Week 9: Comment on Barry’s Blog

In his blog on a resistance reading of John 5 by Huie-Jolly, Barry, comments that if Jesus is “the way” and if the Bible is true, how do these things create outsiders, and if outsiders are created then isn’t that just God’s perrogative? I would agree that postcolonial biblical criticism many times asks the text to do much more than it probably should. Taking a field of study that began in the 1970s and using it to analyze a text from an Ancient Near Eastern gospel author, and critiquing that author for his/her inability to write with a 20th century framework is not only irresponsible from a scholarly perspective, its simply incorrect. Barry I think you have your heart in the right place when you are arguing for divine inspiration and the inerrancy of scripture, I also believe in those tenets, but when making a scholarly argument, or merely responding to biblical criticism, what we must keep in mind is the perspective of the one critiquing. To flippantly respond with “of course the Bible is divinely inspired” of course “God can create outsiders, do whatever he wants” of course “John is presenting an unquestioned argument about the divinity of Jesus”.
If we as Christians are hoping to be able to meet and debate Biblical criticism what we must first do is remove our emotions from the secular critique of scripture. I realize this is difficult, but when we use clear argument and dialogue, without compromising our faith, and when we respond in love to bitter questioning (instead of anger and defensivity) what we discover is that even if our answers are ultimately the same, the one who is criticizing hears them much differently. In reality, when we respond to biblical criticism defensively, and we appear to guard the secrets of our faith by marking certain areas as non-negotiable, what we are really saying to those who do not share our beliefs is, “If you question this, you may find out that what I believe isn’t true, so don’t question the bible to that degree…” but if we are strong enough in our faith to simply stand by our beliefs, in the face of evolution, biblical criticism, what have you, etc. We discover that our faith was never based upon a certain reading of scripture, but rather an authentic encounter with the resurrected Christ attested to in scripture…