Friday- Session 3 Biblical Landscape

Presenter- Marty Soards; Louisville Seminary

Respondees-Andy Dearman; Austin Seminary, Jim Edwards; Whitworth College, David Messner; Dubuque Seminary

Soards-

There is a fractured picture. For 17 centuries the Church was immersed in the pre-critical era of Biblical thought. Allegory was king; and Scripture was written to me, now. The thought that the Bible might be written to people unlike ourselves did not occur.

What followed was the critical era, along with the Confessional era of Biblical thinking. There are different ways of reading the bible now. Different styles. We have lost the paradigm that held us together, which has lead to a proliferation of methodologies. There are lots of readings in lots of different ways, like reading the Bible from a Feminist perspective, or a Liberation Theology perspective or…There is no cross- conversation between these different ways of reading the Bible.

Also, far too many theologians are exegetically specialized.

The most important discovery of the 20th century has been the Dead Sea Scrolls. It forced us to rethink Judaism and to rethink Christianity in light of Judaism.

We have become aware of inter-textuality, we have learned to listen back and forth across texts.

There has been a shift in hermeneutical disposition. We have shifted from a hermeneutic of suspicion to a hermeneutic of affirmation.

The legacy of historical-critical method is fragmentation. This fragmentation shows up in our preaching. There is too much personal experience, relating to a shred of texts. This is what a bad sermon is, totally fragmented.

There is a tendency to divide and conquer; for example Pauline vs. Johanine theologies. What this effectively does is destroy the Word of God as it comes to us through the Church.

The Church is engrafted into Israel, not the other way around. We need to read the whole Bible, not just the New Testament. It is possible to see the preparation for Jesus in the Old Testament. Look for Christ in the Old Testament. Don’t allow professors to put up a wall between the OT and the NT. Relate them together.

Edwards-

Good signs in the Biblical Landscape

  1. There are more evangelicals publishing biblical stuff
  2. Biblical Theology is coming back. The New Testament out of the Jewish experience, relate the NT to OT
  3. It used to be that the home base of understanding Christianity was Hellenism. That has now changed. Students have to understand the Hebrew OT.

6 Problem areas

  1. trajectory- the theory of how texts come into being. The inception, and then they come into being implies that there is no final form. This allows scholars to manipulate the meaning of texts, in which the trajectory is isolated. (The text finally does have something to say)
  2. community- we don’t talk about the author, but rather the author’s community. This is true about John. We tend not to talk about John, the author, but rather the Johanine community, which may or may not have existed. This is the community experience versus a harder reality. This relativizes the texts.
  3. Canon-There is a movement afoot which suggests that the Canon was prematurely closed. The movement suggests the closing of the Canon was an elitist movement. They try to redefine Canon. They look for a breakdown in the normative corpus of documents.
  4. Read the Bible without theological reflection. Studies on Paul that are essentially atheological, but rather sociological, gender issues, without dealing with the driving theological issues
  5. There is always a need to fight off arrogance- to assume we know more about the Bible than the people that wrote it.
  6. Foyerbach- they are always trying to make God in our their image. Essentially they are idolaters. We tend to make the modern world the measure of Scripture. Holy Spirit= the Spirit of the times. This is seen clearly in the homosexual issue.

Dearman-

-positives- a plurality of methods- people are looking at history of methods, they are looking back to Origen and Augustine

-good and bad news on fractures- people are open to new thoughts (no where to stand)- and will reconsider established positions