While my first book, O Theophilus, dealt with matters of genre and text, due to popular demand, this book shall examine how we understand Scripture–indeed, how Scripture can be Scripture. Even, how can *all* of Scripture be Scripture for us. In this regard, I would like to approach the problem from two complimentary directions. The first is theological, the second, catechetical.

Theologically, I understand Scripture to be the Word of God. But there is another whom we also call the Word of God, Christ Jesus our Lord. I propose that our way for understanding them both ought to be related. In fact, I wish to begin by discussing Incarnation in general. Incarnation, most simply, is how our God of Spirit, truth, and power, humbles Himself, veils Himself, to take on flesh and matter and to speak to us on our terms and in our ways. It is the means of divine self-revelation. At this point, I must state a fundamental axiom: Incarnation is messy. It involves things like mud, dirt, flesh, things that are limited and that decay. Furthermore–it’s uncertain. Incarnation isn’t an easy thing to parse out. Separating the divine and the earthly is a complicated task that I’m not sure is ever finished–and that’s part of the point as I see it.

From my perspective, it seems that Jesus, the Scriptures, the Eucharist, and the Church are all best understood as following the same essential incarnational logic. Thus, we can use what we know of Christ and move from there. Let’s review that, though, lest there be confusion…

The best way that I’ve found to both understand and explain this is through the application of Divine Algebra. There are a couple of theorems at work here.
1. 1+1+1=1 or that the Father+the Son+the Spirit=God.
2. 100%+100%=100% or that Jesus is fully human and fully divine.
Now, neither of these follow the rules of normal, standard Base 10 math or Euclidean geometry. The numbers don’t balance to our way of thinking. Most (if not all) of the major Christological or Trinitarian heresies can be explained by attempting to make the math balance. Thus, in theorem 1, the Unitarians try to take the first 1 (the Father) and get rid of the others. The Marcionites tried to take the second (the Son) and lose the first. The Montanists just wanted the third.

Similarly, in regard to theorem 2 the Docetists wanted the fully divine Jesus and to gloss the human, the Adoptionists wanted the reverse, and the folks who said Jesus had a human body but a divine soul wanted to go 50%-50%…

However, emerging orthodoxy affirmed that the more mysterious numbers were, in fact, those confirmed by Scripture, Tradition, and–yes–the people’s experience of God.

So what would happen if we took this Divine Algebra and applied it to the Scriptures? What would it mean to say that the Scriptures themselves are 100% human and 100% divine? Well, for one thing it would mean that we would have to dispense with the whole wheat/chaff line of thought. There was a movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that argued that Scripture had essentially two parts, a human, particular, limited, irrational, contextual part and a divine, eternal, comprehensive, universal, rational and True part. All that had to be done was to determine which was which. The good stuff could be kept, the other stuff discarded. The Jefferson Bible is an example of this logic…

What ended up happening is that you got, essentially, a racist version of the Bible that went through the NT (and OT) and discarded anything “too Jewish” (and irrational and contextual, etc.) in favor of the “Greek” portions. Furthermore, interestingly, scholars seemed to disagree with what was eternal and timeless; it kept looking like whatever the philosophy of the month was…

This means of reading is alive and well today. People go through and pick what they like, call it the eternal truth, and suggest that the other stuff is time-bound and therefore irrelevant. Hey–I’ve done it myself. Let me suggest, though, that this is not really the best way to either encounter or honor the text. [nb: This is not to say, however, that Christians are covenant-bound to obey the Law. We’re not. Christ, Paul, and a bunch of others made that clear. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean that the Law is not the word of God.]

What I am suggesting is that we be open to the entire Scripture as the Word of God. The whole Scripture ultimately points to Christ. The Spirit speaks to us pre-eminently through this text. Even those parts that we don’t like, the “texts of terror” have to potential to be opened for us by the Spirit. The Spirit may lead us to see the love of God in them even if it is through the Spirit demonstrating that the love of God is greater than these texts. Offensiveness is part of being human, material, limited, but such things do not preclude the presence, movement, or reversal of God.

