A Concise Guide to Reading the New Testament

A Canonical Introduction

Nienhuis, David R.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493412983
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The New Testament came together, and comes to us, not as a randomly sorted set of individual books but as a definitely shaped and ordered whole. This concise, theological introduction to the New Testament sheds light on the interpretive significance of the canon's structure and sequence and articulates how the final shape of the canon is formative for Christian discipleship. Providing an essential overview often missing from New Testament books and courses, this book will serve as an accessible supplement to any New Testament or Bible introduction textbook.

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Introduction

The Form and Function of the New Testament Canon

Following the Way of the Word

Each passing year sees the publication of more and more texts that aim to introduce students and laypeople to the Bible (see Glossary for terms in boldface). What could possibly justify the production of yet another book? Aren’t there enough choices available already?

Those of us who teach the Bible to undergraduates and seminarians know that the answer is no, actually. Certainly there is a wide range of excellent and reputable texts to choose from. But teachers who work in contexts that are both academically serious and confessionally Christian face unique problems. On the one hand, we want our students to spend the bulk of their study time reading the Bible. On the other, there are so many introductory matters to cover in order to help students understand what they are reading that there often isn’t enough time in a standard class period both to cover introductory concepts and to work through the text with students. Hence appears the need for an appropriate textbook to inform their homework experience.

But here is where a new and different set of problems arises. Most introductory textbooks seek to be as exhaustive as possible, addressing as many historical and literary elements of analysis as they are able. The result, obviously, is a large text with thick, substantive chapters. What professor wouldn’t be happy with that? I was, for many years, until I discovered some things that concerned me. First, when given an assignment to read the introductory text along with sections from Scripture, I discovered too many students were reading the textbook and skimming (or skipping) the assigned Bible reading. Because students have limited time, they often default to what is perceived to be the shortest possible route to the goal. And because their educational experience has trained them to be assessment oriented, they perceive the goal to be a grade that is determined by homework and exams; so they rush to “the expert” to help them get “the important parts” instead of reading the Scripture on their own. This results in too many students spending their time reading about the Bible instead of actually learning to read the Bible themselves.

Second, most introductory textbooks present students with a Bible that differs rather sharply from the one received by the church. For centuries now, biblical scholarship has privileged the reconstruction of an “original context” for the biblical texts, using historical criteria as a means to regulate contemporary interpretive possibilities. One of the results of this project has been a dismantling of the Bible’s final form. When it comes to the New Testament (NT), students learn that they should actually read Mark first, not Matthew, since the former is the earlier text. They learn that Luke and Acts should be rearranged to be read alongside each other as two parts of an authorial whole; that John’s Gospel should be read alongside the Letters of John; that Paul’s Letters should be rearranged to begin with 1 Thessalonians; and that there are indeed a number of letters attributed to Paul that are not actually written by him at all.

The inevitable result is the suspicion that there is something wrong with the Bible as we have received it. Whoever put it together must have arranged it incorrectly! Worse, they left out all the important historical information we need in order to make any sense of it. How could we ever understand the intention of the original authors without first being introduced to the social, cultural, religious, and political realities that shaped the composition of their text and informed its reception by the original hearers? And who can provide us with this information but the academically trained expert in biblical studies?

Once students start thinking this way, a final realization creeps in. They discover that the quest to read the Bible “correctly” requires them to take it out of the hands of Christians, and out of the context of the church (which is, of course, the community that introduced most of them to the Bible in the first place) and place it instead into the hands of the scholarly expert, to be studied in the context of the university classroom.1 Thus, the hope of most Christian institutions of higher education risks being thwarted: we require courses in the Bible in order to help our students become better Scripture readers and, hopefully, better Christians; but by replacing the Christian Scripture with the scholars’ Bible, we inadvertently create an existential chasm between students’ intellectual formation and spiritual formation. Confusion is the inevitable result when what they hear in class and read in their textbook is out of step with how they read in church and what they hear from the pulpit.

Of course, the actual use of the Bible in many churches presents a different set of problems. Some of my students attend popular nondenominational churches led by entrepreneurial leaders who claim to be “Bible believing” and strive to offer sermons that are “relevant” for successful Christian living. Unfortunately, in too many cases this formula results in a preacher appealing to a short text of Scripture, out of context, in order to support a predetermined set of “biblical principles” to guide the congregants’ daily lives. The only Bible these students encounter, sadly, is the version that is carefully distilled according to the theological and ideological concerns that have shaped the spiritual formation of the lead pastor.

On the other side of the continuum are more “traditional” churches, which use the readings from a lectionary in worship. Students who attend these churches—especially Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox students—typically encounter a huge amount of Scripture each Sunday, including an Old Testament (OT) reading, a psalm, a reading from the NT, and a passage from one of the four Gospels. These four readings are usually arranged typologically, with the first three chosen for their thematic correspondence with the assigned Gospel text. While students in these churches typically hear a lot of Scripture read over their lifetime, they often lack a detailed narrative framework for understanding how all these various texts fit together. They may be able to recognize Scripture when they hear it read, but they are usually unable to place the story they heard within the larger story of God narrated in the Bible.

A wide range of Protestant churches exists between these two poles, and many of their leaders labor to communicate the important role Scripture plays in the life of a Jesus follower. Students memorize the names of the biblical books in order. They learn the basic plotline of the larger biblical story. They are encouraged to set aside time each day for devotions. They memorize a variety of Bible verses. By the standards of most contemporary Christians, these students know their Bible well.

