Resource review

I have taken up stands on both sides of the evolution and creation issue. As an avowed atheist in middle and early high school I liked to pick fights with Christians specifically over evolution. For me, at the time, the fantastical interpretive hoops of a young earth creationist perspective simply didn’t make sense. All too often people were reading into the texts of Genesis 1-3 what they wanted to see. Eventually I relented and my heart softened, and I came to understand the profound restfulness offered by Jesus in the kingdom of God. Post-conversion I didn’t change all that much. Instead of picking fights with Christians I started to pick fights with any atheist I could. There’s a major problem with that way of being though: It’s hard to communicate grace when you treat everyone like something to be conquered. I had switched sides and adopted a young earth creationist stance, all the while knowing there were significant hermeneutical problems with the position.

Seventeen years later, my approach has considerably softened. I spent a decade studying the cultural backgrounds of the bible and during that time I discovered that two of the most profound words in the English language is the statement “me too!” My previous graduate work had been focused on the Old Testament. I went to seminary to gain greater experience in New Testament studies and to round out my training in ministry and leadership development. I’ve learned that identifying with the other, finding common ground to approach struggles and doubts from the same place, has a significant impact on our ability to do ministry, especially with the growing number of unchurched and post-churched.

Because I write about and present on the cultural backgrounds of the Bible in church contexts I am frequently asked about issues of origins, creation, and cosmology. While this does not deal directly with my specific area of study (Archaeology), a cultural and contextual approach to the nineteen creation accounts in the biblical text does bear significantly on how we might begin to gesture towards the relationship between biblical cosmology and modern scientific cosmology. Normally, my stance as an old earth evolutionary creationist gets me into trouble in some church contexts. Where my stance proves fruitful is when I am reaching out to the unchurched and the post-churched who have only come into contact with people who demanded a young earth “literal” reading of the creation account. Ultimately, I must conclude that the cosmology presented in the biblical text is not scientific and should not be read according to a traditional “literal” interpretation. Instead, it should be read as a theological statement about who God is and how humanity relates to God. This leads me to deny any mode or demand of concordism between the biblical text and scientific cosmology. Much harm has been done to peoples’ faith by those who demand that they shut off their thinking mind to accept some predetermined notion of what Genesis 1-3 is all about.

The issue is complicated by science. As an archaeologist, I am a fan of various methods of dating including radiocarbon dating. While there are plateaus in the calibration curves for radiocarbon dating, it is accurate out to about twenty-thousand years before present. There are archaeological remains that are ten-thousand years old making it impossible for the earth to be only four thousand years old. Genomic research also complicates a literal reading of Genesis 1-3 as current research indicates that the genomic diversity in humans could not have come from a population less than ten thousand. That becomes problematic when we consider the words of Paul in Romans 5:12-14 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, and this is normally where the conversation leads for my young earth creation peers. If we are dealing with an old earth, and a large human population how are we to read and understand Paul’s words in these two places. My normal response, as with Genesis, is contextually. That was Paul’s understanding of cosmology. This issue will demand the development of an understanding of the nature of scripture and a greater articulation of an understanding of the nature of inspiration, the embodiment of God’s self-revelation.

These questions will significantly shape the church of the near future

The questions surrounding the relationship between scientific cosmology and biblical cosmology are particularly pronounced for Millennials and Generation Z (the current group of freshmen on campus). Frequently the church’s ignorance of and dismissal of scientific inquiry frequently creates a major stumbling block to faith for these age groups. Largely educated in a public-school system that has whole heartedly embraced Darwinian evolution, Millennials and Generation Z don’t have the same hang-ups about the scientific data that previous generations of evangelicals have had during the culture wars of the 80’s and 90’s. For them, the church’s inability to respond with both a robust understanding and a positive assessment of scientific inquiry leads them to be wary of the intellectual authenticity of the church and its leaders. Ultimately, if your young people are forced to make a choice between evolution and the bible, statistically speaking, many are choosing evolution, rather than choosing the bible and disregarding their intellect. Often, questions about human and cosmological origins become questions about the biblical text itself – or at least certain interpretations of the text: if Adam and Eve were not historical individuals, is the bible true and in what ways? Were humans originally innocent? Was there a “fall”? and Is there original sin?

