In all human things nothing remains unshaken. Every man must continually face the possibility of having to abandon the very belief that determines his place in the world and binds him to the earthly order of things. And he may find no other, but may sink in the general whirlpool. One class shun no concentration of their own powers and shout also towards every side for help, that they may hold fast what they take to be the poles of the world and of society, of art and of science, which by an indescribable destiny as it were of their own accord, suddenly leap from their sockets and allow all that has so long revolved around them to fall; the other class, with a like restless zeal, are busy clearing away the ruins of fallen centuries, seeking to be the first to settle on the fruitful ground that is being formed beneath from the quickly cooling lava of the dread volcano. Schleiermacher, (pg. 121).
The task of the first section was the painful task of self-reflection, of critical analysis, and of clearing away the ruins of the fallen centuries. It has been a difficult task for one who once dwelt in the fallen ruins; but the ground is nearly clear. But before we begin rebuilding in earnest, there is one remaining “sub-floor” that must be lifted.
In traditional fundamentalist understanding, the Bible is the beginning and the end of the revelation of God to man. While other books or messages may be considered inspired, none are considered on the par with the Bible, which is thought to be literal and verbally inspired; the final "official" word from God.
One problem with this fundamentalist view of scripture is that it is totally inconsistent with the fundamentalist view of God, and more in line with a Deistic view of God. From the perspective of Deism, the religious orientation of many of America's founding fathers, God created the universe as a closed system. He set the heavens and the laws of cause and effect in motion, and walked away. In a closed system in which God is now absent as an active creator, the Bible as a first and last edition manual makes sense. In a universe in which God is immanent, active, and ever-engaging, the fundamentalist idea of the Bible makes little sense.
If I were called away to an overseas mission in which I would be permanently removed from my children without any contact, I would probably write a long and detailed document instructing them in exactly what I believed to be the best way to live their lives. But, since I'm here in the middle of all they do and constantly in contact, the "end-all book of instruction" would not only be redundant, but inferior to the active, constant direction and conversation in which we routinely engage.
The Bible is a RECORD of the word of God as it has come to men in the Hebrew Faith and in the person of Jesus. Jesus himself was and is the word, the divine consciousness incarnated in flesh. The New Testament is a record of what that life meant to those who knew him and came after him. Although it is filled with wisdom and insight, it is a creation of man, not God. To elevate it to the place of the only word is to put a medieval compilation of first century letters and ancient manuscripts above the living and active word of God made incarnate in human flesh. That is Idolatry, pure and simple. If a book containing the final word was necessary, why didn't Jesus give his life to such a task? We have no record that he ever felt that such a document was his purpose.
The Fundamentalist view of scripture reduces the biblical writers to mere tools. In occult practices, messages are often transmitted from spirit beings through the process of "automatic writing". When automatic writing, the person doing the writing effectively is possessed by the spirit for a time, and turns over control of his/her body to the spirit. Is this really how God interacts with humanity? Martin Buber tells us that encounters with God are always "I –thou" encounters. By this he means we approach each other as unique beings without objectifying the other. In an I-thou encounter, there can be no personal agenda, no intent to use the other for a specific purpose--which always requires objectifying the person you are encountering. In contemplating this point, I have been forced to reconsider the human-divine relationship all together. In so many faiths we talk of allowing God to "use" us. Does god encounter us for the purpose of "using" us?
If Buber is correct, then God encounters us, and we ought to encounter God, for the singular purpose of knowing his essence . When either of us begin to see the other as a means to an end, then the essential I-thou encounter ceases, and something else begins. Accepting this premise, I cannot accept the idea that God "used" humans to write down his word. So, then, if the Bible is not the literal, infallible word of God, What is it?
A narrative like the Bible, in any other context, is always motivated by a person desiring to make a record of his/her own experiences and thoughts about those experiences. So people who truly encounter God do so in the context of a completely personal I-Thou experience; an experience that was not a means to an end, but an end in itself. Having had such a profound encounter, it is no wonder that the person would want to make an account of the experience and his/her thoughts about it.
The Bible is a collection of just these kinds of narratives. The Books of the Bible are accounts of the experiences of those who have encountered the divine consciousness and their thoughts concerning these experiences. In the prophecies and New Testament epistles, there are directives offered for how one should respond to God, and to others in the spirit of that God; but these are always directives to a time bound group of people in a given culture and world-view. I submit that no writer of the Biblical record ever intended to be writing to an audience removed in time and space as we are, and would be confused and shocked to see his personal writings canonized as the very utterances of God to all peoples of all times.
