When I followed the link on the tweet it turned out to be the words of a barrister in a trial about sex abuse from this news article. I don’t know if the barrister is a Christian or not or what he was basing his view on but it got me thinking. Is this a viewpoint Christians should share? Here’s what he said in full:

[A]s a Catholic priest, [he] has taken a vow of celibacy, condemning himself to a single and lonely life filled with perhaps an underlying sexual frustration because, let’s face it, it is not a natural state for a human to be in.

Is he right? Is a vow of celibacy a sentence of loneliness and sexual frustration? And is it ‘not a natural state for a human to be in’?

Well I think this is often the view of the world. Think of the main indicators of culture. Most TV programmes and and films are about the search for a partner. Marriage may not always be seen as significant but sex and having someone to share life with certainly are. You’ll struggle to find a TV show or film which portrays happy singles, satisfied in their single state (I’m sure there are exceptions but they’re by far a minority). The same is true in music. The lyrics of the top artists are almost always about relationships and sex.  Or think about the popularity of dating websites. Even advertising often revolves around sex and relationships. We live in a world where to not be in a relationship is weird. It’s seen as shameful and often probably as ‘not a natural state for a human to be in’.

Why is this? I think a lot of people would blame the sexual revolution of the 60s onwards. Once the significance of sex was diminished and it became more acceptable to talk about sex and to have sex outside of marriage people have become obsessed with the need to have sex. In part I think this has shaped secular views about singleness and relationships. But I think the main cause is the collapse of family and community. As the idea of close relationships with wider family and communities (whether they be faith based, social or geographical) has disappeared, people are desperately looking for love and somewhere to belong. That’s why the nuclear family and particularly relationships between two people have become so central. It’s all symptomatic of a wider shift in culture.

Where does the church fit into this? Well it’s impossible to speak for the whole church but I would suggest there has been a similar shift. Perhaps as a response to the break down of traditional family life, the idea of marriage and the nuclear family has been elevated in the church. This is probably also a response to shifts in attitudes to sex. Sex is everywhere and since we believe God has created it to be preserved for marriage, marriage becomes more important. The sooner you get married, the sooner you can be released from the frustrations of being celibate in a sex obsessed world (There’s some biblical precedent for this in 1 Cor. 7:3 etc but as we will see the same chapter has more to say on the matter) . In the church culture it’s seem as  ’such a shame’ when someone is still single in their 30s and beyond and the assumption is that all single people are looking that one perfect person God has chosen for them. Save for the focus on marriage, the church largely shares the same attitude as the world on this. Singleness would equal loneliness and sexual frustration and is not natural for humans.

What about the Bible? What would God say in this situation? Without question God loves marriage and sex within in. It was part of his perfect creation (Gen. 2) and has always been significant for his people. However, in the New Testament we find some statements which stand in stark contrast to much of what we hear in the church today.  In 1 Cor. 7 Paul says that he would actually prefer all to be single as he is and he says that both singleness and marriage are (equal) gifts from God (1 Cor. 7:6-7). He sees singleness as an opportunity to serve God (1 Cor. 7:32-35). Paul clearly believes that ‘in Christ’ singles can live happy, satisfied lives. It’s far from unnatural. The same can be seen in the life of Jesus. He stayed single – he was fully human. Again, it’s hard to say that singleness is an unnatural state. (For a brilliant study of the place of singleness in God’s plan check out ‘Redeeming Singleness‘ by Barry Danylak).

What’s gone wrong in the church then? We’ve failed to see how counter-cultural the message of the Gospel is on the topic of sex and relationships. The gospel says that Christ is sufficient for a satisfied life, single or not. The gospel calls for the creation of a community in which singles are not condemned to a life of loneliness (This is a huge issue for the modern church. In following the world’s focus on nuclear families we have lost the biblical vision on the church as a family. This is an area that we each need to look at in our own lives and teach clearly to those we lead). The power of the gospel to satisfy all our needs and free us from the power of sin (Rom. 6) mean singles aren’t destined to a life of sexual frustration. And it is perfectly clear from Scripture that living life as a single is not unnatural. What’s unnatural in Biblical terms is living life without God is. Rather than seeing how counter-cultural the message of the Gospel is we have been sucked into the secular view of relationships. The result of this is that singles are left living lives of loneliness. Biblical singleness can only function properly in the context of Biblical church.

