There is an ethical difficulty in the position "literalists" sometimes adopt, that all the parts of the Bible are equally true and inspired. There is -- or ought to be -- a clear difference between the attitude of Ps. 137 toward the enemy, "Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (v. 9) and Jesus' attitude toward his enemies, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" ( Luke 23: 34). Such statements are clearly not on the same level of spiritual significance. To put every part of the Bible on the same level of importance as every other part is to find oneself in the difficulty which faced the man who opened his Bible at random to get advice on a difficult problem, and had the misfortune to light on the words, "And Judas went and hanged himself." Not content with this cold comfort, he tried again, this time opening to the words, "Go and do likewise."
The Bible is not a static collection of proof-text answers to questions, to be used in such fashion as this, and such a realization exposes the main difficulty of approaching the Bible as a series of statements each one of which is literally true and of equal worth. The question is whether or not the God of the Bible actually chooses this way of revealing himself. Although we will be pursuing this problem in the next chapter, we must repeat again what has already been said, that in the Bible we find God revealing himself not so much in statements as in events, and persons, and acts. In other words, a personal God strives to enter into personal relationship with his children. We cannot enter into personal relationship with an impersonal book, but we can enter into personal relationship with a person, with Jesus Clirist. And it is thus the person about whom the book is written, rather than the book itself, who is the subject and object of our faith. Protestants firmly believe in "the authority of the Bible," but this is because it is the Bible which has brought them face to face with Jesus Christ. God confronts them in a living person, not merely in information about that person.
It is somewhat like a letter from a friend. You don't value the letter so much for its phrases and style as because it brings the friend closer and helps you to know him better. The constant presence of the letter may be nice, but it is a pretty poor substitute for the constant presence of the friend. (Anybody who has been in love will understand this.) Luther made the point well -- if we may change our image rather abruptlywhen he said, "The Bible is the cradle in which Christ lies."
Another way of using the Bible has been to interpret it critically, that is, from the point of view of a literary study of the text. For a long time scholars have studied early Biblical manuscripts, trying to determine when the books of the Bible were written, by whom they were written, to whom, the situation out of which they came, and so forth. Since people sometimes deride this way of interpreting the Bible, it must be stressed that Christians today owe an immense debt to these scholars. Because of their efforts, we now have the tools for a better understanding of the Bible than has ever been possible before. To know when a book was written, by whom, for whom, what the author's intention was -- all this is clear gain.
The main difficulty with this approach, therefore, is not that it is wrong or irreverent, but that by itself it is incomplete. It is interesting to learn, for example, that there are two Creation stories in Genesis, and it is fascinating to compare their similarities and differences. But this is valuable only as a tool to help us toward more fundamental problems: What is the meaning of the stories of the Creation? What do they tell us about God's concern for us? What are the implications of the notion that God has made the earth, and particularly that he has made us? The critical approach by itself does not give us answers to these questions.
4. The above ways, then, are not fully adequate ways of understanding and using the Bible. Is there a more significant way? The way that will be suggested here (and will be presupposed throughout the rest of this book) is that we read the Bible as actors who are involved in the Biblical drama of God's search for men.
We are part of this drama. We cannot separate ourselves from it. We cannot understand the Bible as an ancient manuscript chiefly of interest to antiquarians or museum keepers. We must understand it as a living book addressed to us, in which we identify ourselves with those who stand under God's judgment and those who receive God's forgiveness. The fatal error is to read the Bible as a spectator rather than as a participant, to make the faulty assumption that we can sit in a box seat watching the drama, when actually we are on the stage taking part in the drama.
This means that when Amos thunders out to the people of Bethel that they are guilty of wrongdoing, we hear him speaking to us as well. He not only tells us what was wrong in Bethel -- he is telling us what is wrong in Minneapolis or Houston or Grovers Corners or wherever we may be living today.
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