Millennials and Generation Z craves authenticity and being drawn into a vision and mission that is greater than themselves. Being drawn into that mission and vision cannot come at the price of their own intellectual identity however. They are not willing to turn off their minds to assent to a particular interpretation of the text, instead they want to be drawn into a communal interpretative activity where individual perspectives change and shape the community’s understanding of the text.

Authors Setran and Kiesling and Kara Powell, in talking about emerging adults, cite several factors that contribute to decreased church attendance and faith engagement among emerging adults, including: 1) churches that overly cater to families and do not redeem singleness, 2) the church is perceived as unengaged with society, 3) a perception of shallow/trivial teaching with little relevance, 4) the church is perceived as repressive or outdated (particularly with regard to sexual standards), 5) the church is perceived as exclusive and judgmental, 5) the church is an unsafe place to express doubts and 6) the church is perceived as “anti-science” or at least simplistic in its response.

In response to these perceptions among emerging adults, we need to offer a degree of equipping, discipling and mentoring to emerging adults that produces a spiritual formation bent towards kingdom manifestation. This includes deep theological training and practical exposure to spiritual disciplines of abstinence and engagement. But it also includes a willingness to walk alongside emerging adults in their faith doubts and questions about how their faith relates to the modern social context, their individual vocations, and the modern scientific method. If we offer anorexic responses to their doubts and serious intellectual questions regarding cosmology, emerging adults will continue to eschew the church in preference for a moral therapeutic deism that requires much less of them.

The science is important

For emerging adults, the scientific data plays an important role in their understanding of the biblical text. Churches that insist upon concordism (the matching of a “literal” reading of the Genesis 1-3 with scientific inquiry) often alienate this group of people that are far more comfortable with accepting an ancient age of the earth and cosmos as well as biological evolution as the means through which God created biological diversity, including humans.

Generally young earth creationists identify the age of the earth as somewhere around six thousand years before present. Normally this number is arrived through a calculation of ages based upon the genealogical tables in the Biblical text. Unfortunately, the scientific data simply does not support such a young age for the earth and its materials. Radio-carbon dating is accurate up to about twenty thousand years before present. The earliest settlement in Israel, at Jericho, has been dated radio-metrically to about ten thousand years before present or the 9th millennium BCE. For much of Europe, we have a dendrochronology (tree ring) catalogue that can be traced to roughly twelve thousand years before present. Just those two data points alone make a young earth improbable. Things become even more complicated though as we consider dating methods for the age of the earth and the cosmos in general. The age of the earth and solar system has been determined using two methods: 1) Zircon Grain analysis and 2) radiometric dating of Argon-40’s half-life into Potassium-40. Several dates have been given using these methods for the age of the earth. Radiometric dating in Greenland produced an age of roughly 3.6 billion years for the earth. Zircon grain analysis of grains found in Australia dated the earth to some 4.4 billion years old. The standard though is provided through radiometric dating of meteorites which produces an age of roughly 4.5 billion years for our immediate solar system. Finally, the age of the universe is determined using a combination of the speed of light constant and stellar parallax to determine the distance of near earth and midrange objects in lightyears. The furthest limits of space is set by the cosmic background noise at 13.8 billion light years away (“How are the ages of the Earth and Universe Calculated,” BioLogos available online http://biologos.org/common-questions/scientific-evidence/ages-of-the-earth-and-universe).

