You’re Reading the Bible the wrong way—or so you’ll be told if you cite Scripture against what the culture deems to be sacred. Among your critics will be professing Christians.
The Rossing dossier
Barbara Rossing is a Lutheran (ELCA) professor of New Testament, among other things. She’s often lauded for having written “The Rapture Exposed – The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation.”
Rossing does not believe the Bible in the traditional sense of the Early Church Fathers (or Luther). She uses filters. For example, references to Revelation in her book avoided the plain meaning in favor of ideology. Sure, sure—if she were to respond we’d get a lecture on symbolism, genre etc. In fact her eschatology is framed by the following statement:
Eschatology is something I am working on in relation to environmental issues and the LWF climate change program, how we can move away from the escapist, earth-denying eschatology of a text such as 2 Peter 3 to embrace a more new creation-oriented eschatology. ~ Rossing
When I dug further into why her hit-piece was so off track, I discovered she uses a hermeneutics based on a cultural formula of diversity (and ideology). For example,
“Some of the most fascinating diversity is not simply between different biblical documents, but also between different voices represented within a single document….
“The Bible is God’s word. But it is God’s word spoken differently through different communities and authors in different contexts. It is not a single monolithic book dropped from heaven. It is a library of voices. Various communities in the biblical conversation understood God’s word in different, even competing ways.”
I wrote about it HERE. Presumably one needs a community of diverse voices and theologies (not fundamentalist, of course) to understand what the Bible really means. Sadly, Rossing’s ELCA has gone far off the biblical grid. See Exposing the ELCA.
Un-Inspired fiddling
After Rachel Held Evans (RHE) wrote “Inspired,” she was interviewed by Eric Miller. One of her contentions was that fundamentalists use the Bible wrong. Commenting on her book,
…every page…was significantly informed by the work of biblical scholars. People like Walter Brueggemann and N.T. Wright…significant portions were informed by womanist scholars…I was influenced by Delores Williams and Wil Gafney, black women who read the story of Hagar in a way that I would never think to read it. Also some feminist theology, some liberation theology—I did my research for this book and I stand by it.
In fact, RHE chose the sorts of academic voices which accommodated her. But Wil Gafney is a rank heretic. Meanwhile Brueggemann wants to reassure us that the Bible is okay with homosexuality. For more on this see Albert Mohler’s article responding to Matthew Vines’ book and Response to Matthew Vines 40 Questions.
The terms Feminist and Liberation Theology are problematically loaded. They imply that one cannot fully understand Scripture unless they add these lenses to their hermeneutics. I’ve seen folk asking others how many books they own, written by black-diverse theologians. You might be a racist if you’re shelves are stacked with white male authors. Moreover, you may not have a sound biblical understanding.
In other words, allegedly, the early church and most of Christian history wasn’t well-rounded biblically because it didn’t have the luxury of 21st century diversity. Let us then paraphrase Dan 12:9,
Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up until the time of the end—when there will be a diversity of voices available to properly interpret prophecy.
Like creative book-cooking accountants, progressives fiddle with the Bible because they don’t like what it says. They won’t believe in a God who disagrees with them.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
2 Tim 3:16-17
P.S. One of the most important modern voices defending God’s Word is Dr. Paul Henebury. Start digging at his blog, Dr. Reluctant. See also below.
Maranatha!
Further reading
Let God Be True…And Say What He Means
Tony Garland: Revelation and Interpretation
Are All Sins Equally Heinous? A Response to Barnabas Piper
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