\n<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m sitting here,\u00a0the thought strikes\u00a0me, \u201cMy, Pete, you do\u00a0<\/em>write a lot about the Bible. Aren\u2019t you tired? Don\u2019t you want to move on? Maybe make some money, finally?\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, sometimes, to all those.<\/p>\n But what\u00a0motivates me<\/a> to do what I do is a spiritual\/intellectual quest to answer (or at least have an answer I am willing to sit with for the time being) the questions: \u201cWhat is the Bible and what does it mean to read it well?\u201d And with that quest, in my course of study, I find myself very much in the stream of the history of both Jewish and Christian interpreters.<\/p>\n This\u00a0quest\u00a0is fueled, at least in part, by a drive\u00a0to address my own spiritual struggles, which have\u00a0in no small measure been aided and abetted by the imposition of unrealistic and intellectually unappealing answers to the above questions. Such is the life of a \u201cBible-centered\u201d Protestant, my \u201cthorn in the flesh<\/a>,\u201d as Paul might put it.<\/p>\n My own need to verbalize this process of mine (personality-wise,\u00a0I don\u2019t feel like I have a choice in the matter) has, over the years, exposed me to some criticism, which I am fine with as long as my critics\u00a0don\u2019t sign my paycheck. Been there, done that.<\/p>\n Far, far, far more frequently, however, I have had interactions with all sorts of people\u2014academics, students, and mostly \u201cnormal people\u201d who keep it real \u2014who have the very same questions as I, are as worn out as I am by scripted answers, and whose spiritual lives are fully caught up in the midst of it all.<\/p>\n So, I keep writing about the Bible, which brings me to my point for today.<\/p>\n By \u201ctheological certitude\u201d I do not<\/em> mean that sense of whole-being confidence we pilgrims of faith, by the grace of God, experience from time to time (and some more than others). I am focusing\u00a0simply on\u00a0the Bible<\/em>:\u00a0what it\u00a0is, how it works, and what we are to get from it.<\/p>\n And this Bible does not work well at all as a source of answers designed to essentially remove intellectual ambiguity\u00a0from the life of faith, which is more or less how I and others were taught (directly and indirectly) to think of it.<\/p>\n I see two general reasons for why the Bible does not provide unambiguous theological certitude:<\/p>\n Acknowledging these phenomena does not mean the Bible is therefore \u201cwrong\u201d or \u201cless than\u201d or \u201cworthless.\u201d Not at all. In fact, I think it is far more<\/em> than the limitations sometimes placed upon it. But connecting these two \u201cproperties\u201d of scripture to any active life of Christian faith in order to see the \u201cfar more\u201d takes work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s never\u00a0a matter of simply \u201creading\u201d the Bible but of\u00a0interpreting\u00a0<\/em>it\u2014meaning, of forging that connection between a distant past and our present moment, which is the hard task and deep privilege of theology and hermeneutics.<\/p>\n A simplistic view of what the Bible is and what it means to read it well keeps us at\u00a0a safe distance from such a process. This\u00a0distance is spiritually damaging in the long run because it\u00a0robs us of the risky and even painful process of learning to trust God <\/a>rather than our exegesis.<\/p>\n Personally, I see the Bible functioning more as a \u201cmeans of grace\u201d than as a \u201cfinal\u00a0reference point to produce theological certitude.\u201d Through reading it<\/a>, absorbing it, worshiping by it\u2014in community\u2014we are being tutored in the experience of God<\/em>, who, at the end of the day, is not wholly perceived\u00a0in even a sacred text.<\/p>\n And to put it that way is not to denigrate scripture, but to follow precisely what it models for us<\/a>\u2014a diverse spiritual narrative of struggle and triumph through which people meet and experience God.<\/p>\n I believe that this experience\u00a0of God is hindered\u00a0if we place expectations on the Bible that, at least it seems to me, it was never\u00a0intended to bear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe Bible does not function as a \u201cfinal reference point\u201d to produce in us theological certitude\u2014by which I mean an impenetrable theological wall, a permanent intellectual foundation, a sense of intellectual finality.<\/h2>\n
\n