by Frank Viola
This article exposes the traditional way that most Christians - Protestant,
evangelical, post-evangelical, and charismatic - have been taught to read,
study, and use the New Testament. It then offers a brand new
approach.
“In handling the
subject of ministry in the New Testament it is essential to remember the order
in which the books of the New Testament were written. If we assume, as
the order in which the books of the New Testament are now presented would lead
us to assume, that the Gospels were written first, and then Acts and then the
letters of Paul, beginning with Romans and ending with the Pastoral Epistles to
Timothy to Titus and the Letter to Philemon, we shall never be able to
understand the development of the institutions and the thought of the early
church. ”- Richard
Hanson
Why is it that we
Christians can divide up into thousands of different sects and all claim that
we are following the Word of God?How is it that many of us can blithely embrace
church practices and theological beliefs that are not rooted in Scriptural
principle, yet read them back into the New Testament?
I submit that the
problem is with our approach to the New Testament.
The approach most
commonly used among modern Christians when studying the Bible is called “proof
texting.” The origin of proof texting goes back to the late 1590’s.
A group of men called Protestant Scholastics took the teachings of the
Reformers and systematized them according to the rules of Aristotelian logic.
The Protestant
Scholastics held that not only is the Scripture the Word of God, but every part
of it is the Word of God in and of itself – irrespective of context. This
set the stage for the idea that if we lift a verse out of the Bible, it is true
in its own right and can be used to prove a doctrine or a practice.
When John Nelson
Darby emerged in the mid 1800s, he built a theology based on this
approach. Darby raised proof texting to an art form. In fact, it
was Darby who gave fundamentalist and evangelical Christians a good deal of
their presently accepted teachings. All of them are built on the proof
texting method. Proof texting, then, became the way that we modern
Christians approach the Bible. It is taught in every
As a result, we
Christians rarely, if ever, get to see the NT as a whole. Rather, we are
served up a dish of fragmented thoughts that are drawn together by means of
fallen human logic. The fruit of this approach is that we have strayed
far afield from the practice of the NT church. Yet we still believe we
are being Biblical. Allow me to illustrate the problem with a fictitious
story.
Meet
Marvin Snurdly
Marvin Snurdly is a
world renowned marital counselor. In his 20-year career as a marriage
therapist, Marvin has counseled thousands of troubled marriages. He has
an Internet presence. Each day hundreds of couples write letters to
Marvin about their marital sob stories. The letters come from all over
the globe. And Marvin answers them all.
A hundred years pass,
and Marvin Snurdly is resting peacefully in his grave. He has a great,
great grandson named Fielding Melish. Fielding decides to recover the
lost letters of his great, great grandfather, Marvin Snurdly. But Fielding
can only find 13 of Marvin’s letters. Out of the thousands of letters
that Marvin wrote in his lifetime, only 13 have survived! Nine of them
were written to couples in marital crisis. Four of them were written to
individual spouses.
These letters were
all written within a 20-year time frame: From 1980 to 2000. Fielding
Melish plans to compile these letters into a volume. But there is
something interesting about the way Marvin wrote his letters that makes
Fielding’s task somewhat difficult.
First, Marvin had an
annoying habit of never dating his letters. No days, months, or years
appear on any of the 13 letters. Second, the letters only portray half
the conversation. The initial letters written to Marvin that provoked his
responses no longer exist. Consequently, the only way to understand the
backdrop of one of Marvin’s letters is by reconstructing the marital situation
from Marvin’s response.
Each letter was
written at a different time, to people in a different culture, dealing with a
different problem. For example, in 1985, Marvin wrote a letter to Paul
and Sally from
Take note: 20 years –
13 letters – all written to different people at
different times in different cultures – all experiencing different
problems.
It is Fielding
Melish’s desire to put these 13 letters in chronological order. But
without the dates, he cannot do this. So Fielding puts them in the order
of descending length. That is, he takes the longest letter that Marvin
wrote and puts it first. He puts Marvin’s second longest letter after
that. He takes the third longest and puts it third. The compilation
ends with the shortest letter that Marvin penned. 13 letters are
arranged, not chronologically, but by their length.
The volume hits the presses
and becomes an overnight best seller. People are buying it by the truck
loads.
100 years pass and
The Collected Works of Marvin Snurdly compiled by Fielding Melish stands the
test of time. The work is still very popular. Another 100 years
pass, and this volume is being used copiously throughout the Western
World. (Marvin has been resting in his grave for 300 years now.)
The book is
translated into dozens of languages. Marriage counselors are quoting it
left and right. Universities are employing it in their sociology
classes. It is so widely used that someone gets a bright idea on how to
make the volume easier to quote and handle.
What is that bright
idea? It is to divide Marvin’s letters into chapters and numbered
sentences (we call them verses). So chapters and verses are born in the
Collected Works of Marvin Snurdly.
