God of the Old Testament

[Daniel Hamlin]

This has been bugging me for a while, and I realize it nothing new, but why does the portrayal of God in the OT seem so "mean"? Specifically, why does he call for the slaughter of so many people (i.e. the conquest of Canaan)? Why was death the punishment for what seems like trivial matters?

I realize my perception may be caused by ignorance regarding the cultural, historical, or literary context of Scripture, so please feel free to inform me!

[Tami Martin]

Death was the punishment for eating a piece of fruit. Maybe the problem is we're not seeing with God's eyes. Maybe to Him, our Heavenly Father, dishonoring or disobeying your parents is a BIG deal.

[Dennis Bratcher]

This has been bugging me for a while, and I realize it nothing new, but why does the portrayal of God in the OT seem so "mean"? Specifically, why does he call for the slaughter of so many people (i.e. the conquest of Canaan)? Why was death the punishment for what seems like trivial matters?

I realize my perception may be caused by ignorance regarding the cultural, historical, or literary context of Scripture, so please feel free to inform me!

Some thoughts: Did God Order the Massacre of Canaanites? (http://www.crivoice.org/killcanaanites.html)

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Scott Hilton]

I am starting to come to the thought process that it is not really that He is portrayed as "mean", but that our understanding of what He truly desires has become bigger and He has entrusted us with more responsibility as a "people", which normally changes ones perspective. We had to go thrrough growing pains as a people with rules set up that we don't always understand in order for us as a people to act, with the power of Christ now, in a way that He has always wanted us too.

not sure if that made sense......

blessings

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

God wants obedience.

[Dennis Bratcher]

God wants obedience.

This sounds good, but it is not enough. Obedience to what? We always have a long list of things that we think qualify. Jesus seems not to worry so much about all those things that appear on our lists. In fact, he says that God really only wants two things: love God, and love neighbor (Micah says the same thing with three things). And as Paul says, to fulfill that royal law of love is to keep all the law. (Rom 13:8-9) That is obedience.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis B.

[Scott Daniels]

I think it is important for us to realize that the Bible interprets or re-interprets itself at times. For example, see the way Isaiah 1 re-interprets the sacrificial system or see the way Jesus in Matthew 5 fulfills the law in his "you have heard it said, but I say to you..." teaching.

At places in the OT the people heard and understood purity as elimination of those considered enemy but in the revelation of Christ purity is re-interpreted as love for the enemy. I believe we have to allow space for the development and re-defining of key revelatory ideas in the scripture.

A similar example from American life is when Thomas Jefferson wrote the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." Apparently, given the way he lived, at that time he only meant white men of European dissent being created equal. It took us two centuries to realize that the implications of this profound "revelatory" (it bothers me to use that word here, but go with me) idea of equal rights applied to women, to persons of color, and even to people outside our borders (we are still struggling with these implications).

Dennis' article says things much better than I can. But regarding violence, I would want to argue that God seems to wean the people away from a violent understanding of purity. The OT seems to move from genocides, to ridiculous wars (see for example Gideon in Judges 7), to prophetic hopes of peace (lion and lamb - swords into plowshares), to ultimately the revelation in Christ.

I'm for giving Jesus the last word on the character and nature of the Father, since he is the image of the invisible God and all the fullness of God dwelt in him.

[Dennis Bratcher]

Dennis' article says things much better than I can. But regarding violence, I would want to argue that God seems to wean the people away from a violent understanding of purity. The OT seems to move from genocides, to ridiculous wars (see for example Gideon in Judges 7), to prophetic hopes of peace (lion and lamb - swords into plowshares), to ultimately the revelation in Christ.

I'm for giving Jesus the last word on the character and nature of the Father, since he is the image of the invisible God and all the fullness of God dwelt in him.

I agree, with an important qualification. If this was a process of weaning, then Christianity never grew up. Christianity throughout most of its history has been every bit as violent as anything in the OT in spite of the vision of Peace. If the revelation of Peace in Jesus who is the Christ was God’s last and best word (which I think it is!), we still didn’t get it. I think that it is precisely for the same reason that the Israelites didn’t get it. That is, that God’s revelation, which I think was always one of Peace throughout the OT, was immediately translated back into the culture of the time, and our time, and God was cast as the patron of power (for Christianity, beginning with Constantine and tracking through Charlemagne, Urban II, and others).

While there certainly was a movement from violent tribal warfare to more “civilized” urban society, I do not necessarily see that as a change in God’s revelation as much as it was the movement of history and changes in culture. I think that can be seen played out in various cultures and societies long after and apart from Christendom.

That is not to downplay the influence of God at all. I would certainly affirm that, and using the metaphor of God weaning us away from violence is a good one here. It is just to suggest that the changes were not because God revealed himself in different ways at different times, only that people responded to that revelation in different ways at different times. God worked with people where they were, not by changing his revelation or his commandments (today I want you to kill people; tomorrow it will be wrong) but by patiently continuing to be their God even though they frequently refused to be his people, or at least did not understand what that meant (Peter seems to have that same problem in the Garden).

