Reading the Bible in Light of Scot McKnight’s Blue Parakeets

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

If you read Christian blogs you are probably already familiar with Scot McKnight’s popular and insightful blog, Jesus Creed. I don’t always read blogs, (Christian or otherwise), but when I do, I prefer Jesus Creed… That is, whenever I go there I find good, sane wisdom. Scot McKnight’s writing is always worth your time. I just came back from a week’s vacation. I brought three books along with me and although I spent some time with the other two books the one book I read straight through (years after everyone else already read it, probably including you) was Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008).

I think it is a wonderful and even very important and easy book on the interpretation of Scripture. It is an easy read and is not the kind of book that is likely to persuade anyone who is already committed to a different way of reading the Bible, but for those who are not already committed to a different way of reading the Bible, who are looking for some initial guidance and/or are willing to let Scot serve as their insightful guide, this will be a very helpful book. (Scot teaches undergraduate students at North Park University and this book is filled with material reflecting that context and clearly would be very useful for students in a context like that, as well as for many other kinds of readers.) The book discusses the tendency to read the Bible as a law book or a rule book or to treat it like a puzzle, and argues for the need to understand it as God’s story in which God spoke to (and through) different people in their days and their ways.

“Blue parakeets” (a reference explained through an observation of bird behaviors at a birdfeeder in the McKnight’s yard) are texts in the Bible or questions that people ask about them that cause us to stop and think again about our understanding of Scripture and how we use it today (see pages 24-25). Scot asks us to face up to the fact that readers pick and choose (or adopt and adapt) which texts we will obey and apply (and he provides plenty of evidence that that is indeed the case) and he seeks to uncover the unwritten and unconscious process of discernment that would explain how we go about that process of picking and choosing so that we can think more clearly about what we are doing and why. Along the way the book emphasizes a number of themes that have become dear to my own heart (and which I have addressed in some of my earlier posts here), including, among other things, Augustine’s promotion of a hermeneutic of love. He also emphasizes the importance of learning to read the Bible with the Great Tradition (but not through the Great Tradition).

I am slightly uncomfortable with some of the language used here and there (like “Is this passage for today or not?”; page 25), but Scot clarifies (I think) that it isn’t ultimately about some passages being for today or not but about whether they are to be applied/obeyed/practiced today and in our culture (or in other times and cultures) in the same way as would have been expected for the original audience or if they may serve as “blue parakeets” that can lead us to stop and think and point us to something beyond the original context and inform our understanding and behavior in different ways that are also informed by the rest of Scripture and our ever-developing understanding of creation and culture. (Scot would compare and contrast “our days and ways” with “those days and ways.”)

James’ Long Boney Finger

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I was reading through the second chapter of James the other day and found his long boney finger poking me in the chest again. The good brother of Jesus was once again yelling at me, in this case about my ever so subtle tendency toward expressing favoritism in my church.

The scene he paints could not be more vivid: The setting is the gathered place of worship, perhaps a messianic synagogue (James 2.2-4). As we read the story in the second chapter, possibly the glint of gold on the finger as the sun hits it is what we are drawn to first. Then we notice the purple robes. Clearly this person who just entered the synagogue is a person of distinction. We cannot help but notice him, and if noticing him is our only fault, perhaps we would be okay. But, it takes only this first glance at this visitor for the social gravity of the place to take over. Like a rock, the rich visitor falls to the front of the place of worship. When he arrives at the front, he found a poor man without a ring, void of a colorful robe, and perched at his feet. Let the worship service begin.

Extending beyond my own personal proclivities in this matter as I face the fellowship hall of my own church every Sunday, I find the most dramatic example of preferentiality in the church today in general is in the celebrity status we give to some within our congregations. Don’t we offer certain individuals in our Christian circles celebrity status that mimics the larger culture around us? People and US magazines have nothing on us in this regard. If we were to compare the lists of celebrities who are hot commodities in the Christian world at any time, our lists would be remarkably similar. We should resist this celebrity culture for the sake of these individuals as well as for our own.

