Sometimes I think the doctrine of the Holy Spirit saved me from fundamentalism.
When I was in college, I took a class at a liberal arts school on the Bible as history. For the first time, I was exposed to the historical-critical study of Scripture, a literary method that focuses on the origins and cultural contexts of texts. The class proved to be quite unsettling for me.
It raised questions about the historical accuracy of large swaths of the Old Testament, the morality of certain biblical figures who up to that point I had viewed almost exclusively as models of faith, and challenging depictions of divine violence toward outsiders.
Moreover, it made me realize just how much I had been treating the Bible like a history textbook—specifically, requiring the narrative stories of the Pentateuch (the first books of the Bible), for example, to rest on an essentially verifiable set of facts. But as I began to learn, that wasn’t how ancient history worked.
It was hard. More than once, I returned to my dorm room, disappointed and sometimes in tears.
In looking back, however, I see the changes in me that started to take place. A process began of finding an approach to Scripture with room for nuance, ambiguity, and an authentic invitation to personal engagement with the Bible. In the years that followed, I shifted from seeing the Bible primarily as a raw set of facts (historical, moral, or otherwise) to cultivating a deeper understanding of Scripture as a witness to who God is and who we are in light of this truth.
More specifically, I began approaching Scripture as witness to the church’s three-fold understanding of God: the one God of Israel, revealed to us in Jesus the divine Word, by the power of the Spirit.
Reflecting on the Holy Spirit, this understanding impacted my approach to Scripture in two vital ways. As Christians we hold that Scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). If it is God-breathed, then the Bible itself reflects the Spirit, the very breath of God (Job 33:4; John 20:22), and especially how God works among us in the Spirit. What does that look like?
We get a sense at Pentecost when the Spirit falls upon the disciples, enabling an audience of traveling Jews to hear “the wonders of God” and ask, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12). That is just the beginning of the Spirit’s mission, which, intriguingly, begins by sparking curiosity, or a conversation.
Likewise, the Spirit invokes our prayers, our response to the presence of God among us. Prayer does not merely change us (although it does that), but entices us to “cry, ‘Abba, Father’” to a God who takes pleasure in responding to our pleas (Romans 8:15-16; Matthew 7:7, 11). Here and elsewhere in Scripture, the Spirit works in collaboration with us, not by coercion but rather by drawing us, patiently and persistently, into relation with the living God. Our relationship with the Spirit involves a sense of genuine mutuality.
Applied to the origins of the Bible, that means that God so orchestrates the formation of Scripture that not only does the Spirit act upon the authors of the texts, but the Spirit of God is also acted upon. This language of acting/being acted draws from Gregory Boyd’s Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance Its Divine Authority. (For more on how God’s character connects to the origins of the Bible, see Karen R. Keen’s The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture.) The power of God extends all the way to God’s capacity to bring divine purposes to fruition in dynamic relationship with others.
This insight changed my approach to the Bible by altering what I’ve come to expect in Scripture itself, namely to see the real fingerprints of its human authors on the pages of the text—without that being a threat to my faith.
In my previous understanding, I didn’t know what to do with the challenging parts of Scripture, so I either carefully avoided them or clung to apologetic arguments that never really sat well with me. But in the mystery of the Spirit’s workings, I came to know a God who enters into the intricacies of human life—who becomes enfleshed—and receives the different parts of us, our faults as well as our gifts. What’s more, I believe this further reveals the extent to which God goes to speak to us through the scriptural narrative. It shows how a word of good news, a word that brings judgment and mercy, emerges out of our human frailty.
At once, the Bible became more human and more Spirit-filled and divine to me—and more interesting.
The second change follows from the first. The Spirit comes to us as we are; the Spirit involves us. Thus, far from distancing myself from the biblical text, this Spirit-grounded conception of inspiration served to draw me further in, into both deeper communion with God and a dynamic relationship with Scripture.
I realized I could bring more of myself—my doubts, questions, and joys—to this text. I could approach Scripture as a living conversation with God, the biblical text, and the community with which I was reading the Bible.
When I approach the text of Scripture, what I bring to it, however, isn’t merely myself. I come with a chorus of voices, the words and lives of those who have shaped me amidst the faith communities to which I belong. In this communal exploration, our community at Highrock Covenant Church will engage in our ongoing public discussion series in the Theology Lab on the theme of Scripture and tradition. Through conversations with biblical scholars and church leaders like Esau McCaulley (author of Reading While Black, chief editor of The New Testament in Color) and Amy Peeler (author of Women and the Gender of God), we seek to engage with pressing questions and diverse approaches to the Bible. We will learn from biblical scholars and leaders in their respective fields. But we also hope to learn to hear God’s voice as we approach Scripture together, a practice meant to impact our ongoing spiritual (which includes, our theological) formation.
It’s believing that my approach, and your approach, and her and his approach, and theirs, joined together in a spirit of inquisitiveness—asking like those at Pentecost, “What does this mean?”—can serve as a means of grace that draws us closer to God. My hope is that in our engagements with Scripture, the Spirit continues to transform our words and works into God’s own, and so meet us along the way.
Scripture matters, and because of the lively Spirit of God who dwells in our midst, so does how we approach it.
The online series is open to all. Register here.