This is still a strong resistance to any form of progressive revelation. It is not that God changes his revelation incrementally, but that the people change and that God calls them to change. God stays committed to them through all of those changes, sometimes condemning their choice of lifestyle (Ba’al worship, injustice), sometimes working patiently with them in spite of those choices (warfare, role of women). I think that, from Romans, is a function of grace.

That means, as I suggested in the article, that not everything in the Bible is a positive example of what we should do or be, even when it sounds pious. Sometimes it is just who they were, which was not always condemned at the time (Paul and slavery), but which we have come to understand is not the best way to express what we have come to understand about God, not only because of Jesus but also because of our own location within a time and a place.

It makes one wonder how much of our present practices for which we claim God’s authority will one day come under the category of naive immaturity.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Roland Hearn]

Dennis,
I like your article - thanks.

Something of an epiphany happened for me one day when reading the Psalms. While there are many places that David reflects brutality and anger there are also moments of profound understanding of grace. He speaks of God's love with such clear understanding that it is evident he has encountered God's love in unambiguous terms. It occurred to me that David understood those things reading the scriptures and listening to oral traditions of his time. In his context it made sense. That meant a couple of things to me, in his cultural setting he was able to understand God in much the same way as we do despite those passages that give us problems and secondly perhaps there was more to the story, or less, then what we have today that if we worked with the same information from the proximity that David had we would come to the same conclusions. It gave me room to say I don't think I have all the information so to the extent that scripture seems to portray God as something other than Christ there is a problem with my interpretation, the way the information is recorded or the way that it is communicated. I'm ok with that.

[Hans Deventer]

I agree, with an important qualification. If this was a process of weaning, then Christianity never grew up. Christianity throughout most of its history has been every bit as violent as anything in the OT in spite of the vision of Peace. If the revelation of Peace in Jesus who is the Christ was God’s last and best word (which I think it is!), we still didn’t get it.

That's right. I'm sometimes surprised to see how much I didn't get and how much time it took for me to get it, and I'm quite certain there is stuff I still don't get.

[Daniel Hamlin]

That's what I was looking for. I printed the text and have read it through several times, and will read it through a few more times. Let me paraphrase in my own words to make sure I understand what you are saying in the article, please correct me if I'm wrong:

You view Scripture not as God's Word to us, rather as the community of Faith's (which I assume to mean Jews and Christians) testimony about how God has revealed himself to them. The CoF (Community of Faith) then processes God's revelation, reflects on it, applies it to the culture in which they live, and through God's inspiration records it in written form, giving us Scripture.

In this particular case (the conquest of Canaan), and at this point in history, God had revealed himself to humanity in just a handful of ways. Israel was attempting to apply what they understood about God based on their limited experience with God. So, in essence, their intentions were good (they were trying to serve God) and their implementation (slaughtering people) was a cultural norm for that time. However, when we look back on it, the actions seem barbaric, but they were doing what they felt God had called them to do.

Looking back at my summary, I'm not sure I'm communicating my thoughts clearly. Maybe further discussion will clear up any confusion. I've printed a number of other articles from your website and plan to spend some time reading and thinking about them.

[Ryan Scott]

That's what I was looking for. I printed the text and have read it through several times, and will read it through a few more times. Let me paraphrase in my own words to make sure I understand what you are saying in the article, please correct me if I'm wrong:

You view Scripture not as God's Word to us, rather as the community of Faith's (which I assume to mean Jews and Christians) testimony about how God has revealed himself to them. The CoF (Community of Faith) then processes God's revelation, reflects on it, applies it to the culture in which they live, and through God's inspiration records it in written form, giving us Scripture.

In this particular case (the conquest of Canaan), and at this point in history, God had revealed himself to humanity in just a handful of ways. Israel was attempting to apply what they understood about God based on their limited experience with God. So, in essence, their intentions were good (they were trying to serve God) and their implementation (slaughtering people) was a cultural norm for that time. However, when we look back on it, the actions seem barbaric, but they were doing what they felt God had called them to do.

Looking back at my summary, I'm not sure I'm communicating my thoughts clearly. Maybe further discussion will clear up any confusion. I've printed a number of other articles from your website and plan to spend some time reading and thinking about them.

Sounds good to me, although understanding the Bible in this way doesn't make it any less God's Word, it just makes it something other than dictated.

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

This thread reminded me of some devotional writing I did from the book of Joshua. It troubled me then and it still does that they "sanctified" entire people groups, men and women and children and then killed the livestock too. I just went back and found my response to it:
http://pastorscott.blogspot.com/2005/11/joshua-11-it-was-gods-idea-that-they.html

[Dennis Bratcher]

That's what I was looking for. I printed the text and have read it through several times, and will read it through a few more times. Let me paraphrase in my own words to make sure I understand what you are saying in the article, please correct me if I'm wrong:

You view Scripture not as God's Word to us, rather as the community of Faith's (which I assume to mean Jews and Christians) testimony about how God has revealed himself to them. The CoF (Community of Faith) then processes God's revelation, reflects on it, applies it to the culture in which they live, and through God's inspiration records it in written form, giving us Scripture.

