Bournagain

It has become quite trendy on Twitter to post links to articles and opinion pieces that the tweeter agrees with, and to prefix it with “So-and-so gets it right”. Strikes me as a tad daring to tell the world that somebody has the definitive word on something just because I happen to think he’s “right”.

We need to be especially circumspect about saying “so-and-so gets it right / wrong” when the so-and-so in question lived in another time and another culture. But at the risk of sounding arrogant, I would like to suggest that Bildad got it wrong.

For one thing, most people have heard of Job, but next to no one has heard of his fair-weathered friend Bildad. If Bildad had got it right, we might have heard more about him. Not that relative anonymity is necessarily proof of getting it wrong, but take a look at what he said, as he was berating Job for being a rotter who deserved everything he got, and worse:

How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot – a son of man, who is only a worm! Job 25:4-6

Bildad is not exactly what you would call an optimistic humanist. His basic view seems to have been that there was no such thing as a “good” man, and that basically we are no better than maggots or worms. This same belief has been rehashed many times throughout the ages in a variety of philosophies and religions. But there is something fundamentally wrong with it. Job, in spite of his pain, also recognised that Bildad had rather lost the plot:

Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth? Job 26:4

Whose indeed?

For one thing, man can be righteous. Why should we find that statement so heretical? The first man and the first woman were created righteous, and presumably continued to be so until they disobeyed. Jesus was righteous, and unlike his first forbears he never ceased to be. Job himself was referred to as a “blameless and upright man” (Job 1: 1).

Furthermore, even a superficial reading of the New Testament clearly indicates that making man righteous is one of the central purposes of God’s programme. Yes, the psalmist says “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Psalm 14:1-3), and the apostle Paul validates this verse by quoting it in Romans (3:10). But this undeniable fact is a distorsion of God’s original intention for humankind.

Many Christians perceive themselves as maggots, and approach God on this basis. When we go to God, beating our breasts and saying “woe to me the worst of sinners”, we are acting like maggots. But this is not how God views us.

Many passages in the Scriptures show us that humankind is the pinnacle of God’s creation. We are the only one of God’s creatures that He looked upon and said “very good”, the only one made in His image, the only one that God sent his Son to die for. Humanity is a mirror, reflecting the glorious light of the face of God to the whole of creation.

But Man has been lied to, by one we may refer to as the lord of the maggots, the one whose spirit spoke from the mouth of Bildad (Job 26:4). Our greatest disobedience has been to believe the maggoty lord’s false picture of our identity, rather than the true picture. This true picture we see most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the example par excellence of what it is to be truly human, truly bearing the image of the Eternal God. Accepting the maggot and worm falsehood is what produces the unrighteous behaviour that separates us from God and prevents us from being who He made us to be.

Job’s “friends” accused him of the most dire of sins, in what can only be termed an adventure in missing the point. In their view of the world, suffering has only one cause: the sin of the sufferer. This would seem to be justice, but Job realised that it could not be true, because of his deep and unshakeable conviction that God is not only just, but merciful also. Nevertheless Job’s arguments seem to be stuck in a similar rut. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, Job’s theology of suffering echoes that of Bildad and the others: suffering is the result of sin, but I haven’t sinned, so why am I suffering?

I will never admit that you are in the right; till I die I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live. Job 27:5-6

Job understood that he was neither a worm nor a maggot. He understood that God valued him as a friend (Job 29:4), but his great dilemma was that God no longer seemed to fit within the confines of the theological box he had placed him in.

In order to get it right, Job will need a revelation of what God is really like, and that’s exactly what comes next in the story.

On Tuesday 7 February France beat a historical record: electricity consumption reached an all time high thanks to the toe-numbing temperatures we’ve been experiencing lately.

Although outside it remains sub-zero, the temperature in the National Assembly (parliament) this morning reached new heights.  It all started when Claude Guéant, the Minister of the Interior, declared in a discourse about the French Republic that:

Not every civilisation has the same worth.

It was one of those sound bytes that most of us probably wouldn’t have even noticed in context, but the phrase was bandied about the Internet and started receiving some very indignant reactions.

Guéant continued to stand by his statement, adding that those civilisations that defend liberty, equality and brotherhood seem superior to those that accept tyranny, the oppression of women, and social or ethnic hatred.

Hackles did not stop rising.  Many on the left of the political spectrum seemed outraged by the idea that there is a hierarchy of civilisations, that they are not all created equal.  Many are accusing Guéant of trying to make political mileage out of his statements in an election year, trying to bring extreme right supporters into the Sarkozy fold.  He has been accused of turning the clock back 3 centuries, of being obscurantist and dangerous, of fomenting ethnic conflict, of being xenophobic and racist.

It is not the first time that he has been under fire, having already declared publicly that the increase in practising Muslims in the country poses a “problem”, and that two thirds of school dropouts are children of immigrants.

But the mercury just about burst the thermometer in the National Assembly this morning when the socialist representative for Martinique accused Guéant of bringing back the same ideologies that produced concentration camps.  He basically called they guy a Nazi.  Following his outburst a large number of representatives, including the Prime Minister, left in protest.  The speaker of the house was unable to restore calm, and had to close the session.  There have been no apologies over the “Nazi” statement.  The socialists seem to be standing by their man, who has self-righteously stated in the most unequivocal terms that Mr Guéant will never again be welcome in Martinique, and demanded that he “apologise to all of the peoples he has insulted”.

Mr Sarkozy on the other hand has said the whole debate is ridiculous, and that it was simply good sense to suggest that a society that accords the same rights to all it’s citizens is superior to one that doesn’t.  Not everyone on the Right has been so supportive, however.  One former Prime Minister stated that Guéant “makes a better minister than ethnologist”.

This debate is a startling example of how Europe is losing the culture wars.  The great European identity crisis has reached the point that we have lost confidence in the most basic, foundational values of our culture.  People are willing to relativise them to such an extent that it is now viewed as morally wrong to suggest, for example, that liberty is superior to slavery, equality (in the sense of equal rights for the citizens of a nation) is superior to inequality, and that brotherhood is superior to every man for himself. While it is undoubtedly an oversimplification to suggest that one entire civilisation can be superior to another, the hysterical overreaction to the comments of Mr. Guéant indicate that we are so brittle and hyper-sensitive that we cannot countenance the very idea that there are ways of being and doing in society that are, quite simply, better than other ways of being and doing.  Is this post-colonial guilt gone haywire?  Or is it simply another example of the fact that cultural relativism has so dulled our intelligence that real debate is no longer possible.  Guéant’s comments were undoubtedly “inadequate” to quote Alain Juppé (another of the surprising number of “former Prime Ministers” we have in this country), but they certainly didn’t deserve the reductio ad hitlerum treatment they received in the House this morning.  A culture is in serious trouble if somebody can’t express a controversial point of view without being branded as a Nazi.

There is a fact about the Bible that we don’t often consider, but which has significant implications for the way we handle and interpret the Scriptures today, and it is this: the early Christians managed to promulgate the good news of Jesus Christ all over the then known world without access to the New Testament as we know it today.  Certainly the writings that were later collated into the gospels and epistles were in circulation at a fairly early date, but basically the scriptural tools that the apostles used to support their teaching were all in what later came to be known as the Old Testament.

Why is this significant?

It means, for example, that the Old Testament gave a sufficient revelation of the gospel before Jesus was even born.  ”Sufficient” does not mean “complete” – indeed it could be argued that even with the New Testament added we still don’t have a complete revelation of the gospel, because there are many things that can be learnt about God that are not explicitly revealed in the Scriptures.  But “sufficient” does mean exactly that.  It means that I can take any book of the Jewish Scriptures and find that it points me toward Jesus, sometimes as a simple signpost, but often even in explicit teachings, without which our understanding of “who Jesus was, what he did, and why it matters” is very limited (to quote Tom Wright, whose latest book Simply Jesus is the next on my book pile – watch this space).

Take Job for example – most likely the oldest book in the Bible, and the book I am ploughing through in my daily readings at the moment.

