A while back in a mid-way reflection of Scot McKnight's Blue Parakeet I offered few thoughts concerning the first half. Yesterday I finished Blue Parakeet. Thankfully so, my views of reading and interpreting the Bible were challenged, sharpened, and broadened.
In most, if not all, expressions of Christianity holy Scripture stands as the central and most formative document informing the uniquely Christian understanding of true life and true faith and true wisdom. Yet the fact that humans (fallen and imperfect) interpret these ancient documents; some apart from the past and present body of faith, some in a lust for power and authority, but most out of good faith and Spirit-humility, makes the enterprise a perpetually delicate one. The church is assured by Christ that the Spirit will guide all understanding and truth, but again, their stands the danger - the chaff must be sifted from the wheat.
The fact is, a new generation of believers ensures a re-engaging of the Scriptures. This responsibility requires that each generation reflect, rethink, and express a biblically, culturally, and theologically informed understanding of the Scriptures in a language that informs its own generation of the Grand Redemption Story found in the creation-covenant-Christ-church-consummation scheme presented in the ancient Word. The Scriptures in human hands poses a great danger, but equally so the freedom of Scripture offers hope for our frail race.
Thus, the importance of developing a listening earn, a discerning heart, and a Christian application of love when reading the Scriptures for our day is a grand responsibility. Though it is impossible that one generation offer the final interpretation, each generation must engage the past, rehash the past and present, and finally propose a generational newness to living out the gospel faithfully in its day, in its way.
McKnight breaks down walls and opens the floodgates. Sure, it's safe, comfortable, and easy to hold onto one's initial presuppositions and assumptions, but this often leads to static bulwarks of biblical interpretation and thus limits the way the gospel-story is lived out in a new generation.
What if the way we learned to read the Bible was misinformed because it does not speak to our day? What if our philosophies of knowledge and understanding shape the way we read the Bible in a different way than the past generation? Both are true. The fact is everyone picks and chooses what they "wish" the Bible to be and say in their day. Most of us wish to cage the Blue Parakeets - those wiki-stories that cause our nice-and-neat ways of reading the Bible to not be so nice-and-neat.
Some wish to take all of what the Bible says and apply it to their day, but they soon realize this doesn't work. It can't. It's a different time. Some wish to take all of it, but then boil it down to a neat "timeless" principle. Some wish to read it strictly in a particular age-old tradition without the freedom to review, rethink, and reapply. There are several ways of approaching the Bible, but McKnight argues that the most natural way is to approach it for what it is, a Story. A Grand Story of Oneness-Otherness-Oneness. The Grand Story (Tradition) offers the paradigm for understanding the culturally-contextualized wiki-stories (traditions). So we read the Bible as a Story with a Tradition, but the mistake is where we make the traditions equal to the Tradition. The Tradition is the Story of Redemption. The traditions are stories of redemption being worked out in a contextualized and localized age. We don't own slaves, but the Bible does not condemn the ownership of a human. We have determined the trajectory of the Scriptures to teach that each man is born in the image of God and is essentially a free entity requiring the same respect as the other.
Just how then do we develop a way of reading the Bible in our context? According to McKnight, we listen. We saturate ourselves with the Grand Story of Scripture and allow it to change us. Listening requires attention. Listening requires action. Listening requires humility. Listening is where we begin.
After we listen (a never-ending process) we begin, according to our level of maturity, to develop a Spirit-directed discernment of biblical wisdom so that we begin to apply the Story to the new generation's story. An age-old story of need and frailty, yet a brand-new time. Developing discernment requires attention to the details of both the Tradition and the traditions so that our gospel is "traditioned" in our context according to the grand Tradition. The gospel is never static. This movement of the Spirit requires a deep sensitivity to the ways in which we may increasingly demonstrate the love of God to the entirety of the creation.
In order to demonstrate this way of reading the Bible (Understanding the Story, Listening to the Story, Discerning the Story through the stories) McKnight chooses a highly sensitive test-case for which to apply his method of reading. In Evangelicalism, in particular in our day, the role of women in ministry has been a hot issue. Complimentarian or Egalitarian - which? Generally, most understand the "silencing" passages in Paul's letter to the Corinthians and to Timothy to teach that women cannot stand in an authoritative teaching position over grown adult men. Women are to be silent in the church, which being interpreted in our day is that women should not be allowed the ministry of preaching to the congregation. Most conservative churches would never allow a woman to preach or teach, except to children and youth, and likewise most would not consider the ordination of a woman to the gospel-ministry.
