In his book, Scripture and Discernment, Johnson encourages us to take a more midsrashic or rabbinical view of scripture. By midrashic he means “the entire complex process of searching Torah in the light of contemporary circumstance, for insight into either law or life.” He also says that our study and interpretation should be shaped by the Talmud, which is the written collection of the oral interpretations of the Torah that became necessary as the Jewish circumstances and experiences changed. The Talmud is authoritative in Jewish tradition, not because it replaces the Torah, but because it became the inescapable prism through which Torah is read. In the same way, he argues that the writings of the New Testament are authoritative for Christians, not because they replace Torah, but because like the Talmud they are the prism through which the Torah is read and understood. It was the experience of the crucified and risen Lord that brought about this reinterpretation of the Torah.
Reading the New Testament in the spirit of midrash and Talmud means approaching it as more of a conversation between a variety of voices and viewpoints, rather than as a blueprint that renders a single pattern that must be discovered and implemented once and for all, by all. In a previous post I quoted Johnson?s description of the diversity of voices present in the scriptural conversation.
This is what Brad Young calls a Jewish way of doing theology. He writes: What is Jewish theology? Perhaps it would be more fitting to discuss Jewish theologians rather than any systematic Jewish theology. The different thinkers and rabbis could be studied for their theological presuppositions. But most religious teachers and community leaders in the history of Israel who are considered to be Jewish theologians would probably like to deny the charge. Being called a Jewish theologian in such an environment would not be considered a compliment. To be a scholar or a creative thinker is a compliment. To be a theologian is almost an insult. . .
What some Western observers would call theology among the rabbis, rabbis would view more as a creative process, that is, the spontaneous eruption of interconnected ideas flowing out of a dialectic discussion of God, his world, and human response to the divine initiative. Spiritual values are learned by a dynamic interaction between different personalities; religious giants battle one another in fierce dialogue. Within a process of free exchange and intense debate, they seek the wisdom of Torah and God?s will for humanity.
The ten commandments should be obeyed. But the proper interpretation of the Bible is needed for the people to respond with a positive attitude to God?s will. The Jewish people, in an effort to remain true to biblical faith, have endeavored to interpret the command of Sabbath rest with the Oral Torah (The Talmud includes the Mishnah, the written form of the oral law), a body of orally transmitted traditions which were believed to have been given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai in conjunction with the written Torah. The Oral Torah clarified obscure points of the written Torah, thus enabling the people to fulfill the divine will. Why is there a need for the oral law? The answer is quite simple: Because we have a written one. The written record of the Bible should be interpreted properly by the Oral Torah in order to give it fresh life and meaning in daily practice.
. . .it should be remembered that the Oral Torah was not a rigid legalistic code dominated by one single interpretation. The oral tradition allowed a certain amount of latitude and flexibility. In fact, the open forum of the Oral Torah invited vigorous debate and even encouraged diversity of thought and imaginative creativity.
I was trained to use a set of tools and resources to figure out what the Bible said. I was told repeatedly that a text can have only one meaning. The last thing you wanted to be called was a “creative Bible student.” It?s ok to be a creative Bible teacher, but don?t get too creative with your interpretations. The goal of Bible study is to discover something that already exists, not create something new. Yet, the Jews celebrated the rabbis who brought fresh insights to irrelevant passages and found creative connections between seemingly unrelated texts. Don?t we see Paul doing this in his letters? Wouldn?t Jesus be considered “creative” by those who were surprised by his teachings? (Of course, some decided he was too creative.)
I?ve read books on creative Bible teaching methods, but no one has ever taught me how to study and interpret the Bible creatively. Is a creative Bible student/theologian even something we should aspire to be?
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
Where this stung the Jews was that the Talmud, Mishnah and Halakah ended up being these sort of hedges around the law instead of key interpreters of it. Essentially the Jewish leaders got lost in discussing the interpretation of the oral law, leaving behind what this oral law was actually there for–which was to comment on the Torah itself. So in ceasing to have conversations about the Torah itself what they had were conversations about the conversations about the conversations, and before they knew it the Fuifillment of the law showed up in human flesh and they failed to recognize Him.
We can begin discussing NT Wright’s view of a particular passage, and then start talking about how Piper interprets Wright’s view and then how I creatively interpret Piper’s view, and before we know we are three or four degrees seperated from the passage, wondering “was there a text we were actually discussing?”
