There can be a tendency in a certain kind of academic work on the Bible to heavily assert that the Bible is a collection of documents written by a diverse array of authors in different settings and time periods (so far, that’s entirely true) and that therefore it isn’t reasonable to speak as if the Bible has a unified voice.
This is probably accentuated because in academic work the focus is naturally narrow. I have a book on my desk now about ‘the meal scenes in Luke-Acts’ that isn’t going to be broader than that. Depth typically requires focus. I’d want to critique where the laser focus of the academy is, and is not, useful to the church, but that’s another post.
As evangelical Christians (defining evangelical in the UK as ‘aligned theologically with the Evangelical Alliance’) I don’t think we can say that the Bible doesn’t have a unified voice. I’d go further, after all I’m on record as asserting that the Old Testament is about Jesus and should be read by us as though we were Christians; the New Testament is a commentary on how to read the Old (it’s not just that, but it is that).
You can at least understand how those who want to say the Bible speaks out of both sides of its mouth get there. There are plenty of apparent contradictions, or just differences in emphasis and language, that need in some fashion resolving. Wisdom comes through considering these, which is rather the point of them.
There is also a tendency among some of my fellow evangelicals to resolve these questions simply and easily. Sometimes that’s a great thing that should be commended; other times it seems to flatten the differences in the texts without allowing their difference to speak. This way of approaching the Bible can seem to flatten its contours and—in the most egregious, though rare, examples—make the scriptures sound like a Systematic Theology textbook. There are good reasons that the Lord choose to make his word story, and we do need to recognise that even the more didactic sections of the New Testament are delivered to specific churches and inhabit specific stories.
In some less egregious examples, we can still make blunt the Bible’s moral teaching by assuming it’s impossible and so pivoting to the gospel before the teaching has a chance to enter our hearts like leaven in the dough. The criticism here, for clarity, is of pivoting to the gospel so quickly that we remove the sting of the teaching, rather than of offering Christ as the gift every time we speak—we must do that.
I’ve been reading Richard Hays The Moral Vision of the New Testament, where Hays presents the New Testament’s teaching as polyphonic rather than one note or cacophonous. Up front, I should point out that Hays does think that on occasion the New Testament’s teaching is flatly contradictory and gives a framework for how to decide moral questions when the texts seem divided. Here, of course, we would part ways. There’s lots to commend the book though for those trying to carefully think through their own ethical method—most readers aren’t going to read method books, and that’s quite alright.
Hays’ polyphonic approach can be summarised like this;
- We must resist the temptation to soften one text by ‘correcting’ it with another text. He gives examples like ‘correcting’ Romans 13 with Revelation 13, or softening Mark’s apocalyptic vision with Matthew.
- The individual voices need to speak. Resist the temptation to flip to a ‘comforting cross-reference’ to ‘neutralise … [a] particularly challenging passage.’ We need to hear the more challenging word. His concern here is that we use other parts of the Bible to blunt the ethical demands that we most don’t want to meet.
- He would have us read a challenging text within the context of its own book, and then its own author, before we stretch to other parts of the Bible.
- Sometimes we will find tensions.
It’s at this point that we have to decide if we believe that this is the word of God. Because, if it is, those tensions are deliberate and deep, careful, reflection on them will yield wisdom.
It’s also at this point that I need to part ways with Hays a little. I think we should read the Bible polyphonically, but he doesn’t think all the tensions are resolvable (he again gives Romans 13 and Revelation 13 as an example). He argues we must either choose one or if we try to drive between them, we’ll reject both. He’s against forced harmonisation.
I too am against forced harmonisation, but I am convinced that the polyphonic chorus sings in intricate harmonies if we deign to stop long enough to listen. Some of these are not easy. I do not have every answer and every tension sown up. The Bible is wisdom literature, and its harder parts require work to understand. I believe in the perspicuity (or clarity) of scripture, it’s not obscure, it’s doing what the Lord intended it to do. That doesn’t make everything in it easy to grasp, even if the majority of it is.
What’s my main point? Slow down on resolving tensions. If you’re a preacher, trust your congregations to handle some of them. Believe that wisdom comes from chewing on the text with others. Chew on the text with others (like the cud—which was the point of that food law). Trust that wisdom will arise. Expect the Bible’s more radical claims to change our hearts, our churches, and therefore our worlds.
I suspect to some this all sounds a bit obscurantist (like using the word obscurantist), which is more a feature of my writing than my opinion (I hope). The simple take away is this: God has spoken, let him speak.
Photo by Samuel Sianipar on Unsplash
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