Uncovering the Bible’s Meaning: Should We Start with a Postmodern Root?

“Theological conversations are a privilege granted to those who have encountered a living God. But many have chosen the pursuit of knowledge about the Divine as a substitute for a divine relationship. In other words, rather than humbling themselves before God to receive unconditional affirmation, they seek it through their own smarts. It’s rather silly. The Scriptures are intended to point us toward the Creator, not enable us to understand everything about the Creator and his ways. Early attempts at theological discourse were about bringing us together around the essence of the gospel. It’s time to return to the basics while embracing all believers and the reality that our knowledge is very limited. Let’s start with the apostles’ attempts to articulate the gospel” (Chris Seay, Faith of My Fathers, 81).

Seay wants us to accept all believers given our inability to access absolute truth with certainty (our purported postmodern root); therefore, he wants us to begin with a postmodern root and not the Apostles’ teaching or so it would seem. If we do begin with the Apostles’ teaching found in the NT epistles and if we believe their audience was able to learn and understand their teaching, then our theological discourse should be greatly informed given our ability to grasp the meaning of the Apostles’ words. In this way, theological conversation becomes more than discourse; it becomes a conversation upon the meaning of the Apostles’ words. This meaning, if one truly wants to discover it or at least come to a better understanding of it, begins with the words themselves, the sentences in which they appear, the context of the sentences, the context of the passages, the context of God’s word taken as a whole, and the culture and historical time period in which the words were composed.The Scriptures must do more than simply point us to a Creator. They must help us understand who He is as a Person; otherwise, how would we know with any certainty how we are to relate to Him? The Scripture must help us learn our identity in Christ (our identity in the context of our relationship with God). They must help shape our worldview based on a sure knowledge of God. Such knowledge will add meaning to our lives and the lives of others. It will guide us by giving us a purpose, and it will provide a platform for godly values. While we may not be able to know every little detail about God and some things we do know by faith will always be mysterious given our finiteness, there remains much that can be discovered about God through careful study of His word. If it were not so, then why did He have it written, why did He allow many of its authors to be persecuted and even killed, why did Jesus constantly push His disciples to grasp His meaning, how could and why did the writers of the NT epistles explain Christ’s words using propositional truth claims, why did the Early Church decide on the Canon, and why is there something called Orthodoxy?