Part 2: Christendom and Biblical Interpretation

D. Biblical Interpretation in Post-Christendom

As Christendom fades, the approach to biblical interpretation that characterised the Christendom era and was unchallenged by the Reformers has become increasingly problematic, whereas the alternative approach of the Anabaptists and earlier dissident groups may offer helpful perspectives. For example:

• In a context where churches are no longer in the centre but on the margins, the perspectives of earlier marginal movements make sense. Things look different from the margins. Marginal groups identify with different characters in the story, ask different questions, and apply biblical teaching differently. The experience of base churches in Latin America endorses this.
  
  
• Once the church recognises it can no longer control society and does not need to worry that its interpretation of the Bible might challenge social norms, it can rediscover the prophetic tradition that permeates the Bible and in which Jesus must be understood. New ways of thinking become possible.
  
  
• The suspicion of ideological influences found in the radical tradition and its tendency to subject traditional interpretations to critique and reappraisal may be helpful. We may have plenty of unlearning to do as we gradually recognise how much traditional interpretations of biblical teaching were affected by the Christendom mindset. A degree of suspicion may be healthy.
  
  
• The insistence on recognising Jesus as the centre of the Bible and on adopting New Testament norms for ethics and ecclesiology may assist us to rediscover the Jesus whom Christendom marginalised and to question the ways in which the Old Testament was interpreted under Christendom.

It may be that this emphasis on Christocentrism is of the greatest significance in post-Christendom. Christocentrism insists that Jesus is at the centre of Christianity. That the human life of Jesus is vital and cannot be ignored. That Jesus is our model, our pioneer, our leader, our teacher, our example - as well as our redeemer. That he was truly human and that his humanity matters. That the awkward teachings of Jesus are relevant and authoritative in every area of life - in politics as much as in family life, in social policy as well as church life, in economics as well as personal morality. That the Sermon on the Mount is meant to be lived not just admired. That Jesus is the centre of the Bible, the one to whom all the scriptures point, the one through whom all the scriptures must be interpreted. We do not start elsewhere and then try to fit the teaching of Jesus in (or ignore him if this is too awkward). We start with Jesus and interpret everything else in the light of what he models and teaches.

This Christocentric approach affects all kinds of issues. It profoundly challenges the way we worship, evangelise, work, treat creation, run our churches, get involved in society, exercise power etc. It is urgent that we recover this approach. It was this approach that enabled the early churches to turn the world upside down. It was this that challenged their contemporaries and amazed their persecutors. It was this that was lost through the Christendom shift.

But Christendom is dead or dying. We live now in a post-Christendom society and we desperately need to stop thinking in Christendom categories. Europe has decisively rejected the institutional form of Christianity known as Christendom. Arguably it has not yet seen enough of Jesus to decide what to do with him. Perhaps it is time to read the Bible in a new way, to recover the Christocentric approach of the pre-Christendom churches and the marginal movements, to rediscover Jesus for ourselves and to follow him into a world that is heartily sick of Christianity but which might yet be intrigued by Jesus.

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