Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Four

1.  The tapestry of life is not coloured in simple black and white, representing an unambiguous choice between the unequivocally bad and the unequivocally good. The ambiguity of human deeds and desires means that life includes many shades of grey. What is true of life in general is true also of the Bible in particular. An honest reading of Scripture will acknowledge the presence in its pages of various kinds of ambiguity.

- When did you first become aware of this and how do you approach this ambiguity today?

2.  We might begin our consideration with the chilling story of Genesis 22, the testing of Abraham by God as the patriarch is told to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah. In Christian thinking, the akedah, the binding of Isaac as Jewish people call the story, came to be seen as a type…of the death on the cross of Jesus the Son of God in obedience to his Father’s will. In stained-glass windows portraying the history of salvation, the two events are often represented in close association. Both images reflect the ambiguity of a world in which there is both beauty and ugliness, fruitfulness and wastefulness, joy and sorrow.

- What similarities and distinctions do you observe in this close association with Abraham/Isaac and God/Jesus? 

- Where does ambiguity enter into the sacrifice of both?

3.  The patriarch Abraham is one of the great figures in religious history. Three world faith traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, look back to him as a person of foundational significance. Yet Abraham is not portrayed as morally flawless. Although he is an archetype of the man who puts his faith in God, Abraham’s trust wavers at times.

- What examples are provided regarding Abraham, Jacob, and David?

4.  A quite different kind of ambiguity is represented by the frequent references to angels that appear in both the Old Testament and the New. In both Hebrew and Greek the word translated in English as ‘angel’ is the simply the common word for a messenger. There are therefore different options for understanding these passages.

- Does ‘angel’ refer to a heavenly messenger, a purely spiritual being sent by God? Does it just refer to a human messenger?

- Is the image of an angelic messenger being used to signify by personification, in a symbolic manner that would be natural in the ancient world, the divinely bestowed gift of an enlightening insight?

5.  A somewhat related ambiguity relates to how one should understand some of the biblical miracle stories. I shall later defend my belief that many of the New Testament miracle stories, such as those of Jesus’ many healings and the paramount Christian miracle of the Resurrection, are indeed grounded in historical occurrences. However, is that necessarily true of all these stories?

- Is this an indication that the essential message is that in Christ the ritual of Jewish law is replaced by the freedom of the gospel?

- And does not that imply that the story might simply be a symbolic narrative incorporated into the Gospel as if it were an enacted event?

6.  Yet another kind of ambiguity appears in the Gospels, an ambiguity not of character but of circumstances. Life is such that there is often no single ideal choice to be made, but all possible actions have an inescapable shadow side of one kind or another. The decision to be made is not the unambiguous choice between black and white, but the much more difficult matter of the selection of the least dark shade of grey. Jesus, living a truly human life, was not exempt from having to make this kind of perplexing decision.

- How did Jesus speak of his own family members, as well as a gentile woman who sought healing for her daughter?

7.  We have earlier devoted some attention to what is perhaps the greatest ambiguity in Scripture: the stories of conflict and violence that are to be found in its pages. Though most of these are to be found in the Old Testament, a similar note is not wholly absent from the pages of the New. In addition to the violent symbolic language deployed in Revelation, there are…disturbing incidents to be found elsewhere.

- Describe the ambiguous circumstances surrounding:

       The dishonesty of Ananias & Sapphira

          The betrayal of Judas Iscariot

            The moral struggles of Paul

- What might we have in common with each of these?