As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.  Job 14:12

As Job sinks deeper and deeper into his suffering he gloomily focuses on death as being a finality which is the only hope of escape from his pain.  But even here there is a glimmer of an indication that death actually isn’t the end.  Yes man may lie down, but it seems Job is entertaining the thought that when “the heavens are no more” man will again be roused from his sleep.

This thought continues to develop as he responds in anguish to the judgements of his fair-weathered friends.

I will wait for my renewal to come.  You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.  Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin.  My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.  Job 14:14

Through his blinding pain, and the railings of his “friends”, somehow Job manages to keep hold of some deep truths that he can only have received by revelation.  This is all the more fascinating when we remember that the poetry of the book of Job is among the most ancient writings in the Bible, and indeed in antiquity period.  Job understood that a renewal was coming; that part of this renewal involved a reconciliation with the eternal Creator God, in which his sins would be be covered over.  But how was this to take place?

Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high.  My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend.  Job 16:19

Sometimes the revelation about Jesus in the Old Testament comes in vague whispers, but at other times with flashing neon lights and blaring sirens – this is one of those occasions.  The covering over of sin would involve a witness and an advocate who has direct access to God in heaven.  Job also understood that one of the qualifications of this advocate was that he would have to be human:

[God] is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court.  If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.  Job 9:32-34

Not only would he have to be human, but he would have to be  a friend, a friend whose great love would be poured out in tears before the throne of God.

We know such a man.  We learn about him in hindsight, whereas Job was looking into the distant future.  His revelation of this intercessor was partial, ours is somewhat more detailed (although still not complete), but although separated in time by many thousands of years, we are looking to the same man.

Reading Job we have the impression that the more he poured out his lament to God, the clearer the revelation became.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me.  Job 19:28

Job’s friends seemed to believe that death truly was the end.  But like the light at the end of a tunnel Job’s understanding brightens to the point where deep down he knows that death is not the end.  Indeed, the renewal he speaks of is indeed a resurrection. Though his intercessor and advocate is now in heaven, the day is coming (and has already been) when he will stand on the earth.  Though his body was temporarily destroyed through death, it will be renewed in order that with his own eyes he will meet his intercessor in the flesh.

Here we have a full-fledged doctrine of resurrection right in the most ancient book of the Bible.  Job had a revelation of Jesus.

Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.  Genesis 49:22

This curious verse is found in Jacob’s blessing of his son Joseph.  The fruitfulness of Joseph is a constant theme in the last thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis, and “fruitful vine near a spring” seems consistent with devices used throughout Hebrew poetry, where an initial thought is repeated and expanded upon in in the following phrase.  But what’s the idea with “branches climbing over a wall?”

I have an aunt whose neighbours have a very prolific grapefruit tree.  This tree has a few branches reaching out over the fence into my aunt’s property, and they are usually laden with delicious grapefruit.  Rather than cut the branches off, the neighbours freely invite my aunt to pick and enjoy the grapefruit on her side of the fence.  My aunt does not own the tree, she does not prune or care for it in any way, and she does not pay for the grapefruit she takes.  All she has to do is pick them, and enjoy them.  Sometimes there are so many grapefruit that she gives some away.  But she has no right to the grapefuit tree as such – it is the property of someone else.  The grapefruit are simply a free gift from the person who owns and nurtures the tree.

Some have accused the God of Israel of being an exclusive God, who shows favouritism toward one particular people.  There were strict laws governing intermarriage and even association between Israel and people of other ethnic groups, and the Bible is clear that God identifies himself as the God of Israel, and gives special blessings and responsibilities to this people.  It is as if there is a wall around this people, preventing other nations from entering in and sharing the blessing, and indeed down through the centuries many Jews have perceived their particular “blessing” in this way.

But the fruitfulness of Israel is like a tree that has branches that climb over a wall.  There are hundreds of ways of showing from the Scriptures that the covenant blessings God bestowed upon Israel were in fact for all nations, and that Israel was to be the bearer of this blessing to the nations.  Like with my aunt’s grapefruit, the nations outside the wall do not own the tree, but they can nevertheless enjoy its fruit, as its branches extend well beyond the confines of Israel.

