Author: Christopher R Smith

The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings. He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School.

How should a Christian repent?

Q. How should a Christian repent? What are the steps involved for a Christian to repent? Where does the Bible teach that Christians need to repent? Also, where does the Bible teach what is the purpose of Christians repenting?

In the New Testament, the term for “repent” is the Greek word metanoia. It indicates a change of mind. The English word “repent” comes from a Latin word from the same root as “penalty,” and so it indicates recognizing that something one has done is deserving of a penalty, in other words, that it was wrong. This implicitly suggests a change of mind, since the person presumably did not think the action was wrong before doing it or when doing it. This is a realization that came afterwards. But it would also apply to any future occurrences and hopefully prevent the person from doing it again.

In other words, the “change of mind” is that previously the person would have said, “It’s all right for me to do this.” Afterwards, the person would say, “It was wrong for me to have done that, and I won’t do it again.” So implicitly the idea is not just that the person thinks differently, but that the person also acts differently. This is what John the Baptist meant when he told the crowds who came to hear him preach that they needed to “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” Repentance is not credible unless a person’s conduct changes. If a person says, “From now on, I’m going to believe that things are wrong if God says they are wrong and that things are right if God says they are right,” but that person continues to do things that God says are wrong, then we have no evidence that they have actually changed their mind.

To answer your questions specifically, the gospels tell us that John the Baptist came preparing the way for Jesus by “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin” (Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3). John was saying that to get ready for the Messiah, people should repent of their sins (acknowledge that they were wrong and stop doing them) and be baptized to show publicly that they had done this, and God would forgive their sins. In his gospel, Matthew summarizes the teaching of Jesus himself by saying that he preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). Jesus was telling the crowds to do the same thing that John the Baptist was telling them to do. The apostles preached a similar message. Peter told the crowds in Jerusalem, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out” (Acts 3:19).

In all of these places, an initial repentance is in view. It changes people from living for themselves, without regard to God, to living for God, carrying out a commitment to do carefully what God says is right and not do what God says is wrong. But the New Testament also speaks of repentance as an ongoing process for those who have already made this commitment. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). So Christians who are already committed followers of Jesus need to have an ongoing metanoia, an ongoing change of mind, by which they recognize more and more what God considers to be “good and acceptable and perfect.”

In terms of the steps involved in repentance, I would say that they are: an active seeking to understand better and better how God wants us to live; a recognition of those ways in which we have not been living like that; telling God that we are sorry and asking for and receiving God’s forgiveness; and then living more and more in the way that God does want. This should be an ongoing aspect of life for all followers of Jesus. In some Christian traditions, the process also has a more formal component, and it can help ensure that repentance does happen on a regular basis. For example, a person might go to confession, tell a priest about sins, express contrition, and receive absolution. Or in a worship service, there might be a unison prayer of confession, followed by silent individual prayers of confession, and then an assurance of pardon spoken by the minister.

I must say that as a pastor, I always loved to give the assurance of pardon, and even now as a “civilian” in the congregation, I always love to hear it. I believe it represents what God wants us to know about how he receives our sincere repentance. For example, I used to say (and still love to hear) something like this: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and rich in mercy. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In the name of Jesus Christ, I declare, ‘You are forgiven!'”

Are we supposed to “let God take the steering wheel”?

Q. In Christian circles, folks frequently talk about giving all control of our lives to God. I have even heard “let God take the steering wheel” (hopefully this is figurative). I wonder at times what this really means. How far should we as followers of Jesus take this? Throughout history, so many evil things have been done by those who were supposedly listening to God and had “let God take control.” Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that people are doing evil things as directed by God. They feel they are directed by God, when in reality it is their own zeal or self-interest. So the bottom line is, when we hear “let God (or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit) take control,” what does that mean? Should we ask God for simplest things, such what to eat or what to wear? What to do each day? Did God not give us a brain?

I think that, in general, God does not do for us what we can do for ourselves. God does not want us to remain immature people who never acquire the wisdom, talent, or creativity to come up with good ideas and follow them through. Certainly parents want their children to develop in this way. They don’t want to have to tell their children what to do their whole lives. I think it’s the same with God.

I believe there is still a role for seeking God’s guidance, but I don’t think there is necessarily a clear line that we can draw anywhere, for example, “Be sure to consult God about any purchase over $500.” Instead, I think we should see ourselves in a process that God is encouraging, a process that will lead to godly wisdom that informs better decision-making on our parts. I think the people you are describing have a commendable desire to understand and obey God’s wishes for their lives. But personally I think that sometimes God wishes we would make good choices without having to be told what to do.

I think it’s important to realize that we are in a relationship with God. Sometimes, within the context of that relationship, God might actually lead us to wear a certain article of clothing or serve a certain food for dinner. When that happens, we will see how it fits within God’s larger purposes of drawing people to himself. These things can create solidarity and welcome in contexts of fellowship and hospitality, and God certainly wants to promote those things and so may help us out with some tips. Theoretically no area of our lives is too small for God to become involved in, because God is paradoxically big enough to be involved in such small areas. But as I said, this happens within an active, ongoing relationship. It’s not an abdication of responsibility on our parts.

Certainly we should seek God’s guidance and direction for major life decisions, but there’s not necessarily a clear line between “major” and “minor.” I would say that Christians who get married had better be certain that they have heard from God that they are marrying the right person. That’s clearly “major.” Probably decisions such as what college to attend, what house to buy, whether to go into business with certain partners, etc. also qualify as “major.” But ultimately the determiner is relational. We need to become attuned to the voice of God’s Spirit in our hearts and minds so that we can recognize those times when God, for reasons we might not appreciate just then, is leading us to take a certain direction regarding something that seems minor, and those other times when God just wants us to make a good choice.

