Why have we lost the Story?

In the previous post, I lamented the fact that church has, generally speaking, in some way lost the understanding of the biblical narrative, the redemption story of God and the people he has called to himself in Israel and in the church. This loss has been deceptive because in many parts of the church, it would appear that bible reading is on the rise. Individual study of the Scriptures is now everywhere encouraged, including the Catholic Church which, for a time, kept the Scriptures away from lay people in an ancient language. Additionally, it would appear that Scripture memorization is on the rise. I've been to many churches where pastors encourage this discipline from the pulpit.

But the deception comes just in this. It is easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are biblically literate people because we have memorized a few verses or because we know a few bible stories. It is easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that we understand the story because we know who Balaam is. And so despite what can pass for biblical sermons and such, I hold to my original claim. But why have we lost this story? Particularly when the love of the bible is so high in many denominations. How did we get to where we are? This is a complex question with many possible answers. In this post, I would like to suggest only one possible factor with the knowledge that it alone cannot shoulder the blame.

Maxie Dunham, long time United Methodist pastor and former president of Asbury Theological Seminary, was fond of saying: "As the seminary goes, so goes the preacher, as the preacher goes, so goes the church." There is much wisdom in this statement and I think that he gets at a fundamental truth of the loss of the story. Much of the onus must be placed on the academy that trains these ministers. Allow me a bit of background to make this point.

In the modern era, there developed in biblical scholarship a series of methods for studying the text, which are collectively known as the "historical-critical method." The historical-critical method, in all of its varieties, seeks to find the meaning of the text by placing the text in its original sitz im leben ("life setting"). It seeks to discover the original author, the original audience, the original setting, any circumstances that occasioned the work, and the like. It was thought that the original context would provide the appropriate interpretive context. The historical-critical method developed in response to erroneous interpretations which read the text purely from one's own context, often employing it in manners that are unwarranted by the text itself.

This is all well and good and you might think that the historical-critical method was a positive development. After all, there are innumerable examples of how the text has been twisted to meet someone's personal agenda and the historical-critical method does provide some means of objectivity to act as a check against this sort of exegesis.

Having said this, there are, in my estimation, many negatives to the historical-critical method. The first, and perhaps the only one that needs to be mentioned here, is the shifting of the context of interpretation. For the historical-critical method, the context of interpretation moves behind the text. That is, the real interesting and crucial knowledge about an epistle such as Ephesians is not the content of the letter itself, but rather the situation in which it was written. Scholars who employ this method think that they will ascertain the meaning of the text if they can recreate the original context. But that means that the meaning is not located in anything Paul says in the text (if indeed Paul wrote Ephesians) but what was happening in his mind to cause him to write this. As a result, the text shifts to the background and these "behind-the-text" issues become the only important thing.

The greatest example of the loss of the text is in Gospel studies. Historical-critics are in general agreement that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. But to understand the numerous similar passages found in Matthew and Luke that are absent from Mark, they have constructed a hypothetical "Q" document which is, supposedly, an early list of Jesus' sayings. They contend that Matthew and Luke also used "Q" to write their accounts. There is no manuscript evidence for this document. It is never quoted as such in the early Fathers or canonical lists of books. Yet, for most biblical scholars Q more important than any of the Gospels because it represents the earliest source, a list that is closest in time to the Christ event. NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT IT DOESN'T EXIST! The canonical Gospels, in the work of these scholars, very clearly take second place.

This phenomenon can also be witnessed in any scholarly commentary that one picks up today. On the average, 3/4s of a given commentary is devoted to the recreation of the original setting, whereas only 1/4 is given to actual exposition of the text. And these are the commentaries that our preachers are using.

And here is where I think the academy has led to the loss of the story. The majority of ministers currently in the pulpit cut their teeth on this historical-critical method. As a result, they have been trained to think of the text as secondary in importance. This leaves them with quite a problem on Sunday mornings. Are they to write a sermon about the real author of Ephesians? Chances are no because that does not preach very well. What is left then but some topical sermon? For they were not trained to understand the entire narrative and that its retelling is the only thing that will form Christian disciples.

There are, to be sure, positive things to be mined from the historical-critical method. But to buy into it hook, line, and sinker is to relegate the text to second place and to lose the overall understanding of the story of God from creation to redemption. It is to lose the idea that the one author, the Holy Spirit, is behind all of the individual authors and settings and gives the story its coherence. It is to lose the idea that this story still speaks to us today, that we as the church today are the intended audience of these letters. In short, the beginning of the recovery of the biblical story is the restoration of the text to its rightful place as the center of both exegetical study and homiletical exposition.