Bournagain

Just finished reading the first item on my booklist for 2012, The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith.

The strapline of his thesis is “why biblicism is not a truly evangelical reading of Scripture”, and one of the strengths of his book is that he spends the first four chapters defining what he means by “biblicism”.  He preempts accusations of having liberal tendencies by making clear in his introduction that his book is not an attack on the inspiration or authority of the Bible, but rather a “critical interrogation of certain aspects of one specific account of biblical authority that I think reason and evidence show is impossible to defend and employ with integrity.”  He calls this account “biblicism”, and demonstrates that it is the most common approach to the Scriptures in American evangelicalism.

I am not an American evangelical, and Smith has been criticised for being too centred on the American scene, although I find this criticism somewhat unfair – Smith is addressing the situation he knows best, and in such a short book the scope is necessarily limited.  In France evangelicalism is a relatively young movement and in many respects has more in common with its American counterpart than with the Christian traditions and approaches to the Scriptures native to its own land, therefore many of Smith’s findings are also applicable here, as in other parts of the world.  The fact that Smith has apparently joined the Catholic church and considers himself an “evangelical catholic” makes his study particularly interesting for the French situation, where many evangelicals would consider the term “evangelical Catholic” an oxymoron.

The book is very technical – Smith is an academic sociologist by trade – and you have to plough through to the end as he defines his subject for the book to make sense.  Even the title of the first chapter – “Biblicism and the Problem of Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” would be enough to discourage some readers.  This is possibly one of the weaknesses of the book in the sense that his arguments probably apply more to popular evangelicalism, that is evangelicalism as it is actually practised in the churches and homes of large numbers of American evangelicals, who may find the book inaccessible.  But the effort is definitely worth it.

“Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” is the primary problem addressed in the book, and in short it refers to the fact that Bible interpretation leads to a wide variety of different and contradictory understandings of what the Bible actually means on a very wide variety of subjects, all of which claim to be authoritative.  Smith points out that evangelicals disagree on many issues, including some that have very significant repercussions on the way we understand and practice the Christian life, and his argument is that the reason for this is the “biblicist” understanding of what the Bible actually is and how it should be read.  He defines biblicism in the introduction as being:

“a theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning and universal applicability…a constellation of assumptions and beliefs that define a particular theory and practice”.

So what’s the problem?  That sounds like a fairly “biblical” approach to the Bible.  The problem is that in actual practice, Christians expect the Bible to speak unequivocally on all the subjects it addresses in such a way that all Christians should be able to arrive at the same conclusion about it’s meaning by just taking the text at face value.  In actual practice the exact opposite is true, which has led to the multiplicity of church denominations that we know today, and the sometimes vociferous arguments between Christians about what the Bible actually means.  Smith demonstrates through logic and through practical examples that biblicism as a theory of biblical interpretation is, quite simply, “impossible”.

In so doing he pulls the rug of security and certainty out from under large number of Christians who may find themselves destabilised by the thought that on numbers of subjects raised in the Scriptures there can be a diversity of valid interpretations, and not necessarily one “right” one.  He also goes into some detail about how modernistic approaches to knowledge and epistemology have also profoundly influenced the biblicist belief that it be desirable or even possible to arrive at the “right” answer to whatever question we might ask of the Bible, and that this approach to knowledge is not what the Bible intends.

In terms of what should replace biblicism, Smith gives several leads in the second half of the book, but without developing them or illustrating exactly what they might look like in practice.  This is a little frustrating, but again, consistent with the scope of the book.  He points to other authors who have already done good work in these areas, and perhaps he will address these issues in more depth in future publications.

For me this has been a very important and liberating book.  It is important because of the approach to biblical interpretation espoused in chapter 5, entitled “The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key“.  Put simply, the entire Bible is above all a revelation of Christ.  To quote Smith:

Seeing Christ as central compels us to always try to make sense of everything we read in any part of scripture in light of our larger knowledge of who God is in Jesus Christ…We only, always, and everywhere read scripture in view of its real subject matter: Jesus Christ…Christ is the center, the inner reason, and the end of all of scripture.  From the Bible’s account of the creation of the world in Genesis to its final consummation in Revelation, it is all and only about the work of God in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world.

Most evangelicals would agree with that statement, but often there is a significant gap between agreement and actual practice, because of our tendency to go to the Bible just to find answers to our questions.  We take our questions as the starting point, rather than the Bible itself.  We can usually find answers to these questions, but often we ask questions that the Bible itself does not ask.  We can too easily force the Scriptures to tell us things that they were never intended to.

It was also liberating, because it opens up for me a world where when I am questioned on what is the correct understanding of topics like women in ministry, tithing, church government, or any number of topics which I am frequently asked about where there seems to be some ambiguity in the Bible, I am perfectly free to give my own opinion on the topic without feeling under pressure to be sure to give The authoritative correct answer.  It also gives a strong foundation for genuinely close fellowship with other Christians who may have a completely different view to me on these subjects, because it’s normal that there be different views, as the Bible is not completely clear on every subject.  It is also liberating to think that the fact there are ambiguities in the Scriptures is intentional, and this in no way detracts from the inspiration or supreme importance of the Bible.  Above all, it will potentially lead me to an even greater love for the Author and Perfecter of faith, the central focus of human history, and the all-encompassing theme of the Scriptures: Yeshua.

So practically speaking, next time I read the genealogies at the beginning of I Chronicles (a passage most Christians avoid out of sheer boredom – let’s be honest) I am going to start with the assumption that Christ is the central focus of this passage, and I am looking forward to seeing how this assumption might change my understanding and appreciation of the usefulness of this and other passages that are often left aside because they seem too boring, too strange, or to controversial.