Look, I really admire Adam
Hamilton. He has led thousands of people to Christ and provided invaluable
leadership in the UMC. His church has launched incredible ministries. He’s an
amazing person, and I have no doubt that he is utterly committed to serving
Christ.
Rev. Hamilton recently
published a blog post called “Homosexuality, the Bible, and the United Methodist Church.” I don’t want to focus on the matter of homosexuality in this
post, but only on Rev. Hamilton’s method of categorizing different passages of
scripture. He says that he places scriptures into three buckets:
1. Scriptures that express
God’s heart, character and timeless will for human beings.
2. Scriptures that expressed
God’s will in a particular time, but are no longer binding.
3. Scriptures that never
fully expressed the heart, character or will of God.
Actually, I think this is
how most UM’s do interpret scripture,
whether they are progressive, evangelical or something in between, and whether
they admit it or not. Take, for example, the prohibition in 1 Tim 2:9 against
women having braided hair and wearing gold or expensive clothes. As far as I
can tell, this passage has no normative force in the UMC. Bucket #3. Paul’s
discussion of food sacrificed to idols (1 Cor 8)? Well, in the modern West, we
don’t often see people sacrificing food to little statues in alcoves on the
street. Bucket #2. There are other passages, such as the story of Jepthah’s
daughter in Judges 11. This story simply isn’t going to show up in the
lectionary, nor is it likely to be incorporated into a sermon series on how to
live a Godly life. It has no normative force in our churches. Bucket #3. But
John 3:16? Bucket #1—off-the-backboard 360 slam dunk.
Further, most of the time we
make these kinds of moves without thinking much about them. We do this because
whether we are aware of it or not, we read scripture theologically. Put
differently, we employee a set of theological concepts that largely determines
which scriptural passages we consider normative and which we do not. For
example, we believe that God is a loving, creative, and powerful deity, and
therefore we have no problem assigning normative force to John 3:16. Jephthah,
on the other hand? Not so much.
“No!” you may say. “You have
it all backward! Scripture determines our theology, and not the other way
around!” Many people do believe this to be the case. The relationship between
scripture and doctrine, though, is not a one-way street. It is dialectical. In
other words, scripture and doctrine inform and shape one another. Ask yourself,
“Why do we have a New Testament canon to begin with?” The main reason is that
certain Christian writings were thought to teach and inform the faith of the
Church, embodied in the Rule of Faith, a kind of proto-creed. They became
canonical, and over time helped to shape the further development of our
doctrines. These doctrines, then, have informed the ways in which we read
scripture. So it goes, back and forth: scripture informs our understanding of
doctrine, and doctrine informs our reading of scripture. Thus it always has
been, and thus it always will be.
So the really important
question here is this: What theological concepts do we employ when we read
scripture, and how intentional are we in appropriating these concepts? Even if
we all agreed on the three-bucket approach, we would not agree on which
scriptural passages go in which bucket. Rev. Hamilton acknowledges this in his
post. This way of dealing with scripture, then, doesn’t help us a great deal in
sorting out controversial issues.
One final point: I believe
God can teach us through any passage
of scripture. We don’t have to regard a scriptural passage as prescriptive or
normative in order for God to teach us. God might in fact teach us through the
passages of scripture that we find most difficult. God might teach us through
passages that make us mad, sad, or confused. The Holy Spirit is a teacher who
will consistently surprise and stretch us in our walk of faith.
Now, you may say, “Watson,
that is all fine and good for you seminary types, but what about the people in
the pews of the churches each Sunday? All this high-flying theological talk
isn’t going to help them very much.” True enough, so here’s how I would boil
this down. Rather than setting out the three buckets and sorting scriptural
passages into one of the three, perhaps we should simply ask this question:
Given what I know to be true about God, how can this
passage of scripture inform my understanding of God and the Christian life?
Yes, this question
presupposes that we know something about God before we begin to read the Bible,
but Christians should be catechized before they launch into Bible study.
To sum up, I think that Adam
Hamilton has articulated the way in which most people in the UMC (and many
other traditions) approach scripture. I don’t think this approach is
sufficient, nor do I think it helps us to move forward in terms of our current
disagreement over homosexuality. While I have great respect for Rev. Hamilton, I
don’t think these remarks on scripture are his most helpful contribution.