renaissance and relevance 2b: the time-bound story

One of the ‘problems’ with creating a systematic theology is the cultural gap between our world and the worlds of the texts. How do I get from an ancient text to a 21st Century theology? Can a time-bound text be timeless, i.e. speak to all people, everywhere, in every generation?

time-bound and timeless?
One of the consequences of studying texts in their context is the impression you get of how specific they are, how directed they are to the people the author wanted to communicate to then. (A modern example would be, the phrase “big brother.” Before George Orwell’s book 1984, I assume people would have taken it literally. Afterwards, it meant something like “the non-liberal government system.” Nowadays “Big Brother” is a liberal TV Producer with a friendly cheeky character who only pretends to be strict.)

If a text is very specific, even “time-bound” then the text is in a sense dependent upon the surrounding culture. For example: ‘sacrifice’ only has symbolic worth in a culture which at least understands the concept in some primitive way. The “history-of-religions” school jumped on this and showed how texts are bound up in their culture and proposed that each text can be seen as a snapshot of the evolution of a religion. This does seem to make the concept of revelation less “special”, less “from God”, because the texts are so "limited" to the culture - yes, so “human.”

So does the dependence of a text upon its surrounding human culture exclude the possibility of talking about God revealing himself through a text, even it being in some sense “God-breathed”?

One of the interesting points to be made here is that if God is to reveal himself in any personal way (i.e. communicate), then his revelation of himself has to be specific and time-bound. If he didn’t reveal himself in a particular time and place with a particular language in a particular culture then he would not be communicating at all.

Revelation must then, by its very nature, be specific and time-bound. So I've not answered my question: "Can a time-bound text be timeless revelation?" However, I have suggested that revelation has to be time-bound, unless we are talking about a sort of ambiguous general revelation in nature.

By all accounts, the New Testament is not about a vague general revelation, but about God's special revelation - about Jesus Christ - the image of the invisible God. The claim is: Generally, we don't know God, but God has made himself specifically known in Jesus Christ.

Someone might reject this claim because they reject the possibility of God being a living God, who might act and speak at all. But that is merely a dead dusty deism - God can't challenge everything I've ever known. As I've alread emphasised, my theology can only be a theology of the living God.

So having conceded the possibility of a speaking, acting God, rejecting Scripture as revelation merely because it has a humble, lowly and time-bound form means rejecting the possibility of the living God communicating at all with humble, lowly, time-bound creatures.