The Bible Made Impossible - Chapter 5(a)

Chapter 5 - "The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key"
 This chapter begins the second part of this book in which Christian Smith proposes ways "toward a truly evangelical reading of Scripture." For me this chapter is the most wonderful chapter of the book; however, its beauty in enhanced by the chapters before it because those chapters help remove certain mindsets about the Bible that get in the way of seeing Jesus in Scripture. Because this chapter is lengthy, I will cover it with two posts.

The author  is addressing those who want to find a way (other than biblicism) to approach Scripture that is essentially faithful to the sensibilities of the evangelical tradition. He begins the chapter by defining what it means to be "evangelical": the word evangelical is the joining of two Greek words which mean "good" and "message." "To be evangelical, then, means having one's life centered on the terrifically good message that God is reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ... The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we will ever need to hear and know, and it has the power to reframe and transform everything else...Biblicism too often traps, domesticates, and controls the life-quaking kerygma (proclamation) of the gospel in order to provide the Bible reader with the security, certainty, and protection that humans naturally want."
(We fallen humans like the security we feel in knowing things for certain; by making the Bible an easy handbook to go to - as opposed to doing the difficult work of getting to know an unpredictable and strange Person - biblicism provides answers that are easily accessible, certain and safe.) 

Smith goes on to challenge American evangelicals' "natural historical tendencies toward entrepreneurial, activist, pragmatic, immediate problem-solving, and instead spend time needed to think through matters carefully, creatively, and in interaction with the larger, longer Christian tradition." 

The Centrality of Jesus Christ 

Most of this chapter is dedicated to Jesus being "the purpose, center, and interpretive key to Scripture." Although this reality should be obvious to evangelical believers, the truth is that we have tried to make the Bible be a divine instruction manual that is universally applicable on just about any topic it seems to address; and in doing so, we miss the point of God's giving us the Scriptures, which is "all and only about the work of God in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world."

Following are quotes from other writers pertaining to this:

 Keith Ward
"For a Christian, every part of the Bible must in some way point to Christ, to the living person   of Jesus who is the Christ, and to the unlimited, liberating love of God which is revealed in Christ. To put it bluntly, it is not the words of the Bible that are 'the way, the truth, and the life.' It is the person of Christ, to whom the Bible witnesses." 

Peter Enns
"The unity of the Bible...is a unity that should ultimately be sought in Christ himself, the living word...We believe not only that the Bible is the word of God, but that Christ himself is the word...The written word bears witness to the incarnate word, Christ...The Bible bears witness to Christ by Christ's design. He is over the Bible, beyond it, separate from it, even though the Bible is his word and thus bears witness to him. Christ is supreme, and it is in him, the embodied word, that the written word ultimately finds its unity..."

John Stott
"Whenever we read the Bible, we must look for Christ. And we must go on looking until we see and until we believe."

To read Scripture in a Christ-centered way is to help us read it better but also to provide help in revising our theological mindset and method by putting God at the center, not our own ways of knowing. This brings to mind the two trees in the garden of Eden, representing two ways of knowing: through God in Christ or through independent soulish knowing apart from God.


I will complete this chapter in a day or two...