Category Archives: Hermeneutics

P.T. Forsyth, Three Ways of Reading the Bible

23 Wednesday Sep 2020

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The man who is exploiting God for the purposes of his own soul or for the race, has in the long run a different religion from the man who is putting his own soul and race absolutely at the disposal of the will of God in Jesus Christ.

P.T. Forsyth in his book, The Work of Christ, has this interesting discussion on reading the Bible.

Supposing, then, we return to the Bible. Supposing that the Church did–as I think it must do if it is not going to collapse; certainly the Free Churches must– supposing we return to the Bible, there are three ways of reading the Bible. The first way asks, What did the Bible say? The second way asks, What can I make the Bible say? The third way asks, What does God say in the Bible?


As to the first question, Forsyth defines this in terms of what we expect from a commentary or a seminary lecture: “The first way is, with the aid of these magnificent scholars, to discover the true historic sense of the Bible.” What the Bible says is a matter of grammatical and historical analysis.
But such information is purely information. Discerning what the text “means” could be interesting in the sense of deciphering an ancient Hittite text; it could be useful for some purpose, such as understanding. But knowing the “meaning” cannot be the end of Bible reading.

Forsyth is interesting in the way which the text has an affect beyond the bare conveyance of information. When he asks “What can I make the Bible say?” he is not attacking the objective meaning of words. Rather, he is concerned with the subjective effect of the words.
To rephrase the question, he is concerned more with “What can I make the Bible do to me?” Or perhaps what does the Bible say to me.
This takes a bit of thinking. One could argue that the words themselves have no definite meaning, as does Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass:

‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’


That often does happen in Bible reading; far more often than we may imagine. When we come to a work like “grace” or “love” it is very common to pour our expectations and meanings into these concepts make the words mean whatever we want the words to mean. The Bible deals with such tendencies by providing a number of contexts in which the word is used so that we come to understand what the word means. God’s “love” plainly does not mean that God protects us from all trials. The word “faith” or “belief” (which is the same word in Greek) is used in a number of contexts through the Gospel of John so we begin to understand the precise nuance of the word in John’s Gospel.


So, making the text mean something “against its will” is not all that uncommon, even among those who would never think doing such a thing. Rather, it is an easier fault to commit than imagine.


Forsyth’s concern is with the subjective application of text: what does this objective text have to do with me? Let’s take a non-biblical example Someone says, “Shut the door.” Is that a command for me to shut that particular door? Is it the punchline of a joke and I’m supposed to laugh? The words are clear, but what the word does to me depend upon subjective elements within me.


Forsyth cautions against any sort of reading which reduces the objectivity of the text:


Now the grand value of the Bible is just the other thing–its objectivity. The first thing is not how I feel, but it is, How does God feel, and what has God said or done for my soul? When we get to real close quarters with that our feeling and response will look after itself. Do not tell people how they ought to feel towards Christ. That is useless. It is just what they ought that they cannot do. Preach a Christ that will make them feel as they ought. That is objective preaching. The tendency and fashion of the present moment is all in the direction of subjectivity.


That objective text then has a subjective effect:
We allow the Spirit of God to suggest to us whatever lessons or ideas He thinks fit out of the words that are under our eyes. We read the Bible not for correct or historic knowledge, but for religious and spiritual purposes, for our own private and personal needs. That is, of course, a perfectly legitimate thing– indeed, it is quite necessary.

He cautions that there are dangers here: we must not unhinge the objective text and the subjective effect. The text is a real objective fact; but that objective fact has an actual affect upon the reader.
One has the experience of only understanding certain Psalms until one has experienced that trial, that suffering, that ache, or slander. The words did not change in their objective meaning, but since I have changed, the words have changed.

And finally Forsyth says we should concern ourselves what God is up to in the text:
The third way of reading the Bible is reading it to discover the purpose and thought of God, whether it immediately edify us or whether it do not. If we did actually become aware of the will and thought of God it would edify us as nothing else could.


He then makes this brilliant observation:
I read a fine sentence the other day which puts in a condensed form what I have often preached about as the symptom of the present age: “Instead of placing themselves at the service of God most people want a God who is at their service.” These two tendencies represent in the end two different religions. The man who is exploiting God for the purposes of his own soul or for the race, has in the long run a different religion from the man who is putting his own soul and race absolutely at the disposal of the will of God in Jesus Christ.

