Yesterday's post illustrated the perils of interpreting ancient sacred texts. Greg Carey, who teaches at Lancaster Theological Seminary, suggests that confessional and critical readings need not be mutually exclusive:
[M]ost evangelicals have what I would call a "devotional" relationship to the Bible. By "devotional" I mean that we read the Bible with the expectation that it will address our lives in life-giving ways. This expectation applies to naïve biblicists, who believe that every word of the Bible is the very word God dictated. It also applies to those of us who are comfortable with a more scholarly disposition. We know the Bible didn't just drop down from heaven, but we still expect to hear God speaking through it. ...
Several dangers accompany devotional approaches to the Bible, and they're too complicated for a substantial discussion. One common problem is that evangelicals tend to apply the Bible too personally. The Bible isn't just about "me." For example, we're inclined read the Abraham and Sarah stories as case studies in living faithfully -- but what if they just don't work well for that purpose? Evangelicals so personalize our faith that we often miss how Scripture speaks to communities or to society. Everyone who reads the Bible comes to it with assumptions about what it might or might not mean. Like everyone else, evangelicals have lots to learn from other readers. Evangelicals struggle in coming to terms with the Bible's ethically offensive or violent dimensions, leading us to play complicated intellectual games in order to "explain away" the problems. Finally, this direct, devotional encounter with Scripture has led too many evangelicals to fear genuine scholarship that might complicate their relationship to the Bible.