McKnight tackles the issue head-on being guided by the Story, Listen, Discern method of reading the Bible. The Grand Story is this - the story where all believers have become one in Christ so that there is no distinction, while being Spirit-led and Spirit-taught. All are given the gifts of the Spirit and all are equally precious in God's eyes. McKnight defers to the fall as that which causes the perpetuation of men wishing to be over women and women wishing to be over men. The fall broke the Oneness and caused Otherness, but in Christ we have been brought back into a Oneness so that all are equally as precious to God and each other. In keeping women out of ministry we as believers are perpetuating the "otherness" of the fall rather than the "oneness" of the Redemption. He supports this argument through the examples of several influential women in the Bible. The overall trajectory of Scripture give prominence to women and nowhere does Scripture disallow their gifts from the community of believers.
Of course you will find the "Read and Retrieve" bunch (especially men) standing firm on keeping women silent in the church, but McKnight argues, and rightly so, that this method of reading the Bible is insufficient, not to mention impossible. And not only that, they are inconsistent in that they allow women to teach them through all other avenues of learning - through books, commentaries, testimonies, etc.
Paul's day was consistently patriarchal, thus Paul expresses a "tradition" that was localized for his day. McKnight spells out some significant details regarding the historical and cultural context of the day, and traces the arguments of Paul and comes to a final conclusion: "We can at least begin with two basic options: either we have a general prohibition of women teaching and leading with some exceptions, or we have the possibility of women teaching and leading with some restrictions. There is no ground, however, for total silencing of women in the church."
McKnight's view of Scripture and reading the Bible is perhaps the most balanced thinking I have encountered. Though I am not entirely sure I agree with his final conclusions about the "Women in Ministry" problem, I can certainly agree with direction of his thinking. We must read the Scriptures with Tradition, but not through tradition given the dynamic power of the gospel to speak to every generation in that generation's particular way. Part of the gospel in our generation is the equality of all humankind; race, gender, nationality aside, all believers are one in Christ and all believers have been given the same Spirit to guider and direct. We must Listen to the Story and Discern how that Story applies to our generation and our context.
In most, if not all, expressions of Christianity holy Scripture stands as the central and most formative document informing the uniquely Christian understanding of true life and true faith and true wisdom. Yet the fact that humans (fallen and imperfect) interpret these ancient documents; some apart from the past and present body of faith, some in a lust for power and authority, but most out of good faith and Spirit-humility, makes the enterprise a perpetually delicate one. The church is assured by Christ that the Spirit will guide all understanding and truth, but again, their stands the danger - the chaff must be sifted from the wheat.
The fact is, a new generation of believers ensures a re-engaging of the Scriptures. This responsibility requires that each generation reflect, rethink, and express a biblically, culturally, and theologically informed understanding of the Scriptures in a language that informs its own generation of the Grand Redemption Story found in the creation-covenant-Christ-church-consummation scheme presented in the ancient Word. The Scriptures in human hands poses a great danger, but equally so the freedom of Scripture offers hope for our frail race.
Thus, the importance of developing a listening earn, a discerning heart, and a Christian application of love when reading the Scriptures for our day is a grand responsibility. Though it is impossible that one generation offer the final interpretation, each generation must engage the past, rehash the past and present, and finally propose a generational newness to living out the gospel faithfully in its day, in its way.
McKnight breaks down walls and opens the floodgates. Sure, it's safe, comfortable, and easy to hold onto one's initial presuppositions and assumptions, but this often leads to static bulwarks of biblical interpretation and thus limits the way the gospel-story is lived out in a new generation.
What if the way we learned to read the Bible was misinformed because it does not speak to our day? What if our philosophies of knowledge and understanding shape the way we read the Bible in a different way than the past generation? Both are true. The fact is everyone picks and chooses what they "wish" the Bible to be and say in their day. Most of us wish to cage the Blue Parakeets - those wiki-stories that cause our nice-and-neat ways of reading the Bible to not be so nice-and-neat.
