Reading the Bible again for the First Time

by Marcus J. Borg

  Sacred Status

  What does it mean to refer to the Bible as “sacred scripture”?12

  I begin by noting that the books of the Bible were not sacred when they were written. Paul, for example, would have been amazed to know that his letters to his communities were to become sacred scripture. Rather, the various parts of the Bible became sacred through a process that took several centuries.

  The process whereby the Bible became sacred is known as “canonization.” So far as we know (and we do not know much), the canonization process did not involve official councils that met and made decisions. Rather, it was gradual, happening in stages. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible (the Law, also known as the Torah or the Pentateuch) were apparently regarded as sacred by about 400 BCE. The second part of the Hebrew Bible (the Prophets) had achieved sacred status by about 200 BCE. The third part (the Writings) became canonical by about 100 CE. The canon of the Hebrew Bible was then complete.

  For the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, the process took about three centuries. Though most of the documents now in the New Testament were written by the year 100, the first list that mentions all twenty-seven of them as having special status is from the year 367.

  The awareness that the Bible became sacred scripture over a period of centuries has implications for our understanding of its origin, status, and authority. To speak of the Bible as sacred addresses not its origin but its status within a religious community. Any document is sacred only because it is sacred for a particular community. To mistake status for origin leads to the kind of confusion I described in the previous section of this chapter.

  For Christians, the status of the Bible as sacred scripture means that it is the most important collection of writings we know. These are the primary writings that define who we are in relation to God and who we are as a community and as individuals. This is the book that has shaped us and will continue to shape us.

  Because of the importance of this point, I will make it in another way. In common with many scholars of religion, I see each of the world’s religions as a “cultural-linguistic world.” Two things are meant by this somewhat abstract phrase. First, each religion emerges within a particular culture and uses language and symbols from that culture (even if it also subverts or challenges the central values and understandings of that culture). Thus religions are born within an existing cultural-linguistic world.

  Second, if the new religion survives over time, it becomes a cultural-linguistic world in its own right. As such, it provides a world in which its followers live. Its stories and practices, its teachings and rituals, become the lenses through which its members see reality and their own lives. It becomes the primary basis of identity and vision.

  Within this framework of understanding, the Bible as sacred scripture is the foundation of the Christian cultural-linguistic world. The Bible is the “constitution” of the Christian world, not in the sense of being a collection of laws but in the sense of being its foundation.

  The Authority of the Bible

  To see the Bible as sacred in status and not origin also leads to a different way of seeing the authority of the Bible. The older, conventional way of seeing the Bible grounded scripture’s authority in its origin: the Bible was sacred because it came from God. The result was a monarchical model of biblical authority. Like an ancient monarch, the Bible stands over us, telling us what to believe and do. But seeing the Bible as sacred in its status leads to a different model of biblical authority. Rather than being an authority standing above us, the Bible is the ground of the world in which Christians live.

  The result: the monarchical model of biblical authority is replaced by a dialogical model of biblical authority. In other words, the biblical canon names the primary collection of ancient documents with which Christians are to be in a continuing dialogue. This continuing conversation is definitive and constitutive of Christian identity. If the dialogue ceases or becomes faint, then we cease to be Christian and become something else. Thus the authority of the Bible is its status as our primary ancient conversational partner.

  Yet because the Bible is a human product as well as sacred scripture, the continuing dialogue needs to be a critical conversation. There are parts of the Bible that we will decide need not or should not be honored, either because we discern that they were relevant to ancient times but not to our own, or because we discern that they were never the will of God.13*

  But critical dialogue with the Bible implies not simply that we make discerning judgments about the texts. It also means that we allow the texts to shape and judge us. As we read the Bible, we are not only to bring our critical intelligence with us, but also to listen. I often tell my students that reading well involves listening well—seeking to hear what the text is saying to us and not simply absorbing the text into what we already think.

  To be Christian means to live within the world created by the Bible. We are to listen to it well and let its central stories shape our vision of God, our identity, and our sense of what faithfulness to God means. It is to shape our imagination, that part of our psyches in which our foundational images of reality and life reside. We are to be a community shaped by scripture. The purpose of our continuing dialogue with the Bible as sacred scripture is nothing less than that.14

  The Bible as Sacrament of the Sacred

  Thus one major function of the Bible is the shaping of Christian vision and identity. The Bible has another primary function as well, and it is a further aspect of the relationship between the Bible and God. Namely, the Bible is a sacrament of the sacred.

  In the Christian tradition, the word “sacrament” often refers to one of the specific sacraments: for Protestants, the two sacraments of baptism and the eucharist; for Catholics, those two plus five more. Central to the definition of “sacrament” in this particular sense is that something that is sacramental is “a means of grace.”