William Blake, To Tirzah

31 Friday Jul 2020

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This poem is a good example of how difficult it can be know what the poet intends, particularly when the poet is as deliberately ironic as William Blake. 

This poem also raises the issue of what it means to read something “in context.” Shakespeare and the Bible are famously misused by people who take a particular line wildly out of context. There is a television commercial which advertises a luxury automobile and plays a song which – in its original context — attacks pretension and put-on with material goods. But by using only a portion of the song lyric, the song meant to attack pretension is used to sell pretension.

This short poem is standing by itself one context. In that context, this poem seems to convey a sort of Gnostic Jesus, the body is bad, the soul is good, the hope of life is to be released from the body. “Tirazh” is used as a name for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, following the division of the kingdom into two after the death of Solomon. It is contrast to “Jerusalem,” which would be the heavenly and best.

Tirazh is called a mother of our earthly body which reproduces by means of sexual union, which traps us into a world of sense. The goal of this life is to be finally freed from the body – which the poet claims has been made possible by the “death of Jesus”.

But the poem was a late addition to a collection of poems known as Songs of Experience, which is paired with another collection known as Songs of Innocence. The poems also exist in a larger corpus of poems which develop Blakes philosophy, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

To this difficulty of context, we must remember that Blake is often deliberately ironic. We can never take anything he says at “face value.”

While not at all exhaustive, the following simply raises some questions as to how to interpret this poem when it is put into the context of Blake’s remaining (and largely earlier) work and Blake’s ironic posture as a poet.

To Tirzah

Whate’er is born of moral birth

Must be consuméd with the earth

To rise from generation free, 

Then what have I do to with thee?

Whatever is born will die and return to the earth. The last line is an ironic reworking of Jesus’ words recorded in John 2:4, where Mary tells Jesus that the wedding has run out of wine and Jesus responds, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come.” So the poet, seeking to be freed from the enslaving earth says, “What have I to do with thee?”

It also seems to state the poet’s aspiration, to be freed from generation, to be freed from this mother.

He then turns to the manner in which life is continued in this world:

The sexes sprung from shame & pride

Blow’d [blossomed] in the morn: in evening died;

But mercy changed death into sleep;

The sexes rose to work & weep.

This poem was added in the latter versions of his poems, Songs of Experience, and seems to have been written around 1805. But the collection also contains poems such as The Garden of Love (1794) which contend that shame and sexual repression are the result of the “Chapel” whose doors were shut and the words “Thou shalt not” were written over the door. 

Here the shame seems to be something inherent in the fact of mortality and the body.  Is Blake now arguing that sexual shame is not the result of societal norms and oppressive morality, but rather something inherent in birth and death of the body? Was it shame and pride which gave rise to this problem prior to the body?

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,

With cruelty didst mould my heart

And with false self-deceiving tears

Didst bind my nostrils, eyes & ears.

This stanza echoes the poem The Tyger, also from the same collection and also from 1794. The poet meditates upon the dangerous tiger, who is quite dangerous (“the fearful symmetry”). 

This dangerous beast is blamed upon God

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

[The lamb is addressed in a poem from Songs of Innocence.]

In that poem, Blake asks

And what shoulder & what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

In Tirzah, Blake blames the heart upon the earth – the physical part. Is God from Tyger the equivalent of mother in Tirzah? Is his heart cruel like the tigers, or is it merely the product of another’s cruelty? Does his heart give rise to the outrages elsewhere discussed in Songs of Experience?

This discussion of the senses in Tirzah also sits uneasily with Blake’s longer work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In that poem, Blake praises physical desire as “energy” and writes such “Proverbs of Hell” as 

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

This mortal body of energy is now the moulder of cruelty and death. Does he celebrate the energy of the body, or does he see it as destructive?

And finally

[Thou mother]

Didst close my tongue in useless clay

And me to mortal life betray

The death of Jesus set me free

Then what have I to do with thee?

Jesus, in a Gnostic vein, is used as a trope to argue for an utter freedom from the “useless clay” of the body. How exactly Jesus’ death performs this feat is not clearly stated.

