The Bible at Large – Rewind
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Isaiah 40:8 NASB
Word – Western paradigms focus on answers. Experience is reduced to principles in order that we may predict and control. In fact, the entire enterprise of science, a principal characteristic of the Western mind, is an effort to categorize reality in ways that can be managed and manipulated to achieve desired ends. There is nothing essentially wrong about this enterprise. After all, it has produced enormous results including substantial improvements in health, economics, and living conditions. But this Western view of the world is not the only view of reality. Cultures that do not share this view are not necessarily “primitive” simply because they do not embrace Western science. One of those alternative cultures is the Hebraic culture of the Bible. In other words, the Bible is not a Western scientific book. Its categories of reality are not the categories of our scientific perspective. Its view of life is not the compartmentalized packaging of research. It does not seek to predict and control.
“The categories of the Bible are not principles to be comprehended but events to be continued. The life of him who joins the covenant of Abraham continues the life of Abraham. Abraham endures forever. We are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.”[1]
Heschel’s insight should cause us to reconsider how we regard the Bible. In the West we are likely to view the Bible as a sourcebook for spiritual insights or a jumbled systematic theology or a God-inspired Boy Scout handbook of answers to life’s perplexing questions. What we usually do not think about the Bible is that it is simply a record of God’s encounters with Israel. We don’t see the Bible as a story, a recollection of the emotional involvement of God and men. We think of the Bible as a book of spiritual information rather than a history of divine encounters. Heschel is right. If we think of the Bible from a Western point of view, we will look for the “21 irrefutable principles” rather than recognizing the emotional reaction of awe. We will read the Bible as if it were Fodor’s guidebook to life on earth rather than reading it as the expressions of men and women who discovered God’s presence along the way.
When Isaiah says that the “word of our God” stands forever, does he mean that all those theological categories, divine attributes, creedal answers, and holy platitudes are eternal? Or does he mean that the experience of God found in prophetic revelation is always life transforming? Is Isaiah writing about Messianic prophecies or is he describing what it means to be overwhelmed by God’s holiness? If “word” debar is the speaking of God (not the written words in our biblical texts), then the record we have is not the same as hearing God’s word. The record is second-hand information; the voice is the direct encounter with majesty. Perhaps the Bible is what’s left over after God reveals Himself.
Topical Index: Bible, word, debar, Isaiah 40:8
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 88
“Perhaps the Bible is what’s left over after God reveals Himself.” Emet! And amen.
Indeed! Moreover, what’s left over is a testimony of the events and activity of God’s persisting work and acts of self-revelation and redemption and salvation— a testimony borne by those witnesses who experienced the presence of God as the Word, who is God— in the aspect of his relationship to mankind. Furthermore, that testimony is borne regardless whether that experience of relationship is with God— in a life of communal obedience, or is apart from God— in a life characterized as merely being and responding to the existential circumstances and experiences that proceed naturally from life constituted on the ground of a subjective human existence.
Now faith [looks to] the essence and reality which is the basis of things hoped for, the persuasion of certainty regarding things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)