🍋Fruit 🙂Agree 🟢Conviction 📝Essay
Importance: 91%
Note
Of Forests and Trees
The Continuity of Scripture, the Law, and Doctrine
The Distracted Watchman
There once was a man who was the watchmen of a small town. This town sat on the edge of a vast woods and was situated on the brow of a hill. It rose above the woods and plains offering a view of all the surrounding land. Built into the side of the hill, and surrounding the town, was a strong stone wall. The man’s job, every day, was to sit on the highest section of the wall and look for enemies, wild animals, or anything that might endanger the town. Next to him sat a big bronze bell to ring if ever he should see any danger.
One day this man was given a wonderful gift: a beautiful and expertly crafted telescope. Instantly his sight doubled! No longer did he stand on the wall squinting his eyes to make out the difference between a rustling bush or a wolf. With the flick of his wrist, the telescope brought things into tight focus. The watchman was delighted! Quickly the telescope became indispensable. Wherever he went - his telescope was near at hand.
Some days later, the watchman was dutifully guarding his town. The smallest rustle or creak met with an instant inspection. By now the movement of raising and focusing his telescope had become second nature. It resembled the quick draw of a marksman. Nothing could make it past him, or so he thought, now that he had the power of focus.
But the worst enemies are not the ones that approach from a distance…
In his hast to inspect a disturbance deep within the woods, the watchman forgot where he stood on the wall. With an eye glued to the telescope, he took a step into the open air beyond the wall. His body froze as his foot failed to find a solid surface. By the time he looked up from his telescope, he couldn’t catch himself - he was already over the edge.
Because the funny thing about a narrow focus is that it sometimes leads us astray…
The Fragment Trap
We live in a world with focused yet fragmentary information all around us. From road signs to social media posts, photos, websites, television, sticky notes, spreadsheets, and calendars… All of us move from day to day producing and consuming all these bits of information for many different reasons and purposes. Our eyes are all glued to many different “telescopes” bouncing from one small picture to the next. There is little doubt we live deeply embedded within the information age. It can quickly become overwhelming to try and piece together this menagerie of disparate voices, facts, ideas, and content.
However, in a world with so much information floating around us, it is easy to forget that this is not the way Scripture presents itself. While the books of the Bible were written by many different authors over a huge span of time, every sentence within Scripture works together to paint a full picture of the world and where we as humans fit in it. Bible verses are not solitary soundbites or wall hangings. Nor are Bible stories only small vignettes. Rather, the Bible tells a unified story about a God who is active in creating and restoring His creation. In addition to this, Laws within Scripture are not isolated rules or checkboxes meant to apply to a singular situation, but fit together into a comprehensive description of justice. Doctrines (the formal way of describing things we believe) are also more than seemingly arbitrary maxims. They too are meant to work together to clearly state important aspects of what we believe as taught by Scripture.
Yet it is hard to escape the daily training of our soundbite culture. Our tools abound for a fragmentary laser focus. A blurb here or a comment there pass by us like a rushing stream. When we do stop, we tend toward analyzing the smallest things. It is far easier to like, repeat, or become upset by short sayings than to take time to understand the larger whole. But in such unyielding small scale focus, we run the same danger as the distracted watchman. In our hast to make the smaller point, we can miss the bigger picture entirely.
The Tree of Truth
Psalm 85:11 (CSB)
Truth will spring up from the earth, and righteousness will look down from heaven.
In order to break past this trap, we need to step back and look at the proverbial forest rather than only the trees we are used to seeing. Only then can the beauty, continuity, and harmony of ALL Scripture begin to surface. Out of Scripture arises a wonderful kind of order, a hierarchy, by which things naturally fall into place. Yet, may philosophers, politicians, and even theologians have invested immense effort to construct their own structure within which they force dismembered Biblical sayings or vaguely Christian morals. This is not the example of the prophets, apostles, or even Jesus Himself. In contrast, these hero’s of the faith taught and interacted with Biblical truth in consistent ways. Ways that we would be wise to pursue.
