A “biblicist”–also known as a “fundamentalist”–would never think that “the Bible” and “evolution” should ever be found together in the same sentence. Believing, instead, that such terms are mutually exclusive. That comes from a shallow, if not defensive reading of scripture.
When, in fact, the revelation of Who God is in the biblical witness–it “evolves”–depending, of course, on how one interprets what such “evolution” means. I am among those who see a fuller, richer–more human?–revealing of God in the Bible’s unfolding story.
This is true even within the Hebrew Bible, our Christian Old Testament.
For example, when one reads what is commonly understood as the “Deuteronomic History of Israel”–a theological and ethical interpretation of ancient Israel’s relation to God, found in the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings (the literary form of which finds its roots in the 7th century B.C.E.)–there are various “prohibitions,” not the least of which involves the exclusion of “foreigners” (non-Israelites). As in, for example, Deuteronomy 7.
As if God is “exclusive” where ancient Israel is concerned.
Except that a century later, a prophet of the Exile, Isaiah–he claims that the pagan Persian King Cyrus is to be seen, providentially, as serving God for the purpose of returning exiled Jews to their homeland following years of captivity in ancient Babylon (Isaiah 45).
Even more ironic, in the midst of that “Deuteronomic History of Israel” is found the charming Book of Ruth, in which the heroine, a destitute Moabite immigrant widow (a “foreigner”) marries a prominent Israelite, a farmer named Boaz, and is later remembered in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 (in the Christian New Testament) as an ancient ancestress of Jesus.
Which suggests that Ruth’s story comes from a later period in Hebrew history; indeed, an historical period in which a more “inclusive” view of God has “evolved” in Israelite theology and ethics.
And, of course, it is in the New Testament–a witness to Christian faith–that an “evolving” revelation of God is even more apparent. Specifically, in the Church’s (the “believing community’s”) confession that Jesus is “the Christ” (the promised Messiah of Israel).
As his first followers bear witness to who Jesus is, in the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus himself becomes “the fulfillment” of what is most sacred in Israelite life and religion. In particular, “dietary laws,” the “Sabbath,” the “Temple,” the “Law”; and notably this week, Jesus’ interpretation of “Passover.”
In the first instance, Matthew 15 begins with “the Pharisees and scribes” condemning Jesus with these words, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?”
They are referring to traditional Jewish customs of which–with respect to food, for instance–Jesus declares: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles, but that which comes out of the mouth.”
Again, Matthew 12, Mark 2 and Luke 6 each contain the same story of Jesus being condemned for “violating” the sanctity of the Sabbath by declaring himself “Lord of the Sabbath.”
Regarding the Temple, John 2:13-22 expands upon a story found also in Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 19, ‘though John’s setting comes earlier than in the narratives of the other three Gospels. Here Jesus declares: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The writer of John’s Gospel then explains that Jesus is, there, “speaking of the temple [as] his body.” To which the writer adds: “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.”
Yet another reminder, in scripture itself, that the Bible is written backwards: in the Hebrew Bible (our Christian Old Testament), looking back through the Exodus; and in the New Testament, from a post-resurrection perspective that created Christian faith.
There is likely no more vivid example of the revelation of God “evolving” throughout the Bible–certainly for a Christian–than the ethical imperatives which, with respect to Jewish Law, Jesus proclaims in the Beatitudes (Matthew 1-7). As in Matthew 5: 17 ff., where Jesus’ teaching consists of the litany, “You have heard it said . . . but I say unto you.”
Here Jesus offers radical ethical alternatives with respect to such subjects as “murder, adultery, divorce, oath- taking, retribution, generosity, and human relations involving not just neighbors, but even enemies.”
Jesus’ explanation of such highly “evolved” ethical principles actually comes at the beginning of this portion of scripture, where he declares: “Think not that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets; I have not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them.”
And of course, on this week, surely the most dramatic in the Christian Year–as Palm Sunday proceeds toward the observance of Good Friday and Easter–on Maundy Thursday, what the Church calls “the Last Supper” is a re-enacting of Jesus’ observing the Jewish Passover with his disciples.
The primary source of this tradition in Christian history is found in the 11th chapter of Paul’s letter, I Corinthians, with “Lord’s Supper” (communion, the eucharist) settings also found in the later sources of Mark 14, Matthew 26 and Luke 22. [Interestingly, the Gospel of John doesn’t include “the Last Supper” in the way the other Gospels do; instead, it portrays Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.]
As these “eucharistic” expressions of Christian witness in the New Testament say it, the unleavened bread and wine of Passover are interpreted, according to Jesus, as “my body” and “my blood.”
Again, an “evolving” revelation of God as the Bible’s story unfolds; indeed, a story in which–at least for Christians–Jesus becomes the “fulfillment” of all that is essential to the nature and purpose of who and what Israel is defined as being and becoming.
