When considering the nature of scripture from the perspective of then and now, one needs to remember the vantage point from which it is being viewed. I believe that scripture itself puts forth a timeless pattern, one which is able to flex and to move within the time and culture that it finds itself. It is not that the word of God changes in its message to us, but for it to be relevant in our world today God has encoded it with an imprint or pattern that remains consistent through time. God also has gifted us with His spirit which dwells within us and in humility and faith we can learn what that message is for us through time. James Sanders states:
Scripture is not so much a treasury of wisdom from antiquity, as it is primarily a paradigme provided by our ancestors in the faith for ways to decline the nouns and conjugate the verbs of God’s creation of and redemption of the world. It is also a paradigm for ways to decline and conjugate the nouns and verbs of believers in any generation who are called to pursue integrity of reality. It is a paradigm on ways to monotheize and to narrate the current episodes of the ongoing story of creation and redemption, and on ways to prepare for that eschaton when the story will culminate in the fullness of that integrity.
This pattern or imprint is what we discover when we decode scriptures by hermeneutics. The term hermeneutics, means the art and science of interpretation. It is through this art and science that we attempt to interpret scripture and apply it in our day. Donald Bloesh states:
In the hermeneutical task we should focus on what scripture intends to teach us. What scripture intends to teach is what the Spirit intended to say to the people of that time in this text and what He intends to say to us today in a different period of history.
The Hermeneutic patterns found within scripture consistently address who God is, who we as humans are and how we are supposed to behave in relationship, who Jesus Christ is, and what role He personified while here on earth. These imprints are throughout scripture but they are not overtly addressed as such. They are woven within the fabric of the text and lead us to the important message of scripture for our day.
Sanders, when addressing scripture as canon states, the true shape of the Bible as canon consists of its unrecorded hermeneutics which lies between the lines of its literature. When giving and example of this hermeneutic in scripture, Sanders writes, there was apparently a fourfold process: The ancient biblical thinkers depolytheized what they learned from others, monotheized it, Yahwized it and then Israelitized it. The monotheistic imprint is one key to scripture and something that not only gave these early biblical thinkers a key to proclaiming the message of scripture for their culture and the world around them, but is an imprint that we need to bear in mind today. This is but just one of the imprints or hermeneutical lenses from which we are to interpret scripture. Over the next few days we will continue looking at the timeless pattern of scripture.
Picture: MMUMC Holy Bible, by Pirate_j
Quotes: Donald Bloesh, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration, and Interpretation
James Sanders, Canon and Community
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