Hind sight is not always 20/20

It seems to me that we are having to face a new reality in the reformed world. That reality is that simple acceptance of the Bible (what it is and what it teaches) is no longer a predominate mindset, not even in the reformed world. The basic starting point has shifted. Where once the divine authorship was not only presupposed but it was also the starting point from which all phenomena was judged, now the starting point has become the "evidence" and the divine authorship plays a responsive or contingent role rather than the first cause "shaper". This change has taken place gradually as more and more attention has been placed on literature and archeology from the A.N.E (ancient near east) and man is more and more seduced by the idea that the Bible is not a timeless instruction book dropped out of heaven.

Though the conviction about the "timefulness" of the bible is a good one. We should not overload that conviction, nor should we eliminate (or even unnecessarily downplay) timelessness. It is surely true that the Bible is the revelation of God for His people, and that God stoops ever so low to covenantally communicate that revelation. But it must not be overlooked that God knew the end from the beginning when he spoke that revelation. He knew all His people, His whole bride, when He spoke that love letter to her. As much as a mistake it is to assume that the Bible contained information that was useless to the church for several thousands of years (until the invention of the helicopter for example). To that same degree, it is a mistake to confine the condescension of our LORD's communication to an ancient and foreign mind to the greater portion of the church. In other words "all scripture is God breathed, and profitable... so that the man of God [at any time in redemptive historical drama] may be competent..."

The effect of divine authorship must override the analysis of contemporary literature and artifact. Or else we cannot say that Scripture is our norming norm. To illustrate the approaches and the current problem I have this analogy.

Fig.1

I am using a fictional story about a battle of grays hill fought during the civil war. One of the Soldiers in the battle has two children - one who rebels and hates his Father passionately - the other remains faithful and loves his Father. Over the years the story conveyed to the children may pick up nuances , depicted by the additional dots, but the offspring of the rebellious child maintain a enmity toward the original teller of the story. In the written versions of the story - the grandchild of the faithful son is able to speak directly to his grandfather again before writing - Thus the product of his writing is not directly polemical or responsive, but didactic or informative - not brute fact, but faithful nonetheless.


Fig. 2
In this second figure the story is the same, but the influence of the grandchildren is different and the direct communication is gone. These two models roughly analogize the traditional way to consider the Bible and the new pseudo-sophisticated way. The first diagram is almost totally unconcerned for the product of the rebellious son, and the final product of the faithful son is also somewhat unconcerned about the stories own progression its the line of the faithful, because of the ability to get direct communication with the grandfather. But in Fig.2 the cross breading of sources and the distance from the grandfather make dependence upon one another - necessary?

Using this analogy, modern biblical criticism falls in the second option and pretty much denies divine authorship, even when they claim to believe in the inspiration of the text - they still mean something different than a direct, exclusive, telling of the story from the source, but more a superintendence of the compilation at best. This always seems to result in a late dating of events and strong appreciation for redaction. Which leads to a suspicion of prophecy and the assumption that whenever two events share similar redemptive ear marks (Abraham & Exodus etc.) the earlier story chronologically is being retold during or after the time of the latter story - usually with the desire to vindicate or accentuate the latter story. All of which goes to show you that hind sight is not always 20/20. Just because you have the advantage of looking at events and stories after they are completed - does not mean that you will interpret them correctly, or that we are some how able to impose our fallen understanding of history on the development of the biblical narrative.

When dealing with the Scripture, 20/20 vision is only through the Spirit. Again it is His Word and our authority.

Greek love and English vindication

More likely than not, if you have been in the evangelical world for the past decade at least, you've heard some kind of comparison of the three different types of love that are found in the Bible - that you only have access to through the Greek language. Those loves are "eros" - "phileo" and "agapao". Depending on the level of adherence to the trend, you heard something to the effect that each has a different meaning and they constitute different stages or levels of love. You may have even had the joy of getting these explanations in a marriage seminar, where the teacher so craftily argued that a good marriage has an erotic love (eros) a friendly love (supposedly phileo) and a sacrificial / divine "like" love (supposedly agapao). While all this sound very good, and may in fact be quite helpful for marriage counseling - the problem is that it is wrong! flat out wrong!

In scripture the terms phileo and agapao are used interchangeably and the Scripture often defines the Love the Father has for the son - by the word (phileo). Use of the Septuagint brings even more questions as it says that "Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her." 2Sa 13:1 - and the word is none other than agapao!! - Certainly we cannot think that divine or sacrificial/unconditional love would motivate one to rape!?! No, what we see by the use of these words and the relation to our own languages is that every language is complex and full of nuance - it is impossible to get at the full meaning of discourses simply through the meaning of words. It is the contextual meaning that rules the day.

