Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Study Method

  • Inconvenient Passages Flowchart – Funny!

    … on Exploring Our Matrix.

  • Reading the Bible Frequently and Thoroughly

    I love it when someone famous says all the things I like to hear about Bible study. One thing I regularly say to Sunday School classes or to groups I’m invited to teach is that if they were looking for a five minute a day method, they invited the wrong person. It takes more than that to become acquainted with that.

    I found this video by N. T. Wright via RJS on The Jesus Creed. It’s excellent:

     

    Some of my notes include the lines:

    Read it frequently and thoroughly …

    We have cut the Bible down to size (referring to our methods of looking at short passages and dissecting them)

    Listen in order to be swept along … (using listening to a symphony as an analogy to reading the Bible)

    Until we wrestle with scripture like that we’re not honoring it.

    The additional comments in the post regarding the doctrine of scripture to “… hold loosely to our particular theological commitments and our doctrine of scripture.” I would probably be more likely to say to loosen our doctrine of scripture, than to hold our doctrine loosely, though both options head in the right direction.

    In my book When People Speak for God, I put it this way (pp. 13-15):

    Typically, Christians have found proof texts in scriptures that make comments about inspiration. “All scripture is inspired (or God-breathed) . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). “No prophecy of the scripture came by human will . . .” (2 Peter 1:21). These texts are not only used to prove the inspiration of scriptures, ignoring the circularity of using a Bible verse to prove that the Bible is inspired, but they also provide the foundation for an  understanding of how inspiration worked. I most commonly hear 2 Timothy 3:16 quoted in this connection. I ask someone what inspiration means. “All scripture is  God-breathed,” comes back the answer. “God-breathed” is supposed to be obvious, but somehow the passage doesn’t enlighten us as to what God breathes and how. Another answer, that prophets speak as they are carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), doesn’t really answer the question either.

    The process of inspiration is important not only in terms of how we understand God to behave in connection with people, but also in telling us what we would expect to result. For example, those who believe that God dictates the precise words that a prophet or other inspired writer puts on paper must in turn believe that those words, and not just the message they express, are important, and that they must always be the best words for the  purpose. On the other hand, someone who believes that people receive impressions from God and then express them in human words will place a greater emphasis on the human side of the equation. The message is important, and it may be illuminated by knowing the person who speaks along with his or her cultural background and spiritual experience.

    As the author of Hebrews expressed it:

    1In  old times God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets in many portions and in different ways. 2In these last days, however, he has spoken to us through a Son, one whom he has made heir of everything, and through whom also he created the universe.  3This Son is the brightness of his glory and the exact representation of his real essence. He sustains everything by his powerful word. He performed a cleansing from sins and sat down at the right hand of majesty in the {spiritual/heavenly} heights. — Hebrews 1:1-3

    God’s message came at different times and in different ways, a process that the author of Hebrews states culminated in God’s message coming through a person, Jesus. In Hebrews 4:12 he continues by calling the Word “alive and active” again referring to the Word of God as portrayed in Jesus. Those who place a heavy emphasis on the words, rather than the message, should give serious consideration to the view of revelation expressed in the book of Hebrews. According to this one scriptural author, whom most scholars leave unidentified, inspiration doesn’t always work the same way.

    I would suggest that instead of looking for statements about how inspiration works in the scriptures, we should look at the scriptures themselves. There is no good reason to assume that those who experienced inspiration would also feel it necessary to define it. In fact, when we look at the scriptures we see no real effort to provide us with a theory of inspiration. There were simply people who claimed that they had a message from God, and they expressed it with some force under their various circumstances.

    Reading the Bible as a whole, or reading whole books (Wright suggests the Gospel of John, which should only take a couple of hours), will help you see inspiration in action. Then perhaps, rather than deciding on a theory of inspiration and trying to make the Bible fit, you can see how the Bible was inspired, i.e. inspiration in action, and form from that your understanding of inspiration.

    (I do some commercials on resources from my company here.)

