Recently, I received the letter below from Helen Block of Mary Circle, Bethany Lutheran, Rice Lake, Wisc., asking me a question about the Bible study. My answer to her question is below her letter.
Dear Prof. Stortz:
During the discussion of the September Lutheran Woman Bible study our Mary Circle of Bethany Lutheran, Rice Lake, Wisconsin, certain questions were raised.
First of all, we are somewhat troubled by a literal interpretation of
Genesis — we are not Southern Baptists.
But further, we wondered why you referred to medieval paintings to show fear on the faces of Peter and Paul. Most of us realize that the Catholic church used paintings to put terror into the illiterate populace of the time, fear that would make them bow to the church’s authority. Examples are, of course, similar paintings of hell and the screams of those who ended up there.
We did appreciate your examination of blessings evident and perhaps not so evident, and can use those ideas in our daily lives. We look forward to future lessons based on the difference between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Old Testament.
Sincerely,
Helen Block
—————————————————————————
Dear Helen,
Thanks for your note and for your interest in the Bible study. Let me try to address your questions:
I wasn’t trying to present a literal interpretation of Genesis. I was rather trying to read Genesis through the lens of the beatitudes — and see what we found. Luther suggests that the appropriate hermeneutic for the whole of scripture is to read it for what speaks of Christ (was christum treibet).
And that’s what I was trying to do, possibly unsuccessfully. I attach the following article for an on-line PLTS newsletter for our TEEM program (Theological Education for Emerging Ministries), which gave me the opportunity to think through what I was trying to do. I tried to think through for myself the difference between a literalistic approach and an “anything goes” approach.
Re: the medieval paintings on discipleship. Your interpretation is an intriguing one. The Catholic Church didn’t commission these paintings, though, and Carraveggio was no prince of the church.
What he captured is how terrifying discipleship can be — and often is. It scared even Jesus, hence the cry of abandonment from the cross recorded in Mark’s Gospel. He felt forsaken; I have felt that too. The paintings express that; in doing so they express a truth that doesn’t depend on literacy.
Finally, I teach in an ecumenical setting, and I have learned the hard way to be very careful of criticizing something by calling it “Southern Baptist” or “Catholic.” I know people in both traditions, and there are as many varieties of “Southern Baptist” and “Catholic” as there are of “Lutherans.”
I hope this helps — feel free to share it. And thanks for being in conversation.
Blessings,
Martha Stortz
Reading for your life: The Bible live!
I have just finished a Bible study on the beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel, and a lot of my summer has gone to training Bible study leaders. As I walk up and down in the church, I am again and again asked: “How did you put all this together?” I’ve been running too hard to come up with an answer on the spot, but dead time in airports offers lots of time for reflection.
Here is what I’ve come up with: I want people to read Scripture for life. That takes information, imagination, and prayer. Let’s unpack each of these.
Information:
Information is certainly the starting point for any serious interpretation of Scripture. Knowing the biblical languages allows you to read nuances of the text which may have escaped the settled prejudices of translators. Knowing the historical contexts opens the collision of worlds behind the written word: Greco-Roman, Hellenistic, Hebrew. Finally, knowing the terrain of the Holy Land – which I know only from the work of archaeologists, geographers, and photographers — shows the “fierce landscapes” of that terrain. Then and now, space shapes spirituality. An argument that might fly in the bustling, cosmopolitan streets of first-century Rome would not work at all in the far reaches of the Sinai Desert. All these kinds of knowing illumine a text.
But you can’t stop with information, lest the living word of Scripture become an dusty relic, imprisoned in the tomb of the past. My late New Testament colleague Robert Smith used to joke: “We have to remind ourselves that the manger held a baby. Not a book.” Imagination and prayer enliven a text, giving us the baby instead of the book.
