Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Study

  • What Is Biblical Literacy?

    What Is Biblical Literacy?

    Bibles on top of each other
    © Pamelajane | Dreamstime Stock Photos

    We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it?

    I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and that creates problems in communication.

    Between age10 and 14 I attended a school that was extremely serious about Bible study. We had study guides that took us through the entire text of scripture, asking questions as we went. We memorized substantial portions of scripture, such as the entire Sermon on the Mount and Psalm 119. We also memorized selections of texts on various topics, such as four texts on the Sabbath and the state of he dead. (We were SDA, so these were considered important.)

    I greatly value the knowledge I gained in this way, but when I was done, was I biblically literate?

    This depends, of course, on what one means by biblically literate. Here are some definitions I’ve heard (or experienced):

    1. A person who is acquainted with the key scriptures of his or her specific denomination or group. This type of literacy was provided for me by those “4 text” groups on particular doctrines. I could give a Bible study on any of the major Seventh-day Adventist doctrines as long as you didn’t ask me about context.
    2. One who has a general knowledge of where things are located in scripture.
    3. One who vigorously affirms a particular high view of inspiration.
    4. One who is acquainted with the various higher critical methodologies.
    5. One who knows the original languages.
    6. One who knows the related history and literature along with the Bible story.
    7. One who can place any particular story into the broader story of scripture.

    (No, I didn’t plan to make that seven. It just happened.)

    When I refer to “experiencing” a definition, I mean that I’ve seen someone tacitly dismiss someone else as knowledgeable because they lack one of these elements. I’ve encountrred this attitude about every one of these points. “If he or she doesn’t know x, the person is biblically illiterate.”

    I have encountered this with regard to creation. When someone discovers that I accept the theory of evolution, they will suggest that I am unacquainted with Genesis 1 & 2. I am very acquainted with those chapters. In fact, I had to memorize them as one of those long passages in school. Memorizing them does not mean that I will interpret them the same way others do.

    I fell into the trap myself recently. I was listening to Deanna Thompson respond to her award for book of the year from the Academy of Parish Clergy for her commentary on Deuteronomy in the Belief series. She confessed that she did not read Hebrew. My initial reaction was to think that it wasn’t really possible for someone to contribute to the interpretation of Deuteronomy (of all things!) without reading Hebrew. Yet right within her brief remarks accepting the award, she expressed some rather profound understanding. I mentally took it back and was glad I had only thought it internally.

    This experience does not make me think that learning Hebrew is unimportant. It just makes me think more carefully about what I expect. I have no problem with the value of most of these benchmarks of knowledge. I think they’re important. But what is it that I want the average person in the pew to know? What about my church leaders? Pastors (if we make a distinction)? Seminary professors?

    My own definition would be close to #7. I think hearing the overall story of scripture is critical to everything else. Fit the passage into a broad view of the whole. Of course, this type of knowledge might well look superficial to others.

    My suggestion would be simply that we pay attention to what type of biblical literacy a person has, if any. Far too many people in the church could really claim none of these elements. We should work on that. But we should also recognize other approaches and what kind of knowledge those other approaches support.

  • Eschatology: Eschatology and the Quest

    Eschatology: Eschatology and the Quest

    Some Eschatology SourcesTaken from chapter 5 of Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Edward W. H. Vick. You can find out more about this study on the Google+ Event page.

    Description:

    This study is from chapter 5 of the book Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Edward W. H. Vick. This will be some very basic background, discussing the quest for the historical Jesus and how it has impacted our understanding of Christian eschatology.

    We will also discuss (again!) the critical issue of the way in which we read and interpret scripture and how that will impact our understanding of eschatology, which draws on such a wide variety of sources.

    Or watch here:

  • Eschatology: Daniel and Revelation

    I’ve had a hard time keeping up with blogging this week. It’s a busy month. On Wednesday nights I’m teaching from Revelation for a youth group at a local church, and of course I have my Thursday night events, one of which I’m announcing here, which are a sort of spiritual discipline for me.

