Book Review - The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How each of us chooses (consciously or not, but we all do choose) to read the Bible has a direct impact on how we end up applying its text.

One of the first things Dr. Scot McKnight brings up is that "we all pick and choose" when it comes to the Bible and its application to our lives. The important thing is to become aware of it and learn how we pick and choose. By becoming cognizant of our way of reading and our biases, we can become better interpreters of the text and have a rationale for why we interpret the way we do.

Dr. McKnight details how he believes the Bible ought to be read. His is a balance between all-tradition and all-individualism. Each person needs to read the Bible and think through applications as individuals, but it must be done as part of both historical and contemporary communities of faith. He describes this as "reading with tradition" as opposed to "reading through tradition". The difference is that with tradition values what tradition brings, but leaves open the room to question it and revise it, if necessary. Reading through tradition places it on a pedestal; it is a fixed norm that cannot be changed. While Protestants, and particularly Evangelicals, might protest that they don't put tradition on a pedestal, Dr. McKnight argues that is in fact what has happened in many churches.

He suggests that we would do ourselves great service to learn to read the Bible as a Story, where there was the original intent for humankind, how things went wrong, God's efforts to bring restoration that culminates in Jesus, and ends with a final restoration of all things. This is in contrast to the many ways of contemporary Bible reading that looks to the Bible for isolated principles, maxims, promises, and applications. Dr. McKnight writes that contemporary Christians have often turned the Bible itself into an object of worship (idolatry) by conferring upon it authority and infallibility that belongs only to God himself.

The final section of the book is a case study of what Dr. McKnight discusses in the first two sections. The case study is on the role of women in ministry. He looks at the Old and New Testaments to see What Did Women Do? as found in the biblical text. He places this inside of the greater Story framework of the Bible and God's redemptive plan. He uses this as the framework to interpret some of the "hammer" passages that are frequently cited by traditionalists to bar women from full inclusion in ministry. It is not a full and exhaustive discussion of women in ministry, but provides key points and highlights.

He writes the following, which I see as summarizing his position:

Now for the troubling irony: seeking to control or limit the applicability of the WDWD passages by appealing to the silencing passages illustrates the fall, not the new creation. When men seek to control women by silencing them permanently in the church, we stand face-to-face with a contradiction of the very thing the new creation is designed to accomplish: to undo the fall. What we see in this desire to silence women is the desire to rule over women, a desire that pertains to the fall, not to the new creation. What the Spirit does when the Spirit is present is to release and liberate humans from their fallen condition so that God’s will can be completely done. The Spirit creates mutuality. Always.

I see Dr. McKnight as a progressive conservative: he is progressive in his approach to interpreting the Bible, but he is very much conservative in accepting Bible as inspired by God and is critical in apprehending God's revelation to humankind.

While not all may accept Dr. McKnight's position on women in ministry, he cannot be accused of not having a sound rationale for it. And it would do well for all who claim that the Bible has some degree of authority over them, to read this book and have a clearer idea of how they have chosen to read and interpret the Bible. To that effect there are a couple of quizzes found in the Appendices to help guide the reader.

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Book Review: Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts

Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts: Reflections on Paul, Women, and the Authority of Scripture by Frances Taylor Gench
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book packages three different, but related topics into one. The first is the subject of the authority of scripture and what that looks like in practice. The first two chapters deal with its ins and outs using two passages as case studies. The second subject is what to do with the so-called "tyrannical" texts that minimize and subjugate women. Five of the six chapters deal with examples of such "tyrannical" texts. (The sixth chapter discusses a non-tyrannical passage, Romans 16, which discusses women in church leadership, but also discusses how the church has sought to erase their memories.) The third subject is the controversy regarding Pauline authorship of some of these tyrannical texts, and whether authorship should be a consideration in scriptural authority.

The question of what to do with troubling texts has vexed Christian readers of the Bible throughout its history. In the present day one of its manifestations is in regards to what the Bible "really says" about women and, more importantly, women in church leadership. For traditionalists, "the Bible is clear" that women are not to hold teaching positions and perhaps even remain silent in church. For progressives this is at odds with the overall trajectory of God's plan of restoration and at odds with Jesus' example and Paul's teaching, particularly of Galatians 3:28. Progressives are tempted to minimize troublesome teachings, try to explain it away, or even throw it out altogether.