The question then becomes, does this poem reflect a change in Blake’s thinking (it would not be accurate to say that his earlier position was purely a sex-drugs-rock-n-roll ethos, but it was certainly not conventional middle class anachronistically called Victorian piety)? Blake constantly writes with great irony. His poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell seeks a new negotiation of the body and soul along his idiosyncratic lines. 

But in this poem, one could read it as a movement beyond his earlier position (which was written during the early days of the French Revolution) to more escapist, Gnostic vision — complete with the common aspect of Gnostic asceticism due to its distrust of the body.

And one final question, should the context of Blake’s personal life be used to answer the question of what Blake means by this poem?

Some Notes What a Narrative “Means” (with Help From Euripides)

15 Saturday Feb 2020

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Hecuba and Polyxena by Merry-Joseph Blondell

We can understand what a work of nonfiction “means”: the words in the text refer to some objective (typically) event in the physical world. A book on President Grant refers back to the life of President Grant.

When it comes to non-fiction, the question of “meaning” because more difficult: A play or poem or story does not express “meaning” in the same manner. Sometimes the “meaning” of a text is merely the entertainment the text provides.

Another type of “meaning” comes from a text which seeks to bring the reader to a new understanding of the world. There are always exceptions, but typically “bad” writing tells the reader plainly what to think. Most writers who attempt this work may try to “show and not tell” the reader what to think will handle it poorly.

But when a towering master performs this work it is a thing of beauty.  The effectiveness of the meaning comes from its ability to speak and persuade. Here is an example of brilliance in Euripides’ play Hecuba.

It would be easy to get lost in the names, so I’ll do my best to be clear.

The first thing you must know, is that the original audience for Euripides play were Greeks. The play itself concern the exploits of the great heroes and the great war of Greek of imagination: In the dim past the Greeks came to war against City of Troy as revenge for taking Helen from a Greek king. (How and why this took place is another story.)

You need to know that this story would be the equivalent of the Revolution and the Civil War and the World Wars all rolled into one. The men in this story are more than just George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; they are heroes, mythic figures, nearly divine.

The story Hecuba begins after the Greeks have sacked Troy. The king of Troy had sent his son to another kingdom with a treasure to keep him safe should Troy fall. Yet when the king of Thrace heard that Troy fell, he murdered his friend’s son to take the gold and treasure. The play beings with the ghost of the son telling what had happened to him, washed up on the shore, unburied (a horror to the Greeks).

Hecuba was the queen of Troy, now reduced to slavery is the moral and emotional center of the story. The audience hears from her what it is to be reduced and enslaved and in fear for her family. The natural sympathy of the story is thus skillfully built-up throw the eyes of the enemy in the greatest war in Greek history.

The tension increases when the ghost of Achilles appears above his tomb and demands the sacrifice of Hebuca’s daughter, the princess of Troy, Polyxena. It would be hard to overstate the greatness of Achilles in Greek imagination: Alexandra the Great thought himself in some way the second Achilles.

Thus, their greatest hero demanded the murder of an enslaved princess.

The message that Polyxena would be killed was brought to Hecuba by Odysseus. Again the space for Odysseus is difficult to explain. He is the hero of the second-half of the Greek “Bible” (if you will), the Odyssey. He is an arch-type of all Western Culture.

The tension is raised here, because Hecuba had spared Odysseus’s life during the time of the war. He is depicted as a groveling, dishonest, manipulative man who said anything just to stay alive. As he puts it, “Word-words full many I  found to escape death.”

It is this groveling, ungrateful wretch who is the hero of the Greeks seeking the murder of a young woman to appease the ghost of an even greater hero.

As we hear this scene, it comes to us through the perspective of Hecuba: the woman who home has been destroyed by an invading army, who family has been destroyed now sees a liar come to drag her daughter off to murder.

At this point, Euripides has made the enemies of Greek imagination sympathetic, and the heroes of Greek thought wretched and vicious.

The punch-line of this scene comes when Odysseus calls Hecuba a “Barbarian” (the height of Greek insults), because she is unwilling to pay homage to the dead.

Upon this insult, the Chorus, who are the moral conscience of the play respond, “Woe What a curse is thralldom’s nature.” Hecuba and Polyxena are “enduring wrong” and are “overborne” by the “strong constraint” of their captors.

Euripides didn’t say in blunt terms, destroying kingdoms, stealing women and sacrificing captives to barbaric.