In response to this data, young earth creationists tend to argue one of two tacks. Either they argue for a gap theory where there is a significant gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 where Satan ruled earth for a period in Genesis 1:1 or they argue that God created the earth and the universe with the appearance of age, including geomorphology, dinosaur bones and light already in transit. The problem with such a position though is that is makes significant claims about the character of God which run counter to nearly every orthodox statement about who God is – loving, truthful, etc.

The genomic evidence following the human genome project produces another set of complications for biblical literalists. Namely, the present level of genetic diversity found in humans today indicates that there was never a population of humanoids fewer than roughly ten thousand (McKnight and Venema, kindle location 170). In other words, it would be impossible for us to see the present level of genetic diversity found in the human genome if humanity had descended from either a single pair (Adam and Eve) or a small group of people (Noah and his children). Genomic scientists used three distinct methods to determine the minimal viable population that could produce present levels of genetic diversity. Humans have about three billion alleles (gene data) and about 100 of them are mutated every generation. Using that known rate of mutation genomic scientists, used the method of Allele Diversity to indicate that the human population was never far below ten thousand (McKnight and Venema, L1106). Young earth creationist responded to this method by arguing that genomic scientists assumed a constant mutation rate as opposed to a variable rate. Perhaps, sometime in the past the mutation rate was greater? To account for the possibility of a variable mutation rate genomic scientists used two additional methods that did not require a known rate of mutation. First, “linkage disequilibrium” assumes that nearby alleles are inherited together. Occasionally there are copying errors and the alleles are copied in reverse order. This is called a crossover event. Regression curves based upon the known rate of crossover events also indicated that the human population never dipped far below ten thousand humanoids (McKnight and Venema, L1120). Finally, genomic scientists used “incomplete lineage sorting” which measures the diversity of alleles present in close genetic relatives (e.g. Humans, chimpanzees and gorillas). This method indicates that the lowest population of hominids was between seven thousand and ten thousand when humans first began to leave Africa (McKnight and Venema, L1181).

Between the age of the cosmos and the genomic data significant questions are raised for how we are to read and interpret Genesis 1-3. The traditional young earth “literal” reading that seeks to read into the text young earth science simple cannot account for either the age data or the genomic data that indicate that neither the earth, nor human origins could have occurred in the way young earth creationists normally “literally” read the text. If that is the case then we need to re-evaluate what constitutes a “literal” reading of the text and how we can understand the biblical text alongside what we know from the scientific data.

Why context matters

There are of course nineteen different accounts of creation in the biblical text (Gen 1-3; Prov. 3:19-20; 8:3; 6:8; 22-31; Psalm 19:1; 33:6-9; 65:6-8; 104; 139:13-14; 147:4-18; 148:5-10; Job 9:8-9; Isaiah 45:18; John 1:1-2; Col. 1:16-17; 2 Pet. 3:5; Rom. 4:17), yet the origins debate has tended to only focus on Genesis 1-3 in their discussion of either biblical or scientific cosmology. To properly read the Genesis account considering the scientific data we need to begin to gesture towards how reading the text in its original context, both Genesis 1-3 and Paul’s references to Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, might alleviate some of the perceived conflict between a “literal reading” and scientific cosmology. While the biblical text was written for us, it was not written to us. Indeed, it is filled with several voices, each in their own social location and writing to specific audiences within their own time and place. I contend, along with John Walton that the most “literal” reading is one which assumes the identity of the text’s original audience, and therefore assumes the cultural norms of that audience as well.

For both the Genesis account and Paul’s understanding of Adam we have to assume that what goes unsaid is often the subconscious shared heritage between the texts’ authors and the texts’ audience. This is sometime called the “Ancient Near Eastern Cognitive environment” and it represents the assumed cultural beliefs shared by both the text’s author and audience (Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought). While cultural backgrounds studies do not directly allow us to better understand scientific cosmology they do allow us to better understand that ancient cognitive environment.

