Nothing like a good story (Sunday Reflections for February 7, 2010)

Are you a rational person? Most people would answer “Yes, of course,” but there is a growing body of scientific evidence that we use our emotional faculties far more often than we are aware. In other words, we behave and make choices “irrationally” a lot more than we think we do. And recently this has prompted questions about what this implies for politics.

In a study during the 2004 presidential campaign, a group of men—half Republican and half Democrat—were given MRI brain scans while assessing statements by George Bush and John Kerry in which they clearly contradicted themselves. Not surprisingly, these men jumped on the statements of the candidate of the opposing party while looking past their own candidates’ bloopers. What the MRI showed, however, was that while doing so the men relied almost entirely on parts of the brain associated with processing emotion, conflict resolution, and making moral judgments. The brain area responsible for logical reasoning, however, was quiet as a church mouse.

Based on such evidence, politicians are being advised not to rely so much on information and statistics when making their case for laws or programs. It just doesn’t work; people aren’t persuaded. Instead, they’re either put to sleep or they get angry because they feel they’re being patronized and talked down to. The political struggles over health care and global warming are recent cases where this has happened.

Rather than lots of data, researchers say that what a politician really needs is a good story. In other words, they need to put their case in the form of a narrative involving people’s lives. People need to be able to emotionally engage in an issue and imagine how it involves them personally.

Reading about this recently made me think of the dilemma of contemporary Christianity. For the past two hundred years, churches have been struggling with both the growth of scientific knowledge and scholarly challenges to Christian teachings and worldview. Fundamentalist churches have simply rejected most of this and insisted nothing about Christian beliefs and teachings has really changed. More moderate churches, on the other hand, have tried to adjust to the modern world and work these discoveries into their theology and faith life.

It hasn’t worked very well, however, and the biggest puzzle has been figuring out what to do with the Bible. The problems with the Bible (as I’ve written about before) are pretty obvious, starting with the simple fact that it’s really, really old. It’s written in languages no one speaks anymore and comes out of cultures that disappeared long ago. As a result, it’s often difficult for people today to figure out what the heck it’s trying to say.

The other challenge has been the growing realization that the Bible is essentially non-historical. In other words, many if not most of the events and people it talks about didn’t happen or exist the way the Bible describes them. And in saying that, scholars tell us that makes the Bible fit in with all the other literature of the ancient world—it’s exactly what we should expect. To tell what actually happened or what someone actually said simply wasn’t the reason people wrote these books.

From before recorded history, people have told stories. Sometimes they were based on actual people and events and sometimes not. Whether they were or weren’t had nothing to do with the quality of the story. Nor did it stop people from changing or adapting stories for new circumstances or to use them in new places. One characteristic of a good story was that it was very flexible. Similar ancient stories, including biblical ones, can be found in many different cultures and told in ways that fit those cultures. And in most cases, there’s no way to tell where the original story began (if there even was such a thing).

Today, then, it’s not a surprise that most biblical stories have gotten pretty creaky, if not forgotten altogether. First, it’s a challenge for most people just to find them since by modern standards the Bible is so disorganized and loaded with “filler.” Then if they do find them, the stories as they’re originally told are often kind of bizarre, convoluted, and “foreign.” There is an appealing kernel in there somewhere but it’s buried in its long dead and ancient setting.

Recognizing the value of these stories, modern culture has responded predictably by trying to adapt many of them to contemporary life. This happens through movies, books, plays, TV, and all the other places story telling goes on. Often these stories don’t look like biblical stories because characters, settings and even plot lines have changed, yet the biblical and spiritual messages are still there.

Shakespeare was one of the first to integrate Christian themes into popular, non-biblical stories. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has a Christian holiday as its setting, and Christian themes of charity and personal redemption, yet uses no biblical characters, only contemporary fictional ones—including ghosts! The 1950s sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still has a visitor from another world come to Earth to warn its people about the consequences of their self-destructive behavior. Indeed books and movies in the sci-fi/fantasy genre are often filled with spiritual and theological themes. Star Wars, the Tolkien Hobbit adventure stories, and just now Avatar have been popular block-buster examples.

And yet curiously churches have been mostly suspicious if not hostile to such efforts. They have been more approving of actual biblical adaptations. Yet even these they realize alter significantly the biblical story, as all historical re-enactments do—and often not for the better. And so you get The Ten Commandments, which (at least at the time) was highly entertaining but was certainly biblically and theologically rather dubious. Or there is The Passion of the Christ, which while moving probably told more about the wounded psyche of Mel Gibson than it did about the reality or theological meaning of Jesus’ death. (One doctor said that anyone who bled as much as Jesus did in the movie would have died long before he got to the cross.)

The result, it seems, is a church stumbling along trying to keep its stories frozen in the past while dismissing contemporary stories that are meaningful and moving for people today. Moderate and liberal churches then fall back on: 1) esoteric theology which to most people is as opaque as atomic physics, 2) the social benefits of congregational life which most people now find in other places or 3) appeals for political and social justice. This latter may be fine and even biblical but it runs into the same problem as those statistics-quoting politicians above. Without a good story it tends to put people to sleep or just really tick them off.

In 1960, when introducing John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson made this comparison: In classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke" but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march." Eloquence and reason certainly have value but ultimately the goal is to motivate people to act with compassion and, when necessary, fight against evil. For the church to recover its relevance in the world it must have more than good ideas. It must also have good stories which point people in the right direction and then move them to say, “Let us march.”

The ancient language of story (Sunday Reflections for December 20, 2009)

This time of year the various educational networks (History Channel, PBS, National Geographic) often show programs dealing with “what really happened” when Jesus was born. These types of shows have been popular for the last twenty years or so because it’s now almost universally recognized that the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth need some explaining. They can’t be taken at face value.

Here are a few of the more obvious issues. While there are four gospels only two of them, Matthew and Luke, tell what we would call “Christmas stories.” Mark, the earliest gospel, says nothing at all about Jesus’ birth. Both Jesus and John the Baptist appear as adults right off the bat. John, the last gospel written, follows Mark’s example. It does, however, begin with its famous prologue, a theological and even poetic reflection on Jesus’ coming into the world (“In the beginning was the word . . . “).

Chronologically, Matthew and Luke were written between Mark and John at about the same time, though in different places and for different communities. When comparing their stories of Jesus’ birth, what becomes most noticeable is that they have almost nothing in common with each other. Here are just a few examples.

In Luke, Mary gets the news of Jesus’ impending birth from an angel, while in Matthew it’s Joseph that is told. In Luke, Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem. In Matthew, they live in Bethlehem and later move to Nazareth. Luke has a fairly long section about the actual birth, focusing on the angelic announcement to the shepherds. Matthew, however, simply reports the event (no shepherds) but then tells of a visit by foreign astrologers “led by a star, “ with the implication it may have occurred as much as two years after Jesus’ birth. The bottom line is that, while involving the same three primary characters and set in the same location, these are two very different stories.

Then there are the parts of the stories that raise eyebrows. Not all of these involve the miraculous. Historians agree, for instance, that the census as Luke reports it is preposterous. Ordering everyone to their ancestral home to be counted would accomplish nothing except total chaos. Imperial “head counts” did happen but not like that. For Luke this is obviously a “plot device.”

In the miracle department, there is Matthew’s howler of the moving star. Stars, of course, don’t move, not as Matthew implies. Very likely the natural phenomenon in mind here is a comet. It does “appear” for a relatively short time (weeks) and gradually changes position in the night sky until it’s no longer visible. The notion that such an object could be “followed” to a particular town is fantastic. Again, we have a plot devise for moving characters in a story.

