Chapter Three
1. The Bible is not
really a book but a library. It has within it a variety of different genres:
poetry, prose, story, history, laws, letters, and so on. Part of a proper
respect for Scripture is to be aware of this issue of genre. The sad irony of
so-called ‘creationism’, based on a fundamentalist biblical literalism, is that
in fact it abuses the very text that it seeks to respect, missing the point of what
is written by mistaking its genre.
- Give examples of
where “creationism” generates conflicts in our culture.
2. Over the centuries,
many have seen the unique human capacity for rational thinking as forming the
core of the divine image. However, I doubt whether this really gets to the
heart of the matter. Surely that image is to be found in the mentally
handicapped as well as in the academically brilliant. Its presence is the
theological basis for a fundamental belief in the worth of every individual
human being. To my mind, it is the love of God bestowed on each individual, and
the implicit ability to be aware of the divine presence, that constitute the
essence of the imago dei.
- How does “awareness
of the divine presence” present opportunity to explore this divine relationship
of love of God and love of neighbor?
3. The
greatest of all the wisdom writings is surely the book of Job, a profound tale
of human suffering. For 37 chapters, calamities fall on Job and he and his
friends argue about the significance of the terrible things that have happened
to him and his family. The friends assert that he must have offended God by his
sins and so he is receiving just punishment. Job protests his innocence and
longs to be able to appear directly before God to mount his defense and make
his just protest. Then, suddenly, God is there.
-
What happens to Job next? What allows
him to change his attitude?
4. The
wisdom writers were what we might today call ‘natural theologians.’ That is to
say, they were seeking to learn something of God through general experience,
without overt appeal to the particularities of specific revelatory events.
While this approach is valid, it has its limitations. Its appeal to limited
forms of experience can only yield limited insight.
- Where do we see such attempts today?
What are the consequences?
5. Returning to the opening chapters of
Genesis, it is time to look at chapter 3, the story of the Fall. Once again we
have to recognize that we are dealing with the genre of myth. I do not believe
that the chapter is the historical account of a single disastrous ancestral
act, but it is a story conveying truth about the relationship between God and
humanity. Read in a literal way, the story would clearly be incompatible with
well-established knowledge given us by the scientific study of the past. Once the story’s mythic power is released
from bondage to a fundamentalist reading, it becomes full of insight of a kind
that can be seen as complementary to the insights afforded us by science.
-
Amen! How do you understand and apply
this alliance between the power of biblical myth and the urgency of
ever-unveiling scientific insight?
6. The Fall is indeed a fall ‘upward’, the
gaining of knowledge, but it is an error to suppose that humans can thereby
attain equality with their Creator, so that they can then live their lives
independently of God. This declaration of complete human autonomy, the
assertion that we can simply ‘do it my way’, is the root meaning of sin. The
refusal to acknowledge that we are creatures in need of the grace of our
Creator is the source of subsequent human sins, those deeds of selfishness and
deceit that mar our lives as the result of believing the false claim to be
completely independent of the assistance of divine grace.
- How does this definition of the Fall explain the persistence of sin?
7. This turning from God did not bring biological
death into the world, for that had been there for many millions of years before
there were any hominids. What it did bring was what we may call ‘mortality’,
human sadness and bitterness at the inevitability of death and decay. Alienation
from God brought the bitterness of mortality, but the relation of humanity to
God has been restored in the atonement (at-one-ment) brought by Jesus Christ,
in whom the life of humanity and the life of divinity are both present and the
broken link is mended.
- Ahhh…divine restoration! What “broken
links” have yet to be mended?
8. The
discussion of this chapter will serve, I hope, to illustrate how ancient
religious wisdom and modern scientific knowledge can blend in a way that does
justice to the valid insights of both. This is possible because Scripture is
not a dead deposit of unchanging meaning, the repository of assertions that
have to be accepted at face value without question, but a living spring from
which new truths and insight can be expected to continue to flow.
- What a refreshing view of Scripture!
How is it a “living spring” for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment