I woke up today still burdened by a subject I'm not sure how to
approach. My burden is that I cannot get past the idea of how many in the
church, including the church itself, is reading the bible heretically.
Reading the bible plainly (or literally) has caused a lot of
unloving words and deeds to be done in the name of the God of Love. Reading the
bible spiritually (metaphorically or allegorically) is also unhelpful in that
it gets away from the historical nature of God's revelation being
communicated to ancient peoples many years ago.
Comparative literary analysis has been a large help when
approaching the bible from a historical, grammatical, and contextual point of
study. But it also neglects reading the bible from an evolving sociological,
psychological, and philosophical point of study (or, paradigms; sic, sociological frames of context).
These last three areas especially have caused theologians and philosophers to question how we are reading the bible today. The question before us then is this:
"Is God's revelation always a product of being in a relationship with the God of the universe? Or did God speak once, and we are left alone with only the bible as God's spokeman?"
The short answer is yes. The bible is not God's only means of revelation, but that God is always present and communicating with us through His Spirit as individuals, communities, and societies.
More so, because of humanity's long histories of societal experience we have been evolving in our generations and civilizations
in our attitudes of love, responsibility, and identity of ourselves in relation
to each other, the world at large, and to very creation itself.
Is the Bible Relevant?
My first burden is that our 21st century ideas of society
will not be found in civilizations thousands of years before us. Yes,
smatterings of them, but not in any cohesive, formulated, or directional way.
The beauty of process-based cultural history is that each
succeeding generation and regional cultural has its own unique beliefs and
identities. We learn from one another when we study the past as well as study the
present. But we cannot expect to find any one generation or culture to have
lived and thought "perfect lives and perfect thoughts". It’s never
been done and never will be done. Not even in the bible. That is to say, the bible is a time-dated study of ancient cultural beliefs which have some pertinence today and some not (cultural dress, foods, practices, and idiom for one).
Saying this means that in a process-based world
its very nature is one of evolving from one moment to the next. This was true
for bible people then and cultures of their time even as it is true for us now in
our generations and varied histories. We are always evolving as a creation;
always, concrecsing forwards (growing, moving uniquely
forwards). It may be two steps forwards and one step backwards; it may be with interation, interruption and discontinuity; it may be with harm and death; but it always
forwards on a path of survival, wellbeing, and restorative livelihood.
We live in a processed based world. A world God inhabits and has
given His essence too. Not only by His design but created from God's Essence.
Which is why creation is always moving forwards restlessly, generatively. And as it moves forward it
restores, it creates opportunities for goodness and wellbeing, it seeks for peace, harmony, and balance. Evolution in its essence is a process filled with God
Himself. Its nature can be fierce and wonderful, unique and uniquely in motion,
resplendent and dangerous, in the exercise of its God-given freedom.
Saying this means for me that those oral transcribers who wrote
down the legends of the bible had their own beliefs and societal standards even
as the oral histories of the originators had their own beliefs and cultural
worldviews. But being time-bound, whether Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Judges,
Kings, and Prophets, or the generations after them writing and re-writing down
those stories, none of those historical events and personages could escape
their own or, their society's, evolving thoughts and ideas about God, themselves, and their
place and purpose in this life.
How Are We to Read the Bible?
Which brings me back to my burden. Is the bible written down perfectly?
Or was it meant as a starting point for communication between God and man? If
we take the "magic" out of the transmission process where traditional
systematics teach that God wrote the bible ONCE AND FOR ALL using men and women to communicate
His revealed Word, then we are left with a God using time-bound evolving
culture's to communicate an early expressive theology that ended with its expression.
An earlier theology which wasn't intended to be complete nor completed when speaking of an infinitely evolving God amid an evolving, dynamic creation. I say an "evolving" God because of His experience with an evolving creation. God's experience with creation is moment-by-moment just as creation experiences itself. And I like the word infinite in that it speaks more fully of a process-based creation, if not of God Himself as He is in eternal process with creation as its Creator.
Is it correct then to state the bible to be a record of an earlier, ancient theology serving as a means to begin collectively thinking about God and learning to listen to Him through His Spirit? If so, then the bible isn't fully as evolved in its theology as we would like to think of it as. And if not, then we must admit the bible's theology is historically bound by its theologies and philosophies of its earlier cultures.