Then, of course, there is the most controversial part of the story, the virgin birth. Matthew and Luke are the only ones that mention this (including Paul, who wrote earlier than the gospels and says almost nothing biographically about Jesus’ life). The Isaiah passage Matthew quotes to explain this event is now recognized as a mistranslation of a Hebrew word which actually means “young woman” (the gospel writers all seemed to use the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint).

Jesus’ “virgin birth” is a good example, however, for understanding part of what the gospel writers are up to. The literature of the ancient world was filled with stories of virgin births. They were not everyday occurrences, however, but always involved special people like great heroes and rulers. Ancient people knew virgins didn’t give birth except in stories.

When Matthew and Luke announce that Mary is a virgin, this would have been an immediate signal to their readers and listeners of what kind of person this Jesus is going to be. These writers probably thought this was important to include because in most other respects Jesus is remarkably ordinary: not royalty, not a victorious general, but an itinerant peasant preacher. Especially for gentiles unfamiliar with Jewish tradition, this detail would have provided a bridge into a literary world they understood very well. In an empire of multiple nationalities and cultures, stories were a universal language.

Our obsession with the “fantastic” aspects of these stories—whether they occurred and how they could have occurred—would have puzzled ancient people. For them this would have been missing the forest for the trees. The purpose of stories was to convey cultural (which always included religious) values, meaning and traditions. They shaped people’s identity, made sense of the world in which they lived, and guided them in their choices and decisions. Stories rarely, if ever, were about telling “what happened” in our modern historical sense. Frankly, ancient people just didn’t care.

Matthew’s and Luke’s Christmas stories, like much of the Bible, invite us into a special world. It is not the world in which we live, yet that was also true for these stories' original ancient hearers. In the daily lives of people of the Roman world, virgins did not give birth, angels did not appear, stars did not move, animals did not speak, a loaf of bread did not feed thousands. Ancient people did hear about such things in stories though. They listened carefully and pondered, like Mary, what these things might mean.

Today our scientific knowledge can confuse us when we try to apply it to everything, thinking it’s the only lens through which to see the world and our lives. The Bible’s stories ask us to put our scientific rationality on hold for a moment, but not because science is wrong. Rather these stories speak to us in a different language, opening our ears and eyes to a different world, to a different kind of truth and value. They use extraordinary events to help us see the love of God hidden in the ordinariness of our daily lives.

ELCA's theological fail

The repeated judgment of those upset by the ELCA’s decision to permit noncelibate gay clergy is that the church has rejected the teaching of the Bible. For Lutherans taught the principle of sola scriptura at their father’s knee this is, of course, the worst possible theological infraction. 

As I listen to the endless loop of biblical arguments and counter-arguments, I keep asking myself if the past century and more of biblical studies really happened. The conversation has such an antique feel, including the responses of those supporting the August assembly’s actions. It could have happened two or three centuries ago. It shouldn’t be happening now.

Somehow, the most important question has been missed in all of this wrangling. What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Answer: Nothing. Not a word. Why? Because the concepts of homosexuality and sexual orientation did not exist until the 19th century. Writing centuries earlier, the Bible’s authors knew nothing about them and so could say nothing about them.

In this, of course, homosexuality is like countless other scientific and academic concepts and discoveries which came into being in the modern era. For this reason the Bible has nothing to say about infectious disease, mental illness, democracy, gravity, genetics, electricity, free market capitalism, plate tectonics, relativity, climate change, cellular biology, labor unions, organic chemistry, and on and on and on.

The proponents of gay clergy have attempted to fight the battle on their opponents’ field—always a bad tactic. Well meaning scholars have taken apart the various Bible passages which seem to condemn same-sex relations, showing that they actually referred to specific situations involving abusive and exploitive relationships. Their analysis is very likely accurate—but no one cares. Supporters didn’t come to their beliefs because of such analysis and opponents are never persuaded by it. That’s not how they read the Bible and their eyes glaze over.

What has never been decided is WHAT ARE WE ARGUING ABOUT? Is this a theological and biblical issue or is it a scientific question? In the Bible, when someone begins behaving erratically or collapses on the ground in a fit it is assumed that they are possessed by an evil spirit. In the Middle Ages, when a community experienced a plague outbreak authorities looked for a moral cause: God's rejection of the king, the townspeople’s sinfulness, blasphemous acts by local Jews or gypsies, and so forth.

We know now that the analysis of these situations was wrong, not because people misread the Bible but because they lacked any understanding of mental illness or organic and infectious disease. In fact, the Bible had nothing to say to say about them. And this should have been the first question asked by the ELCA sexuality task force or any other group studying this issue: not WHAT does the Bible say about homosexuality but DOES the Bible say anything about homosexuality?

The historical critical study of the Bible was championed by 19th century European Lutherans and widely adopted by American Lutheran seminaries and colleges after World War II. It was, of course, the cause of the 1970s split in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the departure of most of the faculty of its premier seminary. Knowing this I have been stunned by some of the things I have heard coming out of the mouths of clergy opposing the new ELCA policies. Where did they go to school? What did they hear in their Bible classes? What did they learn about modern church history?

The answer is the sad story of mainline Christianity and its unwillingness to grapple with awkward and difficult theological questions about the Bible. What thousands of pastors did with their biblical training is…forget it. Confronted by the naive biblical realism and literalism of many of their (often most vocal) parishioners, they quickly learned to keep their own beliefs to themselves, preaching and teaching “around” such questions often with amazing creativity and dexterity. Others who were never completely persuaded by their professors in the first place, found it easy to revert to their own previous literalism. It has to be admitted that one of the appeals of fundamentalism is that it’s so much easier to have a Bible that is the definitive authority on what God thinks about every issue or problem.

Just as in secular universities, it’s a well-known paradox (and embarrassment) how little the various departments of most seminaries have to do with each other. As a result, it’s hardly a surprise that new pastors would have trouble creating an integrated and consistent message given how little coordination there is between the Bible, theology and homiletics faculties of most seminaries. In some cases, they’re barely on speaking terms.

It’s a common observation that the discoveries of the past two centuries of biblical scholarship have had little penetration in the average congregation. The reality, in fact, is much worse. Modern biblical scholarship has had little penetration in most clergy and most seminaries, even in mainline churches.

Instead, even the church’s theological authorities compartmentalize their minds. They “know” the fictional and mythical nature of the Bible but keep this from having any real impact on the rest of their beliefs or behaviors. What can’t be accepted or recognized is that modernity and the corresponding transformation of how we understand the Bible has also transformed the authority and mission of the church.

Mainline churches have resisted embracing the discoveries and conclusions of critical biblical and theological studies out of fear of losing disgruntled and disillusioned members to more conservative churches (current example: the Book of Faith Initiative). The ELCA’s train wreck over gay clergy, however, shows that trying to live in two different worlds has its own problems. Our bifurcated theology is serving only to pull us apart. The church today is like the cartoon character riding two horses which are about to go around opposite sides of the same tree. It’s time to pick one horse and let go of the other. Otherwise we’re just going to end up lying in the dust feeling really sore. 

Follow up: I have blogged several time before about the problem of the use of the Bible in the ELCA and the Book of Faith Initiative. The last two posts include an exchange with BOFI's director, Luther seminary professor Diane Jacobson.

• Biblical illiteracy
• Biblical illiteracy (conclusion)
• Keeping closed the "book of faith"
• Getting honest about the Bible

Ending bibliolatry (Sunday Reflections for October 4, 2009)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my loyal child in the faith. . . . Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

(1 Timothy 1:1-2, 2:9-15)

Is this “the Word of God?” Or is it just Paul’s opinion? Or is it actually someone writing in Paul’s name years after his death, trying to “correct” Paul’s radical gender inclusiveness (“there is neither male nor female”), as many New Testament scholars now believe?

A group in our congregation has just started reading and discussing Marcus Borg’s Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally.The opening sentence of his Preface says, “Conflict about the Bible is the single most divisive issue among Christians in North America today.” The ELCA’s churchwide assembly this past August certainly added support to that assertion, if any more is needed.