In the case of the Genesis narratives we can say two things: 1) It is ancient revelation because it does not receive special revelation outside the normal ways in which ancient near easterners would describe the world (e.g. it assumes an ancient cosmic geography); 2) it assumes a functional ontology (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One). The former statement assumes that there is not a single example of revelation revealing a scientific understanding that is not native to the world of the Bible’s ancient authors and audiences. For instance, what is normally translated as “the mind” in the Old Testament is usually the Hebrew word for “entrails” because this was thought to be the location of thinking in the Ancient Near East. In the case of the latter statement, a functional ontology is distinct from a material ontology in that functional ontology argues that things do not exist until they are named, separated, given a role within an ordered system, and someone benefits (e.g. humanity). We use this sort of ontology when we describe organizations today. A business for instance does not exists until it begins making sales or a school does not exist until students are enrolled and they begin taking classes.

There is both internal and extra-biblical evidence to indicate that creation in genesis is operating under a functional ontology. The extra-biblical evidence such as various creation account from elsewhere in the Ancient Near East (e.g. The Epic of Atra-Khasis, Enuma Elish, The Memphite creation, and the instructions of Merikare) all emphasize the gods’ roles in naming, separating, and giving roles in an ordered system. Internally the Hebrew word for “create” (ברא) is used fifty times in the Old Testament. God is always the subject or the implied subject. More significantly however the types of object taken by bara’ are ambiguous. No object clearly demands a material ontology and no materials for the creative acts are ever mentioned (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One). In the Genesis account of creation material exists prior to God’s creative acts – namely, the waters of the deep. Additionally, tohu and bohu (“formless and void”) seem to be functional terms rather than material terms. They denote that the cosmic waters lacked a function in an ordered system. Finally, a functional ontology provides a better account of God’s creative activities in each of the seven days of creation, including the seventh where God takes up residence in his cosmic temple (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One).

If however we accept the modern scientific understanding of human genetic diversity, as well as scientific cosmology a problem is created for how we are to understand Paul’s use of Adam in the New Testament in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-23; 45. This problem is especially acute when people argue that Paul is referring to an actual “historical Adam.” By “historical Adam,” people have tended to assume that this is a reference to two persons (Adam and Eve) who have a biological relationship to all humanity, that those two sinned and brought death into the world, and that sin nature was passed on to all humanity through sexual embodiment. Unfortunately, “historical Adam” does not appear to be the type of Adam Paul is referring to in Romans and Corinthians. More likely, given the intertestamental and extra-biblical references to Adam in early Jewish sources, Paul is using Adam as an archetypal figure.

Here again, we can draw on both internal as well as external extra-biblical evidence to support this position. Internal to the text in 1 Corinthians 20-23; 45 Paul refers to Adam as the first man and Jesus as the last man. The fact that we know Jesus was not the last biological human means that Paul must be referring to Adam as the first and Jesus as the last in a different way. The most likely option is to argue that Adam was the archetypal first (an archetype of disobedience) and Jesus was the archetypal last (an archetype of obedience). In Romans, Paul admits that “death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). While Paul is drawing a contrast between Adam and Jesus, he does not identify Adam as the source of all of humanity’s sin. No, each human has sinned and the evidence of their sin is the fact that every person dies.

The external evidence comes from intertestamental and late first and second century CE references to Adam in Jewish texts such as Sirach 5:11-15; 17:1-10, 4 Ezra 7:118; 127-28, and 2 Baruch.  In each of these extra-biblical text Adam is an archetypal figure. There is no notion of “original sin” that was passed by Adam and Eve onto the rest of humanity. Instead each person has the opportunity to behave like Adam (disobedience) or choose the path of obedience. 2 Baruch is particularly informative because the path of obedience and disobedience are characterized as either the path of Moses or Adam respectively. Like in Paul’s texts everyone has the opportunity to be Adam, and everyone has the opportunity to be Moses/Jesus. None of the authors show a concern for the “historical Adam,” rather their concern is with guiding human behavior in their own time (McKnight and Venema, L2304, L3538 and L3575).

