Perpetual Wrestling

There is a deep theological point underneath all this. I believe, as an a priori, that
he church will never get to the point where it has solved all the exegetical
questions, understood all the theology of the New Testament, so that subsequent
generations can sit back and look it up and not have to think for themselves. I have
come to believe that God has so ordered things that each generation will have to
wrestle afresh not just with a few details on the side but with the large questions of
Jesus and the kingdom, of Paul and the faithfulness of God, of John’s view of God
and the world, of Revelation’s vision of the new Jerusalem coming down from
heaven. If the church as a whole is not doing this, it is not growing into the wisdom
it will need for its many-sided mission. And that means that though most church
members will not give themselves professionally to the tasks of scholarship, they
need to be part of a fellowship in which such tasks are being energetically pursued
and the resultant challenges and dialogue given proper space and weight. This means
– and I don’t think either the church or Christian scholars often reflect properly on
this – that the task of biblical scholarship is a necessary part of the church’s life in
every generation. It isn’t just that, as an unfortunate accident, we don’t quite
understand the Bible yet as well as we should, but perhaps another few monographs
and commentaries will do the trick. It is, rather, that each generation needs to
struggle with the big questions as well as the small ones as part of its own healthy
witness and worship.