A Compact Guide to the Whole Bible

Learning to Read Scripture's Story

Wall, Robert W., Nienhuis, David R.

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441221995
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This compact, one-semester introduction to the Bible prepares students to begin reading the biblical text as Christian Scripture, focusing on the meaning of Scripture for the church. The editors and contributors--experienced teachers with expertise in different parts of the Bible--orient students to the whole of Scripture so that they may read the biblical text for themselves. The book first explains what Christians believe about Scripture and gives a bird's-eye survey of the whole biblical story. Chapters then introduce the story, arrangement, style, and key ideas of each division of the Old and New Testament, helping readers see how the books of the Bible make a coherent whole.

1
Reading the Bible as Scripture

Daniel Castelo and Robert W. Wall

This book is about reading the Bible as Scripture—the church’s book, a sacred text. Our opening chapter seeks to set the table for the feast to follow, but not as most books like this one do. Those books introduce readers to the various strategies scholars use when studying the Bible as an anthology of ancient, religious texts. These are important matters, but first things first: the practices of biblical interpretation follow from the interpreter’s core beliefs about what the Bible is. We have found that students need a compass to help navigate a pathway into the biblical text to mine its theological goods and assess their relevance for the life of faith today. This compass turns on what the church believes about Scripture.

There is good reason for us to begin the book here. Already in the seventeenth century, when science became the arbiter of enlightened truth in the West, the church’s “Scripture” became the academy’s “Bible.” Scholars trained in biblical languages, literary art, and historical analysis became the Bible’s most influential readers. They interpreted biblical texts by wrapping them up in ancient history and languages to explain the author’s intended meaning for the texts’ original readers in the ancient Near East (Old Testament) or Mediterranean (New Testament) world. This hard work continues today, and we understand the church’s book better because of it.

To be sure, the positive purpose for doing the scholar’s work was to protect biblical texts from self-interested, biased use of them—often by earnest Christians. But modernity’s interest in what the Bible must have meant for its first readers created a vast distance between what the Bible meant in the past and what it means today for faithful readers who seek to hear a word from the Lord to guide their witness and form their faith. This same distance often characterizes the gap between the concerns of an academic study of the Bible and those of rank-and-file believers who receive this same text in worship and spiritual instruction.

By referring to the Bible as “Scripture,” we do not intend to privilege certain interpretive methods as better than other methods; in fact, all the tools of modern criticism are used as God’s gifts in due season. Rather “Scripture” signals a way of thinking theologically about the Bible as God’s Word for God’s people, one that supplies the theological goods that fund spiritual wisdom and provide moral direction (cf. 2 Tim. 3:15–17). Readers are cued that the rigorous study of the biblical text that they are about to undertake targets more than their intellectual formation; it offers them a fresh way of thinking about God and God’s vision of a transformed people and a new creation.

Scripture Is Important

The questions we seek to address in this chapter follow from our core convictions about the nature of Scripture as a sacred text appointed by God to do holy work. The different roles Scripture performs in a congregation’s worship and instruction, in our personal devotions, and in academic classrooms where biblical texts are rigorously studied should all logically follow from what we believe Scripture is.

In fact, this should be true of even the well-meaning skeptic for whom the Bible holds no religious importance. In this case, its texts are studied not for practical application to one’s spiritual formation but out of deep respect for its importance for a particular religious community or in shaping Western civilization.

Our claim is that the Bible has always been much more than this for Christians. Jesus denied reports that he had come to abolish Scripture, claiming rather that the purpose of his arrival as God’s Son was to fulfill the promises of God found throughout Israel’s Scripture (Matt. 5:17–18). Christian readers approach Scripture the way that Christ does; they believe that what they find there discloses the full measure of God’s promised salvation and then provides the hope that this salvation is graciously delivered by God’s Spirit to all who believe in God’s Son.

From its founding, the church has looked to the Bible to help believers understand their faith and guide their conduct in distinctively Christian ways. Christians believe that Scripture provides access to inside information about God. Studying the Bible is like entering a sacred place where the truth about God is encountered, which sometimes afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. God’s biblical portrait gives readers a working sense of what practices and beliefs both please and displease God. Scripture is indispensable, then, in forming God’s people.

At the same time, readers should always study Scripture with other resources that the Spirit uses to draw believers into loving communion with God. For example, Jesus followers have always disciplined their daily walk by worshiping together, praying for one another, practicing good works, and receiving the sacraments (e.g., the Lord’s Supper, baptism) as the means of receiving God’s empowering grace. Scripture’s promise that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’s name, his Spirit is there among them (Matt. 18:20) is made real whenever and wherever Christians gather together to worship God and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit is experienced. At the same time, we should be mindful of the Lord’s instruction for individuals to practice their daily devotions in private (Matt. 6:1–6, 16–18). While we hope this book guides Bible study in the classroom and congregation, we also hope it aids the individual reader to engage in what we happily call a “recreational reading” of Scripture!