Further, the greatest dangers in our churches in this regard maybe the most subtle. Discussions involving the status of churches themselves inevitably will illicit a clear profile of what would conventionally be considered “healthy” or vital churches versus those considered not so. Any pastor committed to the current canon of literature involving numerous church growth models in circulation will know that the “sweet spot” in any congregation involves attracting young couples in their 20’s through their 40’s who have lots of children and youth to fill church programs. These are the productive years in the lives of families; the hope is, of course, some of this productivity will translate into the productivity within our churches as well. Conversely, when discussing less productive churches, the most natural description is that they are small churches “filled with old people.”

There is undoubtedly logic to this profile that has a great deal of merit to it, and it has, by and large, passed the test of time for pragmatic reasons. But stepping back far enough to see this perspective against the larger backdrop of the kingdom of God, does this profile of church life not illustrate precisely what James rails against in his example of what is not to go on in the churches he is writing to in first century Asia Minor? Like the silver ring and purple robe of the wealthy visitor, we give preferential treatment to the most productive in our midst. It is for these that we re-engineer our worship services, sometimes to the objections of a prior generation. It is for these that we develop our best programs. And it is to these we seek to attract and accommodate. We do these things while those who we may deem less productive—the aging, sometimes singles, at times the economically challenged—tend not to get as much of our attention. Even our descriptions of them suggest that we view them somewhat as liabilities to our church life.[1] Of this, I will only repeat James’ admonition: “My brothers (and sisters), as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism (2.1).”

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[1] There are several who are beginning to rethink some of these values that have become so central to our thinking of church life. Two who have especially rethought the role of the elderly within our churches are Gordon McDonald, Who Stole My Church (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2007) and Cedric W. Tilberg, Revolution Underway: An Aging Church in an Aging Society, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984.

How Should We Respond?

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

Last week, I was on our South Hamilton campus, teaching my Human Sexuality course. In the airport on the way up, I read the story in the NY Times about NY State passing its “gay marriage” law. The part that I found most distressing was the description of how the law came to be passed. Several key Republicans had to be won over. One wanted to change his mind because the woman he was living with had a gay nephew, and she was making life at home difficult for him. Several others changed their votes because the governor rallied rich donors who made them offers they could not refuse. The article admitted there was little political rationale for passing this law, as there was little support for it in the majority of the state. But the Gay Lobby wanted it and the governor wanted it, so it happened. And so NY State went the way of 6 other states in our country to endorse “gay marriage.”

I found myself thinking about this story during my week of teaching. Here are some of my thoughts:

Homophobia - throwing this word out is an ad hominin argument. When you cannot make a rationale defense, you attack the person, which ends the discussion. This has been used very effectively to silence the opposition to “gay marriage.”

So far in this arena, our society, and Christians, have let the gay lobby set the agenda. They have, for example, framed this as a “civil rights” issue. This requires homosexuality to be like race and gender: biologically determined and fixed & unchanging. They will shout down any information to the contrary (and there is plenty), because that would undermine their argument for seeing them through the lense of civil rights. However, this is permitting them to set the agenda. In apologetics, one should never let the opposition set the agenda; they will on this basis invariably win the argument. In this kind of debate, whoever sets the agenda has a significant advantage over the other and usually wins, in this case, at great cost to the witness of the gospel.

Grace and Truth. As I was teaching on the subject of homosexuality, I talked about Grace and Truth. The church has erred in two ways on the question of how to relate to individuals who identify as homosexual or gay. One has been to completely capitulate to their demands, emphasizing grace to the exclusion of truth, and ending with licentiousness. The other is to violently oppose them, erring on the side of truth to the exclusion of grace, and ending with legalism. If we are to be faithful to the truth of the Bible and the God who authored it, we must always balance grace and truth. We must walk that fine middle line, loving the sinner while hating the sin. My students asked how we should respond to homosexuals. I suggested we should love them, genuinely and honestly, while holding fast to God’s truth on how we should live. We can trust God for the rest.

Next Year in Jerusalem?