Again and again during the debates, speakers both pro and con read from and interpreted Bible passages to support their beliefs. I didn’t hear of anyone, however, being persuaded one way or the other by any of these arguments. Rather, both sides talked past each other, even as they both used the same Bible.

According to Borg, there are essentially two ways of looking at the Bible. One is to read the Bible literally and believe that all that it says is factually true. The other method is to understand the Bible historically and to see its truth being contained in the metaphors of its stories. It is not an exaggeration to say that a person using the first method to interpret the Bible is reading a different book than someone using the second.

Lutherans, like Protestants generally, place great emphasis on the Bible. Luther found the Bible to be the necessary corrective to the institutional and theological abuses of the church of his day. It wasn’t just what the Bible said that was important but it was the Bible itself that became a counter-balancing authority to the spiritual dictatorship that had been established in Rome and in the office of the Pope.

Once the Protestant churches separated from Rome, however, a new imbalance was created. Since no authority comparable to the Pope was established, the Bible became the new spiritual dictator. In theory, of course, dictatorships can be benevolent and this one sometimes was, but often it was not.

The passage cited above has been used countless times over the centuries to strictly limit the roles of women in the church and in society generally. The ones using such a text were, of course, male preachers and theologians. They were aided in doing so by the fact that, through most of the church’s history, they were much more educated than the average person (most of whom couldn’t even read) and that Bibles were rare and in languages few understood.

All this and much more has changed since the Enlightenment and the advent of the modern era. Now, no authority can get away with saying, “This is true because I say it is” (not even a boot camp drill sergeant). Every authority is “peer reviewed” and subject to some other authority and thus potentially can be overruled. Why should the Bible be any different?

The fundamentalist response, and even that of more moderate churches, is that the Bible is the Word of God. Ignoring whether or not it’s even clear what that means, such a statement is still a human judgment and only sidesteps the issue. More importantly, we now have two centuries of intense scholarly study which give us a much more plausible way of understanding the Bible than simply saying all its words are factually true because somehow they came from God. In the end, it’s hard not to conclude that biblical literalism really replaces faith in God with faith in the Bible (a suspicion further fueled by the tradition of many churches to put a large Bible in the middle of their altars. Why wouldn’t a stranger be justified in thinking that was the object of their worship?)

Borg offers a sensible and workable alternative. The Bible is not THE “Word of God” in a literalist sense. Rather it is a human response to God. Specifically, it is the written record of the early Hebrew and Christian communities’ experiences of God. “As the product of these two communities,” Borg writes, “the Bible thus tells us about how they saw things, not about how God sees things.”

And so we return to our opening passage. No, we do not have to assume that God cares whether women wear jewelry or how they fix their hair. Nor do we have to believe God proscribes certainly roles as being only for women and others for men. It is true that some leader of the early church believed those things (almost certainly not Paul) but we can decide, individually and as a church, what we think of his opinions.

For those wanting a clear and certain source of God’s opinions, this is not very satisfying. But the question is whether we were ever meant to have such a source. It is one of the main assumptions of the modern world that truth is something we need to find on our own, often with great struggle. It won’t simply be handed to us and we should distrust anyone who tries to.

Anyone who looks at the Bible honestly and as a whole will discover this is actually a truth ancient people understood. Indeed, it is the meaning of the life of faith and the experience of grace. We are in a constant search for truth. Sometimes we find it, sometimes not. Either way, however, we are blessed in our commitment to that quest. That is our experience of grace.

The Bible records the experiences of a particular community’s quest for truth, lived out in the belief God would love and bless them for their commitment to that quest. As fellow travelers on that way, we learn from and are inspired by their story, even as we create our own. Borg also describes the Bible as a sacrament, a means for encountering God. It is in continuing to reflect on the Bible’s stories and the experiences of its people, that we experience God as our companion in this journey just as they did.

The authority of community (Sunday Reflections for September 13, 2009)

Following the ELCA’s vote last month to permit gay clergy, Charleston, WV Pastor Richard Mahan said, “I can't believe the church I loved and served for 40 years can condone what God condemns.”

How does he know?

This is the question the ELCA stumbled over in trying to resolve this issue: How do we know what God thinks? Pastor Mahan thinks he knows, but does he? For Mahan the answer is simple. What God thinks is in the Bible. Yet anyone who has read even a small portion of the Bible knows it’s not that simple. Or at least, if what God thinks is in the Bible, it isn’t easy to clearly identify it.

It’s understandable that we may want the Bible to be an answer book. “What should I do in this situation?” You check the Bible’s index and find that the answer is on page 317. Some evangelical publishers have come out with Bibles in which you nearly can do this. Of course then you have to decide if you trust the editors who have connected the questions with the “answer” verses. In any case, by itself the Bible certainly isn’t set up that way.

Since the Reformation, the church has been in an unending search for an objective, reliable authority for its life and teaching. Prior to that, the church simply was its own authority. But then along came Martin Luther who said, “The church is wrong.” How could it be decided who was right: the pope or Martin Luther?

Such conflicts had occurred before, of course. Those that became serious enough were resolved by calling a council of bishops where the issue was ultimately put to a vote. This time, however, church authorities decided to treat it as an internal rebellion and just squash it. Of course, it didn’t work. Luther had too many powerful allies who had grown tired of Rome’s corruption and political meddling. As a result, the church split without ever answering the question of who was right or, more importantly, of how to decide who was right.

At about the same time (and not coincidently) there began the intellectual movement that led to the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. It’s radical assumption was that ancient authorities could no longer simply be trusted or assumed to be right. Truth was to be determined by human reason and observation, epitomized by what every junior high student learns as the scientific method. This became the foundation of the modern world.

Having just come through the debacle of the Reformation, suddenly the church found itself on the defensive again, threatened by a completely new source: science. While most scientists at this time considered themselves faithful Christians, the church found their discoveries to constitute yet another threat to church authority. The classic case, of course, was that of Galileo.

Galileo’s error was to take Copernicus’ theory of a sun-centered planetary system and claim to have proven it by observations made with his newly invented telescope. Church authorities claimed this contradicted biblical teaching that the sun moved around the earth and Galileo must, therefore, be wrong. But is that what the Bible says?

Here, of course, is where we enter the arena of biblical interpretation and the issue that has vexed the church ever since. In Galileo’s case, the key passage was the story of Joshua stopping the sun. Joshua did this in order to have longer daylight so he could win a battle with the Amorites. Based on this and other texts, the church concluded that the Bible teaches that it’s the sun that moves, not the earth.

There was nothing wrong with the church’s logic. The problem was with its understanding of the Bible. Did the Bible “teach” that the sun moves? No, the authors of the Bible wrote stories, poems, etc which included the common assumptions of the time; in this case that the sun moved around the earth. So how do we know when something the Bible says is a possibly erroneous assumption of the ancient world and when is it “the truth”?

The church has never really resolved that question (which explains why Galileo wasn’t formally exonerated until just a few years ago). Fundamentalist Protestants responded with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. There simply is no problem, they say: the Bible is always right. Roman Catholics avoided the biblical question with the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Pope decides what the truth of the Bible is and the Pope is always right.

Christians between those poles have taken on the more difficult task of judging each case individually. So when the Bible says women should keep silent in church, this is dismissed as reflecting ancient gender roles. When the Bible says slaves should obey their masters, even abusive ones, this reflects that Bible’s acceptance of slavery as a part of ancient culture. People in biblical stories having fits weren’t really demon possessed but suffered from epilepsy or some similar medical disorder. And so on.

Of course this approach is open to the criticism that one simply picks and chooses the pieces of biblical teaching one likes and finds some excuse to toss whatever is inconvenient. This is exactly the accusation being made against ELCA supporters of gay clergy. Yet this isn’t how it works in practice.

