That Was Then
“But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law, and that is written in the Prophets;” Acts 24:14
Everything – Brevard Childs was a very influential teacher at Harvard. His approach to biblical interpretation has affected many professors today. Childs believed that the way to understand the Scripture was to read it through the eyes of the Church. He called this “canonical” theology. What it means is this: each generation must reinterpret the meaning of the text in contemporary application even though the words of the text are understood in their historical-culture context. In other words, the key is what does the Bible mean to me. I’m guessing that you have heard this type of interpretation many times. In fact, you may even unconsciously read the Bible in this way. Childs’ influence permeates hundreds of pulpits.
Of course, this raises an enormous problem. What standard do I use to determine the correct interpretation of the text. It simply cannot be how I feel about the text since personal feelings are notoriously bad judgments of truth. This is why Childs suggests that the Church tradition sets the standard. It’s not one person. It’s the history of many people, all wrapped up in the Creeds, doctrines and dogmas of the Church.
Scot McKnight’s book, The Blue Parakeet, follows Childs. McKnight says that “ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition or they will misread the Bible.”[1] “We may learn to read the Bible for ourselves, but we must be responsible to what the church has always believed.”[2] He cites the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the doctrines of the Reformation as examples of the standard. Did you notice the sleight of hand here? The “church” did not always believe these things. The “church” only began believing the content of the Creeds after it tossed away its Hebrew heritage. What the “church” believes today is based on doctrinal formations that were developed after 300AD when the church was well on its way toward Greek metaphysics. Childs, McKnight and many others have ignored what the text actually says. Paul believed everything in accordance with Torah, not in accordance with the popes, the bishops and the church councils. Paul believed what the Hebrews taught, not what Tertullian, Irenaeus and Chrysostrom taught. Paul was a Jew, not a Greek.
If you learn to read the Bible through the interpretive history of the church, you will read it as a Greek. You will incorporate centuries of Greek thinking into your view of Scripture. You will apply “universal” principles to contemporary society without considering the eternal commands of YHWH found in Torah. So, you will say things like “the first Jewish Christians probably kept kosher. That’s not for today.”[3] Really? Says who? The “church”? The idea that there were Jewish Christians in the first century is itself an anachronism. How many other instructions of Torah have we put on the shelf because the “church” no longer believes what Paul believed? Are we going to be people of the Book or people of the pew?
Topical Index: everything, Torah, interpretation, exegesis, Childs, McKnight, Acts 24:14
[1] Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, p. 29.
[2] McKnight, p. 31.
[3] McKnight, p. 28.
-everything- “Christ is all, and in you all”. “For in Him, we live and move and have our being.” This post today about “everything” ties in with your recent post, Skip, “G-d of the Past”. We might as well expand this title to- “G-d of Everything” or if you prefer.. He is “LORD of all!”. We must continuously return to G-d’s book for instruction in righteousness and to learn from the living words of YHWH the way in which we must go. The will of G-d is contained within the words of G-d. The book speaks for itself by saying.. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8.20) Also as a word of admonition to all, our Master/Teacher states in Matthew 22.29..Jesus answered and said unto them (us), You do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
It seems today we have invented a new pastime called.. “let’s diss the church”. Many today seem to come down hard on “organized religion” or what they perceive to be a “group of hypocrites” or misguided sheep or whatever name is popular at the moment. You know.. “those” people.. “those” methodists, or “those” Southern Baptists, or “those” Catholics. Doesn’t the Holy Breath remind us from G-d’s word- “other sheep have I which are not of this fold?” and also let us not forget His words.. “I will build my church” or His words again.. “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Ephesians 3.21) Never forget- “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,” The “church” is the bride of Christ. We ought not to be messin’ with His bride- (don’t you think?).. Mess with my bride and see what happens- it ain’t gonna be pretty..
Now, concerning the “blue parakeets. When the door of the Ark was shut and sealed with pitch (atonement) within and without, and the “good ship of grace” set sail upon the stormy waters for the next 40 days and 40 nights, can you just imagine the cacophonic din that ensued from all the critters contained within this floating coffin? Noah must have been bald when the door opened up to some “fresh air!” (lol!)
Let us think eschatologically once again. (that’s the second time in one week I’ve had opportunity to use that word!) We’ll even include the “blue parakeets” of the world in this. Just what is our G-d doing?
According to Ephesians 5.27- “that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” The business of G-d is to “build-a-bride”. (btw.. to remove spots and wrinkles- we generally iron with heat and pressure!)
Jew and Greek, male and female, bond or free,.. we are all one “in Christ Jesus.” For G-d was in Christ, reconciling the world (rather inclusive word!) to himself,- (2 Corinthians 5.19)
And let us review Revelations 5- “For you were killed, and your blood has ransomed people for G-d from every tribe and language and people and nation”… There is (my friend) room at the cross for you!
You are so right.
Unfortunately many (if not most) in the church believe that the church began in Acts 2. The word most commonly translated “church” in the NT is the greek word ekklesia; one time in Acts it is translated as “congregation” (KJV), during Stephen’s testimony where he speaks of the “congregation in the wilderness”. The same word is used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew word “qahal” which means the “called out assembly”. The qahal in the wilderness was the Children of Israel called out of Egypt and assembled at Mt Sinai; the whole Sinai experience is analogous to a Hebrew wedding ceremony (not space to go into it here, but Paul alludes to this when he says that “…all our fathers were under the cloud…”). The fact that it is translated as church in the NT reflects translator bias to support the idea that the church replaced Israel in the purposes of God, an idea that Paul emphatically refutes when he tells us that we, as believers, are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel.
