Edgework

While much more could be said about learning to read the Bible Jesus’ way, it is time to wrap up this series of essays and ask ourselves where this discussion leaves us. For some of my readers the thoughts I have expressed are scary and even dangerous. One person begged me to stop writing because he feared I was leading people into an irrelevant liberalism. On the other hand I have had a good deal of positive feedback. Someone noted that he found these reflections liberating and articulated thoughts he had had for many years.

Personally, I feel like I have just barely begun opening a door to a new and dynamic encounter with the biblical text. I see a need to keep on exploring what lies behind that door and testing it in my future readings of the Bible. But for now I will attempt to summarize where this study leaves me.

In general I see this study, and the various recent books it relies on, as an on-going quest to move beyond an evangelical Biblicism that simply does not work. It picks up where Christian Smith left off in his landmark book published in 2011, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Smith defines Biblicism as “…a theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability.”  His challenge was to accept a “Christocentric Hermeneutic” as a key to unlocking reliable biblical truth in a Bible that, when read literally, is complex and ambiguous on many fronts.

As I see it, learning to read the Bible Jesus’ way is a key tool facilitating our attempt at practicing a “Christocentric Hermeneutic.” Together with all the authors I have referenced in these essays, I contest the charge that this quest is a disguise for giving in to liberalism. Rather it is an honest evangelical attempt to read the Bible with integrity in a way that makes it truly relevant for the 21st century.

In one sense this entire project is an endeavor to recapture a “gospel-focus” characteristic of 18th and 19th century evangelicalism. In, Renewing the Center, Stanley Grenz argues that, in its reaction to modernism, 20th century fundamentalism shifted its emphasis to a “book-focus,” making the Bible’s task that of maintaining biblical orthodoxy (92). Although no doubt unintentional, this redirected large amounts of energy toward defending “the Book” instead of allowing it to be a witness to the real Word of God; that is the person of Jesus Christ.

As Peter Enns summarizes this point in, The Bible Tells Me So, “The Bible is not, never has been, and never will be the center of the Christian faith… The Bible is the church’s nonnegotiable partner, but it is not God’s final word: Jesus is… The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Look at me!’ It says, ‘Look through me.’ The Bible, if we are paying attention, decenters itself” (237).

So as we move forward in our quest to understand the message of the Bible for us today, I propose we focus our discussion on the following talking points:

1. We should expect to have to wrestle hard with the meaning and significance of the biblical text, even that found in the New Testament. Without wrestling we will not move toward maturity but either remain infants or get cocky.
2. The Bible is not a handbook providing clear and indisputable rules and regulations for every conceivable situation modern Christians find themselves in. But the Bible does provide a window into how ancient fellow Christ-followers wrestled with their understandings of God and God’s will for their lives.
3. The various biblical texts are addressed “to” audiences living in different times and contexts than our own which means that not all texts are immediately and unambiguously applicable in our modern world. But it is fair to say that the Bible was written “for” us so that we can draw faith and life lessons from that early story of faith.
4. Just like Jesus and Paul drew forward Old Testament texts in ways that highlighted God’s redemptive character and work, so we must highlight those New Testament texts today that elucidate God’s redemptive will for the world in which we now live. Our “preferred texts” should not necessarily be those that are identified as most important by our particular denominational body, but those texts that lead to healing, hope, love, compassion and redemption. We must be careful not to use biblical texts to hurt, humiliate or exclude people in the way that the Pharisees used biblical texts in their day.
5. This will mean that invariably there will be some “left-over texts” that do not fit well into the long-term vision the New Testament projects. Instead of ignoring such texts or contorting them to fit into the larger biblical vision, we will do well to simply let them stand as components of the dialogue that happened in the faith community of old.
6. In our attempts to understand the nature and character of God, we must be careful not to begin with philosophical categories and then make biblical texts correspond to these categories. God is best understood by what is revealed in the character and actions of Jesus. That is to say that God doesn’t reveal Jesus, but that Jesus reveals God.
7. We should not be bothered by multivocality within the biblical text. It should be expected that the text itself reveals a wrestling of ideas and understandings. With this in mind we should not be too enamored about precisely what the text says but more concerned about where the text wants to lead us.
8. At the end of the day we must come to the conclusion that God is not a violent God. The fact that God is nonviolent has ramifications for how we think about atonement and ethics.