Interpreting Scripture Is Hard Work

While Protestants have always granted a special place of privilege to the Bible, all Christians recognize that Scripture has the authority to teach them the ways of God. For some Christians, however, the Bible functions as the one and only reliable source for knowing God. Often this belief is justified by the perception that the institutionalized practices and traditions of the church have become faulty, unfruitful, and even unfaithful over time. These concerns have always been at the pivot point of Christianity’s reform movements. The Protestant Reformers claim that “the church is always to be reformed” rings true even today, ironically even within some Protestant communions!

The deeply held sentiment that biblical teaching establishes Christian beliefs and practices has limits. Especially during the modern period, biblical scholars have become increasingly aware that a community’s core beliefs about the Bible and its practices of applying the Bible are shaped by the concerns and experiences of a particular context. Without doubt, Scripture is an indispensable resource for Christians—when used in the company of the Spirit—for maturing in their understanding of the ways of God; it is, however, more than a mere philosophical foundation by which to build a fortress of timeless thought. Scripture is a holy text that must be interpreted and applied to ever-changing lives in an ever-changing world. God’s Word is living and active, and the activity of interpretation helps make it so. The reader’s work of adapting these precious but ancient texts to today’s culture is no easy matter.

The reliance on Scripture alone to seek out the truth about God raises an important question: how is Scripture faithfully interpreted by all Christians in every generation of a global church? Interpretation is not a process of mathematical reasoning occurring in lockstep to arrive at the right answer. Texts are not puzzles or algebraic equations; they are collections of words that together form a meaning that relates God’s Word to our lives. Interpretation is not only an intellectual exercise that requires knowledge of those “collections of words” but also an act of worship, requiring prayer and spiritual maturity that helps us adapt biblical teaching to daily life.

The Nature of Scripture

Scripture’s importance and the hard work demanded of us to apply its teaching in formative ways are largely matters that recognize the special authority Scripture holds for a particular religious community. Christian theologians employ a wide variety of conceptions to describe and defend the importance of biblical teaching for the practice of Christian faith. Which among these conceptions provides the best account for Scripture’s role in forming a robust faith?

Before we respond to this key question, remember what is at stake. The best way to protect a biblical text from a reader who mistakes or misapplies its teaching is to make certain that the content and consequence of biblical interpretation align with what the church believes about the Bible—about what it is and is not.

This entire book is organized by the straightforward conviction that the Bible is the church’s book; it has special status and practical importance for every Christian. In part, this claim is based on a historical observation: there would be no Bible without the church that formed it (we believe under the Spirit’s direction). But what we observe in the historical record is even more tightly secured by a theological understanding of Scripture as God’s Word for God’s people.

This integral union between the church and its Scripture leads us to suggest a particular rubric in describing its nature. Even as the Nicene Creed describes the nature of the church as one holy catholic and apostolic, these same four marks are also true of the church’s book. Scripture is one holy catholic and apostolic text.

Scripture Is One

The Spirit works through both the Bible and the church to form an abiding witness of the goodness and beauty of God and God’s purposes for all creation. In this sense, Scripture is “one” book not because it says the same thing in the same way; it is an anthology of many collections, written in many different literary genres and from different theological perspectives. The Bible’s unity is a theological claim about its singular purpose to heal the world God created so that it lives, flourishes, and thrives alongside and in the presence of God.

To describe it as unified also recognizes that the Bible tells a single story whose central character is the one and only God. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture witnesses to who God always is and what God has already done, is now doing, and promises to do in the future. Even though this plotline is neither a simple one nor one that follows a straight line, the Bible’s story has a beginning, middle, and stunning end that tell the story of God’s salvation in a comprehensive and coherent way.

Scripture Is Holy

When the Bible speaks of “holy” things, it refers to an ordinary someone or something that God appoints and enables to perform extraordinary roles among God’s people. Sometimes people shy away from using the language of “holy” because it means for them that something or someone is flawless. We approach holiness differently. We believe the term applies to creatures of God’s own choosing that God sets apart to accomplish God’s purposes.

When we speak of the “holy” Bible, then, we are not describing it as a flawless book. Yes, the Bible is a thing of great beauty. But when biblical writers themselves describe the act of writing a biblical text (e.g., Luke 1:1–4), they describe an ordinary literary process of collecting and arranging materials, writing them down to serve the needs of their readers, so that what they have written will be received and read like any other story, poem, or letter. What makes the Bible holy—set apart for extraordinary service—is the Spirit’s decision to select these particular texts, to guide the church in first recognizing these texts as indispensable for its future and then collecting them together to form a complete Bible (we call this “canonization”), and finally to illumine the church’s use of Scripture for holy ends. Second Timothy 3:15–17 identifies these holy ends as the formation of spiritual wisdom and maturity that enables a people to know Christ and live like him.