In Ezekiel God likens Israel (speaking of the exiled 10 northern tribes) as an adulterous bride, whom he gave a Bill of Divorce. Judah also played the harlot but was not divorced. In that same passage though, God calls Israel to “return to me” again as His bride. How can this be? The Torah clearly states that if a man divorces his wife due to unfaithfulness, and she becomes another man’s wife, then the second man divorces her she cannot return and remarry her first husband because that would be an abomination in God’s eyes. How can He call Israel, who was divorced and “married” other foreign gods, to return to Him as His bride?
Paul gives the answer when he says (speaking “to those who know the Law”) that, “Don’t you know brethren, that the Law (Torah) of Marriage only applies to a man as long as he lives? So if he dies, his wife is released from the Law of Marriage”.
In other words, once Yeshua dies, Israel is no longer bound by the Torah of marriage and He is then free (being resurrected) to take her back as a bride. As you said, “Hallelujah for the cross!”
So who, then, is the bride? All those who worship YHWH and have the testimony of Yeshua; those who are grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel, both natural born and foreigner (natural and wild branches) of both Judah and all the rest of the tribes regathered from among the nations.
Jeremiah 31:31 – Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: *
33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Praise Yah! We are all heirs to the promise given to Abraham and to the convenants of promise.
“McKnight says that ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition or they will misread the Bible.”
I think it would be more accurate to say that ordinary people need to learn to read the Bible through tradition AND they will misread the Bible.
In the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius uses the “wheel of forune” to teach us that there is always an upside and a downside to life, because the wheel keeps turning.
On the upside, “ordinary people” are reading the Bible and trying to their best to understand it.
On the downside, “ordinary people” are probably seeking comfort rather than truth, but that is not all bad, is it?
In the movie Repo Man, the repo man (Harry Dean Stanton) says that “ordinary people” avoid intensity, but that repo men (and women) seek intensity.
He also says that repo men “live by a code” and that what is wrong with the world is that most people don’t.
In my view, the Truth is in this “code,” which Skip referred to as a “codebook” (aka the Torah).
Boethius? Ah, how I am transported into the work of my dissertation. Boethius, the true Parmenidean of Christianity, pushed us further into the Greek world. But I am glad that someone else actually read him. For the rest of us, don’t worry too much about Boethius. Just be aware of his influence on Aquinas and subsequently on the formation of several major Christian doctrines, like omniscience. Thanks Michael.
Hi Skip,
Boethius brings back fond memories of my life as a student in the seventies. As an undergraduate, I remember reading some selections from Boethius in a Chaucer seminar. Then when I was working as a teaching assistant in the Humanities department at UCSD, the professor for the class on Rome and the Middle Ages used The Consolation of Philosophy as one of the required texts. The following year, to my surprise, my favorite teacher in the Humanities Department, Jonathan Saville, used Boethius in his course on the Renaissance. Because Professor Saville was that rare kind of teacher who could teach art, architecture, philosophy, poetry, theater, writing, etc from the Jews and the Greeks to the modern period, his inclusion of Boethius with the other “heavy hitters” of the Renaissance caught my attention. I mention Professor Saville because it was during this time that I first read the Bible, and I read it from end to end one summer in order to teach Isaiah in his class. Professor Saville gave me some tips on how to teach my classes, but I never had any idea what his political, philosophical, or religious beliefs were. However a Jewish friend of mine did tell me at the time that Professor Saville was the son of a Rabbi.
I can understand the dangers of seeing and interpreting Scripture through personal lenses. Whether it is tradition or whatever you want to call it, it remains a danger for us all (and not just the early church fathers). I have always been amazed that God chose to speak to us, to record for us and to preserve for us His perfect and true words through fallen human beings and fallen human agencies. Really a head-scratcher, if you think about it. I am reminded of a great quote I picked up along the way which reads: “We see things not as they are, but as we are.” Meaning that each and every one of us has the inclination to run Scriptures through our own interpretative lenses. We can deny it…but it is there nonetheless. It is a very difficult thing indeed to come to the Word and permit it to speak to us rather than us speak to it…..and no, I am not suggesting that there aren’t good methods for approaching Scripture (e.g. textual criticism, historical-grammatical contexts etc.) but only that, we must be ever “testing ourselves” to be certain that we haven’t declared for ourselves the conclusion that we actually want Scriptures to reach, and then key-holing everything to squeeze into our preconceived conclusions that we then affirm for ourselves must be God’s conclusions on the matter. Very dangerous. Still like the verse that says: “This is the one I esteem: the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word.” Some have used this Scripture to suggest that God’s Word requires a healthy fear of the Lord and I think that is a good view of this passage. But I also think it needs to be our constant approach to God’s Word in the sense that we must be really cautious (tremblers) at thinking that we are absolutely “right” in interpreting what God’s Word says to such a degree that we do not have a healthy knee-shaking discomfort with attempting to carry God’s banner of truth for Him. Especially on matters and issues that are subject to more than one reasonable interpretation and aren’t core to the faith and gospel. Similar to that “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
amen brother David! I love to paint with the “broad brushstroke” in looking at the lives of Abraham, Moses and David. All three different and yet all three the same. And these are just three but these three are just! Am I just a man? or am I a “just man?” The “fear of YHWH” is absolutely crucial as we approach the book of the ages. When G-d’s words penetrate the layers like a bunker-buster bomb and His words begin to accomplish His will in our lives, we will tremble. As the song says.. “then I trembled at the law I’d spurned”, ’till my guilty soul imploring turned to Calvary.. Once again.. Hallelujah for the cross! The word of the LORD is universal in it’s appeal but individual in it’s application. We will see, in the cross of Christ- there is unity in diversity. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity”
I love that quote, and you are so right.