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I’m writing this during my first trip to Israel. I’m here at Jerusalem University College (JUC), auditing their three-week course on Historical and Geographical Settings of the Bible, which is being taught by Dr. Carl Rasmussen (author of the Zondervan Bible Atlas, who lived here for 16 years and has an exhaustive knowledge of the land). This has been a wonderful experience. JUC has many years of experience in teaching these courses and their faculty (as in the case of Dr. Rasmussen) really know their stuff.

Although the course has more of an emphasis on Old Testament contexts there is plenty of New Testament context in the course as well. We have walked all over Jerusalem multiple times (I’ve done so a few more times in my free time). Just thinking of things relating to New Testament times or events, I/we’ve been to the pool of Siloam, the pool of Bethesda, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (traditional site of Christ’s crucifixion and burial and, hence, resurrection), the “Garden Tomb” and “Gordon’s Calvary” (alternative sites for the same, promoted by some), the traditional site of the garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount, sat on the steps to the Hulda Gates (gates in the southern wall of the Temple Mount), and more. Outside Jerusalem we’ve been (among other places) to the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem (and the traditional site of Christ’s birth), Masada, Qumran. Tomorrow we leave for a four-day trip to Galilee and then a day in Samaria. So far each day has given me clearer images and understandings of biblical things and events and why things happened they way they did or were done the way they were.

Does someone have to come to Israel to understand (most of) the Bible? Of course not. Most of the readers of the Bible throughout history never lived in or visited the places mentioned within it. Most of the original readers of the New Testament had probably never lived in or visited the places mentioned in the Bible. (Of course most of the original readers of the Old Testament did live in the land and knew these places.) But seeing these places and learning about the geology and geography helps one not only visualize what took place but understand more clearly the strategic importance of many of the places mentioned and how they relate to other places mentioned in the biblical narratives.

Visual perception and how maps, pictures and diagrams don’t do the same (at least for me) as actually seeing the places and things and recognizing their sizes, proportions, physical relationships with other objects, etc. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you take a course like the one I’m doing right now. For the JUC course see their website and check out the short-term programs. Gordon-Conwell will be offering its own “Study Seminar in Israel and Jordan” in January of 2011, led by the highly competent Dr. Jim Critchlow. You can see his excellent syllabus. If you are interested in going along I suggest you contact the GCTS Hamilton registration office as soon as possible to see if there are any slots left!

If you are a student at GCTS you might speak with the chair of the division of biblical studies about how you might include one of these courses in your program. If you are an alumnus/alumna of GCTS and in full-time ministry, I recommend you consider coming for one of these courses during a sabbatical break from your ministry if possible. If you find yourself in a different situation you may have other means of or better times for coming.

For those who may not be able to come, I can recommend Dr. Carl Rasmussen’s website, “Holy Land Photos,” as a source of wonderful pictures about just about any place of interest in the lands of the Old or New Testament.

The words “Next year in Jerusalem” are usually recited by Jews at the conclusion of the Yom Kippur service and the Passover Seder. But perhaps it would be an apt phrase to keep in mind when you think of your plans for biblical study, spiritual renewal or professional development as well!

A Stroll Along a Raging River

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Harsh words for a gentle, country Scottish pastor, but here they are:

The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness.

Amazing words with a surprising sting to them.

Surprising, indeed! I began reading William Still’s book, The Work of the Pastor, with the idea that I would be taking a leisurely stroll along side of a placid Scottish pond and found myself most often knee deep, fighting a raging river. This faithful country preacher who ‘pastured’ in the same small parish at Gilcomston South Church of Scotland for over fifty years packs quite a punch in his understanding of what it means to be a pastor.

To read what Still places at the very center of what it means to be a pastor seems at first obvious. Obvious, until you realize he really means it. He insists, the Word of God fully and exclusively defines the role of the pastor. Not only does it shape the preaching and teaching ministries of a pastor as one would expect, but the simple power of the Word is meant to spill out into the life of a pastor as he or she walks through his or her community, the way he or she goes about the mundane management of church life, the way pastoral care is distributed to the flock. Allow me to have him speak for himself again:

"To be true pastors, your whole life must be spent in knowing the truth of this Word, not only verbally, propositionally, theologically, but religiously, that is, devotionally, morally, in worshipping Him whom it reveals, and in personal obedience to Him whose commands it contains…”

Everything in a pastor’s life should be laced with the Word.

