What Would You, O God, Have Me Believe And Do?

Although I am the president of council for a local Lutheran church, I consider myself a Congregationalist first and foremost. Yet, marrying into a Norwegian family and helping lead an ELCA congregation has lured me toward the study of some prominent Lutheran thinkers. I recently stumbled on a profound essay by John P. Milton, “How My Mind Has Been Changed Regarding the Bible.”

I was unfamiliar with Milton, so I’m assuming most of my readers outside of seminarians are equally in the dark. Milton was a long-time Old Testament professor at Luther Theological Seminary. It surprised me to learn that he was once quite aligned with reading the Bible in the tradition of historical literalism. I say it’s surprising, because today you would be hard-pressed to find a serious Old Testament scholar who hasn’t wrestled with issues of bad science, theologized yet less-than-accurate history, strange and even offensive cultural artifacts and outright contradictions in the Bible. It was a different time, and in the last decade of his life Milton shifted his understanding and began emphasizing the Bible’s human elements. As I understand it, Milton’s change-of-heart accelerated a broader shift in Lutheran seminaries.

Milton still believed that the Bible was the Word of God, something to which I am as of today unable to affirm. I believe that Jesus is God’s Word, and the Bible is a record of faith that includes and represents Christ as best as it possibly can. Yet perhaps I’m splitting hairs here. Karl Barth considered the Bible the Word of God but only in so much as the Holy Spirit chooses to speak to us through scripture. I was struck by a particular question Milton posed that seemed to match this sentiment: “What would you, O God, have me believe and do?”

Even early in his teaching career, Milton understood and taught that the origins of the Pentateuch were much more complex than simply holding to Mosaic authorship. How do we know Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch? Well, among many reasons, Moses dies in the story and is referred to in the third person. The topic itself requires at least its own blog article here, but I offer you a summary. Mainly, there are different vocabularies used throughout, including different names for God, indicating there are multiple literary traditions at work. We recognize those today as: “J,” which is the tradition that refers to God as, “Yahweh; “E” where God is referred to as, “Elohim;” “P” which uses particularly priestly terminology; and “D” which is written in a distinct Deuteronomic style. Sometimes the same stories are included twice, written in these different styles which seems to indicate that there were multiple sources and editors didn’t want to leave things out. For now, if this really makes you curious, you can research more about the Documentary Hypothesis.

For Milton, it became clear that the traditional teaching of Mosaic authorship at best ignored the later editing and at worst was simply wrong. He felt there was a certain, “Mosaicity,” to it (I leave the reader to decide what that even means in such an ancient text), yet it opened him to historical criticism. He began to see that historical critique was illuminating to scripture, not condemnatory. With continued study he began to see the flawed, very human, culturally bound and linguistically limited elements of scripture to be an important aspect of study.

Milton began to teach about the many human elements in the Bible. I may return to his thoughts, but I’ve written about the many errors and contradictions we find in the Bible elsewhere. Instead, what I want to focus on here is Milton’s concept of progressive revelation. The Bible seems to change its mind throughout history on number of topics. Certainly, we’ve seen Jesus correct scripture:

Matthew 5:38-42

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”

The old ways are not permanent according to Jesus. I take that to mean that we are allowed to progress in our ideas as well and should not be beholden to the specific cultural lenses of the Bible, but I don’t want to put my words into Milton’s mouth. What I think Milton meant by progressive revelations is that our scriptures show a clear development in terms of spiritual insights. Different parts reflect different stages of understanding God and God’s will. We got it wrong, we continue to get it wrong, but we can always get better. Because of that, not every biblical text is equal in relevance, value or authority. Let that sink in.

Milton specifically drew a line before and after Christ. He believed that if you cut out John 3:16 from the Bible, you would cut out part of its very heart. Yet, if you cut out parts of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, it would be but a flesh wound. He pointed to Paul’s caution that we must weigh the past shadows against Christ’s substance using one of my favorite passages as a former seventh day Sabbath keeper.

Colossians 2:16-19

Therefore, do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food ordrink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God.

There is a progressive revelation from shadow to substance. I take it further than I think Milton was willing to take it, and I think that even on the other side of the Christ event we get to continue to progress. That means, for instance, Paul was similarly constrained by his knowledge, his language and his culture. He believed some things that are either misinterpreted or flat out wrong. We have the benefit of 2,000 years of growth to see things in a new light. I’m sure that over the next 2,000 years much of what we believe today will seem silly as well.

What are we to do? Milton says we are to consider all scripture through the mind of Christ. At least as best we can. I have written elsewhere that the only thing that matters is how we see things through the lens of Christ. We are fortunate that we have the biblical record of our Lord to help us with that. But things change and we must help each other determine where our faith leads us into the bold always-changing future. What did Jesus say about abortion, space travel, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, quantum physics and LGBTQ+ rights? Nothing. But Jesus did talk a lot about loving God and neighbor, upholding the marginalized, forgiveness, welcoming foreigners, caring for the poor and hungry and cautioned against strict religiosity and empire. Let’s focus on those things as we try to determine how to best act according to the mind of our Lord.

We aren’t called to worship the Bible; we are called to worship Christ. We don’t need to defend the obvious errors and cultural problems we find in the Bible. We don’t need to defend the Bible’s support of slavery and genocide; neither should we defend its misogyny and anti-LGBTQ+ biases. I do think the Bible is authoritative for us in specific ways, and that doesn’t depend on inerrancy or literalism. It’s incredibly freeing to see the Bible as a library of our faith ancestors without having to read every passage equally and literally. Center your faith on Jesus’ love, forgiveness and the upside-down Kingdom of God that contrasts our earthly kingdoms. Jesus had priorities way beyond scripture, and we should let those shape our interpretation and practice of our faith.