Rather, by giving voice to the pain and fear of the “enemy” and showing the callous barbarism of the “heroes” he more effectively overturns a cheap chauvinism in his audience.

The “meaning” of the text is not some bare proposition (killing other human beings is generally bad).  Rather, the meaning is reversal of expectation the shock of heroes failing, the sorrow for the enemy. The meaning of the story is the transformation of perspective. 

One could repeat a proposition and even understand it’s cognitive content without being transformed. But cry for the enemy and feel shock for the hero is different than the bare proposition.  One can know and not be changed; but that would not be the “meaning” of this play. The meaning is the movement of the human heart.

 

Some Advice on Reading the Bible from John Newton

05 Friday Apr 2019

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In Letter IX in the collection entitled “Forty-One Letters”, John Newton answers the question from a young man concerning the doctrines of grace. What is most interesting in the letter is not Newton’s explication of the doctrines of grace per se, but rather his instruction on how to read the Bible.

First, Newton explains that we do not really understand anything if we can merely recite a creed or have a notional understanding of some theological propositions. For instance, I may know about the nature of the worship of a god by ancient Israelites, but I don’t really understand what those Israelites thought and felt in their worship — I can understand the outside, but I can’t feel and see what they felt and saw.

This truth is even more so when it comes to the knowledge of the true God. There is a level of apprehension which goes beyond mere emotional experience. As Newton writes:

We may become wise in notions, and so far masters of a system, or scheme of doctrine, as to be able to argue, object, and fight, in favour of our own hypothesis, by dint of application, and natural abilities; but we rightly understand what we say, and whereof we affirm, no farther than we have a spiritual perception of it wrought in our hearts by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not, therefore, by noisy disputation, but by humble waiting upon God in prayer, and a careful perusal of his holy word, that we are to expect a satisfactory, experimental, and efficacious knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. I

John Newton, Richard Cecil, The Works of the John Newton, vol. 1 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 188.

He then proceeds to list four guidelines for understanding the Scripture.

First, in handling difficult text or seeming obscure passages, rely upon the “analogy of faith”:

 there is a certain comprehensive view of scriptural truth, which opens hard places, solves objections, and happily reconciles, illustrates, and harmonizes many texts, which to those who have not this master-key, frequently styled the analogy of faith, appear little less than contradictory to each other. When you obtain this key, you will be sure that you have the right sense.

Here is a brief note on the analogy of faith:

Analogia fidei is a concept that has many advocates but few who carefully define it. Henri Blocher has carefully marked out four distinct meanings for the concept of the analogy of faith: 1) the traditional one as set forth by Georg Sohnius (c. 1585):3 “the apostle prescribes that interpretation be analogous to faith (Rom 12:6), that is, that it should agree with the first axioms or principles, so to speak, of faith, as well as with the whole body of heavenly doctrine”; 2) the “perspicuity” of Scripture definition, as championed by Martin Luther, in which the sense of the text is to be drawn from the clear verses in the Bible and thus issue in the topically selective type of analogia fidei; 3) the thematically selective understanding of the analogy of faith, as defended by John Calvin: “When Saint Paul decided that all prophecy should conform to the analogy and similitude of faith (Rom 12:6), he set a most certain rule to test every interpretation of Scripture”;4 and 4) the view held by the majority of Protestants, which may be described as a more formal definition, the analogia totius Scripturae. In this view all relevant Scriptures on any topic are brought to bear in order to establish a position that coheres with the whole of the Bible. The analogy of faith on this view is the harmony of all biblical statements where the text is expounded by a comparison of similar texts with dissimilar ones.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Hermeneutics And The Theological Task Trinity Journal 12, no. 1 (1991): 2-4

Second, Newton cautions that one’s reading must be understood in light of real life “consult with experience.” Here is an example of how Newton applied this principle in his writing to the young man in this letter:

But we are assured that the broad road, which is thronged with the greatest multitudes, leads to destruction. Were not you and I in this road? Were we better than those who continue in it still? What has made us differ from our former selves? Grace. What has made us differ from those who are now as we once were? Grace. Then this grace, by the very terms, must be differencing, or distinguishing grace; that is, in other words, electing grace

Third, do not be prejudiced against the truth on the ground that it does not align with your current theological position. I recall R. C. Sproul saying that if John MacArthur were convinced of some truth from Scripture, and if that truth contradicted a position MacArthur held, that MacArthur would instantly change his mind. We need to be willing to allow the truth overrule our position.  Although offered in a very different context and for a different purpose, Emerson’s famous line has some applicability here, “A foolish consistent is the hobgoblin of little minds”.  We should never be stubborn against the truth.