Changing attitudes in the church has to start with the truth and has to start with individuals. We need to choose not to go along with the unsaid assumption that marriage is the end goal for all people and is the mission of all singles. To do such is unloving to those who feel God is calling them to a life of singleness, its unhelpful to them as they seek to live out their lives as God is leading them and is a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel. It’s time for us all to rethink…

Two things have made me consider this recently. The first is some study I’ve been doing on the New Perspective on Paul. The New Perspective works from the thesis that 1^st century Judaism wasn’t a legalistic religion of works-righteousness as has often been supposed. If this is the case, Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith rather than works can’t be a polemic against legalism. The New Perspective (or more accurately ‘perspectives’) suggest that what Paul is actually opposing is some sort of ethnocentrism which excluded Gentiles from the people of God by insisting on adherence to the law, i.e. becoming Jewish. This all fits into a covenantal understanding of Paul – it’s claimed that far from being about a moral standing, Paul’s language of justification and righteousness is about being a member of the covenant. Likewise, God’s righteousness is about covenant, his covenant faithfulness.

In many ways this is an appealing reading of Paul. One of the great mysteries about Paul in the traditional post-Reformation reading is the absence of covenant. It can feel as if as you move from the Old Testament and Gospels into Paul’s letters there is a sudden shift from covenant and kingdom to sin and forgiveness (this is something of a false dichotomy obviously but the emphasis definitely shifts). Yet I think the New Perspective is full of weaknesses, with its focus on covenant being one of the most significant (there is a surprising scarcity of references to covenant in Paul and he certainly never links justification/righteousness and covenant.  In addition, the work on 1^st century Judaism which began the project has been rightly challenged). Therefore, though appealing for the sake of unity in the Bible the New Perspective should be largely rejected.

The other thing which has made me think this recently is much more simple – the much less controversial observation that the wisdom literature of the Old Testament also shows very little interest in covenant and that when we construe an Old Testament theology based around covenants a substantial portion of the Old Testament is actually somewhat relegated.

Perhaps then, God has chosen to include diversity within the unity of the Bible. I don’t think any of this diversity constitutes contradiction but it certainly includes different focuses and concerns. Perhaps what God wanted to communicate to us in his word was so vast and so much bigger than us, he has chosen to include within the 66 books of the Bible this diversity.

If this is right it should make a big difference to the way we approach reading the Bible. It doesn’t mean we should stop using one book of the Bible to interpret another but it does mean if we are making all our theology, whatever book it comes from, look exactly the same something may have gone wrong. Interestingly this is one area where academic Biblical studies is perhaps a few steps ahead of the evangelical church. Because one can’t assume divine authorship bringing unity to the Bible in academic study (to make another careless generalisation) each author is considered separately and their own voices allowed to come through. I don’t think we need to go so far as to completely separate the writings of each Biblical author but I’m convinced we’ll understand more if we do.

Perhaps the place where this is sadly most overlook in evangelical churches is in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Each evangelist is a fantastic and individual theologian. They write their accounts of Jesus’ life in order to bring out their theological interpretation of it. And I think in many churches preaching from the Synoptics is often treated more as if the three form one big gospel, a great gospel mash-up. If God wanted us to have one gospel he could easily have sorted that. The fact he didn’t should alert us to recognise the diversity in their unity.

For more on the individual theologies of the Gospels see my recent paper on Redaction Criticism in the Gospel of Luke.

Stimulating overviews to the different portrayals of the Gospel story given by each of the evangelists can be found in Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Writings of the New Testament.  A much briefer introduction is F.F. Bruce’s The Message of the New Testament.

Redaction criticism is a method of approaching the Biblical text which gained significant popularity in the last century, from the end of the Second World War onwards. It grew out of a context of source criticism and form criticism which both sought to separate different parts of the text (according to their different sources in the first case and their forms in the latter) but in contrast to its predecessors tried to understand the texts as literary wholes.