The failure of tradition

For the earliest interpreters of the Christian cannon, the patristic church fathers, concerns over historicity were often varied and divergent from modern understandings of historicity and the concordism demanded by young earth creationists between biblical and scientific cosmology. Indeed in describing the early church fathers Peter Bouteneff has argued that in “reading the ancients, we find that during any single era perceptions of and concerns about historicity and its relationship to truth vary among contemporaries at least as much as they do across millennial divides” (Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives, xi). Indeed the early fathers were far more comfortable with reading Genesis 1-3 using a hermeneutic of typology or allegory that modern readers tend to feel squeamish about, particularly if their theology is tied to a certain understanding of original sin and “total depravity.” Bouteneff concludes his argument about the patristics noting that “Genesis 1-3 was read in terms of the Trinity … and even more in terms of Christ” (Bouteneff, 170). This is significant because it allowed the patristic fathers to have a greater freedom with their hermeneutic and exegesis. By maintaining, a Trinitarian focus, Bouteneff concludes, “which our writers identified as something made known through the apostolic witness, was both the hermeneutical key and the treasure sought through early patristic exegesis whether served through literal, typological, or allegorical readings or through a combination thereof” (Bouteneff, 170).

Our modern notion of original sin and “the fall” is rooted in an Augustinian reading from a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 in the Latin Vulgate that read “All die because in Adam all sinned.” Nearly every modern version of this text now uses the original Greek source which reads “death spread to all men because all sinned.” That one error, coupled with Augustine’s own misgivings about sexual embodiment has left a legacy on the transmission of original sin through sexual procreation. Rather than reading in Paul that all men die because all sin, Augustine produced a reading which led to the unleashing of cosmic sin and death because of Adam’s original disobedience. Individuals were no longer personally responsible for their own adherence to the way of disobedience (Adam) or the way of obedience (Jesus) for each had inherited a sin nature which prevented obedience. By the time of the reformation, this position becomes enshrined in Calvin’s assumed total depravity. Against this assumed total depravity I would cite passages such as Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6 where, even after “the fall” humanity is still considered to have been created in the image of God. Likewise, I would cite Exodus 19:6 and 1 Peter 2:9. The former calls Israel a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation”, who, having just come from Egypt, would recognize that this moniker gave them the responsibility of being intermediaries between Yahweh and the rest of the nations of the world. In the latter case, the same image is being drawn on and applied to the Church. We are a “royal priesthood, a holy nation” responsible for mediating the presence of Christ to the rest of the world. Such positions go against any notion of total depravity for all believers in Jesus.

Finally, we should deal with the present disconnect between faith and science and the insistence of young earth creationists that scientific cosmology must match biblical cosmology (concordism). I contend that Genesis 1-3 is ultimately teleological not scientific. It is concerned with who God is, what is humanity’s anthropological purpose, and the ultimate purpose and function of the cosmos. In this way, Adam and Eve are archetypal characters designed to speak into the Ancient Near Eastern cultural context about who humans are and how they are to function in creation. Ultimately, empirical science focuses on causation sequences but it cannot clearly identify teleological purpose. As noted above, there is not one good example of biblical revelation, disclosing a scientific truth which is not native to the culture of either the text’s author or audience. By demanding that we read modern materialism into the Genesis 1-3, young earth creationists wind up negating the Genesis story according to its own functional terms and meanings. In making such demands young earth creationism requires a type of eisegesis by injecting a modern scientific understanding into the text. This means that the text is not being read, as claimed by young earth creationists, “at face value.” There is no reason that we should expect an ancient text to include a modern scientific understanding. If it doesn’t happen for the locus of the mind, or embryology (Psalm 139:13-14) why should we expect it when it comes to scientific cosmological and human origins.