When we read the scriptures, we are not peering into the mind of God; we are getting an insightful glimpse into the minds of those who experienced him; and those minds can, at times, be very primitive in the way they make sense out of their world. Does god really send plagues, vipers, and rebel-swallowing earthquakes in order to assuage his anger, or do unevolved minds suppose that he does? The beauty comes as we watch minds and cultures slowly evolving to a more enlightened way of thinking; being refined and elevated through their encounters with the divine. We listen to the New Testament writers as they recount their experiences with, or the stories that have been passed down to them, about Jesus; and we watch as a dawn of understanding breaks across their minds that is more conscious, more aware and more radically compassionate than the old way of seeing and doing things. We note that Jesus himself chose not to write anything down, but stressed that encounters with God must be just that kind of 'I-thou" experience, that meeting in time with no objectification, a meeting that culminates in the highest goal of simply knowing the other; becoming one with the divine, and therefore expressing the divine essence . It is in this meeting alone that anyone can ever "know" God. God doesn't want to use us; He simply longs to encounter us.
The Word of God is active; It comes to us in the moment when we need it through divine encounter. As stated by the great existential theologian Rudolf Bultman,
The Word of God is not a timeless statement but a concrete word addressed to men here and now. To be sure God’s Word is His eternal Word, but this eternity must not be conceived as timelessness, but as His presence always actualized here and now. It is His Word as an event, in an encounter, not as a set of ideas, not, for example, as a statement about God’s kindness and grace in general, although such a statement may be otherwise correct, but only as addressed to me, as an event happening and meeting me as His mercy. (pg. 70)
Sacred scriptures help us to understand how God has worked in the past, judge whether we have heard his word in the moment, and can lead us forward into enlightenment and faith; But to take them as God's final word is to, in the language of the Bible itself, embrace an idol.
But what is the alternative? For fundamentalists, to remove the subfloor of Biblical inerrancy and finality is to remove the very ground on which their faith it based. But I propose that “faith” that has taken up residence on a permanent floor is faith that has ceased to grow, to evolve, and to seek the very mystery of God, the essence of faith itself.
The spiritual evolution of humanity can be imagined as a journey up a cliff face that reaches into infinity. It is a formidable task; and while we all feel the longing to scale it, while something from the cloud-obscured pinnacle calls to us, few find the vision or the passion to climb. Some do; and those great souls throughout history have undertaken the painful and slow task with determination and faith. In their lifetimes, through contemplation, prayer, divine impetus and inspiration, they manage to reach a higher place than those below. In an effort to mark this place, to provide a hand hold or a foot hold for those who may come after, they imbed a peg into the rock face. The books that they write are snapshots of their understanding at a given moment in time, a marker on the evolutionary climb. Like a ratchet stop on a wrench, they lock into a higher level of consciousness and become a foothold from which future visionaries can begin their own climb.
Jesus was just such a visionary, and his life and teachings were pegs in the rock face of evolution that reached higher than perhaps anyone had gone before. Paul and the early church used some of these pegs as a foundation on which to construct a platform – a foothold not for just one, but an elevated place on which an entire religion could be built.
No doubt Christianity represents a step in the evolution of the human spirit; but it is just a stop on the climb. Instead of using this platform to gather our strength as we contemplate going higher, we have made it our dwelling place. We built permanent structures and declared that we had reached the summit.
As time has passed, others around us have begun to climb higher without us. Visionaries have appeared in science and other spiritual disciplines who have begun to post a few pegs here and there in the rock face above our heads. They call to us to come up; but we are comfortable on our platform. We have become dwellers rather than seekers. From above us, the visionaries can see that the platform on which Christianity has built a “permanent” dwelling is crumbling with age, and in a post modern world, the old pegs are giving way under the weight. It is time to reach for new pegs; to pull ourselves up to higher footholds on the evolutionary climb.
The second part of this book is about identifying those pegs, and attempting to connect some of them with a few planks here and there, planks that can be used as a beginning in building a higher, more stable place from which the spiritual traveler can view the world. In Chapter eight I will survey a number of recently developed scientific concepts behind a new paradigm that is emerging within the scientific community, and that have the potential to breathe new life and understanding into traditional Christian understandings, especially our understanding of God. These ideas appear to be promising “pegs” on which a new Christian mythology might be built.
First, we must ask the central question, where does Jesus fit into this new mythology? I’ll take up this question by looking behind the post-Easter mythology for Jesus; the man, his teachings, and the values he championed as principles for the Spirit-led life.
As we begin to “revision” Jesus, God, and Christianity as an approach to God, we will need a new way of talking about these things. In Chapter 9 I will discuss the role that language plays in our ability to conceive of and ultimately to create reality, and suggest some new ways in which we might talk about God, Jesus, and spiritual practice. My hope is that these humble planks, although rough-hewn, may provide a scaffold for the post-modern “religionless Christianity” that Bonhoeffer glimpsed more than a half a century ago.
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