What does one learn about theology by reading the Bible? Well -- one thing is sure, there are plenty of things to learn about: history, geography, words, ideas, conflict, mercy, and so on. Are people who read the Bible the only people who learn such things? Hardly. Does the Bible teach also how to critique our own understanding?
I began with fear, disjointed instruction from various sources, 'certainty' and ignorance all round. Who doesn't? So how long does it take to become inarticulate? We drive on complex routes and we are much more complex than an articulated lorry - as they are named in the UK. How on earth or in heaven could I begin with 'certainty'? I knew nothing even about myself and my personality -- and beginning there, whether I was brash or humble, would be impossible. We are more than mechanism, more than biology -- though we should definitely study and respect such things. My latest reading is in 'The Gene' by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Wonderfully written history. Last year and still now my favorite history book is East West Street by Phillippe Sands. Don't miss it. These writers are not inarticulate. They speak to the wonder of creation, whether our discovery of it, or our serious distortions of truth, and even to the fact that both sides of a conflict can love the music of Bach.
Given even these three areas of investigation: science, history, or music in the last 3 centuries, how should we read and hear the ancient texts so lovingly advanced to us through the Hebrew tradition? And if we really read this Hebrew tradition, how will those who read the New Testament avoid the apparently certain conclusions -- several of which we have repeatedly got wrong over the last 2000 years? How also will we relate to the wonders that we receive each day from beauty to political distortion to the lessons we are meant to learn from the Bible?
Someone said to me yesterday - based on a reading of Isaiah 19, that the prophet arises from within the community and speaks through, for, and into the same community. I immediately thought of our supply chains of physical goods through which we all depend on each other, (whatever theological tradition we come from). So I saw the prophet reading the community in its exile and giving it hope and stimulating its love and desire to return to its roots after the crushing troubles it had received. It was a hopeful sign. Read Sands and Mukherjee and Bach as also arriving on the scene, being taught, nurtured, and finding their place to encourage us in correction, in knowledge, and in beauty.
In looking recently at my setting of Genesis 22 (mechanical performance at the link), I also saw the future calling to the present to move away from error and into a right assessment of faithfulness, a word (from the same Isaiah passage above) describing the character of the One who calls us. I set Yahweh's part and Isaac's part with the same forces for that reason. Today I note that the name, Yahweh, apparently arises from early Arabic, Midianite, reflecting passion. See this portion. Why not?
How much shame do we need to come to our senses? (Remember the positive value of really getting the point that we might be wrong in our theological emphases and in the evil deeds that result from them. Think Nineveh and Jonah.)
So the move to learn and grow in love comes from within the social fabric even in exile, in trouble, in remote islands like Turtle Island -- called into being by an unknown future and present to us as if given in a mystery, a light to the nations, salvation to the extremity of the earth.
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