The Bible in Context
Relevance or Irrelevance?* by Geoff RyanA
while back I was preaching at my small inner-city church on the lost sheep. I was in the middle of a fairly convoluted background explanation about sheep and their characteristics when my mind split and started running on parallel tracks. Half of my thoughts remained focused on continuing through the sermon. The other half started wondering why on earth I was attempting to explain sheep, shepherding and other specifics of a middle-eastern, agrarian society to a congregation of 21st century, inner-city dwellers. Was all this necessary in order to make my point about getting lost and being found?
Once at a prayer meeting I was attending, the leader asked us to read through a passage of Scripture from Revelation 7:9-12 and then share our thoughts with each other before heading out to pray in the community. My mind split again. As half of me was listening intently to the earnest (and rather speculative, I thought) exegesis of the people around me, the other half was thinking that try as I might, I just could not relate to what was being described. I’m of the cusp-of-the-baby-boom generation and a member of a Western liberal- democracy. I live in the 21st century. What the apostle John was describing was something far removed from anything that I was ever likely to experience apart from on a movie screen. The only people I know who do the face-down, prostrate obeisance thing (toward God) are some of my more charismatic friends. This is not a form of deference that I am accustomed to, nor do I really understand it. Like the sheep in Christ’s parable, it was a word picture that I have no frame of reference for. I’m sure it meant a lot to John’s intended audience as they resisted the demands of Roman emperor worship, but I had a hard time placing myself in this scenario.
I am not one to go overboard in the pursuit of relevance and I definitely think that it can be overdone. Relating to culture and cultural trends is necessary for getting our message across and connecting with people. However, the tension between striving for relevance (being understood) and the call to be counter-cultural (being prophetic) is always present and perhaps, cannot ultimately be resolved. It just may be that one person’s allegory is another person’s temptation.
The spin that Christians (and we evangelicals can be the worst at this) can put on the Scriptures when preaching and praying often leaves me wondering just how the Bible should be used. How does one “rightly divide the word of truth.”
On one hand are extreme conservatives who seem to believe that Jesus spoke King James English and that no other translation of the Bible is valid. Literalism is taken to new heights with claims of inerrancy that carry more than a whiff of the “papal infallibility” argument (pre-Vatican II). The Bible is elevated to a status beyond its function as a revelation of God, into a form of god itself - bibliolatry.
On the opposing side are the liberals, who, like our very own United Church of Canada, effectively threw the Bible sometime in the late 1960s in order to embrace relevance with an embarrassing eagerness. They have been floundering ever since, “carried about with every wind of doctrine”, the apostle Paul would have said. “Theological boneless chickens”, the author Northrup Frye actually did say.
There must be a middle ground between these two, neither of which are very appealing options. The Bible is, after all…the Bible. My own denomination’s first doctrine in our statement of belief says: “We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice”. But do we really believe it in practice? Like everyone else we mix in experience, tradition, reason and culture (“The Wesleyan Quadrilateral”). Maybe this is the crux of the matter, namely the percentages of this mix. After all, as sacred a text as the Bible is, at the end of the day it is valuable only in so far as it reveals the living God. It is a means to an end.
In this area, as with most other things in life, I guess context is everything. The Bible was written in context. It contains timeless principles and is the Word of God, but it was also written in specific historical time-space constructs with immediate application to those particular cultures and contexts. How do we contextualize the Bible without simply defaulting to Hollywood screenwriters, allowing film clips to explain everything (youth pastors) or filtering things through a popular translation such as “The Message” (“give us our three square meals a day”).
How do we engage with the Scripture in such a way that it connects with our present reality, without letting that present reality set the agenda?
The “small inner-city church” Geoff and his wife Sandra founded and minister to, Corps 614 Regent Park in downtown Toronto, is no longer small and is was the first of a series of church plantings now known as the 614 network (http://www.614network.com/), throughout which Isaiah 61:4 continues to be durably inspiring.
NOTES *Originally published in ChristianWeek Magazine, as part of the Iona Diaries series.