I would not at all say this. This sets up a false polarization in which Scripture must be either “God’s Word” or the Community’s word. These are not mutually exclusive categories. I’m not sure what you have in mind to qualify as “God’s Word,” but it seems to be something like God thundering from Sinai or God telling people what to write. Neither are good models to view Scripture as the word of God.

The Bible is, indeed, the testimony about how God has revealed himself in history, as well as reinterpretation and reapplication of that testimony for later generations and new historical contexts and crises, reflections about the ethical implications of covenant, practical applications to everyday living, structures for worship, poetry and songs recounting both sublime praise to God as well as the earthiness of human sexuality, even philosophical contemplation about the nature of life based on that testimony. Scripture reflects all of human existence and all the range of human experience, centered around the idea of God and relationship with humanity. Biblically, all of life, indeed all of creation, is sacred.

Yet, all of that is not a purely human undertaking since this is a community of Faith, a covenant community. We believe that God was constantly at work within and among that community as they moved through history and as they collected and preserved various writings as testimony to God. The canon of Scripture that grew was not God’s word because it came from God directly on gold tablets, but because it was a faithful testimony to who God is and how he deals with humanity.

A good example is the Book of Psalms. These are mostly collected prayers of the people. And yet these prayers of people to God become God’s word to us precisely because they faithfully express who God is and how he relates to people in the realities of life.

The theological confession we use for all of this is that Scripture is inspired. That is, that there is a dimension to Scripture that cannot be defined as purely human, that God is involved not only in revealing himself, but also in helping people understand that revelation, work it out in life, and retell it for different times and circumstances (see Revelation and Inspiration (http://www.crivoice.org/revins.html)).

In this particular case (the conquest of Canaan), and at this point in history, God had revealed himself to humanity in just a handful of ways. Israel was attempting to apply what they understood about God based on their limited experience with God. So, in essence, their intentions were good (they were trying to serve God) and their implementation (slaughtering people) was a cultural norm for that time. However, when we look back on it, the actions seem barbaric, but they were doing what they felt God had called them to do.

Yes, this is a fair assessment. The actions seem barbaric to us because we do not live in 1200 BC in a violent tribal culture amid world empires in which power and death were the norm (another topic is the very sanitized and unrealistic world in which many moderns live, especially in the West). But then from our perspective, the Children’s Crusades or the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans in the name of God was equally barbaric. And I suspect that future generations will assess some of our actions today as similarly barbaric.

We cannot always judge the past and condemn it based on what we now understand, any more than we can judge our actions as a child or a young teen by the standards of our adult life. It is just that we cannot repeat those actions today as God’s will just because they were once done in the name of God.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Dennis Bratcher]

This thread reminded me of some devotional writing I did from the book of Joshua. It troubled me then and it still does that they "sanctified" entire people groups, men and women and children and then killed the livestock too. I just went back and found my response to it:
http://pastorscott.blogspot.com/2005/11/joshua-11-it-was-gods-idea-that-they.html

Good thoughts. I guess that is part of what I was getting at in saying that we live in a very sanitized and unrealistic world today. It is easy to sit safely and securely in our homes, even in a gated community, with money in the bank, a good job, good retirement, hiring other people to slaughter our animals for steaks and deal with the violent elements of society for us, never having to deal with death except in a “clean” way while pretending that it is not real, taking pills for the slightest ache, while watching pretend reality TV, and watching movies or playing video games that let us vent our anger and frustration at injustice by vicariously killing pretend people, all the while rather self-righteously condemning any form of violence of which we do not approve.

And then we expect God to be that same sanitized version of ourselves. This even creeps into our worship, in which we think that all forms of worship should only be upbeat with no hint of anything negative. We are imagining a God that conforms to our cultural model of what God ought to be like as if he were an affluent upper middle-class 21st century American.

Interesting that one of the primary words for “worship” in Hebrew is from a verb that means “to lie prostrate.” To come into the presence of God meant to fall on one’s face in both reverence and fear (the same word in Hebrew!). Watch Roman Catholics enter a sanctuary for worship; they have managed to retain this sense of reverence in worship. Maybe if we recovered that sense of awe and mystery, and even fear, of God rather than the warm fuzzies that we tend to use (I suspect this is why we like Jesus so much more than God), it might help us avoid reducing God to our own image. And that might help us deal with this issue in Scripture, at the same time that we recognize the human element in it all.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

It's not limited to theology either. A slave owner in 18th century who treated his slaves with compassion is vilified by some modern historians for not operating under today's ethical standards.

It is even true in day to day life. A senior adult is judgmental toward a teen who is operating in a very different culture....or, that teen has no compassion on the senior adult who is dealing with personal issues beyond their grasp.

If all that is true, is it any wonder that we have a hard time stuffing the actions of people who lived a thousand years ago into our definition of righteousness.

Good thoughts. I guess that is part of what I was getting at in saying that we live in a very sanitized and unrealistic world today. It is easy to sit safely and securely in our homes, even in a gated community, with money in the bank, a good job, good retirement, hiring other people to slaughter our animals for steaks and deal with the violent elements of society for us, never having to deal with death except in a “clean” way while pretending that it is not real, taking pills for the slightest ache, while watching pretend reality TV, and watching movies or playing video games that let us vent our anger and frustration at injustice by vicariously killing pretend people, all the while rather self-righteously condemning any form of violence of which we do not approve.