The basic idea behind redaction criticism is that by asking how a writer has edited (or ‘redacted’, hence the name) their sources we can begin to see their own theological viewpoint. If author X uses author Y as a source but makes a significant change to the material they take from Y (e.g. reordering, adding or omitting material, changing words or phrases etc.) we can gain an insight into what they thought by seeing how they developed their source material. Importantly, and often overlooked, redaction criticism must also ask what an author has taken from their sources without editing, as their acceptance of this material is just as important in showing what they believe. A failure to consider what hasn’t been edited will give a skewed picture of the writer’s theology as we will only see what they thought differently from their source material. If this point is taken into consideration redaction criticism has a lot of scope for providing profitable insights. One of the great fruits of the development of redaction criticism is that the writers of the Synoptic Gospels are now recognised as sophisticated theologians in their own right. An understanding of the overall theology of a gospel writer can then greatly aid exegesis of individual sections of the gospel.

Though redaction criticism has been applied to several types of Biblical material, it is most useful in the study of the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is for the simple fact that we have three writings which clearly have literary links. Use of redaction criticism relies on an answer to the Synoptic Problem (i.e. what is the literary relationship between the Synoptics? Who has used whom as a source?). The most common answer to this question (commonly known as the Two-Source Hypothesis) is that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and another common source (often called ‘Q’, from the German for ‘sayings’ as the source contains mainly the sayings of Jesus) and that both Matthew and Luke had their own unique source(s) (‘M’ for Matthew and ‘L’ for Luke, this is known as their ‘special material’). If this solution to the Synoptic Problem is accepted (as it is by the majority of scholars) redaction criticism can be very profitable applied to Matthew and Luke in particular, by comparing their editing of Mark when they have used him as a source.

The paper below is an attempt to apply redaction criticism to the Gospel of Luke in order to find its most significant theological messages. As noted above, an appreciation of this ‘bigger picture’ can help a more close reading of the Gospel.

Redaction Criticism and Luke’s Gospel – A. Bunt

For an good introduction to redaction criticism with an account of its development and an extended worked example see:

• Perrin, N., What is Redaction Criticism (London: SPCK, 1970).

A Gospel Synopsis (which places the text of all the gospels in parallel) is a very helpful tool for redaction criticism, allowing one to more easily observe examples of redaction. A good English language version is:

• Throckmorton, B.H., Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels (NRSV) 5th edn (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992)
  

For an excellent overview of redaction criticism along with the other forms of Biblical criticism mentioned above (form and source) see:

• Bock, D.L., Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods (Leicester: Apollos, 2002).

Further introduction to the overall theological message of Luke can be found in:

• Green, J.B.,  The Theology of the Gospel of Luke, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Marshall, I.H., Luke: Historian and Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970)

The first of these is a paper on Church History entitled ‘What factors led the Apologists to expound and defend their Christian faith and how is this evident in what they write?’

The Apologists were a group of writers in the Early Church (c.100-300AD) who sought to defend Christianity against intellectual attacks and argue for its truthfulness. The early Apologists weren’t quite like modern apologists. The concern of these early writers was to show how the new Christian faith could fit into the intellectual, and especially philosophical, context of the period. Modern apologetics is largely focussed on answering direct philosophical objections to the Christian faith. Often this sort of objection wasn’t a problem in the ancient world (arguments against the existence of God aren’t very common in a culture where most people believe in many gods and the vital need of keeping them happy!), however, there were some similar issues they did have to address (so, for example, since most people believed in multiple gods one of the questions the Apologists had to tackle was why monotheism was more philosophically sensible).

The Apologists are some of the easier of the Early Church writings to read and provide interesting insight into the thought and practice of the Early Church. The place to start if you’re interested in reading some for yourself is definitely Justin Martyr, the best starting point being his First and Second Apologies which you can get for free here. They’re easy to ready, pretty short and by far the most interesting of the Apologists.

Motivation of the Early Church Apologists – A. Bunt

The infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke are clearly written to set Jesus in the context of God’s dealings with humanity so far (i.e. the Old Testament). Matthew does this through showing Jesus’ family links to Abraham and David (Mt. 1:1), two men to whom God had made significant promises and noting how the story of Jesus’ birth fulfilled prophecies (Mt.1:23; 2:5-6, 18). At a deeper level Jesus is portrayed as reliving Israel’s early history, he becomes their representative (and so scriptures originally about Israel can be said to refer to him e.g. Mt. 2:15) an idea which finds its conclusion in Jesus’ death as a representative figure. Luke makes the same point about Jesus as the one promised in the OT but in contrast to Matthew’s prophecy-fulfilment formulas Luke provides a more general picture. Through the songs (Lk. 1:46-55, 67-79) and the confessions of the characters it is made clear that Jesus is the answer to God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants.

