Research and Writing Workflow

It should come as no surprise, but I love to read, research, and write. And to make that reading accessible to me after I’ve first churned it up in my mind, I’m trying to develop a workflow for capturing notes and being able to sync them flawlessly between my iPad and iMac for further research and writing. I should have thought about this sooner but thankfully it’s not too late either.

I wanted to share this website from John Chandler that is proving exceptionally helpful to me in developing a solid workflow.

Why I Shy Away from “Application”

In thinking about and planning for future speaking engagements, whether they be sermons, lectures, or even leading my bible study, I am thinking again about “application.” There seem to be lots of people out there saying that preaching the Word is not enough, it needs to be applied to our lives. There even seem to be many whose sermons are only geared toward the “application of truths to peoples lives,” many times through the popular 3 point sermon where the 3 points use one word all starting with the same letter, e.g., “pursuit, purpose, passion,” or something like that.

Without denying the truthfulness of Scripture needing to be “applied to our lives,” I think many have gone off the deep end in an effort to make everything immediately relevant in a way that people know is immediately relevant to their lives. This approach holds the Word hostage to our immediate needs, making everything person-centered rather than Christ-centered. The result, I believe, is to use the Bible as a personal application book for life’s little problems. However, the Bible is more than this.

The reason I think more needs to be said, and why I often shy away from such application, is that it fails to allow for the Word to shape our worldviews and transform our hearts. Instead it offers us a bunch of do’s and don’ts. “Be like David, he was a good man for the most part. Don’t be like David, however, when he committed adultery, that’s bad.” But if my worldview is me-centered, the command to not commit adultery, while extremely important and to be obeyed because it comes from God, we reason, may not be convenient for me at all times and should be done away with when I deem it “necessary.”

What I’m really on about is speaking against poor application that distorts the Bible and fails to recognize that teaching about Jesus and the good news and the kingdom, etc., really produces change in people so that they will, out of the overflow of their hearts, live as transformed kingdom people. In my opinion, this is good “application.” The application pointers beyond this may be useful, but not in order to short-circuit the true work of worldview transformation. And we could definitely use some worldview transformation rather than trying to fit Jesus into our people-centered worldviews.

Short-circuting Meaning by Interpreting Scripture with Scripture

I listened to a sermon this week (not at my home church so you won’t be able to figure out who it was) where I noticed something good being taken to an extreme and made useless.

Many will be familiar with the saying, “Scripture interprets Scripture.” In this sermon I listened to this principle was taken to an extreme, and in my opinion, ended up distorting Scripture. What happened was that this preacher was in a text and instead of starting from the local meaning, immediately jumped to other parts of Scripture that use some of those same words and used the other passage to interpret the first passage. He ended up with a meaning to the first text that struck me as oddly not close to what the text was saying in its own context. What was short-circuted was the local meaning of the first text.

So where does “Scripture interpreting Scripture” come in to play? After all, if we believe there is ultimately one Author behind the whole Bible, as I believe there is, then this must be true at some level. I believe it comes into play after the local meaning of the text has been worked out. Only then is it easier to see whether the other texts being used to interpret the first are even getting on about the same thing.

Better, “Scripture interpreting Scripture” should work on a biblical theological plane instead of a strict exegetical plane. That is, I don’t believe we can exegete a text simply by noting the meaning of a text elsewhere that also uses some similar words or something [a more robust lexical analysis is appropriate but that is beyond the scope of this post]. Rather, once we have worked on the meanings of each text in their context then we can talk about how to integrate them on a higher plane, that being, a biblical theological plane. I.e., how do these texts fit into the larger storyline of the Bible?

And, in the end, we may find that we have to adjust our exegesis of individual texts based on our biblical theological reading, but that is acceptable. There isn’t a perfectly linear line from exegesis to biblical theology to systematic theology. There are feedback loops. Our systematics will affect our exegesis as will our biblical theology affect our exegesis, etc. But by trying to integrate too quickly at a local level we lose the opportunity to understand how the local level affects the other levels.

John 2:13-22 – Jesus the New Temple

Jesus has now moved from Galilee (in the north) to Jerusalem (in the south) as the Jewish Passover feast was near (2:13). This is Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem in this Gospel. Again John the author is highlighting belief (2:22), something that, as we have seen, is commonplace to the purposes of John’s Gospel.

As Jesus is in Jerusalem he goes to the Temple and finds people selling oxen, sheep, and doves and people exchanging money (v. 14). Jesus, dismayed at this, creates a whip and drives them all out, overturning tables and forcing out the animals (v. 15). His explanatory statement for his doing this is found in v. 16, “Don’t make my father’s house into a market!” The disciples present are said to remember that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me,” a quotation from Psalm 69:9.

Understandably the Jews present want to know by what authority Jesus can clear out the Temple. They ask, “What sign will you show us for your doing this?” (v. 18).

Jesus’ response is, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19). Since this is said in the presence of the physical Temple it is understandable that the Jews listening would have understood him to be making a statement about that very Temple. Their response shows this and takes the cryptic nature of Jesus’ command to be about that Temple: “This Temple has taken 46 years to build, and you’re going to raise it up in 3 days?” (v. 20).

But, John tell us that he wasn’t speaking of the physical Temple in their presence, rather he was speaking about his own body (v. 21). No one properly understood it when he uttered it though. It wasn’t until after he was raised from the dead that the disciples remembered what he said “and believed the Scripture and the words which Jesus spoke” (v. 22). So in what sense is Jesus the Temple and what did it mean for the physical Temple standing in their presence at that time?

To fill in what Jesus was meaning by calling himself the Temple that would need to be destroyed and raised, it would be helpful to consider the purpose of the Temple, in very broad strokes, throughout the Old Testament period.