But
by adding chapter-and-verse to these once living letters, something changes
that goes unnoticed.
The letters lose their personal touch. Instead, they take on the texture
of a manual.
Different
sociologists begin writing books about marriage and the family. Their main source? The Collected
Works of Marvin Snurdly. Pick up any book in the 24th century on
the subject of marriage, and you will find the author quoting chapters and
verses from Marvin’s letters.
It usually looks like
this: In making a particular point, an author will quote a verse from Marvin’s
letter written to Paul and Sally. The author will then lift another verse
from the letter written to Jethro and Matilda. He will extract another
verse from another letter. Then he will sew these three verses together
upon which he will build his particular marital philosophy.
Virtually every
sociologist and marital therapist that authors a book on marriage does the same
thing. Yet the irony is here. Each of these authors constantly
contradicts the others, even though they are all using the same source!
But that is not
all. Not only have Marvin’s letters been turned into cold prose when they
were originally living, breathing epistles to real people in real places.
But they have devolved into a weapon in the hands of agenda-driven men.
Not a few authors on marriage begin employing isolated proof texts from
Marvin’s work to hammer away at those who disagree with their marital
philosophy.
How can they do
this? How is this being done? How are all of these sociologists
contradicting each other when they are using the exact same source? It is
because the letters have been lifted out of their historical context.
Each letter has been plucked from its chronological sequence and taken out of
its real life setting.
Put another way, the
letters of Marvin Snurdly have been transformed into a series of isolated,
disjointed, fragmented sentences – free for anyone to lift one sentence from
one letter, another sentence from another letter, paste them together to create
the marital philosophy of their choice.
An amazing story is
it not? Well here is the punch line. Whether you realize it or not,
I have just described your NT!
The Order
of Paul’s Letters
Your NT is made up
mostly of Paul’s letters. Paul of Tarsus wrote two thirds of it. He
penned 13 letters in a 20-year time span. Nine letters were written to
churches in different cultures, at different times, experiencing different
problems. Four letters were written to individual Christians. The
individuals who received those letters were also dealing with different issues
at different times.
Take note: 20
years – 13 letters – all written to
different churches at different times in different cultures – all experiencing
different problems.
In the early second
century, someone took the letters of Paul and compiled them into a
volume. The technical term for this volume is “canon.” Scholars
refer to this compiled volume as “the Pauline canon.” It is essentially
your NT with a few letters added afterwards, the four Gospels and Acts placed
at the front, and Revelation tacked on the end.
At the time, no one
knew when Paul’s letters were written. Even if they did, it would not
have mattered. There was no precedent for alphabetical or chronological
ordering. The first-century Greco-Roman world ordered its literature
according to decreasing length.
Look at how your NT
is arranged. What do you find? Paul’s longest letter appears
first. It is Romans. 1 Corinthians is the second longest letter,
hence the reason why it follows Romans. 2 Corinthians is the third
longest letter. Your NT follows this pattern until you come to that tiny
little book called Philemon.
Here is the present
order as it appears in your NT. The books are arranged according to
descending length:
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon
What, then, is the
proper chronological order of these letters? According to the best
available scholarship, here is the order in which they were written:
Galatians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Romans
Colossians
Philemon
Ephesians
Philippians
1 Timothy
Titus
2 Timothy
The
Addition of Chapters and Verses
In the year 1227, a
professor at the
According to
Stephanus’ son, the verse divisions that his father created do not do service
to the sense of the text. Stephanus did not use any consistent
method. While riding on horseback from to
So verses were born
in the pages of holy writ in the year 1551. And since that time God’s
people have approached the NT with scissors and glue, cutting-and-pasting
isolated, disjointed sentences from different letters, lifting them out of
their real-life setting and lashing them together to build floatable
doctrines. Then calling it “the Word of God.”
This half-baked
approach still lives in our seminaries, Bible colleges, churches, Bible
studies, and (tragically) our house churches today. Most Christians are
completely out of touch with the social and historical events that lay behind
each of the NT letters. Instead, they have turned the NT into a manual
that can be wielded to prove any point. Chopping the Bible up into
fragments makes this relatively easy to pull off.
How We
Approach the NT
We Christians have
been taught to approach the Bible in one of seven ways. See how many you
can tick off with a pencil that apply to you:
You look for verses
that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either
highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator
door.
You look for verses
that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and
thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want. (If you are part of the
“name-it-claim-it,” “blab-it-grab-it” movement, you are masterful at doing
this.)
You look for verses
that tell you what God commands you to do.
You look for verses
that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour
of temptation.
You look for verses
that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your
theological sparring partner into Biblical ribbons. (Because of the
proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere
citation of some random, de-contextualized verse of Scripture ends all
discussion on virtually all subjects.)
You look for verses
in the Bible to control and/or correct others.
If you are a
preacher, you look for verses that “preach” well for next Sunday morning’s
sermon. (This is an on-going addiction for preachers. It is so
ingrained that many of them are incapable of reading their Bibles in any way
other than to hunt for sermon material.)
Now look at this list
again. Did you find yourself there? Notice how each of these
approaches is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual
Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the
NT was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to
individuals.
But that is not
all. Each of these approaches is built on isolated proof-texting.
They treat the NT like a manual and blind us to its real message. It is
no wonder that we can approvingly nod our heads at paid pastors, the Sunday
morning order of worship, sermons, church buildings, religious costumes,
choirs, worship teams, seminaries, and a passive priesthood – all without
wincing.
We have been taught
to approach the Bible like a jigsaw puzzle. For most of us, we have never
been told the entire story that lies behind the letters that Paul, Peter,
James, John, and Jude wrote. We have been taught chapters and verses, not
the historical context.
Needed: A
New Approach to the New Testament
What is needed is a
brand new approach to the New Testament. An approach not based in the New
Testament letters as they are arranged in our Bible. But an approach that
is based in “the story” … which blends together Acts and the Epistles in
chronological order.
If every Christian,
pastors and Bible teachers included, would obtain a panoramic view of the
first-century church in its chronological and socio-historical setting, it
would revolutionize the Christian landscape today. The following are four
specific ways in which this revolution could take place in your own life.
First, understanding
the story of the NT church will give you a whole new understanding of each NT
letter – an understanding that is rich, accurate, and exciting. You will
be ushered into the living, breathing atmosphere of the first century.
You will taste what went on in the writers’ hearts when they penned their
letters. The circumstances they addressed will be made plain. The
people to whom they wrote will come to life.
No longer will you
see the Epistles as sterile, complicated reads. Instead, they will turn
into living, breathing voices that are part of a living, breathing story.
The result? You will grasp the NT like never
before! NT scholar F. F. Bruce once
made the statement that reading the letters of Paul is like hearing one side of
a telephone conversation. This book reconstructs –“the other side.”
Second, understanding
the story will help you see “the big picture” that undergirds the events that
followed the birth of the church and its subsequent growth. This “big
picture” has at its center an unbroken pattern of God’s working. And this
pattern reflects God’s ultimate goal – which is to have a community on this
earth that expresses His nature in a visible way. This theme of a God-ordained
community constitutes a unifying thread that runs throughout the entire Bible
from Genesis to Revelation. Therefore, reading this book will not only
help you to better understand your NT, it will also give you a fresh look at
God’s eternal purpose – that which is closest to His heart.
Third, understanding
the story of the NT church will supply you with the proper historical context
which will enable you to accurately apply Scripture to your own life.
Christians routinely take verses out of context and misapply them to their
daily living. Seeing the Scripture in its proper historical context will
safeguard you from making this all-too common mistake.
Fourth, understanding
the story will forever deliver you from the “cut-and-paste” approach to Bible
study that dominates evangelical thinking today. What is the
“cut-and-paste” approach to Bible study? It is the common practice of
coming to the NT with scissors and glue, clipping and then pasting disjointed
sentences (verses) together from Books that were written decades apart.
This “cut-and-paste”
approach has spawned all sorts of spiritual hazards. One
of them being the popular practice of lashing verses together to build
floatable doctrines. Another is that of “proof-texting” to win
theological arguments. (A vast majority of Western Christianity behaves
as if the mere citation of some random and de-contextualized verse ends all
discussion on virtually all subjects.)
The Medievals called
this “cut-and-paste” method “a string-of-pearls. “You take one text, find
some remote metaphorical connection with another text, and voilà, an ironclad
doctrine is born! But this is a pathetic approach to understanding the
Bible. While it is great for reading one’s own biases into the text, it
is horrible for understanding the intent of the biblical authors.
It has been rightly
said that a person can prove anything by taking Bible verses out of
context. Let me demonstrate how one can “biblically” prove that it is
God’s will for believers to commit suicide. All you have to do is lift
two verses out of their historical setting and paste them together:
“And
he [Judas] went and hanged himself” (Matthew
27:5). “Then said Jesus –‘Go, and do thou
likewise’ ” (Luke
10:37 b).
While this is an
outrageous example of the “cut-and-paste” approach, it makes a profound
point. Without understanding the historical context of the NT, Christians
have managed to build doctrines and invent practices that have fragmented the
Body of Christ into thousands of denominations. Understanding the
sequence of each NT Book and the socio-historical setting that undergirds them
is one remedy for this problem. [1]
I have stated four
reasons why rediscovering the NT story is a worthwhile endeavor. But
there is one more reason. There is a very good chance that it will
revolutionize your Christian life and your relationship with your Lord!
[1]This article has
been excerpted from Frank Viola’s book Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church
Practices and The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.