March 3, 2014
Morgan Guyton writes from the Ecclesia National Gathering, sharing a Bible study metaphor that the truths of the Bible can be equivalent to a “personal ideological display-case” of dead bugs in a science project. What if the Bible is not an equation of truths, but a form of poetry? How would that change how we study, understand, and ultimately share it with others?
“If God speaks only in prose, i.e. grammatical-historical ‘fact,’ then you can be a conquistador of God’s word…Learning the Bible gives you authority, which is why you are invested in the Bible’s authority. You become an expert theological swordsman. But if God speaks in poetry, then some illiterate indigenous woman from Guatemala can ‘get’ a Bible passage better than you do even if she hasn’t been a Christian for nearly as long as you have and she’s never heard of Karl Barth.”
