Filters and all that. Heiser doesn’t like filters. He thinks it is possible to come to the text of Scripture with no filters whatsoever (pp. 14-15). What he means is a grid by which we determine which intepretations are more plausible than others. Chapter 2 is entitled “Rules of Engagement.” Heiser makes several errors here which are quite costly in terms of methodology.
The first error is in assuming that all filters “are not intrinsic to the Bible. They are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters” (emphasis original). This is quite naive, actually. Filters are completely unavoidable, most especially by people who think they are avoidable. There is a crowd of exegetes (a constellation, really) that believe it is possible not to have a systematic-theological grid in place when one reads the Bible. Anyone who tells you that they do not read the Bible with such a grid is lying. What they really mean is that if churchly systematic theology says one thing, then that is automatically a wrong view of the text. What they don’t tell you is their grid is just as binding, but all the more insidious for being camouflaged. It is just as griddy to say one has no grid as it is simply to acknowledge that one has a grid and then tell you what it is. You see it in churches all the time when they scream “no creed but Christ!” They have a very definite creed. They just won’t tell you what it is until you fall foul of it. But read this book to see that the Bible commands us to confess our faith.
To put things another way, imagine that you are looking at a Rembrandt, one of the most famous painters for contrasting light and dark. If you look at the light part of the painting, you can say, “I see this light and the patterns that are illuminated by it.” If, however, you say, “the light is too much like a grid, and it can’t impose itself on the dark part of the painting,” then you are imposing a “non-light” grid on the painting. That is exactly what Heiser does.
Since this is completely unworkable, however, he immediately contradicts himself by saying that “we need to see the mosaic created by the pieces” (15). He goes on to say “The Bible is really a theological and literary mosaic. the pattern in a mosaic often isn’t clear up close. It may appear to be just a random assemblage of pieces. Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole…But the meaning of all the pieces is found in the completed mosaic. And a mosaic isn’t imposed on the pieces; it derives from them.” Don’t look now, Heiser, but you just described systematic theology, which derives from the pieces of Scripture (I would argue that Vos is on a better track here by calling Scripture an organically unfolding whole, not a mosaic). So, having told us that we cannot use filters, he says that the meaning of a passage is found in the completed whole. So his whole becomes a filter by which to see the individual pieces. See, he has a filter. It just isn’t what the church has said about anything. In this he follows Johann Gabler in his distinction between biblical and systematic theology.
The irony of his position is clear in a later paragraph where he opines that removing one’s filter allows one (or drives one) to ask the question about why something is in the Bible. I could be wrong in this, but it doesn’t appear to me that having a filter prevents anyone from asking the questions he raises (“Why is that in the Bible?” and “How can I make sense of all this?”).
I personally do not know who he is talking about when he claims that we have been taught that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible (16). The true context of Scripture is the literary and historical context. Scripture interprets Scripture, and Scripture is a revelatory interpretation of God’s redemptive actions in history. I think what he means is the italicized words “Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.” But this is not the same thing as saying that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible. We stand on the shoulders of previous giants in the faith. We can see farther because of them. This does not mean they are always correct. He says that we shouldn’t ignore the forefathers, but that is really what he is saying. The proper key of interpretation, for Heiser, lies in throwing off the shackles of churchly interpretation. This just winds up meaning that everyone should, in fact, put on the shackles of a Heiserian reading instead of the church.
I do agree completely with Heiser, however, that the church has been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world (16-17). As I said previously, one of the reasons I am taking up this book is that the Western ignorance (sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental) of the unseen world is going to come back and bite us if we do not inquire of the Word how we are to engage in it.
David Gadbois
greenbaggins
paigebritton
Reed Here
reformedmusings
rfwhite
Ron Henzel
Green Baggins 