This means that the commonly held idea that the Greek mind had a better way of conceiving of "love", because of its tight and ridged differentiation of terms, and that their is more meaning and color buried in the language - to which the English suffers through its ambiguity to convey - is simply false. The Greek language is loaded with idiom and ambiguity too, and the more we study the language the more we see the lack of precision that grammar and word meaning actually have. It is context, built by grammar, syntax and discourse all together that bring more precision to the meaning - and also allow for more accuracy in translation. It is my belief that the more the Greek or Hebrew turns out to be ambiguous in word meaning, the more English translations are vindicated. Sure there is trouble in translating, and the concepts of one culture are not always compatible to another, but the symbols and morphology of language do not constitute her communication - and in that regard we should be comforted to know that there is nothing new under the sun. Man's language has not evolved - nor do I think it has devolved. The expression and the communication has remained within the scope of finite humanity grasping at the Divine condescensions. Though we may add to our vocabularies and to our refining of concepts within our context, we cannot utterly lose the ability to communicate - precisely because God condescends and communicates where ever the Word of God is preached.

Beware of anything that hints of secret or hidden meaning, now that God has made Himself known fully in Christ.

No Brute History

The idea of the modern man that history is a collection of facts in some chronological order, is becoming less and less appealing to scholars and critics. For the most part we as conservative reformed Christians can be glad for this shift, but I fear that it not all roses. Anytime a non believer starts agreeing with you its always time to check yourself - and this is no exception.

The apologetic world was I think significantly changed for the better when Van Til refined the idea of world view and transcendental/presuppositional argumentation. No brute fact - taght us that there is not one think in our thinking that is not interpreted through the grid of our world view and that is pretty potent stuff when your opponents world views are so blatantly inconsistent and borrowing from the Christian WV. What happens though when someone gets a hold of this concept and applies it to History? Can we say that there is no uninterpreted history?

There are advantages to such a position, and if we are consistent with our apologetic we must affirm this position at least on some levels. But I think a caution should be used. We can come dangerously close to relativism, and I believe flirt quite aggressively with the neo-orthodox position if we grab to tightly to this position. We must affirm that having an interpreted history in the Bible is not the same thing as having a false or mythical history. Sure the events are interpreted - but they are always interpreted around events that God preforms and, fortunately for us they are all interpreted by the Holy Spirit. So when the NT writers quote the OT and they don't "get it right" so to speak, we need not flee to fanciful "thats common place for the 2nd temple folk" talk - but rather boldly proclaim "the Lord rebuke you, for it is he who speaks, he who interprets"!

Surronding the Text

Even with the great dichotomizing confession that the Word of God is really the word of God and therefore inerrant - still some wrong thinking and wrong approaches sneak into the orthodox camp, still the luster and allure of respectability infect the ground.

Just what is the implication of "a believing" approach? And how far does it extend?

Current scholarship (even with in the Reformed world) has undertaken the task of learning the culture and the literature that surrounds the text of the Bible in an effort to try to refine its understanding of the biblical text. The argument is rather straight forward - if the biblical author was influenced by something else that we can get a hold of (like other literature or schools of thought, well, or even not so well, documented) then it will only aid in our further understanding of the text to study these.

Concerning the schools of thought - it would seem quite obvious that God speaks to our condition, condescends to our estate, even our trends in epistemological frameworks. This seems quite clear from the ease at which the Bible was able to speak to both the Hebrew culture and the Greek culture - but equally obvious is that the revelation of God while coming to and through these cultures always transcended those cultures. The idea "product of your environment" is not a biblical one! And needs to be rejected no mater how heartily one believes it to be true. If we deny the ability of God to transcend the boundaries of human culture and thinking then we make those out to be gods and ascribe to them the worth that is due the creator. This is also true when we force or pigeon hole any person into that same cage of human culture and context. Those things being ever so potent - remain finite, limited and week in the presence of God. No man is necessarily one way or another because of his environment - whether he is a Biblical author or not. God is sovereign over the likes of all this - and try as we may - we cannot make anything else the sovereign over God - even the use of means that he chooses! So in the study of what has influenced the text, we need to be always careful to ascribe full rights unto God to do as he pleases.

What about studying the other non biblical literature - what value do these works bring to our understand of God's Word?

Scholars, much like great artist, are appreciated for their fine observation skills. It is these skills that can add the greatest amount of color and interest to what they produce. The ability to spot similitude is one of the most important tools of the trade, and with both art and science, is able to help gain better mastery of things - by placing a similar -yet simpler object in view. This has been the approach to understanding inspiration in many scholarly circles. Find something that acts/looks like the Bible and build up from that an understanding of what the Bible is doing. The problem is - the Bible is unique. No matter how much God condescends in it - it still remains His Word, and all other writings always remain - not His Word. Thus to use the comparison of other text to gain understanding is only legitimate with in the Bible itself, apples to apples(as the Reformed have always held).

Scholars, put down your Babylonian scripts, there is no life in them! The Dead Sea Scrolls are not worth their weight in paper!
Students, use the phrase "inter-testamental" as opposed to "2nd Temple" for we are all about presupposing the inspiration of the one and not the other.
Christians, stop being embarrassed by the Word of God! They mocked Christ, they will mock His Word