    I was going to try to both talk about Daniel and Revelation (in a very general way) and then go on to talk about eschatology and the quest for the historical Jesus, but I have decided not to do that and give myself a slightly more relaxed session talking about the structure and rhetoric of Daniel and Revelation. The two books are substantially different, yet they are the two acknowledged works of apocalyptic literature in the Bible, and almost any Christian discussion of eschatology touches on them at one point or another.

    Growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist meant that I repeatedly studied these books. I even took a college class titled just “Daniel and Revelation.” There was an extract of the SDA Bible Commentary combining the comments on Daniel and Revelation in one book.

    While I will be looking at these two books in particular, my study since has led me to look at a much broader range of material, from Ezekiel, to several chapters in Jeremiah, to much of the latter portion of Isaiah, and much more in the Bible, and also a considerable amount of non-biblical material. Yet these two books still tend to hold pride of place.

    Is their purpose to give us an end-times outline? If so, in what detail, and if not, what is their purpose? I’ll be discussing this on video this evening.

    Google+ Event Page

  • Eschatology: Prophecy and Apocalyptic

    I’ll be working from Chapter 4 of Dr. Edward Vick’s book Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide and looking at the nature of prophecy and the literary nature of the texts. I’ll also be looking at ways in which we interpret prophetic literature. I apologize for posting this very late. I will try to comment in writing and add some links tomorrow and Saturday.

    Google+ Event Page

  • Seven Marks: Apostolic Teaching

    Seven Marks: Apostolic Teaching

    nt church booksIn the video, Dave calls this simply “The Word of God.” I’m embedding it at the end of this post.

    9781631990465mOne of my observations in talking to people about their churches and church programs is that they find the first moment when a book or program differs from their situation and take one of two approaches. First, they might discard the entire thing. This is fairly common. That won’t work for us. It doesn’t matter that what we’re doing isn’t working either. Second, they try to follow the program precisely, despite any differences, because if it worked for the expert who wrote the book, it has to work for them.

    Neither of these is a strategy that is likely to succeed. Each person, community, church congregation, denomination (or jurisdiction within a denomination) is different. Each one will have different opportunities and perhaps a different call from God. I am passionately convinced that sharing the good news about Jesus with the world is our general calling. Whether that is going to involve a food pantry, classes, involvement in broader community outreach, collecting money for projects across the globe, or any one of a myriad of other possibilities, is wide open.

    Especially in protestantism we tend to downplay tradition, but our church tradition has a role. The way you will carry out certain missions is going to depend on the history of the church congregation. We don’t all get her in the same way, and we’re not going to move forward in the same way. Dr. Ruth Fletcher, in her book Thrive: Spiritual Habits of Transforming Congregations devotes an entire chapter to choosing, to the necessity of discerning the right path and making and carrying out decisions.

    The reason I wanted to emphasize this right now is that quite frequently we think we cannot benefit from something like “apostolic teaching” or “the Word of God” unless we absolutely agree on what it is and how we’re going to deal with it. But just amongst the books that I publish, we have Dr. David Alan Black, a Southern Baptist Greek teacher (and full-time missionary, he’d insist!) and Dr. Bruce Epperly, a United Church of Christ pastor, seminary professor, and a process theologian who are both going back to the same place: Acts of the Apostles. Now I’ll tell you that if you read both of their books, something I urge you to do for reasons beyond the fact that I publish both, you’ll find quite a number of things they disagree on and quite a number of points of different emphasis. But in a church that is often drifting and dying while repeating the same behaviors that led it to its current malaise, that one similarity is enormous. Let’s look back at the early church. Let’s ask what made Christianity what it is. Perhaps there is something there that would help us.

