Upstairs/Downstairs

I am preparing to change the course of my life.  I have spent the greater part of the last several days putting application packages together to attend graduate school next fall; specifically, I am probably going to divinity school to pursue graduate studies and fulfill my ordination requirements.  What I have noticed ironically is that when I describe to Christian friends what I am planning to do, they often return a tolerant, although nonplussed demeanor.   As I have begun to meditate on this and seek its explanation, I have found myself returning over and over to the question of authority. 

That is, the Scriptures have become a largely private affair.  As the philosophical smoke clears from the last 300 years or so, what seems to remain is a myriad of unanswered questions and objections to the text of the Bible.  One way Christians have dealt with this, and sadly so, is by retreating, Bibles in hand, quietly to the upstairs.  The Bible has become merely a devotional text, having lost its ability to make claims on the culture and world downstairs and outside. 

In a previous generation, as recently as Billy Graham, evangelists would call out "the Bible says..." to remind people of a failed obligation, and the people would flood the altars in repentance.  More and more, the response of our culture to what the Bible says is "so what?" 

We could each stand to be reminded of the fact that the events the New Testament narrates occurred in broad daylight, wide open to the world around.  Moreover, the NT's formation itself did not take place behind a curtain.  It may well be an inspired text, but on the face of it, there ain't nothin' spiritual about the debates that formed it.  But the irony is that Christians are leading the charge indoors with their texts, which is the very thing its words demand them not to do.  For no one puts a lamp under a bushel.  Or do they?

It is an understandable impulse: as the minds of the last three centuries have sought to dismantle the message Christians have said was contained in their Scriptures, Christians have sought the protection of private religious experience ("you can't tell us what we can and can't believe!").  As a result, in the culture, the NT is seen as a colloquium of private propositions (beliefs) about something inherently "religious" or "spiritual," rather than to open the way to anything like "real" knowledge.  This is the deal we have struck:  you don't tell us how our story isn't true, and we won't claim too loudly that it is.

Which may be why I'm getting the strange looks.  As I share with others my intention to return this text through academic work solidly back into the public sphere, perhaps what I am getting is a backlash of warning not to upset the terms of the bargain.  Or alternately, perhaps it is the case that we have grown comfortable in exile.  As I have spoken about a New Testament whose clear simplicity of message when it comes to becoming children of God ("believe on him...") does not mean it will not maintain the deepest critical study, perhaps the uneasiness I sense from others is a fear that if the Bible is returned to the public square, they will no longer be able merely to interpret it as they like.  If the Scriptures are known in the way Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is, the defense that "this is what it says to me" may no longer be adequate as a defense of supposedly Christian faith and practice.  God forbid the New Testament should speak loudly and mean what it says; oughtn't one to use their indoor voice in Church?

So it would seem, actually.  Indeed, if much of the theology of the Romantic era (think Rahner and Schleiermacher) urged the Scriptures' retreat into the whispers of the world, even the neoorthodox movement of the early 20th century is more like a shout in the soundproof room we have locked ourselves into.  Thinkers like Barth and Kierkegaard insisted, a la Luther, that the knowledge of God through the Scriptures was a closed circle, and only those blessed with the revelation of God could get into it.  According to the former view, the Scriptures leave us without a word to say in the world; following the latter, we puff our chests at the news that it is the world's deafness, not our ineloquence, that keeps them from the word of God.

In contrast, I surmise that the Jesus who was willing to be pawed at by Thomas, enjoined upon by Mary, and seen alive by hundreds of people after his resurrection, does not need protecting.  Although it may make Christians uneasy, I have seen our story subjected to the strictest strands of literary and historical criticism, and it has shone not less brightly but more so.  This is a public text!!!  And if our spirituality, our devotion, our mission, etc... are already energized by a Scripture in hiding, how much more so when the Scripture comes out to play as it wishes?  This is my own story.  Much like the other apostles in the room with Thomas as he struggled from partly-honest doubt to faith (which is the struggle that may yet redeem our culture), as I have seen the Scriptures handled, inspected, perused and scrutinized by every kind of criticism, I have found my own faith and devotion strengthened and solidified:  my prayer life deepened, my mission made blindingly clear.  In finding the Scriptures able to stand the weight of all the world's questions, I have discovered confidence to trust them with mine as well.  There is nothing to fear by retracting the cage that protects the Scripture from the world's tough questions.  It may get ugly for a while; historically, it often has.  But let the Scriptures be spread on the board of human inquiry, and they will endure it.  We may find they were not what we had thought originally, and so much the better.  But as sure as He whose story they tell was not overcome by the hands of sinners, we can rest assured the New Testament will survive all hands as well:  even ours.

A final parable to illustrate the point.  In the movie "Watchmen," there is a scene where a former superhero, Rorschach, falls prey to the winds of political and intellectual change and lands in the prison in which the very criminals he has busted are themselves incarcerated.  They wait eagerly for their chance at revenge and are surprised when they find they will not get the better of him just because he is on their turf.  After bathing one of his attackers in the blistering grease of a deep frier he shouts, "you people don't understand.  I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me."

Replace "Rorschach" with the NT and you've just about got it.

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Post-script:  for further reading on the public- and private-ness of faith in various periods of history, see Lesslie Newbigin's fascinating books The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, and Proper Confidence.  In both, he traces the heritage of the enlightenment's sending of religion up to its room.  The Scriptures, he argues rightly, allow for no such dualism.  In the language of the children of Abraham, there was no word for "spiritual."