The fact that early Christians were completely unlike us in terms of world view and cultural context is an unsettling result, to be sure, for those accustomed to read these writings as sacred Scripture, and in particular for Protestants who traditionally emphasize that anyone at all can read and interpret that Bible. The truth of the matter, for those readers without knowledge of ancient languages, ancient cultures, and other such subjects, the meaning of the Bible is at times not all clear, while at other times it can seem to clearly mean things that it is unlikely to have meant in its original context. The possibility of misunderstanding a reader today in a Western cultural setting is at least as great as the chances that the same individual will experience a cultural or linguistic misunderstanding if traveling to a foreign culture. By emphasizing these points, I do not wish to discourage interested individuals from reading the Bible in English translation – far from it. it is important, however, for all readers to understand that they are having the Bible interpreted for them by those who have translated it into their native language and are then engaging in interpretation themselves through the act of reading. The books they are reading derive from a very different world, and therefore one should not cease reading but should utilize the multitude of books and other resources that scholars have made available, expressly with the aim of helping readers make sense of these ancient texts. Having done that, one should then go on to express one’s conclusions about what these writings mean with an appropriate humility and tentativeness, aware that what seems obvious to a reader today may not have been what seemed obvious to a first-century reader.
James McGrath in The Only True God (page 100)
James McGrath in The Only True God (page 100)
2 comments:
Welcome back. I haven’t read this guy’s book, but lack of knowledge has never stopped me from offering my opinion before, so why start now?
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything he say, but I worry a little about what his primary assumptions are. From reading this passage, I get the impression that the author views reading as an individual act, so I’d probably argue with that premise to start with. Reading and understanding a text - especially scripture, which is fundamentally liturgical - is primarily a communal act, not an individual one. Think of Paul’s letters. They were read out loud to (largely illiterate) congregations long before they were collected and pored over by monks and scholars. I’m always a little wary of hermeneutical strategies that assume people are autonomous islands unto themselves, scrutinizing fragments of texts in their cubbyholes, rather than members of a community that come together to find common meaning in their shared stories and experiences of God.
More importantly, the author doesn’t mention the role of the creeds, specifically the Nicene/Constantinopolitan creed as a normative guide in interpreting scripture, which is vitally important. Marcion, the Docetists, the Arians, etc., were all using scripture as their foundational texts, each of them arriving at wildly divergent interpretations of the Christian story. Who decides when an interpretation has departed from the fundamental message of Jesus? Luke Timothy Johnson has a great book on this, which I’m doing with my Sunday school class (not the average Nazarene Sunday school class, I know…).
Having said all of that, the author makes some very good points about the humility needed in interpreting scripture and the dangers of superimposing our own cultural and linguistic worlds onto scripture.
Cheers
I'm trying to find Jesus in the maze of evangelical thought. I strongly agree with what you set forward. We are all to willing to take our stand on issues we are so sure of. Commonly held opinion becomes dogma. History has proven how wrong these Christian stands can be. Take slavery, women in ministry, burning and persecuting heretics, hating the Jews. All of this was done based on skewed perspectives of "the clear teaching of the Word." The Word is clear, we see through a glass darkly. This truth must push us toward a posture of humility about what we and others hold as absolute. I long to hear more believers say, "this is what I believe, but there is a chance I might be missing something, lets' talk."
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