McKnight and Venema’s Adam and the Genome offers an important corrective to this failure of tradition and the the failure of the modern church it address serious scientific inquiry and doubts held by it’s youngest members. If we want a thriving church filled with emerging adults over the course of the next decade we need to do a better job than offering anorexic one line responses to their doubts and questions. We need to engage young people deeply, walking with them in their struggles of faith. Every statistical indicator shows that in doing so young people walk away from the experience with even greater faith formation. McKnight and Venema’s book is a fantastic resource for guiding you through an alternative perspective on how that conversation might go. I can’t recommend it enough.

Disclosure of Material Connection. Some of the links above are affiliate links. That being said I only promote things which I thoroughly believe my readers will benefit from and that I use myself. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, part 255: “guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

You’ve probably been on a “missions trip” before. Studies as early as 2009 were indicating that 35% of all American Young Adults (age 25 and under) had either participated in or planned to participate in a service trip in the next three years. Those number have only trended up since.

In all likelihood, if you haven’t participated in a trip yourself, you’ve likely been hit up with a support letter. Even though the world is becoming flatter and flatter and we have more and more opportunity for cross cultural experience, few of us have come away from our cross cultural experience realizing the significant implication it could have for how we read the bible.

Simply put, we are far more willing to invest time, effort, and even money into being able to successfully communicate the gospel into a foreign “target” culture than we are willing to invest our time, effort and money into receiving the gospel from its “origin” culture. We forget that the modern western world is and continues to be a “target” culture for the original authors of the bible. Authors who are no longer alive to make the missionary investment. We, the “target” culture have been left to shoulder that burden because ultimately, reading the bible is a life long cross cultural experience.

But what would it mean to read our bibles missionally – fully aware that we are entering a foreign culture and receiving a foreign message. In the first place we would spend a whole lot more time, effort and money becoming culturally competent in the bible’s cultures of origin.

Reading the bible should be like a long-term mission trip!

Let’s face it, you can get away with less training on short-term mission trips than you can on a long term mission. Churches tend not to invest in very many long term missionaries that haven’t spent a year or two trying to achieve fluency in a target language. Yet, we are often very willing to ignore the importance of original language study in our daily devotions and weekly bible studies.

Sometimes I am shocked by ministry leaders that insist, in one breath, that: everything one needs to understand about the bible can be gleaned from modern english translations. Yet just a few short breaths later will insist upon the importance of contextualizing the gospel for this group or that group. If the gap between adult bible education and youth bible education is so great, how much more should we consider the gap created by two thousand years of world history and an entire shift in worldview.

Fortunately, the missionary’s lens exposes both the problem and potential solutions.

Even as missions identifies our blindness to the cultural gap between ourselves and the bible, it also gives us a method for bridging that gap in order to more clearly receive the bible’s original message. Missions is, after all, in the business of making connections across cultural gaps.

You don’t have to be a long-term missionary to learn to benefit from cross -cultural missional thinking. Indeed, we can take a lot of the strategies utilized by short-term missionary leaders to help us increase our cultural competence when it comes to our daily bible reading.

4 cultural competencies necessary for reading our bibles with greater clarity.

In his definitive book on short-term missions, Serving with Eyes Wide Open, David Livermore identifies four core competencies that missionaries must achieve in order to effectively serve in a cross-cultural context. By developing these four competencies of “Cultural Intelligence” not only will we be more equipped to communicate the gospel cross-culturally we might just find that we are better equipped to read that gospel message in its original context according to its original thought world.

1. We have to develop our drive to think (and read) cross-culturally.

By this Livermore means that missionaries must be interested in and motivated to engage with and adapt to cross-cultural experience. We can’t be missionaries in Vietnam and refuse to eat vietnamese food. We have to be willing to cross the gap.

The same goes for reading our bibles cross-culturally. We need to be willing and motivated to identify those areas where the words on the page may be culturally influenced. We have to be prepared to question our “literal” understanding of our english bibles in order to see if there are cultural layers simmering just below the surface of the text. And, once found, we need to be excited about the opportunity to dive in and immerse ourselves in the bible’s ancient cultural context.