  • Quote of the Day: God’s Word and Our Words

    Creation: The Christian DoctrineI’m working on editing Creation: the Christian Doctrine by Edward W. H. Vick. It’s quite an enjoyable task. I regularly learn new things while reading Dr. Vick’s work. In this case he’s talking about knowledge of God. He has already contrasted this with knowledge of the natural universe. We, as finite creatures, cannot by normal means understand the transcendent. Only as God acts and reveals himself can we attain such knowledge.

    It is because God has expressed himself and continues to express himself that God is known. A clear distinction is to be made between the divine reality, the form by which God is expressed, and the knowledge human beings acquire of him.

    …

    So we, the human creatures, cannot by observation, sensation
    and deduction, arrive at a knowledge of God. We use such methods in our successful search for knowledge within the cosmos, but they are not the ways that we can come to a knowledge of God. But as God reveals himself and the Word is grasped, the human can understand the expression by which the revelation is made possible and expressed. We never transcend the limitations of our language, even in speaking of the revealing act of God. We are creatures and our language is anthropomorphic. But that does not mean that there are not poorer and better ways of using our language! The very use of language should remind us that God is transcendent.
    He is Creator. We are creatures. Without the Word, we would know nothing of the transcendent God.

    (Creation: The Christian Doctrine, pp. 54-55, forthcoming from Energion Publications.)

    Vick develops these ideas further in his earlier books History and Christian Faith (distributed by Energion) and From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully.

  • Michael Bird on Studying the Gospels

    Michael Bird has a really excellent post on critical and faithful study of the gospels. I’m not going to extract from it, though my hat tip goes to Darrell Pursiful who extracted an excellent quote.

    I was reminded of a book my company published recently, From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully. I haven’t had time to write the “reflections” post I usually write regarding each book I publish, but some of those reflections would surely reflect the attitudes that Bird expresses.

  • March Abnormally Interesting Biblical Studies Carnival Posted

    … at — you guessed it — Abnormal Interests!

  • Would This Be Bibliolatry?

    Red Letter Christians has a post titled “Is This Any Way to Treat a Bible?” which tells how a high school teacher, on seeing a student’s heavily marked Bible, held it up to the class and asked that question. The article that follows is excellent.

    I would think a more relevant question would be “Is that any way to treat a student?”

    But that aside, I would certainly attract the wrath (and sarcasm) of this teacher. My Greek New Testament is heavily marked, and it’s the replacement for one that I used until it fell apart. I collect Bible editions and many of them have such markings, though none so many as the Greek and Hebrew Bibles I carry with me.

    More importantly, I think this displays an inappropriate emphasis on the form. The book is holy as an object, not because of its contents. The marking shows a deep interest in the contents, but the teacher misses that point, and sees only the “desecration” of the object.

    Idolatry? Probably too strong a word, but it unfortunately points in that direction.

     

  • Biblical vs. Unbiblical

    Morgan Guyton has a very strong (and, in my view, entirely justified) reaction to the abuse of the term “biblical.”

    … In how many other “Bible” churches out there has “Biblical” become a code-word for an ideological platform that serves a purpose completely foreign to God’s mission but cherry-picks verses out of the Biblical text to justify itself?

    Good question! (Of course, his question follows an example.)

    Nonetheless I want to sound another warning: Let’s watch out about the abuse of the word “unbiblical” as well.

    Declaring something unbiblical also requires a view on what the Bible does and does not require, but instead of declaring a particular view in bounds, it declares it out of bounds. It can be abused in the same way. The word “biblical” is a positive adjective which tends to lead people to accept a statement, even if it has no biblical warrant. “Unbiblical” is a negative adjective (in most churches) which tends to make people reject an idea, even without biblical warrant.

    So am I saying one can never use the adjective “biblical?” No. What I am suggesting is that many of us use it, and its opposite, too much. We use it as a sort of shorthand for “you ought to believe this” (or not), rather than as a statement backed by the appropriate study and research.

    Instead, I suggest that we skip the adjective and do the work. If you provide a sound backing from the Bible, appropriately interpreted, for what you say, others can apply the adjective “biblical” to it. If not, well, not so much!

