Last week I mentioned that I reject the idea that the New Testament is a constitution. There’s a lot of things that the New Testament isn’t. It’s not a love letter from God. It’s not a science text. It’s not a history book. It’s not legal code.
I do believe that the New Testament is scripture. The different books inspired, sacred writings. There is a human element to them, which explains the differences in writing styles, but that does not mean they are limited by human fallibility. They are inspired books, unique in that way. We can apply certain literary principles that we would apply to the reading of any book, yet we must recognize that they are different from all other books.
There is legal code in the Bible. It’s not hard to recognize. Read the Torah and you will several sections of legal code. Take a chapter like Exodus 25 and lay it alongside any of Paul’s epistles, and you’ll quickly realize that Paul isn’t writing legal code.
Paul is writing letters, letters motivated by specific situations and written to address those situations. That’s what we mean when we say they are occasional, they were written in a specific context for that context. While this seems less true for some of the other writers (Peter and James seem to address a wider audience), yet each letter was written for some specific purpose. And none of them was written for the purpose of establishing a constitution for the Lord’s church.
That’s not to say that nothing in those letters is of general application. Much that is said applies to all Christians, everywhere. But we won’t find that by reading the New Testament the same way we would read the U.S. Constitution.
Does it matter? How do things change when we read the New Testament as if it were a series of statutes and laws? What role do literary genres play in our understanding of the Bible?
I believe what you’re describing used to be called “context.” When I was going to school, when we weren’t dipping girls’ pigtails in the inkwell, we were learning how to read for context and meaning. Before it was a point of hermeneutic controversy, determining the proper context of what was being read was a standard part of instruction in English language and literature classes. And that means answering the five Ws as they would have been answered by the writer at the time of writing. While we can’t remove our cultural glasses completely, we can certainly make the effort…and for your efforts in encouraging us all to do just that, I give you a hearty “Amen!”
Perhaps a start would be to remove the accretions to the Bible that have messed up our thinking: no more Old Testament/ New Testament division of books (perhaps use the Law/Prophets/Writings/Gospels/Letters) and no more chapter/verse breakdowns, except for the Psalms (chapters only). Take each book and divide it into paragraphs to suit our sensibilities (not perfect, but it will help with contextual reading). If our Bibles start looking more like standard books, we may be more willing to read them the same way. People need to remember: chapters and verses are a human innovation, much like instrumental music and buildings that suck up our budgets .
Interesting suggestion, Robert. I’ve definitely seen problems caused by those pesky numbers that have been inserted into the text.