2. We have to develop our knowledge of foreign cultures.

By “knowledge” Livermore means that missionaries need to understand and measure the various degrees and levels of cultural difference between their own culture and that of the target culture. For Livermore, this is about more than simply gaining an outline of a culture’s history. It is about becoming cognizant of the mental geography of a foreign culture. Frequently this geography is invisible, it goes without being said, and is made up of all the assumptions about life that we subconsciously assent to on a daily basis.

Our cultural knowledge regarding the world of the biblical text needs to be nurtured as well. Many of the categories used to understand cultural difference in the modern context (such as notions of time, individualism vs communalism, power distance, etc) can be brought to bear on the gap that exists between ourselves and the ancient biblical world. Doing so will allow us to more easily identify subtextual assumptions shared by the bible’s original authors and audience. Frequently these subtextual assumptions shade the Bible’s message in ways that are easy for us (modern western foreigners) to miss.

3. We have to develop our cultural strategy

Its not enough to have drive and knowledge, for Livermore, missionaries need to have a plan in place to ensure that we are “mindful and aware when we interact cross-culturally.” It means that missionaries actually become aware of cross-cultural interaction prior to the event so that the interaction can be planned in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways. It also means that missionaries have mechanisms in place to allow for flexibility according to the facts on the ground.

Reading the biblical text with cultural strategy means that we are prepared to handle  messages of the text that are culturally distinct from our own. It means we don’t jump to conclusions about the message of the text because of our own feelings  and dispositions on any given day. It means never assuming that what we understand to be the “plain meaning” of the text was in fact the “plain meaning” intended by the authors. It means investing in resources that facilitate our own, and our congregants entrance into the cultural world of the text. And perhaps more importantly, it means having an open hand approach to receiving and discussing questions regarding biblical meaning, message and application.

4. Finally, we have to develop our willingness to act culturally.

By this, Livermore, means that missionaries must be willing to in-fact change their behavior when interacting cross culturally. This might entail changing everything from what they say, to who says it, where and when. And it most certainly entails how one practically applies their cultural drive, knowledge and strategy to living among and engaging with the target culture.

In terms of reading our bibles with greater clarity, developing our cultural action means that we are more willing to allow the text’s original culture to determine its message today. Before applying the words of the bible to our lives in 21st century modern America, we have to determine how those words might have applied to its first audience. Only then can we begin to seek a textual application that successfully translates the original application into our modern context. To do anything else is to allow our own modern context to determine the meaning of the text.

We are called to be transformed by the message of the bible. Sometimes that message comes in ways that are steeped in its own ancient and foreign culture. That knowledge should be brought to bear on how we apply the text. In other words, cultural action implies that we don’t just translate words, concepts and meanings – we also have to translate the original authors intended effects. If the ten commandments were meant to offer grace in a system that sought retribution escalation, perhaps we should’t be using it as a means of condemnation in our evangelism.

You may or may not have engaged in a short term service mission during the course of your life, I only pray that you realize: You are part of a “target” culture, distinct from the bible’s cultures of origin. What’s more, you are on the receiving end of a long-term missionary effort each and every time you open up your biblical text. Learn from this fact. Develop your cross-cultural drive, knowledge, strategy and action in order to read your bible with more clarity and live better today.

What has been your experience with missions or cross-cultural interaction? How has that led you to read the bible with greater clarity?

Disclosure of Material Connection. Some of the links above are affiliate links. That being said I only promote things which I thoroughly believe my readers will benefit from and that I use myself. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, part 255: “guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Context, for the archaeologists is everything. Indeed, where a particular artifact was found, its provenance, is often more important than the artifact itself. Context is so important to the archaeologist that it is the fundamental unit of archaeological data. Everything from the smallest potsherd to the most massive of ancient walls is assigned a context.

