Known unknowns?

This post is written less as a response and more as a tangent or corollary to a post from Si of The Alethiophile which you can find in full here. In his post he was explaining and expounding a tweet which had caused a few people, myself included, to raise an eyebrow. It's an interesting, thought-provoking and well-argued piece (we expect little else from our favourite mouse), and it got me thinking; a dangerous business if ever there was one. I'm not planning to tackle exactly the same topic, though I wouldn't be surprised if there ends up being a degree of overlap.

A friend of mine wrote a blog post recently which referred to a Bible class he attended. Rather than summarise it, I shall quote the paragraph wholesale:

"This came up at a monthly bible school I have recently started attending at the church I’ve settled at after having moved house last year. The overall discussion was about the Magi, with a significant portion devoted to whether or not they were Zoroastrians. The point at this stage in the discussion had been about Jewish eschatology and how a good many intelligent people had ideas about how and when the Messiah would come, but what actually happened, even though it fitted up with the Old Testament prophecies, still came rather unexpectedly. Therefore, though we have a wealth of ideas about christian eschatology, ideas of heaven, hell, resurrection and annihilation, it might well turn that we have all got a little bit right most mostly wrong, and that what we expect will be radically confounded."

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that had I been present I would have found spending a session discussing whether the Magi were Zoroastrians incredibly frustrating: I prefer my Bible classes to feed more directly into the world of exposition, rather than pondering apparent imponderables. That said, it's given rise to some useful thought, so, everyone's a winner!

In my after school group for 11-14s we are working our way through John's gospel, and this week we were in chapter 10. The group are really getting to grips with it, and were baffled that God's historic people couldn't see the Messiah when he was right in front of them. The response that John is calling for in his gospel is for us to not make the same mistake, and to put our faith in Jesus as the Christ, and so have life.

The question I want to ponder in my untrained, ham-fisted fashion is this:

What are the chances that our reading of the Bible is as wrong as the first century Jews' seems to be in the gospel accounts?

To do so, I want to take a brief look at two passages from the New Testament.

From Hebrews 1, I want to spend a moment looking at what the Bible says about how God speaks, and whether that has changed since Old Testament times.*
From Ephesians 2 I want to look at how we listen, and whether that has changed.

God Speaks

The opening words of the letter to the Hebrews tells us that

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Heb 1.1-2)

God has chosen over the course of salvation history to speak to his people in a variety of ways: burning bushes, overly chatty livestock, prophets, you name it. God would speak to his people typically through a mediator, leader or prophet, who would pass the message on for him as it were.
Those days, according to Hebrews, are gone. That is how God used to speak, but at the incarnation things changed: Jesus revealed the Father, he spoke to us about who he is and how we can be in relationship with him.
The gospel of Jesus - the good news about who he is and why he came - have been committed to paper, under the guidance and overall authorship of the spirit, so that now when we read our Bible, God speaks to us directly. This is an immense blessing and a privilege, and one that is only possible because of the atoning work of Jesus on the cross.

We Listen

In Ephesians Paul tells us that

And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

There are so many places in the New Testament I could have gone to, but I'm quite familiar with Ephesians, so I stayed on ground I know.

In the Old Testament, it seems that God sent his Spirit on people at certain times for certain things. The Judges often acted to rescue and defend God's people in a state of temporary-Spirit-filledness. The Spirit was sent on Saul, and later removed again. The prophets looked forward to one on whom the Spirit would come and stay [sorry, no citation - my brain's on a go-slow].
That Spirit-filled leader (spoiler alert) was Jesus. He came, he lived and worked in the power of the Spirit, and when he left, he sent his Spirit on his followers, and that Spirit lives in us, not as a temporary resident who might pop off, but as a seal, guaranteeing our inheritance.

So the same Spirit who oversaw the writing and compiling of the Bible is the same Spirit who lives in us. That does make it sound easier, doesn't it - having the author constantly on hand to help us understand what we read?


Now of course, we are finite and sinful human beings: we misread, misunderstand and misapply the Bible left, right and centre. We cannot fit all the magnificence of the Bible into our tiny hearts and minds (or is this just me?) There are limits to what we can know, and "know" is a sliding scale.

But there is plenty we can know with confidence. We have a God who has given us his Word which is able to make us wise for salvation. We can't know everything, but we can know enough to be right with God. I'm confident that thanks to the Spirit both speaking and helping us to listen, we (those who believe in Jesus) have more than enough to not end up on the outside.


It's worth re-iterating: I have next to no formal Bible training, certainly nothing that comes with a piece of paper to show for it, and I could very well be wrong.
If you have a comment, are able to express these things better or would like to put forward a dissenting view, please do, but play nicely, OK?


*I've been reading Guidance and the Voice of God by Payne & Jensen which has been invaluable with this. There will be a review coming soon here.