Joseph’s own life is a clear example of this, as it was a result of his intimate relationship with the God of Israel that Egypt was finally saved from a devastating famine.  And the saving work of Joseph simply foreshadows the life of the most famous and most influential Jew of all history, who also made a trip to Egypt in his early years, and whose house would be called a house of prayer for all nations, and who, many centuries before his birth, was identified by the prophets as being a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel.

My aunt could choose to react to the branches of the grapefruit tree in different ways.  She could complain about the intrusion of wayward branches into her property and insist that the neighbour cut them down.  She could become jealous, wishing that she herself had such an excellent tree on her own property.  She could refuse to pick the fruit because she doesn’t want to feel indebted to the neighbour in any way.  The nations have reacted to the fruitfulness of Israel in all of these ways and more.

But the most intelligent thing for my aunt to do (and the approach she has in fact chosen) is to gratefully take as many grapefruit as those branches can produce, to enjoy them herself and share them with her guests, and to express her appreciation to her neighbours – something which she has been able to do in a variety of practical ways.

Quite a good deal, really, when you think about it…

Jumping ahead a few chapters in Genesis so as to not get too far behind in this year’s reading programme.

Have you ever noticed how often the figure 70 appears in the Bible?  There are a few occurrences in Genesis that are particularly interesting.

Terah was 70 years old when Abraham was born.  Genesis 11:26

There are 70 names in Genesis 10, leading to the Talmudic tradition of the 70 nations.  The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Tanakh, the version that is quoted in the New Testament) counts 72 names.  Interestingly there is a similar discrepancy in the gospel of Luke, where in relation to the number of disciples that Jesus sent out to preach and demonstrate the kingdom of God, the numbers 70 and 72 are more or less evenly distributed in the manuscripts (Luke 10:1).  Rather than getting upset about the fact that the manuscripts don’t all the same thing, let’s be intrigued by the fact that this same discrepancy exists both in the Old and New Testament texts, probably a strong clue that they are referring to the same issue.  Other examples:

The members of Jacob’s household as they travelled down to Egypt during the time of the famine were 70.  Genesis 46:27

When Jacob died the Egyptians mourned for him 70 days.  Genesis 50:3

So what?  What does it matter how many days the Egyptians mourned for Jacob?  Traditionally the Jews have strongly associated the number seventy (or seventy-two) with the Gentile nations.  Terah’s age at Abraham’s birth could have been coincidental, but it is certain that his illustrious son was the first to receive the call to be a blessing to all nations, a call which to a greater or lesser degree has always featured in Jewish thought as being a significant part of their national identity.

Long before his descendants were conscious of being Jews, or Israelites, Jacob led the 70 members of his family southward to escape a terrible famine.  It is not clear to what extent Jacob, was actually conscious of his particular mission, as Abraham’s grandson, to take the blessing of God to the nations.  But he ended up doing it in spite of himself.  His own son Joseph became the saviour of Egypt, which opened the way for his whole family to set up shop in a corner of that land where they became a shop window for the kingdom of God.  Why 70 family members?  Perhaps a reminder of the call to go out into the world and demonstrate what being a righteous nation was all about.

The presence of Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, or “Israel” as they came to be known, left a lasting impression on people – so much so that when Jacob died, 70 of the greatest dignitaries of the nation were in the cortege to carry Jacob’s remains back to the land God had promised him.

Whether or not Jacob understood all this, it is strongly suggestive of the mission of God to reach every nation with the message of the restoration of his kingdom.

Other “seventies” elsewhere in the Scriptures may serve to confirm this, such as the 70 bullocks sacrificed at the tabernacle (II Chronicles 29:32), the 70 weeks of years in Daniel 9:24-27 during which Jerusalem would be trampled by Gentile powers or the 70/72 missionary disciples Jesus’ sent out as forerunners.

Toreo

This is a painting by an exceptionally talented New Zealand artist who also just happens to be my sister.  You can see more of her works on her website Melbourn Art.

We now have four of her pieces gracing our walls at home, and they are quite a talking point.  Her paintings are full of interesting detail and texture, and striking colour, especially in her more recent work.

