Right Sizing The Bible

I was brought up to believe that the biblical story covered the entire history of the cosmos; but by the time I reached university I was keenly aware that this view of the bible was susceptible to some fairly thorny questions-namely why would God take thirteen billion years to create a near infinite universe for what amounts to a few millennia of very finite human existence?

The biblical narrative when read this way feels more like a myth birthed in ancient cosmology than divine insight - for surely such an immense, near flat and therefore near infinite universe must be inconsistent with a very recent creation that will soon come to an end. Simply put - the discovery of how big the universe is surely discounts the cosmological setting as described in the biblical narrative.

 

When we read a modern English bible we certainly get the impression that it is a cosmic story - for the narrative describe the creation of the cosmos, the judgment and destruction of the planet by flood, and the end of the material cosmos when Jesus 'makes all things new'.

But on investigation this reading smacks of modernism. Instead, the biblical story that originated in antiquity was far more interested in kingdoms, lands, people and their relationship with God.

So if we re-frame the biblical story through a more appropriate kingdom filter creation simply connects Israel's proto-history lost in the mists of antiquity to Sinai, the flood destroys the lands of Israel's proto-history; and all this happens through the very kingdom orientated stories of patriarchs, prophets, kings, and empires right up to the coming of the messiah. 

 

After Jesus the story moves into the realm of eschatology. But even here a local theme remains for Christ prayed God's kingdom come, meaning that Christ post cross would usher in a new covenant both for Gentile and Jew alike. The events described in Revelation may then refer to the events surrounding the demise of the Mosaic covenant vis a vis the destruction of the temple in 70CE and not some future cosmic ending event. So even eschatological events as described by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, by the author of 2 Peter, by Paul and by John in his Revelation do not necessarily point to a cosmos ending event per se.

 

I will not attempt to defend this alternative framework here  - suffice to say I believe that it is very defendable. Instead what I want to point out is that it is precisely because we moderns too often try to stretch this kingdom orientated narrative over the entire history of the cosmos that we end up with paradoxes, contradictory facts, and problematic theology.

 

But if we right size the biblical narrative - and by that I mean we adopt a sober kingdom perspective that views the biblical stories in the same way that antiquity viewed these stories then the list of inconsistencies do begin to fall away.

To be clear I am not saying the bible's framework no longer has a moral or ethical standard nor am I saying that the bible is in some sense less valuable or less authorative - but I am saying that if timeless truth is contained in these kingdom stories then our best hope of understanding them begins with a correct local framework.