Why do you study Scripture as literature?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Problems of Becoming and Being a King’ (1990).

You ask, what on earth am I doing with all this supposed literary stuff? Isn't this a strange way of treating holy Scripture?

Seeing verses in their context

I don't know whether it is strange or not, but I would like to say in the first instance that I am doing very little different from what I suspect most do in the serious study of an epistle, like for instance the Epistle to the Romans. It is the fact that some (and certainly I) will from time to time take an individual verse of Scripture, such as John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world . . .' and we shall preach it just as a verse, as it stands, completely out of its context. For the purposes of our sermon it wouldn't make any difference whether the verse was written in Genesis, Leviticus, Thessalonians, the Revelation, or the Gospel of John; it would still be valid in its own right. And I suspect millions of preachers have done so with John 3:16. They have been right in doing so, of course, and God has blessed their sermons immensely. I say nothing against it. On the other hand, if you would see the glory of John 3:16 fully, one of the things you should do is to read it in its context, and see what it is doing within its context.

A logical flow of thought

As I say, you would consider the context when studying a serious epistle like the Epistle to the Romans. If I were to ask you what is the function of chapters 6, 7 and 8 in Romans, I suspect I should meet an immediate reply: 'The function of those chapters is to announce and describe to us God's position for making us holy. It is about sanctification.'

But if I should then say, 'Why are chapters 6, 7, and 8 not at the very front of the book? Is sanctification not the need of the hour? Why does he bother with all that stuff at the beginning? Why doesn't he get straight to the practical things? These tiresome preachers do go around the earth before getting to the main thing.'

Well, wait a minute, if you want to preach Romans 6, 7 and 8 on sanctification as the front part of your message, go ahead and do it. There's no sin in doing it. It might be appropriate. But within the Epistle to the Romans you have a sustained, logical setting forth of the Christian gospel. And therefore chapters 6, 7 and 8 stand where they do, and not elsewhere, because of what their function is, and that function is best exercised there. The early chapters are devoted to showing that all are sinners and stand under the wrath of God. The second half of chapter 3, chapter 4 and the first half of chapter 5 are devoted to saying how we can be delivered from the wrath of God, that is, in a word, how we can be justified. And then come chapters 6, 7 and 8 showing how the justified can also then be sanctified. They are in that order because it is a logical order. They are in that order because we need first to be justified—the action of a moment, before we are fit to go on to the question of sanctification. They are in a logical order.

You would not be upset with me, or think I was being strange (or at least not more strange than usual), if I suggested to you, as I have done, that chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Romans are not a collection of isolated verses. The verses all contribute to this overall theme that is our sanctification, and you will happily compare those chapters with the preceding chapters. The verses in the second half of chapter 3, chapter 4 and the first half of chapter 5 are not isolated verses either. Those verses stand together in a logical flow of thought, serving the function of explaining on what terms we are justified.

Seeing stories in their context

If then we rightly say that the verses in Romans in any one place are best and fully understood if we first look at them in their context, and then ask ourselves, 'What function does that major context fulfil, and how does the individual verse help that context to fulfil its function?', then there should surely be nothing extraordinary if someone suggests that the stories in an historical book, interesting as they are as individual stories, do not however finally stand merely as isolated stories. The stories are very often arranged as part of a larger context, and each story contributes its part to the major theme, or themes, with which that context is concerned. And therefore if we would come at the true exegesis and then exposition and finally application of any one story, we shall be on safer ground if, first of all we ask, 'Now where does this story come, and in what context, and what is the major theme running through the stories that stand side by side in that context?'

That is all I'm doing, actually, which is nothing profound, is it? At least, I am attempting to do it.

The historian's use of formal summaries

You say, 'But wait a minute, what evidence have you got for this claim that stories are not meant to stand as isolated stories, and that there are these contexts, or what you call movements of thought? What evidence is there?'

Allow me to point to 1 Samuel, because it is of practical importance. There are indications from the historian himself how he is dividing up his narrative. Notice at the end of chapter 7 the matter of the formal summary. You come to the very great climax of a tremendous victory over the Philistines, after the earlier horrible defeat. Now you come to the great climax and the glorious triumph over the Philistines, the erection of the stele, the stone, in memory of the occasion. It was called Ebenezer: the stone of help, 'hitherto has the Lord helped us'. It is a glorious climax. And then, as we saw, the historian enters three verses of general formal summary. It is not another story but a simple summary, giving you a summary of Samuel's life and ministry (1 Samuel 7:15–17). We see the same thing after we reached that terrible climax in chapter 15 when Saul was finally rejected; then there is a formal summary (1 Samuel 15:34–35). So this is one of the devices a historian will use to indicate how he himself groups his stories into groups.