John’s starts differently, he starts before creation but not before the Old Testament. John is basically taking Jesus and sticking him smack bang in the middle of the Jewish monotheism of the Old Testament. ‘In the beginning…’ starts Genesis and John, John is rewriting creation with the word in the centre, he’s telling the story of creation and new creation. In both cases creation comes through the agency of God’s word.

The Prologue is all about being and becoming. There are two key words repeated time and time again which are obscured in translation. This first is about being, it’s the verb ‘to be’ which is used 12 times. The second is the verb ginomai which doesn’t have an exact English equivalent but is all about becoming and is used 7 times. John is opening by talking about being and becoming. Take a look at how key these words are. In the translation below all the occurrences of the verb ‘to be’ are marked in green and all the examples of ginomai (‘to become/happen’) are in blue.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. ² This one was with God in the beginning. ³ All things were created through him and apart from him nothing was created that has been created. ⁴ In him was life and the life was the light of men ⁵ and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

⁶ A man came on the scene, having been sent by God, by the name of John. ⁷This one came as a witness so that he might bear witness concerning the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ This one was not the light but came that he might bear witness concerning the light.

⁹The true light, which shines on all people, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world and the world was created through him but the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to his own but his own did not receive him. ¹²but to as many as received him, he gave to them the right to become children of God, to those believing in his name. ¹³They were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh or of the will of man but from God.

^14. And the word became flesh and pitched his tent with us and we saw his glory, a glory as the only one from the father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ John bears witness concerning him and he preached saying ‘This was the one about whom I said “The one coming behind me came before me because he was before me”. ¹⁶ For from his fullness we all also received grace instead of grace. ¹⁷Because the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; the only God, the one being in the bosom of the father has made him known. (John 1:1-18 – Author’s translation)

To get the Prologue we need to switch off our memories for a minute and read what John has written without bringing to it what we already know about Jesus and John’s Gospel. When we do we realise that there is no mention of the incarnation, of Jesus becoming a man on earth, until v.10 at the earliest. That means that when we read about the life, the light and the darkness in v.4-5 we’re still talking about the creation mentioned in v.3 and implied by the verbal link to Genesis 1. Jesus was intimately involved in creation even before he came into it as a man. 1:1-5 are the story of creation.

But then Jesus becomes man, takes on flesh and joins us on earth. John tells us this is an act of becoming (v.14 ‘The word became flesh’) and leads to other becomings (v.12 ‘to become children of God’). Jesus’ coming is about new creation.

When we continue into the Gospel we find that Jesus is called the light (8:12) and the life (11:25; 14:6). What he once was in creation, he now is in salvation. Old creation is replaced by new creation. If we come back to the beginning of the Prologue we find that v.1-5 have another layer of meaning for one who has read the Gospel. John is big on irony and having people say more than they know (e.g. 18:14), here we find John has said more than we know.

The concept of New Creation is often thought to be confined to Paul and Revelation in the New Testament. Yet here we have Jesus presented as creator and bringer of a new creation. This is John’s ‘Infancy Narrative’!

We all have a worldview, a set of beliefs which shape how we understand life and the world as we experience them. I think both conversion and discipleship involve a change in worldview. At conversion we throw of our old understandings of God, ourselves and the universe and replace them with God’s truth (I’m not saying this is the centre of conversion, which it obviously isn’t, but it is part of the event, in a sense it’s part of repentance). Discipleship should include reshaping and refining of our worldview so we live in the truth more and thereby enjoy the life God has for us.

