A script, as in drama script, is the last metaphor possibility I suggest in The Bible as Improv.
Each metaphor has it’s own unique contribution and limitations. But a drama script is a particularly helpful one. This is not one I came up with. NT Wright first used this in an article that if you haven’t seen is worth the read sometime. He further develops it in his massive opening volume on Christian origins entitled, The New Testament and the People of God. Again most of you reading this blog will be familiar with his work, if you haven’t read the first 3 volumes of what will be his life’s work you need to (volume 2, volume 3. two more are forthcoming) He suggests that maybe the bible as we have it is the first four acts of a five act play or a drama. The fifth act however is lost and that situation needs to be remedied. So we have a couple options.
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There are other options for possible metaphors that move us away from the owner’s manual for life (OMFL) approach to the bible. The bible as classic, inspired classic, is one option but what about reading the bible the way we would read a jazz score?
The OMFL approach has us combing the text for whatever we think might apply in our lives right here right now. The problem is over time what applies right here right now, doesn’t apply 50 years later right here right now. We have found that model desperately wanting.
But a jazz score? Ahhhh….here is a metaphor with some traction. In jazz you immerse yourself in the score of the composer. You need to know that score inside and out. Why? Because there is going to come a time during the performance where you as the trombonist get to improvise. And your improvisation must be in continuity with the score. A couple things are very important here. Improvisation builds on the score. It isn’t a repetition of the notes on the page, but it is in continuity with the score. In other words the improvisation ought to smell of the original score but have it’s own contribution in how it echoes it.
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The classic is one new metaphor we can consider as we are looking for a way forward from the owner’s manual for life (OMFL) approach which seems to be boil the narrative down to stories encasing propositions we have to figure out how to mine.
David Tracy was one theologian who realized the problem we were having in our reading the biblical text. His proposal in 1981 in his winsome though dense volume, The Analogical Imagination, was that we might want to consider reading the text as a classic.
Now for those of you reading this from a more conservative perspective don’t panic. Classic doesn’t imply “not real” or even ‘not inspired’ for that matter. In fact let’s call it an inspired classic (some actually find that a redundant couplet…all classics are inspired some would say). We have to consider new paradigms with an open mind or we never really “hear” their power.
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We need some new metaphors. I think it is quite clear the two bucket theory is untenable, and the owners manual for life metaphor reduces the bible to a behavior manual. Both the theory and metaphor generate so many problems that it is time we start searching for an alternative approach to the text.
This is always how paradigm shifts occur. When a paradigm is initially adopted it answers a variety of questions very well. Those adopting the paradigm realize it doesn’t answer all questions and those unanswerables go on a shelf for further reflection and research. No paradigm is perfect, no model can answer all the questions.
Eventually the current paradigm, always historically and contextually rooted, answers fewer and fewer questions well and the shelf with the unanswerables becomes overloaded and near collapse. This is when a new paradigm begins to emerge. We are undoubtedly living in such a new paradigm time.
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Let’s say the author and editors of the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) were living in a largely mythic culture, with a mythic view of God as well as a mythic reality and world around them. We might legitimately ask the question, does a skin legion, per the book of Leviticus, actually render you unclean to attend “church?’ I mean literally, does that mean you can’t worship God and he no longer connects to you? Does contact with a corpse disqualify you from being able to worship? All the laws of Leviticus, for instance, come “from God” yes, but within a very particular sort of mythic culture, meaning they are coming from a very particular view of God that THEY had. Does inspiration make this view of God, and these laws “correct” because it is canonized in the inspired text?
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We pick and choose at will….what we apply from the bible that is. If our controlling metaphor for the text of scripture is too modern then so is our approach. I ended our last post in this thread asking, “can I just apply Joshua 1:6-9 to my life as if the text is written to me?” The owner’s manual metaphor approach will give a resounding yes. But the question has to be asked why? Why do we think something written to a guy somewhere around 3500 years ago would have any application directly to me?
I see people do this same direct application thing with passages from Jeremiah 1 to the book of Jonah, from words to the disciples, to early church practices. And when asked why we assume this one to one correspondence between the life of the biblical character and my life is appropriate, one response seems to get pride of place. The bible is the inspired word of God and is profitable…(II Timothy 3.16-17)
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In our modern world we have used a metaphor for approaching our sacred text that may be responsible for a growing set of problems. We have said the Bible is our Owner’s Manual for Life, and we start using this idea early. Metaphors are lenses we use to give us insight. But we have to remember the limits of metaphors. They are illustrative. Metaphors work because there is a an element of truth that rings clear. But metaphors breakdown. Metaphors are culture specific. Metaphors that work today may not work tomorrow. We have been referring to the Bible as an “Owners Manual for Life,” and that metaphor has outlasted it’s welcome. Life can’t be negotiated with an owners manual. Life is too dynamic and too situational to yield to simple looked up entries in an index that refers us to a page for “the answer.”
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