Editing the Bible
A guy at my church asked me a great question about the Bible the other day, and I answered him in an extensive, drawn out type answer that took a while to research. In the midst of my research on the question, I found this article by NT Wright, who, in my humble opinion is the man, and at the same time is not trying to be the man. In the aforelinked article, Wright asserts:
“The Christian Bible we know is a quite astonishingly complete story, from Chaos to Order, from first creation to new creation, from the Garden to the City, from covenant to renewed covenant, and all fitting together in a way that none of the authors can have seen but which we, standing back from the finished product, can only marvel at.”
This is a great article and worthy of your reading time, but something that stuck out to me – a question I would like to raise – is this: Do we do Scripture injustice by giving “new believers” excerpts of Scripture, specifically John and Romans, in an effort to teach them a specific theology bent relevant to these two books?
I mean, in one sense, I understand that all Scripture is powerful, in that it is inspired by God, and so excerpts are fine, no matter what books of the Bible they carry. But that’s not why we offer up those two books as relevant to those who are “new to the faith”, is it? We want them to read those two books because we want them to believe what we believe – I think – about the Bible, and our thought is that if they read those two books first, what we believe will come easier to them.
I’m not a legalist about this thought, in fact, it’s just a thought. But I wonder if we take the appropriate story out of the Bible when we hand someone an excerpt of Scripture, and say, “Here you go. You don’t need to know why you need salvation, redemption, and the like. You just need to know that you do. So get in the Christian line, sis (or bro, if she is a he).
Right now I’ve just finished Deutoronomy, and am reading Isaiah and Hebrews, and the light bulb just kind of clicked on today reading each of these books, that I wonder if people are missing out on the full experience at first because the meat is so important that we forget the forks and diningware, not to mention the appetizers?
It’s just a thought, but I’d like to hear yours.
Related posts:
I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around a thought… Or maybe trying to wrap a thought around my brain.
The question is this:
Is it the orthodox position to suggest that every passage of scripture is self-sufficient and complete unto itself?
I think you’d have to be pretty extreme to believe that idea. It’s one thing to say that excerts are fine. It’s quite another to say that every exert has all that we need.
In fact, if somebody did believe that, I’d have to ask them why they’d even want to both with the whole bible. If you can get it all from one book, or one chapter, or one verse, it’d certainly be easier to meditate on that one chunk than to grapple with the whole of God’s word.
It seems inescapable: the idea that cherry picking our favorite books will give a perverted picture of who God is. I suppose people have to start somewhere. And it seems reasonable that the same few books might be relevant to most new believers.
It seems crucial to check our motives about this, though. It’s a great question: Do we pick these books because they confirm the theology we already have.
Of course, if our perspective is perverted as a result of an unhealthy emphasis on these books at the expense of other books, the blind are quite literally leading the blind.
I suppose we all ought to pray that The Holy Spirit guide us into truth. We sure aren’t going to find it on our own.
So I’m curious about the question that kicked this whole research off.
Marty, I think you’re right. I think part of why Jesus has always been a live entity to me (well, He IS one, but not everyone senses that or something, I think) is because I spent much of my early childhood on a diet of the Old Testament. (This might also be why I didn’t consciously have an iota of an understanding of what grace was until sometime in London, but that’s another story for another time.)
Something I’m struggling with right now, in my expanded CE Director position at church, is how to present the full Christian story, from the Bible, to seekers or young Christians, without its initially taking forever. I mean, the discipleship process is a lifelong thing, of course, but in a set small-group Bible study, people are going to lose attention if you go chapter by chapter from Genesis to Revelation. (I think that might be another reason why people pinpoint John and Romans–it’s quicker.)
Any suggestions?
Do we spend enough time finding ways to give people the big picture? What if the time and energy we spent pouring through book after book, memorizing verses and what not, what if we took some of that time, away from the primary sources and spent it on things that give us the big picture?
I’m almost supressing a gasp as I write that– I’m even scandalizing myself.
But it seems like we take five hours to read and study Exodus. Or we could get the lion share of it through watching that animated “Prince of Egypt” movie. We could read the whole of book of Exodus and then read the whole of Revelations, which would make our brains hurt and take weeks, or we could watch that Nooma about the two trees in ten minutes and walk away with some important aspects of these.
