Using the Bible - Words to Live By: Love Art Print

Words to Live By: Love Art Print
DeWitt, Debbie
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How can I use the Bible so that it will speak to me in this way? Let us look at some of the ways in which Christians have tried to answer this question.

1. One method which people have used since very early times, particularly with difficult passages, has been to interpret the Bible allegorically. An allegory is a story that has hidden meanings which do not appear on the surface. If I write, for example, "The raccoon had a splinter in its paw until it got to the riverbank," this may be my allegorical way of saying that the Christian (raccoon) is involved in sin (splinter) until he has been baptized (riverbank), and I may be seriously trying to write about Christian faith in the form of an allegory about animals.

Many of the Early Church Fathers interpreted portions of the Bible in this fashion. Take Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, a story illustrating what it means to be a good neighbor (look it up in Luke 10: 25-37 if you've forgotten how it goes). Augustine made an allegory out of the story, giving every detail a hidden significance. "A certain man" was Adam. Jerusalem was the heavenly city. The robbers were the devil and his angels. The Samaritan was Jesus himself. The inn was the Church. The innkeeper was the apostle Paul. And so on. The story of the Good Samaritan was transformed from a tale about true neighborliness into an allegory of the whole Christian drama of salvation.

Since religious language must always make use of imagery, the method of allegorical interpretation can sometimes serve a useful function. The danger is that one who is not a scholar and expert can "twist" a story to mean whatever he wants it to mean, and not only may the real point of the story be lost, but utterly false meanings may be "read in."

2. In sharp contrast to the allegorical method is the view that the Bible is to be interpreted literally, often with the further claim that since every word is directly inspired, all parts are therefore of equal profit and value. This is a much newer way of interpreting the Bible than the allegorical way. Luther, for example, the first Protestant Reformer, made sharp distinctions between various parts of the Bible, calling James an "epistle of straw," and stating that he saw little religious value in the book of Revelation. Whether his judgments were correct is not so important, for the moment, as the fact that he felt free to make them. But later Reformers, having continued with Luther to repudiate the absolute authority of the pope, turned more and more to a belief in the absolute authority of the Scriptures, interpreted in such a way that to be a Christian meant believing the words of the Bible, the statements contained within the covers of the book, as literally true in all particulars. In what way did this raise a problem?

For one thing, it is true that religious language must resort to symbolism, imagery, and poetic description on certain occasions, and such use of language loses its religious significance if taken literally. When Jesus told us to be as little children, for example, he didn't mean that we were supposed to wear diapers.

What the Bible tells us - Greatest Virtue is Love Art Print

The Greatest Virtue is Love Art Print
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The Bible not only tells how God sought his people in the past; it is also a means by which he seeks us out today. It is not just part of the dead past: it is also part of the living present. We cannot read it without a sense of being involved. For the experiences of the Biblical characters are basically our experiences. They ask questions:

If a man die, shall he live again? (Job 14: 14)
What do you think of the Christ? (Matt. 22: 42)
Who are you, Lord? (Acts 9: 5)
What shall I do, Lord? (Acts 22: 10)
Why does the way of the wicked prosper? (Jer. 12: 1)
Why are you cast down, O my soul? (Ps. 42: 5)

And we ask the same questions, even though we use different
words:
What happens to me when I die?
Is this Jesus really more than a great man?
Who is God?
What difference does believing in God make?
What's the point of "being good"?
Why does life sometimes seem so horribly futile?

To the extent that we really ask such questions (and it takes courage to ask them honestly) we find ourselves involved in the asking and answering which goes on in the Bible. To be sure, we shall not find answers given on a silver platter, but answers were not given to the Biblical characters on a silver platter either. The answers they got had to be hammered home to them in the "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" of a tragic history. They were not spun out in a philosopher's study, or even in a Sunday school classroom. They emerged from the rough and tumble of life, and it is in the rough and tumble of life that we discover how right the Bible's answers are.

But it is not only in questions and answers that we find God seeking us in the Bible. Not only are God's demands and promises brought home to us, but God himself "comes alive," and speaks to us, as we take the Bible seriously. It is for this reason that Christians speak of the Bible as "the Word of God." This does not mean that God's "words" are recorded in the Bible as though someone had had a celestial tape recorder and then transcribed the message on paper. For, as we shall see, God "speaks" to people, not so much through statements as through his creative activity right where people are. The supreme revelation of his "Word," his creative power, is the "event" of Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection-the "Word made flesh," as the Fourth Gospel says.

The Bible, then, tells us of these times when God has acted upon the lives of men, and as we read it, the possibility is opened up that God can speak through those acts and events directly to us. "The Bible is a special delivery letter with your name and address on it," is one way of putting it. So it is more than a record; it is a call, an invitation, an urgent message to us.

What Is the Bible? Words to Live By: Faith Art Print

Words to Live By: Faith Art Print
DeWitt, Debbie
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Faith... is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see - Hebrews 11:1

If this is true, there is real point to asking once more: "Just what is the Bible anyway? Why does it continue to make this kind of impact? Why do people keep being transformed by it?" Let's try to find out.

