I don't find the Bible, for the most part, to be that hard to understand. I think its teachings are generally consistent, reasonable, understandable and pretty danged obvious (if challenging and hard to live up to, short of God's grace). I don't find the Bible to be a puzzle in the least.Speaking only for myself, I find understanding the Bible to be a journey full of traps and tricks, a lifetime-long search for understanding that never ceases. I refuse to rest in this journey, because within the dead words on the page, the Spirit constantly urges and whispers, comforts and convicts, binds and frees me. Reading the Bible as a far too comfortable middle-aged man in the second decade of the 21st century is a far different experience than a far too self-enamored young seminarian in the last decade of the 20th century, or a far too earnest and serious youth in the decade prior to that.
In addition, I find myself challenged by new readings, using all sorts of tools of which I was either unaware, or ignorant in their inner workings. It can become bewildering, discovering new meanings, new ways of reading, new questions to ask the text, finding new questions posed by the text.
The Bible is Heraclitus' stream. Which would be frustrating were it not the stream that flows from the Throne, the Living Water that, once tasted, leaves us never thirsting again.
So, Dan, I'm wondering if you really mean what it sounds like you're saying here. I find the Living Word that resurrects the text as surely as the dry bones of the Valley are made to dance by the Spirit of God's grace a challenge both in its whole and its parts. The questions it asks, the challenge it poses, the threat to my self-satisfaction; all these and so much more change not only with each phase of my life, but each passing moment of that life. The only reason I return to it each day is that I believe the sentence passed on my previous sense of success and understanding is a window to the only real Life that matters.
7 comments:
I agree with what you say here...
I find understanding the Bible to be a journey full of traps and tricks, a lifetime-long search for understanding that never ceases. I refuse to rest in this journey, because within the dead words on the page, the Spirit constantly urges and whispers
AND yet, as a rule, at any point in time, I generally don't find the Bible too complex. I think it is generally clear (with some confusing parts, and plenty of contextual ignorance on my part) and consistent.
I guess what I'm saying is that, I have reached a point where I believe the Bible to be clearly a book of Truth and Truths. I think those Truths are generally internally consistent. I think that Jesus summed it up best when he said all the law can be summed up in Love God and Love People. And, I think, what goes for "the Law" also generally applies for the Bible.
And thus, I read the Bible thinking, "Okay, how does THIS point teach us to love God/love people? How does THAT point do so...?"
Reading it thusly, I find the Bible to generally, pretty reasonable/understandable - keeping in mind that when it was written and what huge differences there are between my culture and their various cultures.
Which does not mean that I am not challenged by its words - far from it - or that I don't gladly recognize ignorance at times, or that I don't find new ways of understanding passages. It happens all the time.
I guess I don't find it bewildering, though. It seems, to me, that each time I come upon a new insight or understanding, that THAT new - maybe even different - insight seems reasonable and consistent and I'm surprised it had never occurred to me before.
So, I can gladly confess at being bewildered by my own ability to not fully understand consistently (although, my ability to be mistaken is a given, for me, so that really shouldn't be that bewildering), but at any given point in time, I don't find the Bible that confusing or hard to understand.
Also, since I've moved away from being more of a literal literalist to being more of a Truth literalist, perhaps I'm less bothered by points I don't think I understand. I am fine enjoying it for the words that are there, thinking that it has probably meant a lot to some people somewhere at some time, without worrying that I don't fully understand it.
Can you give me an example of what might be hard to understand? Maybe we'd agree on that example.
From the Study Guide to the Invitation to Romans class I took last fall, written by Pamela Eisenbaum, p.34:
"This brings us to another of Luther's highly influential translation decisions. IN Romans, he translated the Greek phrases pistis Iesou Christou (3:22) and pistis Iesou (3:26) in a way that removed a long-recognized ambiguity about whether the sense of the language meant "faith of Jesus Christ" or "faith in Jesus Christ". In the centuries following Luther, Protestant readers assumed that when Paul speaks of being justified by faith, he means faith in Christ. But among Pauline scholars today, the debate about how to translate pistis Iesou Christou is on-going. The theological implications of how this phrase is translated are enormous . . ."
The text goes on to make clear that centuries of Reformation theology may well rest upon an interpretive decision in translating particular tiny phrases in Romans 3:21-26.
So who is right? Lacking an understanding of the intricacies of Greek grammar, I am completely at sea. Are we saved through our own faith in the Christ-event? Or, as Eisenbaum is suggesting Paul may well have meant, are we saved through the faith of Christ, much the same way the purity of the priest offering the sacrifice in the Holy of Holies, and the purity of that sacrifice, were necessary for its full efficacy? Does this not, then, make of our faith not something we possess, either as gift or work, but irrelevant to the entire project? There are hints and clues within Romans (and the rest of the Pauline corpus) that point in both directions.
At this point, the matter is up in the air. If salvation comes, apart from the Law but always with the Law and prophets as witnesses to this coming salvation, not from our faith in who Christ is and what he has done, but rather the faith that saves is the faith of the crucified and risen Christ, then the question: What does it mean to be a Christian, as one who is saved by Christ by grace through faith can be answered in a variety of contradictory, incompatible ways.