And then we expect God to be that same sanitized version of ourselves. This even creeps into our worship, in which we think that all forms of worship should only be upbeat with no hint of anything negative. We are imagining a God that conforms to our cultural model of what God ought to be like as if he were an affluent upper middle-class 21st century American.

Interesting that one of the primary words for “worship” in Hebrew is from a verb that means “to lie prostrate.” To come into the presence of God meant to fall on one’s face in both reverence and fear (the same word in Hebrew!). Watch Roman Catholics enter a sanctuary for worship; they have managed to retain this sense of reverence in worship. Maybe if we recovered that sense of awe and mystery, and even fear, of God rather than the warm fuzzies that we tend to use (I suspect this is why we like Jesus so much more than God), it might help us avoid reducing God to our own image. And that might help us deal with this issue in Scripture, at the same time that we recognize the human element in it all.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Daniel Hamlin]

I would not at all say this. This sets up a false polarization in which Scripture must be either “God’s Word” or the Community’s word. These are not mutually exclusive categories. I’m not sure what you have in mind to qualify as “God’s Word,” but it seems to be something like God thundering from Sinai or God telling people what to write. Neither are good models to view Scripture as the word of God.

The Bible is, indeed, the testimony about how God has revealed himself in history, as well as reinterpretation and reapplication of that testimony for later generations and new historical contexts and crises, reflections about the ethical implications of covenant, practical applications to everyday living, structures for worship, poetry and songs recounting both sublime praise to God as well as the earthiness of human sexuality, even philosophical contemplation about the nature of life based on that testimony. Scripture reflects all of human existence and all the range of human experience, centered around the idea of God and relationship with humanity. Biblically, all of life, indeed all of creation, is sacred.

Yet, all of that is not a purely human undertaking since this is a community of Faith, a covenant community. We believe that God was constantly at work within and among that community as they moved through history and as they collected and preserved various writings as testimony to God. The canon of Scripture that grew was not God’s word because it came from God directly on gold tablets, but because it was a faithful testimony to who God is and how he deals with humanity.

A good example is the Book of Psalms. These are mostly collected prayers of the people. And yet these prayers of people to God become God’s word to us precisely because they faithfully express who God is and how he relates to people in the realities of life.

The theological confession we use for all of this is that Scripture is inspired. That is, that there is a dimension to Scripture that cannot be defined as purely human, that God is involved not only in revealing himself, but also in helping people understand that revelation, work it out in life, and retell it for different times and circumstances (see Revelation and Inspiration (http://www.crivoice.org/revins.html)).


Sorry for the misunderstanding. I started reading "Revelation and Inspiration" last night, but didn't get it finished yet. For the past few years my thinking regarding Scripture has changed from "God dictated it" to something less literal and fundamentalistic . However, it is a paradigm shift and I'm still wrapping my head around the proper view of Scripture.

[Billie Goodson]

Dennis,

I had to really be open to reading some of what you said. In your initial post (or one of them) you seemed to be getting away from some of the "God inspired" aspects -- then when you continued, you really clarified what you meant. I think it really does add a lot to the discussion.

There are entire aspects of the bible that seem really strange until we compare them to other Ancient Near East writings that reflect more upon the culture of the time. I think your points about how we interpret the writings of yesterday through today's culture really echoes so much of what some people find wrong with the bible. Yet, when we view them in comparison to other ANE writings, we really get a more complete picture of the culture of the day. That in turn helps us look at the historical pieces of the bible and more easily reconcile what we read there to the consistency of God's relationship with us.

[Wilson L. Deaton]

Dennis,

In the article you linked to, you wrote this:

"Unfortunately, sometimes in their history they also did things less noble that they also attributed to God's will. Or at least they gave a theological rationale for what they should have done. The fact is, the early Israelites were a warlike people, not uncommon for tribes of that area. They conceived of God in terms of a great divine warrior who fought beside them or for them. Frequently, they portrayed God Himself slaughtering their enemies... .

... It was a short step to conclude that since God had wanted them to be free from Ba'al worship, then God must have wanted them to kill the Canaanites...

In other words, it was not simply a direct command from God, but their understanding from a certain time and place in history of what they thought would please God. They changed that later, just as they changed a lot of ideas about God throughout their history."

Given my stance on non-violence, etc., I really appreciate this explanation and it reallly resonates with me. While I like this explanation, I'm struggling just a bit to accept it wholesale. I'm not sure I can adequately formulate my questions but I'll try.

How does one separate in Scripture, "truth" from a faulty understanding of what was thought to be truth about God?

For example,
Scripture records that God made a covenant with Abraham.
Scripture records that Ai was ordered destroyed.

On what basis do we know that God made a covenant but didn't order Ai destroyed? How do we know that everything we think we know about God isn't based on misunderstanding? How is Biblical theology even possible if some of our source material (the Bible) is faulty? If something got changed later, how do we know the change was correct and/or adequate? How can I ask these questions without sounding like a Fundie?