  • Ken Schenck on Women in Ministry

    Ken Schenck outlines his reasons for supporting complete equality in ministry, and he even uses the t-word — trajectory, as I did in my previous post. The arguments are related to those used by Kubo, but Schenck goes into some detail on the specific texts rather than just laying out the approach.

    I think all of the referenced posts illustrate the importance of going over our hermeneutics at the beginning of a discussion like this. Too often we shoot past one another because while we’re reading the same texts, we’re using a different method of interpretation. And the most varied aspect of interpretation is the way in which a text is applied to the interpreter’s context.

     

     

  • Alan Brill Interviews David M. Carr

    … and a mighty interesting interview it is, including discussion of how authors, readers, and texts were understood in the ancient world.

  • Connecting the Scriptural Dots – From Then to Then … to Now

    When it came time for third year Greek at Walla Walla College (now University), I had Dr. Sakae Kubo, who had just become dean of the School of Theology. Taking a Greek class with Dr. Kubo was an experience. I credit him with bringing my Greek to the level that allowed it to stick with me. He gave me a workout!

    Recently he wrote two articles for Spectrum, the first Slavery, Circumcision, and the Subordinate Role of Women (Nov.  21, 2011) and second Jesus, Galileo, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Dec. 19, 2011). The Seventh-day Adventist Church is going through a great deal of controversy right now over the ordination of women. Right now they have women as “commissioned” ministers. In local churches in North America and Europe, these ministers perform the same function as ordained ministers, just under another name. One of the key questions of the moment is whether women can be conference presidents, which would place them in a position similar to that of Bishop in the United Methodist Church.

    Kubo’s basic argument is that in the case of circumcision we see a change in right and wrong within scripture itself. At one time circumcision is commanded, and then at another that command is set aside and membership in God’s people is determined by a different means. He notes as well that the new means, faith in Christ, is no longer male-centered as was circumcision. In the case of slavery, we came to understand that slavery was wrong at a much later date, but nonetheless a change was made.

    He extends this argument to dealing with the subordinate role of women, and thus to ordination and to eligibility for other offices in the church. (This is a very abbreviated form of the argument. You should read both articles linked before commenting on Kubo’s position.)

    Now this is not a complete argument for the ordination of women. One could (and should) discuss some specific texts as well. But what Kubo has done is provide a framework for the egalitarian argument. This is not how it is often done, but I think it is a more robust approach. It is similar to arguments I made earlier regarding trajectories in Scripture.

    That is why I used “then to then” in the title before “to now.” We often do biblical interpretation in a simple progression of discovering what the Bible writer was saying to people then, determining from that eternal principles, and then applying those principles to a modern situation. This is similar to the nutshell process illustrated given by Michael Patton on his blog.

    That approach is generally quite useful, but we also need to recognize that there is more than one “then” involved generally before we get to a good general principle. And if we look at multiple points of “then,” such as statements regarding vengeance that I referenced in my trajectories post, then we may find that the eternal principles are somewhat different than what we would get if we took just one passage and went from the “then” statement through theology to the “now” statement.

    Now many egalitarians make their argument almost exclusively with the very same exegetical methods as complementarians, which sometimes results in some odd readings of the various texts. I would argue that the key here is in the hermeneutics, and particularly in the way we get at the principles and apply them to modern times. It is much easier, though not necessarily simple, to discover what a passage meant to the original hearers/readers.

    I believe that Kubo’s method allows one to both be very faithful to what the text said originally, while also being flexible enough to apply the principles to modern times in a valid way.

    But why do we need flexibility? The accusation is generally that those who are more liberal in their interpretation are flexible in order to avoid the plain commands of Scripture. I would say instead that the flexibility is required so that we can be faithful to the broadest (and I think clearest) principles of Scripture. I see a very clear effort to move people from one set of practices to another in many areas. Galatians 3:28 provides a template for this, I believe.

    But in addition, I think we often ignore the story (or stories) of Scripture, and the fact that what is practiced is not what we think the authors are preaching. I think the evidence of women in leadership in the early church needs to be laid alongside our understanding of specific commands. Which should have priority? Perhaps if we follow the trajectory, neither. Both can have their place.