Frances Gench shows her readers another set of options. The first chapter discusses 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and then suggests five recommendations for reading and handling tyrannical texts. The intent is to take seriously the canonical authority (as opposed to authority based on presumed authorship) of the biblical text.

For me the fourth recommendation - Learn from the dangers as well as the insights - was a revelation. This recommendation acknowledges that biblical authors are human, even when inspired, that they are writing within their various contexts and with various motivations - some which may not be altogether pure or praiseworthy. This recommendation allows for errors and even bad theology to have been recorded in the pages of the Bible. What it does is allows us to wrestle with the problems and see where the authors and the communities they were writing to went off track so that we can learn from their mistakes. For me, this was the book's most important contribution.

Gench provides exegesis and discusses various interpretations of some of the common tyrannical texts employed against women. She frequently disagrees with even some commonly supplied progressive interpretations and provides alternatives that she suggests are more faithful to keeping to the text and its authority.

For progressive Christians, this book can provide a way to reconcile a Bible that is less than perfect with divinely inspired authority of said writing. It is a progressive apologetic to a way of interpreting and using scripture that remains faithful to its intent and to two millennia of church history.

This book is also a fine resource for exploring biblical feminism and gender roles in the family, church, and society.

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Book Review: Disarming Scripture

Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did by Derek Flood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Unquestioning obedience, or faithful questioning? Which hermeneutic a reader of the Bible uses can either lead to violence or love.

The above is, in a nutshell, the thesis of this book by Derek Flood. Christians have frequently struggled with the amount of violence in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, though there is still plenty to be troubled about in the New Testament. Two common options for dealing with these is to skip it altogether (common in liberal Christianity); or, justify violence and maintain it is still applicable today (conservative and fundamentalist Christianity).

Derek proposes a third option: to accept it as reality of how the culture and the times saw God and violence, but to question if it is really ever was representative of God's ways. Ask the question, how does the text fit into the overall trajectory of the Bible which culminates with the command for enemy-love that Jesus gives? This is the hermeneutic of faithful questioning that Derek proposes as the most appropriate way to read the Bible. He suggests that this is how Progressive Christians ought to read it.

Derek highlights some of the most problematic passages in both the Old and New Testaments to argue his case. He shows how the Hebrews and Jews did not have issues with conflicting views of God in scripture, but rather used them as springboards to argue and dialog about the nature of God; that for them, scripture is not the final authority, but a tool to lead them to greater understanding. Derek shows how Jesus and Paul used scripture in this way: not as the final say, but as starting points; and that they had no difficulties in intentionally changing or omitting portions of texts in their interpretations.

Derek also discusses the common arguments raised by inerrantists, infallibists, and literalists (i.e., conservative and fundamentalist Christians) against this kind of hermeneutic. His key argument is that Jesus spoke about leaving the Holy Spirit to guide future Christians into greater truth. His next argument is a corollary: that Paul writes about how "we have the mind of Christ" and because of that, no static text can be the final authority. Inspiration is found in the act of reading; not inherently in the words.

Derek's conclusion is that in order to defend the authority of a static text, force and violence must eventually be used. When a person or a religious group sees the Bible in this way, they must defend their "rightness" and the violence found in the Bible is justification for their means. In order to disarm violence and embrace enemy-love taught by Jesus, this static reading of the text must be abandoned to a more robust and flexible hermeneutic.

This book will appeal to many Progressive Christians and questioning believers. It provides a way out of the rigidness of traditional ways of reading and interpreting scripture while still maintaining faithfulness (Derek would say it is more faithful ) to God and his inspiration of scripture. This book will help liberal Christians take another look at the problematic parts of the Bible. And hopefully for those who hold to a conservative position on scripture, it will at least help explain how Progressives can claim faithfulness while rejecting inerrancy, infallibility, and literalism.

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Video: Origins Today–Genesis 1-3 Through Ancient Eyes by John H. Walton

How should modern Christians interpret and understand the creation accounts of Genesis 1-3?

My notes follow.