The Temple-proper begins with Solomon. His father, David, had in mind to build a ‘house’ for God but God advised David that his son would build it instead (2 Samuel 7). Solomon does indeed build this ‘house’ for God, what is known as the First Temple.

This so-called First Temple or Solomonic Temple didn’t come out of nowhere in Israel’s history. It was the first permanent structure but prior to this Moses was given instructions to build a Tabernacle that would move with the people in their desert wanderings. It was to be the dwelling place of God with his people. One may even move further back than this to the Garden of Eden but we’ll save that for another time (see e.g., G.K. Beale’s The Temple and the Church’s Mission). In fact, I won’t trace it out now, but consider reading Revelation 4-5 and 20-22 for a picture of where this all eventually leads.

Back to Solomon’s Temple; it would not last. When Babylon invaded Judah in 587 B.C. the Temple was destroyed. It was subsequently rebuilt as the exiles returned to Jerusalem around 538 B.C. It was completed in 515 and known as the Temple of Zerubbabel (Wise, “Temple,” Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 811). This Temple would not stand in toto through its history and would need rebuilding, resulting in Herod’s building project starting in 20/19 B.C. (idem.). Herod’s ambitions were grand and while most of the Temple was built by the time of Jesus, internal adornments and continual work was being done. It so happens that 46 years had passed at the time relayed by our text in John 2. This period has come to be known as the Second Temple period (though the terminology is not completely accurate as the Temple at the time of Jesus was sort of a 4th Temple).

About this Temple, Ezekiel speaks of God’s glory leaving it (Ezek. 43:1-12), indicating that it was seen as a place where God’s glory dwelt and at a time to come (from Ezekiel’s day) would lack God’s presence. Many Jews believed in Jesus’ day that God’s presence indeed was not there as it had been in former days. But the Ezekiel text forecasts a day when God would dwell in his peoples’s midst forever.

Then Jesus shows up on the scene and declares in the Temple’s presence, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John later understands Jesus to be talking about his body declaring Jesus to be the new Temple that the Lord had envisioned. Jesus is the new meeting place with God. Jesus is the very presence of God, the one who became flesh and tabernacled (recall our study in 1:14) among us.

In making this pronouncement and then dying and rising, Jesus also made the physical Temple obsolete. And indeed the Temple would be destroyed in 70 A.D. in the Jewish-Roman war. It was no longer the meeting place with God. The new meeting place with God would be Jesus. Know Jesus and you know God.

This is the sign Jesus offers those who questioned his authority. The sign of his death and resurrection. His authority to cleanse the Temple would be the cross and the empty tomb.

Why I Find Bible Study so Challenging

Since becoming a Christian I have loved the study of the Bible. I hated it before, but immediately fell in love with it after. This, I suggest, is the work of the Spirit. But I have to admit, several years into studying the Bible and it being the main passion of my life (in order to seek Jesus), I still find it thoroughly challenging.

I could mention that I find it challenging to follow its worldview in some ways, but that’s not where I’m going with these thoughts right now. I find it challenging to discern its meaning.

I’ve grown up holding two fairly conflicting worldviews in tension: that of a sort of ‘positivism’ and that of a sort of ‘postmodern deconstructionism.’ Positivism essentially means that I look at a text (say, the New Testament) and immediately gain a window onto objective reality and events as they really happened. There is the author and his or her intent and the events which he or she narrates and I can know them objectively. Postmodern deconstruction, on the other hand, essentially sees no authorial intent in the text but rather sees the text as a mirror reflecting back upon the reader their own viewpoints. Somehow I’ve subconsciously walked these two lines, contradictory though they are. Having not thought through them prior to becoming a Christian and a philosophy major, I’m sure I just unconsciously applied them at different times as it was convenient to do so.

It seems to me that there are Christians who fall into one of either camp (or both like I somehow did). On the positivist side, Christians sometimes think that the objective meaning of the events and author’s intent are simply there and easy to ascertain. On the postmodern side, Christians sometimes approach the text in terms of ‘what it means to me,’ never asking the historical question. What matters is the reader’s response.

But the reason I find Bible study so challenging is that meaning is not so simple. In fact, I think both sides have aspects of it right but have absolutized their position into falsehood. Indeed, Christians so often rail against postmodernism as an enemy (usually in favour of an equally non-Christian position, that of modernism) failing to recognize that it has developed in response to things that were left unaccounted for in the prior prevailing worldview (modernism). Yes the pendulum has swung too far to the other extreme, but postmodernism has helped us remember that there is in fact a reader in the reading process that must be taken into account. And that reader brings all sorts of presuppositions and viewpoints to the text they read. Postmodernism’s failure, however, is that it has lost any anchor, something a Christian should be very cautious about unless abandoning “God has spoken” is something desirable.

In responding to postmodernism as Christians, I believe we also need to be careful not to swing the pendulum back again and forget the reader in the process. I have seen, at least in popular discussion, this sort of thing happening.

Navigating these waters is not easy. That, or I’m just not that bright (entirely possible!). Or, I am sure someone will say I’m not allowing the Spirit to speak. Well, maybe, but when I look at 4 legitimate Christians and their take on the same text and the differences present, I am persuaded that our mind/thinking plays an important role in the interpretive process. That’s for another post, and there are good books out there that would show it biblically (both John Piper and Mark Noll have recently written books to this effect).

So, should I despair? No, I think there is a ‘middle ground’ or what have you, that doesn’t succumb to either positivism or deconstructionism. It recognizes there is a reader with presuppositions but it also recognizes that the reader can be shaped by the worldview of the text, produced with some intent that can be (to some degree) obtained. This itself is the content of whole books but it feels good to write some of this out, even if in broad-strokes and so preliminarily.

What do you think?