The Bible is creative enough, for me to dress up it up would be like handing a four year old some water colors along with a Rembrandt, and telling him it needs his personal touch. On our best day we can’t be more creative than the Scriptures, we need only to be faithful to them.
In my mind, creativity is fine if that means spiritual discernment, as long as it’s being driven by the Holy Spirit, whom God gave to help us “understand what God has freely given us”. Paul said “the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit”, and the Spirit is in the business of revealing God’s thoughts to man. Any approach to Scripture must be Spirit led and driven, or it will not take us to where it was designed to take us – the heart and mind of God.
This idea of “finding your own truth” in a particular text just doesn’t completely scan with me. People are doing this all the time. You can go wherever you want to go and believe whatever you want to believe in regard to anything if truth were as relative as some would like. I know Scripture has to be interpreted, and it seems we have done a pretty poor job in some instances, but the answer to poor interpretation is not ascribing to the text an endless supply of meanings, all correct, so as to diminish our responsibility in dealing with it.
If I were God, and I was wanting to say something, I wouldn’t want those listening to me to just make up whatever they wanted my words to mean. I’ve got something to say, something I want you to know or believe or do. Why would I be happy with them thinking they can make my message say whatever it is they wanted it to say.
I’m not sure how pleased God was\is with the Talmud. To codify opinions seems to be what we are always fighting in our churches. Wasn’t that what Jesus was trying to straighten out in the Sermon on the Mount when He would say, “You’ve heard it said that…, but now I tell you…”? God had a particular intent and purpose for the Scriptures, and the “theologians” bent, twisted, neutered and robbed it of its godly meaning.
Off the subject, sometimes when I am writing comments in your comment window, your sidebar links, login, rss, comments rss, wp are overlayed on the scroll bar of the comment window. Like right now, I can’t hit scroll up without clicking one of the links. This doesn’t always happen, only when the window is in certain places because of the length of your post and the comments of others. Is this fixable, or it may not be important to you. Just thought I would give you a heads up. I enjoy your blog! Sorry I was so wordy.
Wade,
About ten years ago, I was teaching a Wed. night class on neglected books of the Old Testament. I know, for some folks that would be 39 books. But I especially wanted to deal with Lamentations and Song of Songs.
When we came to the Song, I talked about the whole Jewish-and- Christian tradition of allegorizing it. I talked about songs like “Lily of the Valley” and “His Banner Over Us Is Love” as examples of how the allegorizing approach had made its way into our hymnody. To top it off, I even had the class read some of Bernard’s classic sermons on the Song. How wrong he was, I concluded.
Then, one of our more astute class members spoke up and said something like, “No, Bernard’s sermons don’t have anything to do with the authorial intent of the Song. But they sure are great sermons, aren’t they?” After a fresh reading of those sermons, I had to agree.
Ever since then, I’ve daydreamed about approaches to Scripture in which the literal sense of a biblical text was identified (and in control?) while at the same time so-called sensus-plenior or fuller-sense interpretations that did not violate the first were also welcome (to the extent that they resonated with the truth of the gospel?)
You’ve raised a really big set of issues here. I just know that the evangelical position that “We mustn’t deal with Scripture they way New Testament writers did because, after all, they were writing by INSPIRATION,” hasn’t satisfied me in a long time.
Also, the question comes in “are we sure we understand what was being said?” because we are not perfect. The church is not perfect (yet). There is always room for improvement in this life.
It seems we think we have it all figured out sometimes, and that is essentially the same as what the Jews did in the Talmud. By that I mean, we’re taking accepted interpretations of Scripture and perpetuating them rather than challenging them to see if they are correct. Correct teaching, if done in the Spirit, should stand up under honest scrutiny, so we shouldn’t be worried about looking at things afresh.
This is what I understood to qualify as being a “creative Bible student” while reading what Wade wrote. If we did find that our approach was off, it would be like learning new and surprising insights. And, in all honesty, I feel that until we are perfect in Him and with Him, this should be happening.
Some ways of creatively approaching scripture aren’t helpful (How can I make these verses say what I want to believe?) and some are very helpful (How can I leave my preconceptions behind and hear what this verse is really saying?).
Maybe we should be asking for the Spirit’s creativity in helping us interpret scripture; for His clarity and perfect understanding. After all, He inspired it all and it testifies of Him. They work together, not apart.
I wonder what we might discover if we actually read scripture with Him?
