A precis of chapter 5.

This cruciform approach to interpreting Scripture may seem to be new (because it has not been taught in the church for 1500 years.  But, in fact, it can be traced back to the early church and (most importantly) to Scripture itself.  And in the following ways.

(a) Finding Christ crucified in all of Scripture.  Martin Luther has been rightly characterised as ‘the theologian of the cross’.  For Luther, the cross was the key to interpreting the Bible.  However, he never applied this hermeneutic to the OT ‘texts of terror’.

(b) Looking beyond the surface meaning of the OT text in order to interpret it through the lens of the cross.  The idea that we are tied to the original meaning of the text belongs to post-Enlightenment thinking.  Thus, for example, Mt 2:15 gives Hos 11:1 a meaning that it could not have had for its original author.  We should certainly have great respect for the original meaning of the text.  But we should be willing to depart from it where it portrays God as other than the one revealed by the cross.  This approach is consistent with a ‘high’ view of the historical nature of the biblical text.  For example, it is possible to believe in the historical Flood (and, indeed, that it was a judgement of God) without agreeing with the biblical author that it was God who caused the Flood.  Even where an OT story is not securely rooted in history, it is to be regarded as divinely inspired, because Jesus regarded it as such.

(c) Recognising that divine inspiration is relational.  Theologians have consistently held that God inspired the text of Scripture through the medium of individual persons (and therefore their personalities, styles, cultural perspectives, and intellectual capabilities.  This involves divine accommodation, which implies that their writing reflect, not what God actually is, but what he appears to them to be.  The dominant view of God is that he is above time and space, and that all biblical portraits of God as changing his mind, or being affected by what others do, or experiencing surprise, disappointment, frustration, sorrow or grief are divine accommodations.  But the incarnation and the cross show that God is not above time, not incapable of change.  Focussing on the cross delivers us from metaphysical speculation about the divine nature, and helps us to be concerned primarily with his moral character as a loving God.

(d) Acknowleding that God’s self-revelation is progressive.  It is widely accepted that God’s self-revelation in Scripture develops over time.  To begin with, he had to deal with his people as spiritual infants, and to adapt his revelation to their fallen nature and culturally conditioned beliefs.  As these were gradually peeled away, he was able to reveal more truth about himself.  Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390) argued that God first ‘cut off the idol’, but allowed animal sacrifices for a while.

‘So, for a period of time, God graciously stooped to take on the appearance of a deity who enjoys, and even demands, the ritualistic killing of animals. While Yahweh was able to influence the Israelites away from the ANE assumption that gods actually eat these sacrifices, he nevertheless accommodated their culturally conditioned belief that he enjoyed their “pleasing aroma.”’

In this way, God led his people by incremental steps away from paganism.  He has always revealed his true character as much as possible, while also accommodating the fallen and culturally conditioned state of his people as much as necessary.  He was willing, for a time, to allow his people to think of him as a warrior deity, while, in time, he would reveal himself as radically different from the gods of the ANE.

This view differs from that of most evangelicals, who agree that revelation is progressive, but deny that later revelation ever denies or contradicts earlier revelation.

Which brings us back to the cross:

‘If any aspect of God has needed to be progressively revealed to people over time, it concerns God’s nonviolent, self-sacrificial, loving character. For it is on precisely this point that the true God revealed in the crucified Christ most thoroughly contrasts with the way fallen humans have always tended to conceive of God and the gods, including, unfortunately, with the way most Christians have conceived God throughout history!’

Reflecting on Church History

Since the 5th century, the concepts of progressive revelation have not been applied to the OT’s violent portraits of God.  This failure may be attributed to the conversion of Constantine, the establishment of the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ and the redefinition of God as a warrior deity.  The persecuted church became the persecuting church.  And the OT portrait of a violent God became less problematic.

‘At its heart, this entire book could be summed up as a plea for Christians to once again place their complete trust in the cross. Dare to believe that God really is, to the core of his being, as beautiful as the cross reveals him to be. For if our faith in the crucified Christ remains resolved, we will necessarily believe that something else is going on when we encounter sub-Christlike portraits of God in Scripture. And we will by faith discern that this something else is the same thing that was going on when God breathed his full revelation on Calvary.’