    Now one interpreter might be looking for a definitive, apostolic pattern to apply and follow. Another might be looking for a series of commands that one can carry out. Another might be reading the story and asking how are stories might relate. Yet certain things come out of such a study, and certain things result from going to the source.

    I’m very protestant in ethos. I’m not at all interested in things like apostolic succession, in the sense of a series of people who had hands laid on them by a person who had hands laid on them leading back to the apostles. But I’m very interested in seeing what those early apostles did. I’m very interested in connecting my story to theirs. There is nothing about that process that is mechanical or that allows me to depend totally on someone else’s work.

    Dave makes this point in the interview as he talks about us teaching one another. Why am I comparing what Dave has said with what two other authors have said? Is it so that I can sell more books? Of course I want to sell more books. I’m never going to lie to you and tell you I don’t care about selling books. But that’s not the key reason. I started publishing to do this. I wanted us to teach one another, to do on a broad scale what Dave is talking about in the local church (where I also want to see it done). I want is to help one another learn. I hope we find ourselves challenged.

    There is nowhere that I want to see this more than in our use of the Bible. How is it that we can begin to see more of this individual Bible study in the church? And let me specify here by “individual” I mean “individual in community.” Let’s avoid two serious errors: 1) That Bible study is individual without any community control or involvement, and 2) That Bible study is a communal affair that can be handled by an expert passing out information. The reason I named a series I publish “participatory” in spite of the number of people who thought that word was too long, is that it is individuals participating in community who have the best possibility to find the message for themselves, their churches, and their communities.

    Ruth Fletcher comments on this. Note how she doesn’t propose the same type of study for all types of churches.

    Even though this is an age when people care more about what the church does than what it believes, transforming congregations know they must lessen the gap between people’s experience of God and the church’s teaching about God if the church is once again to become a reliable source of wisdom. Beliefs matter. Transforming congregations that are creedal churches help individuals discover a deeper truth in the words they recite; those that are non-creedal churches create safe space where individuals can work out their own guiding beliefs. They create space within their own tradition where people have the freedom to honestly express doubts, to say what they do not believe, to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers, and to wonder about the mysteries of the universe. (Thrive, p. 91)

    Bruce Epperly has a similar idea:

    The first followers of Jesus “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” They were a church whose spirituality was truly holistic. They prayed and they studied, and discovered study was a form of prayer. We need thinking Christians, who take theological reflection seriously, who ask serious questions, and challenge unhealthy and superficial images of God and human experience. (Transforming Acts, p. 48)

    If you think the various visions are distant from one another consider this: What would happen to the church in America if we were to focus on studying the early church looking for insight into how to be a church following Jesus in the world today? I think that a number of wonderful things might happen despite how we decided to approach the question and the hermeneutical principles we took to the effort. Do I want us to debate such hermeneutical principles? Absolutely! The do make a difference. I think one of the greatest things we can do is to consider and discuss that issue seriously. But if we started at that point, we’d already be devoting ourselves, in our own limited ways, to the apostles’ teaching. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

    The section on this mark in the video begins about 15:30. I’m not setting the video to the starting point, as I suspect most who are willing to invest time in the video will watch it as a whole once.

  • A Reason to Talk Sensibly about Eschatology

    … so it is not left to this sort of discussion. I did some study of and discussion of the so-called Bible codes some years back, and I’m not spending more time. The problem is that using the methodology in question (and its variants) one can come up with so many things and such vague things that it becomes self-defeating to try to respond.

    In my view, by doing this sort of thing (trying to know things that are not present in the text), we go well beyond what the Bible was intended to do. The Bible is there to help you come into communication with God. That it conveys some information is not the main issue. We get stuck arguing about informational details while ignoring the broad sweep of the text.

    When we turn to the Bible codes, we begin not just concentrating on informational details, we’re creating new content. It may be nice to feel that we know these things, but in fact we do not. Nobody knows. That’s the way God intended it.