Some wish to take all of what the Bible says and apply it to their day, but they soon realize this doesn't work. It can't. It's a different time. Some wish to take all of it, but then boil it down to a neat "timeless" principle. Some wish to read it strictly in a particular age-old tradition without the freedom to review, rethink, and reapply. There are several ways of approaching the Bible, but McKnight argues that the most natural way is to approach it for what it is, a Story. A Grand Story of Oneness-Otherness-Oneness. The Grand Story (Tradition) offers the paradigm for understanding the culturally-contextualized wiki-stories (traditions). So we read the Bible as a Story with a Tradition, but the mistake is where we make the traditions equal to the Tradition. The Tradition is the Story of Redemption. The traditions are stories of redemption being worked out in a contextualized and localized age. We don't own slaves, but the Bible does not condemn the ownership of a human. We have determined the trajectory of the Scriptures to teach that each man is born in the image of God and is essentially a free entity requiring the same respect as the other.
Just how then do we develop a way of reading the Bible in our context? According to McKnight, we listen. We saturate ourselves with the Grand Story of Scripture and allow it to change us. Listening requires attention. Listening requires action. Listening requires humility. Listening is where we begin.
After we listen (a never-ending process) we begin, according to our level of maturity, to develop a Spirit-directed discernment of biblical wisdom so that we begin to apply the Story to the new generation's story. An age-old story of need and frailty, yet a brand-new time. Developing discernment requires attention to the details of both the Tradition and the traditions so that our gospel is "traditioned" in our context according to the grand Tradition. The gospel is never static. This movement of the Spirit requires a deep sensitivity to the ways in which we may increasingly demonstrate the love of God to the entirety of the creation.
In order to demonstrate this way of reading the Bible (Understanding the Story, Listening to the Story, Discerning the Story through the stories) McKnight chooses a highly sensitive test-case for which to apply his method of reading. In Evangelicalism, in particular in our day, the role of women in ministry has been a hot issue. Complimentarian or Egalitarian - which? Generally, most understand the "silencing" passages in Paul's letter to the Corinthians and to Timothy to teach that women cannot stand in an authoritative teaching position over grown adult men. Women are to be silent in the church, which being interpreted in our day is that women should not be allowed the ministry of preaching to the congregation. Most conservative churches would never allow a woman to preach or teach, except to children and youth, and likewise most would not consider the ordination of a woman to the gospel-ministry.
McKnight tackles the issue head-on being guided by the Story, Listen, Discern method of reading the Bible. The Grand Story is this - the story where all believers have become one in Christ so that there is no distinction, while being Spirit-led and Spirit-taught. All are given the gifts of the Spirit and all are equally precious in God's eyes. McKnight defers to the fall as that which causes the perpetuation of men wishing to be over women and women wishing to be over men. The fall broke the Oneness and caused Otherness, but in Christ we have been brought back into a Oneness so that all are equally as precious to God and each other. In keeping women out of ministry we as believers are perpetuating the "otherness" of the fall rather than the "oneness" of the Redemption. He supports this argument through the examples of several influential women in the Bible. The overall trajectory of Scripture give prominence to women and nowhere does Scripture disallow their gifts from the community of believers.
Of course you will find the "Read and Retrieve" bunch (especially men) standing firm on keeping women silent in the church, but McKnight argues, and rightly so, that this method of reading the Bible is insufficient, not to mention impossible. And not only that, they are inconsistent in that they allow women to teach them through all other avenues of learning - through books, commentaries, testimonies, etc.
Paul's day was consistently patriarchal, thus Paul expresses a "tradition" that was localized for his day. McKnight spells out some significant details regarding the historical and cultural context of the day, and traces the arguments of Paul and comes to a final conclusion: "We can at least begin with two basic options: either we have a general prohibition of women teaching and leading with some exceptions, or we have the possibility of women teaching and leading with some restrictions. There is no ground, however, for total silencing of women in the church."
McKnight's view of Scripture and reading the Bible is perhaps the most balanced thinking I have encountered. Though I am not entirely sure I agree with his final conclusions about the "Women in Ministry" problem, I can certainly agree with direction of his thinking. We must read the Scriptures with Tradition, but not through tradition given the dynamic power of the gospel to speak to every generation in that generation's particular way. Part of the gospel in our generation is the equality of all humankind; race, gender, nationality aside, all believers are one in Christ and all believers have been given the same Spirit to guider and direct. We must Listen to the Story and Discern how that Story applies to our generation and our context.