Part Four--Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis and the Emergent Church.Bell, spends a good deal of time explaining that we cannot understand scripture as it stands. We each interpret it to fit our own viewpoint, and therefore we need a community to explain the scripture to us. He proves this by quoting some scriptures that are difficult to understand.
I do see the need for each of us to apply scripture to our own life, and, granted, there are some scriptures that don't really apply to us; they were for another people--addressing a specific need in another time. Also, some scriptures are difficult; they can be interpreted more than one way. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us in our understanding of them, just as Bell says.
However, there are also some concepts in the scripture that are very plain. They are only "hard to understand" because you disagree with them and want to make them say what fits your preconceived viewpoint.
To say that we cannot understand the Bible except through community is to take away the power of the Word of God to the individual. It is regressing. . . to a time when individual believers were told what to think by a larger community. Not only that. It's a little frightening: Usually, when someone tells you that you cannot possibly understand a thing this important without help, their next step is telling you what it means.
2 comments:
Lilibeth,
That's an ironic observation you make about "taking away the power of the Word of God to the individual" in light of the context of the reformation when the scripture was put in the hands of "the royal priesthood of every believer" and actually expanded Christian community.
It is only in our modern times have we have become so individualistic as Christians, and even the reformation was about expanding the community of the church in their understanding of Scripture for greater accountability, not limiting it.
That was a great benefit of the reformation for sure. Unfortunately in time one draw back is that people started looking at Scripture as if it came to us in a vacuum; as if scripture was not written, embraced, and canonized by the body of Christ. Scripture is "God breathed" because it came to us through the living church which God has breathed life into.
Scripture is the earliest testimony of the living church and links us to that community as co-followers of Jesus.
Scripture can be "hard to understand" when you forget the context of scripture is the church. This takes nothing away from God's ability to move and speak to an individual through a text. However God uses the body of Christ to reveal his Word as well and help us understand thing like context, historical interpretations, and original intentions. The greatest evidence of the bible's authenticity is that it is the testimony of an historic community, not just a single individual.
Scripture is meant to be understood in community for mutual accountability. If someone tells you that scripture speaks something, you also have scripture to test those things and hold what they say accountable too.
Sometimes there are contextual things that may make scripture not as apparent in what it means when read without understanding those things. So if someone gives you a reason why scripture should be understand differently than an individual might read it with out understanding things like historical context, then as an individual you should weigh that information too. But Christianity is not about the "individual", it is about the community of the church, the body of Christ.
I think it is very dangerous when we think being a Christian just means following Jesus with just me and my bible. That is not at all what Jesus had in mind.
The Holy Spirit is our guide through the scriptures, I think that people re-write the scriptures to fit what they want to validate in their lives. Not a good thing.
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