We see this in the Bible. The Bible presents God as a God who is active in history and who invites people to join in his plan for creation. Part of this invitation is to see the truth of what God is like and what he is doing; to reject an old worldview and enter a new (true) one. For example, I recently heard someone define Genesis as ‘a collection of worldview shaping stories brought together to reshape the worldview of the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt’. I was instantly struck by what an effective definition of Genesis that was and how significant the idea of worldview shaping is (Incidentally I also think this definition can be useful in helping us evaluate the nature, provenance and dating of some of the Genesis material but that is a matter for another time). Here we see that after the archetypal act of salvation in the Old Testament, the people saved need a worldview change. No longer must they think of God, life and the world as they did under the influence of the Egyptians but they must be challenged to see the world as it truly is. The same point could be made about many of the more obscure laws given to the Israelites which were designed to challenge the practices and assumptions of those around them.

A New Testament example can be found in the epistles of Paul. Regardless of whether Paul was actually trying to directly challenge the place of Caesar by calling Jesus kurios (‘Lord’), which he probably was, one of the key messages of Paul’s soteriology, cosmology and eschatology is the idea that Jesus is now ascended and seated at the right hand of the father with all authority and power. Jesus is Lord. Jesus reigns and demands complete allegiance from his people. Paul stood after the Christ-event and declared a new worldview which took into consideration what had taken place in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Anthropologists recognise this idea about worldviews. They use the concept of superplausibility to explain an event (often a conversion experience) that leads one to abandon a previous worldview in order to adopt another. What is plausible to them has been superseded by something now even more plausible. But I wonder if this idea has been (or at least is being) overlooked in Biblical studies and in the Church. Here are a few areas where I think this is important to remember.

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Biblical Studies

Understanding the purpose of a text is vital to good interpretation. Therefore, if our hypothesis here is correct it is of great importance that we consider the purpose of some Biblical texts might well be to reshape a worldview and therefore to ask what message it is proclaiming and what assumptions it is challenging. So, for example, when reading Genesis we need to ask what seems to be the main point the narrative is trying to teach (e.g. Joseph cycle – God is in control even when human eyes can’t see it) and how it challenges assumptions in cultures contemporary to them (e.g. Gen.1 – God is the sovereign creator, bringing order from chaos, unlike other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths). Or when we are reading Paul we ask how is his worldview different from the traditional worldview of a Hellenistic Jew?

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Evangelism

I think this idea has implications for evangelism. If becoming a member of God’s people involves a significant worldview change that needs to be included in our presentation of the Gospel. We don’t need to explain everything to people before they can respond but there is a challenge here that perhaps sometimes we don’t say enough. Is a classic substitutionary atonement presentation of the Gospel really going to provide enough for a modern Westerner to understand what the Gospel really asks of them? We sometimes discuss repentance in Gospel presentations but do we ever really explain that Jesus is Lord? That becoming a Christian is to come under his total rule and authority. And do we perhaps sometimes minimise the Gospel too much by presenting it just as a way to receive God’s love or to get a ‘Get into Heaven Free’ card forgetting it’s about the glorious truth of a God who is renewing all things.

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Church & Discipleship

Finally continued worldview shaping must be part of discipleship. We need to understand more and more the truth about God, ourselves and the universe. Until our worldview is reshaped to see that Jesus is Lord and God should be the utter centre of our life we will be half-hearted Christians never fully enjoying life with God. Until we see that God is in utter control of all history and is always working for good we will live in fear. Until we realise that the Church is the hope of the nations and the body of Christ meeting to worship the holy God and be built up together we will not see our deep need for it and we’ll become lax about bothering to get out of bed in a Sunday morning. This is a huge issue for the Church. What new Christians and so-called ‘lukewarm’ Christians need is not more teaching or encouragement to have a quiet time and pray and read the Bible but for their whole worldviews to be transformed by God’s truth so that they see the reality of who God is and what life with him should be like.

What is interesting about Wright’s account of the Quest is that he says that to find its roots we must look to the Reformers. He observes that in their quest for the truth (“‘timeless’ doctrinal and ethical teaching’  in Wright’s words, p.13) they turned to the epistles and only then considered the Gospels and when they did it was to find these same timeless truths, usually in the teaching of Jesus which became ‘mini-epistles’ (p.13) or in conflicts between the false religion (i.e. Pharisees, seen by the reformers as legalists) and Jesus’s religion. In effect he points out that the Reformers largely ignored the narratives of the Gospels and the details of Jesus’ life recorded in them.