(Could a pastor at an "average" Nazarene church tell his congregation that God didn't really command everyone in Ai destroyed and keep his job?)

Wilson

[Randy Wise]

This has been bugging me for a while, and I realize it nothing new, but why does the portrayal of God in the OT seem so "mean"? Specifically, why does he call for the slaughter of so many people (i.e. the conquest of Canaan)? Why was death the punishment for what seems like trivial matters?

I realize my perception may be caused by ignorance regarding the cultural, historical, or literary context of Scripture, so please feel free to inform me!

God waited 400 years until the sin of the people being removed reached full measure. The death of the body is not the death of the soul. In this case the judgment fell on a people not under law so I see judgment in regard to flesh only. Have you read about Noah as in that case the whole world was judged in regard to flesh? So I believe as written God commanded the removal by death.

Randy

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

[Daniel Hamlin]

I second that question! I was thinking the same thing!

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

I remember a time in the OT, that God changed His mind. I will cite one of them, in where He said how people would suffer for sin, down to the 3rd and 4th generation. But, look in the early part of Ezekiel 18. Also, do you think, He may have already given people a warning in advance, such as Pharoah, when He finally brought
heartache or destruction to them?

[Dennis Bratcher]

Dennis,

In the article you linked to, you wrote this:

"Unfortunately, sometimes in their history they also did things less noble that they also attributed to God's will. Or at least they gave a theological rationale for what they should have done. The fact is, the early Israelites were a warlike people, not uncommon for tribes of that area. They conceived of God in terms of a great divine warrior who fought beside them or for them. Frequently, they portrayed God Himself slaughtering their enemies... .

... It was a short step to conclude that since God had wanted them to be free from Ba'al worship, then God must have wanted them to kill the Canaanites...

In other words, it was not simply a direct command from God, but their understanding from a certain time and place in history of what they thought would please God. They changed that later, just as they changed a lot of ideas about God throughout their history."

Given my stance on non-violence, etc., I really appreciate this explanation and it reallly resonates with me. While I like this explanation, I'm struggling just a bit to accept it wholesale. I'm not sure I can adequately formulate my questions but I'll try.

How does one separate in Scripture, "truth" from a faulty understanding of what was thought to be truth about God?

For example,
Scripture records that God made a covenant with Abraham.
Scripture records that Ai was ordered destroyed.

On what basis do we know that God made a covenant but didn't order Ai destroyed? How do we know that everything we think we know about God isn't based on misunderstanding? How is Biblical theology even possible if some of our source material (the Bible) is faulty? If something got changed later, how do we know the change was correct and/or adequate? How can I ask these questions without sounding like a Fundie?

(Could a pastor at an "average" Nazarene church tell his congregation that God didn't really command everyone in Ai destroyed and keep his job?)

Wilson

Well, the issue is certainly a complicated one, which is no doubt why you asked the question. I wrestled with this same question for 25 years until I finally came to some resolution. I understand this won’t be acceptable for some people. But then from my own experience and those of many students and church people over the years, and as you have said, I know that the “traditional” answers are not really acceptable either.

The key question is “How does one separate in Scripture, "truth" from a faulty understanding of what was thought to be truth about God?”

Several observations at this point related to who we are that need to factor into our thinking. To really deal with this would take a book. So just a rough sketch and perhaps more later.

1) Most of us evangelicals operate with a historically literalist approach to Scripture that has been greatly influenced by Calvinistic absolutist perspectives. That is, we want to affirm the authority of Scripture, often in the “God said it” mode, and often at the expense of careful reasoning and exploring all the evidence.

2) As heirs of Protestantism, and especially of certain strands of the Reformation, we evangelicals want to affirm sola scriptura (Luther, “scripture alone”) or homo unias libre (Wesley, “a man of one book”) but apart from an historical understanding of what that actually meant in the Reformation or in 18th century England. As heirs of the more radical elements of the Reformation, as well as the 19th century revivals and later holiness movement, we have tended to elevate Scripture as the only source of any kind of truth.

3) When that is combined with an aggressive anti-intellectualism in some circles (with historical origins), as well as elements of Pentecostalism and charismatic theology, we end up with a view of Scripture that basically affirms that whatever we think to be true about Scripture is the truth of God on the subject. We need no historical perspective, no understanding of the context, no understanding of culture, history, biblical languages, or any theological perspective, let alone any “Tradition” to help us. Biblical truth is self-evident to anyone as long as they sincerely believe the Bible.

4) This very easily leads to the “golden tablet syndrome,” in which we see Scripture as something other than a human product, written by the finger of God without any kind of error and absolutely perfect in every aspect. Scripture is actually seen as something apart from humanity, a genuine divine book, sacred because of its origin not its content, unmarred by humanity (picking up the neo-platonic assumption that human beings are fatally and irredeemably flawed precisely because they are humans). From this view it is only humans who try to interpret Scripture that introduce any kind of disharmony into Scripture, which is actually to say “introduce disharmony into the logical system that we have created to support our ideas of what Scripture ought to be”).