Instead, the process involves a genuine wrestling with biblical texts, as well as with history, science, personal experience, and any other factors relevant to the issue in question. Further, this isn’t decided by any individual but involves as much of the church as wants to join in. The result, of course, is that there isn’t any one simple authority, be it a book, a pope, an ayatollah, or a “council of elders.” The authority rather is simply the process of thought, study, debate, and discernment, with the commitment of those involved to seek the truth and with a trust in the guidance of the Spirit. For those wanting quick and clear judgments this can be very frustrating.

What this process recognizes, however, is that life is not about “getting it right.” It’s not a game show or a class with a killer final exam. Life, as God has given it to us, is about learning and discovery within a community of love and faithfulness. It’s not about jumping through hoops but living freely and creatively under grace. Being right is important if life is about scoring points. Discovering the truth is important if life is about maturing and growing and becoming the people we have been created to be.

Brueggemann's swing and a miss

For the second time this summer Walter Brueggemann has an online piece dealing with the challenges of biblical historical criticism in the life of moderate Christianity. (Brueggemann, a United Church of Christ minister, is a popular author, exegete and retired Old Testament professor.) Early last month WorkingPreacher.org posted a short video by him, which I commented on. At the end of July he posted an essay on the Christian Century sponsored site Theolog, provocatively titled “Remembering an imagined past.”

Brueggemann is certainly right that historical criticism has created enormous problems for the moderate and liberal churches which have embraced it—much greater than they usually acknowledge. Depriving the Bible of virtually any historical credibility has sucked much of the life and energy out these church’s preaching and proclamation, or as Brueggemann calls it, “confessional passion.”

According to Brueggemann, the problem with historical criticism as it has been applied is that it deprives the church of its “textual memory.” He writes, “It remains for the church and the synagogue, in their thick practicality, to keep opting for memory over historicity.” He then goes on to acknowledge, however, that “to be sure, much of the textual memory is ‘imagined’"—hence the essay’s title.

Yet, as everyone knows, memory is hardly a reliable source, whether individual or collective. Just as we see what we want to see, so too we remember what we want to remember, and we often remember things we would be better off forgetting. So Brueggemann admits that “the biblical text can and often does lead to destructive ideology” along with “risky, faithful, generous obedience.” But when and why does it lead to one rather than the other? And how can it be recognized at the time and what can be used to sort and judge one from the other?

On these questions Brueggemann is silent. His remedy seems to be an idealized view of the gathered believers. “Serious remembering—in a community of self-awareness, moral passion, knowing discipline and generous hope—is thick, elusive and multidimensional.” Well perhaps, but it remains unclear where such communities exist or whether they are typical or exceptional. Certainly such a description isn’t simply synonymous with the church, at least not in my experience.

Obviously a large part of the problem with Brueggemann’s essay is the vagueness of much of his language. “Imagined past”? What keeps that from being simple fantasy? What happens when one person’s or one group’s “imagined past” conflicts with that of another? How does one judge among “imaginations”? What is “confessional passion” as opposed to passion that is misguided and even destructive? Given the “passion” of fundamentalism it would seem that its absence in moderate religious groups isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Brueggemann admits that “no doubt we must keep asking questions about historicity” but doesn’t say why or ever give a clear statement of what, in his view, is the value of historical criticism. What he describes here is all negative. Indeed, for him historical criticism is primarily about depriving the church of biblical texts: “’modernizing’ that seeks generally to get rid of stuff is misguided.”

This, however, is where Brueggemann goes off track. He accuses Old Testament historical critical scholars of concluding that most OT “texts are largely quite late theological constructs designed to serve nefarious ideological purposes.” Late yes, but nefarious? I’m somewhat familiar with their work and that is hardly the conclusion I have drawn. This seems like distortion bordering on slander. Indeed, one of my favorite books in this genre, The Mythic Past by Thomas Thompson, actually restored my awareness of the Hebrew Bible’s value even as it removed it from the category of “history.”

Similarly, Brueggemann accuses the Jesus Seminar of having “voted out much of the memory of the church” by determining what of the gospels genuinely goes back to Jesus and what is the creation of the early church. But how so? He admits much of this “textual memory” is “imagined.” The Jesus Seminar, well or poorly, simply tried to separate the imagined from the real. I’m not aware they concluded that anything not red (the color code for “the real Jesus”) ought to be discarded or ignored.

In assessing the red texts of the Jesus Seminar’s New Testament, Brueggemann says, “Not surprisingly, what is left has turned out to be a Jesus who looks and sounds a lot like the voters.” True, and totally unsurprising. This is what a century ago Albert Schweitzer figured out has been the story of Jesus interpreters all along: Jesus always bears a striking resemblance to whoever is telling us about him. We find in Jesus what we need and what we want to see. That’s the Jesus we proclaim. Jesus may not be Everyman but he is Everyman’s Savior.

In his video presentation, Brueggemann says that historical criticism has stifled preachers’ imagination. While I agree imaginative preaching has taken a hit I think it is flat out wrong to blame this on historical criticism. On the contrary, had the church genuinely embraced it, historical criticism could have provided the sanction for a dramatic revival of creative and imaginative preaching.

It’s pretty evident that down through the centuries, preachers have intuitively known or suspected that much of the biblical material at their disposal fell more into the creative writing category than that of eyewitness reporting. The church’s hang-up with this didn’t come until the Enlightenment.

At that time and since the church has felt its authority challenged by science’s use of objective and observational truth. Attempting, fruitlessly, to compete on that field led to shoving the Bible into such categories through ideas of scriptural inerrancy and literalism. Of course, the very scientific methods the church was trying to keep up with led to the discoveries that undermined any claim for the Bible’s scientific or historical accuracy.

Even while rejecting fundamentalism, liberal and moderate churches still live with a sense of inferiority in relation to the scientific and technological world. Theology still pines to be, once again, the “queen of the sciences.” Even these churches want to be able to proclaim what the late evangelical Francis Schaeffer called “true truth.”

Trying to corral historical criticism is a losing battle, and one that doesn’t even need to be fought. Rather, by abandoning notions of “scriptural authority” the church can at last let the Bible be what it is and drop any need to defend it. Where it is objectionable or simply wrong, acknowledge it. Where it is irrelevant (as any two thousand year-old document must be sometimes), just move on. And where it provides the materials and the impetus for creative reflection on life and the world, go for it.

Freed from any concern over whether this or that really was said or happened, preachers can take biblical characters and images in an infinite number of directions—as great story tellers have always done. Indeed, one of the key discoveries of historical criticism is that this is exactly what biblical writers themselves did with the literary material they found at hand. Rarely, if ever, did they create ex nihilo.

So what’s stopping us? I suspect this is largely a fear that the emperor has no clothes. What is the Bible without any claim to objective and/or divine authority? Most in the church suspect it will become just another book. And they may be right. Yet surely the past century has shown that giving the Bible some special status doesn’t accomplish anything. Its words either move, inspire and teach—or they don’t. Labeling the Bible “holy” or “God’s word” doesn’t change that.

Putting the Bible in some kind of protective glass case will only lead to it becoming a dusty air loom. Indeed, given the rising levels of biblical illiteracy that’s a status it is rapidly approaching. To save the Bible we need to kill it, at least as it has been viewed and used in the past. It needs to be set free from any and all doctrinal and theological straightjackets. Use its stories and images however necessary to be challenging, shocking, inspiring, and enlightening. If we can’t use it to do those things, then it’s time to get new material.

But will it preach?

Walter Brueggemann is certainly one of the most well known biblical interpreters and preachers in mainline Protestant circles. In this short video, however, he appears positively tongue-tied as he tries to explain the place of historical criticism in preaching. (Hat tip to Bob Cornwall for causing me to find this.)