This is a trend still discernible in Protestant circles and is the point which struck me and led me to consider: How might this insight (or warning?) help us consider the way we teach from the Gospels in the local Church context?

In a preaching series from one of the Gospels we might very happily look at ethical teaching or stories which seem to show Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness of sinners or his power to heal or which portray a good example to us or call us to mission. But all of these run the risk of only ever using ‘the gospels as sourcebooks for ethics and doctrine, for edifying tales or, smuggled in behind the back of the sensus literalis, allegory’ (Wright, p.15).

But what about (taking just Luke as an example) all that singing in the opening chapter with talk of Israel, David and Abraham? Why did the people in Nazareth get so worked up over Jesus’s comments on a few lines from Isaiah? Are the healings and casting out of demons and resuscitation really just about God’s power? What’s with the sign of Jonah? And the barren fig tree? Isn’t Jesus being a bit over dramatic crying about a city? Who’s this ‘Son of Man’? And does anyone have a clue what the talk of destruction and wars and signs in chapter 21 is about?

I may be being a little over the top and unfair, I’m sure there are great preachers who have brilliantly tackled these questions but they’re the bits of the Gospels and the questions it is easy to overlook. They’re the bits of Jesus’ life and teaching which don’t just link him to our favourite Protestant ideas found in the Epistles but put him in the big story of God’s plan. The story which starts in Genesis 1 and ends in Revelation 22. The framework that actually makes everything else work.

You could say this is about letting Jesus make us look backwards as well as forwards. To consider where he’s come from not just where’s he’s taking us. If we turn to look backwards with the Gospel writers we will understand the forwards view – where we are and where we are going – much better.

It struck me that actually tackling some of these things on a Sunday morning is perhaps one of the best ways to teach people about the bigger picture. The story of a Kingdom. The story of covenant and of a creation awaiting it’s redemption. And perhaps it could begin to help us towards one of my other regular thoughts: If Wright and others are right about some of their readings of Paul, which for example in understanding Galatians as primarily about ethnocentrism I think they, at least in part, are, how do we begin to bring this into Sunday morning teaching? If we believe it to be the truth of God’s word we need to do so. Perhaps tackling the Gospels in a fuller sense, not just our favourite easy bits but the bits which help us see what’s going on on the big scale, might help people see the map more clearly so when, for example, we’re considering why circumcision specifically is such a big deal in Galatia we know that circumcision was part of a covenant made with a guy called Abraham, who Jesus was descended from, who God made big promises to which Jesus came to fulfil.

I guess it’s not surprising that two of Wright’s observations (on the importance of letting all the history of the gospels speak and on reading Galatians) should support each other and I’m certainly not advocating this as the only way of faithfully acknowledging some of the good results of this recent scholarship in the church. If we’re really going to do justice to Galatians we will need to be prepared, whether while teaching Galatians or at some point before, to show people how the big picture works. But I think a more holistic and (dare I say) more theological approach to teaching the Gospels could have benefits on both levels!

This fact raises an interesting question: if Paul was unsystematic in his presentation of theology is it right for us to try and systematise his teaching and harmonise it?

I think the answer is ‘yes’, it is right for us to systematise his thought but with a few additional thoughts leading on from this overall consideration.

First, it could be argued that claiming Paul was unsystematic is a little misleading. True he didn’t produce a systematic theology or a single piece of writing intended to outline his whole theology but his writings certainly do show coherent arguments and thought processes within a single work suggesting that he had some sort of systematic thought in his mind. The argument in Romans is a good example of this or the understanding of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

Secondly, I think it is reasonable for us to seek to systematise and harmonise Paul’s thought because even though his writings are undoubtedly situational I find it hard to believe that behind it all wasn’t a coherent whole in Paul’s mind. Paul’s constant use of theology to address specific situations is surely more evidence of an amazing mind which can apply and express elements of his core beliefs in different ways to suit the situation rather than an erratic mind scrapping together a theology just to answer the issues and purposes of his letters.

In addition, the great level of coherence which can be found when one seeks to harmonize Paul’s thought from across the letters surely suggests that behind them is a set pattern of teaching from which he is drawing for each new situation. The many parallels between theological motifs across the letters surely points to this conclusion.

