Struggling with Scripture
Although I hate the baggage that is now associated with the label, I am an Evangelical Christian. As such, I am passionate about Scripture, but I am not a fundamentalist, and I am not a literalist. In my view, such approaches to biblical interpretation violate the text. The Biblical text is textured, multi layered, rich and vibrant with traditions, multi-vocal, and contains many different genres and theologies. Contradictions abound and are woven into its fabric. It offends, comforts and challenges, and despite fundamentalist, literalist attempts otherwise, it resists all moves to tame, flatten and homogenize. Try as you might, it cannot be caged within a neat theological framework and all such endeavours make it something less than what it is - if you tame a lion, you will get a pussy cat.
If you truly extol his word, let it be what it was meant to be. Become part of its story, immerse yourself in the debate. Read it for what it is. Let it offend your sensibilities and frustrate modernistic conceptual categories - it does not and will not fit. Luther described the Bible as our adversary, take it on, struggle with it, converse with it, argue with it, and disagree with it, and be changed by it. Jacob wrestled with God and was blessed but from then on always walked with a limp. So it is with us, if you lay hold of God’s word, you will be blessed but the experience will leave you permanently different.
3 Responses to “Struggling with Scripture”
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
isc
Said this on May 3rd, 2007 at 9:16pm:This is a response to Deb on “Fundamentalism” - as this newfangled interweb thingy that AJ’s got up and running won’t let me post to that bit of the site. “Bad workmen always…” well, probably.
Still, the point is that lobbed a couple of tongue in cheek grenades at our beloved moderator, I wanted to jump to his defence.
How? Well, on the question of “getting out more”. As for the rest, I’m waiting for his gentle and pastoral rebuke! And how do I intend to jump to his defence? Well, to stand with him in finding myself to be a sad, sad individual. The thing is that I just found out that there’s an “Emerging Church” meet-up group in Second Life. So what’s more sad - the fact that such a thing exists or the far that I know that it exists?!
Barry
Said this on May 12th, 2007 at 11:00pm:I always think that the reason God gave us the scriptures in written form is precisely so that we would read it, wrestle with it in all its ambiguities and contradictions, and thus come to understand him more in discussion with the community of believers.
If God had intended us to understand his word in a particular way with no possibility of alternative understandings, but with total uniformity of understanding and doctrine, he certainly wouldn’t have given it in written form. At the very least he wouldn’t have let fallible humans write it. He is quite capable of telling us himself everything we need to know. The very fact that he hasn’t speaks volumes to me.
I think those with a very “high” (i.e. fundamentalist) view of scripture actually have a low view of what the scriptures are actually for, and how God intended us to engage with them. I’m pretty sure that listening to a preacher for three quarters of an hour on a Sunday morning and giving him the same (or more!) respect as we give the Bible didn’t really feature highly in the original plan.
AJ
Said this on May 13th, 2007 at 12:02pm:I agree but do you know Barry, it took a long time for me figure that out. I think I spent years trying to make scripture conform to a nice neat theological conceptualization.
And I definitely would like to see a model of engagement with the text which is more community focused. I think the days of priest/congregation, teacher/class are numbered. Real people, in authentic relationship, earthed and located in community, figuring out what God and his kingdom means to them now, in the midst of all that, is the type of theology I want to be involved with.