“Scripture and tradition require to be read in a way that brings out their strangeness, their non-obvious and non-contemporary qualities, in order that they may be read both freshly and truthfully from one generation to another. They need to be made more difficult before we can accurately grasp their simplicities.... And this ‘making difficult’, this confession that what the gospel says in Scripture and tradition does not instantly and effortlessly make sense, is perhaps one of the most fundamental tasks for theology.”—Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 236. [HT: Alastair]
I like that.
If it makes instant sense to ears trained in the spirit of this age, could we have possibly heard it correctly? Isn't this another way of saying that we must always be sure that we are proclaiming the gospel of Christ's kingdom- not the latest "self-evident" fad of this passing age?
3 comments:
You mean like the book of second opinions many Christians seem to have in their Bible? I have 3 Bibles at home all different translations and not 1 has the book of second opinions... Go figure. The other part of this is that it was a completly different age when the books and letters et al were brought together into what we call the Bible. The technology was different and so some of the things that made perfect sense to the people 2000 years ago, make us scratch our heads today...
Yeah. Mine is missing that book, too.
I agree with you completely that one of our biggest dangers is reading our “stuff” back into scripture. Sadly, the worst practitioners of this are those who most want to take the Bible seriously. The problem is that we use our modern standard of “seriously” when we approach the text. Modern men and women are notoriously nonliterary, in my opinion; and so we bring a reductionistic, woodenly literal grid to the passages we are reading. After all, that how we would write the thing…if we were the one’s doing the writing. But if we truly respect the book that St. Paul, for example, wrote, then we need to find the book he wrote- not the one we would have written. This requires work. The gospel is hard in this sense.
But I was thinking the gospel ought to be difficult in another way. Just as there is a danger of reading our technological/literary presuppositions back into an ancient text, we need to be careful that we don’t infuse the “gospel” with the message of this age. An obvious example would be the health and wealth message that is wildly popular. “Gospelese” is used to make the case for a position that is contrary to taking up a cross for the sake of others.
So, in a nutshell: I think the gospel is screwy from any perspective that this age offers. If it makes instant sense to those who are hearing it- if it doesn’t appear a little screwy (or "foolish" to quote Paul), something is probably wrong.
By the way, thank you for stopping by.
Well, it's hard to take is seriously if you think "Paul was stoned" sounds like "Fast times at Ridgemont High" and you have not a clue about the mustard plant. Some things are and should be pretty obvious in the Bible. But you are right that it takes time and effort to really get it. I think that's why I have three different bibles. One's an NIV devotional for men, (very cool), I have a study Bible where it has maps, notes and other things to help the reader get a better grip on what they're reading. That one is a NLT bible, which is not my favorite translation. Then I have my old one from when I was a kid. I'd like to get a New King James version at some point.
You have a good blog, that's why I have a link on mine. Mmmmm Chili Dogs...
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