  The word “sacrament” also has a broader meaning. In the study of religion, a sacrament is commonly defined as a mediator of the sacred, a vehicle by which God becomes present, a means through which the Spirit is experienced. This meaning thus includes the two (or seven) Christian Sacraments even as it is broader. Virtually anything can become sacramental: nature, music, prayer, birth, death, sexuality, poetry, persons, pilgrimage, even participation in sports, and so forth. Things are sacramental when they become occasions for the experience of God, moments when the Spirit becomes present, times when the sacred becomes an experiential reality.

  The Bible often functions in this sacramental way in the lives of Christians. It did so, for example, in the conversion experiences of many of the central figures of Christian history. Augustine’s conversion experience happened when he heard a child singing, “Take up and read,” which led him to read a passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans that changed his life.

  Martin Luther’s breakthrough from anxious striving to the experience of grace, as well as the movement of the Spirit in John Wesley’s heart, happened through immersion in scripture. In each case, they experienced the Bible as a means whereby the Spirit addressed them in the present.

  The sacramental use of the Bible is also among the spiritual practices of both Jews and Christians. Meditation upon the Torah is an ancient Jewish practice. In the Christian tradition, a spiritual practice designed by Ignatius of Loyola involves meditating upon the images of a biblical text until they become animated by the Spirit. Another practice, lectio divina, involves entering a contemplative state and listening while a passage of scripture is read aloud a number of times with periods of silence between each reading. In these examples, the purpose of the practice is not to read or hear the Bible for information or content. Rather, the purpose is to listen for the Spirit of God speaking through the words of the biblical text.

  For many Christians the Bible sometimes becomes sacramental in private devotional reading. As with the practices mentioned above, the purpose of devotional reading is not acquisition of content. Rather,
it is openness to the experience of God addressing the reader through a phrase or verse, openness to a sense of the Spirit present within. In such moments the Bible becomes sacramental, a means of grace and mediator of the sacred. God “speaks” through the words of the biblical text.

  To see the Bible as a sacrament of the sacred also connects us back to the Bible as a human product. The bread and wine of the Christian sacrament of the eucharist are manifestly human products. Somebody made the bread and somebody made the wine. We do not think of the bread and wine as “perfect” (whatever that might mean). Rather, to use a common eucharistic phrase, we affirm that “in, with, and under” these manifestly human products of bread and wine, Christ becomes present to us. So also “in, with, and under” the human words of the Bible, the Spirit of God addresses us.

  In the worship services of many denominations, including my own, the following words are spoken after the reading of a passage from the Bible: “The Word of the Lord.” With my emphasis on the Bible as a human product, I sometimes joke that we should say instead, “Some thoughts from ancient Israel,” or “Some thoughts from the early Christian movement.” But when I am being serious rather than flippant, I find the words used in the New Zealand Anglican Book of Common Prayer exactly right: “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.” The Spirit of God speaks through the human words of these ancient documents: the Bible is a sacrament of the sacred.

  The Bible as the Word of God

  The sacramental function of scripture leads to a final point about the relationship between God and the Bible: the Bible as “the Word of God.” As already mentioned, speaking of the Bible as “the Word of God” has often led Christians to see the Bible as coming from God. By now it is obvious that the lenses I am prescribing for reading the Bible do not see it that way.

  What then does it mean to call the Bible “the Word of God”? It is important to emphasize that the Christian tradition throughout its history has spoken of the Bible as the Word of God (capital W and singular), not as the words of God (lowercase w and plural). If it had used the latter phrase, then one might reasonably claim that believing the words of the Bible to be God’s words is intrinsic to being Christian.

  But the use of a capital W and the singular suggests a different meaning. Namely, “Word” is being used in a metaphorical and nonliteral sense. As with metaphors generally, this one resonates with more than one nuance of meaning. A word is a means of communication, involving both speaking and hearing. A word is a means of disclosure; we disclose or reveal ourselves through words. Words bridge the distance between ourselves and others: we commune and become intimate through words.

  To call the Bible the Word of God is to see it in all of these ways, and no doubt more. The Bible is a means of divine self-disclosure. The traditional theological phrase for this is “the Bible as the revelation of God.” In the Bible, as the foundation of the Christian cultural-linguistic world, Christians find the disclosure of God—not because the Bible is the words of God but because the Bible contains the primary stories and traditions that disclose the character and will of God.

  Seeing the Bible as the Word of God also underlines its sacramental function: the Bible’s words sometimes become a mediator of the sacred whereby the Spirit addresses us in the present. In short, calling the Bible the Word of God refers not to its origin but to its status and function.