5) We have long understood that there are significant differences within Scripture, not only between the OT and the NT, but within both OT and NT. Since part of the assumption about Scripture from the above is that there can be no conflicts, we have deftly used rationalism and logical formulations to make the Bible fit within preconceived parameters without considering the possibility that the basic premises were wrong. That logical preservation of certainly theologies or ideologies is part of the role of perspectives like “progressive revelation,” or “predestination,” the immutability or sovereignty of God, or even “original sin” (in its more classic logical formulations as the source of all evil).

6) All of that suggests that we have built a very elaborate rational theological system in relation to Scripture in order to make all the pieces fit, and that system makes sense on the surface to most people. The problems come from two sources: a) when we carefully examine the inner logic of the system and realize that if we actually carry through the logic we end up with a God that looks nothing like the God of the Bible even on His worst days ;) ; b) when we examine closely the biblical evidence and realize that it will not support the logical systems since they are not even tangentially connected to the biblical text.

While this may be overstated for many evangelicals today, I think this is basically where we came from in trying to understand Scripture. A second set of observations related to Scripture itself to sketch ought how to deal with the question.

7) We have tended to use Scripture either as proof texts without consideration of the meaning of a text within a larger context, or we have focused on Scripture only in short sermon texts or single short passages without considering larger blocks of text.

8) We have also tended to focus on selected passages that support certain readings without considering other texts or passages that say something different. Because of other assumptions (above) we have tended to assume that passages that appear to say something different really do not if we only had more information about them. Since we do not, they are effectively ignored.

9) This means that we have easily harmonized Scripture to make it all say the same thing, without considering that what we think it says in this truncated version curiously reflects the way we think in our particular time and place.

10) As a result, and because we have developed rational arguments to explain the text (#5 above), we have not really been aware of the tremendous diversity within the biblical traditions themselves. We have not noticed that priestly language and perspectives are very different from prophetic language and perspectives, or that the wisdom traditions (Song of Solomon!) and many of the psalms (137) are really not very pious from our sanitized and harmonized ideal of Scripture. We have not noticed that within the pages of Scripture itself Israel actually changed many of the “laws” attributed to God, and did so without any new Sinai revelation.

11) Until very recently (mid 1800s) we knew very little about the history and culture of the Ancient Near East, so it was easy to assume that Israel was unique in the world and that its religious practices recorded in Scripture as being given by God were likewise unique. Now we know that, for example, most everyone in the Ancient Near East except the Philistines practiced religious circumcision, that everyone offered sacrifices to the gods, and that religious festivals like Succoth, Yom Kippur, even Passover/Unleavened Bread were practiced throughout the region. We also know that the Akkadians had a creation story, the Egyptians had a collection of wisdom sayings, and the Sumerians had a flood story, all a thousand years before Abraham. Virtually all the nations of the ANE practiced holy war, offering conquered peoples to the gods (killing them). Of course, none of this means that the Bible is not true. But at the very least, it calls us to understand Israel within a cultural and historical context.

Well, there are other things to say here. But these two major factors, our assumptions about the nature of Scripture and our lack of informed and critical engagement with the biblical text, allowed us to claim things about the Bible that simply cannot be sustained today without some modification.

OK, so how do we distinguish “truth,” that is, what the Bible says about God, us, and our relationship to God, from translations of that into time- and culturally-conditioned confessions that may be modified.

(to be continued)

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Dennis Bratcher]

(continued)

OK, so how do we distinguish “truth,” that is, what the Bible says about God, us, and our relationship to God, from translations of that into time- and culturally-conditioned confessions that may be modified.

Again, this could take a whole book. So, just a sketch.

1) Take all of the previous points seriously, and try to alter our perspectives and assumptions about Scripture. As hard as it is to swallow, the Bible simply is not what many people think it is or want it to be. Once again, that says nothing about the truth of the Bible; it remains Scripture of the Church and as such “inerrantly reveal[s] the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation.” But it does say something about what some people think about Scripture and the “battle for the Bible” promoted by some as God’s own agenda. In reality, it only promotes a certain view; it is not a battle for the Bible at all, but rather a battle for a certain theological doctrine that is seriously flawed.

2) Allow Scripture to have its own voice without telling it what to say. To do that, we must understand the human dimension of Scripture, the human times, places, and circumstances into which God’s word to us is incarnated.

3) Incarnation did not begin with Jesus. It is the way God has always dealt with humanity, of which Jesus is the best example. It is not just an event, but part of the nature of God. That is, God has never dealt with humans in absolutist terms apart from human existence, but always within the flow of human history. He has always revealed himself within the mundane that has always been located within a certain time and a certain place. And the people who passed on the traditions and wrote the Bible all lived within the same times and places and spoke and wrote from within those contexts.

4) If we take that historical dimension seriously, then we can track through history the different ways human beings have talked about God (theology=God talk), the ways they have changed their language and practices in different periods and circumstances, even the way they have applied the biblical commandments in practical ethics. From that, we can begin to see how God’s people have understood and applied the truths about God, in both positive and negative modes.