Brueggemann acknowledges the now universally recognized obstacle that historical criticism has become to preaching and the church’s overall task of spreading the gospel. His proposal here that we somehow put historical criticism on a shelf to be admired but essentially ignored is, of course, nonsense. His stumbling hesitancy would seem to indicate he knows this himself.

The problem, he says, is that historical criticism “flattens” the text. But why would that be when essentially the same methodology is applied to other literature, like Homer or Shakespeare, with no ill effects? The reason, of course, is that such other literature does not claim to be “God’s word” or holy scripture.

What Brueggemann won’t acknowledge here is that historical criticism by definition grants no special privilege to any writing it analyzes. He does say that it “deconstructs the text” but doesn’t elaborate. This, however, is the crux of the problem for its use in the church. By accepting the legitimacy of historical criticism as a means of understanding the Bible, mainline churches and their colleges and seminaries have accepted its verdict that the Bible is simply one piece of ancient religious literature among many others. It can be evaluated as better than those others, or even as the best among them, but it can’t be evaluated as “true” or as speaking God’s truth.

More than flattening the text what historical criticism does is to bring the whole Bible down to earth. It is revealed to be the work of human beings, living in a certain time and a certain place, who inevitably wrote with all the limitations of any historical authors—limitations which the church heretofore had ignored or denied. And for ancient writers those limitations are pretty severe as far as contemporary readers are concerned.

Take for example the texts used most often in Christian preaching, the gospels. A preacher familiar with historical criticism is stopped immediately by a basic question: What am I looking at? That is, what kind of literature is this particular text?

While the gospels’ primary interest is in Jesus, of course, there are varying degrees of doubt as to what any particular text tells us about a historical Jesus. Did he say or do this? Did he tell this story, perform this act, or was this done to him? Historical criticism casts shades of factual doubt on virtually every text a preacher encounters. What is the "real Jesus" and when are we encountering what was said or imagined about him by the early church, the gospel writer, local folklore, legend, or mythology?

Thus most preachers are forced to hesitate doing what they most want to do, which is to announce with confidence, Jesus said or did thus and so. The texts are not necessarily flattened. Rather, viewed through the lens of historical criticism, stories remain just as fascinating, intriguing, meaningful or profound as before, so long as they are treated as stories. It becomes impossible, however, to treat them as newspaper accounts, if you will, of events that happened. It’s impossible, that is, if you want to speak with honesty and sincerity.

Brueggemann begins by talking about the need to declare the gospel to be “true.” Again, he gives no further explanation of this, but this is a huge can of worms. He may be nodding at what has in fact become mainline churches’ biggest conundrum: deciding what is the gospel today and whether we ourselves actually believe it.

What’s fascinating about this short video is how Brueggemann is able to skip along the surface of the contemporary church’s most profound problems without really diving into any of them. This, I think, is exactly why mainline churches are in the mess they are in today. Having gone down the road of historical criticism and modern thinking generally, it’s simply impossible for us to view our tradition the same way our forbears did. At some fundamental level, however, we still want to. But now we know too much—we can’t go back.

So, like Brueggemann, mainline Christianity pretends that its message and mission are basically unchanged, when in fact everything now is different. We are in a new time and a new world. Not only have our sacred texts been deconstructed but inevitably so too have the God and Christ that they speak of.

The greatest stories ever told (Sunday Reflections for July 5, 2009)

One night last week I watched a documentary on the life of Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille is credited with being one of the founders of the Hollywood movie industry and was a truly great and innovative director. His movies were known for their action, color, drama, and sex.

According to people interviewed, DeMille was also a genuinely religious man—at least of a certain type. His father was a preacher who read aloud from the Bible to his family every night. As a result, the Bible’s stories and images were lodged permanently in DeMille’s imagination. It was this love of the Bible’s drama which would later inspire several of his greatest movies, including King of Kings, Samson and Delilah, and The Ten Commandments (twice).

Beyond that, however, DeMille’s own religious beliefs were amorphous. His granddaughter said that DeMille didn’t really go to church but rather that he “went into churches,” where he would sit alone and in silence. DeMille would often hold court in the studio cafeteria with the likes of Billy Graham, the local archbishop, or prominent rabbis. His even-handed treatment of Moslems in The Crusades enabled him to get permission to film the second Ten Commandments on location in Egypt. (In the movie, many of the fleeing Israelites were played by extras from the Egyptian army, who would later fight the real Israeli army the year the film was released!)

As I watched clips from DeMille’s movies, I thought of last week’s Reflections column and some of the discussions in our last book group. The scholarly understanding of the Bible has changed dramatically over the past two hundred years, and especially in the period since World War II. The difficulty has been, however, that little of this information has made its way into the consciousness of the general public. And DeMille may be partly to blame for this.

In DeMille’s 1956 epic The Ten Commandments, the ancient biblical story of Moses’ delivery of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt explodes across the screen. No picture Bible, Sunday school book or film strip could ever compete with such a retelling of this tale—nor could a simple reading of the story from the book of Exodus. While the story may have endeared itself to DeMille as a child when he heard it read at the family dining table, his nearly 4-hour, Technicolor, “cast of thousands” film version left that story in the dust.

Despite usurping (and certainly altering) the biblical version, religious people—clergy and laity alike—loved DeMille’s Ten Commandments, in part because he made it so real. Who was Moses? He was Charlton Heston! Who was Pharaoh? He was Yul Brenner! What did the “angel of death” look like? It was an eerily green, snaking cloud (who knew?) wrapping itself around its victims. What was it like to part the Red Sea and then close it again, drowning Pharaoh’s army? A huge tank built in Hollywood especially for the purpose, plus special effects photography, showed us.

Ever since, those images have lodged themselves in the minds of anyone who saw DeMille’s version of this biblical tale. DeMille and the other cinema pioneers recognized the incredible psychological and emotional power of this new medium. Humans have been story tellers for as long as anyone knew. The popularity of the novel had spread across the globe after its modern invention in the 18th century. Now moving pictures, sound, and spoken dialog were combined to bring stories to life more vividly than . . . well, more vividly than life itself. That was cinema’s appeal, its magic, and its power for deception.

Like a painting, novels and movies are images, representations of real life. Real life, of course, is mostly ordinariness and routine (a quarter of our life, at least, is spent sound asleep). Stories sift out the all the “boring stuff” and focus our attention on the intense feeling, action, planning, and consequence that most interests us. They allow us to experience and reflect on these events in the lives of others (both fictional and real) so as to make sense of, and inspire, our own lives.

Movies, however, are “real” in ways written stories are not. Novels must rely on our imagination while movies do the imagining for us. In fact, movies hijack our imagination. Can anyone imagine Rhett Butler as someone other than Clark Gable after having seen the film version of Gone with the Wind? Indeed, movies are so powerfully vivid that they usually push aside any written version of a story, where one exists. Ironically then, DeMille’s movie is now much better known than the Bible story he heard as a child. And however DeMille himself imagined Moses, for millions of people he will always act and sound like Charlton Heston.

As I wrote last week, the epic tale of the founding of Israel told in the first books of the Bible is increasingly viewed as just that: a tale and not history. There isn’t space here to explain why this is so, except to say that there is simply no evidence to support any of it and quite a bit of evidence that contradicts the Bible’s depiction of that time. As a result of the archaeological data, biblical scholars increasingly view the story of Israel’s founding as a mythological story of Israel’s origins. It was written to give Jews, living three to four centuries before Jesus, a sense of identity: their meaning, purpose, and place in the world.

DeMille once said, “Give me any two pages of the Bible and I’ll give you a picture.” He knew the Bible overflowed with human narrative and drama which could be adapted for any age. It’s widely recognized, for example, that The Ten Commandments is as much about DeMille’s Cold War politics (with enslaving Pharaoh as a stand-in for the oppressive Communist Joseph Stalin) as it is about either religion or ancient history.