A helpful visualization for their approach is to imagine your favorite kind of tree. A strong trunk supports the large sweeping branches. The branches fan out to support flowers, leaves, and fruit. The natural movement up and out can be easily expressed with your hands. In the same way, accurate handling of Scripture, Biblical Laws, and Doctrine operate with the same principle.
Telling the Story
To begin applying this principle, we should start with Scripture itself. Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, Joshua before the whole assembly of the Israelites, Stephen as He was being stoned to death, the 11th Chapter of Hebrews and Psalms 78, 105, 106, 135, and 136, all have something in common - they retell the whole story of Scripture for a particular purpose.
Each retelling varies in length and specificity. For example, Joshua read the whole book of the law down to the last word. While Psalm 135 gets the job done in about three hundred words. An even simpler retelling of the Biblical story could go like this:
- Creation → Fall → Redemption → Restoration
Regardless of the particular level of description, we see the common principle emerge. Just like the image of the tree growing and branching out. There is a common flow and order pointing us toward something, or more properly, toward someone. Jesus took the two disciples on the Emmaus road through this same kind of retelling:
Luke 24:27
Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
What this means practically is that no part of Scripture stands by itself. Just like Jesus retold the story of Scripture to open His disciples’ eyes to the reality of His resurrection, we too are tasked with constantly retelling the story of Scripture to interpret our lives and the world around us. In this way, the structure and order of Scripture can begin to influence us, rather than the many alternatives from the world around us.
The Foundation of Two
This principle holds true for our interaction with the Laws of Scripture as well. Reading laws about skin diseases, sacrifices, and even clothing can seem pointless unless they fit into a larger understanding of Justice. Every little law within the pages of Scripture are in the context of more general laws beneath them. Like the growing tree, an individual law will never make sense unless it has been placed within the flow of the full picture. Jesus clearly laid out the foundation of two core laws:
Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
In His sermon on the mount, Jesus continues to walk through law after law showing their connection with the heart of God to bring justice and mercy to His people. Paul also talks about love being the driving force behind the law (Romans 13:7-9). Likewise, the ten commandments expand on these two foundational laws to make things a bit more specific. In Luther’s small catechism, Luther naturally continues expanding and making connections between the literal words of the ten commandments and the loving picture they point toward. For example,
Small Catechism, Fifth Commandment
You shall not murder. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.
Every commandment, law, or instruction should always connect and flow together. If a law is being used as a loophole to not love, or not care, then it has been taken out of it’s proper context. Only when we keep them together can they work in unison to help us see what it really means to love God and one another.
What We Believe
Finally, theology and doctrine, when rightly understood, functions with this same exact principle. Growing from the rich ground of Scripture, doctrinal expressions allow us to restate what we believe in clear and concise terms. Here is a brief outline of how this all fits together:
- Scripture is God’s word to us and our foundation.
- The Creeds are big picture summaries of Scripture. A lot like retelling the story of scripture described above, but focused on what we believe about God.
- The Small Catechism choses key parts of Scripture to help us see the big picture of what is right and wrong, how to pray, how we are forgiven, and how we participate in God’s people.
- The rest of the book of Concord holds a collection of more in depth discussions about important aspects of Scripture’s teachings.
- On top of all of that, are many other helpful books on theology or Christian living that can help us think about and interact with the truths of Scripture.
All of these should build off of, and work together, to help us think about what we believe from different angles and levels of specificity. Yet whether we are reading the short lines of a creed, or diving into the many pages of a book, doctrine and theology help to slow us down and look a little deeper at the words of Scripture. They help highlight Scripture’s natural structure and order pointing out ways it comes into our lives.
Maybe if the watchman had heard about the tree growing from the pages of Scripture, he would have put down his telescope to see things from a broader perspective. All of us are tempted toward a narrow focus. What telescopes do you need to put down before you step off the wall?