Finally, Newton explains that we should favor those readings which make much of God and God’s glory:

This is an excellent rule, if we can fairly apply it. Whatever is from God, has a sure tendency to ascribe glory to him, to exclude boasting from the creature, to promote the love and practice of holiness, and increase our dependence upon his grace and faithfulness. The Calvinists have no reason to be afraid of resting the merits of their cause upon this issue; notwithstanding the unjust misrepresentations which have been often made of their principles, and the ungenerous treatment of those who would charge the miscarriages of a few individuals, as the necessary consequence of embracing those principles.

John Newton, Richard Cecil, The Works of the John Newton, vol. 1 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 189–190.

 

What must you know of the author?

18 Friday May 2018

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There is a debate within literature study as to whether one must know about the author or not in order to make sense of the text. Here in the first essay in the Spectator, Addison places the question a bit differently: rather than speaking of “meaning” he writes of “pleasure”:

I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure ’till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.

That places the question of reading on a very different foundation: is this something in which you can take pleasure?

Reading Scriptural Narrative

24 Saturday Jun 2017

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I am working through Biblical Doctrine by MacArthur and Mayhue. I am going to have a criticism of a single sentence, so I should put this into context. The work over all is quite good. The greatest strength of the work lies with the marshaling of biblical evidence.  When it sets forth a doctrine, it typically sets forth the universe of Scriptural support. For example, on page 340, they list 27 instances of how the Holy Spirits ministers to the people of God (He adopts, baptizes, bears witness, call to ministry, convicts, empowers, et cetera). The book is filled with such lists and charts. On this particular point, it is exceptionally good.

A second aspect of the work which I appreciate is that it does not require a great deal of technical background: the text avoids theological terms and prefers to explain the doctrine and use relative simple English terms. This makes the book useful for those coming to theology for the first time as a discipline.

In short, the book is a very good introductory systematic theology.

Now to pick on a sentence. This sentence scraps a particular concern of mine: the common place lack of training in literature and language for Bible teachers and theologians. The Bible is primarily a book of stories and poems. However, most Western contemporary theological training tries to reduce the entire Scripture to a mass of bare propositions akin to blueprints or a shopping list. This is wrong for a million reasons — but that is another topic.

Anyway, here is my concern:

On page 356, a rule of interpretation is stated as follows:

Use teaching (didactic) sections of Scripture, not historical (narrative) portions to determine what is prescriptive rather than what is merely descriptive —what is exceptional compared to what should be considered normative.

First, the bare fact of something having had happened tells us very little beyond that it had happened. We need to ask other questions to make sense of the bare fact: we need context to understand a historical event. They should have written something like, “there are different hermeneutical principles for deriving application from narrative than for didactic passages.”

Our life comes to us as narrative: we see the events in our life as coming from some context and going in a particular direction. Therefore, anyone who merely points at some bare fact and then draws a “random” conclusion proves little more than there are an infinite number of lines which can be drawn through any point.

For example, George Washington was president of the United States. Therefore, I conclude that am the president — or anyone named George can be can be president — or only persons named George can be president, et cetera. Or only persons who were friends with people who knew George Washington — or whatever crazy rule. The proper context is the legal context of the United States Constitution which creates the basis for one becoming president.

I read the United States went to war with England in 1812, therefore, I conclude that England is the enemy of America. I prove that point by pointing to the Revolutionary War. Then someone points to World War I & II.

This sort of naive reading of narrative is seen by members of the Watchtower Society who will not have birthday parties, because Herod — a bad man — had a birthday party. Therefore, birthday parties are bad. Herod also ate, drank, slept, married.

The question being considered on page 356 is whether all believers must speak with tongues to be saved. Some will argue that because there were instances of tongue speaking recorded in Acts, that such is proof that all believers must speak in tongues. That sort of poor reading does not mean the narrative is ambiguous, faulty or otherwise deficient. It merely means that one has to read a narrative in the manner proper for reading narratives.