If you were handed a Bible for the first time in your life, and given a couple of hours to jot down some impressions, you might end up with a list like this:

a VERY long book two main divisions (O.T. and N.T. -- what do these terms mean?) actually not one book, but many books (66 on actual count) some books very long, others less than a page all sorts and kinds: history short stories a play a love poem philosophy law codes informal letters some which baffle me completely seems to be mainly about the Jeuish people and later on one of them in particular (Jesus)

If you did a little digging into the history of the book itself, you would come up with a few further facts:

book a long time being written-about 1,000 years first part written in Hebrew, second part in Greek, couple of dashes of Aramaic (what's that?) parts of it since translated into OVER 1,000 LANGUAGES!! latest translation (into English) called "biggest publishing venture in history"

Of course, such information doesn't begin to answer the question, What is the Bible? But if you kept at it, you'd finally come up with something like the next few paragraphs.

It wouldn't be enough to say that the Bible is the record of man's search for God, a report on the slow, agonizing, upward quest from primitive origins to a highly developed monotheism (belief in one God). True, there are many examples of the development of the concept of God as it becomes purified and ennobled in the course of Jewish history. But as a means of understanding the Bible, this isn't enough. It is much closer to the truth to say that the Bible is the record of God's search for man. Throughout the Bible people seem bent on trying to escape from God. And in spite of this, God continues to seek after those same people, refusing to give up, continuing the pursuit in spite of countless rebuffs and evasions.

It has all the excitement and thrill of a detective story, in which the detective relentlessly chases the criminal through chapter after chapter. The same kind of relentless pursuit dominates the interpretation that the Jewish people put on their historical past, in the Old Testament. The search culminates in the New Testament, where the claim is made that God has so desired fellowship with man that finally he has not just sent emissaries or ambassadors or prophets or representatives-in Jesus Chirist he has come himself! It is the most astounding word that has ever been spoken. It is the most stupendous claim that has ever been made. If anything is "unexpected news," this is.

Council of Clermont

Council of Clermont

A church council, held in 1095, at which Pope Urban II made a powerful speech urging the knights of medieval Europe to join in a Crusade to the Holy Land, to assist the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus in his war against the Turks, to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from Moslem hands, and to reach the lands of the East where there was greater wealth and a greater abundance of food. The First Crusade was a direct outcome of the Pope's skillful pleading.

Mordecai Cohen

Mordecai Cohen

Mirah's lost brother Ezra; an idealistic Jew, on fire with plans for the advancement of the race. The character is said to have been drawn from a Jewish journeyman watchmaker named Cohn or Kohn.

A man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except for its possibly making some obstruction to a conceived good which he would never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whose sun would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with a passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth.--Ch. xliii.

Clorinda

Clorinda

The pagan heroine whose praises are sung in Tasso Jerusalem Delivered, daughter of Senapus of Ethiopia, a Christian. Because she was born white, her mother changes her for a black child. The eunuch Arsetes is entrusted with the infant Clorinda, and as he is going through a forest, he sees a tiger, drops the child, and seeks safety in a tree. The tiger takes the babe and suckles it, after which the eunuch carries the child to Egypt. In the siege of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, Clorinda is a leader of the pagan forces. Tancred falls in love with her, but slays her unknowingly in a night attack. Before she expires she receives Christian baptism at the hands of Tancred, who greatly mourns her death.

City of God: St. Augustine

City of God

Latin title De Civitate Dei. The most famous work of St. Augustine (written after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths ( 410 A. D.) in order to disprove the charges then being made that Christianity was to blame for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Augustine asserts that all history is a conflict between good, represented by the City of God (Civitas Dei), which includes all pious Christians--in other words, the Church which later became the Roman Catholic Church, and evil, represented by the Earthly City (Civitas Terrena), including pagans and unfaithful Christians, or the Roman Empire. This conflict is leading, through the will of God, which is supreme, to the Last Judgment, when the people in the City of God will win immortality, and the Earthly City will be destroyed; the Church, therefore, is more important than the state, since it is destined for triumph, and should be given support.

City of refuge

City of refuge

Moses, at the command of God, set apart three cities on the east of Jordan, and Joshua added three others on the west, whither any person might flee for refuge who had killed a human creature inadvertently. The three on the east of Jordan were Bezer, Ramoth, and Golan; the three on the west were Hebron, Shechem, and Kedesh ( Deut. iv. 43; Josh. xx. 1-8).

By Muslims, Medina, in Arabia, where Mahomet took refuge when driven by conspirators from Mecca, is known as the city of refuge. He entered not as a fugitive, but in triumph 622 A. D. Also called the city of the Prophet.

Cistercians

Cistercians

A monastic order, founded at Cistercium, or Cîteaux, by Robert, abbot of Molême, in Burgundy, in 1098, as a branch of the Benedictines. The monks are known also as Bernardines, owing to the patronage of St. Bernard, who entered Cîteaux in 1112 and in 1115 became abbot of a daughter monastery at Clairveaux. In 1664 the order was reformed on an excessively strict basis by Jean le Boutillier de Rance.

Christmas Day: Nativity (of Christ), Noel, Yule

Christmas Day

December 25th. Also called the Nativity (of Christ), Noel, Yule. Before the 5th century there was no consensus of opinion as to when Christmas should come in the calendar. In Britain, December 25 was a festival in pre-Christian times.

The ancient peoples of the Angli began the year on December 25 when we now celebrate the birthday of the Lord; and the very night which is now so holy to us, they called in their tongue modranecht, that is, the mothers' night. In 1644 Christmas was forbidden in England. Charles II revived it.