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.