Pastoral Perspectives on the Bible: Part 2
How does one get to be a person to whom the biblical text reveals its secrets? Were it not for the Calvinistic connotations with which the term is too closely associated, one might find biblical warrant for saying that it is a matter of "election". In any case this opens onto a discussion that takes us too far afield of the assignment, which is to conclude with certain guidelines for general readers like myself. Suffice it to say that initiation into the mysteries of the Kingdom is not the reward of intellectual assiduity, moral earnestness, or the disciplines of piety. All the student can do is read the text critically, pursue it passionately, return to it repeatedly, wait upon it patiently.
Rudolph Bultmann argues that if by "presuppositionless" one means the elimination of "the individuality of the exegete," his "biases and habits," an unprejudiced reading of the Bible is hardly possible. This does not mean, he assures us, that it is impossible to interpret the text without prejudice to the "results" of one's investigations. "Every exegesis that is guided by dogmatic prejudices does not hear what the text says." But how does one rid himself of such prejudices? How does one work free of his preconditioning environment? In part, may I suggest, by reading as widely as possible, particularly in the sacred literatures of other religions, but also in such non-religious texts as raise and address questions of biblical enormity, not excluding those that call the Bible and biblical faith into question.
The Jewish-Christian collection is not the only Bible! Nor are sacred texts of whatever provenience the only literary means by which human words become the Word of God.
Wesley, somewhat naively as Albert Outler has shown, fancied himself homo unius libri. In fact his breadth of reading was sufficiently prodigious (some fourteen hundred authors cited in his writings!) to embarrass the belated Methodist who writes this essay and, I suspect, a good number of my colleagues. There is no virtue in confining oneself to the Bible. Whatever sola scriptura means in our tradition, it does not sanction intellectual provincialism.
"Any theology that is content to be exclusively biblicist, or traditionalist, is invalid and finally fruitless," says Outler. It is possible, however, to read everything, from the daily newspaper to the most abstruse philosophical text, in light of the Bible. He who devotes his life to its consideration finds in due course that the Bible becomes inescapable. He can put it away but not aside. It intrudes upon all his thoughts about anything. He can't read philosophy or poetry, see a play or a movie, without the Bible calling itself to mind, insinuating itself into the text or drama at hand, writing itself into the margins, insisting upon being consulted, imperiously having to have the last word. That is to say, only when every literary encounter accentuates the primary text is the reader homo unius libri "in the Wesleyan spirit."
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." Not only as a child but well into adulthood I read the Bible childishly: as a book of precepts to be memorized and "applied" to my life; as a Law, external to my self, to be unquestionably obeyed; as the undifferentiated "Word of God" brooking no questions, disagreements, or reservations; as an inerrant document uncontaminated by human perspective, in a word, innocently, oblivious to the complexities involved, shutting myself out of its secrets by the very esteem in which I held it. Reading the Bible is not an exercise in passivity.
It is a conversation with the very human and therefore fallible human authors, aware of their temptation to put words in the mouth of God as well as their longing for That Which no words can express, recognizing the limitations imposed upon them by a particular time, place, and culture (to which the Word of God must condescend if It is to be heard at all), a dialogue, then, in which the reader is an indispensable, equal partner. Reading the Bible is an engagement with its authors and, one hopes, with the Spirit with which they thought themselves inspired. The author and reader drink of one Spirit, bridging an otherwise unbridgeable cultural distance. As the reader listens to the Voice of the text, he therefore insists upon being heard. He argues, objects, disagrees, arrives at an impasse, reconciles or fails to reconcile himself with the author or authors, thereby effecting an ongoing, vigorous, sometimes stormy, sometimes exasperating, sometimes exhilarating, but always edifying pursuit of that which concerns human beings ultimately.
Do not misunderstand what I am about to say here. The Bible is one of the world's literary treasures. Even those who don't believe or read it would not want the world to be without it. (Imagine Nietsche, for example, without the Bible to which so much of his thought was a response, notwithstanding the fact that he read it "with gloves on.") For Jews and Christians, it is the indispensable text, and therefore ought to be, as the Edwardian Homily has it, "much in our hands, in our eyes, in our mouths, but most of all in our hearts." But, alas, a danger, our undoing potentially, lies right at the heart of an unbiblical veneration of the Bible. The bibliolater mistakes the means for the end, the agency for the goal, the sign for the thing signified.
Christian theology and spirituality are Christo- not bibliocentric. Christians aspire to be led by the Spirit. The New no less than the Old Testament is eschatologically provisional: a "schoolmaster to lead us to Christ." Eschatologically speaking, the Bible, no less than all else that appertains to religion, is scheduled for obsolescence. Once the reader is grasped rather than intrigued by That to which the Bible bears witness, once he has "entered" as opposed to contemplating the Kingdom of God, once he becomes the "friend" rather than the "servant" Jesus, once he has "put on Christ" rather than imitating Jesus, once he has learned to reside in rather than envision the existential "heavenly places," the Bible becomes superfluous. Not disposed of. Eclipsed. Relegated to its penultimate place in the economy of salvation: as preliminary to autonomous existence, a means to the end of participation in the Spirit, a heuristic agency for the untutored. As disconcerting as it might seem to bibliophiles such as myself, if there is no Temple in the "New Jerusalem" of the spirit, there is presumably no Bible either! "No longer need they teach one another to know the Lord," writes one who dreamed of that of which I speak, "all of them, high and low alike, shall know me, says the Lord."
I am tempted to say that what the Dharma is to Nirvana in Buddhism, the Bible is to the Kingdom of God in Christianity.
In the Majjhima Nikaya (l.22.l3- 14) the Buddha compares his teaching (dharma) to a raft by which one crosses a river to the safety and freedom of the other shore. What is then done with the raft, he wants to know. Does one hoist it ridiculously on his shoulder and carry it about with him? Of course not. The reasonable thing is to leave it at the river's edge or set it adrift. The dharma, he concludes, "is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of the crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping."
This is something of a moot question, of course, for those of us for whom the far shore is only a distant horizon.
Donald Morris is pastor of Trinity UMC, Athens, Tenn.
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The Clergy Connection is a communication produced and written by the Clergy of Holston Conference for the purposes of deepening relationships, encouraging spiritual growth, increasing awareness of challenging opportunities, imparting useful information, stimulating theological exploration, providing a forum for honest expression and sharing the joys of creative ministries.
The Clergy Connection exists to call clergy into deeper covenant with God through Christ and to call clergy to live in covenant with each other.
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