Approaching the Bible

Revelation

Biblical theology forms an organic whole. This means not only that one can approach any part of the subject by beginning at any other point of the subject (though some vantage points are certainly more helpful than others), but that to treat some element of biblical theology as if it existed in splendid isolation seriously distorts the whole picture.

On few subjects is this more obviously true than with regard to one's doctrine of Scripture. In this skeptical age it is doubtful if an articulate and coherent understanding of the nature of Scripture and how to interpret it can long be sustained where there is not at the same time a grasp of the biblical view of God, of human beings, of sin, of redemption, and of the rush of history toward its ultimate goal.

For instance, if it is true that the Bible tells us about God, not least what kind of God he is, it is no less true that unless God really is that sort of God, it is impossible to appreciate the Bible for what it is. To approach the Bible correctly it is important to know something of the God who stands behind it.

God is both transcendent (i.e., he is "above" space and time) and personal. He is the sovereign and all-powerful Creator to whom the entire universe owes its existence, yet he is the God who graciously condescends to interact with us human beings whom he has himself formed in his own image. Because we are locked in time and space, God meets us here; he is the personal God who interacts with other persons, persons he has made to glorify him and to enjoy him forever.

In short, God has chosen to reveal himself to us, for otherwise we would know very little about him. True, his existence and power are disclosed in the created order, even though that order has been deeply scarred by human rebellion and its consequences (Gen. 3:18; Rom. 8:19–22; see Ps. 19:1–2; Rom. 1:19–20). It is also true that rather a dim image of God's moral attributes is reflected in the human conscience (Rom. 2:14–16). But this knowledge is not sufficient to lead to salvation. Moreover, human sinfulness is so ingenious that not a little energy is devoted to explaining away even such revelation as this. But in his unmeasured grace God has actively intervened in the world he made in order to reveal himself to men and women in still more powerful ways.

This was true even before the fall. God assigned certain responsibilities to the creatures whom he made in his image (itself an act of revelation), and then met with them in the garden he had made for them. When God chose Abraham, he established a covenant with him, revealing himself as his God (Genesis 15; 17). When he redeemed Israel from slavery, God not only conversed with Moses but displayed himself in terrifying plagues and in the thunder and lightning of Sinai. Though the whole earth is his, he chose Israel as his covenant people and made them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19:5–6). To them he disclosed himself not only in spectacular displays of power but in his Torah (lit. "instruction"), which included not only detailed prescriptions for daily life but entire structures of mandated religious observance (tabernacle/temple, sacrifices, priesthood).

Throughout the period covered by the Old Testament, God revealed himself in providence (e.g., the arrangements that brought Joseph to Egypt, Genesis 37–50; 50:19–20; sleeplessness on a certain night in the life of Xerxes, Est. 6:1ff.; the decrees of Cyrus and Darius that effected the return of some Hebrews to Jerusalem after the exile), in miraculous events (e.g., the burning bush, Exodus 3; the fire at Mount Carmel, 1 Kings 18), in prophetic words (the "word of the LORD" repeatedly "comes" to the prophets), in poetry and songs (e.g., Psalms). But even while Old Testament believers knew that God had disclosed himself to his covenant people, they were aware that he had promised more definitive revelation in the future. God promised a time when a new shoot would emerge from David's line (Isa. 11), a man who would sit on David's throne but who would, nevertheless, be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9). God himself would come down and usher in a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 65). He would pour out his Spirit (Joel 2), introduce a new covenant (Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36), raise the dead (Ezekiel 37), and much more.

The New Testament writers are convinced that the long-awaited self-disclosure of God and his salvation have been brought near in Jesus Christ, God's Son. In the past God had revealed himself primarily through the prophets, but now in these last days he has revealed himself supremely and climactically in the Son (Heb. 1:2). The Son is the perfect image of the Father (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3); all God's fullness dwells in him (Col. 1:19; 2:9). He is the incarnation of God's self-expression; he is God's Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14, 18).

This Son-centered revelation is found not only in the person of Jesus but also in his deeds. Not only in his teaching, preaching, and healing, but supremely in the cross and resurrection Jesus reveals God and accomplishes the divine plan of redemption. By the Spirit whom the exalted Christ has bequeathed (John 14–16) God convicts the world (John 16:7–11), assists believers in their witness (John 15:27), and above all, manifests God to them, taking up residence in them (John 14:19–26). Thus God reveals himself by the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee and down payment of the promised inheritance (Eph. 1:13–14). One day the ultimate self-disclosure will occur, and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:11; cf. Rev. 19–22).