By making the Bible “real”, however, movies unfortunately also freeze it in our mind: this is the way it was and must always be. Most remakes flop because they inevitably challenge impressions already in people’s minds left by their predecessors. Thus it becomes harder for us to reimagine a Bible story we have “seen” already, let alone accept that many or most of the Bible’s stories are just that: stories. If people knew only the written text of Exodus, learning that it is likely fiction wouldn’t be so surprising or hard to believe. Now, however, we’ve seen the waters part, we’ve seen Moses/Heston come down with the tablets. It must have happened.

Scholars are also recognizing that biblical stories were treated much more fluidly in the ancient world. They were often revised and retold, sometimes with dramatically different outcomes and meanings. This can be seen even in the Bible itself where similar stories are told multiple times. The gospels contain perhaps most familiar examples but the two creation stories that open Genesis is another. DeMille also had this instinct as he had no problem revising biblical tales for the sake of his pictures.

It has only been in recent years that the Bible, for some, has become frozen—Gods’ “inerrant Word.” It’s also becoming obvious that frozen equals lifeless and dead. Stories can’t stand still if they are to survive. Where DeMille saw the struggle against totalitarianism, African American slaves and their descendents saw the struggle for freedom and the hope for a Promised Land. And that, scholars tell us, is why the story was told in the first place: not to remember past events but to inspire struggle and resistance against Israel’s then Greek and later Roman oppressors. Real stories, true stories, bend and adapt. So it is today that these stories can only live and inspire us if they are allowed to float free. Anchored to “history” and to the past, all we can do is pass them by.

Getting honest about the Bible (Sunday Reflections for June 28, 2009)

(Note: this is a revised version of an earlier post.)

Recently I had an email exchange with the director of the Book of Faith Initiative (BOFI), Diane Jacobson. Jacobson, a lay person, is professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. BOFI is the ELCA’s new effort to raise biblical literacy and, as I have written previously (here and here), I have serious doubts about its value.

I wrote Jacobson to draw her attention to the critiques I had posted on my blog about BOFI and its introductory book, Opening the Book of Faith. Her response was very gracious and appreciative of what I had written. Some of her specific points, however, illustrate just the problems I have identified in BOFI and in our current confusion over what to do with the Bible.

In my review of Opening the Book of Faith, I had criticized one of its sample studies (written by Prof. Jacobson) of the story of God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-15). Specifically, I criticized the study for never making clear whether in this text we are reading a report of actual events or a piece of literature, a mythological tale about Israel’s origins. I noted that virtually no non-fundamentalist scholar would say this is an eyewitness account by Moses (a tradition added long after the story was written). Further, many would say that little if any of the Exodus saga was supported by historical evidence and very likely did not occur.

In reply, Jacobson writes that she agrees that the Bible is not primarily eyewitness history—“No CNN” as she says. And I just note here that such a clear statement is nowhere to be found in this book or any BOFI materials I have seen. She goes on, however, to muddy the waters in a way typical of the current approach to the Bible in mainline churches, due primarily to our desire to have it both ways. Jacobson says that she does “accept that Israel (or some tribes of Israel) were slaves in Egypt and followed a leader named Moses.” But then she says this a little later: “You say ‘there is simply no historical evidence for any of the Exodus saga.’ Perhaps. I simply am not at all bothered or much interested in this.”

What’s going on here? Jacobson says she “accepts” the basic story that Israel was enslaved in Egypt and led to freedom by Moses. Yet to my flat-out statement that there is no historical evidence for this, she replies, “Perhaps.” In effect, she’s saying: Yes, that’s true but (for whatever reason) I can’t or won’t come right out and say so. This means, of course, that this has stopped being scholarship and become something else.

I don’t mean to pick on Jacobson here because I think she is representative of the fog that has descended on biblical scholarship throughout moderate and liberal church higher education. Many such teachers have followed contemporary biblical research to a point on the road where they don’t like what they see ahead, or aren’t sure how to respond to it. So they stop, saying in effect,. “I don’t need to go the rest of the way. I like it here. It doesn’t really matter what’s on ahead.”

Consider this statement by Jacobson:

Actually, I am not at all worried about avoiding controversy over historicity. I simply think such questions are often not at all helpful. There are two reasons for this opinion. One, because I do not think the main question of history is “did it happen?” I think the main question for historical study of the biblical text is “What insights from history would be helpful to know in order to hear, read, study, or understand this passage more accurately?”

In my experience, most mainline pastors and educators are actually deathly afraid of “controversy over historicity,” and not without reason. I still remember vividly an adult education class on Genesis at my first congregation, led by a seminary Old Testament professor. That particular night ended with one of our members screaming at this poor man about his heresy in saying that the Genesis creations stories were not historical fact. He later quit our church and joined a fundamentalist “Bible church”—which of course is where he belonged.

And so, Prof. Jacobson’s first statement is simply nonsense. One of the main questions—and certainly the first question—of history is always “did it happen?” Because if something didn’t happen, then it’s not history. Her second statement is, on the other hand, certainly true but it makes a subtle sidestep away from the historicity question. Now she is talking about the value of history in helping understanding a text and, of course, this is true for any kind of literature. Knowing English history is essential for fully appreciating Shakespeare, for example. You would certainly miss a lot reading Gone with the Wind if you knew nothing about the Civil War and Reconstruction.

So is the Bible more like Shakespeare and Gone with the Wind than a history text book? The emerging consensus of biblical scholarship is simply, yes. Just as you will search in vain for Scarlett, Rhett or Tara in Georgia state historical records, or for Hamlet in Danish ones, so too has the search for Moses, Aaron or Pharaoh’s drowned army been a fruitless one. Prof. Jacobson knows this, as do other biblical scholars and writers working on the materials of BOFI and similar projects, but they won’t say so in those materials ostensibly because they are “not at all bothered or much interested in this.”

Well, I just don’t buy it. I know that a large portion of the church’s lay membership is very interested in this, and not a few are also bothered by it. Personally, I find the history questions very interesting but I am not (any longer) bothered by them. In fact, since I stopped viewing the Bible as history my interest in it has actually grown and it has become more credible. I no longer feel like the White Queen having to believe “impossible things” everyday. And this is why I believe it is so important to teach this and not avoid it, because the Bible is more useful to modern people when read non-literally, not less.

We as leaders of the church have to stop being afraid of telling people what we know to be true. By not doing so we are only creating more trouble for ourselves, not avoiding it. We are also certainly creating it for our members. For every member who reacts in horror to the notion of a biblical character or event not being historical, I have had many more ask, “Why was I never told this before?” Jacobson denies my charge that the church has been paternalistic in avoiding this topic, yet I often talk to people who feel like they have been treated like children, as if they were incapable of handling “the real story.”

I believe the Bible is the world’s greatest collection of ancient religious literature. It can’t be anything more than that, however, nor does it need to be. The church can only be relevant in this world when it is honest with itself and others that its scriptures are a product of the ancient world—a world in which we no longer live. That doesn’t make it irrelevant but it does tell us how the Bible, like all ancient literature, needs to be read and appreciated. It indicates both its value and its limitations. We accomplish nothing by pretending to turn back the clock. The church is in this world, our members are in this world, and God is in this world. All of us can handle that fact, and so can our two thousand year-old Bible.

Babies and big fish: the truth of stories (Sunday Reflections for June 21, 2009)

Last week the Chicago Tribune carried a front page story headlined “Blogger’s baby a hoax”. Beccah Beushausen, 26, an evangelical Christian and ardent abortion opponent from suburban Chicago, had created an online persona who was struggling with a problem pregnancy. As she told her story she developed a large following of supporters who encouraged her in her pledge to not abort her child despite its handicaps. Recently “April” was born but died shortly thereafter. Ms. Beaushausen’s mistake, however, was to publish a picture of her with her newborn. Some of her faithful followers recognized her “baby” because they had the same doll (as it actually was) in their own homes. Very quickly, everything came crashing down.