This seems a radical proposition but perhaps we shouldn't regard the bible as the once-and-for-all definite word of God. When we have its follows have committed some very un-godlike thinking and actions in their day. A processed-based reading of the bible would regard it as a product of its times and a beginning point for discussion re ethics, morality, and even the atonement of God through Jesus.
So then, how are we to be guided by the bible if we cannot be guided by its stories and illustrations? Might I simply suggest we be guided by the Author of the bible Himself? By Jesus and His words and deeds? By the idea of God's love and what it means to be loving?
If so, then when reading of the violence of Israel towards its
neighbors in the Old Testament, or the violence at the end of the world as
perceived by five hundred years of speculative eschatologists of the time (from the third century BC to the second century AD) may not
be what God is intending. Violence is never love. And preaching a God of
violence is antithetical to God's essence (nature) as a God of love. But isn't
God a God of judgment? Hmmm, let's discuss that next....
Sin and Evil
Holding the belief that God is in control of everything may have
been how one thought of God in ancient times but after centuries and centuries
of sin and evil one can say in the affirmative that God is not in
control of everything. In the Old Testament I read again and again the
sentiment by the biblical ancients that if God is God then He is
always in control. Thinking through in the New Testament of Jesus' words
and His sentiments on this subject of God being in control we
Jesus' word to be a bit more nuanced yet those who later wrote down His words
in the early church - as well as the apostles' revelations - came back to their
own societal beliefs and restrictions claiming a controlling God.
Since the bible is a product of its historical generations I
wouldn't expect NOT to see these sentiments. It is exactly what I expect to
find - that the OT and NT are fully consistent in speaking of God as a controlling God
of historical events and coming futures. This is borne out by the biblical text
as by product of its ancient transcribers. And yet, God is not a
controlling God. Why is this? Let me suggest a couple of ideas....
Because God gave to man freewill it is implicit that with freewill
comes an undetermined future. Each are part-and-parcel of the other being
divine gifts granted creation. To say God is in "control" is not
necessarily the best word to use then - even though the sentiment wishes to
give the God of creation and of its salvation His rightful place of glory and
honor. The problem of theodicy - that is of sin and evil - in a free willed
world can be stated immediately that by its nature God cannot be
in control. We are using the wrong word to express how we think of God's
sovereignty.
Lately, the problem of theodicy is being answered in redirecting
the idea of theodicy back upon what a God of love would do when creating a free
willed creation. Originally I thought God "chose" to give man
freewill but, I've learned since then that creational freewill originated
because of God's love. Love is not a choice. In its essence divine love means
the ability to choose as well as to live in
an open, undetermined future.
ORPT
Thus, the Arminian-based (sic, Wesleyan) idea of an "Open and
Relational (Process-based) Theology" has been born to answer the problem
of theodicy. ORPT states God is fully sovereign but not in control of creation.
Rather, God is a fully-pledge participant with creation in its direction,
evolvement, and fulfillment. Though God is not in control of indeterminate,
freewill event and future, God is fully imbued within creational structures by
gifting creation with His Essence, His Spirit if you will, which flows through
all things.
That sin and evil are is because they are the other half of the
coin of goodness and love. This defines freewill. The choice between good and
evil. Creation is both a product of good and evil even as it struggles against
it to find its fulfillment in obedience and submission to its essence. That
essence being of course the essence of God. It is no mystery to see this
eternal struggle in the evolution not only of creation but in humanity's
society evolution to find goodness, beauty, and love in this world. As long as
creation exists so too will this titanic struggle continue.
Given this, when re-reading of the bible's ancient cultural
dispositions we see that earlier generations really had a difficult time in
describing how God is God and yet not in control of everything. the Process philosopher
and theologian will say that this is not a problem. God is in control
but in a different kind of way. God's control is one which releases creation
to become what it was made to become. Who empowers creation to
overcome sin and evil? To become that which is kind and loving, good and holy.
God doesn't "force" a free willed creation to become this, God
"assists" a free willed creation in becoming what it was made for;
that is, for unbounded fellowship with itself and with its God.
Again, finding these sentiments in the bible can be found, it’s
just that those oral legends and transcribed records believed in theological
ideas of a "controlling God". The ancients did not have the
many-centuries "backwards" look we have today of wars, revolution,
societal experiments, enlightenment, dis-enlightenment, and so forth. Our backwards
look gives us the advantage to speak of God in a different way than earlier,
evolving generations were able to think of God. But again, in a process world,
nothing is static, not even our beliefs.