The point to emphasize is that a genuinely Christian understanding of the Bible presupposes the God of the Bible, a God who makes himself known in a wide diversity of ways so that human beings may know the purpose for which they were made — to know and love and worship God, and so delight in that relationship that God is glorified while they receive the matchless benefit of becoming all that God wants them to be. Any genuine knowledge human beings have of God depends on God's first disclosing himself.

The Word of God

What must not be overlooked is that this God is a talking God. Doubtless he reveals himself to us in many ways, but word is not the least of them.

In English "revelation" can be understood actively or passively, i.e., as either the activity whereby God reveals himself, or the substance of that disclosure. When it refers to God's self-disclosure in speech, the active sense envisages God's making himself known in words, while the passive sense focuses on the words themselves insofar as they constitute the message God chooses to convey.

The importance of God's speech as a fundamental means of his self-disclosure cannot be overestimated. Creation itself is the product of God's speech: God speaks, and worlds leap into being (Genesis 1). Many of God's most dramatic deeds of revelation would not have been understandable apart from God's accompanying speech. Moses views the burning bush as a curiosity until the voice tells him to remove his sandals and assigns him his new responsibilities. Abraham would have had no reason to leave Ur were it not for God's revelation in words. Again and again the prophets carry the burden of "the word of the LORD" to the people. Verbal revelation is essential even in the case of the Lord Jesus: during the days of his flesh, he was, first of all, the teacher. Moreover, apart from the explanation of the significance of his death and resurrection, preserved both in the Gospels and in the letters, even these momentous events would have been unbearably and tragically obscure. So central is God's speech to his own self-disclosure that when John the Evangelist casts around for an encompassing way to refer to God's ultimate self-disclosure in his Son, he chooses to refer to him as "the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... The Word became flesh" (John 1:1, 14). The horseman of Revelation 19 is called "Faithful and True. ... He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God" (19:11, 13).

Of course, to establish that God is a talking God, and that his words constitute a foundational element in his gracious manifestation of himself to us, does not itself demonstrate that the Bible is the product of that active revelation, and thus itself revelation in the passive sense. Indeed, the expression "the word of God" in the Bible has a wide range of uses. All of them presuppose that God talks, that he is not simply an impersonal "ground of all being" or a mysterious "other"; but the variety of uses is noteworthy. For example, "the word of God" or "the word of the LORD" is frequently said to "come" to one of his prophets (e.g., Jer. 1:2; Ezek. 30:1; Hos. 1:1; Luke 3:2). How this "word" or "message" comes is usually not explained. Clearly, however, even these instances are sufficient to demonstrate that in the Bible itself "the word of God" is not necessarily identical with Scripture.

Some who make this observation go farther and argue that it is inappropriate to speak of Scripture as the word of God. Alternatively, they hold that if "the word of God" is used to refer to the Bible, it must be in some vague sense: the Bible's message, what God has in general terms revealed to human witnesses, or the like. It must not be used to refer to the actual words of Scripture.

But this is surely to err on the other side. Jesus can reproach his opponents for setting their tradition above "the word of God" (Mark 7:13), and what he has in mind is the Scripture that has already been given. If some messages from God are cast in the most general terms, a very substantial number are cast as oracles, utterances, from God himself. Thus the prophecy of Amos modestly begins, "The words of Amos ... ," but oracle after oracle throughout the book is prefaced by some such expression as "This is what the LORD says" (2:6) or "This is what the Sovereign LORD says" (3:11). Jeremiah pictures God's revelation as coming in almost dictation fashion, so that when the initial manuscript is destroyed, God graciously delivers the message again (Jer. 30:2; 36:27–32). David insists that

the words [the Heb. means "words" or "utterances," not "promises" as in the RSV] of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. (Ps. 12:6)

When we extend our inquiry into the New Testament, we find writer after writer saying that "God says" something that is found in one or another canonical book. While New Testament writers frequently refer to what Moses or Isaiah or someone else says (e.g., Rom. 9:29; 10:19), they can also refer to what God himself says when he addresses the writer of the Old Testament book (e.g., Rom. 9:15, 25). Moreover, they can say that "God says" or "the Holy Spirit" says even when quoting passages of Scripture where the Old Testament writer is not in fact directly addressed by God (e.g., Heb. 7:21; 10:15). Sometimes a longer formula is used, e.g., "what the Lord had said through the prophet" (Matt. 1:22); "the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David" (Acts 1:16).

