God-breathed
It’s been a good three years. Since I’m hopelessly embedded in the academic calendar, Summer break is the best time to look back. It’s the only chunk of time that slows down enough to let me reflect. And while reflecting on one’s choice of major is probably passé at this point, writing it out for an audience gives me some reassurance that what I’ve begun studying will move toward something. Bear with me.
I find myself preparing for (read: crawling to) my last year of undergrad with many more questions than I have answers for — and that’s a good thing. I’ve barely grazed over only the most accessible tips of the humanities’ icebergs: ancient languages, textual/literary/etc. criticism, theology, philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology— oceans of content that I’ll never really cross. It’s paralyzing and overwhelming, but exciting and motivating all the same. I’m thankful for where I’ve come from and where I’m at. Critical reminiscence is beneficial for me, so I’ll look back.
Since I couldn’t have articulated it, I’ll borrow some phrasing from my advisor: I entered into my program seeking answers to two questions: “What is the Bible?” and “What do we do with it?” Thanks to my professors, the authors I read, the relationships I maintain, and the educational environment that I am blessed with, I’ve begun to establish structures with which to approach those questions.
Often I feel a draw to write up a series of blogs or to start a podcast (the last thing this world needs) to share the bits and pieces of what I’ve gathered to throw at those two questions. This desire is usually kindled from the excitement in reading a new book or hearing an especially compelling lecture. It’s quickly snuffed out when I remind myself of my “age & stage,” like my Dad has always phrased it. I’ll likely change my mind in a few weeks, hear something more compelling, and end up regretting what I released to the world. It’s a wise caution, and I’m thankful that he’s been consistent in giving it. So instead, I’ll read more, and I’ll wait.
In the minimal reading that I dedicate to poetry and fiction, I try to write down quotes that resonate with me. Keats offers a great description of my current age & stage (and I repeat it fully aware of how pretentious it is to quote John freaking Keats):
“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.”
— John Keats, preface to Endymion
So I’m stuck. My age & stage leave me with those two questions that I brought into my program, the beginnings of hazy answers to those questions, and no small amount of “thick-sighted ambition” to add more capital letters after my name.
I was reminded of my “undecided character” and “fermenting soul” as I finished up a book in the coffee shop today. Even in reading Biblical Studies books (Gordon’s book is primarily theological, and thus more amiable to divine intervention), God gives me frequent and jarring moments of self-reflection:
“The Christian reader must be self-critical above all else. Christian reading requires one to have experienced the Holy Spirit’s internal work, refashioning the inner person in conformity with Christ. It requires one to have an openness to mystery, to transcendence, to perplexity, and to suffering. To participate in the economic* work of the Triune God, one must lay down any desire to control God or God’s authority. One must become as Christ.”
— Joseph K. Gordon, Divine Scripture in Human Understanding p. 259 (emphasis added)
*read: management, handling, or literally “housekeeping”
On the right-hand margin I scribbled “I’ve reeled against all four.” I’ve reeled against all four with more energy than I’ve put into anything else in my life. Mystery disappoints me; transcendence confuses me; perplexity angers me; and suffering frightens me. Nearly every decision I make is to mitigate one or more of those experiences.
But I can’t argue with what the author describes as authentic Christian reading! He’s offering the beginnings of answers to my questions, whether I like them or not. It’s ouroboric: I have to become like Christ and be transformed by the Spirit to really understand/interpret Scripture, but in really understanding/interpreting Scripture I become like Christ and am transformed by the Spirit.
If — like what I think Professor Gordon is proposing — authentic engagement with Scripture is divinely ordained to transform the transformed reader into Christ (an idea I’m wholeheartedly behind— thank you Professors Gorman and Hays), then of course the process would be mysterious, transcendental, perplexing, and full of suffering.
I love the idea, but I still reel against those characteristics of God & Scripture because they make me uncomfortable. There’s a dissonance between what I know to be true and what I do. Paul (or his amanuensis?) probably said it better.
And in that reeling I’ve come to realize that those two questions I entered into my major with were not entirely innocuous. Cognitively, I believed that I had qualified them well, but my actions and efforts demonstrate a different reality. I had substituted my unaware, Solo Scriptura/biblicism/bibliolatry with a slightly more informed yet laughably underdeveloped critical method — one aimed at achieving the same “assured results,” albeit with a different paint job. That inclination is no one’s fault but my own, and I am confident it was not instilled in me by any of my instructors. I think it came from something inside me.
It’s only now that I’m beginning to see that the answers to those questions can’t stand in for God. As much energy and work as I put into my Biblical Studies and the early phases of my theological reading, It will never be enough. It will never bring me closer to God on its own. It will never transform me by itself.
I’ve found my new “life verse” in the Gospel According to John:
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
John 5:39–40 NRSV
Biblical Studies has provided me with a new reading of John 5:39–40.
So I seek change. I inconsistently and imperfectly try to seek life. When I’m blessed with the right temperament and motivation, I attempt new or revive old spiritual practices: I pray more often, I attend church, I read devotionally (still figuring out how to do that with a critical paradigm), I seek counsel from peers and mentors, I work to serve and to help the people and communities around me — I do Christian things to seek Christ. I hope that he sees my work and my effort, and I hope that he answers by providing where I fall short because he loves me.
Under my old paradigm, the only “real” way to come to Christ was through Scripture. As I dismantled ideas about other “-ologies,” vestiges of old assumptions about christology and theology remained, and they assimilated into my early critical lens. Having named that, I can now move forward.
Interestingly, those two questions that I started with haven’t disappeared. If anything, they’ve gained significant meaning and value within a new structure of understanding. “What is the Bible?” and “What do we do with it?” are now more valuable to me than they were before, because their answer is couched in terms of a means, not an end. And they’re a vastly inferior end in comparison to Jesus. As a means though, one of the primary means, their value is incalculable. Because of that, I will work just as hard to answer them, if not harder.
My advisor always harps on method. He says (wisely) that if I’m going to go into academia, I have to stick to a method. My goal now is to figure out how my method can acknowledge and account for mystery, transcendence, perplexity, and suffering.