  • Eschatology: New Testament Eschatology

    Eschatology: New Testament Eschatology

    9781938434105sTonight I’ll be basing my presentation on Chapter 3 of Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Dr. Edward W. H. Vick. The event description can be found on Google+.

    I’m embedded a YouTube viewer below.

    This will be on my YouTube channel and Google+ at 7 pm central time tonight.

    I’m actually going to start from what I left off last week and talk about “this generation shall not pass,” which will require me to talk a bit about biblical inspiration. Following that I plan to introduce my (not so original) simple view of eschatology and then look at Mark 13 and how it might fit in.

    Next week I’ll be looking at the variety, and some history of prophecy in Old Testament times, and then next week we’ll tackle chapter 4 of Dr. Vick’s book, Prophecy and Apocalyptic.

    As I work on these, I’m also working on a series of four talks on Revelation to be presented to some teenagers during the month of October. That may be more challenging than these presentations.

  • Some Lessons from Tilling My Garden

    Some Lessons from Tilling My Garden

    Well, my prospective, perhaps presumptive garden, that is.

    One of the important elements to understanding stories in the Bible, parables included, is our perspective. In Christian circles, when we hear “the sower went forth to sow,” (Matthew 13:3), or perhaps “a farmer went out to sow his seed,” we generally see ourselves in the role of the one doing the planting. We are evangelising, and people have different kinds of hearts. Have you ever heard someone describe another person as being rocky ground? Or perhaps someone has said, “He’s trying to dig some hard ground there!” Usually these expressions are used regarding targets of evangelism.

    garden and tillerI’ll mention evangelism later, but first, let me place myself in the role of one receiving the seed. Is that not what I do when I pray and hope to hear from the Lord? Is that also not what I do when I open my Bible and hope to be changed by God’s message? So I am the ground, not the sower.

    But let me tell you the story of my garden thus far. Fortunately for me, I have few plans that involve saving money on food, supplementing my diet, or saving on the food budget. I had one purpose in starting a garden: I need to spend more time in physical activity. Now I’m a bit of a workaholic. I have a hard time not doing anything. The easiest way to get myself to do what I need to do was to make it into work. Then I can feel good while I do it.

    So I picked a plot on our little place out here and started to work on it. It has gone through being broken up with an excavator (at which time I killed power to my office and broke our water line, but that’s another story), lots of hoeing and raking, and digging up of roots and rocks. This morning I finally got to the point of being ready to actually till the plot. My previous work had been aimed, not at getting the soil ready for actual planting, but at removing obstacles. I have a large pile of brush, roots, and rocks at either end of the plot, things I have removed as I worked.

    Then I had a period of time when I was just too busy with work. Between my work with computers and computer networks and my publishing work, I was simply overwhelmed. The phone would ring by 8 am and I wouldn’t get that much done outside. What do you suppose happened? Well, the plot got some new growth, but not the stuff I want to grow, of course, since I hadn’t yet planted. So out came the weedwacker, the hoe, and finally the rake.

    Today I finally got to the tiller. That’s the tiller, in the picture to the left. I borrowed it from my friend Tom Hunt. If you need a floorplan done for a new house, he’s the one to go to.

    There were some interesting things about using the tiller as well. Weeds leave behind small roots that tend to wrap themselves around anything available. No matter how may rocks you’ve removed there may be a few more. Run the tiller in a couple of directions. The pile of dirt from one pass may hide some hard soil. Power tools are great, but I ended my morning session more tired than when I worked with the hoe. The tool helps, but the human still better put heart and back into the effort.

    Let me apply these to Bible study just a bit. You might want to reference my post from yesterday. Here are some thoughts I had while listening to that wonderful purr (or roar) of the tiller motor.

