The Text(s) of Scripture: Living and Active

This is the first post in the “Text(s) of Scripture” series in conjunction with Dave at Through A Glass Darkly.

Our first text is Hebrews 4:12:  “For the word of God is living
and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to
dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart.”

Reflections

Dave: What does it mean for a text to be “living and active?” I’m
reminded of current debates in the United States about whether our
Constitution is a “living” document. There is lots of unfortunate
political baggage around this concept, but it seems obvious to me that
the Constitution is a living document, whatever approach one takes to
its interpretation. The Constitution must continually be applied to
circumstances the framers never could have anticipated, such as the
scope of free speech rights on the Internet. And the Constitution
continually judges our polity and praxis, forcing us to consider again
and again whether “we the people” are living up to our formative
ideals. There is a hermeneutical spiral in the interpretation and
application of the Constitution, as we move from the original context
to the contemporary challenges and back again.

The Bible is a sort of constitution for the Church, and it is
“living and active” in a manner similar to the U.S. Constitution. The
community governed by the Biblical constitution – the Church – must
continually apply the principles reflected in the text to new
circumstances the human writers could never have imagined. How do we
respond to ethical challenges posed by new technologies, such as in
vitro fertilization? What kind of community should we become in a
global village networked on a scale inconceivable in the first century?
And the Biblical constitution continually judges the polity and praxis
of the Church, cutting through our cultural baggage and hypocrisy and
asking whether we truly are loving God and neighbor fully.

Yet the Bible is “living and active” in ways that cannot be claimed
for a legal text like the Constitution because this “word” is uniquely
“of God.” The God who speaks this “word” is the triune God, who became
incarnate in the Son and who speaks in and to the Church in the Spirit.
The “text” of the “logos ton Theou” is not merely a set of signs that
signify discrete legal-regulative principles in the manner of a
Constitution. It is rather the signification of the presence of the
triune God who continually transforms the community of faith.

Thom: There is a sense here that the author is intentionally linking
the “word of God” or gospel to Creation. The Sabbath rest is a
signifier of judgment or completion, for only when Creation was good
and complete did God rest. The actional quality of the “word of God” is
the sense that it moves beyond the text to stir hearts to adhere to the
gospel message. Here, the gospel or “word of God” finds its truest
sense as the way that a person is judged once he or she has completed
the task at hand: to live a life based on the “word of God.” I do not
take “word of God” to be inclusive of Scripture here, but instead to be
the fullness of God’s prophetic action in the world, whether through
the words of Scripture, the words of his servants, prophets, or kings
(especially the true King, Christ).

The statement that follows our
quote is “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we
must give account. Thus, the “word of God” is substance to which we
must give account.

There are troubling and awesome prospects in this:
that we cannot enter the rest of God unless we live the living Word.
This is not a justification by works (alone), for the author clarifies
in the previous section “for we also have had the gospel preached to
us, just as those who have fallen short of it did; but the message they
heard was of no value to them, because those who heard it did not
combine it with faith. Now we who have believed entered that rest.” The
intersection of Word and Creation is evident in that Christ, the first
fruits of the new creation, enables the faithful to enter into a
Sabbath rest.

The Word of God, the voice that called Creation into
existence has been completing the work of rest since the creation of
the world. Therefore, the “word of God” is thus a prophetic message,
one of prayer, Scripture, prophecy, judgment, and action, that calls
people out of the patterns of this world and into the Sabbath rest of
God.

Exegetical note: It is difficult from the context to determine what “ho logos ton theou,”
“the word of God,” means in this context. The immediate context seems
to refer to the gospel, and warns that the gospel must be received in
faith for the promise of a “Sabbath rest” to become effective for the
hearer. Some commentators therefore suggest “the word of God” here
refers specifically to the gospel; others identify it with Christ, the
“Logos” of John 1, though this is not a typical Pauline usage; and
still others identify it with revelation generally, including all of
the scriptures.