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Scripture: Our Father & Mother’s Unruly Child

Scripture: Our Father & Mother’s Unruly Child

Last updated on: September 19, 2016 at 8:55 am by J. R. Daniel Kirk

Scripture: Our Father & Mother’s Unruly Child 2016-09-19T08:55:51-08:00 J. R. Daniel Kirk

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Scripture, being breathed-out by God functions much more like the God-breathed first man than like the rote reiterations of a catechumen. It interprets the parental instructions, whether given by divine father or human mother, sometimes to its benefit, sometimes to its own detriment, but never as one beaten and broken and under complete control.

What It’s (Not) There For

The fact is (really, it is a fact, or if it’s not then scripture is a sham) scripture was not given to us to serve as a confirming reservoir of our correct theology.

If you think it is and you are a Calvinist, go read Hebrews.

If you think it is and you are an Arminian, go read Ephesians 1.

If you think it is, why don’t you take a few minutes to sit down with an African American and read over the household codes and Philemon together.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

If scripture was given to be the always-affirmer of our theology then (to approach the contested question of our doctrine of God) the Old Testament would be a little more manifestly Trinitarian. But that doesn’t really seem to be its point. Sure, once we have recontexualized the OT with both the NT and the Creeds we can give revisionist Trinitarian readings that would have never occurred to anyone prior to the second or third century.

And that’s not wrong.

Because we are humans. And humans can always and do always read their sacred texts in light of what they “know” to be true of God.

And, yes, the same goes for the NT. There is not one Trinitarian among the authors of scripture. But many of their writings can be helpfully within a Trinitarian framework.

So maybe the gift of the church’s theology is not to be found in telling us how to read the texts. Maybe its gift is to be found in providing a later, fuller theological layer that we can add after we have taken the time to listen more carefully to what an original author might have had in mind or what an original first-century audience could have heard.

Maybe instead of silencing the text the tradition could have the confidence to stand back for a few minutes, listen to what someone might say with the text itself, and then rejoin the conversation. Nobody wants to be at a dinner party with someone so sure of all the answers that nobody else gets to put a word in edgewise.

So let’s dial it down with Tradition as hermeneutic. This is not disrespecting the Tradition, it’s respecting the Tradition enough to expect it to act like a mature adult when someone else is speaking.

I think this is good for all of us. Maybe there’s something to be gained by stopping, for a second, with the assumption that we already know what the Bible is going to say because we have already determined ahead of time.

Let’s stop with letting the Tradition (or our own individual or denominational traditions or our political traditions) tell us the right answer, dominating with the voice of what we already know, what’s already comfortable. It’s typically a bad reading strategy, and it’s worse if our goal is to learn and be transformed by the encounter.

If our only goal is to learn subjection to the church, then fine. Let’s give up caring what the Bible says and simply learn our theology. Then we will easily enough hear the church’s voice in whatever scripture we set our hands to.

But if our goal is to learn the story of the Christ and God’s saving action in it, then we have to tell that voice to give it a rest. If only for a minute.

We want to hear—we have to hear—what the unruly child has to say.

theological interpretation

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