 

Notes

• What does the Bible reveal? How does the Bible reveal what it reveals?
• God reveals his purpose through human communicators. This communication is limited to human means, culture, time, language.
• Bible is written “for us, but not to us. Message transcends culture, but form is culture-bound.” We are reading someone else’s mail.
• We have to learn to see the world as the original writers of the text saw the world. What was their view of cosmology? (E.g., they didn’t see the world as a globe/sphere.)
• What we see today as “mythology” was the ancients’ truth.
• The Israelites/Hebrews had their particular cosmological view that does not look like anything like our modern scientific one.
• If God is going communicate into the ancient culture, which cosmology would he use? Theirs or ours? God uses what is familiar, but by his communication he is not endorsing the cosmological viewpoint.
• The human view of cosmology is always in flux. Much has changed even in the last century about how we see the universe.
• “We must see the text the way the ancient Israelites saw the text.” The definition and meaning of words in the Bible must be what they understood. We must not impose our definitions onto the text.
• The Bible does not provide new scientific revelation – it is a theological text.
• When the Bible speaks about “thinking or feeling” in the heart, we know what that means. We don’t feel the need to “defend” the Bible’s “physiological” and “neurological” perspective of thought, mind, and emotions. So we should extend this to other “science claims” in the Bible.
• The Bible is not teaching or revealing science. It is making certain historical claims. But it’s primary intent is theological.
• The Creation account of Genesis is not about material origins, but about functional origins. Ancients did not consider “existence” to be about material origins, but about something being given a “function.”
• “Naming and separating are acts of creation.”
• Genesis 1 is “not about building a house, but making a house a home.”
• Days 1-3: functions proclaimed (no material creation)
  • Basis for 1) time, 2) weather and space, 3) food provision
• Days 4-6: functionaries installed
  • 4) Lights (not objects) for signs, celebrations, days, years; 5) fish and birds to fill the world; 6) animals to fill the world and people to subdue and rule
  • The Israelites saw sun, moon, and stars as “lights,” not objects. (The other peoples in ANE saw these as both lights and gods.)
• The world is thus a home. Whose home?
• The world is a cosmic temple. The Creation account is the arrival and enthroning of God in his home. It is a cosmological account; not a material account.
  • The Sabbath is the day in which God arrives.
  • In the ancient world, gods “rest” in temples
  • “Rest” is the main goal of creation and the creation account
  • Resting expresses having control over an ordered system
  • It is from where God governs the world
• “Rest” in the Bible is not about downtime. It is about order and stability.
  • When the book of Hebrews talks about “not yet having achieved rest” it means that there is yet another level of order and stability that has not yet been seen.
  • Rest is not about activity/inactivity
  • Biblical rest is about engagement
  • The opposite of rest is unrest
• Creation account
  • The days are 24-hour periods – but it’s not about material creation
  • Therefore, it is not making a claim about the age of the earth of how it was created
• Second account of creation: Genesis 2
  • It is not about an expansion of Day 6
  • There is a sequence problem if we try to fit it into Day 6
• Synoptic (doubling back, restating) vs. Sequel (moving forward, a different account)
  • All Genesis synoptic relationships concern brothers
  • Genesis 2 does not involve brothers
  • Genesis 1 speaks of a large multitude of human beings created
  • Genesis 2 speaks of two distinct individuals: Adam and Eve
• If Genesis 2 is a sequel account, it is a later time period than Genesis 1
  • Solves the problem of Cain and a large population that is assumed to exist
• Genesis 2 – an account of archetypal function of humans
  • Adam and Eve may be historical individuals, but Genesis 2 is more about their forming as archetypes
  • If the text is making statements that is true about all humanity, it is most likely archetypal
  • If the text is making statements that cannot be true for all humanity, it is about individuals
• The “forming” account of humans
  • Not about chemistry or sculpting
  • Dust cannot be formed (clay works better)
  • Dust represents mortality (Gen. 3:19)
  • Genesis 2 is making a statement about human mortality
    • Humans were created mortal (otherwise there would have been no need for the tree of life)
  • What about Paul’s statement that sin brought death? Doesn’t that mean humans were originally immortal?
    • No. Sin caused humans to lose access to the tree of life. Thus sin brought death.
    • Paul’s statement says nothing about the original immortality of human beings
• When the Bible speaks of “forming” people, it is about functions and identity – not material origins
  • E.g., Psalm 103:14; 1 Cor. 15:47-48
• Genesis 1 – functional creation of the world and all its inhabitants. Genesis 2 – a “choosing” of some subset of humans for a specific purpose.
• What about the creation of woman?
  • More than just rib – bone and flesh
  • “Rib” – never used anatomically again. Used architecturally to mean “one side of a pair.”
  • Not about surgery.
  • “Deep sleep” – a visionary state. Adam is “seeing” something in a vision; something that is deeply theological.
  • The collective human race is only complete when both men and women come together (not specifically about marriage or sex).
  • This is another archetypal statement.
• Both men and women designed and commissioned to serve as priests (Gen. 2:15)
  • “Helpmeet” – Eve to help Adam in sacred task
• Genesis contains no information about the “forming” of individuals
• There is no biblical account of material/biological human origins
• The Bible says nothing on whether evolution and common origins is true or not; but the Bible would not contradict, either.
• The theological, ontological human creation account
  • Endowed with the image of God
  • Creation of a spiritual being
  • Designation as priests
• Biology being could have evolved, but the spiritual being could not
• Genesis 3: Order, non-order, and disorder
  • Order – connected to sacred space
  • Non-order – remained after creation
  • People given the task of expanding sacred space and order
  • Presence of God brought life
  • Serpent as chaos creature promoting disorder
  • People wanted (desired) to be the center of order (temptation)
    • The fall isn’t about disobedience and eating fruit, but about wanting to be like God – center of order
    • This desire led to disobedience and eating fruit
  • Sin brought disorder
  • Humans cast out from sacred space into les ordered realm
• An alternate way to interpret Genesis 1-3
• How can people who read the Bible and accept its authority, but interpret it very differently, get along together?
• By only allowing a singular interpretation of the Bible (usually a strict creationism), Christians fail to minister to one another graciously, Christians fail to evangelize effectively, and is leading to attrition among Christians.
• By defending the singular, traditional interpretations so strongly, are Christians failing in our mission?
• Q&A
• Original sin or original innocence? Case can be made for latter.
• Human soul – not tied to the breath of life (because all living beings have it) but connected with being created in the image of God.
• Origin of civilizations – distinct from material and ontological origins