She does commissions, and mail orders from anywhere in the world.

I’m allowed to be biased, ok?!  But she really is good – take a look for yourself.

What will you be doing, the day after tomorrow?

This is the question I will have exactly 12 minutes to answer with 11 other speakers at Bless Talks: a day of thought-provoking talks, music and dinner in Dudley, UK on February 4th.  I’m not exactly sure where Dudley is, or how I’m getting there, but I’m sure it will be fun.

According to the blurb:

For years people have been predicting the end of the world in 2012, but the one thing we lack as a church, it seems, is a long-term plan.

What if it isn’t the end of the world?  What would you want the church, above all else, to do? What priorities of God’s mission would you address?  What kind of church do you dream of for the day after tomorrow?

We’ve asked 12 creative and innovative leaders to answer this question, and we’ve given them each 12 minutes to share their answers with you.

Not entirely sure about the creative and innovative bit – but I must at least look the part, and I’m happy to be joining friends Gerard and Chrissie of the Bless Network for this event.  They run a centre for missional formation near Lisieux in Normandy – a place we have really enjoyed visiting and hope to do so more.

Back to Genesis, and in light of the “christocentric hermeneutic” in the book The Bible Made Impossible  reviewed in the previous post, how should we understand the story about Noah?  A good place to start is to see how the earliest Christians understood the story.

A question before we go there: is the story historical?  In other words, did it actually happen?  Nowhere in the New Testament is the historicity of the Flood either questioned or defended.  It is simply assumed.  The early Christians certainly appear to have believed the account to be accurate, and up until about the eighteenth century it was generally assumed to be historical.  In our day it is generally assumed to be complete fantasy.  Modern scholarship tends to envisage an impassable chasm between history and myth, whereas the line between the two is actually very blurry, particularly when we are dealing with ancient history.  One way of viewing “myth” is to consider it an interpretation of events, focusing on meaning rather than simply a blow-by-blow account of what actually happened.  Part of the reason history as it is taught in schools is often a source of great boredom for children is that events are listed without any presentation of the great uniting themes that give sense to them.

Let me say that I have no compelling reason not to consider that the basic elements of the story actually happened.  That said, I cannot prove the story in an empirical sense any more than it can be disproved, separated as we are from the events by several thousand years.  I don’t believe we are intended to try to prove or disprove the veracity of the account within the limitations of modern historical method. There is undoubtedly meaning in the story that goes beyond a dry and technical analysis of whether or not the events actually occurred as written (even though I see no reason to accept that they didn’t).

The first thing to note is that Jesus himself spoke of the ark, the days of Noah and the flood, with the clear assumption that his hearers knew what he was talking about  (Matthew 24:37-39).

Similarly, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews uses Noah as an illustration of practical faith, when he built the ark to save his family in response to God’s instructions (Hebrews 11:7)

The apostle Peter seems to have been the first to explore the theological significance of the story of Noah.  He interprets the ark as an image of salvation, pointing to the fact that 8 people (the family of Noah) were saved from the waters of the Flood thanks to the ark.  He then draws a direct parallel between the waters of the Flood and the waters of baptism “that now saves you also” (I Peter 3:19-21)  Here we enter right into a christocentric interpretation of the story.  There are many ways in which the Flood story points toward Christ.  The extreme nature of the Flood as a judgement reflects the gravity of mankind’s disobedience, in a similar way that the extreme seriousness of the cross of Christ does.  In many ways the ark is a reflection of Christ, carrying his people through the waters of judgement for sin.  Peter specifies that baptism is not so much about the removal of dirt, as the pledge of a clean conscience toward God.  A just God cannot turn a blind eye to disobedience and sin.  The dirt is real, but in spite of the dirt, if we respond obediently to the solution that God has provided in Jesus Christ, we may approach the throne of God with confidence, a major theme of Hebrews chapter 10.

