Chapter 12: My Private Bible
In the OT, reading the Bible was a communal experience. Now it is mostly a private experience. "Once again we find within the pages of the Bible a crucial element that has been largely lost in our experience today. We just don’t do things communally like this. We don’t act as one, repent as one, commit as one, rejoice as one. We do these things (if we do them at all) as individuals. In fact, so deep is our Western individualism that it doesn’t even occur to us that our experience with the Bible, and our role as significant players in the redemptive drama, should or could be centered on anything other than our own personal experience and actions. How did we manage to lose such a fundamental feature of the Scriptures? How did we turn a text that is for and about communities into a private book about me and God?”
From Sola Scriptura to Sola Me. The history of the private Bible. 6 streams:
- The rise of the concept of the individual.
- The proliferation of printed Bibles.
- The emphases of the Protestant Reformation.
- The visual fragmentation of the Bible (chapters and verses).
- A new consumer-oriented delivery system (profit).
- American philosophy.
What Reading Alone Looks Like. Two implications of reading the Bible alone.
- We mistake the intended audience of the Bible's messages. Plural nouns and pronouns are converted to singular, missing the point.
- The valuable resources of a wider interpretative community are lost."
- Ongoing isolation from others in my Bible engagement simply allows my own idiosyncrasies free rein. I don’t come to the text in a neutral position or as a blank slate open to all that it has to offer. I bring all of myself to the text and naturally slant it this way and that based on any number of things in my own life story. This in itself is not to be lamented (it’s the only way I can possibly read; I can’t escape myself), but it is to be balanced and circumscribed as I open myself to what others have found there. God’s Spirit has been working through all of his people through all of his ages.”
Quotes from Paauw, Glenn R. (2016-04-21). Saving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Live the Bible Well (Kindle Locations 2603-2608). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.