The trouble with “we all must speak in tongues” is not that one has used narrative to determine a doctrine. Rather, the trouble is that one has read the narrative poorly. The proper context for the narrative is all of Acts — and all of the New Testament, and all of the Scripture. Part of the narrative context are the epistles.

Moreover, the epistles must be understood by referring back to the narrative portions of Scripture: each of the texts helps make sense of the other texts.

Second, the rule as stated makes a point about reading narrative: it distinguishes between exception and normative: That is something gleaned from reading the narrative. Herod celebrating his birthday does not mean that a two year should not eat cake on his birthday. That would be an example of very poor reading.

Third, the authors contradict this rule repeatedly in this very book because they use narrative to prove up doctrine.

For example, on page 366, they consider the question of the Holy Spirit’s work in the Old Testament. After a review of the narrative they write:

The major characteristics of indwelling in the Old Testament can be summarize as follows:
Infrequent
Involving selected leaders in Israel only
Temporary
An empowerment for service

Page 367. They read the narrative and deduced a doctrinal point. This is an appropriate reading of narrative.

Or, on page 384, they are considering the question of whether miracles are normative and continuing. On previous pages, they cited to historical precedent and church historians. Looking to the Bible they write

There is no single, explicitly clear biblical statement that specifies whether miracles through men and temporary gifts ceased with the apostles or continued, but if one consults the whole counsel of God, one will find the answer.

They then engage in a reading of the explicit and implicit narrative of the New Testament.

What they really mean to say is that one must read the Scripture with some care. For example, when reading narrative, one cannot simply conclude that because a good man has done X that all men must do X to be good (how many men will offer their son as a sacrifice, ascend Mt. Sinai or bury a linen belt?).No can one conclude that because God did X for a good man in the past means that God will do so of all good men in the future (how many men have been fed by ravens?). Such readings demonstrate foolishness: the fault lies in the reader not in the text.

We can only assume that such people do not go about the world concluding that because a police man has a light bar and gun that they should do the same thing.

One’s reading of the narratives must be consistent with all of the Bible. Plucking an isolated text and drawing a conclusion is foolish and lazy.

Carl F. Henry, “Revelation and Myth”

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

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God, Revelation and Authority, vol. 1, chapter 3, pp. 44-69. The prior post in this series may be found here.

This essay (“Revelation and Myth”) concerns the position taken by some scholars (mostly notably Bultmann) that the Scripture is “myth”, a special symbolic language used to express transcendent realities human speech (because human speech is defective for communicating such realities):

Many modern theologians set aside any emphasis on intelligible divine revelation (that is, the view that God communicates to mankind the literal truth about his nature and purposes); they affirm, instead, that God uses myth as a literary genre to convey revelation in the Bible and perhaps elsewhere as well. To them the biblical accounts of creation and redemption are written mythological representations of transcendent realities or relationships that defy formulation in conceptual thought patterns.
Could the God of the Bible have used myth as a literary device? Surely we must allow the sovereign God of Scripture complete freedom among the various possible means of expression. But whether God has in fact used myth as a revelatory means is quite another question. The answer turns in part on whether revelation is objectively meaningful and true, and if so, whether God would and could have employed myth as a communications technique.

Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 1, “Revelation and Myth”, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 44.

Henry first notes that careless language on this point quickly runs into absurdities: for instance, all language is symbolic, so what is left for pure “myth”. Henry thus moves to focus the issue on two alternatives:

The precise definition of myth is therefore crucial if we are to answer the indicated questions intelligently. Decisive for the evaluation of myth are how one relates myth to objective truth and to external history, and what religious significance one attaches to rational truth and historical events. The basic issues reduce really to two alternatives: either man himself projects upon the world and its history a supernatural reality and activity that disallows objectively valid cognitive statements on the basis of divine disclosure, or a transcendent divine reality through intelligible revelation establishes the fact that God is actually at work in the sphere of nature and human affairs. (45)

The Scripture itself has a definite answer on this point: God does not speak in myth:

