N.T. Wright, excerpted from a 1996 lecture at Yale:
"So What?"
commentsN.T. Wright wrote:"Many of us grew up being taught to read the Bible in one or both of two ways.
"On the one hand there was the devotional reading: A passage each morning, and one prayed and listened to hear something that 'God was saying to me today' through it. The historical and literary setting was quite unimportant; what mattered was 'What does this say to me today?'. Now that's a venerable and not unimportant practise. But if it's divorced from other readings of Scripture it can become not only self-centered but also dangerously arbitrary. God doesn't deceive people but people can be, and often are, self-deceived. Detached devotional reading gets you so far but you can easily get stuck.
"On the other hand there was 'the Bible as proof texts'. Some classical instances come to mind; The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, with its doctrinal statements and its big biblical footnotes. That encouraged a mentality which thought of the Bible as an unsorted collection of data, belonging in principle to a unified dogmatic theology; as though God had given us the Bible like a jig-saw puzzle in a box all shaken up into bits, needing to be assembled into a single picture which, whatever it was going to look like, sure as anything wouldn’t look like what we actually have from Genesis to Revelation.
"Within modernist Christianity this took, very broadly speaking, two forms: The evangelical form, in which the game was to get every single piece into the picture somewhere in order to to get one great big unified picture and: The liberal form, in which you were allowed to play chess with the pieces, letting one piece take another piece and so, removing it from the board (the audience laughs). The goal was still the same: 'a single unified picture' but the method was different.
"And nobody stopped to question whether either of those activities was actually what God gave us the Bible for. I grew up with the devotional and the proof-texting method side by side. They didn't really interlock as far as I was concerned. It is only from the vantage point of increasing middle age that I realize that all sorts of other things are to be taken seriously as part of use of the text.
The Bible...does form an essential and non-negotiable part of Christian Praxis (practice). The devotional use is right and God-given but it's only one part of the whole. Yes, the Bible does give answers to certain questions. It is right and God-intended that we should consult particular passages on particular topics, and emerge trembling and fearful with a definite word from God on definite and difficult and, perhaps, controversial topics whether political, theological or whatever. But, in addition to Praxis and Question, we must also develop and understand the Bible as Story and as Symbol. We will only get the praxis and the questions on the right road when we put them in that wider setting.
A word about the the Bible as Story: From the very early days of the canonical process the books were arranged, not under abstract topics: truth one, truth two, truth three, but as a complex and winding narrative. If you believe in the inspiration of Scripture you must believe that this is the book the Holy Spirit chose to give us; not an unsorted edition of something else, whether a manual of doctrine or devotion which we have to unscramble. But as a story, the True Story, which we are invited and summoned to live. And only when we take this seriously can we get away from the sterile debates of modernist Christianity, both liberal and conservative, as to whether this passage of Scripture is opposed to that one. Again and again, such debates play off passages of Scripture that belong at different moments in the Story!
"Concentrate on questions without narrative and you will create, and worry over, all sorts of unnecessary problems. (That's an oversimplification).
"But the Bible is also Symbol in the Church. Its regular and serious reading in public and in private; that's not just functional, as though all of that could be reduced to the simple conveying of true information or wise advice which you might in principle get by some other means. Rather, it is deeply symbolic....
"It is because modernist Christianity, whether evangelical or liberal, has forgotten about symbolism, the Bible is often trapped and muzzled within either a self-centered devotion or an arid proof texting....
"Once you understand the Bible as as Story and as Symbol, all sorts of things open up in front of you. You start to understand where you come, yourself, into the narrative that Scripture is telling. And you start to realize that your own reading of Scripture has become part of your own story. It has made your own personal, communal narrative what it is. When you read the Bible its not that it's reminding you of lots of true bits of information, true doctrine, or right moral teaching. It is becoming part of who you are."
I've been having computer problems and can't stay online.
Briefly, what Wright said in the third paragraph and posting here (Thanx!) has helped me to understand Calvinism for what it is -- a system of theology based on proof texts (taken out of context). I first questioned proof texting a long time ago, when I came to see that dispensationalism was based on proof texting, and therefore, an erroneous system of theology. As of late I had been studying Calvinism in-depth. My cousin, who is a Calvinist preacher, was going to visit this summer and always wants to debate about it. So, I had taken it upon myself to study it more to prepare for his visit.
In any event, he isn't coming till Fall. From what I've learned on this forum (Thanks, all!) and my other studies is that it would probably be for the better I decline to debate my cousin again this year if he brings it up (he visits yearly). I don't -- and cannot -- see the Bible as proof texts and, as a result, can't talk about it or ab/use it in a "trapped and muzzled proof texting way."
My computer is acting up...been having problems with it...better go!
Thanks,
Rick