As it turns out, Bueshausen had lost a newborn son a few years ago. She began her blog this past March to help deal with the loss and to express her anti-abortion viewpoint. To her surprise, she was soon getting 100,000 hits a week and “it got out of hand,” she said. “I didn’t know how to stop…. One lie led to another.”

One of the biggest obstacles I encounter in teaching a modern critical way of understanding the Bible is the notion that many/most of its stories “aren’t true.” Characters that never existed. Events that never occurred. “You mean someone made it up?” people ask incredulously. Well, a lot of someones actually, but yes they did. And the follow up needs to be, “It happens all the time.”

Headlined reports of truth turning out to be fiction have become almost commonplace. In recent years many major newspapers have had to publish embarrassed retractions when reporters were discovered to have been using their creativity a bit too aggressively. In 2006 author James Frey was publicly rebuked by Oprah Winfrey on her TV show for fabricating much of his “memoir,” which she had promoted through her book club. Significant Holocaust biographies have been revealed recently to be largely fictional.

People make things up. They tell stories about themselves and about others. It happens all the time and has been happening for as long as we have records. Ancient “history” hardly exists except for what contemporary historians can piece together from minimal fragmentary evidence. Recorded histories from these times are almost always propaganda, promoting this or that king’s exploits or creating the mythological story of some people’s origins. In a time before PhDs or a publishing industry, who cared about “objective truth”? Were 100 killed in the battle, or 10,000? Who counted, and who remembered?

The line between fact and fiction is certainly an important one to maintain. That doesn’t mean, however, that determining that line is easy. Psychologists have shown that our individual abilities to separate the two are more flawed than we realize. Our perceptions in real-time are often mistaken and our memory of events often selective. We see and remember what we want and can filter out what is unpleasant or contrary to firmly held beliefs.

I read recently about a series of surveys of World War II vets which showed how over time the percentage reporting having killed someone in battle steadily declined. In a different direction, post-election polls always show the number reporting having voted for the winning presidential candidate to be higher than the actual vote. In the religion field, it’s now widely accepted that people consistently over-report their worship attendance to survey takers (one of countless examples of people telling pollsters what they think ought to be the case rather than what actually is).

We like to tell stories and we like to hear stories. Does it matter if they are “true”? More often than we might think, probably not. A delightful story about story telling is the 2003 movie “Big Fish” by director Tim Burton. Its setting is that of an estranged adult son coming home to the death bed of his father, a notorious “big fish” story teller. The mythology the father has spun is so thick that his son thinks he knows nothing about the real man. As the stories are retold, however, he gradually discovers that the “truth” has been there all along, hidden in the fanciful events and characters of his father’s tales. This realization finally sinks home when many of the real people who inspired the stories’ characters appear at the end for the father’s funeral.

Life is often messy, confusing and painful. Stories/myths sometimes help us make sense of life. Sometimes they help us hide from it or hide it from others. It’s also true that stories allow us to tell the truth in ways that can be less threatening or overwhelming, to ourselves or others, than if we were to tell “all the facts.” Good fiction writers are aware of all these things and good fiction can be some of the most truthful writing we encounter.

The problems seem to come when we invest ourselves too much in our stories or other’s stories. We need to remain aware of where our own fiction begins and ends. We also need to realize everyone, including our greatest heroes, is surrounded by a certain degree of fiction and mythology. Feeling personally insecure we often attach ourselves to someone else’s “certainty.” When we get a glimpse “behind the curtain” and see our heroes as they really are, we feel betrayed. Yet we really betray ourselves when we expect others to somehow be untainted by the ambiguities and imperfections that are our everyday reality. And so, pro-life idealists are hurt by attaching themselves to a seemingly perfect story affirming their beliefs, when they discover that it was . . . a story.

Is the Bible true? Sometimes. Does the Bible tell stories? Always. How do we know which stories are true? We don’t, if by “true” you mean that they happened. Based on comparable examples from the ancient world, and based on what we know about human nature, it’s probably a good bet that a lot of them, even most of them, didn’t happen. They are, after all, stories.

But whatever truth the Bible contains is largely unrelated to the factuality of its stories. While “just the facts, ma’am” was enough for Joe Friday, we’re interested in different kinds of truth. We’re looking for truth that guides and makes sense of our lives and of our world. Since our world is very different from that of the Bible, many of its truths are of limited value to us. Still, the appeal of its stories is more than the appeal of its exotic tales of camels, polygamy and, yes, big fish. Something else speaks to us in these stories through the dilemmas and discoveries, tragedies and triumphs of their characters. If nothing else, their search for hope and meaning, and their conviction that they were there to be found, encourages us to continue on our quest for these same things. The people we meet in these stories give us the faith to believe that for us as for them, life and truth will be given to those who seek them.

Ascension: a tall tale

This past week liturgical churches observed Ascension, the festival that commemorates Jesus going to heaven after his resurrection. It is one of the stranger stories of the New Testament and is one of the best examples of how literal reading can not only be absurd but actually obscure what a text is trying to say.

Any one comparing how each of the four gospels comes to an end realizes there are significant differences between them. Given how scholars believe the gospels were written it is fairly easy to imagine the progression. Mark’s ending (Mark is the earliest gospel) is most famous for what it doesn’t include, namely an appearance of the risen Jesus. Women go and find the tomb empty on Easter morning. An angel tells them Jesus has risen and they should go tell the disciples that they will see Jesus in Galilee. The women flee in terror but say nothing to anyone. End of story.

Matthew, likely the next gospel written, obviously did not like how Mark ended his gospel. He basically retells Mark’s story to its ending but has the women flee in terror “and joy”, with the stated intention of obeying the angels’ (now two of them) instructions. Awkwardly, Matthew has Jesus appear at this point (running alongside them?) but all he does is repeat the angels’ directions. The disciples do go to Galilee and see Jesus. There is little action but Jesus gives a final sermon which includes the “great commission” to take the gospel into the world and “baptize all nations”.

Dating John is difficult because it seems to have been edited at various times and does not follow Mark’s chronology. This gospel also leaves Jesus on stage—twice. After Jesus appears in the upper room to Thomas to bring him to faith, the gospel is brought to a clear conclusion. The next chapter then has obviously been added later by another hand and gives an account of Jesus appearing to the disciples on the shore of Lake Tiberias. A “wrap-up” paragraph similar to the one in the previous chapter ends the gospel again. In neither case is Jesus “removed” from the scene.

Perhaps being more the dramatist, Luke appreciates that having Jesus reappear after his resurrection creates the problem of having him lingering on stage. At the end of his gospel, after Jesus has appeared to the disciples (in Jerusalem, not Galilee) he is “carried up into heaven”. To begin Acts, his second book, Luke double backs and again has the risen Jesus appear to the disciples. Here, alone among the gospel writers, Luke introduces the idea that Jesus appeared to the disciples for forty days after his resurrection (which is why Ascension always falls on the Thursday of the sixth week of the Easter season). A more involved conversation ensues and Jesus gives the disciples Matthean-like instructions to be his “witnesses…to the ends of the earth” (something he hadn’t done at the end of Luke’s gospel). After this we are told that Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Angels then appear and tell the disciples to stop staring into space and get to work.

