In the public domain, reproduction of The Israelites Leaving Egypt, by David Roberts in 1828

Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church recently made some surprising statements about his belief on the role of the Old Testament in the life of modern Christians. He said early church leaders “unhitched” the church from the worldview, value system, and regulations of the Jewish scriptures, “and my friends, we must as well.” Stanley claimed the early church and its leaders showed there was a need to do this for the sake of Gentile believers. “The Bible did not create Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus created and launched Christianity. Your whole house of Old Testament cards can come tumbling down.”

The above was gleaned from an article on the Christian Post website. On the website First Things, Wesley Hill acknowledged how Stanley was motivated evangelistically in making these claims. He was trying to reach individuals who have lost their faith or rejected Christianity because of the perceived violence and legalism of the Old Testament. Stanley did not want these difficulties to keep them from “coming to Jesus.” But it seems he went too far with his attempts to “unhitch” modern Christianity from the Old Testament.

Alas, most of the 39-minute talk can really only be described as an elaborate and educated flirtation with the old Christian heresy of Marcionism—the belief that the Old Testament is not authoritative in matters of Christian doctrine and morals.

Andy Stanley and other moderns—as well as Marcion—seem to stumble over the meaning of an Old Testament passage because of their distance from the time period of the ancient author of that Old Testament book. “At times our distance from the ancient communicator might mean that we misunderstand the communication because of elements foreign to us or because we do not share ways of thinking with the communicator.” In other words, “Even though the Bible is written for us, it is not written to us.” These two quotes are from an essay by Tremper Longman and John Walton in The Lost World of the Flood. Although their book examines the Genesis flood account, the discussion on understanding “Genesis as an Ancient Document” speaks to the potential for interpretive errors that can be made by any reader with cultural and time distance from the original biblical author.

Longman and Walton noted how comparative studies help us to have a greater understanding of the “cultural river” in which the biblical authors composed their texts. Comparative studies help us to understand more fully the form of the genres used by the biblical authors, as well as the nature of their rhetorical devices “so we do not mistake their elements for something they never were.” This does not compromise the authority of Scripture; rather it ascribes authority to that which the author was communicating. Comparative studies are needed in order to “recognize the aspects of the communicator’s cognitive environment that are foreign to us, and to read the text in light of their world and worldview.”

This is not imposing something foreign on the text; it is an attempt to recognize that which is inherent in the text by virtue of its situatedness—the author and audience are embedded in the ancient world. We are not imposing this on the text any more than we are imposing Hebrew on the text when we try to read it in its original language.

They applied the metaphor of a cultural river to illustrate this. Our modern cultural river contains currents pertaining to fundamentals such as human rights, diversity, individualism, freedom, capitalism, democracy, scientific naturalism, natural laws, and others. Some moderns may float with these currents, while others struggle against them. “But everyone in our modern world inevitably is located in its waters. Regardless of our diverse ways of thinking, we are all in the cultural river, and its currents are familiar to us.”

The ancient world had a very different cultural river flowing through its diversity of cultures (Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Israelite and others). People are people, so certain elements remain the same. “But few of the currents common to the ancient cultures are found in our modern cultural river.”

In the ancient cultural river we would find currents such as community identity, the comprehensive and ubiquitous control of the gods, the role of kingship, divination, the centrality of the temple, the mediatory of images, and the reality of the spirit world and magic. The Israelites sometimes floated on the currents of that cultural river without resistance, and we should be neither surprised nor critical. At other times, however, the revelation of God encouraged them to struggle out of the current into the shallows, or even to swim furiously upstream. Whatever the extent of the Israelites’ interactions with the cultural river, it is important to remember that they were situated in the ancient cultural river, not immersed in the current of our modern cultural river.

In order to be faithful interpreters of the biblical text, we should strive to understand this: “God communicated within the context of their cultural river.” His message, purposes and authority were all framed within the internal logic of Israelite language and culture. In order to be confident of the authority of the message of God communicated through these ancient intermediaries, we must understand the cultural river of these intermediaries.

The communicators we encounter in the Old Testament are not aware of our cultural river—including all of its scientific aspects; they neither address our cultural river nor anticipate it. We cannot therefore assume that any of the constants or currents of our cultural river are addressed in Scripture.

When we read modern ideas into the text, we evade or compromise the authority of the text. Ultimately, we transfer authority to ourselves and to our ideas. “The text cannot mean what it never meant.”  While there may be some convergence with modern science or modern culture, “but the text does not make authoritative claims pertaining to modern science [or culture].” The meaning of the ancient author and the understanding of his audience places limits on what has authority.

We can begin to understand the claims of the text as an ancient document by first paying close attention to what the text says and doesn’t say.  It is too easy to make intrusive assumptions based on our own culture, cognitive environment, traditions, or questions (i.e., our cultural river). It takes a degree of discipline as readers who are outsiders not to assume our modern perspectives and impose them on the text, but often we do not know we are doing it because our own context is so intrinsic to our thinking and the ancient world is an unknown. The best path to recognizing the distinctions between ancient and modern thinking is to begin paying attention to the ancient world.

Two voices speak within a biblical text. The human author is the ‘doorway’ through which we pass into the ‘room’ of God’s meaning and message, according to Longman and Walton. So we are reading an ancient document and should use assumptions appropriate for the ancient world of the particular biblical author we are reading. “We must understand how the ancients thought and what ideas underlay their communication.”

Whether the revelation of God in the Old Testament reflects the kind of thinking that was common throughout the ancient world or it exhorts the Israelites to abandon the standard thinking in the ancient world, the conversation that takes place in the Bible is assuredly situated in the ancient world. So the more we can learn about the ancient world, the more faithful our interpretation will be.

What then of Andy Stanley and his view that “God’s arrangement with Israel should now be eliminated from the equation”? He seems to have imposed a modern perspective onto the Old Testament text. He did this in saying believers should ‘unhitch’ themselves from the worldview, value system, and regulations of the Old Testament because of its perceived violence and legalism. Instead of “unhitching” the Old Testament, he needs to understand what it means within its cultural river, within its ancient world. In order to reach those who have lost their faith or rejected, he should first help them realize they also are evaluating it according to the currents of their modern cultural river. Stanley then needs to acknowledge how he compromised the authority of the biblical text by urging others to take this approach.