Babes No Longer: Maturing Readers of Holy Scripture
Quit Infantilizing Students!
I’ve been thinking a lot about my biblicist friends of late, in conjunction with my upcoming class with Davenant, On Emotions of God. It promises to be quite the course; we’ll be squaring up and facing all the sayings in holy Scripture involving divine emotions: God regretting; him being jealous; him being angered; and him having empathy (yes, you heard me!).
The immediate goal is interpreting these metaphors, and especially identifying the three universal categories for doing so–namely as the fathers and scholastics define those categories. One of the three (and the most frequent) is when a divine emotion was put for some creaturely happening: e.g., although God being angered was said, only someone experiencing pain was meant. According to this interpretation then, when we read e.g., God is angered with the wicked every day, the sense is only that everyone who commits sin always experiences pain as a result. Last week, I gave another angle on this in my piece on God regretting—see my post, If God Doesn't Regret...
But there is a larger goal of the course which goes beyond this–and here is where I think of my biblicist friends (my own background, and one for which I give thanks generally). That goal, in a line, is
…maturing readers of holy Scripture so that they are no longer babes, but grown men in Christ.
Reflecting upon this goal (in many ways just the goal of my own teaching), my mind went to a somewhat random but still pertinent sermon from Augustine: Sermon 23 on Psalm 73:23, “You hold my right hand.” Among other things in the sermon, Augustine praises holy Scripture, but then admonishes us to not stay babes in reading it:
“The Scriptures are holy, are true, are blameless. All Scripture, divinely inspired, is useful for teaching…, and thus there is nothing which we accuse the Scriptures of, if we perhaps have not understood them and somehow deviate [from the truth]. For when we understand them, we are right; but when they have not been understood, we are wrong, we abandoned the right. For when we are wrong, we do not make it wrong; but it remains upright, so that we can return to it for correction.
But with that said, the same Scripture, although it itself is always spiritual, nonetheless speaks bodily in many passages–and that, to exercise us; for the law (the apostle says) is spiritual, but I am bodily. Accordingly, although Scripture itself is spiritual, still it very often walks bodily with us embodied. But it does not want us to remain bodily! Even a mother loves to nurse her babe, but she does not love that he remains one. She holds him to her breast, strokes him with her hands, cherishes him with kisses, nourishes him with milk–yes, she does everything for her child. But she wants him to grow, so she must not always do such things.”
No doubt the above depicts the heart of every Christian teacher, who simply loves his students into truth. As much as he is able and privileged to induce, the teacher wants his students to grow up both in knowledge and love. More and like a mother, he actively dislikes when they remain only babes. He wants them to grow, so that the baby-things are no longer needed.
But Augustine then applies this specifically to when holy Scripture speaks of God in bodily terms, for here most especially it is a mother delighting to nurse her babe, but disliking if he stays one.
“Now let me take the words of the psalm which we sang: ‘You held my right hand.’ Take a bodily hearer. What will he think here, except that God appeared in a human shape, took his right (not left) hand, and led it according to his wish, and brought him where he wanted. If [such a hearer] understands this, indeed if he thinks it, then he never understood. For whoever understands, understands truth; but whoever thinks something false, does not understand. Therefore, if a bodily hearer thinks this, thinks that God’s nature or substance has distinct bodily parts, is determined by a shape, conscribed by a quantity and remaining in a place, then what shall I do with him? If I say, God is not like that, then he will not follow; but if I say, God is so, then he will seemingly follow, but I deceive him. I cannot say God is so, lest I lie–and not about just anything!, but about my God, about my Savior, my Redeemer and my hope, about the one to whom I reach out my hand as my own desire. It is no small thing to lie about such! Being deceived about such is troublesome and dangerous, but lying about it is horrific and pernicious.”
Augustine is not going to lie about the facts, but tell it like it is. He thus kindly addresses this babe in Christ and alerts him that his thoughts were wrong and that he misunderstood holy Scripture. The exemplar here is what Christ did with the Samaritan woman, when she thought God was a body and thus concluded that he could not be worshipped except in Jerusalem.
My own point in mentioning this sermon is to say–perhaps provocatively–that Augustine is drafting the syllabus for Christian teachers here, for all their courses on reading holy Scripture. The bodily passages of holy Scripture–which are the vast majority–must be dealt with. We cannot infantilize students and keep them beguiled–yes, even deceive them ourselves. Rather, we tell it like it is: what God is and is not, and which interpretations of holy Scripture are false, and which true.
Likewise in my own topic, viz., divine emotions in holy Scripture, the hope is making readers of holy Scripture (1) not understand something false but rather (2) clearly understand the truth. And both steps, come to find, are essential–not just the second, but also the first. Much of sound theology must sadly be destructive; it is tearing down idols, destroying golden calves, and so on. For causing this destruction, we say things like God has zero anger; that no jealousy falls in him, etc. This is so that one does not read God being angered and anywise think this is so, and so that one hears God being jealous but understands it nowise to be. Only thereupon, a cleared foundation, can sound theology become upbuilding–where we say things like God being angered means someone suffers pain; him being jealous means the cause-and-effect arrangement where if we leave God then we are rendered sad; etc.
In the upcoming course, we will primarily engage the latter upbuilding step, actually equipping readers to interpret divine emotions in holy Scripture. And yes, we will make much use of texts from Augustine where he himself makes us no longer babes–texts like his question on what God regretting means (Augustine, 83 questions, q 52), among others. The course will be difficult, but rewarding; and I know of no other place where you can learn all at once how to interpret all the divine emotions in holy Scripture. You’d be most welcome to join me. Click here for more info: Davenant Course: Emotions of God