Imagination:
As a writer, I attend to metaphor, those precise words that allow a visible object to point to something invisible. I love finding exactly the right metaphor that allows my students to “see” something that could not be caught by the ordinary eye. Consider the vision you gain from a familiar description: “My love is like a red, red rose.” You see the intensity of color and delicacy of the petals. Perhaps you even smell the sun-drenched fragrance. And then, the possibility of thorns….
Reading Scripture for life demands a well-tutored imagination, and imagination works analogically. It “catches the rhyme” between what the import of biblical words in biblical times and what those words might mean in our times. The hard sayings in Jesus’ beatitudes were related to a specific audience in a very particular situation. What’s the relationship between those words and that time? And what would be a similar relationship in our own times?
The well-tutored imagination allows a middle course between biblical literalism on one hand, and biblical irrelevance on the other. As my own late husband and Roman Catholic moral theologian Bill Spohn astutely observed, Jesus advises the young lawyer to whom he directed the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) to “Go and do likewise” (:37). He doesn’t counsel him to “Go and do exactly the same thing,” which might be the approach of biblical literalism. He also doesn’t tell him “Go and do whatever you want!” advice that would relieve those convinced that the Bible has nothing to say to the present. Rather, Jesus asks the young lawyer to attend to what mercy demands in the parable – and act in ways that would be similar in the situations in which he finds himself. Mark Twain opined that “history doesn’t repeat itself – but it does rhyme.” A well-tutored imagination catches the rhyme.
Scripture rhymes with itself – if you listen closely. As I worked with the beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel, I started letting various parts of Scripture talk to each other. There were lots of rhymes! Probing the background for the third beatitude, “Blessed are the meek….”(5:5), I found myself face-to-face with Moses, the man whom the Hebrew Scriptures regard as “very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3, KJV). If Moses gets to be a paragon of meekness, then biblical meekness must not have the wimp-factor that attaches to our contemporary notions of meekness. The young Moses killed a man who harassed his people; he stood up for the people before God – and for God before the people. It turns out that biblical meekness means knowing when to stand up for something – and when to stand down. Moses certainly qualifies.
But when imagination illumines the Moses story, here’s what comes up. At Meribah, Moses seems to have drawn water from a rock like a magician draws a rabbit from a hat. The Lord was not pleased, and as a consequence, Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. The beatitude promises that the “meek shall inherit the earth,” a promise that restores the land to Moses – and not only the Promised Land, but the whole earth. Imagination catches the rhymes within Scripture – with gracious issue.
Prayer:
But I have spoken of a “well-tutored imagination,” and prayer tutors the imagination. We often think of prayer as talking to God, but prayer also involves a fair amount of listening. We listen to God, as a partner in dialog; sometimes, though, we find ourselves listening for God, as we sift the silence for some words – any words.
Biblical literalism falsely assumes that the words of Scripture are God’s exact words, eternally relevant and binding on us today. Biblical illiterates – those convinced of Scripture’s irrelevance – cavalierly assume that God had found a found a better medium for talking to us than the Bible – perhaps an iPhone or a YouTube offering. Prayer maintains that God speaks through Scripture, because of and in spite of the printed words. Because, finally, God came to us as a baby, not a book. And, as with any good relationship, this one takes time. Quality time.
Any parent knows that quality time with a kid can’t be scheduled: it just happens, often in the midst of something else. Prayer develops the habit of listening for God, and we tune our ears to that divine frequency when we make time to listen.
A lot of the rhymes I caught in Scripture came to me during prayer time, those precious moments when I just sat with a text – or during my pool work-outs, when sheer volume of water shook something loose that I hadn’t noticed before.
So when do you waste time with God? When do you pause to listen? It’s like waiting for a distant and beloved friend to contact you.
Information, imagination, and prayer: these three tools are essential for our preaching, our teaching, but above all, our lives of discipleship.
And the greatest of these is prayer.
Martha (Marty) E. Stortz
Professor of Historical Theology and Ethics
Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary/The Graduate Theological Union