In so many ways walking through door of the ark and stepping out onto dry ground was like a resurrection for Noah.  Just as baptism is an identification with Jesus’ rising from the dead, so Noah and his family embarked (no etymological relationship implied) on a completely new life in a new world which bore some resemblance to the world they had known but in many respects was completely different.  Not only a new world, but a fresh start, like the fresh start that Jesus offers us daily when we lay our dirt at the foot of the cross, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep heading up the road, taking on more and more of his likeness as we move ahead.

There are other fascinating ways in which the Flood account foreshadows Christ.  The ark rested on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th of Nisan – the 7th month in the Hebrew calendar, which also happens to be the date of the Jewish feast of Firstfruits, the first day of the harvest, and also it would seem the date of Jesus’ resurrection, the day after the feast of Unleavened Bread.  The apostle Paul seems to confirm this.  Just an interesting coincidence?

I’m also fascinated by the following enigmatic comment, following Noah’s entry into the ark:

 Then the LORD shut him in.  Genesis 7:16

We cannot save ourselves.  Even after doing everything God had commanded him, there was still a final step that Noah was incapable of fulfilling: closing the door of the ark.  Jesus is the author of salvation in the sense that left to our own devices we can no more escape sin and live righteously than fly to the moon.  If we can live rightly, it is only through his achievements and his presence in us.

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.

It seems that Eve did not fully understand the reasons why the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be eaten (we see later that it was in fact Adam that was held accountable for his wife’s actions), but this lack of understanding did not mitigate in any way the requirement that she obey.  I don’t suppose Abel understood exactly why God approved the offering of an animal but didn’t approve an offering of vegetables (Genesis 4:2-5), any more than we do today, but nevertheless God’s reaction to his offering shows that Abel had obeyed, but Cain hadn’t.

Noah is an excellent example of what obedience looks like.  We can barely imagine life inside the ark those 40 long days and nights, shut up in that huge windowless box, buffeted in all directions by the waves.  But forty days is only just over a month.  What we don’t always notice is that once the rain had stopped, Noah waited over 7 months before leaving the ark. After the ark stopped moving, 7 more months living on stale food with all the smell and mess of those animals, presumably in the dark, breathing old air.  Why did he do that?

Why did God require that of Noah and his family?  We can only guess – he had his own reasons.  But we see by Noah’s obedience that he had unshakeable faith in the fact that God knew best, that he loved him, and had his best interests at heart.  This is what gave Noah the confidence to obey, even in such difficult circumstances.

“Faith” has become a very esoteric word, meaning something like a vague positive feeling that everything is going to work out ok.  At least that’s how the term is often used in popular music and Disney movies.  This is not at all the same kind of thing as the faith that we find in the Scriptures, which is a very concrete, day by day discipline of believing God: believing that God is who He says he is, that His vision of my identity is the correct one, and that He really does have my best interests at heart.  On this basis, trusting and obeying him is the most intelligent response I can make.  This is not a once-and-for all decision, but a choice that has to be made several times each day, when we are faced with situations that on the surface would seem to call God’s love into question.

How did Noah’s family feel about being cooped up in the ark for so many months following the end of the rains?  We don’t know, but I imagine that Noah’s decision not to leave the ark until God explicitly told them to possibly didn’t go down very well.  There were a hundred and one reasons why it would have seemed a good idea to get out of that place.  ”Did God really say that we had to wait….?” – echoes of Eve about eating the fruit.  ”Did God really say…?” is the question at the root of all doubt concerning the integrity and goodness of God.

But not only did Noah stand firm, but what was his first act in the new world?  No sooner had his feet touched terra firma than he was looking for materials to construct an altar:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in is heart:”Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.  As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Genesis 8:20-22

Much more could be said about the significance of altars and sacrifices, but for now let’s just notice that Noah shows by his obedience that he is acting consistently with the line of Abel, and his obedience is what saved humanity, and continues to be a protection for us right up to our day, regardless of the evil inclinations of human hearts.

That’s because God doesn’t forgive because of man.  God forgives because of God.  Obeying Him because it’s in our best interests is as good a motivation as any when we start on our journey, but we are on a path heading for a deeper understanding of obedience, and a higher motivation, which is that we obey him for no other reason that He is who He is.