The Malleability of Old Testament Narratives

Last week I wrote about a sermon I heard on audio from the Old Testament, one influenced by Keswick theology.  That message also reminded me of many I have heard from the Old Testament through the years that left me scratching my head. "Where did he get that?" I ask.  "I don't see that in the text."  "The cloud Elijah saw was the size of a man's fist.  A man's fist has five fingers.  The number five represents such and such, so the cloud is this."  All of that, versus, "The cloud was very small."

What doctrine and practice does someone cull from Old Testament narratives?  By narratives, I'm talking about the stories in the Old Testament.   A large percentage stories make up Genesis, some in Exodus, a little in the rest of the Pentateuch, gigantic amounts in the historical books, and some in the prophets.  A big chunk of the Old Testament is narrative.

When you read an Old Testament narrative, it isn't hard to figure out what is happening.  The actual story is easy to understand.   People will largely agree on what the narratives mean.  However, a lot of divergence, I've noticed, comes in the message people take from those narratives or how they apply.

Reading some deeper meaning into a narrative, making facets of the story mean something in a symbolic or figurative way, when figurative language isn't being used, allows for unlimited possibilities to spin out of a passage.  The Old Testament narratives beccome quite malleable in the hands of such allegorical interpretation -- gumby-like.  Out goes the point of the narrative and in comes convenient and desired personal opinion.

What occurs, when someone takes an Old Testament story into his own hands to form it into a unique, hidden or mysterious meaning, is that the clear impression that the preacher possesses a power above the listeners.  They can't ascertain that same meaning, because they just don't see it there.  Apparently he has tapped into an elevated condition of Holy Spirit involvement not readily or ordinarily available to the average Christian.  In Keswick thinking, he arrived at this superior spiritual state through above average desire.  He wanted it more and he paid the price.  Now he can do these things unwilling others cannot.  I like to say that he's breathing a kind of pure spiritual air.

The listeners must be conditioned to accept that such experiences occur.  Their preacher has advanced abilities, not because of study or preparation or application of the ordinary means of grammar and syntax, but because God tells him things -- not out loud, but in the "still small voice."  The same impressions also inform to build a new auditorium.  Part of why he can do this is because he's been "called," which was to him another subjective ecstatic-like experience.

Because scripture is being referenced, the sermon arrives with divine authority.  God gave him this message, even as he and others may have prayed that "God would give him the words to say."  Those applications are as good as God's Word because they came from a testimony of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever he is saying must be true because it is attached to scripture and declared as if it is in the Bible.  If the listener disobeys the preaching, he's as good as disobeying God.

IF someone can't treat the Old Testament narratives in the Keswick style, what's he supposed to do?  It seems that the preacher is limited in what he might preach. When Joshua's sun stands still, that testifies of God's faithfulness to His covenant with His people.  The world is not a closed system without supernatural, divine intervention. God works according to His will for certain eras using miracles as a confirmation of His Word.  This means, however, is not normative.  One should not expect the sun to stand still for himself.  No doubt God has power to remove mountains, but He functions for most of time according to the ordinary means of His providence.  This is not a lesser exhibition of God's work.  It brings Him equal glory to any sign or wonder performed in an age of miracles.

An important mindset for individual Old Testament narratives is to see them within the overarching biblical metanarrative, the whole story of the Bible, from creation to fall to redemption to consummation.  Also crucial are God's covenants:  Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New.  Preaching must report what God says and only what He says.  We confine ourselves to only what is in the text.  We should not make doctrinal and practical conclusions not found in the passage.

The original authors of Keswick were Protestants, who were greatly influenced by spiritualized teaching, parallel to the allegorization of their covenant theology. Adding the dimension of an extra-scriptural work of the Holy Spirit expanded the possibilities of brand new meanings and new applications.  Roman Catholicism read in amillennialism that was systematized by the Protestants, justifying their state church.  Keswick became that approach on steroids.

Unaffiliated Baptists, who take up the Protestant tradition of the Keswicks, do not embrace their heritage.