    1. Different tools accomplish different things. No matter how much you may have gotten with one approach, try taking another look from another angle or with some different help.
    2. Weeds don’t stay dead. You’re never really done. It’s easy to get complacent and think you already have it covered. Now it’s all about telling other people. Don’t get in that place. If you neglect your heart garden for a while, you may find the ground hardening and the weeds getting tall.
    3. Don’t imagine that a period of neglect is the end. That’s what weedwackers, hoes, shovels, rakes, and tillers are for. Those of you who have forgotten your biblical languages after seminary, consider this as well. How about working on reviving them? Yes, I believe you can study the Bible effectively without the biblical languages, but after investing all that time and effort wouldn’t you like the benefit of that tool?
    4. Don’t be blind to the rocks that are still there. You may have removed bunches of rocks, yet there are still some to find and remove. I often joke with Jody that it would be nice if I could measure the quality of my cleaning by the quantity of dirt I removed and not by what was left. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 if you’re thinking you’re good!
    5. Tools help but they don’t do the job. I love Logos Bible software. I love sites that let me compare versions (BibleGateway.com, for example). But these things don’t do your studying for you. They will make you more efficient. Many Bible students amass information and yet don’t get to what the text is saying to them. I was reminded of that forcefully as I moved the tiller through my prospective garden. It did more work than I could have accomplished with the hoe, but it still required me to make the application!
    6. Sometimes you get so tangled with the weeds that you can’t really go on clearing and tilling. I experienced this as left-over weeds and roots tangled up the tiller. I had to stop and clear the blades so the tiller could work efficiently. I’ve experienced this in preparation for teaching my Eschatology series on Google Hangouts on Air (link to next session, Thurs. night at 7 pm central time). Eschatological views are based on many, many texts, and there are many, many views on each of these texts, plus mountains of theology done to tie them together or explain them away. It’s very easy to get so tangled in the details that you can’t see the actual text in front of you. I bounced this off my wife Jody, who has a practical mind set. I asked her to read Mark 13 the other day and then question me about it. She had a set of questions that helped clarify the chapter.

    I’m sure there are many more lessons, but those are the ones that occurred to me as I worked this morning. But does any of this apply to evangelism?

    1. Quit trying to judge the people you witness to. You can’t see what’s under the ground.
    2. The best way to witness is to till your own heart. I can’t emphasize this enough. Most people can tell very quickly if you’re trying to use them for something else. So if you are making relationships with other people in order to convert them or make them into church members, they’re going to get that feeling. But if you are genuine and genuinely care about them, they will also know that.
    3. The Christian life and Christian witness isn’t a strategy. See #2. Enough said!
    4. God is the one who changes people. You witness. God acts. Be humble enough to give God the credit. Be humble enough to let God take the responsibility.

    Do you see what happened? Quite frankly, all the lessons but one applied to me. As for reaching others, I have one duty: plant the seed. Now planting the seed can be complex, but I suggest that it starts with some of the points I made above. Let God’s word impact your life. Continue to let God’s word impact your life. Continue some more letting God’s word impact your life. Continue yet much more letting God’s word impact your life.

    You’ll impact the lives of others.

     

  • Praying and Studying to Change Yourself

    Yesterday I wrote a bit about using prayer and Bible study as a starting point for change. The problem is that it’s very easy to pray and study the Bible in such a way that it makes you a worse person.

    I’ve found a relatively simple way to determine whether I’m doing this myself:

    1. If I’m studying the Bible to figure out what other people are doing wrong, how other people need to change, I’m making a worse person of myself.
    2. If I’m studying the Bible so that by beholding I can be changed, so that I can find out how to be a better follower of Jesus, I’m allowing God to make a better person of me.

    I frequently hear (and have sometimes myself offered) prayers that ask God to fix someone else. If you’re praying for your pastor and asking God to make him or her see things your way, you’re on a dangerous path. Let God make the decisions. It might just turn out that what needs to change in your relationship with your pastor might be you.

    In Bible study I’d take another step and say that one’s general approach needs adjustment. When I started studying biblical languages I imagined that I would discover the original text and read it in the original languages, and thus resolve issues, at least to the extent that I would be certain of what was right and what was wrong. Getting that information was my entire intent.

