BlakeHuggins.com

Part I: Where I Find Myself.

You may want to look over the comments in part one before reading. The discussion ended up covering some of this stuff and some of the things I’ll cover later.

Anyway, contrary to what most people would be inclined to think here in the buckle of the bible belt, scripture is, before anything, at least for me, a narrative; a group a narratives, or stories that comprise a larger narrative of the experience ancient people’s had with God and God’s action in history on behalf of the entire world as N.T Wright might say, or the entire cosmos as I would add. Now, I’m not saying this to knock systematic theology at all, I think there’s a place for that and I think that systematics can be done very effectively (although I tend to be a more non-linear type of person), but I’ve observed that many people abuse and misuse the word systematic and assume that the bible was written systematically, almost as if it were written by the same person (likely a man) and God was somehow dictating every stroke of that person’s pen.

Maybe that’s a little extreme and exaggerated. Ok, so some people won’t go that far, but still believe the bible is primarily linear and systematic, originally written and spoken with the intention of being systematic from start to finish, Genesis to Revelation. The thought that scripture was originally passed down orally through the form of story-telling never crosses their mind, much less that fact that systematic theology wasn’t even invented until Aquinas came along in the 11th century and wasn’t fully developed until after the advent of the printing press in the 13th by Gutenburg, not to mention the strenuous and highly politicized process of canonization itself.

When I study historical and literary criticism and some of the other higher types of criticism, this literal, rigid, linear, and systematic view begins begins to fall apart. I speak from personal experience as I used to hold a this view of scripture. Then when I study how the canon was formed, the result of many political power plays by many opposing groups offering the books they believed to be “orthodox”–which more often than not reinforced that group’s status quo–and rejecting the more “dangerous” or “heretical” books that challenged their conventional way of thinking, my thought beings to shift. When I read about how the books in the bible were redacted, edited, and even altered, by different groups and people it becomes all the more clear to me that scripture is not some inerrant, infallible dictation from “the mind of God,” but above all a narrative, a finite story of persons experience with God, with ultimate reality and a record of God’s redemptive and restoration action in history as recorded by imperfect, finite individuals and communities.

It seems to me that one of the only things linking me with a scripture writer some 2000 years ago is experience, specifically the experience of God and the experience of participation with God. I likely operate cognitively from a higher level of consciousness than the scripture writer. I have modern science, modern cosmology, modern medicine, modern technology and a host of other things the scripture writer didn’t have at his disposal. But I still experience God, perhaps, but maybe not, in the same sort of ways the scripture writer did. In this respect we are united and linked as human beings.

So when I read scripture I must first remember this writing was originally a story and an oral story at that. With that in mind I have to ask myself, how does this particular passage or narrative fit within the larger story of healing, renewal, peace, and reconciliation? What was the experience of the writer and of the community that brought this story to be written in this way and how can I learn more about ultimate reality through that? Where do I see myself in this story? Moreover, and perhaps most important, how can I learn to become a better human being through my interaction with this story and through my response to God’s grace, my synergetic participation in the life of the divine?

To me, those are the better question to ask when reading the bible. Not, how does this fit within my cute and clean systematic theology, but how does this fit within the larger story of God’s action in history for and with the cosmos.

~bh ><>