Wade,
I put Johnson’s book on my to buy list. Thanks for the head’s up on it. I think the approach you/he described is fascinating and worth serious consideration. What we in the church today often lack that these rabbis possess is an openness and lack of fear regarding scripture. my protestant background somehow taught me to be afraid of drawing outside the lines, so to speak, as if my potential misunderstanding of scripture could blemish the word of God. If God had intended it to be a so stolid a thing, I wonder if he’d have really left His word untended for so long in what we call the period of “oral tradition”? Think about it. We’re so afraid of getting it wrong, while God himself left His words in the hands of unwitting re-translators for millenia. Yes, we have to be faithful to the spirit of the God we know as we interpret, but by all means we need to be more childlike in our exploration. I learn more these days as I re-interpret the bible for my 6 year old than I did when I was able to spend hours a day picking apart verse by verse and putting it back together after I knew for certain exactly what it said…
Perhaps every Bible student is a creative Bible student. I would say that there are as many interpretations–as many creative Bible students–as their are Bible students. Hasn’t that always been the case? What were the prophets, the poets, Jesus, Paul, Peter, etc. but creative Bible students with followings? And I have never thought about this before, but it seems they were all being “creative” about the Torah. In other words, they were all interpreting the Torah for their particular time and space. (The Sermon on the Mount is a glaring example of this.)
It should be pretty obvious that there is no one interpretation; if it’s not obvious, just count the different church buildings on any street.
I never went to a Bible college, so I might be missing some basic assumptions in this – if so, please advise/correct. When I’ve been involved in Bible study groups, I’m told that God wants me to use my gift of intelligence to better understand and live out his will. Is the gift of creativity any different? Sure, I could twist scriptures to benefit me – to win an argument, to persuade others to follow me, even to drive believers away from the church – but I’ve seen traditional interpretations do the same. And weren’t those old “interpretations” a result of creativity as well at one time or another?
I hate to see us turn our backs on any gift we’ve been given. The Spirit can make use of all our words and actions for God’s will, even if we can make use of the same for other purposes.
Some of the stuff I was taught as a kid was pretty creative…
Wade, I think it’s ok to aspire to be creative. The difficulty with this is reading the word like we would any other piece of classical literature–that is, actively. I was brought up believing the Bible was a rule book of sorts, that it was one dimensional, and that any and all meaning was obvious and could be scooped right off the surface. I certainly don’t think that any longer, and regret that I ever thought men like Moses and Mark were so “uncreative.” I do caution that any hope for objectivity is to be found in a collection of subjectivities (we need to be restrained/guided by other wise voices). And we might understand and say something different than others as a result of our life experience, but it probably will not be original. I think all the theology has already been mined from the depths long ago.
We’re already creative in our interpretation, no? As W. Brueggemann says, every time “we insist that the old text (the Bible) is a contemporary word to us, every time we transport ourselves out of the 21st century back to that ancient world or, conversely, we transpose ancient voices into contemporary voices of authority” we are being creative! We think creatively all the time! One example: When we make a theological case for acapella music, we are thinking creatively.
What ever our approach to Holy writ, we must never take lightly this unchanging truth. The scriptures were Spiritually written and must be Spiritually understood. (my amateur paraphrase)
Unless the Holy Spirit shines the truth in our innermost beings we will only know the book of God as we do other great peices of literature.
“Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”
Grace and Peace,
Royce
Wade,
Thanks for tackling such a significant topic. Reading your blog and the other responses makes me think about Watchman Nee. (I don’t remember the book’s title right now.) He made a point about trying to be “right” and that was that our attempt to be “right” all the time is really the sin of the garden. That is what it means to have the knowledge of good and evil. We can’t imagine not having that ability. What if we chose to do something that was evil because we thought it was good. We would obviously be held accountable for that error. I don’t think so. When I read the account of Abraham in Genesis I see a man that made a lot of errors in judgement and in action. But when I read Paul’s recounting of his life in Romans 3&4, Abraham is presented as having NO sin. Why, because he believed God. We are quick to accept that grace covers our mistakes but we still think that “getting it right” is worthy of all of our attention. Don’t get me wrong, I want to “get it right” as much as anyone else, and I won’t use grace as an excuse for doing whatever I want (I also read Romans 6), but I find the less I worry about getting it right the more open I am to the creative reading of scripture you are talking about. I think that also opens me up to whatever God may want from me. I would rather Him talk to me through scripture than for me to try and figure out what He is saying. To me there is a huge difference between the two.
Thanks for your thoughts. May God richly bless you with creative reading.