One of the more curious tendencies of the emerging church is to take the words of Jesus as somehow more important than the rest of the Bible. Reverence for Jesus has to be demonstrated by elevating His words to a higher plateau, I suppose the thinking goes. I've seen this attitude in scholarly works on EC and at the local level. It's problematic, and I know I've posted about it before, but for the benefit of a friend let's address the issue again for just a bit, eh?
First things first - the Bible explicitly tells us that all Scripture is given by inspiration and all Scripture is profitable for growth in Christian character. You'd like to think that would settle it, but apparently it doesn't for plenty of EC folk.
Perhaps more to the point, Jesus Himself clearly sees enormous value in the Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, He uses the text of Jonah to validate His own ministry. In Matthew 12, His detractors ask for "a sign" and He promises to validate His ministry by none other than the "sign of Jonah". The language of the text makes it clear that Jesus fully accepts both the authenticity and authority of this OT text. If Jesus Himself had such a high view of Scripture, is it not the height of folly to declare that Jesus' words are more important than other Scriptures?!
Here's another issue: the words of Jesus fail to address so many issues that other texts of Scripture deal with. If we are to limit ourselves to only the words of Jesus, we severely limit God's voice on many, many topics.
Another: seeing the words of Jesus this way is a fundamental error in our view of Scripture. If Scripture is a sort of divine self-help book, then perhaps you could argue that the "way of Jesus" is most important in the Bible. But since the Bible is, in fact, God's self-revelation to humanity, such a view of Jesus' words falls very short of adequate.
None of this, of course, means that I'm devaluing the words of Jesus. I'm simply arguing that - while it sounds terribly pious - regarding Jesus' words as somehow more important than other words of the Bible is actually a lower view of Scripture and therefore the Christ of Scripture, too.
Hatushili
Monday, February 9, 2009
Words written in red
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6 comments:
Hi Hatushili,
I agree with your view on this. I generally look for Bibles without Jesus' quotes in red ink so as not to be drawn into thinking them more important than the other texts. Haggis Breath
Haggis: you're older than me - do you ever remember a time when people attempted to build entire systems of praxis on red-lettered words? That's what so many in EC are doing. Gibbs, in his defining work on EC, lists this concept as pivotal for EC ... not just tangential. Any perspective you can share here?
Hatushili,
I don't recall it in the church; but society seems to favor Jesus over the "superstitious and male dominated" OT and writings of Paul -- when it gives a nod to Christianity at all. A Newsweek or Time article mentioned the authoritative James Earl Jones as an OT God figure and Morgan Freeman as a softer, easier NT God figure (JEJ has read the Bible on CD and MF played God in the Bruce Almighty series of movies). Do these red letter folks follow the teaching of their Author and contextualize His message with the OT references He cites or realize that He is the hard teacher Who has returned to the ideal and is the anti-type to the softer (i.e. fallible)OT types? If they continue in their vein, won't they eventually come to honor all of Scripture as Christ did? Or no?
Haggis Breath
They would, I think, say that they honour all Scripture, but that they also recognize the superiority of what they often call 'the way of Jesus'. It's troubling to me, because - like you - I've not really seen this tendency in the life of the local church before.
For example, many of these folk attempt to build an entire ecclesiology around the 'way of Jesus'. This is - obviously - fraught with difficulties! Moreover, it leads to some patently silly conceptions of what a local church really is.
Sad, made more sad by its rampant growth.
Thank you for your help!
re: Anonymous ... you're welcome, I guess! :) Thanks for what, exactly?
Hatushili
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