Evangelicals -wrong on the Bible. [New Evangelical Manifesto 2]

Cheryl Bridges Johns in the third article (A Disenchanted Text; where Evangelicals went wrong with the Bible) starts with the alleged (and I happen to think it likely to be true) decline of Bible understanding and knowledge in the USA -including among Evangelicals. I say 'alleged' because it was reasonably unsubstantiated and I'd have like to have seen some kind of references to research (ditto with some of Brian McLaren's -though it that instance I have seen the research so didn't feel the need for referencing so strongly. Presumably part of the editorial policy).

The sting is not in the tail but near the start: "The problem does not lie primarily with people who do not read the Bible. It rests with the way that Evangelicals read the Bible." Both sting and thesis. This is linked to Weber's reading of western history since the Enlightenment as 'disenchantment' -a disenchantment which affected the way also that the Bible was received. In response some asserted that the Bible would be seen to be scientifically valid and worked up a theory of inspiration to match. However, asserts Bridges Johns, this move gave rise to a kind of Deist Bible (that's my characterisation phrase, not hers, though I think it represents her idea) where God was present at its creation but not particularly active in its reading. This was linked with a dispensationalist approach which systematically removed miracle from the post-apostolic ages. Thus reading the Bible became a rational exercise. Ironically, in effect, a rather low view of scripture and a high view of reason. This modernist view and usage of scripture has characterised Evangelicalism ever since.

So when younger generations become 'disenchanted' with the culture and culture wars, they may consider the Bible to be part of the problem or they may simply not know how to make use of it. This points to a need not to 'go back to the Bible' but to get back 'to the God in the Bible' and this entails a re-conceiving of our view of Scripture.

This view resists seeing Scripture as a set of propositional texts but rather as a teaching and community-forming text. Bridges Johns several times writes about recovering the Bible as "Holy Scripture". To do that would mean allowing it to deconstruct the readers; to challenge identity and re-form it rather than simply to bolster it. What is needed is a properly Pentecostal appropriation of Scripture, that is pneumatological, where we feel and know ourselves addressed by God in it; we realise that God's truth and God's presence are inextricably linked.

This means that there is a dialogical relationship between discovering Scripture as community-forming and identity-fashioning and its elusive reflexive quality challenging and subverting ill-founded identity and mis-established community -again that is my characterisation of what I think Bridges Johns is arguing. She puts in it terms such as "the deconstructive power of the Scriptures brings grace and judgement into the world, beginning first with the people of God."

I think that she's broadly-speaking right in the call for a pneumatological reading of scripture. What we need to be wary of is thinking that this solves problems. It is important to note what kind of church it requires to read such Scriptures: a Church that knows how to listen humbly to the other in genuine love and respect; a Church that knows how to argue with charity rather than a desire to win arguments; a Church that knows that our listening to each other and the scriptures will provoke repentance and may take time for us to discern wisdom from foolishness (and I use that pair rather than right and wrong, deliberately). And this is because we will still have to wrestle with human frailty as interpreters. I would suggest that perhaps our problem with Scripture goes even further back: to choosing Platonic ontology as our route for philosophical understanding rather than the Panta rhei of Heraclitus. Thus Scripture tended to be approached as a 'once and for all' thing rather than a 'living' thing (as suggested by an oft-quoted passage in Hebrews).