This is the second week's question and post from Old Testament. I think my answer here didn't come together as well as my last one, but here it is. Lemme know what you think!
"As several of you have noted, the Bible has many elements of a story. Yes, as we talked about in class, the meaning of the text in some measure derives from the interpreting community, not just from the text itself. So, in what sense is the Bible a single, unitary story? Or is this unity derived from the outside? Or does the unity also sit side-by-side with fractures in the story, with discontinuities? And, most importantly, what does any of this mean theologically? How adequate a starting place is the category of story for our biblical theological reflections?"
The perspective of faith would be that the Bible does contain a deep underlying unity that comes from divine guidance and involvement. As has been pointed out, though plenty of attempts have been made, as yet no *single* theme has been shown to dominate and provide unity to the whole. And yet, we see threads running throughout that for the community of faith seem to suggest the fingerprints of God on all of it. I would suggest theologically that we can’t expect to be able to boil down that unity to a particular concept or theme. Since the unity comes from God and happens in the community of faith it is transcendent and eludes our articulation even as we experience it.
I would say that “story” is a useful category for understanding the Bible in a number of ways. It is useful because it captures the faith proclamation that the Bible contains unity without forcing the text into a category (such as a systematic theology) in which it clearly doesn’t fit. Also, narrative is a much more pervasive element than anything else. Thirdly, the idea of Scripture as a story comes much nearer to explaining the way humans actually come to be converted or captivated by the Bible. We don’t generally find a set of arguments with which we agree or even historical claims which we research and confirm, but instead we feel an inward resonance with the spirit of the text. I think this is what Christians mean by the involvement of the Holy Spirit in us, and by the Bible being the Word of God.
On the other hand, as has also been pointed out, not all of Scripture is story. Moreover, since if unity exists it is beyond articulation, I don’t think we should limit our approach to one overarching category, even if that category is as nuanced and powerful as story can be.
I think we have to make a theological distinction between the way in which other stories have unity and the way this one does. We need to recognize that if God is uniquely involved, then no category is going to completely contain what it is that is going on in Scripture. So I'd suggest that for us unity does sit side-bye-side with fractures and discontinuities even as we proclaim unity is underlying them. What does this mean? I think it means we should be careful not to impose categories on the text or too easily resolve tensions. Finally, we recognize that God is the one who gives unity to the Bible in a way that will always be beyond us, but He promises to be with us in our attempts at understanding it if we approach with humility and as a community.
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3 comments:
You mention that "no *single* theme has been shown to dominate and provide unity to the whole." I think that's inherent to the nature of Scripture. If Scripture is about God, it's literary nature must reflect the nature of God. Just like God could never be boiled down to one characteristic, Scripture can't be boiled down to a single theme.
Good thoughts.
Very cogent analysis. Sparks my idea for a new post on my blog. The idea, posited by many apologists for the Bible's divine origins, that its unity proves that it is divinely inspired, can be explained by purely human origins. What you have is a series of authors, having access to the previous authors' work, adding to and extrapolating from that existing work.
Dad,
Two things: First (this is my perennial criticism) you're still only dealing with (I think) the least interesting subset of Christian thinkers who deal with and defend a very particular view of the text.
Second, and more to the point, I don't think the Bible quite *has* the type of unity that would make their case *or* yours. There are very different perspectives that are sometimes dissonant. What's amazing is that such different perspectives are included, rather than simply cut out or explained away.
For example, despite all the talk of misogyny in the Old Testament, a person as intelligent and anti-Christian as Harold Bloom can posit that a woman wrote or edited much of it.
Anyway as I said, I think the unity of the Bible (since I think there is unity) is sort of underneath the text in a way that isn't really able to be captured in one neat set of ideas or propositions. Therefore, I think that Christian apologists are at a disadvantage in this discussion if they are using the unity of the text as evidence. It is easy enough to show that elements where the one biblical text appears to disagree with others.
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