This very brief sketch of the evidence has tried to show that God has disclosed himself in many ways, but especially in verbal revelation. We have glimpsed evidence that this is tied to Scripture itself, but we have not yet probed very far in that direction. Before proceeding, there is one related element in the biblical revelation that must be briefly mentioned.

The Word of Human Beings

Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows it is not the product of a flat divine dictation, still less something that has been handed down from heaven on golden plates. Despite its many claims to divine revelation and authority, the Bible is an astonishingly human document — or, more precisely, sixty-six astonishingly human documents. Later writers in the canon cite the earlier human authors by name, treating many of the documents as the products of well-known historical persons without for a moment hinting that this human dimension diminishes the documents' authority. Indeed, some of the allusions to Old Testament Scripture are made with surprising informality, e.g., "But there is a place where someone has testified" (Heb. 2:6). If we are to think clearly about how Christians should approach the Bible, then however much we affirm that the Scriptures constitute God's word (a point still to be pressed) this decidedly human dimension must not be overlooked.

There are a number of important implications. The Bible did not come to us in one go, but across a period of about a millennium and a half, at the hands of many human beings, the identity of some being entirely unknown. The first implication, then, is that the Bible is deeply grounded in history. The various human authors represent concrete cultures, languages, historical events, assumptions, idioms. The obvious parallel, and one to which attention has often been drawn, is the incarnation. The eternal Son, the pre-existent Word, became incarnate. He is both God and man. The classic formulation is still the best: the eternal Son became incarnate in history, two natures, one person. Jesus Christ cannot be truly perceived and believed if either his deity or his humanity is disowned or diluted. Somewhat similarly, the Bible is both divine and human in origin. It is God's revelation, and it is a human record. The message, extending to the very words, is divine, originating with the eternal God, yet it is deeply human, written in history, one book with two natures. Of course, the analogy must not be pushed too far. Jesus Christ is himself both God and man, but no one would affirm that the Bible is itself God and man; it is never more than an instrument in the hands of a self-disclosing God. Jesus Christ is to be worshipped; the Bible itself must not be worshipped. Nevertheless, the comparison, properly restrained, is helpful if it provides us with some categories to help us understand what the Bible is, and if it encourages us to be humble as we approach the Bible. In all our probing of Scripture, we must never discard the virtue of humility — humility before the God who has so graciously accommodated himself to our needs as to disclose himself powerfully both in the Word incarnate and in the Word written.

The second implication is that the revelation preserved in the Bible is not an abstract system, whether philosophical or ethical or theological. Buddhism stands or falls as a system of thought: if it could be proved that Gautama the Buddha never lived, the religion named for him would not be jeopardized. Not so Christianity. Despite the immense literary diversity in the Bible, as a whole it tells a story, and that story takes place in time and space. Despite the best efforts of some scholars to argue that biblical faith must never be made hostage to historical research, there is a profound sense in which the nature of God's gracious self-manifestation, taking place in ordinary history (however spectacular or miraculous some elements of that revelation may be), ensures that there can be no escape from historical enquiry. If Jesus Christ never lived, Christianity is destroyed; if he never died on the cross, Christianity is destroyed; if he never rose from the dead, Christianity is destroyed. However much the ultimate object of Christian faith is God, that faith is incoherent if it affirms faith in the God of the Bible but not in the God who according to the Bible discloses himself in history that is largely accessible and testable. In short, the elements of the large-scale biblical story are essential to the integrity of the Christian message.

Third, because the Bible is so compellingly human, it includes not only God's gracious self-revelation to us, but also human witness to God. The book of Acts, for instance, relates many incidents in which the apostles boldly confronted the authorities who were trying to silence them, and the unshakable confidence of these first Christians is tied to the unassailability of their conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead. They had seen him; indeed, according to Paul, more than five hundred witnesses had seen him (1 Corinthians 15). Many of the Psalms offer moving testimony as to how those who believe in the living God react to the changing circumstances and storms of life. More broadly, many people described in Scripture or writing Scripture are deeply engaged with their contemporaries. They are not mere secretaries taking down dictation. One cannot read the passion of, say, Paul in 2 Corinthians 10–13, or the moral indignation of Amos, or the deep hurt reflected in Lamentations or Habakkuk, or the concern of Jude in the face of theological drift, or the deeply committed witness of Matthew and John, or the transparent affection of Paul in Philippians, without recognizing that the Bible depicts and was written by real people. However much they are being used to convey God's truth to later generations, they also bear witness to their deep experience of God in their own.