Scripture Is Catholic

The Bible is a “catholic” book because it is “the Word of God for the people of God.” The word “catholic” (small “c”) means global and so refers to the scope of Scripture’s influence, which extends to every culture in every age. If the church is global, so is every Scripture, which promises to communicate God’s Word to every kind of Christian. The Bible is nondenominational!

Of course, the particular social contexts in which the Bible is composed, collected, canonized, and considered all matter. So do those real settings in which a particular congregation picks up the same Bible translated into its own language and receives it as God’s Word. All interpretation is local interpretation! These contexts matter only in light of the conviction that every believer everywhere is “in Christ Jesus” (cf. Gal. 3:26–29). Each is a citizen of a new kingdom that embodies and shows the renewal of all things. The Bible is “catholic” because God uses it to establish God’s reign on all the earth.

Scripture Is Apostolic

Those who are familiar with the Gospel story of Jesus know that he appointed some of his disciples as apostles. They were those who from the beginning heard, saw, and touched the historical Jesus (1 John 1:1–3). They knew him best and were witnesses to what he said and did as God’s Son. Scripture is “apostolic” because all its teaching lines up with the testimony of these first witnesses of Jesus. Their story is our story. They are our trusted forerunners in the faith. Christians find their witness reliable and good.

When the Gospel writers tell their authorized biographies of Jesus, they do so with materials received from these apostolic witnesses who knew the historical Jesus best and who experienced firsthand the salvation he brought into the world. The New Testament letters are pastoral writings of these same apostles (or their associates). Even Paul, who never met the historical Jesus, was personally schooled by the resurrected Jesus (Acts 9:3–6; 22:17–21; 26:14–18; Gal. 1:12, 16; 2:2). And even as their apostolic witness and transforming experience of the risen Jesus were first interpreted by studying Israel’s Scripture (our Old Testament), so now the church’s book also includes the synagogue’s book. Both Testaments, Old and New, are apostolic in content and consequence. Israel’s Creator God is the very same God personified by Jesus Christ, whom the apostles met, trusted, and followed. We trust the Bible’s teaching as followers of Jesus just as his apostles did.

This last point leads us to the most important claim of all: if the apostolicity of Scripture assures its readers that its teachings are of a piece with the apostolic witness, then every good interpretation of Scripture will necessarily always focus readers on the risen, living Jesus. The church has always taught that all Scripture, both Old and New Testament, illumines his ways, which alone hold the key to our happiness—or to use scriptural language, Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

A Few Good Questions

This book will not answer every question readers bring to the Bible. Its modest purpose is to provide an overview or framework of a particular way of thinking about the Bible that we hope will provide a way forward. But here are four good questions students constantly ask in the courses we routinely teach. We raise them in this opening chapter to illustrate how our understanding of Scripture carves out room for particular responses to familiar questions, which may also help readers see more clearly the Bible’s enduring importance in their lives.

What Relevance Does the Bible Have for Its Non-Christian Readers?

The formation of Scripture (canonization) fixed a particular number of collected writings in a particular order to make clear their special significance in forming the faith and practices of Christian readers. But why should non-Christians be interested in stories that have no real bearing on a faith they don’t share or a life they have no real interest in engaging?

First, if one accepts the Bible as a cultural classic, the citizen of the world may approach the Bible as a curious reader interested in a book that continues to exert power over the thinking and popular imagination of people, especially in the West. Even knowledge of the biblical story’s plotline (see the next chapter) allows one to participate thoughtfully in a range of conversations about religion conducted in and for the public square.

Second, if one accepts the Bible as a literary classic, the well-educated reader may approach the Bible for the sheer pleasure that great works of art evoke. The appeal of its great stories, the memorable lyrics of the Psalms, the pithy wisdom of the Proverbs, the moral power of the Sermon on the Mount, and the arresting images of the book of Revelation have stirred the imagination of artists for centuries. Although Christians may not be disposed to think extensively about the Bible’s literary artistry, it remains a good reason for non-Christians to enjoy reading and studying it.

Finally, if one accepts the Bible as a devotional classic, which every well-educated person should read, even the thoughtful nonbeliever may look to its depiction of the Triune God as a repository of spiritual wisdom that adds layers of meaning to the other sources of human wisdom, including the sciences and humanities. Any robust conception of ...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Reading the Bible as Scripture
• 2. Reading the Bible as Story
• 3. The Beginning of the Story
• 4. The Story of Israel in (and out of) the Land
• 5. The Witness of Israel's Poets and Sages
• 6. The Witness of Israel's Prophets
• 7. Israel in Waiting
• 8. The Story of Jesus
• 9. The Story of the Church
• 10. The Story's Conclusion
• 11. Epilogue
• Glossary
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover