Reading the Bible

In this editorial, we reprise two awakenings: Gideon Strauss's lightning bolt engagement with the biblical narrative, and Russ Kuykendall's discovery of the neocalvinist tradition of thought.

Reading the Bible's not easy. You must do it believing expectantly, on your knees.

Reading the Bible publicly . . . with a megaphone in a public square? Or, allowing the Bible's public character to express itself? Sometimes both, and always the latter.

The story of the Bible tells us the way the world really is—a normative claim, a public truth. But it needs to be understood as one single unfolding story; if reduced to a collection of moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, historical-critical bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits, it can easily be absorbed into the reigning story of culture instead of challenging it. Then, of course, the Christian's basic beliefs in the biblical story must form the blueprint through which s/he sees human existence and the cultural task. In other words, articulating a worldview is the natural answering of life's most foundational questions. Here's how.

How can discerning readers of the Bible know that they are properly interpreting Biblical texts? With so many interpretative approaches out there, it's important to be taught some of the common mistakes of private Scripture reading . . . and then to remember both the basic clarity of Scripture, and the Spirit's work in helping understand divine things.

The Bible is a doorway to a person, an invitation waiting to be sent. When we read it obediently and expectantly, like an actor, we find gracious and surprising self-disclosure.

Augustinian neocalvinists? Anti-capitalist, counter-cultural neocalvinists? Neocalvinist monks? Anabaptist neocalvinists? Neocalvinist charismatic-Pentecostal Christians? Canadian and Calvin College professor James Smith sketches out his vision of big-tent neocalvinism.

Neocalvinism is a tradition detached from the broader and longer, western intellectual tradition. It's detached from its confessional roots, and from a catholic understanding of church. Most of all, it's detached from ecclesial community. Is it truly a mere publishing project, with a view to variously showing signs of vitality or allowing evangelicals to recover a Christian mind? Neocalvinism . . . Dan Knauss replies, "Just say, 'No.'"

Hearkening back to neocalvinism's salad days in the first fifty years of 20th-century Dutch society, Dr. Harry Van Dyke offers up neocalvinism at its best. Van Dyke's is a vision of neocalvinism as an ecumenical project whereby Christians of various confessions may join together in associations and institutions, to confront and transform culture—in homes, markets, farms, the arts, labour, churches, states, and schools and universities.

Formerly an anabaptist, in neocalvinism Janel Curry has found an intellectual framework that allows her to negotiate between the pitfalls of both Enlightenment modernism and postmodernism, and find a cohesive solution to the problems posed by both in her discipline. But . . . while positioning herself as a scholar operating from the neocalvinist tradition, Curry offers a warning and issues a challenge to 21st-century neocalvinists.

In the thought tradition given impetus by the late 19th and early 20th century's preacher-politician of the Netherlands, Connecticut Congregationalist Clifford Blake Anderson finds a genuinely public and prophetic theology . . . with certain reservations. Chief among these is the question of how any tradition—including neocalvinism—may be prophetically self-critical.

Let me emphasize at the outset that I speak as a neocalvinist "insider," with all the strengths and weaknesses that such "insiderdom" implies... I have been an enthusiastic advocate of its distinctive strengths throughout my adult life