    As I studied, I found that every aspect of that approach was problematic. Even the idea of an original text wasn’t easy to define. Was I looking for the text that came from the pen of the writer, however inaccessible that might be? Was it to be found in whatever sources were used by a writer? Perhaps the text actually used in the early church was more important than some earlier text that was beyond my reach. Having discovered (or pretended to discover) whatever text I was after I then had the problem with where and how it applied. The hard and indisputable facts were generally in dispute, no matter how long I studied.

    Over time I have come to believe that there is value in studying all levels of the text. Those who prefer canonical criticism look down on form, source, and redaction critics, and claim that the canonical form is the “special” form of the text. Source criticism, just as an example, assumes that one wants to get closer to the roots of the text.

    I find both approaches helpful. One is certainly on less solid ground looking at the prehistory of the text. While I may have doubt about the details of the canonical form of the text, I am frequently in serious doubt about the text’s prehistory. Yet when I’m studying the text to see God in action, I am always able to listen for the voice of God. Sometimes that voice will even get through the static of my own thoughts.

    Talking to God and listening to God are about changing me. Only when I first focus this on me will I be in a position to help someone else. If I respect them and love them as I believe God loves me and calls me to behave, I have to allow them to behold and become changed (2 Cor. 3:18) as well.

  • Eschatology: Mark 13

    While I titled the event Eschatology: Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, I will be focusing on the first. I will be mentioning the parallels and likely working directly from gospel parallels. I’m embedding the YouTube viewer first, then I’ll make a few comments.

    I had hoped to post more earlier, but the work load this week prevented it. I also hope to post something more this afternoon, giving some background for what I’ll be saying. It is obviously impossible to do a detailed exegesis of Mark 13 in an hour, so I’ll be looking at some key points.

    First, yes, I won’t be able to resist. I’ll mention some elements in the parallels that could play into arguments over Markan vs. Matthean priority.

    Second, I want to talk about my overall view of biblical eschatology, and how I read that in Mark 13. Note that this is, to a certain extent, eisegesis. My overall view is the result of my study of many eschatological and apocalyptic passages, and not a derivative from Mark 13. Yet I will use it. I had planned to wait to present this overview, but I think it’s better for me to give my “mini-eschatology” first and then develop how I connect it with much broader and deeper eschatological views as I move forward.

    Third, I want to focus on just what the disciples would have expected when they heard or encountered this material. Thus I’ll discuss the debates on whether this is original to the gospel (as a whole), whether certain elements were added later, and also just when this was written.

    All of that leads to the point where I—finally—talk about “this generation shall not pass,” which has provided fodder for biblical and theological debate for the last two millenia. How was it understood in the past and how shall we read it now?

    In studying eschatology from a biblical perspective, it is important to realize that one needs to resolve a broad range of questions nearly every time one wants to resolve one question. For example, the way in which one understands Daniel 9:27 impacts how one will understand “the abomination of desolation” and how one understands the vision of Daniel 7 will impact how one understands the son of man coming in the clouds. Not to mention whether one is certain those particular references are in view. Deciding how to understand those chapters involves a range of decisions regarding the text of Daniel as well as its historical and cultural context. Those decisions involve a number of issues regarding how one dates literature.

    I say this because I expect to circle back to many of these passages after we’ve studied others. I think it would be useful to read Mark 13 again after we have done further study of Daniel. Jesus did not live in a cultural or theological vacuum either. Certainly his disciples did not. How might they have drawn these passages into their understanding of the words in the gospels? It is possible that what you or I decide in studying Daniel might be the correct historical understanding, i.e., we might be right about when it was written and how it would have been understood by its original audiences, but that the understanding we get there might not be the one the disciples would naturally draw in as they studied the words of Mark.

    Complicated? Indeed. Fun? I think so!