Sunday reflections

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.
So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1: 16 – 21)

Everybody has their own favorite slant on the latter paragraph above. Some would emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit in the recording of scripture and others would emphasize the caution against private interpretation.

I have no problem affirming the role of God's Spirit in the faith responses of men and women that were recorded, transmitted, transmuted, and interpreted as writings the community recognizes as leading us to God. Just as Christians see Jesus as the Word of God, and speak in terms of fully human and fully divine, so they speak of the Bible as both human and inspired (θεοπνευστος = "God-breathed"). It is not necessary to assert "verbal plenary inspiration [in the original manuscripts]" to hear God speaking to us through those pages. Nor is it a denial of inspiration to say it is a collection of human documents that record faith responses to experiences of the Holy. We can do much better than either/or thinking.

Here you see my postmodern side, happily turning to the Bible in order to understand God while not identifying the words on the page with the ipsissima verba Dei (very words of God). As my biblical theology professor indicated many years ago, in the Gospels we may not encounter the exact words of Jesus but we do hear his voice (and we recognize it). That is the point of it all. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Through the pages of the Bible folks have heard God speak to them over the course of millennia, and we still do.

We should beware idiosyncratic interpretations and applications, however. To me, ignoring the last few centuries of biblical scholarship, or taking verses and applying them heedless of their context and historical constraints upon their meaning is not simply a matter of ignorance but of wrongheadedness. It simply won't do.

Biblical interpretation, as rabbinic scholars continue to teach us, is a matter of constant wrestling and debate in which all possible sides may be considered. It is the worst sort of hubris to think we ever arrive at a final and authoritative interpretation for all time, for in doing so we have asserted that the Holy Spirit has nothing new and nothing more to say, no matter how the new context for living one's faith may differ from that in which our forebears lived theirs. I do not want a stone age faith in a stone age deity; I want a living faith here and now in the living God.

The Bible itself shows instances in which faithful people found very new applications and meanings in earlier texts, creatively applying them and going beyond the original context and understanding while still seeking to honor the intent. In other words, biblical authors were themselves not "strict constructionists."

This is preaching to the choir on this site (which, though it involves exchanges, is not a debate forum) but I thought I'd put it out there since the text offered an opportunity.

The more important issue, on this Sunday of the Transfiguration, is are we--individually and collectively--opening ourselves more and more to the workings of the Holy Spirit of God so that we may be changed from glory into glory, into the likeness of Christ, into our own full participation in the divine energies of the Most Holy and Lifegiving Trinity? That is where we need to bend our energies and not to debates over books.

Come, O faithful, let us go up to the Mountain of God, to the house of our God, that we may see the glory of his Transfiguration: the glory as of the only Son of the Father, receiving light from Light; let us rise through the Spirit and praise the consubstantial Trinity for ever and ever. Amen.
Byzantine Rite Prayer at the Lete on the Feast of the Transfiguration
--the BB