One In Jesus

As I’ve been pondering this approach to understanding the Bible, I’ve asked myself how the church’s history might have been different had this approach had greater prominence in our thinking. How might the Churches of Christ behaved differently in the 20th Century had they adopted this old (not new) hermeneutic?

I grew up in the 1960s, and the Civil Rights Movement was not only big news, it was a major reality. Schools were desegregated, but so were restaurants and stores and water fountains. The changes were dramatic, as was the the reaction of the churches. Well, it wasn’t all that dramatic, really. In fact, there was hardly any reaction at all. The churches began the 1960s racially segregated and they ended then 1960s racially segregated.

And while this was going on, many Christians were busy looking for prooftexts to defend the separation of the races. One of the most popular was Genesis 10, with the idea being that God has assigned locations to the various descendants of Noah. Therefore, the argument went, God meant for Africans to remain in Africa and so we should send African-Americans back to Africa — in fulfillment of God’s will. Continue reading →

As I’ve been thinking through this approach to hermeneutics, it’s occurred to me that there’s an obvious objection: where in this Story is salvation? Where is forgiveness of sin? Where is heaven?

You see, in the religion I was brought up in, the entire focus of the Bible was salvation. It was all about convicting people of sin, urging them to repent, and getting them saved. Once they were saved, they were assured of heaven if they could live up to God’s will, being mainly concerned with personal morality and patterns of worship and church organization. 

Later on, I learn that God’s will for us was that we should receive grace, so that salvation comes to us as a free gift, and we respond to this free gift through obedience.

But the Story tells us that God wants us to enjoy covenant community today and to invite others into this community. Where’s salvation? Continue reading →

So how does this approach to hermeneutics affect Restoration Movement teaching? Well, quite a lot, actually. Let’s take some examples.

Sunday

The classic Restoration Movement hermeneutic is to think in terms of commands, examples, and necessary infererences (CENI). This approach struggles a bit when confronted with inconsistent examples. For example, we see that the Jerusalem church met daily (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 5:42). And yet the churches in Troas and Corinth seems to have met weekly (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), although the texts are a bit ambiguous. Logically, if we were meet daily, we’d honor both examples, but we only meet on Sunday and Wednesday, and we consider Sunday the only day that’s strictly mandatory.

How do we decide? Well, traditionally, what we do is look at the Patristics, writings of uninspired early Christians that reveal that the early church meet weekly on Sundays. But this is contrary to being “silent where the Bible is silent” and sola scriptura. 

The Story, however, takes us down a radically different path. Continue reading →

Just a few thoughts that didn’t fit in the earlier posts.

Thought 1: So what’s what’s so fearsome about “emerging”?

Scot McKnight is one of the leading scholars in the emerging church movement, and yet his book doesn’t partake of the sins alleged against that movement.

He plainly respects the authority and inspiration of scripture. He plainly centers his Christianity on the gospel and faith in Jesus.  He does not extend false hope to those without Jesus. 

The book could have written by any number of mainstream evangelical authors. Continue reading →

McKnight offers an extended example of how to apply these principles in practice by working through the passages on the role of women. I’ll not cover those chapters in any detail, as they follow the outline of my own Buried Talents series posted here earlier this year. Buried Talents is much more detailed, but the logic is much the same.

Now, although I think McKnight reaches the right conclusion (evangelical egalitarianism), and his analysis is sound, I don’t know that he ties his conclusions to his principles as well as I’d like. It would be entirely possible to agree with all that McKnight says and yet struggle to apply the principles in other contexts.

And so, I’m going to try to simplify the analysis — and those who are interested in the details should refer to the book or to Buried Talents. Continue reading →

McKnight argues that if we love someone, we’ll listen to his words. Therefore, our Bible reading must be a listening reading.

Now, this seems pretty elementary, but consider what it contradicts —

* Reading to prove yourself right

* Reading to prove your opponent wrong

* Reading to answer your questions (as opposed to reading to learn what the correct questions are!)

All these are plainly in contradiction to love for God. Rather, in acting this way we set ourselves up as the standard by which God’s will should be judged. We pick those verses that defend our preferred views and don’t bother to listen to the others.

And so, McKnight offers some tips on how to listen well. Continue reading →