Testing Theology

It is my observation (limited as it may be) that the truthfulness and validity of any point of theology in a religion is based primarily upon its derivation from the source it holds to be authoritative. In the case of Christianity (the religion with which I am most familiar) the authoritative source is the Christian Bible. If a point of theology can be sourced from the Bible, then it is assumed to be true.

That said, there are many ways of reading and interpreting the Bible and this, of course, leads to theological points held by different peoples and groups that are in contradiction to one another. That brings me to my question:

Is there a “test” that can be employed to determine if a particular point of theology is true or false?

I suggest that there is one. Even though theology is not science in the usual sense of the word, I believe it is possible and necessary to bring in processes and principles that are used in the social sciences, which are used to establish sufficient evidences to support the truthfulness of hypotheses in those fields.

Since controlled studies are sometimes difficult, if not impossible, in social sciences, what is often done are observational studies that take two events and determine a level of correlation between the two. The major problem with this type of study is that causation cannot be determined. It can be inferred, but it cannot be proven. But still, there is value in understanding that the two share a close relationship.

Might we be able to do the same thing with theology? I believe we can, and must. Does a particular point of theology correlate strongly to certain behaviors and attitudes? Because it does not prove causation, we may not know for certain if it is the behaviors and attitudes that lead a person or group to hold to a particular point of theology, or the other way around. But what I believe we can say is that if a particular set of negative behaviors and attitudes correlate to a certain point of theology, the truthfulness of that point of theology is in doubt. It really doesn’t matter if it is theology that leads to behavior, or vice versa: it is unhelpful in either case.

What happens when a point of theology is determined to be under question? There are a number of options. First, it may just be completely false; a lie. Or, it may be that the underlying reasoning to arrive at theology is flawed. Or, perhaps the interpretation of the text is wrong? Or, the text is no longer applicable. There may be other options. The important thing is to let go of bibliolatry (i.e., making the text a god) and let some of the other faculties (that God uses; e.g., our minds, our experiences) to help inform us about what is true.^1,2,3,4,5

Here are some signs that I believe point to unhelpful and false theologies: theologies that are used to excuse or accommodate abuse, control, force, violence, fear, hate, manipulation, over-emphasis on individual salvation, over-emphasis on end-times, over-emphasis on “getting to heaven”.

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¹Job is a Bible character who reasoned and argued his position and beliefs about God against what his “friends” were arguing.

²Abraham argued with the Lord about the proposed action against Sodom, because what he [Abraham] knew and had experienced with God contradicted what he was about to do. (Genesis 18:22-33)

³Luke 10:27, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (ESV)

⁴1 Thessalonians 5:21, “But test everything; hold fast what is good.” (ESV)

⁵Matthew 7:15-23; verse 20, “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (ESV)