Review - The Blue Parakeet

In The Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight provides his thoughts around how it is that we should read the Bible, and apply it's words in today's culture. His questions are thought provoking, and his analysis of the lenses through which we peer at the Bible are helpful. He argues for the timelessness of scripture, while exhorting the timeliness of it's importance.

The overreaching question of how we are to live out the Bible in our culture is central to Scot's exploration of biblical study. What I found most helpful was the detail surrounding the question of how do we read the bible. I think it is safe to say that we all fall into default modes of interpretation that are often culturally and traditionally conditioned.

I remember back in the day when every bookstore I went to I saw 'The Bible Code'. The Bible Code was a system of tricks by which the author(s) had claimed to find hidden and timely prophecies encoded within the words of the Bible. As time has proven this was no more than a theory, and I would say a sensationalistic money grab. Scot affirms that we can not use gimmicks to better understand the Bible, we must instead rely upon the narrative story present in scripture from front to back. From creation to consummation the Bible narrates God's story as told from the vantage point of many different authors in many different cultural contexts.

The blue parakeet is a metaphor for those things that are beautifully unique and stand out against the sparrows of the world. At first they are troublesome, scary, and out of place, however as we read the narrative as it is presented and begin to understanding micro/macro nature of the Bible those blue parakeet passages and personas that we don't quite know what to do with become less frightening. In time we begin to listen to the parakeet's distinct song, and discern it's place among it's peers.

The Blue Parakeet is a great introductory study for those interested in understanding how it is that we are to be reading and applying the Bible in our cultural contexts in a way that is both true to our way's today and to the story of God among his people. The language is conversational and accessible; rich with practical application without diving into big academic words.

The last half of the book wrestles with the 'blue parakeet' of women in Christian leadership roles. Scot's analysis in this area while not exhaustive to the topic reveals the heart of this books potential for helping us understand and correctly apply the intent of Paul's letter.

As mentioned earlier the accessible and conversational tone of this book suits it's purpose however it leaves me wanting Scot to further develop his hermeneutic technique in a more academic piece. One that can truly lay the groundwork not just for a personal understanding of the Bible, but a work that provides a more fleshed out framework from which further scholarly study of the Bible can develop.

I recommend this work as a great place to get your feet wet in critical thinking about the Bible, especially as it relates to understanding God's story both within the author's context and today.

The Blue Parakeet will be available generally in November.

Reclaiming Paul From What?

The upcoming conference titled “Reclaiming Paul” at NTS begs a very simple question—what are we reclaiming Paul from? The title hints at the reality that as Protestants and Evangelicals we enter into Paul’s text with certain prejudices. When my church community recently followed the lectionary through Romans, I noticed how difficult it can be to free Paul from the preconceptions of our own traditions. Where does this preconceived lens in our Protestant, Evangelical culture come from? How has this lens changed the way Romans and other works by Paul are perceived?

I have been thinking a lot this past year about the Reformation and wondering if the Reformation may have overcompensated on some issues. The shift away from the authority of the church seemed to make sense for the reformers in the context of the corrupted institution of power and politics that they faced. But I wonder how an idea like “scripture alone,” which came in response to a lack of trust in the institutional church, has caused us to lose sight of a very important element—context.

When Protestant/Evangelical people speak today, the idea of scripture alone seems to inherently deny the relevance of context. The context of the Reformation from which this idea emerged is lost. Even the context of scripture is lost to some degree as scripture is treated as if its context is exclusively self-contained. The idea of “scripture alone” in our modern Evangelical culture can rob scripture of the context of the church into whom God breathed life as the body of Christ, and through whom the scripture was both written and canonized. It is as if modern Evangelicals, so affected by the 16th century idea of “scripture alone,” have forgotten that scripture cannot really stand alone without the context in which it came, the body of Christ and the people of Abraham before that.

It is in this pursuit of context that I wrestle with Paul and his writings, particularly his letter to the Romans where our church reformers began to tap into another idea—“faith alone.” Certainly this idea of faith is a critical theme for both the reformers and Paul as he spends the first six chapters of Romans making a case for faith. However, I can’t help but wonder how the context of the church with which the reformers butted heads may have been misapplied to the text by the reformers, and how Paul’s context was very different. While the reformers were making a case against the church of their day that justification is by “faith” rather than merit which comes from jumping through the hoops of the institutional church, Paul seemed to be making a completely different kind of argument. Paul’s goal was to put both Jews and Gentiles on the even footing of faith.

Who would Paul be talking to that thought they could “earn their way into heaven?” I am not sure that the Jewish section of his audience had this in mind, at least not in the way we tend to think about it. I also don’t think the Gentile section of Paul’s audience in the Roman church was thinking they could earn their way into heaven. This doesn't seem to be the real issue Paul was trying to address. The issue was whether the Gentiles had the same footing with the people of promise, the Jews. Yet, today you will hear the primary point of Paul, according to many Protestants and their “Roman Road”, is that you can not earn your way into heaven. I suspect that the idea that you could “earn your way to heaven” was much more ingrained in the institutional church the reformers had conflict with than the Jewish people of Paul’s audience; or at least the idea of “works” for Jewish people was something more complex than we attribute to it.

