Have to say, I love the very vivid picture of the choked-upon latte. I love, too, that even though it took you this long to articulate your comeback, you still shared it! Promise to teach me how?!?

Surely when Paul wrote to Timothy that all scripture was God breathed he was referring to what we call (more or less) the Old Testament. So this verse doesn’t necessarily apply to our New Testament. I don’t really know where I’m going with this suffice to say whilst I do believe that what we have as our Bible is God inspired (as much because of inherent authority and overall consistency as anything else), it is I believe healthy and sensible to consciously challenge the way we read scripture. I think as you say the only (safe) way to do this is in light of the central theme, the Good News of Jesus.

If I can pose perhaps an even more controversial question: Might it even be true to say that some of Paul’s letters are no more inspired by God than books published by Christian writers of this age e.g. CS Lewis??!!

To come back to David & Goliath, I think, as Van Peebles hints, perhaps Caleb isn’t a million miles off with his interpretation. It’s a good question ‘What would Jesus have us do?’ Jesus avoided the politics of his day and lived submissively under Roman occupation. Perhaps to do otherwise would have confused the world about the purpose of his mission. But is that the same for us? I wonder whether Christians need to be more prepared to throw stones in certain circumstances.

I reckon (as I hinted recently on QM’s blog) if I had opportunity, I might well be tempted to throw a brick in Robert Mugabe’s direction without it pricking my conscience! Is that wrong?!

I’ve never heard such a brilliant articulation of neoconservative thought!

But, actually, this chimes with a very interesting discussion over at Jesus Creed concerning the writings on Bonhoeffer and R Niehbuhr and the concept of Christian realism.

Is there a time when we “should” throw stones at giants (even though we know we’re never without sin). This is fighting Nazis territory, to be sure. But it’s interesting that within Emerging circles the discussion seems to have moved away from Hauerwasian pacifism towards a study of realism and political responsibility. The question is less “What would Jesus do?” but “What would Jesus have us do?”

ME TOO! in fact im writing this before i’ve read past your first paragraph… so im FORCED not to respond. nuffin but luv

QM

OK, so on the issue of “consistency.” Roughly my approach to reading the Bible is “read every part according to its genre and its historical-cultural context, and in light of the good news about Jesus.” Because the Bible is a wonderfully diverse collection of books, when you apply that principle consistently, you’ll read Genesis, Jonah, Kings, Proverbs, Mark and Revelation in very different ways. To read them all in the same way is consistency of a very obstinate and peculiar kind.

Your limitation of all the possible options for literary genre to essentially “fact” or “fiction” is the crudest kind of reductionism. There’s no room in that kind of choice for poetry, parable, saga, myth, proverb, apocalyptic, prophetic vision etc etc. My four year old has no desire to reduce all the colourful variety of stories he hears to those two neat little boxes, and hopefully it’ll be a while before he gets contaminated by the dull reductionism of enlightenment rationalism!!

sorry… you’re right, focus isn’t my strong point. (’point’, geddit?)

I do understand your ‘way of reading’ it. I’m just not sure that there is evidence that this ‘way of reading’ is the way Jesus and the disciples did (if I concede some of the NT narrative for the sake of argument) …or that this way of reading will convince Caleb very much -- he wants to know if the david & goliath story is like ‘Humpty Dumpty’ or like ‘The Somme’, its important, truth maters.

I have a way of reading it too. I accept most reported narrative in the absence of any other disagreeing narrative -- I won’t put my proverbial house on it but I don’t feel the need to have nailed down irrefutable evidence before I accept that Jonah existed or went to Nineveh… I do need nailed down strong evidence to accept that he lived inside a whale. The thing is, I carry this on to the NT as well, and indeed other texts from other ancient societies. What’s wrong with my way of reading it? Seems logical to a non theologian like me.

I think my reading method is quite consistent, I also think that reading every word of the bible as god breathed, flawless and accurate, whilst being a bit mental, is consistent. I’m not 100% sure that yours is.

I’ll limit myself to one response, in the hope that other commenters might then return us to the theme of the original post…

Just to clarify, I don’t personally subscribe to the medieval view that the OT is largely allegorical. I was just pointing out that a Jesus-centred hermeneutic has a long pedigree. I think the more recent move towards reading it in a largely historical way is right (and affirms God’s interest in and love for the messiness of ordinary human life).

The new challenge this raises is to read it as a historical narrative which moves towards Jesus as its pinnacle and climax, not as a flat narrative in which every part can be read and used in exactly the same way.

There are parts of the OT whose historicity I’m less certain about (the early chapters of Genesis, maybe Job and Jonah), but that’s because of clues within those texts as to their literary genre, not because I don’t like their content. I take the gospels as pretty much reliable eye-witness testimony.

Now, someone else please save me from another QM barrage…

How do you judge which reports in the OT are historical… Jonah and the whale? Samson? Adam and eve? The walls of Jericho? Joseph and pharaoh? Are all of these stories factual or all non factual or some are and some arnt?

In any case… I find books which mix historic happens with ‘made up’ ones and morality tales very dangerous indeed. eg Dan Brown’s stuff. When you talk about a non historical OT you relegate the bible to the D Brown league I fear. I hate the fact that I read Brown’s Angels and demons… I know that some of the things mentioned in it were true and some wernt, but im not sure what… very dangerous, could almost spawn a religion that’s for another post though I guess.

1. I’m certainly not proposing a blank canvas where we can make the Bible mean whatever we please. I’m suggesting a very specific hermeneutic – that everything is to be read and interpreted in light of the good news about Jesus.

2. I’m pretty sure the idea of a Jesus-centred hermeneutic is not a new one. In fact, for about the first 14 centuries I think most interpretation went too far in this direction, seeing most of the OT as an allegory about Jesus. It’s actually only in the modern era that people started to read the OT more historically, creating a new set of challenges.

3. I think plenty of ordinary Christians read the Bible this way instinctively, without being too self-conscious about their hermeneutic. I’m pretty sure my brethren granny read the Bible in a Jesus-centred, gospel-centred, love-centred way. You don’t have to be a genius to come up with this approach. Common sense and a good heart will lead in this direction.

4. For the centrality of love in biblical faith, check out the following post-modern, Guardian-reading, bleeding-heart liberals: Irenaeus (2nd century), Augustine of Hippo (4th), John Cassian (5th), Bernard of Clairvaux (12th), Martin Luther (16th), John Wesley (18th). This is more like the rediscovery of what’s been lost, not a new innovation.

5. The crusades are a much more complicated story. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux had an approach to Scripture that was Jesus-centred and love-centred. But he also preached in favour of the crusades. It’s a bloody hard thing to understand in historical retrospect.

Unorthodoxology – I’ll pass on your respect to caleb.

Beardy – I’ll also pass on your disagreement. He’ll be raging.