Never forget that the Word of God is living and active as Hebrews tells us. The words of Scripture are static, fixed, and limited in ways that God is not. However, our reading of Scripture in the Spirit is ever new, ever alive. Following Heraclitus, you never read the same passage of Scripture. While your eyes may pass over the same letters, the circumstances of your life, the movement of the Spirit in the world, the oppressive realities of sin, the ongoing redemptive activity of God are all making the Scriptures new, allowing them and aiding them to mediate the true Word of God who is Spirit and Truth and who has promised to reveal himself to those who love him.

This is the fully divine part of Scripture. The Scriptures are the pre-eminent way that we encounter God’s ongoing self-revelation.

The fully human part is the recognition that Scripture was written by limited, fallible, prejudiced human beings. Yes, these were men (and maybe a few women) who lived in certain cultures who thought in certain languages, and whose worlds were bounded by certain realities–realities that we may neither know nor understand. There are errors in Scripture, factual errors, grammatical errors, syntactical errors, etc. Scripture itself seems to point out conceptual errors is other parts of Scripture (a prime example being the interplay between Job and Proverbs…) These are writings by men about how they have seen, considered, and understood God’s relationship with His people.

But once again, we believe that God’s Spirit was at work in them as they wrote, enabling God’s self-revelation to speak through their words, their images, their prejudices, and yes, even their errors. But in order to hear this we must listen with the ears of the Spirit.

That’s one way of understanding the Scriptures–a theological perspective. It may be a little too theoretical for the liking of some, so let me approach it from a different, and complementary, direction: the catechetical.

One of the classic questions in the study of the NT is formed like this: if we were to discover a letter tomorrow that we could absolutely establish beyond a shadow of a doubt to be from the very hand of Paul, should we accept it into the canon? Or, even more difficult, if we found a writing from Jesus Himself, should it be included in the canon? My answer to both would be–no.

Why, you ask? Because of this: The canon, the whole of the Scriptures, are the writings by which and in which Christians have formed themselves for centuries. We have formed ourselves in relation to these texts from the time of the apostles, through the Roman persecutions, through the adoption of Christianity, through the Dark Ages, through the Renaissance, through to our own day. These are the texts that we have lived in, prayed with, argued with, pondered over, disagreed with, and found comfort in. These are literally the texts that have made us who we are. Should we throw out the Pastoral Epistles since we don’t like what they say about women or hierarchy? Christians–Christian women–have been hearing, reading and disagreeing with these texts for centuries. Even this disagreement is part of the process of formation. It is with the Spirit and in light of God’s full revelation that we read of the wars of genocide and the hurban–the devotion of entire cities to slaughter–that we disagree and say that this is not God’s way. But to remove, to excise, these texts is to lose the opportunity to struggle against them and to shape ourselves in relation to them.

This view takes the authority of Scripture very seriously. It means that we must take seriously and engage Scripture even when and where we don’t like it. That those passages we don’t like should be read again, straining the ears of the heart to hear the voice of the Spirit, teaching us, leading us into the mind of Christ. Is it the same as “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”? Hell no. Because it’s never that easy–even for the people who sport those bumper stickers.

Of course, this means that engaging the Scriptures must be a discipline. Some may ask, why should I read texts that cause me pain or that offend against me or that have been used to demonize and oppress me for centuries? My reply would be twofold. First, because the are the Scriptures. They must be wrestled with, they must be dealt with. BUT–they should be encountered in God’s good time. We may need to put certain texts away for a season. For those parts and passages that have been used as sharp rocks it may be necessary to gain strength in other places before revisiting them again. Some Scriptures of comfort and consolation may be required as wine and oil for our spiritual wounds before encountering the others. However, in some season, encountered they must be.

This is one of the purposes and powers of the liturgy, especially the liturgy of the Daily Office. Proper liturgy *is* the disciplined encounter with Scripture. With all of Scripture. And it is administered in short doses If some passages seem too much to bear, they are always surrounded by other words that contain encouragement and consolation (one of the purposes of the post-Scripture canticles imo).

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Having said the things I have purposed to say, it seems fitting to pause at this point and to declare an end to Book 2. There are things in here that may be difficult and that you may disagree with. These are my reflections on a life with Scripture; I welcome yours….

