This is the continuation and conclusion of chapter 5 in which Christian Smith presses the point over and over again of the importance that we see all Scripture in light of Jesus and that any internal harmony in Scripture derives from its core purpose to tell us about Jesus; such harmony doesn't come from its propositions and stories fitting together in a perfect, neat puzzle.
"It (the Bible) witnesses to the incarnate person and work of Christ. It offers apostolic theological reflections on Christ for the church and the world. It shows the difference that Christ made in human life during the earliest years of the church. It tells us who and what we really are in light of Christ. And it sends us on a mission in life in response to the good news of Christ..."
The author quotes Geoffrey Bromiley: "...the Bible can serve as a means of Christian unity only when Jesus Christ is placed at its center..."
Before there was a recognized canon, the early church had what they called a "rule of faith" which was a summary of Christian truth containing "apostolic teaching" and "tradition" and "sound doctrine" and "the faith"; at the very center of this "rule of faith" was the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Later this rule of faith was used in determining which books should be included in the canon, meaning that the centrality of Jesus was the core determining issue in the formation of the canon.
Smith acknowledges that some official statements and declarations of American evangelicals have the "germ" of this Christ-centered insight, but he adds, "...such short, isolated Christocentric statements are rarely strong enough to counter the implications of the many other declarations about complete coverage, the handbook model, and so on, which tend to lead to a flat, centerless, biblicist reading of scripture...Nobody ends up explicitly denying that Christ is the purpose, center, meaning, and key to understanding scripture. But in actual practice Christ gets sidelined by the interest in defending every proposition and account as inerrant, universally applicable, contemporarily applicable..."
A Christ-centered approach to reading the Bible means that we see all of our daily issues through the "mind-transforming lens" of the big story of Jesus and of God's reconciling the world to himself in Jesus. Once we are gripped with the stunning good news of Jesus Christ, "...perhaps God wants us to figure out how Christians should think well about things like war, wealth, and sanctification, by thinking christologically about them, more than by simply piecing together this and that verse of scripture into an allegedly coherent puzzle picture."
The author touches on how this would change preaching, making the good news about God's love in Jesus the central theme rather than focusing primarily on issues and problem-solving and secondary doctrinal matters.
Smith tackles the issue of biblicism bordering on idolatry by acting and talking as if the Bible were God's highest self-revelation. "The Bible is of course crucial for the Christian church and life. But it does not trump Jesus Christ as the true and final Word of God. The Bible is a secondary, subsidiary, functional, written word of God, the primary purpose of which is to mediate, to point us to, to give true testimony about the living Jesus Christ. The Bible did not and could not exist or have any meaning without the higher, truer, more final Word of God, Jesus Christ."
Though there is much more in this chapter, I'll conclude with Christian Smith's words as to how this way of reading and interpreting Scripture helps deal with the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism within biblicism. He suggests three things:
- It keeps us from turning the Bible into an idol.
- It provides an interpretive center to direct our scripture reading.
- If done well, it can have the healthy effect of disarming us of arguments and thereby foster more humility and openness in dialogue with others with whom we disagree.
No comments:
Post a Comment