Seminary Lecture - Conversations with the Scriptures and their Architects

Conversations with the Scriptures and their Architects: Seeing the World in New Ways

Notes from a lecture by Donn Morgan

Grace Memorial Episcopal Church

December 1 2010

Genesis

            This lecture is a part of a larger effort to trace the ways in which we talk with the Bible.  In an earlier book (Fighting with the Bible, Church Publishing, 2007), it became clear to me that before we could “fight” with the Bible (either through serious study or through using it as a weapon, most often against fellow Christians), we needed to be talking with the Bible, being in active conversation with it.  For though the diversity and difference in the biblical messages have much to do with our ability to take very different and conflicting stances on war, or peace, or what it means to be human, or the nature of God, to cite just a few examples, part of the “difference” that divides Christians has to do with the ways in which we read the Bible in our own particular contexts.  Thus my present concern with how we “talk with” the Bible. 

            Talking with the Bible is to be involved in a conversation, presupposing a relationship between the participants in that dialogue.  We talk to and listen to the Bible; we are shaped (through values imbedded in stories, covenants, etc.) by the Bible and we help to shape it (lectionary, prayer books, etc.).  Talking with the Bible, then, is a prerequisite for fighting with, teaching, and learning from the Bible.  This conversation is a critical component of our faith journeys.

           One of the challenges inherent in describing the conversations we have with the Bible revolves around the fact that the Bible is, at one level, an inanimate object.   How does one “talk” with an inanimate object?!   At first it might seem better to think we have “one way” conversations with the Bible, with us as the primary speakers and the Bible sitting there, inert and unresponsive.  Perhaps, however, we have experienced the Bible’s voice through careful study.  But what if we don’t like what we hear?  How do we continue to hear and have a conversation then?

            To talk with the Bible we need help, partners, if you will.  These may be preachers, teachers, commentators, and other interpreters.  These may be folks we live with and listen to in person, or these may be folks of previous generations who have left their imprint on the way in which the Bible is read and interpreted, including those who have produced and put the scriptures together into the “book” (Bible!) we have today.  It is indeed both past and present partners who allow this book to live and carry its message to us.  We all, past and present readers and interpreters of the Bible, keep each other honest and allow us to “hear” and respond in conversation.

Searching for a Metaphor: Michael Pollon

            In searching for an apt metaphor to describe the ways in which we have conversations with the Bible, I have been helped by Michael Pollon, author of the popular works The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.   Pollan’s insightful and uncanny ability to describe parts of the natural order like tulips or potatoes or marijuana as having conversations and interaction with us seemed worthy of comparison to our talking with the Bible.

            Of special interest and pertinence was Pollan’s A Place of My Own, where he described the making of a small building in his large back yard.  The interactions between architect and builder and raw materials and Pollan himself (in part the construction worker and in part the designer and ultimate user of the space) yielded many interesting parallels with the Bible. 

            At one point in the narrative Winston Churchill is quoted:  “First we shape our buildings, and thereafter our buildings shape us.”  This quotation and much of Pollan’s book are testimony to give and take between a building and its community of creators and ultimate users, an ongoing conversation.  It is a witness to a conversation over time, including many developments that may or may not have anything to do with what original architects had envisioned.  It is also a witness to a function-oriented conversation, where functions may change in terms of the “rooms” of the building, but the basic needs pointed to by these functions will find other ways of fulfillment.

            I am inviting us to imagine the Bible as a literary building, in two different ways.  First, diachronically (through time)—as the story of how the Bible came to built; second, synchronically (at one time, holistically), focusing on the functions served by the rooms and other parts of the building.  Finally, this lecture will close with some questions and concerns we might profitably address in the future as we explore ways we talk with the Bible.

The Building of the Bible

            Components or Raw Materials Might Include: stories of all sorts (including a variety of narratives); prayers; songs; lists (e.g. calendars, genealogies, decalogues); letters; oracles; laws (and subsequently codes); proverbs and other wisdom forms (fables, parables, etc.).

            Initially most of these raw materials are collected for a wide variety of purposes and audiences.  Sometimes this collecting is a part of a creative process.  At other times it is just an attempt to organize, set aside, or preserve.  When the collecting is a creative process, the collectors are doing some of the work of architects.