And yet these same students typically struggle in my classes as much as the others, if not more so. This is the case because most of them have been trained to be Bible quoters, not Bible readers. They have the capacity to recall a relevant biblical text in support of a particular doctrinal point, or in opposition to a hot spot in the cultural wars, or in hope of emotional support when times get tough. They approach the Bible as a sort of reference book, a collection of useful God-quotes that can be looked up as one would locate a word in a dictionary or an entry in an encyclopedia. What they are not trained to do is read a biblical book from beginning to end, to trace its narrative arc, to discern its main themes, and to wonder about how it shapes our faith lives today. Indeed, oftentimes these students find themselves dismayed when they read a beloved Bible quote in its actual literary context and discover that it does not seem to bear the meaning they thought it did when they quoted the verse in isolation.

To summarize, the problem as I see it is this: the university frequently introduces students to a Bible they don’t recognize, and the church often teaches students to be devoted to a Bible they don’t know how to read.

In my years of teaching I have found that what is most helpful is a kind of concise reading guide, one capable of providing a relatively straightforward bird’s-eye view of the text to orient readers so they can get down to the business of building a life habit of reading the Bible carefully for themselves. This is precisely why Rob Wall and I partnered with our Scripture department colleagues at Seattle Pacific University to produce The Compact Guide to the Whole Bible: Learning to Read Scripture’s Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), and why I have gone on to compose this reading guide focused specifically on the NT.

The chapters of this book are held together by a thematic refrain that echoes throughout. I consistently refer to the form of the New Testament itself, as well as the contents of the story it tells, as the way of the Word. The logic behind that refrain can be stated simply:

The Bible, which has been provided for us to be the written Word of God, is intentionally designed to guide readers through a process of learning the way of Jesus, who is the embodied Word of God.

This conception of the Bible’s intended purpose is grounded in the Bible’s own articulation of Scripture’s function: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). These verses have far less to say about the original authorship of Scripture than about its contemporary function: Scripture’s primary target is the revelation of God for the formation of faith.

The subtitle describes this book as A Canonical Introduction. What makes a NT introduction canonical? Four orienting convictions drive the reading articulated here: a canonical introduction will read the Bible as Scripture; it will approach the Bible as an authoritative collection; it will privilege the interpretive significance of the Bible’s final form; and it will focus on the Bible’s function as a faith-forming narrative. Each of these convictions requires further elaboration before we can start our journey on the way of the Word.

Reading the Bible as Scripture

Christians turn to the Bible for a number of different reasons. Some do so to gather biblical support for doctrinal positions. Others search it for propositional truth claims that can be used in arguing political or ethical matters. Still others seek inspirational quotations or stories in search of emotional support. All of these readers undoubtedly conceive of the Bible as an authoritative text, but they are not necessarily approaching the Bible as Scripture.

Reading the Bible as Scripture requires a recognition of the Bible’s orienting identity. The Bible is the canon of Christian Scripture, a collection of holy writings set apart by God’s people in recognition of their Spirit-empowered capacity to mediate the transforming presence of God to the community of faith. Those who approach the Bible as Scripture, then, do so in company with faithful others in order to be transformed by God. They will be less interested in having their own questions answered than in opening themselves up to the questions God has in store for them. They will not think of the Bible as a tool to be used like an inert object, but as a divinely appointed setting for encountering a living Subject (i.e., God). In short, reading the Bible as Scripture involves approaching it as an act of worship.

This means, then, that the church is the appropriate setting for reading the Bible. In using the word “church,” I do not merely refer to the buildings we gather in on Sunday mornings, but to the transhistoric community of God’s people who received this text long ago and have been gathering to attend to its message ever since. Yet I do not mean to say that the classroom, the living room, or the bus is somehow the wrong location for reading. No, reading the Bible with the church means reading the Bible knowing that we are always reading in company with a very particular community. It means reading as members of a body, knowing that interpretive meaning is discovered in conversation, not in isolation. It requires an awareness of the contemporary diversity of that body, knowing that we will never be transformed if we read only with those who already support our biases and presuppositions. It means keeping the church’s ancient theological agreements (often called the rule of faith) in mind as we read, knowing that the powerful variety of Scripture’s witnesses may lead us apart from one another if we do not read with the hope of fulfilling Christ’s prayer that his followers “may all be one” (John 17:21).

Chief among these theological agreements is a proper understanding of the God who brought Scripture into being and speaks through it today: this is the Creator of all things, the faithful covenant partner to Israel who became flesh in Jesus and comes to us today by means of the Holy Spirit, who takes away our bent toward sinning and sets our hearts at liberty for service to God.

Thus, this book will not include extensive historical analyses of the factors that brought individual NT texts into being. We do not presume that a singular “real meaning” is hidden away in a past “original context” that must be unearthed by a professional historian. In place of reconstructed portraits of ancient authors and original audiences to whom we no longer have direct access, the reader will find a close analysis of the text that stands before us, with one reader’s careful reflection on what the Word has to teach us about the way of Christ and how the Holy Spirit might help us walk in that way today.

Approaching the Bible as a Collection

The previous section identified the Bible as the canon of Christian Scripture. The word “canon” comes from a Greek word used initially to describe a “rule” (as in a ruler with which one measures things). Over time it came to refer to an official, approved “list” or “collection” of authorities by which truth might be measured. To approach the Bible as a canon, then, is to read it in the recognition that the Bible is actually an authoritative book full of books, a collection of writings edited together into a unified whole.

The Bible’s “collectedness” bears a number of important implications for our reading. Just as approaching the Bible as Scripture disallows interpretation in isolation from other Christians, so also approaching the Bible as a canon disallows the reading of one biblical text in isolation from another. Though each book of the Bible had its own ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Gospel according to Matthew
• 3. The Gospel according to Mark
• 4. The Gospel according to Luke
• 5. The Gospel according to John
• 6. The Acts of the Apostles
• 7. The Letters of Paul
• 8. The Catholic Epistles
• 9. The Revelation to John
• Glossary
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover