In life, politics, religion, arguments, news reporting, and biblical interpretation, context is essential. One of the best examples is trying to understand the Constitution of the United States of America (Constitution below) without taking into account the historical, philosophical, and lived political experiences of those who authored it.
If one knows nothing of the times in which the Constitution was conceived and written, one will misunderstand it. We have all heard of the Boston Tea Party and its slogan, “Taxes without representation.” Slogans are usually weighted with ambiguity. They are meant to agitate, inspire, inform, encourage, and so on and so forth. There were two important issues the slogan, “Taxes without representation,” was meant to address. First was the taxes levied on the colonial people who had no elected members of parliament. Perhaps, if Britain had permitted the election of members of parliament by colonists, the colonists might have been quieted. However, there was a larger issue. The second allusion made in the slogan was that Britain had imposed a burdensome and bureaucratic system of international commerce rooted in mercantilism, which prioritized the mother country's wealth and power. These regulations, primarily enacted through the Navigation Acts, aimed to control trade to benefit Britain, leading to restrictions on colonial trade and ultimately contributing to colonial discontent and the American Revolution. (For more on the commercial restrictions, see University of Wisconsin, Madison, https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/ls261/chapter/ch-2-2-colonial-trade-laws/#:~:text).
We often hear about the political philosophy of British Philosopher John Locke, which was a significant influence. However, we do not hear about the impact of historical figures whom the founding fathers revered for their political insights, like Cicinnatis. Our first president was nicknamed Cincinatis because he was believed to be a model of the virtues, statesmanship, and, especially, the humility of the Roman emperor during the time of the Roman Republic (6th century ACE). One only needs to view photos of Washington, DC to see the reverence our founders had for classical art and architecture. The education of the founding fathers, whether from the north or south, was primarily classical, in which they learned to read and write Latin and Greek and studied classical philosophy and history. And all of them lived through the worst of British oppression and heard the testimonies of religious intolerance in Britain and Europe.
Another element is guns. In the 16th to 18th centuries, rifles and pistols in America were flintlock. That meant a highly complex method of preparing the rifle to fire once. A well-trained and practiced person could load in a matter of seconds. Then there was one shot before reloading. The rifles were heavy and unreliable. Pistols were not very accurate and of little use at a distance. Swords and knives were more useful than rifles and pistols in a fight and for self-defence. Rifles were more useful for hunting, and pistols for threatening an adversary. Gunpowder had to be kept dry. That was not an easy matter.
The American British Colonies were spread through what was mostly rural countryside with cities like Philadelphia (40,000 pop), New York (25,000), and Boston (15,000). By comparison, when I left home for college, the population of St. Johns County was around 30,000. Today, the population is about 335,000, but it swells to around 1 million with tourists and snowbirds in the Fall and Winter. To prosecute a war in colonial America required militias, of which there were many. The militia led by Washington was associated with militias from Georgia to Maine.
There were no phones, telegraphs, or easy routes of communication. Lanterns were used in the famous ride of Paul Revere. Paul Revere was riding to sound the alarm among the people spread out in Eastern Massachusetts. When Washington needed to coordinate with other militias, the messenger ran on foot or rode a horse between his headquarters and those of the various militias. That is why his guerrilla warfare technique worked so well. The British, accustomed to battles on the planes, found moving through the woodlands and mountains of America rugged at best and horrendous at worst. Washington led his militia on a cat-and-mouse campaign with the British. He only occasionally committed to offensive actions against his enemy. When he did, he knew he had the advantage.
Thus, the Second Amendment takes on a different meaning in this context. Today, we have incredible communication systems, advanced spying technology, and powerful weapons, among other things. The common claim that the Second Amendment assures all the rest of the amendments is lame at best. If a movement was begun to overthrow a tyrannical government, all the weapons Americans own would stand no chance against those of the federal government. Peaceful civil disobedience would be the only option. Such mass movements have been far more effective at overthrowing tyrants in the 20th and 21st centuries than armed conflict (See A Force More Powerful, https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/force-powerful-english/). In the U.S., an oppressed minority successfully challenged the Federal and State Governments through peaceful protest. We call it the “Civil Rights Movement”.
As much as context matters in history, it matters in the rest of life. It also matters in biblical studies and history of religions. The Bible (as Protestants construe it) is made up of 66 disparate books. That fact is easy to see, and I know of nobody who thinks they are all the same. There are books of history, poetry, prophecy, narratives, and some theology. They have differing styles, syntax, styles, and symbols. Reading any book without considering its context can lead one astray. For example, to read a Gospel apart from having read and studied the Old Testament and especially the prophets will lead to misunderstanding the Gospel Narrative and the words of Jesus.
Biblical interpreters and preachers often make the mistake of interpreting a text while ignoring the context. Dogma based on proof texts has a long history of bad dogma. The history of our fractured and disparate Christianity in the U.S. is testimony of this fact. John Calvin, the father of Protestant theology, spent considerable time studying Latin, Greek and Hebrew before embarking on writing his vast theological treatises. Philip Melanchthon was an accomplished classical scholar when Martin Luther invited him to teach in Wittenberg and began his work as the architect of what became Lutheran theology. (Apologies! Luther was an incredible leader, but not a great theologian.) Calvin and Melanchthon, like many before and after them, devoted their lives to studying, thinking, and writing theology grounded in their comprehensive study of the Bible. As far as they were able, they sought to understand the Bible within the historical contexts in which the books were written.
As I wrote in my last post, we have gained an incredible amount of knowledge regarding the biblical materials since the Reformation. Much of that knowledge, which is still growing, has to do with broadening our understanding of the historical contexts of the culture in which the Bible was written. We also know more than ever about the contexts in which the theology of the church developed.
What may be called contextual criticism, or trying to understand all the influences that led to biblical materials and to their interpretation by their original readers, is a rewarding study. It leads us to avoid our own prejudices based on the way our lives are reflected in the texts. For example, we live in what is referred to as a liberal democracy made up of a government, laws and institutions to maintain a civil society. Jesus lived in the colonial empire of Rome in Judea and Galilee, where Rome brutally oppressed the population. It was common for the Romans to crucify dissidents along the roads leading between the villages. Jesus could not have missed them. He heard the stories of the times when the Romans burned whole villages for having had dissidents living there.
How does his message differ when considering those facts from our reading it as if he walked the streets of our hometown? There was nothing civil about the Roman Occupying Army. Perhaps, a correct reading of Jesus’s world can best be represented by our thinking of living in a military state where a soldier watches every intersection of our lives; our neighbor may be an agent of the state; our daughters, mothers, and neighbor girls are not safe from rape by the government officials. Our lives are out of our control. Every move we make is recorded by some supercomputer. (See my next post on Artificail Intelligence).
Context matters! I began to understand this at a more micro level while in college as I studied homiletics in a course on preaching. We were assigned to prepare and write a sermon. One student decided to preach on Luke 12:13-21, which begins with a demand to Jesus, who seems to dismiss the demand and the man who made it. Instead, he told the parable of the rich man who decided to build bigger barns to hold his incredible harvest. We all agreed our colleague did an admirable job of parsing the parable, only to be taken aback when the professor asked, “What, may I know, was the context for the parable?”
The student was flummoxed, so the professor asked, “If the parable was told in response to the demand of the man that Jesus tell his brother to divide the wealth justly, then what was the point of the parable? Didn’t Jesus have a response to the man other than, ‘Who am I to judge?’” Our colleague still had no answer. Neither did any of us. Finally, the professor said, “The brothers, like the rich fool, were thinking of their wealth only. Jesus calls us to think of others. Justice is not about me or you; it is about us. That is the universal problem for the privileged. Those of us sitting here in a college classroom are the privileged.”
I had never thought of myself as privileged. However, there I was studying theology in a college in the beautiful mountains of East Tennessee while most of those I had graduated with from high school remained in St. Johns County, most likely working as mechanics, painters, working on maintenance crews of various kinds. With my fellow student in college, I was privileged. So context helps us to find, think about, and process what is true or false.