            Architects  These folks most often work with multiple building materials fulfilling goals far more comprehensive than collection (for example, the architects of the book of Psalms are creating a prayer book for ancient Israel, and those putting some of the stories of Genesis together are trying to create a national epic.  The work of biblical architects may be categorized in the following manner:

1. Writers (more accurately editors or redactors and sophisticated collectors) of “books”
2. Redactors of larger collections of books (e.g. Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings; Luke, Acts; etc.)
3. Creators and Shapers of Canon (Hebrew Bible = Torah, Prophets (Former and Latter), Writings; New Testament = Gospels (parallel to Torah), Acts and Epistles (parallel to Former and Latter Prophets).

To the work of these architects must be added later interpreters who had a significant role in helping to shape the biblical conversation for subsequent generations (e.g. rabbis, scribal schools, early Christian leaders, and giants like Augustine and Maimonides).

A proviso:  We can trace the ways in which the building is shaped and interpreted best by moving backward from the latest additions and nuances given to us by interpreters and others in conversation with the Bible.  It is difficult to impossible to begin at the beginning, attempting to ignore the overlay of (often) normative building and interpretation and conversation added to the work of the early architects with their raw materials.

Conversations with this literary building process will involve a focus on the “so-what” of the community—that’s the most important priority for most of these architects, collectors, and interpreters.  We need to explore what is motivating each of the architects, attempting to determine for whom they are working and for what purpose.  The bottom line answer to these questions, however, appears to be a communal one, asking us, finally, to see ourselves in such a focus and context for this building of the people of God.

The Bible Building

Having described the primary materials and architects involved in the building of the Bible, some attention needs to be given to some of the characteristics of the building itself, the functions that it serves, through conversation and dialogue, for those who inhabit it.  Though there are many ways to do this, including imagining what the “whole” finished building might look like (something I leave for you to do!), I want to look at some of the basic parts of most buildings, asking what purposes they serve in this Bible Building.

• Windows.  Windows provide a way to see the world for folks inside the building and provide a “face” for the world to those outside.  Pollan speaks of the window in his building, an old-fashioned, almost anachronistic, window composed of six panes of glass divided by a grid of muntin bars.  “What had been a single uninflected horizontal view out over the desk was now divided into six discrete square frames.  The surprise was just how much more you could see this way, now there were six focal points instead of one, and twenty-four edges composing the scene instead of four…” (A Place of My Own, p. 260).  Think of the Bible, with its many authors, each providing part or all of a frame through which to see God and people in the world!  Quite a building, from either inside or outside!  A few examples of such windows, or rather categories finally containing many windows, are:

1. Genesis/Wisdom Windows.  Here the focus is on the “order” of the creation, of our inability to discern it all, on the one hand, and our mandate to try, on the one.
2. Prophetic Windows.  These windows look out on a world with messages of judgment and justice, on the one hand, with promise and restoration, on the other.  Depending on the prophet and the time, there will be more, or less, of each of these special concerns.
3. Apocalyptic Windows.  Seen through these windows, the world is in deep trouble, going to hell in a hand basket, as it were.  And, at the same time, this window portrays God in control of all this, and about to act, in a definitive way, to set things right (with new heavens and a new earth and terrible judgment and so much more).  An ethics of immediacy comes through these windows, asking us to be faithful in addressing the seemingly insurmountable problems of the world, lest we be caught unawares when God comes “like a thief in the night.”

• Foundations.  What holds us up?  What can we count on?  Among the many possibilities for foundations in this Bible Building are:

1. Exodus.  Over and over the exodus (God bringing the people out from slavery, death, oppression, poverty, sickness…, to life and health and wholeness) is a paradigm by which we can understand the world and be confident.
2. Sinai or the Mountain of God.  Here we receive direction and clarity for mission and ministry, for living, faithfully and regularly adapted to the changing circumstances and contexts of our lives.
3. Monarchy.  God is king, sovereign—an important point to note and remember as a foundational piece of this building.  Many of our societal structures that try to represent an ordered way of building social life together are mirrored in and through this larger biblical reality.
4. Cult.  We have been given a religious infrastructure, upon which we are able, together, to understand a bit more about what it means to live faithfully and well in this world, through a special relationship (covenant) with the One who brought us to this place.

• Roofs.  What covers and protects us in this building?  What makes sense of our world and creates a place where we are, at least from time to time, comfortable and secure?  Among many possibilities are:

1. Retributional Systems (for example, in wisdom literature [the “two ways” one can walk and live] or in Deuteronomy [“I set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity”] attempt to make sense of our experience and to orient us toward the good.
2. Multiple stories of salvation (and ruin) call us to have confidence in the one who has, does, and will continue such acts in the future.