Conclusion
Is it fully allowable then that God may be perceived as speaking
to us through our own generations, commentaries, and preaching? Sure, why not?
God is always communication to creation. To the trees, rocks, wind, earth,
moon, and stars. Why not then mankind?
How God spoke and was perceived by the ancients is no less
different in our generations today. God's bible is in the people who speak for
God, who disagree with heretical church sentiments and beliefs, who write, who
author, who reflect philosophically on God and consider what our scientific and academic
discoveries are telling us about God today.
I would fully expect an "incomprehensible" God to be an
evolving story of "comprehensibility." That is, God began with
ancient primal man in his thoughts who thought "just maybe, there was a God, perhaps a
God beyond all other Gods" (read James A. Michener's book, The
Source). From there, the "story of God" has been evolving... even
unto this day.
All that can be said of a God of love and salvation can never be
said in several generations, not even across many generations. The Story of God is an
evolving story of enlargement, beauty, holism, and grandness. I, for one, am
not surprised that what I thought I knew about God continues to surprise me.
Surprise me in that God continues to become larger than the God I thought I
knew and been taught to know by wise and holy men and women.
The bible of common men and women was becoming a collection of narratives of holy-and-unholy men-and-women learning who God is in their lives. (1) This God is always in
the state of revealing Himself beyond our imaginations. (2) That the bible is a product
of its times, albeit many, many centuries earlier. But (3) when its stories ended its
lessons did not. The bible is being written and re-written by the philosophers
and theologians of every century. Its lessons are being written upon our heart
by the Spirit of God breathing into our imaginations what a God of love means
to the generations of today.
This God of the bible is not static. God is a "living, breathing, relational cosmic entity" who wishes to be in a living relationship with us as we face an open future of good and bad.
Our story is God's story even as God's story can be our story. The Spirit presence and relationship we have with the divine is manifold: From a simple walk on the beach to a walk on the moon; from beholding the wonder of our firstborn to the wonder we find in the books of the academics; from sliding into Homeplate without a prayer of a chance of making it, to looking up at the twinkling stars far above.
The Wonder of God is everywhere, and we shouldn't be surprised not
to hear His Voice upon the deeps of heavy hearts awashed the sins and
evils of the day. A God who speaks against the unfairness and injustice of society being committed towards each other. Who speaks through its newspapers, through podcasts, even through social media, challenging hearts, motives, and purposes.
The bible is being rewritten afresh upon the hearts of God's people speaking
out against the ill we are doing to God's Self, His love, His salvation, to one another, and to His creation.
The bible is every bit of our experience today even as God was back then in the ancient's lives. We may think of the bible as a one-time revelation - or as a series of one-time revelations - but what if it was marking the "officious" beginning of God speaking to mankind all the time, in every way possible?
What if the bible is not a dead thing but an expanding compendium reaching beyond old, dead-and-gone, cultural thinking of God, to the best of humanity's thoughts, discoveries, and deeds of God? That instead of thinking of the bible in literal ways as a collection of stories time-bound and time-dated in its theologies, that instead we might consider the bible's lessons as the first steps of humanity towards understanding and developing Christ-centered theologies emphasizing God's love and His work of redemption throughout the concourses of humanity's livelihoods?
God has not ceased speaking. God is speaking everywhere and in every way. Through every culture, every generation, and every soul burdened to resist evil and speak for right and truth. Do not think only one agency, the church, may speak for God. When such agencies lose their way, God finds the rocks of this world to speak out His Word like the turbulent winds sent across the treetops. Words of weight and infinite wisdom.
God raises up babies from carpenter's cradles to challenge the establishment. From raises up the cries of the Church Fathers, the burdens of missionaries, revolutionaries, scientists, novelists, poets, and orators. God raises up the children of the next generation to re-right the lostness of their parent's generations. To stand against unrighteousness and war. To seek revolutionary ways to not lose this earth to the plagues we have unleashed upon it. God's prophets and disciples of this world is the now generation willing to envision a God who is beyond our imaginations. A God whose mystery continues to amaze us as we study His heavens, His creation, one another, and the wisdom of the ages.
Be amazed. God speaks today!
R.E. Slater
October 21, 2020