Four benefits of knowing the archaeological context of artifacts

1. Context gives meaning to the artifact

Context tells us in what way an artifact was created, used or discarded. It connects the artifact to the greater narrative of the room, the building, the neighborhood, the city, and the society in which it was found. If an artifact is completely disconnected from its original context, if we have no understanding of how the artifact functioned within that society then it is often relegated to ambiguous categorization: “unknown, possible game piece/cultic item”

2. Context dates the artifact

The layer in which an artifact was found places the artifact within stratigraphic sequence or relative chronology of the site.

3. Context controls the artifact

Context reigns in the imagination of the archaeologist, or researcher. Artifacts are not whatever an archaeologist wants them to be. When artifacts are removed from their context all sorts of suppositions can be made about them which may have nothing to do with their original time and place.

4. Context provides perspective

While objects may be intrinsically valuable for their beauty, form, function or economy, lack of context destroys our ability to have proper perspective. Someone developed that object to function well, someone created its beautiful form, and someone conceived it to be more efficient. Without the perspective of context it is far too easy to elevate the status of the artifact above that of the artisan or society that created it.

Biblical Scholars, commentators, pastors and armchair theologians would do well to apply these lessons to their handling of the biblical text too.

Four benefits of understanding the cultural context of scripture.

1. Context gives meaning to the text

Some would have us ignore context because they view the biblical text as simply the literary product of an ancient society. Homer’s Odyssey, for instance, should not be subjected to a contextual reading because it is a work of fiction. “So too,” they say, “the biblical text is the literary fiction of a particular culture, disconnected from any basis in reality and thus has no need for contextual analysis.”

But, if context doesn’t matter to the text, if the people places and periods it describes didn’t actually exist, if God didn’t actually act in redemptive history then …

the biblical text’s content doesn’t matter.

The text is simply an “unknown; possible game piece”

Others would have us ignore context because their view of inspiration places the text above its human authors. “Let scripture interpret scripture; anything else would threaten its perspicuity,” they argue, “If scripture is not wholly above its human authors, then its divine authority is threatened. The meaningful thrust of the text is not towards the cultures to which it was first communicated, but to us, today, in its final form.”

But if context doesn’t matter, if God never actually intended to communicate his truth to Abram, or Moses or Isaiah in ways that were meaningful to them in their own time and place, and if their own cultural milieus didn’t affect how it was constructed and communicated then …

The biblical text’s content doesn’t matter.

If God wasn’t actually trying to communicate to them in ways they could understand what makes us think he is actually trying to communicate to us.

The text becomes an “unknown; possible cultic item”

2. Context dates the text

The communication that occurred in scripture did not occur in our own time and place. Fallen fools that we are, we are far too capable of anachronistic thinking. We far too often apply the lifeways of a western modern world to the revelation to an eastern ancient one. By placing the biblical text in its proper chronological context we prevent ourselves from imposing modern standards and worldviews on the text.

3. Context controls our reading of the text

Context reigns in our proclivity for reader response devotions which are burdened with presuppositions from our own time and place. I don’t trust anyone that tells me that the work of the spirit supersedes the need to do the hard work of studying the text in its original place and time. The hard work of studying is, in fact, the unleashing of the spirit into the world.

God choose to communicate his revelation to the world in specific places, at specific times, using the limiting language of specific people. He has also ordained, given the cultural gulf between his initial revelation and today, that education and teaching, and scholarship would be necessary in order to encounter his truth through scripture.

The text does not mean whatever we would like it to for our own situation. It witnesses to the truth communicated with specific intent to a specific place and time. As such, it is vital that we understand the self-imposed cultural limits of God’s self-revelation if we are to properly interpret and apply it in our own lives.

4. Context provides perspective

Finally, when context isn’t king, we elevate scripture over God, we elevate the act of communication over the intent of communication and we confuse what was said for why it was said.

The artifact is not more important than the society that created it.

Scripture is not more important than the God that revealed it.