5) This not only applies to Scripture but extends beyond to how Scripture has been understood in various periods throughout the past 2,000 years. Whether we American (and some European) evangelicals like it or not, we need that Tradition both within and beyond Scripture to help us establish a theological trajectory through Scripture into the modern world. It is that trajectory (I would call it biblical theology, but that is a more technical term that, like “Christian worldview,” has fallen into disrepute because of how it has been used by some) that provides us a basis to talk about God (theology) in new ways, as well as to do new lawmaking that is faithful to the biblical witness (here is where “traditional” evangelical perspectives cause us the most problems).

6) We are really back to Wesley and his theological method, sometimes called the Quadrilateral in which Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience stand in a dynamic and interactive relationship. Wesley always began with Scripture. But he understood that at the same time he was “a man of one book” that Scripture never stands apart from an interpreting community and the process of God-given lawmaking that “works out [our] salvation with fear and trembling.” Wesley openly acknowledged that there is a human factor in how we read, understand, and apply Scripture. I am suggesting that this same human factor is part of Scripture itself, part of the incarnation of God into humanity.

7) It is even helpful to compare the OT and the NT, not just to disregard the OT as archaic, which is often either the goal or the result of such comparisons, but to see how the truths about God from the OT are incorporated into the NT confessions in light of new times and circumstances (the Advent). I just spent an afternoon with the pastor of a large Nazarene Church doing that very thing in working through the lectionary passages from Isaiah for the next three weeks. Not only does that help us identify the cultural elements of the OT, it also helps us understand why certain things were said about Jesus and why it was important.

OK, enough for now. If this doesn’t help any, maybe we can go a different direction.

(Could a pastor at an "average" Nazarene church tell his congregation that God didn't really command everyone in Ai destroyed and keep his job?)

I think this is an entirely different question. The other was a biblical and theological question; this is a pastoral question. Given the first set of observations, the real question is, “Given where people are in a local context, what is the best way to help them understand the nature of Scripture?” In a lot of Nazarene churches, this probably would not be a good starting place. It takes time and patience, and God. And even then, my experience has been that a few would rather hold onto their own notions than risk growing.

Grace and Peace,

Dennis Bratcher

[Wilson L. Deaton]

Dennis,

Thanks for the rather thorough response. I haven't responded yet because I'm still processing.

Wilson

[Kyle Porter]

Again, this could take a whole book. So, just a sketch.

I hope you get a chance to write this book someday!

[Genevieve Boller]

Yes -- for those of us who will likely never have the opportunity to take a class from you, a book would be wonderful. :basic05

[Daniel Hamlin]

Dennis,

I'm not sure if you are still monitoring this thread or not, but I have another question. I've been pondering what you've written over the past couple of months. I understand, at least at a high level, what you are saying. However, do you have any suggestions on how to implement this? When I'm reading the Bible, how do I determine what was cultural and what wasn't? If you have any books or other resources (I've spent time on the CRI website) that you could point me toward, I'd appreciate it!

[Dennis Bratcher]

Dennis,

I'm not sure if you are still monitoring this thread or not, but I have another question. I've been pondering what you've written over the past couple of months. I understand, at least at a high level, what you are saying. However, do you have any suggestions on how to implement this? When I'm reading the Bible, how do I determine what was cultural and what wasn't? If you have any books or other resources (I've spent time on the CRI website) that you could point me toward, I'd appreciate it!

I apologize, but I am traveling this week in the Far East and have limited time. I return 2/18, so remind me again next week and I'd be happy to talk some more about this.

Dennis B.

[Daniel Hamlin]

Dennis,

Do you have time to expound on this a little more? Thanks!

[Dennis Bratcher]

Dennis,

Do you have time to expound on this a little more? Thanks!

Thanks for reminding me!

The basic question here is the question of hermeneutics. Generally, hermeneutics is the process of interpretation of a written text. However, some make a distinction between exegesis, the study of the meaning(s) or communication of a text in relation to its original context(s), and hermeneutics, how we understand what a text communicates to have meaning or application in a different context (ours).

Others combine the two ideas into a single interpretive process, arguing that one cannot distinguish past and present meaning since all meaning seen from the present will be in terms of the present (any “original” meaning(s) is not recoverable from our perspective). I try to take a mediating position between these two. I take seriously this last perspective in realizing the huge amount of meaning we tend to project onto a text from our own location in place and time (“the Bible says” far too often means “I think it ought to say”). Yet, at the same time I think that by careful attention to the various contexts and dynamic of a text we can hear a/the communication of a text in order to have some ability to track that communication across and through history (a trajectory).

The difficulty in the question about implementation is that there are a range of views about how to practice hermeneutics, and a variety of approaches to doing exegesis. That means that there are a lot of resources that answer this question in various ways, without any one of them necessarily being the “right” way.

I would recommend three that more or less reflect what I am talking about (a larger bibliography can be found at http://www.crivoice.org/NTS/herm/Herm-sum06-syl.pdf).

Callen, Barry L. and Thompson, Richard P., eds. Reading the Bible in Wesleyan Ways: Some Constructive Proposals. Beacon Hill Press, 2004.