Two considerations are sure: first, the biblical witnesses repeatedly indicate that the revelation they communicate was divinely addressed to them by the living God not in cryptic mystery form but in intelligible statements that convey publicly identifiable meaning; second, they speak of myth only in a disapproving way. The New Testament refuses to lower discussion of myth to a level where the prophetic-apostolic representations correspond to pagan representations of the divine. As Giovanni Miegge emphasizes, “the supposed neutrality of those who offer only a formal definition of myth itself conceals a presupposition, and … this involves bringing Christian faith down to a level of pagan forms of worship, treating the one as commensurable with the other. This is exactly what the New Testament itself refuses to do” (Gospel and Myth in the Thought of Rudolf Bultmann, p. 101). (45-46)

Henry considers the biblical witness, what the ancients thought of “myth” and sound scholars think of the claim. Lest anyone think this is a matter of mere arcane academic squabbling, Henry notes that the integrity of the entire religion is at issue:

The use of myth in the framework of untruth or unfactuality in contrast to the truths of the Christian revelation “is in complete harmony with the classical connotation of the term which from the time of Pindar onwards always bears the sense of what is fictitious, as opposed to the term logos, which indicated what was true and historical.… The Christ of the Bible is The Logos, not a mythos” (“Myth,” pp. 368, 371). Logos, says Stählin, is “the absolutely valid and incarnate Word of God on which everything rests, the faith of the individual, the structure of the Church. If the Logos is replaced by myth, all is lost; the Word is betrayed” (“Muthos,” 4:786). Stählin insists that “the firm rejection of myth is one of the decisions characteristic of the NT. Myth is a pagan category” (4:793).

If the category of myth is a form of expression for events occurring outside the limits of earthly history, then to apply the term to the Word made flesh inverts not simply the traditional sense of the term, but all linguistic usage as well, and all customary linguistic associations and implications.(49-50)

Myth is not God making revelation to man, rather, “myth is the product of man’s religious imagination” (50).

Having set out the seriousness of the issue and the incompatibility of the “myth” thesis with Scripture and the Christian religion, Henry spends 15 pages earnestly and carefully addressing the arguments of those who claim that myth is a proper category to understand Scripture. His analysis is dense, accurate, insightful and comprehensive (he covers an astounding array of ideas in such a short scope)

He sets out the essence of the pro-myth case as follows:

But myth is now held to be the literary framework through which man describes what cannot be expressed in rational or historical categories.1 The operative assumptions are that (1) transcendent reality is not conceptually or historically revealed or knowable; (2) myth is the only form in which the reality and nature of the invisible spiritual world can be expressed; (3) myth properly understood demands not elimination but interpretation of its function; and (4) believing acceptance of the myth involves an inner encounter that leads not to secret information or valid knowledge but to vital awareness of divine presence.

1 American public school children are now taught this positive view of myth, and of biblical religion as illustrative of myth, often without being given the historical view of Judeo-Christian revelation as a credible alternative. (Cf. the curriculum used in Pennsylvania schools for high school students, “Student’s Guide to Religious Literature of the West” by John R. Whitney and Susan W. Home, which arbitrarily adds: “In this course, we use myth not in a negative way, but in a way in which literary scholars and theologians generally use it.”) (51)

As Henry spins through the details of this thinking, he notes the insufferable knots which result. The men doing this are somehow trying to retain the transcendent truth of Christianity without the difficulties of a historical text. But, as Henry notes, they were trying to hide something:

It was the dubious distinction of twentieth-century neo-Protestant theologians that they not only turned the whole biblical drama of creation and redemption into myth, but also and moreover represented this transformation as necessary to one’s comprehension of the Christian faith, rather than acknowledging such manipulation to be a compromise with unbelief. (57)

Moreover, such “myths” cannot really help us in our quest to know God:

Insofar as divine revelation is declared to employ myth as a mode of communication, such myth might indeed convey a fascinating galaxy of impressions, but the one thing that myth cannot communicate is literal truth about God or about anything else. If a literary genre communicates some literal truth, it is not myth; if it is myth, it can at best, as Gordon H. Clark somewhere suggests, communicate myth about myth, but whatever it communicates cannot be valid information. (66)

Henry then ends with the affirmation that Christianity is decidedly not a myth, indeed it is the deliverance from myth:

Novel and diverse indeed as are the convictions mankind has entertained throughout human history, the Christian perspective differs fundamentally in its insistence upon intelligible divine revelation as its governing principle. The special merit of Christianity lies in its deliverance of fallen man from mythical notions of God and its provision of precise knowledge concerning religious reality. Christianity∙ adduces not simply mythical statements but factual and literal truth about God. In freeing religious experience from only symbolic imagery and representations, Christianity manifests its superiority by providing valid propositional information: God is sovereign, personal Spirit: he is causally related to the universe as the Creator of man and the world: he reveals his will intelligibly to chosen prophets and apostles: despite man’s moral revolt he shows his love in the offer of redemption: he is supremely revealed in Jesus Christ in once-for-all incarnation: he has coped decisively with the problem of human sin in the death and resurrection and ascension of the incarnate Logos.(68-69)

Why the genealogies in the Bible?