Here’s the first installment of the promised Scripture post…

I’ll start my discussion with the theological question as I believe our answer to this must ground a full-on discussion of Scripture in the public forum in order to avoid misunderstandings and certain unintentional misinterpretations. What is the Bible, theologically speaking? In response to this question, I reply that Scripture is the inspired Word of God, God’s own self-revelation to humanity for the sake of our salvation through faith in Christ Jesus [nb: not contains but is. The difference? “Contains” can be a dodge to say “only the stuff in there I like is God’s Word”; with the use of “is” I’m closing that loophole for myself]. In Scripture, we have the words of human authors inspired by the Holy Spirit that depict and communicate God’s dealings with humanity, especially Israel and the Church, for our edification, reproof, correction and training in righteousness [nb: the majority of that last sentence modifies “words”–not “human authors”. I don’t deny the inspiration of the human authors, mind you, but the words are canonical, not the authors. And yes, you’ll note that I quite consciously used 2 Tim 3:16, favored proof-text of conservatives and the horror of liberals.] As a text–like all other texts (or forms of communication for that matter)–it requires interpretation. Make no mistake here. Any act of comprehension is an act of interpretation. [When we take anything into our mind it passes through our own filters that are conditioned by our own personality and culture. The filters affect some kinds of information more than others but they are always in place. I’ll give you an example: 5+5=10. This is pretty objective, right? Not as much as you’d think…the use of Base 10 is a cultural assumption.]

Should the Bible be read literally? Well, that’s a premature question and it starts at the wrong place. Acts of interpretation are bound up with expectations and assumptions. Our cultures mediate to us certain implicit understandings about various forms of communication and how to interpret them. We pick up on clues both subtle and not so subtle that let us know how we are suppose to understand things. Examples? But of course! 1) Once upon a time 2) A man walks into a bar 3) You could already be a winner.

1. Once upon a time Our cultural milieu embeds an automatic knowledge of this phrase into us by the age of five through the use of the bedtime story–this signals a fairy tale. But how–through the meaning of the words? No. The words themselves do not denote that what follows is a work of creative fiction. They reveal a certain ambiguity of time and place but that’s as far as they go. Ponder this: what would a non-native English speaker make of these words? Or–as I like to ask my students–do you know how to say “Once upon a time” in Hebrew? It’s not a linguistic question–it’s an interpretive one.

2. A man walks into a bar Again, our cultural milieu lets us know that what follows is a joke. In certain company it also signals a cue to cover the ears of any young children seated nearby since many jokes that start this way tend to be…vulgar.

3. You could already be a winner When imprinted upon a piece of mail this is a signifier meaning “recycle me.” On an internet pop-up window, it means “close me–the faster the better…” On a piece of email, “delete me–and don’t even think of opening that attachment.” We know this is a scam even though the literal sense of the words proclaims the exact opposite.

My point is this: interpretation is a complex act. It doesn’t start with individual words, but by making a judgment on the genre of the text and making a decision about how the words are supposed to be interpreted. That’s why the “literal” question is a premature one. You can’t make that decision until you know what kind of text you’re dealing with and even when you’ve decided that a literal interpretation of two different genres is not necessarily the same thing. Content is only half of the process; context also has a profound effect on meaning.

Let me clarify that. This sentence: “In 1127, Robert of Notre Dame made a heroic escape from a closely-guarded prison in Burgundy aided only by one of his loyal knights and a common house-cat.” is a relatively straight-forward sentence. There might be some room for allegory and metaphor in there but precious little. [The reference to the knight and the cat seems to be a synecdoche for a larger plan of escape–but that’s the only literary device I can find.] On the surface, the sentence contains certain points which lead us towards an interpretation of its meaning: dates, names, places. Furthermore, it displays an internal consistency. The names, places, dates, and objects mentioned all seem historically plausible. Now–is this sentence from a history book or from a novel? That’s the key question.

What’s important to notice is that we would still read the sentence the same way–literally, as it were–if it were from a history book or a novel; the difference would be the meaning that we take from it. If the sentence appears in a history book, it would convey a certain historical fact. If it was from an historical novel, its facticity could be up for debate. Is it a piece of history inserted into the novel or is it a literary creation of the author? In one case, we might treat it as if it came from a history book–though reserving a certain skepticism given the source–in the other we would expect it to fit into the author’s overall message depending on how this sentence figures in the plot. Is it a little bit of character development or is the whole story about the escape? [For those wondering, I made the sentence up.]

