A further result: Christianity in the modern period became preoccupied with the dynamic of believing or not believing. For many people, believing “iffy” claims to be true became the central meaning of Christian faith. It is an odd notion—as if what God most wants from us is believing highly problematic statements to be factually true. And if one can’t believe them, then one doesn’t have faith and isn’t a Christian.
The thoroughly modern character of this notion of faith can be seen by comparing what faith meant in the Christian Middle Ages. During those centuries, basically everybody in Christian culture thought the Bible to be true. They had no reason to think otherwise; the Bible’s stories from creation through the end of the world were part of the conventional wisdom of the time. Accepting them did not require “faith.” Faith had to do with one’s relationship to God, not with whether one thought the Bible to be true.12
Postmodernity
We live on the boundary of postmodernity. We are not simply modern people; in addition, we are living in the borderland of a new period of cultural history. The central and defining features of that new period have not yet become clear, so we do not know what to call it yet. Hence we simply call it postmodernity: it is what comes next.
Like modernity, postmodernity is a large and complex phenomenon. Moreover, some postmodern movements strike me as dead ends. Thus I will not attempt a comprehensive description or definition of postmodernity but will simply highlight three characteristics of primary importance for our purposes.
First, postmodernity is marked by the realization that modernity itself is a culturally conditioned, relative historical construction. The modern worldview is not the final word about reality any more than previous worldviews have been. Postmodernity knows that someday the Newtonian worldview will seem as quaint and archaic as the Ptolemaic worldview, a development that has already occurred among theoretical physicists.
Second, postmodernity is marked by a turn to experience. In a time when traditional religious teachings have become suspect, we tend to trust that which can be known in our own experience. This turn to experience is seen in the remarkable resurgence of interest in spirituality within mainline churches and beyond. Spirituality is the experiential dimension of religion.
Third, postmodernity is marked by a movement beyond fact fundamentalism to the realization that stories can be true without being literally and factually true. This development is reflected in much of contemporary theology’s emphasis on metaphorical theology. An obvious point that has often been forgotten during the period of modernity: metaphors and metaphorical narratives can be profoundly true even if they are not literally or factually true. This realization is central for the way of seeing and reading the Bible that I will be suggesting in this book.
Given who we have become, one of the imperative needs of our time is a re-visioning of the Bible and Christianity. I deliberately hyphenate the word “re-vision” in order to distinguish what I mean from a common meaning of “revision” (without a hyphen). We often use the latter word to describe the improvement of something that has been poorly done—for example, a manuscript or a term paper. But that is not what I mean.
Rather, to re-vision means “to see again.” The emphasis upon “seeing again” also reminds us that the older form of Christianity is not “traditional Christianity” but was an earlier way of seeing the Bible and the Christian tradition. What is needed in our time is a way of seeing the Bible that takes seriously the important and legitimate ways in which we differ from our ancestors.
The way of seeing and reading the Bible that I describe in the rest of this book leads to a way of being Christian that has very little to do with believing. Instead, what will emerge is a relational and sacramental understanding of the Christian life. Being Christian, I will argue, is not about believing in the Bible or about believing in Christianity. Rather, it is about a deepening relationship with the God to whom the Bible points, lived within the Christian tradition as a sacrament of the sacred.
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2
Reading Lenses:
The Bible and God
Christians have always affirmed a close relationship between the Bible and God, just as other religions affirm a close connection between the sacred and their holy scriptures. In this chapter, I begin to describe a way of seeing and reading the Bible again by focusing on how we might see the relationship between the Bible and God. Four topics are most central: the Bible as a human response to God, the Bible as sacred scripture, the Bible as sacrament of the sacred, and the Bible as the Word of God.
The Bible as Human Response to God
Foundational to reading the Bible is a decision about how to see its origin. Does it come from God, or is it a human product? Are we to see and read what it says as a divine product or as a human product?
Through the lenses of natural literalism and its modern descendants, the Bible is seen as a divine product (as already emphasized). The inspiration of scripture is understood to mean that God guided the writing of the Bible, directly or indirectly. What scripture says, then, ultimately comes from God.
The alternative, of course, is to see the Bible as a human product—the product of two ancient communities. This is the lens through which I see scripture. The Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) is the product of ancient Israel. The New Testament is the product of the early Christian movement. What the Bible says is the words of those communities, not God’s words.