Identifying major and minor climaxes

You say, 'All right, but what's all this you talked about minor and major climaxes? Isn't that rather odd?'

Well, I don't think it is, in particular. Do you? Have you never had the experience of sitting by the fireside or the radiator, or wherever you sit, and your friend starts to say, 'Oh let me tell you this story'? And he says, 'I was here and there, and then the plane took off, and I said something to this and that person.'

And you are listening to them and thinking, 'This is going to build up presently to something really exciting.'

Then your friend stops.

And you say, 'Well, yes? Go on. So what?'

'No,' he says, 'that is the story.'

You say, 'Oh well, yes, that's a very interesting story. I thought it was going to lead somewhere, up to some sort of very interesting point.'

You mean a climax, don't you? And when it didn't, or according to you it didn't, and just petered out, you say, 'Well there wasn't much to that.' And you say to your wife later, 'What did you think of that whole palaver?'

And your wife says, 'Well I couldn't make any head or tail of it.'

You say, 'No, that's right. It seemed to be all about nothing, because it didn't lead up to a climax.'

There are minor and major climaxes in any sensible story, or in most stories. And what is more, this is not a matter for the head only. Or at least, it is not a matter just to say interesting literary criticism on the Bible. If you are expounding a passage of Scripture, be it reasoned argument like Romans, or historical narrative like Samuel, and you are preaching it, well it is not wrong to take a story out of its context and do your best to apply the story. But the best thing of all is to say, 'Now, what climax is the Holy Spirit aiming at? Because, if I am going to use this story for the purposes for which it was primarily given, I shall have to see to it that my sermon, or my final sermon, comes to the climax. You know, so that you can really thump the pulpit when you get there, so everybody realizes you've come to the climax!

And if you were telling the story of the miserable days in the time of Eli and his sons, and the terrible departure from God that there was, you wouldn't want to underestimate the departure, would you? But in telling that story, where would you put the climax? Well, the minor climax would be perhaps God's message to Samuel of the terrible judgment. You'd have to rub that minor climax in, wouldn't you, if you were a preacher? But even if they hadn't given you another night you'd ask for one, wouldn't you? You'd say, 'I mustn't leave them there, because the great climax, the Holy Spirit's climax, is that God recovered his people!' And you would have had that it mind right from the start: 'This is the climax I should be driving at!' And in so doing you would not be preaching your own sermon but the Holy Spirit's sermon, and you would be driving at what the inspired historian was driving at. And it would come across with all the more authority and power because it wouldn't be your sermon; it would be the Holy Spirit's sermon, so to speak. You are making the climax what he made the climax. That is very important.

Themes going through sections of the book

You say, 'How do you prove that there is a theme going through what you are pleased to call, sections?'

Well, how do you understand that there is a theme going through the first movement of one of Haydn's sonatas? How do you distinguish one movement from another in a symphony? Can you? It would be a bit odd if you were rendering a symphony or a sonata, or whatever it was, and you played the first movement; and at the end, instead of coming to a graceful pause, you added on a few bars of the next movement and started the next movement halfway through the slow movement, and got the slow movement mixed up with the fast movement. That would make a kind of chaos of what the composer was really getting at.

How do you decide which movement is which? Well, I don't know, except listening to it, and watching the different tempos, and watching the recurrent themes, and so forth. But they who read music tell us that in big works a writer will start a theme in one place and he will develop it and develop it and develop it, and that is one movement. Then he will go off to the next movement, and he's got the same theme but he's turned it upside down. Then he comes to a third movement where he's added something else, but he reintroduces the first, and it isn't just a series of isolated notes. And the various movements within the whole are of course related to each other; they are not just arbitrarily stuck side by side.

As in music, so it is in literature. The book of 1 Samuel is a very carefully constructed whole. Not only was it written by a brilliant historian, it was inspired by the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit knows how to write. There are indications, of course, of relationships between one movement and another, as there would be in music.

There are indications of relationships of themes. I've underlined some of them in the notes so that you may see recurrent themes, and that they are not just little artistic additions. Notice Jonathan's progress across the sections: Jonathan's devotion to David, then Jonathan stripping himself in loyalty and love to David, and giving him his royal insignia gladly. That is followed by Saul stripping himself reluctantly, and being forced to do it to his shame. There is a gospel sermon in that just by itself. You'll strip yourself willingly. It will be your very glory to strip yourself of every bit of kingly insignia you ever had and gladly give it to your 'greater than David'! Or else you will strip yourself one day, for God himself will strip you and land you naked, to your shame and prostrate. These things are not just little icings on the cake, little fairy decorations. They are an integral part of the message. But then what enormous, great, evocative ideas they are.

You may disagree with what I have suggested to you about a particular section of Scripture, and, yes, different people have different ways of interpreting the same piece of music don't they?