Having agreed that seeking to harmonize Paul’s thought is an acceptable task what useful points can we draw from the observation which raised the question in the first place? Is there a significance in the fact that all of Paul’s letters are situational? I think we can gleam several helpful thoughts from this observation.

The first and most significant is about the purpose of theology. In all the writings we have Paul demonstrates how to use theology for practical purposes. He never writes theology for the sake of writing it. Now, as I argued above I think it most likely that Paul had in his mind a coherent system of thought which was formed before he then applied it to the practical situations in his churches but I think there it is significant that none of the writings we have from him contain such theologising. The point for us to take is that theology should be used in the community of believers for practical purposes. It should make a difference to our lives.

This point has particular implications for those involved in ‘academic’ theological study and those involved in teaching in the church. For those in academic settings it means that often the understanding gained through such study is the first step. I might spend ages wrestling with Paul’s understanding of the parallel between Adam and Christ in Romans 5 but if I stop at understanding what he meant I’ve missed out and haven’t gone far enough. The following step needs to be to ask what is the significance of that? Why does Paul discuss it here? In this particular example I would argue it is about assurance – because we are ‘in Christ’ and no longer ‘in Adam’ we can be sure of the total effectiveness of our relationship with Jesus to save us from God’s wrath (v. 9).

For those involved in teaching in the church the message is almost the reverse. If we want to best serve people and let God shape and change their lives we’ve got to help them to apply good theology to their lives. Just as Paul has set the example in his letters pastoring and dealing with practical problems needs to be done through good teaching. It’s no surprise that in Ephesians 4:11 the role of pastor and teacher seem to be combined – the most effective way of pastoring is through teaching truth. This means that often the second step which can be missed by people in this situation is moving from the issue and some wise words about it to a faithful and helpful application of truth to the situation.

So, should we seek to find a coherent thought system behind Paul’s writings, yes I think so. But only if we then take that thought system and explore how it affects our lives and the lives of those we teach and share life with.

I say ‘general’ analysis because with this section, as indeed with every other section of Scripture, if we know how to read our Scriptures properly, it is always wise to have a general analysis before we proceed to a particular analysis. If our minds understand the scheme, the drift and scope of the whole section, we shall be in a better position to deal with some of the intricacies and difficulties of the particular statements. (Romans: Assurance, p.184)

This is true on so many levels. If we are going to understand a passage correctly we need to look at the whole, look at the immediate context and look at its context in the whole of the Biblical story. It’s a weird fact that we so often use the Bible in a way we would never consider reading any other narrative or didactic work. We pick one short bit and consider it in isolation and therefore won’t see the full truth contained in it. We wouldn’t bother reading two sentences from two thirds through a novel we’ve never read or the 13th paragraph of a detailed, finely argued essay. Yet when we turn to the Bible this important consideration can be completely ignored. This is where the problem of proof-texting starts: we spot something or hear something and think we know what it means or indeed we really like what we think it means and so cling on to it to help us or to argue a point when in fact in the wider context such a reading doesn’t make any sense.

May I give this bit of instruction with regard to the method of reading the Bible. If you really want to enjoy your reading and studying of the Bible, always ask it questions. So, when Paul asks ‘Wherefore’, you ask, ‘Why did he say “wherefore”? What was his purpose and object in doing so here’ You then try to work out the answer (p.171)

This is something which really struck me recently on seeing the title of an article by Piper entitled ‘Brother, Let Us Query The Text‘. I suddenly realised the vital importance of asking questions for reaching the correct conclusions. I noticed that that is what I had inductively been doing for a long time (I am constantly rethinking my understanding, for example, of Paul’s theology as each time I read one of his letters I will be struck by another point which seems to not follow or not fit with his teaching elsewhere and so wrestle with it to understand what’s going on and in doing so deepen my understanding of it) but noticing Piper’s article made me realise how vital a tool this is and that we must be happy to do this and indeed encourage people to do it. I have observed that people in our churches can be wary of asking the difficult questions a passage or statement bring up because they think they are questioning its authority or integrity yet in reality they are taking the first key step to upholding its integrity. This may have important implications for preachers: perhaps rather than giving the ‘finished article’ of our exegesis we need to model something of our process, explaining the questions a verse raises and then showing how we solve them. This is certainly what Lloyd-Jones does and is one of the reasons his sermons are great resources not only for understanding the text but understanding how to learn to understand them yourself!