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The latest edition of the Practical Theologian has an article on just this subject, particularly as it relates to the OT. The author Terry Gray, suggests that effective biblical preaching happens when we allow the alien world of the text to intersect with ours. We must do this in such a way that that the voices of the text are released to speak with power to our stories. This requires usrecognising that the word of the Lord is always historically located. If we allow these ancient voices to truly tell their own story (without imposing ours on them) we create a resonant space were God himself can speak to us. Even through a story about sheep and shepherds. (It’ll just require a lot of explanation and analogy since most of us rarely hang out with sheep).
That is why bible studies led by the confident but biblically illiterate must be balanced by story-telling preaching (as opposed to dogmatic, propositional) that has wrestled with the God stories of scripture in their own context. We must stop using the OT in particular as promise box of proof texts for whatever theological absurdity takes our fancy. God did not say to every Christian “I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you”. I know this because a lot of them have died.
Twelve years ago next month, I asked God to take control of my life, and ever since, I have been trying to read the Bible and rightly understand its teaching. I wished I knew how many times I have gone back and forth as to where I stood on several issues.
The number of contexts that must be key simply boggles my mind: historical context, regional context, purpose of writing, issues addressed where we have the answer but no question, author’s intention, author’s communication of God’s intention, original lauguage, meaning of words in teh context of usage which can make an exhaustive concordance useless.
And then there is Deuteronomy. How many times have preachers stepped into the puplpit after exhaustive study only to wonder of they have it right as they try to apply it to the lives of the believers they are ministering to.
I have to trust God to guide me unto all truth, becuase if it were up to me, it would be a problem a paragraph.
And then there are all of the sermons which are overly spiritualized and forced to communicate application that the text never suggested or intimated.
Wrote alot. but my one response in reading this was, “Hmm.”
The more I go on, the more i am convinced that certain forms of literary theory can open up many doors for biblical exegetes. I find that much fruit comes of taking a biblical book as a whole and applying to it a few key literary questions. Students of literature have long been taught to interrogate authorial intent, overarching themes, and the _how_ of message-making in order to better understand the _what_ of the message. Perhaps once we’ve taken a closer look at how a message is being conveyed in a biblical text - what literary tools the writer is employing in order to develop a theme/argument- we become better equipped to combat fundamentalist interpretations that ignore the actual function of hyperbole, metaphor, and other such poetic license.
It is erroneous to assume that just because our inspired OT and NT writers were premoderns, they had no sense of the writer’s craft. Indeed the literary sophistication of the OT and NT’s intricate allusions and appeals to collective historical motifs and metaphors has kept scholars in the Eng Lit departments in awe of the biblical texts for decades, Northrup Frye being an excellent example. I would argue that God is a Master Author and, when I read the Bible with a “big picture view,” I see His recurring themes of love, forgiveness, joy and hope woven throughout. These trump any narrow isogetical or extreme fundamentalist interpretations of individual passages.
I would also submit that, in addition to scholarly biblical literateness, a sense of honesty is needed as we interpret the Scriptures. By this, I mean quite simply honesty about our confusion. I fear we’ve set up our pastors and priests as authorities who are called upon to give ready -and easy- answers each week at the pulpit. I liked Geoff’s reminder of the wisdom inherent in the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” I believe that in order to hold all four of these elements -experience, tradition, reason, and culture- (think about the significance of each!) in any sort of tension, a person needs to cultivate real authenticity in their contemplative practices - in the nagging questions and yes, even fears. And I believe that we need to take the emphasis in Chrisitanity off of a triumphalistic “we have the answers” approach to a “we are searching and wrestling in all honesty” approach. And this must be done both as individuals and as a community. And this must be done with the framing guides of faith, hope and love. Without these the wresting becomes an anxiety-ridden and fearful exercise…
As the last respondant noted, it is extremely difficult to make sense of some biblical passages - and even more so to trick a sermon out of them. I am always reminded of the strange OT story of Jacob wrestling with God/an angel. I often read that passage (out of context!!) as a metaphor for wrestling with God over the “big questions.” There are some verses in the Bible that I simply wish weren’t there. But I will wrestle with God over them. And I am not afraid of being honest with myself and with God about these questions. I take Jesus at His (W)word when he says “seek and you will find” - although perhaps “finding” isn’t always putting things into words; instead of expressing logos it is knowing/loving logos. Some days wrestling is the only honest way of seeking…
Geoff
Forgive me if I sound like I’m trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but much of what I’m about to say you know – however since you’ve opened the debate…
I endorse doctrine number one but that doesn’t mean I believe that the bible is beyond contradicting itself. Truth is not absolute it varies according to context and if the bible is truth then it must be adaptable to all possible scenarios. The KJV is actually mistranslated in places the best example being Philippians 2: 6
KJV – “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God…” Wrong
NIV – “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…” Right!
