Taking The Bible on Its Own Terms

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Because of gaps in information, we tend to fill in blanks from other texts.  We do this with the four gospels and we do this with Paul's letters and Acts.  The problem in this approach is that we may fail to see what a particular writer is emphasizing.  The gaps are our gaps based on our agendas.  By filling in the gaps, we satisfy our questions.  But we may at the same time miss one of the important aspects stressed by the author.

 

An example:  The conversion of Paul is narrated vividly in Acts 9 and retold in Acts 22.  The details as recounted in Acts are never repeated in Paul's letters.  This is not to suggest that Acts is inaccurate or to be disregarded.  But, the way Paul's conversion story is constructed in Acts serves the overall theological agenda of Acts.  Whereas the way Paul speaks of his own conversion serves his own theological agenda.  If we bracket what we understand of Paul's conversion from Acts and seek to understand Paul's conversion on Paul's own terms, new insights develop.  

 

Beverly Roberts Gaventa has a helpful chapter on Paul in her book From Darkness to Light.  When we look at Paul's conversion only in terms of Paul's letters we see that he focuses less on the event of his conversion and more on the contrast from before and after.  There was a change in Paul's understanding, “Paul's refjection of things he once regarded as important stems from his conversion which forced him to acknowledge that God had indeed acted through those whom Paul regarded as unworthy” (p. 39).  Further, she writes that focusing on Paul on Paul's terms stresses the reality of on-going transformation, “While some real and significant change occurs for believers [in the moment of conversion], that change is never finished or complete” (p. 45).  Learning to take biblical writers on their own terms is not absolute nor is it to say that atomizing is best.  Rather, it is an exercise that has been helpful to me in seeing insights in the text that I have otherwise overlooked because my mind was busy filling in my gaps.