Out of Context

As we approach the midterm elections, I have noticed an uptick in the number of political advertisements that feature quotations or data points taken out of context. The creators of such ads are counting on a shocking sound bite to motivate voters who are not inclined to check the sources or search for the larger statement that could reframe the issue at hand.

Politics is not the only arena in which words are taken out of context. Recently, I read an article about a Methodist preacher who was being attacked by conservative Christian media outlets for saying that the Bible is full of made-up stories. Of course, that is not the whole story. Her sermon, which I listened to on her church’s website, is, in my opinion, a faithful exploration of the nature of holy scripture. Although her approach to the divine authorship of the biblical texts is less traditional than my own, picking and choosing isolated quotations from a preacher’s sermon in order to label her “demonic” undermines both the critic’s argument and their claim to be promoting Christian orthodoxy. The Bible has always given itself to diverse yet faithful readings of our sacred texts.

One of the foundations of contemporary, mainline biblical scholarship is the importance of honoring the historical context. As Episcopalians, this technique has become so familiar to us that I suspect all of us use this approach when reading the Bible without even thinking about it. Anytime you read a passage of scripture and ask, “What did that mean back then?” or “What was going on in the lives of God’s people at the time this was written?” you are engaging in the historical-critical method of studying the Bible.

Questions like these began to emerge back in the sixteenth century with the dawn of the modern era. At first, not surprisingly, the institutional church rejected such questions on their face as tools belonging to the sort of secular, worldly inquiry that was not worthy of sacred scripture. Eventually, though, as translations of the Bible into the vernacular became widespread, more and more scholars and, in time, preachers used the historical-critical approach in their work. During the nineteenth century, theological giants like Schleiermacher, Strauss, Feuerbach, and Hegel made this form of biblical scholarship mainstream in German universities and seminaries, and their work continued to grow in influence throughout the twentieth century.

One of the reasons some more conservative denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, delayed accepting the historical-critical approach to scripture as legitimate is because of its willingness—even eagerness—to think of the Bible as the product of human authors rather than as a collection of texts authored by God. When we ask, “What was going on in the lives of God’s people when this passage was written?” we are, in effect, asking how the ordinary, normal human lives of the community of faith were integral to the formulation, transmission, revision, and preservation of these sacred stories. For many of us, those assumptions have become second nature, while, for others, they represent a deep threat to the sacredness of God’s word.

For example, when studying the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9, we might ask how our ancient Jewish forebears borrowed from other near-eastern religious traditions to develop a distinctly Israelite version of a nearly universal human myth. In a recent Bible study on those chapters, we noticed how some of the strange details in the biblical account—like how God reacted with remarkably human emotions to the pleasing aroma of the burnt offering Noah sacrificed after the flood—may have been holdovers from a non-Israelite religious tradition. Even if that depiction seems out of sync with the Bible’s characterization of Israel’s God, it could be that those strange details were so well known across cultures that omitting them in the retelling of the story undermined its integrity.

Those sorts of observations are interesting and helpful, but I think their usefulness has limits. The goal of scripture is not to answer every historical question behind it, effectively demythologizing the biblical text; the goal of scripture is to encounter God. To the extent that historical inquiry enables that pursuit, it should be celebrated, but remembering that, for Christians, the real purpose of biblical study is to be shown a glimpse of its true author is essential. Even if you could interview the apostle Paul about his motivations when writing 1 Corinthians, the text as it has come to us is not valuable because it contains Paul’s understood words but because the Holy Spirit has breathed them and breathes onto us through them.

Regardless of a passage’s historical and cultural context, we believe the Bible to be the Word of God—God’s own self-revelation to the world—and, even if that self-disclosure is made through a particular human author or is entrusted to a particular human community, it is still somehow God’s Word to us and for us. While there is great value in studying the Sitz im Leben or “setting in life” out of which every passage of scripture has arisen, we cannot separate the Bible from its divine source. Knowing more about the context in which that divine self-revelation was made is useful because it helps us hear and understand what God is saying to the world about Godself.

Sometimes, though, while preparing for a class or a sermon, I wonder whether we, as mainline Christians, have become so immersed in the historical-critical approach that we have forgotten how to encounter the majesty of God in the biblical text. I think we would rather try to solve the riddle contained within a passage of scripture than celebrate the mystery that is God’s strange and mysterious self-disclosure. With regard to the history of biblical interpretation, that historical-critical instinct is a relatively new phenomenon. Our spiritual ancestors have been reading and applying the words of sacred scripture for millennia, and only in the last one hundred fifty years has it occurred to us that we need to inhabit the minds of the people who originally composed the texts in order to understand them.

The theologians and biblical scholars who hold those two approaches together—the ancient, mystical, pre-modern reverence for God’s Word and the skeptical, analytical, deconstructive analysis of the biblical texts—are the ones I find most attractive and inspiring. Lately, I have been drawn especially to the work of Katherine Sonderegger, whose unwavering insistence that the Bible is not primarily about us or even about salvation but always about God challenges both the historical-critical method and those who question its legitimacy. For her, the Bible is unique in its origin and, therefore, in its authority, yet she simultaneously resists shallow appeals to biblical inerrancy.

Following her example, in my own reading of scripture, I am attempting to unlearn my instinctive reliance on the historical-critical method as the starting point for biblical analysis. Instead, I am trying to start by reading the passages in the daily office and in my sermon and Bible study preparation as if I were in hearing them in children’s chapel. Rather than asking what the human authors were trying to say through these words back when they were written, I am asking what God might be saying to God’s children through them today. To be honest, it isn’t easy for me.

I think it is easier for us to approach the Bible as something we are in control of—a subject to be scrutinized, dissected, and explained—than an awesome reality before which we are to be humbled. But somehow children do not seem to struggle with that as much. Our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program, which is the heart of our children’s ministry, starts by presenting the children an encounter with Jesus, the Good Shepherd. In Sunday school, our children hear the story of the Good Shepherd not as something to pick apart but as a truth into which God is inviting them. They are encouraged to ask questions about the biblical text not from the perspective of historical inquiry—though that is welcome, too—but from the perspective of their lived encounter with Jesus. Who is the Good Shepherd? How does he know your name? What does he sound like or smell like? Where does he lead you?

I think it is possible to approach the bible first as a devotional experience before thinking of it as an object of intellectual exploration. Liturgically speaking, I think we experience this when we hear the reading of scripture and sit in silence as a congregation before moving on to the next part of the service. I also think we could provide a more intentionally devotional encounter in the opening lines of a sermon—a technique I may try out this weekend. Ultimately, there is value in reading commentaries, engaging in comparative studies, examining textual analysis, and learning about the historical context. All of those things help us understand what God is saying to us about Godself in a particular passage of scripture. But it might be that our reliance upon the historical-critical approach to the Bible has robbed us of scripture’s most important aspect—the holiness of God’s word. Without it, every part of the Bible is taken out of context.

Yours faithfully,

Evan D. Garner