This example alone must sound a caution to even the most ardent fundamentalist.
When it comes to preaching I always read from the NIV (sometimes JB Philips or the Message but usually the NIV) but I always contemporise the words and metaphors when I deliver my exposition.
Take your sheep illustration, surely all we need to do is find a modern replacement for ‘sheep’ that impacts upon our hearers in the same way the original story impacted upon those who listened to Christ. There’s no need to explain the original text as long as the truth is drawn from that text and hammered home appropriately.
Let’s not underestimate the role of the Holy Spirit. The bible was inspired when it was written and needs to be inspired when it is listened to.
It’s a problem, but no different from the problem that faced Wesley and Booth, they found a way around it and so will we.
Love and prayers A
I’m afraid it seems that though many are not buying what the enlightenment has taught us about scripture, they’re certainly wading around in its thick sludge. It’s good that they’re questioning these things and maybe what I’m going to write next will help move us along from the tired old debates and misuses of the ‘I’ words etc…
For one thing to suggest that the Bible is valuable ‘only’ as a written record of God’s ‘revelation’ falls short of the mark of what scripture has been given us for. The ‘timeless truths’ suggestion is neither a satisfying conclusion as it screens out much of the other tasks that scripture is doing.
I also have the sneaking suspicion that those who hold to the tri or quad systems or whatever may fall in to the danger of equating them as equal prongs on the fork or equal legs on the stool. We need to be clear that the Bible is the foundation, the well of fresh water that reason, tradition and even experience need to be continually saturated in, as important as they are as tools to helping us studying, wrestle with and preach these ancient texts.
I propose, based on the matrix given from certain scholars who are continuing to do so much for the ‘evangelical’ arena in Biblical Studies, is that:
1) We need to view scripture primarily as narrative, the long and winding story of God and his world
2) with a missional hermeneutic/framework that allows us to draw on this overarching narrative to help shape our mission to the world.
What’s the main narrative?
Right from the very beginning,Genesis speaks of a good God who made a good world, which despite got all cranky with its creator, remained good. It’s in this respect that instead of throwing it on the rubbish heap God calls a people to be the agents of bringing restoration and redemption to the world. The Old Testament is largely to do with this nation struggling to bear this vocation to be the light of the world as it frequently turns to idolatry and colludes with the powers of death.
The climax of this calling comes when a young Jewish prophet claims that ‘the Kingdom of God is near,’ He believes God’s saving rule is finally being brought to bear, strangely enough through his own ministry and particularly through his crucifixion and resurrection.
The resurrected Jesus is shown to be the true Lord of the world and this ‘gospel’ is the summons for all created beings to worship him thus. The great commission is for Jesus disciples to tell this good news to the world, that God’s great project of redemption and resurrection has arrived, sweeping through the world like a hurricane force, transforming people by the Holy Spirit, each disciple of Jesus playing a valuable part in bringing resurrection to this broken world.
That, my friend is what the Bible is all about. Yes it tells of God’s continuing revealing of himself, yes it tells us of the Truth, the way and the life, and yes it gives us a record of how God’s project is being brought to bear, but importantly, by interacting with these texts, we are equipped, empowered and transformed (continually) to go out to the world and get on with God’s mission.
That’s a Christianity worth dying for.