childs, sees three areas: literary/exegetical (the final form is a commentary on the preceding forms of the text), catholic/ecclesial (the questions the church has posed to the Bible matter), and theological.
 
There are problems here, some of them overblown a bit, but many have pointed to lack of clarity on the meaning of “canon” — though I think this distracts from the genuine contribution of Childs and, at the same time, the challenge of making this approach work. A significant question for me is “Whose canon? Which canon? Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish?” And “Which text?” This one is interesting because Childs embraces the entire textual manuscript tradition of the church … variants, too!


BT As A Theological Construction
December 4, 2012
 
"Restoring Theology to Biblical Theology"
 

The problem is that Old and New Testament scholars, almost uniformly, ignore (systematic) theology in favor of what is demonstrable from the text in its historical context. Yet, yet, yet … who can read the Bible and not observe that it is theological? For theology, by theologically minded and for those who worship? This backing away from all things theological occurred from the Enlightenment on and now has a fierce (and oft-protected) grip on biblical studies and therefore some on biblical theology.
 
Where does theology invade biblical theology the most?
 
To the “rescue” comes a kind of biblical theology concerned with the theological dimension and focus of the text. This is BT5 in Klink and Lockett’s Understanding Biblical Theology, and they have chosen Francis Watson as their major proponent of this approach.
 
What is the “biblical theology as theological construction”? It is how the church reads Scripture as church and how the church reads Scripture as Scripture. That’s theoretical and, to be blunt about it, both “biblical theology as theological construction” and “theological interpretation of Scripture” is no clearer — in any statement I’ve seen. Maybe they’ll consider my definition for understanding their discipline.
 
Reading the Bible, then, is a theological enterprise — for the present. The Bible is not a historical text; for the church the Bible is Scripture. It is unlike any other book and so is unique as a genre. Those who judged this discipline are those for whom it matters: those of faith, those in the church. It involves the whole Bible — OT and NT, seeing a two-Testament Bible. Christian tradition matters.
There are emphases: the revelationist approach (Vanhoozer), textualist (Lindbeck), and functionalist (Fowl). The subject matter is God and secondly the church.
 
They move then to Watson, who offers a textually-mediated theology and a textually-mediated Jesus. The Gospels are narrated history (neither just history nor just narrative). This mediated theology is taken up into Christian worship and praxis, which influence how we read the Bible. Watson discusses the Old and New issue: a twofold Bible, with one preceding and one following, with the New taking on precedence in the person and work of Christ. So he argues for a christocentric reading of the Bible.
 
Most of Watson’s critics think he is not theological enough (not Trinitarian enough) while historians will say he’s too theological.