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Hermeneutics, Image of God, Psalms

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Should you open the Bible to 1 Chronicles, you will find:

17 The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. And the sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech.
18 Arpachshad fathered Shelah, and Shelah fathered Eber.
19 To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided), and his brother’s name was Joktan.
20 Joktan fathered Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah,
21 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah,
22 Obal, Abimael, Sheba,
23 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; all these were the sons of Joktan.

1 Chronicles 1:17-23. It goes more or less in the same manner for pages. How is one supposed to understand such lists?

Calvin begins the Institutes of the Christian Religion with the observation that our knowledge consists of knowing God and knowing ourselves in relation to God (this is a gross simplification, but sufficient for our purposes). Gerald Bray in his book God is Love takes Calvin’s observation, turns it into three questions and then applies the questions to the text.

Bray first notes that a Christian must “make spiritual sense of passages like these” (59). Therefore, he asks three questions.

First question: “What do the genealogies reveal about God?” You see in the lists the names of human beings going from generation to generation — hundreds upon hundreds and thousands upon thousand whom God did not forget. Since the genealogies occur in the context of God’s dealings with humanity in light of God’s covenants, the genealogies, “tell us that he is a faithful Lord, who keeps his covenant from generation to another” (59). In Ecclesiastes 1:4, Qoheleth writes, A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

But above and greater than even the earth is the Creator of heaven and earth who remains faithful despite our failings:

11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself.

2 Timothy 2:11-13.

Second question, “What do the genealogies say about us?” Look at the lists: the men and women are nothing more than words, funny sounds – but we do not attach the sounds to any human being. Thus, the answer to Bray’s question is, “[F]rom the worlds point of view, most of us are nobodies” (59). That is a painful observation, but true.

It is painful, because we all know that we must be more valuable than to be a “nobody” — and yet, in the end, most of will be invisible to history. And even those who will be written down will become more and more obscure over time. Proof: Quick, name any ruler of the Hittite Empire.

Now, note Bray’s answer: It is in the eyes of all humanity that we are nobody — but the memory of the world is not the whole story. Think again: What if these men and women did not exist? What if they died without children? God has kept his words among human beings; and God has exercised his power before human beings, “We are part of a great cloud of witnesses, a long chain of faithful people who have lived for God in the place where he put them.”

Now, this does not end the analysis: There is knowledge of God and knowledge of humanity — there is also the point of interaction, “Finally, what do the genealogies say about God’s dealings with us?”

Before you jump to his answer, think for a moment. God has not abandoned history to blind forces. God has not gone far away and forgotten (even when we fear that we may be lost to space and time). But these lists tell us plainly that God has not forgotten, “They tell us that we are called to be obedient and to keep the faith we have inherited, passing it on to the next generation. They tell us that there is a purpose in our callings that goes beyond us” (59).

In short, while the genealogies demonstrate that we may be little in the eyes of men and women with little memory and little understanding; they also tell us that we part of the greater story of God’s work in the world.

There is then an application, We know that we exist for great things. We know that our life must be more than sensation, food, sleep. We all understand that there should be some magnificent about us. We desire such things, because we were made for such things. It was built into us when God created us:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Psalm 8:3-8. We were created as the capstone of creation — we were created in the image of God. Now sin and death have obscured that image, but the stamp is not gone. Indeed, God’s covenant and end have been directed toward restoring that image:

9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Colossians 3:9-11. Thus, when one is found in Christ, the gruesome weight of history which wears us down to invisibility is undone in Christ. Sin’s dominion is ended in the death of Christ. The waste of death is overcome in the resurrection of Christ. Alienation gone in the reconciliation of God and human beings in Jesus Christ. The genealogies with their endless story of death and death point us toward the need of Christ.