Reformed and Ritual? The Real Biblical World and Our Embrace of It

“That biblical commands are not arbitrary decrees but correspond to the way the world is and will be is fully appreciable only as we inhabit the Bible’s narrative and appropriate its perspective on how the world is and will be. The point is important because it will by no means necessarily be evident within the worldviews of our society that biblical commands correspond to the way the world is. Theories of natural law that attempt to demonstrate this independently of the biblical narrative have a certain value, but they are never completely successful, and in a postmodern society are unlikely to carry much conviction at all. Recognizing the importance of the biblical metanarrative enables us to see that inhabiting it is learning to see the world significantly differently (though not of course in every respect differently) from the way the cultural tradition of our context see it. Biblical laws that ‘make no sense’ in relation to the world as those traditions portray it may do so in relation to the world as the biblical story portrays it… Neither what the Bible obliges us to believe nor what the Bible obliges us to do can be known from isolated texts, but requires their total context in the biblical metanarrative.” (Richard Bauckham, God and the Crisis of Freedom, pp. 70, 72)

Can we ever really understand Holy Scripture--and can we ever truly live with the faith, hope, and love to which the Scriptures call us--if we don’t first embrace the strangeness of the biblical world as the real world? The Christian Scriptures contain many strange commands and teachings that do not appear to correspond to the world as we know it, or as we think we know it. The truth is that we do not realize just how extensively we assume things about reality in modern and western terms until, as close readers, we run up against the very different world not only at work in Scripture but persistently commended to us in Scripture. What do we do at that point of friction? Will we submit from the start to the world Scripture commends as the real one, or will we suspend our embrace of it as true until the end of our own investigations and experiences of life? How does this issue of hermeneutics play out in relation to the ritual way that Scripture depicts that reality? The passage above from Richard Bauckham may help us reflect upon these pressing questions.

To discuss these questions, and Richard Bauckham’s understanding of them, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, is joined with the Rev. Jesse Crutchley, pastor at Severn Run Evangelical Presbyterian Church (PCA) and member of Greystone’s Presidential Ministerial Council.

For more on this and related questions, Dr. Garcia’s course on Theological Anthropology and other Greystone courses are available this Fall for audit or for credit, and his multiple other lectures on this topic are available now for all Greystone Members at Greystone Connect. Become a member today for unlimited access to the growing Greystone Connect library.