Reading both critically and spiritually

I think it is essential that we integrate our critical thought with our spiritual discoveries.

“A fruitful interplay exists between the informational [critical thought] and formational [spiritual receptivity] modes. We must have a certain level of information about the biblical passage, some sense of the meaning of the text in its original context, some sense of what God was saying to the intended readers before it can become formational” (Mulholland 61).

I have often thought the true power of the Word of God is when we let it be his true Word and not what we would like it to be. For me this has meant looking at the text using all the Bible study methods at my disposal to try to determine what God is trying to say through this author.

I have found that I am never satisfied with my studies for a sermon until the text has mastered me, breathed new life in me and destroyed me. This has often proved itself to be difficult work, and I often have found myself asking God if I missed the mark in choosing this text because it hasn’t yet shaken me to the core. He impresses on me that the good seldom comes easily and I keep on: reading, rereading, even before I knew what lectio was, until he gets my attention. The text then takes on the spiritual force of true scripture to my soul.

The Spiritual side also must inform the critical study. Barbara Bowe in her book, takes a much more liberal view of scriptures than I do. She betrays her demythologizing tendencies with her reference to the Sea of Reeds (as opposed to the Red Sea), but does it really matter? She still sees and demands the spiritual force of the text to remain.

The understanding of the Bible as being scripture before textbook has allowed me freedom as I have matured. I grew up a fundamentalist, and don’t get me wrong: technically I still am since I still believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. When I was eight or nine I remember sitting down at my dad’s typewriter one December to harmonize the birth stories in the gospels. When I went to college it still shocked and offended my sensibilities to think that Matthew may not have been the first gospel written, after all its the first one in the book! The understanding of the Bible as a sacred text, as scripture to bring formation and not, in the first place, information, helped me understand that each gospel writer had his message, inspired as it was, to present. Even in the way he ordered his stories served to form us! I loved this idea and by my senior year was really taken with synoptic studies. Form criticism (or as I like to say, formsgeschichte, mainly because it is fun to say) took its place as a powerful way to introduce to me the spiritual message of the evangelists.