Again, not having any detailed understanding of Greek, I refuse to say what I think, other than noting this is just one tiny instance, in one short passage, in one rather small book, where translation-as-interpretation has made clear to generations of readers and believers what, in actual fact, is a far more murky, far less clear meaning in the original language.
The Bible is long, written in long-dead languages, whose intricacies and nuances we are still learning. Please forgive me if I stand to one side and admit that any claim of understanding as final, let alone any claim of truth, or Truth, or Truths, within such a thing is ever possible.
I should be clear: I stand by what I believe the Bible says at any given time. I would never claim this belief has anything to do with things like "truth" or "Truth" or "Truths". As I have stated repeatedly, on this, at least, the Bible says something I still believe is right: Jesus is, among other things, the Truth. The Bible is a bunch of books that, taken as a whole, in conversation with believers around us and in the great cloud of witnesses all breathed to life through the Spirit offer us a way to start understanding our lives as those claimed by God.
The Bible itself, though, is just a bunch of writings. Truth is external to it.
Perhaps if I explain it this way:
Time was, I took the Bible fairly literally and treated it as a rulebook, "God's Instruction Manual..." not unlike many others of our more conservative friends.
As I tried reading the Bible in THAT way, there were MANY difficult teachings and commands that were troubling and seemingly inconsistent.
Now that I look at it more for what it presents itself as (indeed, it was my literal/rulebook reading of it that led me AWAY from treating it in that manner, as it never suggests it ought to be read in that way...), the Bible is not so troubling or difficult to understand.
Challenging, to be sure. Always there exits the surprising discoveries of new readings, slightly skewed interpretations, fresh meanings, etc. Always challenging.
But, reading it for what Truths can be gleaned, what realities I can find in my own life, what dares it may make of me, to find puzzling points I don't feel I have the context to understand, NONE of this is "difficult" in the way a literal/rulebook reading-approach was.
If I find a passage I don't understand or don't think I have a solid grasp of, I can always say, "Huh. Wonder what that means...?" and that's okay.
If that makes sense.
I think I keep stumbling over the word "Truth". For me, that word has a particular meaning, and one I cannot apply to reading the Bible. For most of the history of western thought, Truth was a singular thing, distinct but inseparable from a statement. It was a quality that made any statement to which it could be applied transcend the particulars of time and place. Truth is singular, irreducible, universal.
Nothing about my understanding of the Bible leads me to apply any of those qualities to what I believe.
It's probably my own shallowness, but I'll have to admit to not really knowing what you mean. By Truth, I mean ideas like, "Love your enemy," and "love/tend to the least of these..." These are, I think, Eternal Truths for Right Living that can be found and etched out in the Bible. In that sense, I guess I think of Truths as being possible in the plural.
It IS a truth that we ought to love our enemies, I think. It IS a truth that we should care for the least of these. It IS a truth that we should not cheat, nor steal, nor cause harm purposefully and maliciously. These truths are aptly summed up in the even larger truths: Love God, Love humanity.
I glean from the Bible much truth that corresponds and illuminates those bigger truths.
According to western philosophy, one of the things that makes a proposition "True" is that, once stated, its correspondence with reality becomes self-evident. The fact that "Love your enemies" is not only NOT self-evident, but contrary to our experience of most of human history would, it seems to me, argue for it being not at all True.
Why is it True, without argument, reason, or example for you, Dan? Is it true because Jesus said it? Is it true because it makes those who follow it good, moral people? Or is it, perhaps (and here is where the idea of Truth as the Person of Jesus comes in) is it True because it reflects who Jesus was, it echoes in his passion, death, and resurrection?
Is it something we wish were the case, perhaps? Is it a goal toward which we all strive yet always fall short? Or is it, perhaps, as part of the Truth that is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into which we are baptized and in which we participate through the eucharist, the Truth that is our life now?
Do you understand the questions I'm asking? Do you understand the distinctions I'm making here? If not, I'm sorry, because I don't know how to make them any more clear.
Geoffrey...
Is it true because Jesus said it? Is it true because it makes those who follow it good, moral people? Or is it, perhaps (and here is where the idea of Truth as the Person of Jesus comes in) is it True because it reflects who Jesus was, it echoes in his passion, death, and resurrection?
Yes.
Although, if Jesus had only said it and yet it didn't make us good, moral people, then it would probably ring hollow.
I find that "love your enemies" IS self-evident, if not obviously self-evident. Or maybe "self-evident" isn't the right word. I think "love your enemies" makes sense because it's the only thing that does make sense. In a shared world, a world full of humans inclined towards selfishness and wrong-doing, the only Truths - as they relate to relating - seems to me to be "love your neighbor," "love your enemies," and truths spring from that fount. What else could possibly work?
Survival of the fittest? Kill or be killed? Fight or flight? None of these seem to me to be rational, wholesome ways to live.
So I guess I believe in Truths that ultimately (even if not at first blush) make rational human humane sense because everything else would seem to me to be chaos and hell.
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