  Concluding Metaphors for Seeing the Bible

  In the modern period, Christians have often emphasized believing in the Bible. I conclude this chapter with three metaphors, all suggesting a very different way of seeing the relationship between Christians and the Bible.

  A Finger Pointing to the Moon

  The first metaphor comes from the Buddhist tradition. Buddhists often speak of the teaching of the Buddha as “a finger pointing to the moon.” The metaphor helps guard against the mistake of thinking that being a Buddhist means believing in Buddhist teaching—that is, believing in the finger. As the metaphor implies, one is to see (and pay attention to) that to which the finger points.

  To apply the metaphor to the Bible, the Bible is like a finger pointing to the moon. Christians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that being Christian is about believing in the finger rather than seeing the Christian life as a relationship to that to which the finger points.

  The Bible as Lens

  Until now, I have been speaking about the lenses through which we see the Bible. Now I am applying the lens metaphor to the Bible itself: the Bible is a lens. I owe this use of the metaphor to a student who a few years ago took my introductory-level course on the Bible. About two weeks into the term, he said to me, “I think I’m beginning to get it. You’re saying that the Bible is like a lens through which we see God, but some people think it’s important to believe in the lens.”

  His simple statement has stayed with me. The point, of course, is the same as the finger metaphor: there is a crucial difference between believing in the lens and using the lens as a way of seeing that which is beyond the lens.

  The Bible as Sacrament

  For my final metaphor, I return to the Bible as sacrament. Now, though, I extend the metaphor so that it includes the Christian tradition as a whole: the Bible as well as Christian creeds, liturgies, rituals, practices, hymns, music, art, and so forth. When one sees Christianity as a sacrament of the sacred, being Christian is not about believing in Christianity. That would be like believing in the bread and wine of the eucharist rather than letting the bread and wine do their sacramental work of mediating the presence of Christ. It would be like believing in the finger or the lens.

  Rather, being Christian is about a relationship to the God who is mediated by the Christian tradition as sacrament. To be Christian is to live within the Christian tradition as a sacrament and let it do its transforming work within and among us.

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  3

  Reading Lenses:

  History and Metaphor

  In this chapter, I move from ways of seeing the Bible to the more specific topic of reading the Bible. In radical shorthand, I call the method I will develop a “historical-metaphorical approach.” It presupposes the central claims about the Bible made in the previous chapter: its origin as a human response to God, its status for Christians as sacred scripture, and its functions as foundation of the Christian world and sacrament of the sacred.

  The Historical-Metaphorical Approach

  Both adjectives in the phrase “historical-metaphorical approach” are crucially important. As shorthand, they are large umbrellas. I will compactly define each before describing them at greater length.

  By “historical approach,” I mean all the methods that are relevant to discerning the ancient historical meanings of biblical texts. The chief concern of the historical approach is the past-tense question, “What did this text mean in the ancient historical setting in which it was written?” By “metaphorical approach,” I mean most broadly a nonliteral way of reading biblical texts. A metaphorical reading does not confine itself to the literal, factual, and historical meanings of a text. It moves beyond to the question, “What does this story mean as a story, independent of its historical factuality?”

  The Historical Approach

  The historical approach focuses on the historical illumination of a text in its ancient context. As a large umbrella category, this approach covers all the methods of historical criticism that have been developed by biblical scholars over the last few centuries. The word “criticism” is perhaps unfortunate, simply because in popular usage it often has the negative meaning of fault-finding (as when we say, “Oh, don’t be so critical”). But in the phrase “historical criticism,” “criticism” means “discernment”—in other words, making discerning judgments about historical matters.

  What It Is The historical approach includes the traditional methods of source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, and canonical criticism.1 It also includes more recent interdisciplinary meth
ods of historical study. Sometimes called “social-scientific criticism,” these involve the use of models and insights derived from studies of preindustrial agrarian societies, honor-shame societies, cultural anthropology, and so forth. These interdisciplinary methods are especially helpful for constructing the ancient context in which biblical texts were spoken or written. They help us to understand the very different cultural worlds in which the Bible originated.

  The focus of a historical approach is twofold: the historical meaning of a text in its historical context. The context in which words are spoken or written, or deeds are done, pervasively shapes their meaning. The word “context” suggests as much: the Latin prefix con means “with.” Thus con-text is that which goes with a text.

  Why It Matters Though devotional use of the Bible can be quite independent of the historical approach, the latter is indispensable for genuinely hearing the Bible as a collection of documents from the past. It recognizes that the Bible as a whole and its individual texts are historical artifacts: things made in the past. To say the obvious, they are artifacts from the distant past. The Hebrew Bible was written from approximately the middle of the tenth century BCE to the middle of the second century BCE.2 The New Testament was written from approximately 50 CE to the early or middle 100s CE.