I’m not saying we should stop new believers from reading the bible itself. But we’re so blessed to live in age when there are so many amazing resources available. We should certainly be discerning in what we choose. But it seems like we want people to use a microscope to analyze God’s word in tiny details when it’s equally important to give them a telescope to see the grand, vast, picture.
Maybe part of the challenge is if we’re going to equip new believers with a wide view of how scriptures fit together we must possess such a view ourselves. And this is actually quite an intimidating thing to put on the line. Because nobody can critique us or disagree with us if we’re teaching what’s in black and white within an individual chapter or book. Once we start drawing connections, reading between the lines, and emphasizing context, though, people can attack us and complain and cause division…
Jeff wrote: “I’m not saying we should stop new believers from reading the bible itself. But we’re so blessed to live in age when there are so many amazing resources available. We should certainly be discerning in what we choose. But it seems like we want people to use a microscope to analyze God’s word in tiny details when it’s equally important to give them a telescope to see the grand, vast, picture.”
It is precisely this mistaken attitude about the technical “resources” available to us that has changed Christianity from a living faith and close walk with the Lord to a kind of participatory movie about such a faith and walk. We have become detached from the Word of God like a doomed fetus becomes detached from the uterus and then dies, which the mother may not discover for days, but which can kill her as well if it is not discovered in time. That mother is the Church, that fetus is the believers who do not live in the Word but only “watch a movie” about it and think they’ve “got it.”
To live in the Word of God is to make the holy and God-breathed scriptures, the bible, our daily bread, our constant companion, our very home. This means never being without it, physically, when possible, even if it’s only a slim New Testament and Psalms tucked into a pocket. This means rising in the morning with the Word on our lips, praying and thanking the Lord in the words of psalms and prophecies, not just five times a day as Muslims do, but all through the day (and night). It means turning not to vain and sometimes vile entertainments (making excuses for the profanity in them), but turning to the bible for refreshment, for relaxation, for recreation. No, you can play sports, go on hikes, collect stamps, read novels, write poetry, play the guitar, have an electric train set, or even a speedboat, but what’s on your mind, really. I am not different from the rest. I often have to yank my attention back to where it belongs, visit the mansion that Christ my Lord and Saviour has prepared for me in His Father’s house. What? You thought He was talking about the heavenly mansion? Well, yes, of course, that one too. But the study of and meditation on the inspired words of the divine and holy scriptures, that is like a foyer leading into the heavenly mansion, and a foyer is part of the house itself.
Paradox upon paradox, that the churches that claim most strongly to be centered on the bible have the most trouble cleaving to it, but find ever more numerous by-paths and supposed short-cuts to keep them off the One True Highway to Heaven—the Word of God. Who is Max Lucado? A better question is, why is Max Lucado? And why all these dozens of “Christian” authors and their books. Isn’t the Word of God in the form of the bible enough for us? Isn’t the Holy Spirit here with us to help us understand it? But how can we hope to be disciples of the Lord, if we do not stay constantly at His side? And how do we do this? By “never letting the sacred volume out of our hand” as Jerome says.
Instead of expanding your facilities and upgrading your film stash and other technological enhancements, get back to the bible, teaching it, studying it, learning it by heart, worshipping with it, praying it, prophesying with it, evangelizing with it, healing with it, feeding on it and living in it. There is no other divine scripture on earth, no other literature whose sum is greater than the total of its parts, no other book so alive that it doesn’t need to be enhanced with movies and computer games. And we think that we can do better than the living God who provided this crown for us?
So, this blog post inspired a post on my blog. My blog post lead to a comment from an interesting guy from the Orthodox… persuasion? bent? orientation… At any rate, at his blog, (costofdiscipleship.blogspot.com) he developed this comment into a post of its own. Here’s the comment, in it’s entirety:
First of all, the bible is not technically God’s Word. Christ, the Divine Logos, is God’s Word. That’s what Logos means, as everyone knows.
