Two contradictory messages about the Bible caught my attention this
week. The first came from my friend Dennis Ignatius and his electronic
reflections on faith (www.ministry@firebegetsfire.org) and read in
part:
"God has put into our hands awesome power to impact the world – the
message of the Gospel. It is the power of God. It is life for those
who are dead in sin, light for those who sit in darkness, food for
those who are hungry, healing for those who are sick, and hope for
those who are desperate. Think what that means."
The second opened an article by John Vissers, principal of the
Presbyterian College in Montreal, whose denomination-- and my own-- is
holding its annual General Assembly this week in Ottawa. Vissers
writes in the June Presbyterian Record that Bible reading is in a
difficult period for mainline Protestant churches
(www.presbyterianrecord.ca). He refers to a former colleague, who
concluded that essentially two groups do most of the serious reading:
"those of us who make it say whatever they want, and those of us who
make it say nothing at all."
The Bible
In the short time available, permit me to pass now to the phenomenally
successful British writer on spiritual issues, Karen Armstrong, and
her 2007 book, The Bible. Her publisher (Atlantic) notes on the jacket
that it is estimated that more than six billion copies of the Bible
have been sold over the past two hundred years in more than two
thousand languages. Readers are also told that the contents of
Armstrong's work trace how its sixty-six books have been created by
scores of people over hundreds of years.
Peter Stanford, a reviewer of The Bible in The Independent newspaper
in London, concludes "…as well as leaving you with a clearer, more
historically accurate picture as to what precisely the Bible is (and
isn't), (Armstrong) also makes you want to go back and read it again
with fresh eyes." Another reviewer, Hugh MacDonald in the Glasgow
Herald, adds, "This is not an obituary for the Bible, but a biography
of a book that still lives, breathes and can preach the most essential
of messages."
Let me refer only to a few of the points the author makes in this book:
- The scripture of various faiths is being criticized today. For
example, some Christians campaign against the teaching of evolution
because it appears to contradict the creation account in Genesis. Some
Jews use God's promise of Canaan (modern Israel) to the descendants of
Abraham to justify oppression against Palestinians. Some terrorists
use the Qur'an to justify atrocities. Armstrong therefore stresses
entirely reasonably that it is more important than ever to be clear
what scripture is and what it is not.
-
The Bible notes that an exclusively literal interpretation of the
Bible is a recent development. Until the nineteenth century, for
example, very few readers imagined that the first chapter of Genesis
was a factual account of the origin of life. For centuries, Christians
and Jews alike insisted that a wholly literal reading of the Bible was
neither "possible nor desirable".
-
The New Testament began as an oral proclamation and from the
beginning had no single message. Competing visions were placed side by
side without comment and there was not historically great interest in
discovering the original meaning of a biblical passage. Later on, she
notes, Bible interpreters "felt free to change it and make it speak to
contemporary conditions…the Bible 'proved' that it was holy because
people continuously discovered fresh ways to interpret it…exegetes
continued to make the Word of God audible in each generation."
- Armstrong: "Human beings seek ekstasis, a 'stepping outside' of
their normal, mundane experience. If they no longer find ecstacy in a
synagogue, church or mosque, they look for it in dance, music, sport,
sex or drugs. When people read the Bible receptively and intuitively,
they found that it gave them intimations of transcendence…"
-
The book has a long chapter on modernity, which closes with the
conclusion of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), formerly professor
of comparative religion at Harvard, who stressed the importance of
understanding the Bible historically. Armstrong goes on, "It was
impossible to say what the Bible 'really' meant when any one of its
verses was likely to have been interpreted in several different ways.
Religious people have all worked out their salvation within the
confines of a particular place and time. The Bible has meant different
things to Jews and Christians at different stages of their history,
and their exegesis was inevitably coloured by their particular
circumstances. If an interpretation concentrated only on what the
biblical author said, and ignored the way generations of Jews and
Christians had understood it, it distorted the significance of the
Bible."
Conclusion
It is clear that author Armstrong does not favour slavish conformity
in interpreting the Bible. She likes Hans Frei, who says that the
Bible has been a subversive document and suspicious of orthodoxy since
the time of Amos. Even Calvin insisted that the Bible was not a
scientific document and that those who wanted to learn about astronomy
or cosmology should look elsewhere.
The debate continues. For example, as Armstrong notes, the Bible is a
patriarchal text, and opponents of feminism can find biblical
authority, but some well-known New Testament authors thankfully had
very different views, and Armstrong stresses that they can be cited to
show that "in Christ there was neither male nor female and that women
worked as 'co-workers' and 'co-apostles' in the early Church. Hurling
texts around polemically is a sterile pursuit. Scripture is not able
to provide certainty on this type of question." Permit to add a
personal thought here: those on any continent who rely on scripture of
any kind to beat or abuse women should be expelled from their places
of worship and prosecuted vigorously in the courts of their countries.
The final page of the author's Epilogue deserves the last word in this
talk this morning: "An exegesis based on the 'principle of charity'
would be a spiritual discipline that is deeply needed in our torn and
fragmented world. The Bible…is being distorted by claims for its
literal infallibility; it is derided—often unfairly—by secular
fundamentalists; it is also becoming a toxic arsenal that fuels hatred
and sterile polemic. The development of a more compassionate
hermeneutics could provide an important counter-narrative in our
discordant world."
Amen!
