I just initiated this past Sunday morning in the church office a small group Sunday School study (four week series) on “How to Study the Bible.”  I have at least half a dozen books specifically carrying this title.  So I first picked up a volume written 50 years ago that had been included in the Laymans Theological Library.  In the book, Understanding the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), Fred J. Denbeaux writes on a particular theme of interest to LDS who are sensitive to the ideas of Greek philosophers corrupting Christianity.  I strongly disagree with some of his writings, but tell me what you think of this excerpt in the book:

Ancient Greece and Rome had created extraordinary high religious philosophies.  The most dedicated Christian could not hope to exceed the integrity of Socrates or the moral responsibility of Epictetus.  No one could surpass these pagans in their sense of high and holy living.

 

Paganism appealed to each man on the basis of the intelligence that resided within him.  The intelligence within each man was assumed to be identical with that larger intelligence which was directing the course of the universe.  If a man did not heed this “wisdom,” he wasted his life in confusion and error and he made wrong choices; instead of accentuating his mind he emphasized his flesh.  But if a man heeded the demands of intelligence, he would dedicate his life toward that which was pure and noble.

 

The religion of the Bible, by contrast, differed from this “high” view of paganism in two ways.  In the first place, the Biblical man was not so sure that the fulfillment of life came from going “higher.”  He rather thought that our life on earth was good, that it had to be fulfilled in the here and now.  Thus Jesus says,

 

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10)

 

In the second place, the Biblical man differed from the pagan man in that he could not bring himself to believe that either his intelligence or his spirit was a trustworthy road to God.  Indeed, he found it slightly inconceivable to believe that God was to be found at the end of a thought:

 

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:9)

 

God could only be understood as One who was infinitely more than man, a transcendent being with whom man could never feel entirely familiar, a Holy Stranger with whom man could never be comfortable.

 

So the Hebrew did not attempt to find God through the logic of him mind.  Instead, he declared that God was grounded in a mystery that preceded all thought and understanding.  God could only be understood as the One who had brought a helpless group of slaves into freedom and purpose.  So each Hebrew child was taught, not to think his way up to God, but to remember that “we were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”  (Deut. 6:21.)

 

Christendom has chosen to cast its lots with the faith of that Hebrew child and not with the wisdom of great philosophers.  We are also convinced that God is found, not in the mirror of our thoughts and feelings, but in that strange world of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The pagan felt that God was in continuity with man.  This meant that man could move directly out to the end of his thought and find – God.  Although Christianity has a deep appreciation for thinking, it is convinced that God lives beyond our thought and feeling and sense.

 

The Christian discovers that the strangeness of the exodus event breaks into every intellectual reverie.  The covenant event keeps us from getting lost in ourselves, from becoming intoxicated by the potency of our thoughts.  There is a thus always a tension between thought and the Bible.  Whenever we think, we find the Bible irritating.  Abraham, Moses, and an obscure Semitic people interrupt our love affair with ourselves.  We are drawn to One who is infinitely more than we are, before whom our thoughts are only broken bridges.  We are filled with foreboding.  Although, with the Greek philosophers, we feel intellectually confident before nature and logic, we feel different when we try to “think” our way to God.  Before him we feel fragile and uncertain.  Before him our logic collapses and, with Francis Thompson, we confess:

 

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.  Up vistaed hopes I sped; and shot, precipitated, adown Titantic glooms of chasmed fears, from those strong Feet that followed, followed after.” (71-73).

Of course, what bridged the gulf between the Holy Stranger and finite, fallen, creaturely mankind was the incarnation of Jesus Christ.