Looking at our history of understanding the Bible, I went looking for what our various authors have said about Bible Study. It’s clear fairly early that there is a difference between the teachings of the former ‘Kingdom Teachers’ and the average evangelists. By and large, I’ll stick with the writings of the Teachers with one notable exception.
Advanced Christian Training
In 1986, the Central London Church of Christ published this book as a tool for training. It covered several topics from counseling to preaching to study to difficult challenges and more. Although not widely distributed, this book offers a look at how the Bible was studies and understood at the time.
There are two short expositions; Romans written by Gordon Ferguson and Ephesians by Tony Coffey. It would appear the Romans starts with great detail in the early part of the article, but ends with an entreaty to study the rest on your own. Tony’s outline of Ephesians is quite practical and avoids telling the reader what they should understand from Ephesians. Both articles are notably deficient in Kingdom jargon. Both spend much time on exegesis - basically providing more detail about the book and what it is saying rather than looking for how it should apply in the lives of the listeners. Both articles are good reads.
Deep Convictions
Before 1992, the only puiblication dealing with the Bible is A.C.T. First Principles taught what a person must believe to be a member of the Internations Churches of Christ. Second Principles was an outline of the Old Testament. In 1992, a book was commissioned to teach the ‘basics’ to young christians. In chapter 13, there is a week devoted to understanding Colossians.
More later.
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One Response to “How We Understood the Bible”
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- toeteaknow: well, since it was a post, the answer I guess is ‘yes’ and not ‘maybe’….. …maybe not? ttk
- pinakidion: what rock said
- Rock: “Is Pinakidion ever going to post again?”
- salguod: Is that an answer to a question that I missed?
- xray342: How’s this for cryptic? $ echo ‘pinakidion’ | md5 16da6556b9ba8a411a6f4251591eae2b
I’m interested in seeing where this exploration leads. Interesting topic.
One thing stands out to me about the use of scripture in the ICOC culture. Everyone from the evangelist to the bottom of the food chain seemed to only use the Bible as a tool to alter behavior–whether in preaching, teaching, or quiet times. If people didn’t walk away from a lesson moved to “do” something, it was as if they had wasted their time. That led to shallow interpretation, overuse of a few passages, and to ignoring the vast majority of the Bible. Personal Bible study for many people basically boiled down to collecting “cool verses” without having any framework of context for understanding the passages. How many lessons did we hear where an isolated passage was quoted from a book in the OT that neither the speaker nor the audience had actually read!
I would estimate that I heard less than 10% of the Bible preached or taught from 1987 to 2003. Did we think we didn’t need the rest of it? Who did we think we were?
The Bible has other purposes besides getting us to “do” things. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. We get to know God from reading the scriptures. We gain wisdom from the scriptures. David loved the law because it made him wiser than his enemies. Paul told Timothy that the scriptures were able to make him wise for salvation through Jesus Christ. Note, in that context (2 Tim 3
) he was referring to the Old Testament scriptures which Timothy had known from infancy! How well do most of our members know their Old Testaments?
Bible study purely for the purpose of listening, meditating, and learning has intrinsic value. We should just study the text–all of it! God’s word will not return void. It will prosper in the purpose for which it was sent.
I wonder what percentage of the people in these churches have read the entire Bible at least once. I wonder how many can even name the books of the Bible. Based on my experience, there is a lot of work to be done.
Ok I’m off my soapbox ;->
Alan