Eastside Church of the Cross

Our Way of Reading Scripture

 

The Bible is made up of many books, and the manuscripts behind them are ancient.  And the languages of the Bible are Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.  That means it is a challenge for us to go back and read those ancient documents.  But we must!  And we are not lost in a world of uncertainty simply because we are so far removed from the events of the Bible and the recording of those events.  We keep in mind the following as we read:

a. Scripture is Inerrant

 

b. Know Thyself…

         We are not blank slates without bias.

         We have ideas we bring to the text of the Bible

         We have presuppositions that we

                  must discover so that we

                  can account for our own biases.

 

c. Reason and History help us in reading scripture and they help is sift through various interpretations

                  Therefore:

 

We are not confused post-modernists.

 

We are not without authority reason is a valid tool for interpreting words  we can use solid research and commentaries.

 

Church fathers and old commentaries are useful, but they do not trump reason, history and valid research.

 

d. Reading with Archaeolgy

                  Archaeology is The Historian’s Professor

                  For example, we use archaeology to understand

                           1. Solomon’s temple and

                                    the ancient Near East

                           2. The Judaism found in Qumran

                                    and “2nd Temple Judaism”

 

e. The Relation of the Christian to Israel’s Torah

When we read the Bible, we must read so as to account for the fact that the Church is not under Moses. We have to keep track of which stage of the Kingdom of God we find ourselves.

 

Some sample test cases/scriptures useful in testing our way of reading include the following:

 

                  1) Sabbath keeping? 

What do we do with that commandment?

2) Stoning rebellious children in the Torah?

                           What’s that about?

                  3) Ezra commands divorce? 

                           Is that for us?

                  4) Malachi commands Levitical tithing?

How are we to integrate that into our thinking?

 

f. Reading the Gospels as narratives from the first century

         When reading one of the four gospel:

             Read the entire Gospel from front to end!

 

Don’t think of the Gospels as collections, but as unified wholes.

 

g. Covenant Theology compared to Dispensational Theology

Like it or not, these two categories predominate in the church. Even if you are not familiar with these terms, you fit within one stream of thought — a way of reading the Bible. There are two big ways that Bible-believing, Jesus-loving theologians read the Bible:

 

                  Dispensational vs. Covenantal

 

Q. Which way do we read the Bible within these two options?

 

A. We are mostly Covenantal, though we do account for major discontinuities between the covenants. 

 

h. Story-Arc: God’s Image and New Exodus

From Genesis to Revelation, there is a story of God’s Image, and the story of what God is like, and how he is imaged in someone being like him.  The Bible is a story about God — following off the five stages discussed earlier.  His image is developed in the story of Exodus and New Exodus.  Jesus enacted a New Exodus in his flesh (cf. Luke 9, and the Mt. of Transfiguration event).

 

i. God’s Passion for his own Glory

Defending his justice, being God in the world.

 

 

Louisburg, Kansas

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Glorifying God by Enjoying Him Forever