Stretching the Mind

Those of you who read my blog know I like to delve into the deep questions of life:

• Why are we here?
• What is our purpose?
• What is Truth?
• What is the nature of reality?

And so on and so forth.  I read and write about biology, cosmology, quantum physics, biblical studies, cultural issues, difficult texts in the Scriptures, and other heady topics.

Honestly, I get a lot of energy and inspiration from dealing with difficult subjects.  I get a lot of energy and inspiration from trying to wrap my head around questions which have been around for a very, very long time.  I like crawling up into the realms of abstract thought and logic.

But then I come crashing down to earth rather quickly, and it is not preaching for my congregation which does it.  It is teaching Sunday School--especially this year.

For this year, in our Sunday School program, I am teaching the pre-K and Kindergarten students.  I am teaching kids who have just learned to potty train and can't tie their shoes.  I'm teaching kids who have no clue about the nature of atoms, quarks, and other subatomic particles.  They have no clue about evolution or science.  They can't even come close to comprehending the idea of the Trinity or historical-critical biblical methodologies.

And I am teaching them about God.

Talk about keeping you grounded and stretching your mind.

Jesus famously said, "Unless you accept the kingdom of God as a child, you cannot enter it."  Too often, I think we adults lose sight of this.  Maybe we should all try to teach a group of 3-5 year olds about God from time to time.  Might keep us a bit more humble.

Faith and Evidence

I find it quite interesting that it is not enough for we as Christian believers to simply deal with those who do not believe in our faith and seek to articulate and defend our positions to them.  No.  For some reason, we also must deal with one another and oftentimes to seek to articulate and defend our positions to one another.  Oftentimes, when we engage in such debates, non-believers can simply sit on the sidelines and watch us go at one another all the while laughing at our inter-squad rivalries.

It would be nice if we did not have to have such inter-squad arguments.  It would be nice if we could have an agreed upon methodology of interpreting Scripture, formulating doctrine, and defining practice.  But, alas, Pandora's Box has been opened, and we cannot stuff all the entities back into it.  And so we must wade through the varying theologies and methodologies to seek the Truth and hopefully be grasped by it at some point.

One of the great struggles in the Christian faith has been the interpretation of Scripture and how we view the documents called the Old and New Testaments.  Much ink has been spilled in how to view these documents throughout the ages from the earliest decades of Christianity to the present, and, in some cases, the arguments of how to handle these documents has gotten rather heated.

In our own cultural situation (North America, U.S.A.) perhaps the most heated debates on how to deal with the biblical canon are between those holding to biblical inerrancy and those who embrace the historical/critical methods of interpreting scripture.

I am of the opinion that each side takes its particular position too far in its effort to prove its credibility oftentimes ending up with the following exchange:

"You historical/critical folks do not take the Bible seriously enough and you try to manipulate it to say what you want to say."

"Well, we believe and worship the God of the Bible and not the Bible itself!"

The accusations on both sides are flawed.  Each side takes the Bible very seriously--there is no doubt about that.  Yet, each side fails to recognize some very basic truth as well.  I believe some of these differences can be reconciled if we view the Bible in a particular manner--as evidence.

Professor John Lennox in one of his lectures found on Youtube said the following:

We have a job to do to explain what John does in his Gospel so brilliantly.  That faith is not something that just happens to people.  It’s a response to evidence–these things are written...in order that you might believe.  Here is the basis, and faith is based on evidence.  Otherwise, by definition, you wouldn’t need the New Testament.  If faith is believing where there is no evidence, then the greatest faith is shown by those people who never read the New Testament.  Because it is evidence, I am sorry to say, but I am not sorry to say. 

This is a very important statement in my estimation.  And as I have thought about it, it makes a lot of sense to me.  Here is why:

Evidence demands interpretation, and it does not tell the full story.  Those who hold to the inerrancy of scripture would do well to remember this.

Consider the analogy with dinosaur bones.  (I am sorry.  I cannot help but use this example as my son is a huge dinosaur fan.)  The bones tell us an awful lot about anatomy.  They give us a great glimpse of what the skeletal features of these creatures looked like.  But, we also know these are the basics.  There are much more to dinosaurs than just bones.  In a very real way, we have to fill in some blanks.  There is interpretation which must be done especially in regards to behavior.  How did the dinosaurs act?  Hunt?  Move in their environment?  How fast could they move?  Were they warm blooded or cold blooded or did different species have different blood types?  We can make some very good guesses based upon the bones, but the full truth actually escapes us.  There is no way to fully verify.

The God of the Bible can be viewed similarly (please allow that I realize no analogy is complete).  Scripture gives us the bones in a very real way.  We see God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We see God revealed in how He acted in the Old and New Testament.  We see God revealed in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, fully divine and fully human.  However, there is much which begs interpretation.  There is much which begs to be filled in.  There is much to God which we still do not know.  Given the tremendous advances in technology, how indeed does God view genetic engineering?  The use of fossil fuels?  The role sporting events now play in our nation?  The rise of science?  The fact that we interact so much over our computers and phones?

If we are true to ourselves, we will answer that we truly do not know for sure.  We can get a pretty good idea, but the full Truth is just beyond our grasp, and the best we can hope for is to be grabbed by it.

