The Bible as Scripture
What is the Bible? The Christian answer is that it is the word of God. Yet at the same time, the church has always recognized that the Bible is also a fully human book. In fact, it is not a single book, but a collection of dozens of books written by dozens of different human authors over the course of centuries, which were finally collected into the canon of Scripture which we today call the Bible. These various writings show great diversity in their messages and themes, but Christian faith holds that the ultimately form a unified whole as the word of God “breathed out” through the human authors (II Tim 3:16). As the very word of God, the Bible stands as the supreme authority over the church as it carries out its life and mission.
So how does this work? Obviously, not everything in the Bible directly applies to Christians today; to think that it does would lead to countless confusions and contradictions. Yet, at the same time, Christians must recognize that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (II Tim 3:16); we cannot ignore or reject any part of Scripture, even if it seems strange or if we think it seems obvious that it cannot apply to us.
Scripture as Story
The way to make sense of the Bible is to understand it as a story, a story in which we are invited to participate. The Bible is not a handbook of theological and ethical ideas which we can simply take as directly applying to us, no matter where they are found. Nor is it a collection of various, sometimes contradictory, teachings from which we can pick and choose according to what we like or what seems to make sense to us. Rather, it is one coherent story, the story of God’s relationship with His creation through His covenant people, in which there are developments, plot twists, and both continuity and discontinuity throughout different parts of the story. This story can be understood as divided into six “acts,” according to the major events and developments that take place: 1) Creation, 2) Fall, 3) Israel, 4) Jesus, 5) Church, and 6) New Creation.
In Act I, Creation, God creates an ordered cosmos, and it is good. He creates human beings in His image, to have a special priestly role in creation as His representatives on earth. He blesses them and all living things He has made.
In Act II, Fall, human beings abuse the free will God has given them and rebel against their Creator. Their sin causes a broken relationship with God, and they are cast away from God’s presence. Because human beings have a special priestly role as mediators between God and His creation, this broken relationship between human beings and God has consequences for all of Creation; disorder and evil is introduced into God’s good creation, and a curse is now on all living things.
In Act III, Israel, God elects Abraham and his Israelite descendants to be His chosen covenant people. God promises to dwell in the midst of His people Israel; access to God’s presence, lost by the Fall, will once again be available to humanity. God promises to bless Abraham’s descendants; in fact, He promises to bless all nations on earth through them. Thus, the election of Israel is the beginning of God’s plan to reverse the curse on His creation brought about by the Fall. In His covenant with Israel, God calls the Israelites to be faithful to His Teaching about how to live out their identity as His holy people among whom His holy presence dwells. But Israel is repeatedly unfaithful to this calling, and eventually this leads to Israel being cursed with exile from the land God gave them and from His presence.
In Act IV, Jesus, God Himself steps in to human history in order to bring salvation to Israel and to all of His creation. God becomes Incarnate as the Israelite human being Jesus Christ, His presence dwelling fully in the midst of His people. In a surprising twist, God brings salvation to Israel by taking the consequences of their sin upon Himself and dying an accursed death upon a cross. Three days later, Jesus rises from the dead, overcoming the powers of sin, evil, and death on behalf of Israel, and all of humanity. Jesus’ resurrection is the inauguration of God’s New Creation and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth.
In Act V, Church, Jesus, having ascended into heaven, sends God’s Holy Spirit upon the community of His followers, the Church. God’s promise that He would bless all nations through Abraham’s descendants is at last fulfilled, as even Gentiles who believe in Jesus can now be grafted into God’s covenant people and share in God’s presence and blessings. The Lord Jesus sends the Church, the body of Christ, out into the world to proclaim the good news about Jesus, to advance God’s Kingdom, and to live out its identity as the firstfruits of God’s New Creation. Empowered by the Spirit, the Church is called to carry out this mission until Jesus comes again.
In Act VI, New Creation, Jesus will return to fully consummate His victory over the powers of evil. The dead will be raised, there will be a Final Judgment, and the righteous will live eternally in God’s New Creation, while the wicked will be cast out to experience eternal death. As heaven and earth are joined, God will at last bring His creation to its intended fulfillment; God’s presence will fill all of creation, and all evil will be removed, resulting in perfect order and blessing for all of creation.
Inhabiting the Story
The Bible gives us Acts I-IV and the beginning of Act V, and then tells us basically what is going to happen in Act VI. God then calls Christians to faithfully improvise the rest of Act V. If we start acting as if we are back in Act III, this is not biblically faithful, just as it would not be a faithful improvisation for an actor to just repeat a scene from Act III in the middle of Act V. On the other hand, if we start acting in a way that contradicts what has been established in Act III, this is not biblically faithful, just as it would not be a faithful improvisation for an actor to improvise a scene in Act V that contradicts what has already happened in Act III. At the same time, we must always keep in mind what is going to happen in Act VI, making sure we are being true to the trajectory of where God’s plan for the salvation of His creation is heading.
The upshot of all this is that all of Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is relevant to Christians and has something to say to them. However, not everything every part of Scripture says directly applies to Christians. Rather, different Scriptural teachings directly or indirectly apply to Christians in varying ways. If we are going to be biblically faithful, we cannot just take Scriptural statements out of context and assume they directly apply to us, nor can we divide the Scriptures into parts we will accept and parts we will ignore. Both of these approaches are overly simplistic. Instead, every part of Scripture needs to be taken on a case by case basis and interpreted within the context of the full canon of Scripture in order to determine how it applies to Christians. Scripture does not contradict itself, but its story does contain discontinuity as well as continuity in the development of its plot. Discerning just how each Scriptural teaching is relevant to Christians today requires a biblically formed wisdom that can discern just how each part of Scripture fits into the whole canonical story, and how that relates to our place within that same story.
Old Testament commandments regarding ceremonial cleanliness and temple rituals are not to be followed by Christians today, because Jesus, and His body, the Church, has replaced the temple as the place where God’s Holy Presence dwells. But these Old Testament commandments are still relevant in that they help us understand how serious God’s Holiness, and thus how we need to live as those in whom God’s Holy Presence dwells. Old Testament commandments regarding capital punishment for idolatry, adultery, and other serious sins are not to be followed by Christians today, because God’s holy people are no longer identified with a particular nation, but are a voluntary, global community that transcends all national boundaries. But these Old Testament commandments are still relevant today in that they help us understand how serious those sins are, how they cannot be tolerated within the Christian community, and how the church needs to remove those who stubbornly refuse to repent of these sins from the Christian community. Jesus’s command to His disciples during his earthly ministry to “Go only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt 10:6) is not to be followed by Christians today, because, in the age of the church, the risen Christ sends His followers to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). But this command is still relevant today in that it helps us understand that the salvation accomplished by Jesus was not for individuals in the abstract, but, first of all, for God’s covenant people Israel, and that we as individuals are saved because we have been grafted into that covenant people. These are just a few examples of how every part of Scripture needs to be interpreted within the whole context of Scripture in order to understand its enduring significance and application for Christians today.