• Doors.  How do we enter such a building?  How do we control access to it?  Among many possibilities are:

1. The Decalogue and Covenant.  Here the picture of a people  committed to God through faithful obedience to a covenant provides the means for identifying who should, and should not, live in this building.
2. Education.  Through a number of different ways of teaching and remembering and telling and witnessing to the story of the people of God, others come to live in or benefit from the presence of this building in the world.

• Rooms with particular functions.    The Bible Building has many different rooms, with multiple functions in the same room, with the rooms constantly being renovated or sometimes taken back to their original characteristics or…!  Among the functions these rooms serve for the people are as places of: direction and vision; food, nourishment, and sustenance; education and learning; preparation for service to the world; study of relationships (to God, one another, the world, nature, etc.); the teaching of values and perspectives special to the people of God; etc.

Conversations in this house are too broad and varied to be summarized here, but the characteristics and functions of this building may be profitably compared with others.   For example, the building may be compared with others, the food it provides, the service it calls us to, the judgments it makes, the promises it makes, and fulfills.

What Have We Done?  Questions and Next Steps

Here are a few final thoughts and questions for further reflection.

1. From Pollan’s A Place of My Own:  “The architect borrows from the past by adapting successful patterns, the one that have been proven to support the kind of life the place hopes to house—porches and watching the world go by, for example.  But what about the time to come?  ...it seems to me there is another, more profound way an architect can open a building to the impress of its future.  Forswearing a totalitarian approach to its details, the architect can instead leave just enough play in his design for others to “finish it”—first the craftsmen, with their particular knowledge and sense of the place, and then the inhabitants, with their stuff and with the incremental changes that, over time, the distinctive grooves of their lives will wear into its surfaces and spaces.  It may be that making a great place, as opposed to a mere building or work of architectural art, requires a collaboration not so much in space as over time.” (p. 275)   Would the folks who wrote and shaped the Bible Building have the same kind of frustrations with users and subsequent interpreters as (some) architects have with folks who live in the house/building after it is completed?  Is not the Bible Building much like the “great place” Pollan describes?
2. The building of the Bible witnesses to an incredible amount of diversity (theological, political, and cultural) on the part of its architects and communities, to say nothing of the great differences in raw materials used to construct it over a long long period of time.
3. The Bible Building is constantly caught between “old” and “new.”    Many of its rooms were constructed with reform and renovation  of other, now seemingly outdated, rooms and functions in mind.  And yet, together, all these rooms are a part of the “whole” building.
4. The Bible as building is filled with tension: diversity and difference, old and new, are built into its structure and character.
5. Conversation, inside and outside, this building is a critical part of its purpose—through worship, study, and the multiple uses and functions it was, in its many parts, constructed for.
6. The Bible Building, through conversation, is a partner in both changing times and stable times.  It witnesses to the mystery of the created order—something never fully know, to something greater.  It also bears the imprint of others in the past who have lived in this building, from whom we have much to learn.
7. Think of some modern buildings.  For example, the Pentagon: witness to one “big” family; a place in which one is easily lost, where seeing the whole is difficult, where getting around requires the help of others and good communication.  Or the “Big Pink” in Portland: Who inhabits this building, and where?  Is there a community, a sense of the whole.  This a big place “shared” by many, but what else ties these folks together?  Or think of some big old building constantly being renovated and redone, with a lot of “old” functions and building materials and designs…

In such buildings it’s easy to get into a rut, staying in one place that is comfortable and familiar.  So also in the Bible Building!  It’s easy to be and stay in one corner or nook of the building.  But, unlike the Big Pink, for example, the Bible Building is all ours, every bit of it belongs to all of us!  If we pay attention to its architects and early interpreters, letting them be our guides, and getting other contemporary inhabitants into the mix, then we will be enriched by other conversations, seeing different spaces, and ultimately seeing the world in new ways.

1. Next Steps?  Walk around the building.  Explore.  That what the architects

wanted and those who followed them.  We’ll need help for orientation, but it’s there for the asking.  We will also need each other to show the way to new places, or to revisit old ones we’ve forgotten…

1. And what about those other buildings, tied to ours with sky bridges,

witnessing to other religious faiths and to the needs and wisdom of the “world”?  Maybe we can and will be open to going to even more of these buildings, thanks to living more fully in the Bible Building.