Asking the right questions?

"Asking the [Bible] the right sort of questions, and avoiding asking the wrong ones, is a key not only to understanding the Bible as a written expression of God's Word, but it also prevents us from creating more troubles in interpretation than are necessary" (Ben Witherington III; The Living Word of God, 25).

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I have provided, as bookends for this post, two quotes that I hope can emphasize the point I am trying to make:

I hope that in post-modernism we as Christians may be able to regain a view of the Bible that was damaged during the modern era. Following the Enlightenment much of Western Christianity bought into the worldview of modernity. One of the results of this was an emphasis on "Systematic Theology." Systematic Theology was a way of approaching theology that followed the scientific method. Observe the following quotes from two prominent Christian Systematic Theologians:

“…the theologian must be guided by the same rules in the collection of facts, as govern the man of science.” - Charles Hodge

“the laws of methodology are as essential in the science of systematic theology as in any other science” - L.S. Chafer

“... the Bible contains the truths which the theologian has to collect, authenticate, arrange, and exhibit in their internal relation to each other” - Hodge

I won't take the time and space right now to argue with these quotes other than simply saying that I think this approach to theology has had some very destructive results (if you want some of these ideas just ask and I can comment on them). One of these results is, in my opinion, the largely pointless debate of creationism/evolutionism.

One of the biggest follies Christians have committed is attempting to claim scientific truth in the scriptures. Just ask Copernicus, Galileo, etc...

Obviously this is a hugely dense topic with a tonne of baggage so there's no way I can deal with this with any justice in a blog post but for now I will just highlight one or two points.

Genre, people... genre. In most cases it is not very difficult to identify the genre of any given passage of scripture. For example, to argue that the earth is flat because Ps. 135:7 talks about the "ends of the earth"; or to say that the sun goes around the earth because Ps. 104:22 says that "the sun rises"... to argue these points is just plain silly. Why? (aside from the fact that science has clearly proven otherwise) Because it is poetry! Why on earth would one attempt to derive scientific fact from a sacred poem? Maybe it's just me, but you'd think that a religious poem would be trying to address something other than the natural sciences.

Here's the thing: the Bible has it's own agenda. In a sense it is providing us answers to questions that we may not be asking. So part of the interpretive task for any and every Christian is to find out what questions we need to be asking it (see top & bottom quotes). When we come to the scriptures with our own questions/hypothesis we are almost guaranteed to be misinterpreting it.

It is coming out of this that "Biblical Theology" has risen. The emphasis in Biblical Theology is to read the Bible as a whole and to discern what God's agenda is in the written Word and then yield our agenda's to His.

In short: Systematic Theology starts with our questions and looks to the Bible to answer them while Biblical Theology starts with the Bible's answers and asks us to change our questions.

[This is not to say that all Systematic Theology is bad or that all Biblical Theology is good; nor is it saying that Systematic Theology isn't Biblical or that Biblical Theology isn't in some sense systematic. They are just two different approaches]

So, if we are to even begin to address the creation/evolution debate we need to come to the creation account with no agenda (as much as is possible) on our own part. Or maybe I should say, our only agenda needs to be to hear the answers that God provides us with and then ask if we've been asking the right questions.

I'd like to keep going but I'm not sure how much more you poor readers will keep reading... maybe more next week.

Please provide me with your thoughts and comments :)

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"Even when only partly understood, the Bible remain(s) bigger than the niches to which it (has been) relegated. For it requires that we be hearers of the Word,

listening for what it asks us, not bringing our questions to find the Bible's answers, but prepared to have our current questions revised or even discredited by its own" (James McClendon; Ethics, 37).