Filtering the Text
Our tradition, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. they are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters.
The Mosaic
The facts of the Bible are just pieces - bits of scattered data. Our tendency is to impose order, and to do that we apply a filter, But we gain a perspective that is both broader and deeper if we allow ourselves to see the pieces in their own wider context. We need to see the mosaic created by the pieces.
Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole. Yes, the individual pieces are essential; without them there would be no mosaic. But the meaning of all the pieces is found in the completed mosaic. And a mosaic isn't imposed on the pieces; it derives from them.
Obstacles and Protocols
1. We've been trained to think that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible.
The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers - the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a persuasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.
The Biblical text was produced by men who lived in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean between the second millenium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into the intellectual output of that world. A vast amount of that material is available to us, thanks to modern technology. As our understanding of the worldview of the Biblical writers grows, so does our understanding of what they intended to say - and the mosaic of their thinking takes shape in our minds.
2, We've been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world.
First, many Christians claim to believe in the supernatural but think (and live) like skeptics.
One is their suspicion that charismatic practices are detached from sound exegesis of Scripture.
The other reason is less self-congratulatory. The believing church is bending under the weight of its own rationalism, a modern worldview that would be foreign to the biblical writers.
The second serious shortcoming is evident within the charismatic movement: the elevation of experience over Scripture
Those two shortcomings, while seemingly quite different, are actually born of the same fundamental, underlying problem: Modern Christianity's view of the unseen world isn't framed by the ancient worldview of the Biblical writers.
-the truth is that our modern evangelical subculture has trained us to think that our theology precludes any experience of the unseen world.
My contention is that, if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world.
3. We assume that a lot of things int he Bible are too odd or peripheral to matter.
"We're going to skip this section of 1 Peter since it's just too strange."
The more common strategy for "handling" strange passages is more subtle: Strip the bizarre passage of anything that makes it bizarre. The goal is to provide the most ordinary, comfortable interpretation possible.
There are many other passages whose content is curious or "doesn't make sense" and so are abandoned or glossed over. Here's a sampling of them:
Gen 1:26
Gen 3:5, 22
Gen 6:1-4
Gen 10-11
Gen 15:1
Gen 48:15-16
Exod 3:1-14
Exod 23:20-23
Num 13:32-33
Deut 32:8-9
Deut 32:17
Judg 6
1 Sam 3
1 Sam 23:1-14
1 Kings 22:1-23
2 Kings 5:17-19
Job 1-2
Pss 82, 68, 89
Isa 14:12-15
Ezek 28:11-19
Dan 7
Matt 16:13-23
John 1:1-14
John 10:34-35
Rom 8:18-24
Rom 15:24, 28
1 Cor 2:6-13
1 Cor 5:4-5
1 Cor 6:3
1 Cor 10:18-22
Gal 3:19
Eph 6:10-12
Heb 1-2
1 Peter 3:18-22
2 Peter 2:4-5
Jude 5-7
Rev 2:26-28
Rev 3:21
My contention in this book, is that if it's weird, it's important.