You cannot have a living and functioning body without a skeleton; so you must start with the skeleton. You cannot put up a building without erecting a scaffolding. That is absolutely essential. In order to arrive at the great and moving doctrines we have first to struggle with the problem of correct exegesis. Failure to do that has often been the cause of heresy. It involves hard work, but it is essential, and always rewarding. (p.170)

Here Lloyd-Jones is exploring the interplay between what modern academic theology would call Biblical Studies and Systematics. I strongly agree with Lloyd-Jones that exegesis (part of Biblical studies) is vital to correctly forming our understanding of doctrines (the role of systematics). I think, however, that one can go one step further. Linking to the point of the second quote I think, though exegesis must be the first starting point, once a doctrine has begun to be understood it can be one important tool in the process of exegesis. It becomes part of the process of asking questions. For example one might be helped in understanding Ephesians 1 (“every spiritual blessing in Christ) by having a thorough understanding of the doctrine of union with Christ from Romans 5. Biblical studies is the foundation of systematics but systematics can also serve Biblical Studies. This is a helpful warning against the placing of a sharp dichotomy between the two disciplines.

This observation could be expanded to consider the case of Biblical Theology which in academic terms is considering the overall message and flow of the Bible. Thorough exegesis of many passages (Biblical Studies) will be vital understanding the workings of the big picture (Biblical Theology) and likewise a thorough understanding of the big story of scripture will aid exegesis.

I’m struck that each of the observations Lloyd-Jones makes points to one thing, which he himself observes in the last quote, good Bible reading and studying requires hard work. There are no quick fixes. Detailed study in a variety of disciplines is necessary. This variety of disciplines is important as in the academic theological world they are so often divided sharply and one focuses on only one. I would contend, however, that for a teaching church leader and any Christians who want to really explore what God has done for them this mix of disciplines is vital.

In 1849 an archaeologist in Iraq discovered an incomplete copy of the Enuma Elish a creation epic from the ancient civilisation of Babylon which has given us a further insight into interpreting the passage. Ever since the first publication of the find significant similarities and differences have been noted which suggest that Genesis 1-2:3 may have been produced, at least in part, as a polemical response to the Enuma Elish. Many of these points of similarity (such as both starting with a watery primeval state) and difference (e.g. God creating earth for man with all he needs vs. man being created to serve the gods) have been noted by commentators (Wenham in WBC is a good example) but on looking at the Enuma Elish the other day I was struck by a point of contrast I haven’t before read about which seems very significant.

The Enuma Elish is, on the whole, a story of divine violence. When the we reach the creation of the world its bare form is created using the carcass of one of the gods following the triumph of Marduk. The other gods ask Marduk what they can do to honour him and suggest building a shrine for him on the earth. Marduk replies ‘Construct Babylon, whose building you have requested, Let its brickwork be fashioned. You shall name it “The Sanctuary”‘. A little later when Marduk takes his place in Babylon he declares ‘This is Babylon, the place that is your home! Make merry in its precincts, occupy its broad places’.

The creation of the earth leads up to the creation of Babylon, the dwelling place of the gods. Given the apparent link between Enuma Elish and Genesis 1-2:3 it seems significant that the Genesis account doesn’t lead up to the same point about Jerusalem. Rather is seems that Genesis is proclaiming a wider message ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein’ (Psalm 24:1).

If, as many scholars believe, Genesis 1-2:3 was written after the return from exile (c. 5th Century BC) perhaps the message was even stronger. Yes, some of God’s people may have been able to return to Jerusalem but is that it? Isn’t God’s plan bigger than that? Wasn’t Abraham told he would be a blessing to ‘all the families of the earth’ (Gen.12:3)? And hasn’t God said ‘the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Hab.2:14)?

Perhaps then one of the messages of Genesis 1-2:3 is a reminder that God’s plan is for the whole earth which one day he will make new (Is. 65:17) and to which we are called to be ministers of reconciliation, proclaiming the message of new creation to everyone (2 Cor. 5:11-21).