Davis, Ellen F. and Hays, Richard B., eds. The Art of Reading Scripture. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.

Klein, William W., Blomberg, Craig L., and Hubbard, Robert L. Jr. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Rev ed. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004.
As far as implementation, I follow a couple of very basic hermeneutical principles, both of which I would like to think are biblical principles.

1) the covenantal principle expressed in the formula “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” For me this is a basic faith confession that works out in various ways throughout Scripture. It is the confession about God that affirms his initiation of relationship by grace. And that grace calls people to response. In the OT, “I will be your God” is the exodus/return from exile, while “you shall be my people” is Torah, how we work out living in the world as people of God. In the NT, “I will be your God” is the Incarnation, while “you shall be my people” is embodied in the teachings of Jesus (for example, the Sermon on the Mount) and the applications of those teachings in the epistles.

2) the principle of expectations for living as God’s people that are condensed by Jesus into the Great Commandment: love God and love neighbor. Not only are these quotations from OT Torah (Lev and Deut), they are expressed in various ways throughout both the OT (for example, Micah 6:6-8) and the NT (for example, John 13, Rom 12, etc.).

Note that neither of these principles involves “law” in the sense of specific commands about how to live. In neither the OT nor the NT is law ever a basic principle of how to understand God or to live in the world, as Paul forcefully argues in Romans (although in culturally conditioned ways!). That simple fact has some tremendous implications about how we read Scripture. It directly relates to how we answer the question of determining what is cultural in Scripture and what is more enduring. These principles suggest that when we read, for example, that “You must not lacerate yourselves or shave your forelocks for the dead” (Deut 14:1), we are dealing with a cultural issue. It is an attempt to translate covenant with God and the principle of love God-love neighbor into practical living in ways that allowed the people to live as “children of the LORD your God” in a specific time and place.

Of course, this example is easy. But the principle is sound even when we are dealing with texts that are not so obvious, such as the well-known passage about women in 1 Corinthians 14. The basic idea here is that all ethical instructions in Scripture are culturally conditioned because by their very nature ethics issues are context specific (most anyone who has worked cross-culturally understands this well). [For me, moral principles, like the Ten Words, are a different issues and a different topic.]

That does not mean there are no boundaries, contrary to what some advocate or contrary to the fears of “slippery-slope” proponents. The principles of covenant and love relationship are actually much more bounding than law can ever be, which was Jesus’ point in the early sections of the Sermon on the Mount. They are just not as easy to put into “special rules.” Sadly, in our quest for law we seem to have perennially forgotten that finally sin is not a matter of actions only, but a matter of the heart. We forget that we can only look on the outside but God looks on the heart.

Now, of course, I understand the necessity of guidelines and ethical standards within a community. But the issue here is biblical interpretation, and how we read biblical texts. The guideline here is that in almost all cases what we tend to read in the Bible as legal behavioral commands for all time are culturally conditioned ethical instructions that need to be interpreted before we impose them today as our law or ethical guidelines.

Beyond ethical issues, I think these same two principles can serve us in broader application in asking questions about cultural context. This also involves very essentially what we understand Scripture to be. I’ve already dealt with this in some detail in previous posts and the articles, so won’t repeat it here.

Basically, the Bible tells us three things: 1) about God, 2) about us as human beings, and 3) about our relationship with God. If we keep in mind that whatever else Scripture says (or whatever we think it says) it is really about these three things, we can avoid getting sidetracked by a lot of other ideas. For example, Genesis 1 is not about science and evolution; it is about God, cast in the language and thought world of fifth century BC Israelites who had struggled with the syncretism of Baal worship. Joshua and Judges are not a historical chronicle of the conquest; they are about the faithfulness of God and human failure and sin, cast in the language and culture of eleventh century BC tribal Hebrews struggling to come to terms with how to live as God’s people in a very violent and polytheistic world. Before we move those texts into modern applications, we must begin with them there.

There is one other factor that we need to consider and take seriously in dealing with biblical texts: Scripture did not arise at a single time from a single place by a single author. And it did not emerge full grown and immutable from the head of Moses or Paul. Scripture is not just a book, but is a set of traditions that were dynamic across more than 1,500 years of human history (and in some ways are still dynamic). What we read in Scripture is a community of Faith in dialog with itself across a millennium and a half, through several epochs of human history. The biblical text cannot be flattened out and made to read as if it were written as a whole at one time, and certainly not as if it were addressed to us as it stands.

This means that all of Scripture is culturally conditioned, not just the parts that are hard to understand. And it is conditioned not just by one cultural or historical context but by several or many. As a result, on a cultural and historical level Scripture will not be consistent (for example, three different systems of tithing in Deuteronomy). That necessitates the two basic hermeneutical principles as well as understanding essentially what Scripture addresses (God, us, relationship) in order to focus on what the text communicates, without getting lost in the details.

Of course, there’s a lot more to be said and I’m not sure this is addressing the question as you asked it. Let me know where we can go from here.

FYI: Some might be interested in the Power Point presentations developed by Roger Hahn and myself on biblical interpretation: http://www.crivoice.org/NTS/herm/herm06.html

Grace and Peace,

Dennis B.