The following are some
thoughts I’ve been thinking. Actually, in writing them out here, I am trying to
wrap my arms around them a bit. That is to say that I don’t have all of this
figured out yet, and I am not quite ready to write it out formally. I guess
what I am saying is that I am using this paper, and whoever has the courage to
read my words, as a kind of sounding board to work through my idea(s).
I think the seeds of
these thoughts must have been planted in my mind several years back when I went
to a lecture by Walter Brueggemann. I can’t quite remember exactly what he said
in his response to a question asked by one of the audience members, but he said
something which was fascinatingly disturbing. The individual in the audience
asked something about how we can assure that people will theologize correctly.
Walter Brueggemann claimed that there isn’t a reliable way to regulate correct
theologizing. He went on to explain that there doesn’t need to be, and
shouldn’t be such a thing.
He discussed the way in
which each generation produces theologians. Some generations produce superior
or inferior ones, ones that are more or less responsible, ones that are truer
or more divergent from the truth or to the reliable traditions of old. He
explained that it is God’s responsibility to oversee the conveyance of His
message. All of that resonated nicely with me; it felt simultaneously freeing,
and disconcerting to think that we, or someone, or some group, doesn’t have to
obsess over making sure ‘others’ get it right. That’s what we do; our
insecurities of what others might do, call us to acts of control, regulation,
codification, systematization… the pasteurization, homogenization,
sanitization, and processing of truth into something innocuous. We turn
something that is supposed to be “the power of God unto salvation” into
something un-scary, safe, and with an enduring, everlasting shelf life.
So perhaps there is a
way of making sure we, as a believing community, are all on the same page for
identity’s sake. Perhaps what is needed is not regulatory in nature, but a kind
of categorization of what is Christian, and what isn’t. A criteria which is set
so we know who is in and who is out…
Of recent I keep running
into the argument that true Christianity is a Christianity which adheres to
history; the true Christianity is the historic Christianity. But then I keep
wondering: what part of history? I know, I know… the part of history that has
the creeds and such. The parts of history which agree with the things that the
likes of Augustine and Aquinas had to say. The problem is that we can’t really
say that one part of history is more authoritative than another. As soon as we
start using apologetics to get to a moment in history that is more authorized
than another, we have to start explaining why the line of reasoning doesn’t
apply to the likes of Muhammad, or Joseph Smith. There was no definitive moment in scripture
to emulate; Eden was banned, the prophets endlessly railed against their
history and ‘now moments’, Jesus took issue with His contemporary orthodoxy,
the ‘Acts moment’ was over before the world had a chance to process it. What is
more authoritative than any of the scriptural moments?
I am certain that we
don’t need regulation. I don’t think we are in need of a criteria of
continuity. The tower of Babel tale would have us believe that God isn’t too
excited about homogeneity. And the Book of Revelation describes a church made
up of churches whose practices are individualistic, each with good and bad
points, none of those points, at least as far as Jesus was concerned while
critiquing them, was their lack of homogeneity. But, in the same way we can distinguish jazz
from non-jazz, and we can distinguish good jazz from bad jazz (I realize that
much of it is subjective, but that is partly my point, and partly, my point is
that, generally, we know it when we hear it) we can think about authenticity.
Rather than hunt for an
authorized moment to emulate, or pursuing an authorized historicity which is
wrought with unreliability, perhaps we ought to pursue authorized individuals
who lead the way. I propose that we look to the structure of the text, and the method(s)
of scripture’s writers. If we start with
the writers of scripture, a group of individuals who God set apart to record
His message, and endeavor to emulate the ‘how’ of what they did, we can take
away a reliable methodology for the ‘doing’ of scripture.
The way in which
scripture is written is informative. How scripture was handled by its writers
is informative. By sticking to their form and structure, we adhere to a
reliable maneuvering of scripture. The content of scripture is informed by its
structure. The message of Job, for example, gets past the modern reader pretty
easily unless, and until its structure is considered.
The first and last
chapters of Job mirror each other. They complement one another, and almost
answer each other in dialog-like coherence. The middle of Job works almost like
Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is made up of
a series of proposals which are intended to examine philosophical
misconceptions of God, and how He has set up reality. After an idea in
Ecclesiastes is proposed, each one of the believing community’s incorrect ways
of thinking are shot down into absurdity. Ecclesiastes concludes with the only
possibly correct way of thinking about humankind’s purpose, and its proper
response to God.
Obviously, there is more
to the structure of Job than what is contained in the above paragraph, but by
noticing the structure, and tracking how it works, the message becomes clearer.
Job is all about transformation from someone who knows of God from a distance
to someone who knows God enough to be able to hear Him directly. Job’s
structure drives the content. Method matters too.
When we consider
Ezekiel, we see scripture like none other. Ezekiel doesn’t change any of the
sentiments which came before him. Even though many parts are spectacular on the
onset, there really isn’t anything new presented in the Book of Ezekiel. ‘How’
he presents the age old, reliable material of the believing community’s
collective memory though, well that is everything. It is a new riffing off of
the theologizing, which came before, all done in new, and fresh ways which
struck the minds and hearts of his contemporary population. He was bold. When
the people didn’t hear the old message, the old way, he committed himself to
performance art. The message wasn’t changed, it wasn’t watered down, it was
retold in the face of Ezekiel’s present darkness.
Such a way of getting
the message across sets precedence and implies permission for us to reimagine
the sacred text, to riff on it for our now. We can’t learn to do this from
historicity, but by studying the form of what has already been written in the
sacred texts, and paying homage to their writers by emulating the way in which
(the ‘how’) they worked the message over and over again, we can reliably and
successfully face off our present darkness. Appointed, authorized scripture
writers, with their structures, and methods, are a superior guide to us in getting the
message ‘right’, than is historicity.
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