From the Covenant
Network Conference
Placher calls for "Struggling with
Scripture"
Dr. William Placher, Professor of Religion and chair
of the Department of
Philosophy and Religion at Wabash College in Indiana, began his
exploration of the ways Christians must struggle to understand scripture
by holding up a Bible. "This is the Bible I got in fourth
grade," he said, for being a member of his Sunday school class.
"And it's from reading it that I've come to know about Jesus. And
without that, a lot of things wouldn't make much sense for me, and on
dark days I would have little hope."
After that affirmation of the importance of the Bible
for himself, Placher read a statement by a conservative who says that
"for conservatives the Bible is the truth; for liberals it's a
taking-off place for their own thinking." Given that kind of a
spectrum, Placher no one spot on the continuum fits him exactly.
Truth and fact are not always the same
But for him, taking the Bible seriously means engaging
in an unending struggle to understand its meaning, and not simply
affirming that it is "true."
Too often we lose sight of the distinction between
fact and truth, he said. When Jesus told the parable of the good
Samaritan, he was not stating facts, but rather telling a truth. When
the book of Jonah recounts the repentance of Nineveh, the Jews would
have known that that was a story, not an historical fact.
To understand the Bible or any other text, Placher
continued, we need to recognize that cultural signals are essential to
understanding. When we in our culture hear someone say "A minister,
a priest, and a rabbi ....," we know a joke is coming. Someone from
another culture would be baffled by such a story. And so are we baffled
sometimes, when we try to read passages in the Bible whose meaning
depended on cultural signals that are now lost to us.
Our most passionate debates about Biblical
interpretation today are not about creation, the virgin birth, and so
on, but about morality. And here we need to distinguish between the
cultural assumptions by which a message is shaped, and the message
itself. The noted 19th century evangelical theologian Charles
Hodge, and the 20th Biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann, both
agree that we must make this vital distinction, said Placher. Just where
the line is drawn is subject to debate, but the need for careful
distinctions remains.
So, for instance, when Paul in his letter to Philemon
discusses slavery, his point is the relations in Christ transcend
master-slave distinctions. He is not arguing for the institution of
slavery, but simply assuming its existence as part of the culture of his
time.
What about sexuality?
Then, asked Placher, how might we deal with the
current debate about homosexuality? In looking at Romans 1, he argued,
we need to be aware that Paul's focus is on the righteousness of God,
and it is in defending God's righteousness that Paul asserts that the
reality of the Creation alone -- without any special revelation -- gives
people enough knowledge of God that they can be held responsible for
their idolatry.
Paul then turns to picture the wickedness of the
pagans, including their homosexual practices. But we must ask here
whether Paul is teaching that same-sex intercourse is wrong, or is
rather teaching about the much larger issue of sin and righteousness.
Again, he takes a common example from his own culture, assuming it as
reality, not offering it as a teaching. His teaching here is
that God is righteous, and that humanity, pagan or Christian, is sinful.
Placher noted at this point that his two favorite
commentators on Romans, Martin Luther and Karl Barth, don't even discuss
sex here; "that's not the issue," he added.
So, he went on, "the question is not about the
authority of the Bible, but about what it means. You can't talk about
the authority of something unless you know what it means."
Referring to Charles Hodges' acceptance of the
learnings of natural science even when they contradicted the apparent
truths of the Bible, Placher asked whether today we should be equally
willing to accept learnings from the social sciences as well.
Returning to Paul's condemnation of same-sex
relations, Placher questioned why that one form of sin is taken so
seriously, when for Jesus the sins of wealth and the hypocrisy of the
Pharisees are of far greater concern. Again he pointed to the impact of
our cultural assumptions: we accept divorce in spite of Jesus'
condemnation of it, he said, because "too many wealthy and powerful
people are divorced." Since our culture accepts it, we find ways to
accept it as well.
Yet, Placher noted, interpretations like these, which
consistently favor the powerful, clearly do not follow Jesus' own
pattern. So, he said, "let's begin our interpretation with the
Bible, and not with our own cultural assumptions. ... If we work through
what Romans means about gay/lesbian issues, then we have to go back and
ask about the really hard issues of wealth and poverty."
Authority of the Bible shown in our experience
So just what is the authority of the Bible? Placher
offered a modest and experiential answer: "In a lifetime of reading
and struggling with the Bible, we find we are enabled to live more
faithfully as Christians." But that implies that if we are not
doing the reading and the struggling, we need to start.
Summing up, Placher concluded by saying that the basic
problem is that "power shapes interpretation," and that none
of us is immune from that reality. But we must insist that taking a few
verses literally is not "taking the Bible seriously."
We must constantly be aware of the complexity of the Bible, its message
and its truth, and that recognition "helps guide us home from
exile, to the love and grace of our sovereign God."