To see the Bible as a human product does not in any way deny the reality of God. Indeed, one of the central premises of this book is that God is real and can be experienced.1 I have put that as simply as I know how. At the risk of repetition, I mean that God (or “the sacred” or “Spirit,” terms that I use synonymously) is a reality known in human experience, and not simply a human creation or projection. Of course, whatever we say about the sacred is a human creation. We cannot talk about God (or anything else) except with the words, symbols, stories, concepts, and categories known to us, for they are the only language we have. Nevertheless, we also have experiences of “the holy,” “the numinous,” “the sacred.” These experiences go beyond our language, shatter it, and relativize it. I am convinced that the Bible, like sacred literature generally, originates in such experiences. I am also convinced that the Bible (like everything else expressed in words) is a human construction.
There is a third way of seeing the relationship between God and the writing of the Bible: there is no relationship, for there is no God. For this position, the Bible is of course a human product, but it has no religious significance beyond what it tells us about what these ancient people mistakenly thought. This is not how I see scripture.
I see the Bible as a human response to God. Rather than seeing God as scripture’s ultimate author, I see the Bible as the response of these two ancient communities to their experience of God. As such, it contains their stories of God, their perceptions of God’s character and will, their prayers to and praise of God, their perceptions of the human condition and the paths of deliverance, their religious and ethical practices, and their understanding of what faithfulness to God involves. As the product of these two communities, the Bible thus tells us about how they saw things, not about how God sees things.
The Difference Our Perspective on the Bible Makes
The justifications for seeing the Bible as a human product are compelling, and the case has been made by many writers.2 Most basically, it seems to me that a close and careful reading of the Bible makes it impossible to think that what it says comes directly or indirectly from God. So, rather than making the case that the Bible is a human product, I will offer five illustrations of the difference that these two ways of seeing and reading the Bible make.
The first illustration is a story. I sometimes listen to Christian radio. One night I was listening to a call-in show about the Bible and ethical questions. In response to a listener’s phone call, the host said, “Let’s see what God s
ays about that,” and then quoted a passage from the Bible (one that happened to be from Paul). I was a bit stunned by the host’s leap from God to scripture, even as I immediately understood it. After all, the host saw what the Bible says as coming from God. But the difference between seeing the Bible as a divine product and seeing it as a human product is apparent in this illustration: Does a passage from Paul tell us what God says or how Paul saw things?
My second illustration concerns the Genesis stories of creation. If we see the Bible as a divine product, then these are God’s stories of creation. As God’s stories, they cannot be wrong. If we go very far down this road, we may find ourselves attracted to scientific creationism (the attempt to show that a certain kind of “science” supports a literal reading of Genesis). We may even become involved in conflicts about whether Genesis should be taught alongside evolution in biology courses in public schools.
But if we see the Bible as a human product, then we read the opening chapters of Genesis not as God’s account of creation but as ancient Israel’s stories of creation. Like most ancient cultures, Israel had such stories. If we ask, “What are the chances that ancient Israel’s stories of creation contain scientifically accurate information?” the answer would be, “About zero.” And if they did, it would be sheer coincidence. Having said that, though, let me add that I think Israel’s creation stories are profoundly true—but true as metaphorical or symbolic narratives, not as literally factual accounts.3
My third illustration concerns the laws of the Bible. If we think of the Bible as a divine product, then the laws of the Bible are God’s laws. To illustrate with a contemporary Christian controversy, the single law in the Hebrew Bible prohibiting homosexual behavior between men is found in Leviticus: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” The penalty (death) is found two chapters later.4*
If we see the Bible as a divine product, then this is one of God’s laws. The ethical question then becomes, “How can one justify setting aside one of the laws of God?” This is, of course, how fundamentalist and many conservative Christians see the issue.
But if we see the Bible as a human product, then the laws of the Hebrew Bible are ancient Israel’s laws, and the prohibition of homosexual behavior tells us that such behavior was considered unacceptable in ancient Israel. The ethical question then becomes, “What would be the justification for continuing to see homosexual behavior as ancient Israel did?”
The question becomes even more acute when we realize that this law is embedded in a collection of laws that, among other things, prohibit planting two kinds of seed in the same field and wearing garments made of two kinds of cloth.5* We do not worry about these matters; most of us wear clothing made of blends without giving it a second thought. We readily recognize some of these prohibitions as the laws of an ancient culture that we are not bound to follow. Why, then, should we single out some as “the laws of God”?
My fourth illustration is a strange little story in Exodus involving Moses, Zipporah (his wife), and their son.6 They are on their way back to Egypt, in obedience to God’s commissioning of Moses as the liberator of Israel. We are told, “On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the LORD met him and tried to kill him.” Zipporah then circumcises their son and touches Moses’ feet with the foreskin. The result: God lets him alone; the divine intent to kill Moses vanishes.