One of the implications of this radical commitment to the Word in ministry is that Still would suggest that many of the ministry tools we have grown to view as important for doing our job as pastors not only are not essential but actually compete with the Word for our attention and the attention of our flock. Unintentionally, perhaps, our over-dependence on church programs has become a cheap substitute for the power of the Word, entertainment most often has become a substitute for fellowship in the Word, and in the case of his words at the beginning of this blog, cheep gimmicks intended to attract unbelievers are more evidence of our lack of confidence in the power of the Word than of our well-intended concerns for the lost.

I recommend you take a stroll along this raging river of a book. It is well worth the risk.

Not for God’s Secrets

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

I was reading along in my Bible recently, and came across this verse:

“The Lord our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions.” (Deut 29:29)

It is a part of Moses’ final words to the people of Israel before he dies and they enter the Promised Land. It is a part of his final word reinforcing both the promises and the curses of the covenant God made with the people of Israel.

I have been thinking about this verse ever since I came across it. How cool is it that God does not require us to be responsible for everything! He has required only the things he has told us about! When I first read this verse, I was thinking about the questions that always come to mind in the face of suffering: Why, Lord?! It can be frustrating but it is also a mercy that this is one of God’s secret things. We are not in charge of the universe so we don’t have to worry about why. This could be a very difficult place however for someone in the face of apparently meaningless suffering. This is where our faith can hold us and give us peace. Because the Bible does reveal who God is, because his character is not a secret he has kept to himself, we can know that he is faithful and good and merciful and just and sovereign. In this knowledge, we can navigate the storms in our lives with confidence that God is in charge and whatever we are going through, he has a purpose for, and in this knowledge we can have peace and confidence.

But as I continued to think about this verse, it occurs to me that the most important thing that God has revealed for which we are accountable is that he sent his beloved Son to save us. Jesus said “you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me” (John 5:39). When Paul preached at Berea, we are told that the listeners examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so (Acts 17:11). We can have confidence that we will find the truth about Jesus there because that is the purpose of Scripture. So, according to this verse in Deuteronomy, what we are responsible for is knowing Jesus and, in knowing him, have eternal life. Thank you, Lord, that this is what you require of me!

We recently had a dust-up because claims have been made once again about the end of time and the return of Jesus and his judgment of the world. May 21 past without a ripple. I expect October 21 to do the same. Jesus said of his second coming, “of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the father alone” (Matthew 24: 36). Before he returned to the father, he reiterated the point, “is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:7). Jesus’ return is one of God’s secrets. Because of this assertion by Jesus, whenever I hear announcements about his return, I feel assured that whatever date is proposed is wrong! If we keep these things in mind, we will not be led astray by false prophets. We can stay on track with God’s intentions by paying attention to what he has revealed and not trying to figure out what he has decided to keep secret. This is the way to live at peace and in the confidence that God is in charge, and that the Lord of all the universe will do what is right and good and just.

The Bible in the World: Abolitionist, Contemporary and Future Perceptions

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I just returned from the 2011 iteration of the Nida School of Translation Studies and the second residency of our new D.Min. track in Bible Translation, which took place in Misano Adriatico, Italy.

Faculty and Associates of the Nida School come from diverse places and perspectives with some coming from the field of Bible translation and others from the wider academic field of Translation Studies, with special affinity to Post-Colonial criticism and other ideological criticisms. For many people on one side (you can guess which one) the positive impact of the Bible in people’s lives and in society is perfectly obvious and the thought that Bible translation could contribute to injustice or oppression in the world is hard to believe. For many people on the other side (again, you can guess which one), it is obvious that the Bible and its translation have been part of oppressive imperialistic and colonizing powers and movements and that the Bible has shown itself to be a dangerous book with a problematical reception-history.