Please note my use of the word “facticity” above. The word I didn’t use was “truth.” Facts are a category of things contained within the set of things that are true, not the total set of things that are true. There are true things and statements that are not scientifically quantifyable “facts.” Furthermore, I’m prepared to argue that history books contain truth and that novels can also contain truth. These are different kinds of truth, packaged in different ways and intended for different purposes, but that does not make one true and the other untrue.

Okay, enough digressions–my point here is that both content and context must be considered in order to arrive at meaning. Let’s take the discussion back to the Bible. I do want to stay on the genre thing for a moment, though, and loop back to my initial comments about assumptions and expectations.

We have expectations of certain texts. These expectations include culturally assumed limits on a text’s contents, authority, and relative truth claims. This is entirely natural and appropriate. Furthermore, these are based on genre identification. When I pick up a book entitled Quick Dinnertime Meals I expect it to contain recipes that I can follow to whip up a quick and tasty meal for my family. I don’t want it to be a poet’s interpretive feeling of what ingredients could go together in a euphonious fashion. My expectation of a book entitled A True History of the Templars will be different if I’m pulling it out of the stacks of a research library than if I’m taking it from a rack next to the supermarket checkout. One of the modern issues with Scripture, I’m convinced, is genre identification that is intimately bound up with the issue of expectations.

When an Israelite picked up Deuteronomy, or Jonah, or the Psalms, he would unconsciously identify the various genres of the books as his culture had conditioned him (he knew what “Once upon a time” is in 8th century Hebrew…). When we pick them up, we see them as all part of the same genre–Holy Scripture. This makes a huge difference in our expectations of what these books contain and thus in how we understand them from the expectations of how contemporary readers–and their authors, even–understood them.

One of the reasons why there is great resistance among laity and first-year seminarians to the discipline of biblical studies is because one of the first tasks of the instructor is to reorient the assumptions and expectations about the biblical text. This can either be done poorly or be done well. Let me just say that I’ve rarely seen it done well… Often, especially in undergraduate institutions, religion profs take a certain glee in stripping the naively religious students of their assumptions through the use of shock tactics.
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In Antiquity works were divided into books and volumes. This was a practical concern based initially on the length of a roll of papyrus. When you reached the end of one, you had book 1 and it was time to start book 2. My handheld’s battery is about to die [yes, I’m writing this on the train]; if it does, I’ll lose this–so here endeth book 1!

Yes. I’m procrastinating. I should be writing Very Intelligent Things on knowing and unknowing in the Cloud of Unknowing for a book chapter I stupidly got roped into doing. I’ve just printed out a good set of Aquinas extracts and the Epistle of Discretion for marking up alongside the Cloud and am celebrating that hard-won progress by doing random blogging…

I love All Souls. It’s the last bit of the goth Triduum (Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls) and the only set day of the Sanctorale where the appointed color is black. And the vestments today at church were to die for… (Literally, of course–it’s the set they use for Requiem masses.) But as I was telling Dave on the phone, I think that the current protestant attempt to recover the saints in general and All Saints in particular has really wrecked the church’s sense of All Souls. As you probably now, the standard early 21st century protestant take is that everybody gets to be a saint. Yeah, I know there’s *some* theological basis for that…but where does it leave All Souls? If we’ve already celebrated all the baptized yesterday, who were we celebrating today? All the non-Christian dead? I mean–in one sense, yes, since we are celebrating literally all souls but… The way to recover it, as far as I can see, is to draw the line and say–look, yes, we’re all saints in one sense but in another sense some people really did do an exemplary job of showing forth the love of Christ in their lives. These people really should be held up as exemplars and as intercessors. Perhaps the problem is that we’ve lost the third section of the Church… Traditionally we spoke of the Church Militant (all of us living folks here on earth still slogging away), the Church Expectant (those who have died and are generally hanging around waiting for the resurrection), and the Church Triumphant (those souls who are already participating in the fullness of God and who are–even as you read this–interceding before the throne of God on behalf of us poor slobs).

Ok. Must do work. Oh, one more thing–for those of you who are interested, I posted something over at the other blog on singing the psalms. Enjoy…