It seems to me that the Jews certainly thought that keeping the law was critical, but there was also some sense of entitlement by the Jews simply because they were Jews; who as a people were keepers of the law. The law was theirs, not always because they had perfectly followed it, but because God gave it to them. There were even provisions in the law for when they failed to keep it. Because of this, on some level they understood concepts concerning, their own sin, confession, repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness, but again, they also felt entitled to such things just for being a Jew.

Paul’s argument in Romans does two things. First it addresses the Jews false sense of entitlement. Then it does something wholly unique; it reconnects the origin of their religious standing and practices with faith. I don’t think the idea of “faith alone” here is argued by Paul to dismantle some false idea of “merit alone”, rather it is to point out that God has always been the one that does the work, and our hope has always been through responding to him in faith. The gospel then, as presented by Paul, is not about “giving up works” for “a better way of faith”, but rather showing how faith is the common ground for everyone both Jew and Greek. Paul goes to great lengths to say that Judaism is based on faith, and has been all along; so “faith” is not what is new. What is new is Jesus, who is accessible for the Greek in the same way God has always been accessible; by faith. Paul does not dismantle and toss aside the value of being a Jew but he does put it in perspective.

Unlike the argument the reformers had against the church of their time, Paul seemed be re-grounding “Jewishness” in the foundation of faith it began in. He did this with the purpose of showing how even Gentiles could share in faith as the shared common ground. Paul was able to put his Jewish heritage in the proper context of faith in a way that the reformers failed to do with the church of their time; granted the church the reformers struggled with also had different problems. Both these different challenges and problems do provide important context that simply can not be ignored by pretending that we can actually read the works of Paul as just reading “scripture alone”.

Just recently someone told me that they have no issues with the emergent church as long as they preach the gospel as “justification by faith alone” and not a gospel of “works”. It occurred to me, in this very Protestant statement, just how much we want to create a disconnect between faith and works. This statement, and ones like it, is often spoken as if these words where brought to us in a vacuum. Just like I wonder if Paul’s audience in Romans (from which this statement is based on) were trying to “earn their way into heaven”, I wonder who we are talking to today that is trying to “earn their way into heaven”? I don’t think that earning our way into heaven is the point, or even what most people are looking for. I think what people are looking for is a way to connect; and they are anxious to respond in faith to God in any authentic opportunity they can find. The issue then is not faith; people have faith. Like Paul was trying to point out in Romans, faith is not new, Jesus is new. So how is Jesus new, and how do we respond to him?

Paul’s argument’s in Romans builds in a logical way. I can’t help but to notice Paul’s view of his Jewish heritage merging with his Roman upbringing as he speaks of his Jewish tradition from the logical philosophical lens of a seemingly Greek influenced education. Paul was the perfect person to be the advocate for the Gentile’s place as part of the Kingdom of God and children of the promise of Christ. Again, that seems to be Paul’s mission and Paul’s point; even as Paul builds on his argument and talks about things like "sin" and "falling short of God’s glory".

Unfortunately, our Protestant lens has us convinced that Paul is trying to convince the Jew in Romans that he is a sinner and that being keepers of the law does not make him righteous. While certainly some Jews forgot this from time to time, I don’t think it is fair to assume this as the norm. I think Jews were very much aware of their sin because they had whole systems reminding them of it on a regular basis. Again, I believe this argument is to put the Gentile on even footing with the Jew. The argument was probably as much for the benefit of the Gentile, maybe even more so, than the Jew. The point is to remind everyone that our standing with God, and our sinfulness and falling short with out him, is the same with everyone and only God is in position to do anything about it.

As Paul builds on his argument of faith to include Christ as his ultimate answer for the problem of being disconnected from God and sin, I wonder what else may need to be reclaimed from the prejudices of our Protestant/Evangelical lens. I think as the after-life took on a greater emphasis, along with the de-emphasis on works, in the view of salvation for the Protestant, so changed the nature of our view of the cross. As redemption became less connected to the reality of our life today, so the cross became more abstract and less practical. Oh it was still “practical” from a spiritually economic point of view, but I think much of the theological track of arguments that emerged from Protestant and then evangelical thought focused exclusively on some eternal spiritual exchange.

As I have been reading Paul lately though, I have been seeing something earthier than this. I have been seeing Christ who as entered the reality of our human condition in the here and now. Not simply to come pick up the bill, but to be where we are and to be connected with us. I wonder if we have largely forgotten the context of the incarnation in Paul’s writings as we learn how Christ has met us in the reality of human life; which includes the reality of sin, injustice, and death. Lately I have been hearing the good news ringing in my head that “God is with us” as the primary theme as I read the works of Paul. The message seems to be far deeper than just some kind of debt transaction as the primary theme that the dominant reformed theology in our evangelical culture wants to portray.

Reclaiming Paul from what? Well I guess for us evangelicals it is from our own prejudices and influences from things like reformed theology which has monopolized Paul with their dominant lens. Perhaps we need to reclaim Paul even from the influences of where the reformation may have overcompensated against the authority of the church and its incarnational presence; and dare I say “works” in the world.

As Evangelicals and descendants of the first Protestants, it can be difficult to keep from reading the issues of the Reformation into Paul’s writings because the reformers leaned so much on them as they birthed a new Christian tradition. Certainly our various Protestant traditions have drawn on a wealth of brilliant Christian thinking throughout this stage of Christian history, but we need to do our best not to allow the Reformation to monopolize our lens concerning Paul. Paul was not trying to reform the 16th century church through his writings. We are very likely to miss the real richness of his message if we keep thinking that that was his intention.