The Christian faith began as a joyful message spread about
by people whose lives had been changed by meeting Jesus of Nazareth. After he
had been condemned and executed by crucifixion, these people had experiences
that convinced them that he was alive and would never die. These experiences
were of different kinds, as we can see hinted in the New Testament. They did
not all understand resurrection in the same way, but it was real to them.
Out of these experiences came a variety of messages, all
centred on Jesus. Some proclaimed that he was the promised Messiah, come to
liberate the Jewish people. Others saw him as the expression of the true God in
a human being with a universal relevance for the whole of humanity. Others
again interpreted Jesus in terms of one or other of the various philosophies
and spiritualities that were around in the cosmopolitan culture of that time.
The one thing all these had in common was that Jesus was central to their
thinking and to their lives.
Some of this variety can be seen in the writing of the New
Testament. To the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was the new Moses who
went up a mountain to give a new Law which, unlike the old Law, was meant for
the whole of humanity. To Luke the mission of Jesus was to bring God’s forgiveness
to all kinds of people in word and in action. To Paul, the converted persecutor
of Jesus’ followers, he was the great Reconciler who, by the very fact of his
being condemned by both Jews and Romans, was the means by which all humanity
can be reconciled to God and to each other. To the writer of John’s Gospel,
Jesus was God’s Word in the flesh, come into the world to call people to a new
dimension of life under the supreme rule of Love.
These different interpretations of the meaning of Jesus were
all part of the rich variety of early Christianity. However, tensions soon
began as some people became more and unhappy with what others were making of
Jesus. This too is apparent within the New Testament. Paul, enthused by the
new, inclusive human fellowship that was coming into being, was furious with
those who wanted to fit all the followers of Jesus into a narrow Jewish mould.
At the other extreme, he and others were dismayed by the various exotic cults
that were emerging and presenting a complicated system of teachings further and
further removed from the simplicity of Jesus. And so, inevitably, conflict
arose as different groups began to claim that they alone stood for the true,
authentic understanding of the meaning of Jesus. And with this conflict there
emerged the issue of authority.
The Christian movement was born within Judaism, a religion
that reveres its Holy Scriptures as God’s authoritative word. However, Judaism has
always used the Scriptures creatively, feeling free to question them and to
argue about how to work out their meaning in every new situation. From what we
see in the Gospels, Jesus too was creative in his interpretation. He went so
far as to say “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you …”. He took
stories from the Scriptures and gave them a new, sometimes quirky meaning. This
was all part of the tradition of Jewish rabbinic discussion, and Jesus was into
it as much as any other rabbi. Above all, whatever the Scriptures said he
interpreted their essential message as radical, uncompromising love for God and
neighbour.
So how did Christianity come to be characterised by so much
unloving dispute and so much insistence on fixed and unquestionable authority?
The cause of this development probably has a lot to do with the culture of the
Roman Empire. The Christians in Rome inevitably came to see themselves as the
metropolitan church with some right to keep the rest in order. As the churches
became more numerous and influential, and especially after Christianity became
the official religion of the Empire, authority began to express itself in
coercive ways. Church leaders were now able not only to tell people they were
wrong but to punish them for it. And so began the unhappy history of
inquisitions, witch-burnings, heresy trials, religious wars, persecution of
Jews and Crusades against the Muslims.
Though in some cultures even today the social and political
pressure to conform is still very strong, we can be thankful that most of
Christendom has grown out of the practice of imposing “correct” beliefs by physical
compulsion. However, we have not grown out of the idea that there are “correct” beliefs. Christians may
not burn heretics any more, but they still disapprove of them, and sometimes
threaten them with an even worse burning in hell.
This idea of “correct” belief has entered deeply into the
consciousness even of the most open-minded of Christians. We approach the Bible
with the assumption that it has an important message for us and that we ought
to study it very carefully to make sure we get the “right” message. The Bible
does indeed have an important message for humanity, but it is not the kind of
message that can be delivered and understood in a straightforward way like
factual information or practical instructions. The Bible is a great collection
of literature that speaks with many voices. We can hear the message only by
listening to all the voices and joining in their conversation.
Discussion of the authority and interpretation of the Bible
among Christians has mostly been burdened with the wrong kind of seriousness.
In our concern to get the “right” message we have argued endlessly about
“hermeneutics”, literal versus figurative interpretation, typology, allegory,
“progressive revelation” and so on, as
if it were a matter of life and death not to get it wrong. I believe the time
has come for a more relaxed approach, the kind of approach we adopt towards
other literature.
There is no doubt that most of the Bible is great
literature, and as such is open to all kinds of observations, comparisons and
reflections. In the world of literature we can echo the words of Ecclesiastes
and take a step further by saying, “of the making of many books, and of books about books, there is no
end.” Literary critics can find all kinds of things to say about the books they
read, some helpful, some controversial, some superfluous, but there is never
the suggestion that what the critic offers is the meaning of a play by Shakespeare, a sonnet by Keats or a novel
by George Eliot. It is one of the many possible facets of its meaning. This
does not mean that we need to go to the post-modernist extreme of saying that
anything can mean anything: some interpretations are spot-on, some are
far-fetched but interesting, and some are just incompatible with the spirit of
the text. However, there is a vast range of interpretations that are quite
acceptable, stimulate the imagination and enhance our enjoyment of literature.
To read the Bible in this way is a relatively new approach,
but actually closer to the way Jesus read it than the kind of fundamentalist
reading that has usually been predominant in the Church. As we learn to
appreciate the profundity of some of the great myths, the joy of the
story-tellers, the concerns of the controversialists, the wit of the wisdom
writers, the warm devotion of the psalmists and the passion of the prophets,
and to accept their differences, we will find that reading the Bible can
actually be fun. And while we are having this fun, now and then I think God
will sneak up behind us and whisper an authentic word into our ear that can make
us say “Aha!” or “Wow!”, or perhaps even “Ouch!”