If we see the Bible as a divine product, the question becomes, “Why would God want to kill Moses—especially since Moses has been chosen by God and is doing what God has commanded him to do?” The question is impossible to answer. It suggests a disturbingly capricious and malevolent God. Appealing to the familiar “God’s ways are not our ways” seems like a dodge, not an adequate response.
But if we see the Bible as a human product, we realize that this is a story told by ancient Israel. The question then becomes, “Why would Israel tell this story?” The answer may still not be clear (presumably it has something to do with the importance of circumcision), but at least we are not left with the dilemma of seeing it as a true story about God.
Because the previous three illustrations have been taken from the Hebrew Bible, I conclude with one from the New Testament. The passage is from I Timothy, a letter attributed to Paul but almost certainly not written by him:7
Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.8
This is an extraordinary passage. Not only are women not to teach or have authority over men, but they are not to braid their hair or wear pearls or gold or expensive clothes. Furthermore, they are held responsible for the origin of sin in the world: it was the woman who was deceived, not the man. The “good news” is that women can be saved—through childbearing.
If the Bible is seen as a divine product, then these are God’s restrictions on the behavior and roles of women. Indeed, for those Protestant churches that continue to prohibit the ordination of women, this is the way the passage is seen (even though the other restrictions are commonly ignored).9 For them, the ordination of women is against “God’s Word.”
However, if the Bible is seen as a human product, then this passage tells us about how an early Christian author—a man—saw things. As just mentioned, Paul almost certainly did not write these words. The author is commonly seen as a second- or third-generation follower of Paul writing in his name. But it is equally possible that the author is not a follower of Paul, but a “corrector” seeking to negate the remarkable gender egalitarianism of the early Christian movement. When the Bible is seen as a human product, the contrast between this text and other texts in the New Testament requires that we recognize more than one voice in early Christianity speaking about the role of women and that we seek to discern which voice to honor.
Thus much is at stake in whether we see the Bible as a human or a divine product. When we are not completely clear and candid about the Bible being a human and not a divine product, we create the possibility of enormous confusion.
Why Our Perspective Needs to Be Either-Or
To anticipate a possible objection: Why see the question as an either-or choice? Why not see the Bible as both divine and human? In my experience, affirming that it is both only compounds the confusion.
When the Bible is seen as both divine and human, we have two options. One is to say that it is all divine and all human. That may sound good, but it leaves us with the dilemma of treating all of scripture as divine revelation. More typically in my experience, affirming that the Bible is both divine and human leads to the attempt to separate the divine parts from the human parts—as if some of it comes from God and some is a human product. The parts that come from God are then given authority, and the others are not. But the parts that we think come from God are normally the parts we see as important, and thus we simply confer divine authority on what matters to us, whether we be conservatives or liberals.
To use an example: most Christians who think of the Bible as both divine and human would say that the Ten Commandments are among the parts that come from God. They seem important in a way that the prohibition against wearing garments made of two kinds of cloth does not.
But a moment’s reflection suggests that the Ten Commandments are also a human product. They are written from a male point of view: for example, they prohibit coveting your neighbor’s wife but say nothing about coveting your neighbor’s husband.10* Moreover, the commandments against stealing, adultery, murder, bearing false witness, and so forth are simply rules that make it possible for humans to live together in commun
ity. Divine genius is not required to come up with rules like these. The point is not that the Ten Commandments are unimportant. Rather, the point is that their human origin is apparent.
Thus the lens I am advocating does not see the Bible as a whole as divine in origin, or some parts as divine and some as human. It is all a human product, though generated in response to God. As such, it contains ancient Israel’s perceptions and misperceptions of what life with God involves, just as it contains the early Christian movement’s perceptions and misperceptions.
Thus it is we who must discern how to read and interpret, how to hear and value, its various voices. The Bible does not come with footnotes that say, “This passage reflects the will of God; the next passage does not,” or “This passage is valid for all time; the previous passage is not.” So also the Bible does not come with footnotes that say, “This passage is to be read literally; that passage is not.” Reading the stories of creation or the stories of Jesus’ birth literally involves an interpretive decision (namely, a decision to read them literally) equally as much as does the decision to read them metaphorically.
Thus any and every claim about what a passage of scripture means involves interpretation. There is no such thing as a noninterpretive reading of the Bible, unless our reading consists simply of making sounds in the air. As we read the Bible, then, we should ask not, “What is God saying?” but “What is the ancient author or community saying?”11
The Bible as Sacred Scripture
Though the Bible is a human product, it is also sacred scripture for three religious traditions. The Hebrew Bible is sacred for Judaism, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are sacred for Christianity, and both are sacred for Islam (though neither is given the same holy status as the Koran).
Reading the Bible again for the First Time Page 3