Second, the bible is the written icon (or image) of the Word of God. It no more fell out of the sky from God’s lips than did Jesus. Jesus had to be born into the human world as a man through a woman’s body. The bible had to enter the human mind as a body of literature written by a multitude of seers. You already know this too. I’m just organizing the thoughts.
Third, every limitation voluntarily accepted by the Christ when He incarnated as a man is applicable in its own frame of reference to the written icon of the Word of God. Both suffer a diminution or reduction in the process of being translated from heaven to earth. In neither case does this veiling of glory diminish or dilute the absolute Truth of the Word of God in any way.
Fourth, the bible is infallible in its unity and infallible in its parts, but the application of this infallibility always depends on the intervention of the Holy Spirit, who alone knows how, when and where to apply it. Without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, the bible cannot be known as infallible, indeed cannot be known at all for what it is. A medicine may be infallibly effective, but if it is not applied or ingested in the right way, at the right time, and in the right place, it can have even the opposite effect, possibly becoming lethal. Only the physician knows how to apply it in every case.
At this point, we introduce the concept of the use of proof texts and the like, which can be applied in sometimes disastrous ways by persons who have not ingested the whole of scripture by constantly and daily feeding upon it without mixing it, but who rather begin to teach their partial understandings (some of which may be wholly true, others wholly false) without being first built upon the sure foundation of faith. It is not how educated and learned one is that qualifies one for understanding and interpreting the written icon of the Word, nor is chronological age a criterion. Spiritual maturity rather than chronological age, practical application, even incarnation, of the scripture’s tenets rather than academic prowess or a prodigious memory, these are what put a man in the place where the Word of God can employ him as an agent of divine Truth.
Remember who the Word of God is, and do not trifle with the arguing spirits. Rather apply yourself to knowing and living the Word, who is alive and active, and in so doing demonstrate on the battlefield of your own body the victory of Christ, who is Truth come unto His own in you, and by thus receiving Him, receive also the power to become the son or daughter of the Most High.
Hey Jeff et al., certainly hope posting on this blog doesn’t get me into trouble, because that happens to me some times. It was no surprise to find myself described as “an interesting guy from the Orthodox… persuasion? bent? orientation…” For some reason, evangelical bloggers have a hard time putting a tag on me, and people like me. On one brother’s blog, there’s a link to mine, Cost of Discipleship, which he calls “an Orthodox twist” (http://zealousconvert.blogspot.com/). I suppose he means that I put an Orthodox twist on things, I would say an Orthodox spin, if I could think at all.
Imagine this. It’s evening towards sunset. We are standing in a large empty hall with log walls , facing east with an open west facing door, through which reddening sunlight is quietly pouring
… and a cool breeze is gently wafting in through some open leaded glass windows on the north wall. Under our feet are oriental rugs, here and there are what looks like little pulpits or pedestals, each topped with a slanted, glass-covered painting. People are moving about, coming in through that sunlit doorway, bowing to each other and then going over and kissing the pictures. Soft a capella singing has started, and as the sun slowing sinks, it darkens inside the hall. People start lighting small thin candles and holding them while they sing. A strange and purply smell assaults our noses, while our ears now hear a jingling of small bells. More people are filling the hall gradually, moving about, praying and sometimes hugging and kissing some of the people that they meet. Finally, darkness falls, and the hall is lit by dozens of those small candles. Another sound is heard, the croaking of frogs joins the slow melodious chanting of psalms back and forth between the women and the men, who we now notice are standing on opposite halves of the hall. This goes on for some 90 minutes or more. Then, suddenly, the singing stops, and people begin breaking up into small groups, some sitting on benches that line the walls, some leaving and going outside. We join the latter group. There’s more benches outside on a large porch and in front of the entrance to the hall, which we now see has a pond along side it. So that’s where the frog sounds were coming from! We walk slowly and talk among ourselves quietly, as we pass the pond and a grove of trees on the way to our car, to eventually return home.
What am I describing? This is what we call “church”. This is the Orthodox church. It’s not a persuasion, not a bent, not even an orientation, and certainly not a twist. Some people like to call it a tradition, but no, it’s not merely that. It is simply the Church. Anything else you call it, even “Orthodox,” is only a name. Yes, brothers, that is where I come from.