I think this is another of those instances where each side tends to be correct in what it affirms but reductionist in what it denies. That is, the Bible has led millions of people to peace, forgiveness, grace and hope, and have led to the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages, and innumerable charitable ministries around the world. And it has also been used through the centuries to support unjust and oppressive institutions, relationships and behaviors.

On the flight home from Italy I began reading Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Although I’ve only read the first four chapters so far I can say I highly recommend it (for what I have read so far). But it has also provided a remarkable parallel to what I had just observed at the Nida School.

Callahan discusses the opposing positions of Frederick Douglass (whom I have mentioned in an earlier ETC post) and Henry Highland Garnet in a debate that took place in New York in 1849:

“Douglass and Garnet were both African Americans. Both had escaped slavery from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. But their respective experiences of slavery, literacy, and religion—and so their respective experiences of the Bible—were profoundly different, and those differences crystallized in diametrically opposed views of the Bible's liberating power…. Garnet saw the liberating power of the Bible as self-evident. It was so for him: he assumed it would be so for slaves in the South who might manage to read or have read to them a contraband copy of the holy scriptures that he knew so well” (page 22).

Callahan reminds us that “the abolitionists of the North and the planter class of the South read from the same Bible. Long before Lincoln, Douglass had learned that the Bible was the highest authority of American slavery and the strongest link in the chain of oppression and violence that warranted slavery as the sacred basis for the Christian culture of what would become the Confederacy” (23).

“Bitter experience had taught Douglass and other slaves and former slaves that the master class of the United States bore a whip in one hand and a Bible in the other. It was this Bible that Garnet and his colleagues were now proposing to send to the South” (23).

“Douglass anticipated that the Bibles sent to the South would become raw material for proslavery propaganda” since he “knew intimately what Garnet's limited experience with slavery could not teach: that the justice of the Bible was not self-evident. Douglass had begun to learn the Bible as a slave, and he knew that some people reading the Bible under the slave regime remained tone-deaf to its message of justice” (24).

The two former slaves held dramatically different perceptions of the Bible’s role in either combating or supporting injustice and oppression in ways that directly parallel perceptions found today (over 160 years later) among those who also see the Bible as naturally supporting one side or the other of this justice/injustice divide. So abolitionist and contemporary perceptions of the Bible are similarly divided. What will it take if future perceptions of the Bible are not to be similarly divided on this crucial point?

We who love the Bible cannot afford to be naïve about the fact that while it does and should do great good in people’s lives and in the world (including supporting battles against slavery, prejudice and other social evils) it has also been used to promote and/or justify oppressive relationships, institutions or cultural realities, including crusades, inquisition, slavery, apartheid, genocide, the abuse of women, children and minorities. It has been used to empower the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

How can we work to make sure that it serves as a weapon of justice rather than an accessory to injustice? Callahan points out that “none of Jesus’s words have been more influential—and more troublesome for the ideology of American slavery—than the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’ (Matt. 7:12). Simple observance of this simple principle would have rendered American slavery impossible” (35). Of course, the Golden Rule turns out to be a paraphrase of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves (found in Leviticus 19:18 and repeatedly cited by Jesus and his apostles [Matt. 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8]). So we are brought back again to Jesus’ own hermeneutic of love.

In his teaching On Christian Doctrine (1.36-37), Saint Augustine of Hippo stressed the importance of a hermeneutic of love. He argued that “[t]he fulfillment and end of scripture is the love of God and our neighbor.” Furthermore, “[t]hat interpretation of Scripture which builds us up in love is not perniciously deceptive nor mendacious, even though it be faulty…. Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.”

What if future generations could not look back (as I have just done with Callahan’s help) and continue to see that the same contradictory patterns continued through the 21^st century? What if the hermeneutic of Jesus, Augustine, abolitionists and others, a hermeneutic of love for God and neighbor might become so widely accepted that those that continue to interpret the Bible abusively would find themselves without any significant following due to a widespread awareness of such tragic abuse?

It is my prayer that God might bring that about and glorify himself through the church in that way… “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21; ESV)