Luke’s exclusive account of Jesus’ levitation into the clouds certainly creates problems for modern readers. Besides the obvious awkwardness of having Jesus fly away like Superman, one is also left wondering just what exactly happened to the fleshly and fish-eating Jesus (Luke 24) after leaving earth. Just what was that cloud he flew into? If Matthew and John were aware of any difficulty in leaving Jesus on earth, perhaps they anticipated that any story of his removal would simply create more narrative problems. More likely, it simply didn’t occur to them to include this dramatic element, because what becomes obvious when comparing how the gospels each end their stories is that these are not accounts of what has occurred based on eye-witness testimony. Each writer is taking a general tradition of Jesus’ resurrection and creating dramatic narratives consistent with their individual purposes, Luke included.

The notion of the gospel writers creating their material is extremely bothersome to many Christians. And yet the church’s acceptance of four distinctly different gospels makes clear that its concern at the time was not for journalistic or historical accuracy. Indeed the gospels themselves imply or say outright that their purpose in telling their stories is to proclaim the gospel and create faith, not report events. What is often missed today, however, is that the gospel writers did not create out of thin air. Rather, they followed the ancient and biblical tradition of creating new stories out of old. In doing so, they connected their work with the scriptural quilt that had been evolving over the centuries. They intentionally wove their stories into the greater narrative of God’s people.

There usually are multiple influences in any biblical composition but often one will stand out. In this case the tradition Luke clearly has in mind is the cycle of Elijah/Elisha stories, in particular the account of the passing of the mantle (literally) from the latter to the former. The key passage is 2 Kings 2: 9-11. Elisha knows his teacher Elijah is about to be “taken away” and that he will be assuming his responsibilities. As the moment nears Elisha decides to ask for help.

9When they had crossed [the Jordan], Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." 10He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not." 11As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.

Elijah wails in mourning. Nonetheless he takes up the mantle Elijah dropped and repeats Elijah’s miracle of parting the waters (a connection back to the Moses tradition). Elisha is ready to carry on the mission.

The parallels with Acts are pretty obvious and, as a result, so is Luke’s underlying message. Jesus, like Elijah, is taken up into heaven as the disciples watch. Their experience of Jesus’ ascension is the confirmation that, like Elisha, they will now inherit the spirit that has empowered Jesus. Luke is not a copycat, however, and so creates his own dramatic confirmation of this promise in the Pentecost story of the next chapter. Here is where the fire and whirlwind of Elijah’s ascent appear, as a “violent” wind/spirit fans the flames burning above the disciples’ heads. Subsequent events confirm the disciples are indeed on fire with the spirit and gospel message of Jesus. This is where Jesus has really gone: into the lives of his disciples.

Did Jesus ascend into heaven before the disciples’ eyes? No. Did any of the events in the Ascension/Pentecost narrative actually occur? Probably not, but who knows? Certainly Luke didn’t know, living more than a half-century (and a devastating war) after the time he is depicting. Increasingly scholars are recognizing Acts as fitting quite well into the style and form of the ancient novella. It doesn’t fit well at all as a work of journalism or history.

In the ascension story Luke has a theological message he is trying to convey. Whether these things actually happened is an obsession of ours and was irrelevant to Luke’s intent in including them (or creating them). The story is the work of a great theologian, not an investigative reporter. When we insist “this must have happened” because it’s in the Bible, we miss Luke’s whole purpose in writing and for many contemporary readers cause it to have the exact opposite affect Luke intended: it doesn’t create faith but drains it away.

Keeping closed the "book of faith"

Opening the Book of Faith is the introductory guide for the ELCA’s Book of Faith Initiative (BOFI) and an introduction to Bible study from a Lutheran perspective. I think this book has a lot of problems (certainly due in part to the fact that six different people had their hands in authoring its hundred pages). One that jumped out at me illustrates well the concerns I have discussed elsewhere with BOFI and with our attempts to revive Bible study today in the church.

In the book’s third chapter, BOFI’s director Diane Jacobson (a professor at Luther Seminary) lays out four perspectives for reading the Bible: devotional, historical, literary, and Lutheran. In discussing the historical approach she correctly emphasizes understanding a text’s authorship and context. In the first of four sample Bible studies which follow (and which Jacobson also writes), this guidance somehow goes out the window.

The text is Exodus 3:1-15, the story of God’s call of Moses at the burning bush on Mt Horeb. In the previous chapter on study methods, Jacobson lists several appropriate questions (p. 53) that should be asked about a text and its author: who wrote it, who was it written for, what do we know about the political and cultural context when it was written, and so on. But when she turns to this study she focuses on the events in the story. She says nothing about authorship of the text or any possible context for the story’s writing, ignoring her own instruction. Why? Because it avoids the presumably too controversial issue of the historicity of the Exodus events.

Who wrote Exodus? Certainly no ELCA seminary or university Bible department would say it was Moses, the tradition added to the Pentateuch well after it was written. Without needing to get into specific theories of authorship (like JEDP), the key point to be made is that this certainly is not an eye witness account but rather was written centuries after the presumed time of these events. Given that, and given that we are trying to emphasize relating the Bible to adults as adults, certainly some attention has to be given to the obvious question: Did any of the events in this story actually happen?

Surely Professor Jacobson is aware (whatever her own stance) that a significant portion of biblical scholars would say “No they did not”. And they say so, not because they believe God doesn’t speak through burning bushes, but because there is simply no historical evidence for any of the Exodus saga and ample reason to take that silence as telling. In this view, Israel was not enslaved in Egypt, Moses therefore did not come and rescue them, the Israelites did not wander in the Sinai and then invade Palestine, and there probably was no Moses, at least not as he is depicted in the Bible. How, when you are supposedly looking at a text from a historical perspective, could you not identify it not as history but as story, not as a recounting of events that occurred but rather as part of the larger mythology of Israel’s origins?

Perhaps one of the most disingenuous statements in the chapter is this (p. 71): “Though we cannot always know how much of each story is precise historical fact, we do know the story of God’s saving action in the Bible includes real people and places.” But what does that mean? If I read a story about George Washington’s brilliant leadership in a Revolutionary War battle in Texas, then it’s valuable because George Washington was a real person and Texas is a real place? However great a story it may be, as history it would be preposterous because we know there were no such battles in Texas and, while Washington may have slept in a lot of places, we know he never laid down his head in Texas. And we know, in fact, that this kind of mix-up of names, places and times happens all the time in the Bible.

What frustrates me is that I know Professor Jacobson knows all of this. What is she afraid of? What are we afraid of? Why is it so awful to think that the Bible tells stories, just as every other culture and religion of the ancient world told mythological stories about their origins? Here again we are applying contemporary values and perspectives (“precise historical fact”) to ancient writings and getting confusion and misunderstanding.

The main issue here, however, is that once again we are paternalistically deciding what people should be told. To discuss this text from a historical perspective and not even hint at the fact that many, and probably most, non-fundamentalist scholars consider this a fictional tale is simply deception. And what does it do to the church’s credibility when people find this out on their own? How can they not conclude that they were lied to?

Opening the Book of Faith could have been written fifty years ago and most of it probably a century or more ago. Some will view this as a testament to its faithfulness to tradition but I see it as evidence of its failure to realize how fundamentally our world has changed. The first two chapters trot out the tried and true chestnuts of Lutheran hermeneutics and theology without any awareness that many of these have become meaningless gibberish to ordinary people. The authors cheerlead and cajole (“Lutherans read the Bible…they believe the Bible…they love the Bible” p.26) seemingly unaware that BOFI was launched precisely because so many of their assumptions are no longer true.

All of this raises the question of who this book and BOFI generally are intended for. Most of it seems aimed at the faithful remnant who already know the church’s language, are still regular worship attendees, and already have a traditional familiarity with the Bible. And so to protect their sensibilities we will avoid offering anything new or challenging to the Sunday school view of the Bible they received a generation ago. For the vast majority of people with little interest in or familiarity with the Bible, however, this approach will ensure that it continues to be seen by them as an antique curiosity, cherished by our ancestors but largely incomprehensible and irrelevant to contemporary life.