Ken Schenk has started a series of posts towards a basic study guide of critical issues in approaching the Bible. The first two are here and here. Take a look at these as they get posted. As far as short introductions go, he packs a lot in, and his introduction to the OT Canon is a good example of the “in a nutshell” genre. I’m sure that different people would place their emphases slightly differently, or quibble over a detail here and there. (Is Psalms in Luke 24 simply a reference to the collection we know now?)
I was, however, pulled up short by his introduction, and left in two minds.
I personally think a seminary trained pastor should at least have heard of the standard critical issues of the Bible. They don’t need to know too much about those issues as they are really tangential to what ministry is overwhelmingly about. Indeed, I would argue these issues are tangential to what the Bible is primarily about for Christians.
And I don’t say that because I am in denial, as if anyone with a brain or with faith knows that these issues have no substance but are simply the faithless schemes of godless liberals. I say that because the Bible as God’s word is the Bible as Christian canon, and on this level it matters precious little whether there were sources that the Pentateuch edited into its current form.
Let me make a couple of personal contextual comments. First, in the Church of England, a bachelor’s degree or equivalent in theology validated by a secular university is now part of the normal training requirements. That means more than just “[hearing] of the standard critical issues”. But I’m also responsible for the provision of our diocesan course for lay preachers (Readers) which is nationally moderated by the Church, and so find myself asking Ken’s question more in this latter context.
What limits our coverage of issues is time more than thought through first principles of what students need to know, but if I had the luxury of more time, I think I would expect a more thorough engagement with the critical issues. The appeal to final form seems to me to close things down too quickly. It is prone to the danger of being a docetic approach: one doesn’t need to engage the messiness of the human process to listen to the divine word.
Let me give a couple of examples:
- The OT material on creation. A final form approach tends to start with Genesis 1 for obvious reasons. The way in which engagement with Babylon, and the experience of learning to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, however, issue in the powerful henotheistic work of deutero-Isaiah, which holds creation and salvation together in more dynamic ways than the historicized ordering of creation, fall [a Christian emphasis] and Israel’s vocation towards redemption.
- Sticking with Isaiah for a moment, I think some sense of the diversity of origin for the book needs to be held onto together with unity of themes. So the Zion theology of Isaiah of Jerusalem needs to go through the chastening experience of being re-interpreted as tradition by the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day. (This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord – Jer 7:4) Only then can it emerge towards the end of the exile in a more complex vision of the God whose servant must suffer for his people to be saved.
Those are not intended to argue against final form readings: I believe there is a proper tension between a whole range of methods in reading scripture. They are to say that mapping the history of the text as best we can also has much to teach us of the ways in which God works with humanity. If I were to push the point, I’d be tempted to say that the messiness of the process may have more to teach the pastor about working with people than the purity of a canonical theology based on the final form. More than a nodding acquaintance is needed.
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