And just like a paleontologist has to put together a skeleton based upon his or her knowledge of anatomy, we too have to put together the pieces of God as revealed as the Trinity.  We know the fullest revelation of God is in the person of Jesus, and so we must look to Him as the example as we move forth in our talk about God.  So, as we look at Jesus, does the "bone" regarding the stoning of disobedient children in Deuteronomy 21 fit?  Obviously not.  Furthermore, Jesus Himself told us that some bones are not to be dealt with any longer (dietary laws).  Based upon the evidence of Jesus, we have a great guide to wade through some of the issues regarding inerrancy in the Bible.

However, there are a couple of things that we are not allowed to do.  We are simply not allowed to rearrange the skeleton in whatever fashion we desire.  I mean, when a paleontologist puts together a mess of dinosaur bones, he/she does not take a bone away just because it doesn't seem to fit his/her own imagination of what a dinosaur looked like.  If a full skeleton of a dinosaur is found, and the bones are arranged in a certain way in the ground, the paleontologist does his or her best to deal with the skeleton as it is and tries to work with the bones as they are presented.  One cannot manipulate the pieces and rearrange them to fit one's preconceived notions.

There are more than a few who involve themselves in the historical/critical methodology who do just this.  They take the evidence presented in the Bible and arrange it to fit their own ideas of what God is like.  They are more than comfortable saying, "Well, this bone/saying of Jesus doesn't fit what I think God/Jesus is really like, so this must be made up by a particular community; it must be legend; it must be an invention in the mind of a particular scribe who is trying to push his own agenda."

Evidence demands to be interpreted--not thrown out because one does not like it.  And too many scholars enjoy trampling on pieces of scripture because they do not like it and it does not fit their own ideas of what God/Jesus is/should be like.  Indeed, this is tampering with the evidence instead of truly wrestling with it.

And so, what do we have if we view the Bible as evidence?  Where do we arrive if we assume this book is God's people writing down how God has revealed Himself throughout history?

We have something we must take very seriously--but realize there are limitations.  We have something concrete and unchanging: beyond manipulation--but some blanks that beg to be filled in.  We have guidance in wresting with the tough issues of our day without having to come across as completely dogmatic and thinking we have it all figured out.  We also have the ability to invite other eyes to come and view the evidence--to see if they can uncover things as well.

It seems to me, that viewing scripture as evidence of God and His work gives us a path forward to navigate in the rough seas generated by two particular views of Christianity which are highly incompatible 

Too Priceless Not to Share

From Luke Timothy Johnson's book The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (bold emphasis and strikeout emphasis is mine.  Italics are Johnson's):

Christianity has credibility, both with its own adherents and with its despisers, to the degree that it claims and lives by its own distinctive identity.  This means, at a minimum, recognizing that Christianity is not measured by cultural expectations but by the experiences and convictions by which it lives.  A church that has lost a sense of its boundaries--that is, a grasp of its self-definition--can only recover it by reassessing its character as a community of faith with a canon of Scripture and a creed.

The erosion of these boundaries has been exposed in the current Historical Jesus debate.  There has been no clear sense of where "the church" stands as a community concerning the historical Jesus.  Indeed, as we have seen, official leaders of a church, like Bishop [Shelby] Spong, have expressed opinions that are, on the face of it, incompatible with the classical Christian creed.  "Christians" have been strung all along the continuum of stimulus and response in this discussion.  But there is no explicit realm of discourse that can be called the church's.

One reason has been the loss within the church of any sense of how the Scripture can function as a basis for debate and decision making in response to crisis.  This loss, in turn, is in considerable measure owing to the hegemony of the historical critical method.  Several generations of scholars and theologians have been disabled from direct and responsible engagement with the texts of the tradition in their religious dimension.  Even more obvious has been the disappearance of the creed as a meaningful framework for reading Scripture and undertaking theological discourse within the Christian community.

It is not at all obvious how Christians can recover some sense of community, canon, and creed.  The present polarization and distrust between conservative and liberal tendencies within Christianity make the recovery more difficult.  But a start might be the simple recognition that whatever the church's discourse is, it should not be the same as the academy's, nor should it be subject to the same rules or the same criteria of validity.  It is time for a return from the academic captivity of the church.  It is time for Christians to recognize that not every intellectual tendency or shift of mood is one that enhances the church's fundamental responsibility for handing on a tradition of life from one generation to another.  --p. 169

Words still very relevant today as they were when written in 1996.

I argued in 2009 after the ELCA made the decision to begin ordaining non-celebate homosexuals living in life-long monogamous relationships that the vote was really a decision as to who would dictate the meaning of Scripture: the scholars or the people reading and interpreting the plain language.  The scholars won the vote, and even though people are invited to share their own readings and interpretations, they must always take a back seat to "the scholars" who are the ones who "really know" what the Bible means. 

But Johnson's statement is astute; yet it generally falls on deaf ears--at least in mainline, liberal Christianity, "It is time for Christians to recognize that not every intellectual tendency or shift of mood is one that enhances the church's fundamental responsibility for handing on a tradition of life from one generation to another."  I am convinced that until those in the mainline grasp this reality, the slow death spiral will begin accelerating until there is just a remnant of those who tenaciously hold onto this perspective.