Should I keep reading the Bible, praying, going to church, etc. if I’m no longer motivated to do those things?

Q. What should a Christian do if he is feeling bored (and/or unmotivated) of reading the Bible, praying, reading Christian books, going to church, and other Christian activities that he used to enjoy doing and was very motivated to do? Should he force himself to continue doing them, hoping that he will regain his enjoyment and motivation, or should he only do them when he feels motivated and will actually enjoy doing them?

The activities you describe are often referred to as “spiritual disciplines.” That does not mean that they are things we have to do. Rather, they are things that we choose to do in order to invest in our relationship with God with structure and regularity. I think that tithing, giving 10% of our income to God, provides a good example. A Christian wants to be part of what God is doing in the world through giving. But if we simply have that desire without introducing any regular practices into our lives, we may end up giving little or nothing, despite our genuine wishes and intentions. So the discipline of calculating 10% of our income, setting it aside for God’s work, and giving it regularly and intentionally to ministries we believe in can help us ensure that we actually do what we want to do.

It’s the same with the specific disciplines that you describe and with all spiritual disciplines in general. To give another example, we have a sincere desire to understand the story of God’s redemptive work in the world and how we can find our own place within that story, and engaging the Bible helps us do that. But if we have no structured plan to engage the Bible regularly, this may not happen. And so forth.

I think the issue you are encountering may be a relational one. As I said, spiritual disciplines are a means of investing in our relationship with God. But every relationship grows and changes, and the things that feed it at one point may not feed it at other points. Put simply, relationships need variety, since they are growing, living things. So not only do we need to commit to following spiritual disciplines to ensure that our sincere desire to walk closely with God is realized, we need to re-examine our disciplines on a regular basis to make sure that they are still fulfilling their purpose. We can change the way we are pursuing certain ones, and we can stop doing others and start doing new ones. Those who study spiritual disciplines have identified over two dozen of them. (In this post I describe a few beyond the ones you list, such as spending time with God in creation or in silence and solitude.) So one thing I would suggest is “mixing it up.” Engage the Bible at a different time, or in a different way. Explore other kinds of prayers besides the ones you have been praying. Pursue simplicity or service as spiritual disciplines for a while instead of reading Christian books. And so forth.

I believe that you asked this question because you really do have a heartfelt desire to be close to God. I believe that desire reflects the relationship with God that you already have, and the relationship that God already has with you. You are just experiencing some “growing pains” in that relationship, and that is actually a good thing. It shows that the relationship is growing.

One thing that happens to all Christians at various times is that their experience outgrows their understanding. That is, we have a workable framework for our Christian life; we understand and expect that things are going to work in a certain way. But as our faith becomes more mature, we also become more discerning, and we can recognize that things are not necessarily working in that way, not all the time. If we don’t reflect on this, we can actually become secretly disappointed with God. We feel inside, without necessarily articulating it this way to ourselves, that God has somehow let us down. If God hadn’t, things would have happened differently, we feel. This leads to spiritual dryness, a sense that we are not moving forward in the faith, and a lack of motivation to draw close to God.

But all of this, I would say again, is actually a positive sign. It shows that your experience of faith has been growing. Your understanding just needs to catch up with it. So I would invite you to ask yourself some questions. Was there something I was expecting God would do that God apparently didn’t do? Was there something I was expecting God wouldn’t do that God apparently did do? Who can I speak with about this who could help me understand what happened, perhaps in light of another look at the Scriptures and the heritage of Christian experience and a reconsideration of the ways of God? What books or podcasts or blog posts or other resources might also help? Do my expectations of God need to change, and if so, in what ways?

I think the process I have just described needs to begin with a commitment to being realistic. We only understand God and ourselves better in light of the truth. We don’t need to apologize or make excuses for the God we have been believing in. We can say, in a clear-eyed way, “Okay, I’ll admit it, this happened.” From there, we can sort out the implications for what we have been believing, and we can re-examine our beliefs in a fresh light.

Just writing this, I’m excited for the journey that you can take forward into a renewed experience of your faith. May God bless you as you translate your sincere desire into practical steps on that journey.

Are the warnings in Hebrews addressed to non-believers rather than believers?

Q. The author of Hebrews speaks in the 1st person plural when giving the warning, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” So, is it possible that the author was addressing all the members of the local church? Within this gathering there would be believers, non-believers, those “sitting on the fence,” and so forth. So, is the “therefore” not for believers who have assurance, but a warning for those who would “drift away” from the truth they’re receiving? Similarly, is the controversial passage in Heb 6:4-6 not for the believer who needs to hear the warning against apostasy, but for those non-believers, those “on the fence” who could “drift” into apostasy and never be restored again?

I think you are suggesting a very good possibility. I think the warning is against presumption: just because you’ve heard about Jesus and know about Jesus, don’t assume that you have received the salvation that Jesus brought—not if you haven’t done anything in response to what you’ve heard and learned. In other words, the recipients of this letter must not “ignore” (or “neglect,” as some versions translate it) this salvation, that is, they must not fail to take action in response to it.

So the author of Hebrews is basically saying to the whole church, “I’m not going to assume that any of you are genuine believers—and neither should you either. You can’t complacently assume this; you need to know that you have made a definite commitment in response to Jesus.” This would be similar to what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” (And here in Hebrews, since this is in the 1st person plural, as you note, the author is actually saying, “I’m not going to assume that any of us are genuine believers.” The author models self-examination by taking part in it personally.)

I think the case is similar for the other passage from Hebrews that you mentioned: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance.” I find it interesting that the author says, right after providing an analogy to illustrate this point, “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation.” In other words, while the ones who cannot be brought back if they fall away have “tasted” and “shared in” some things, those are not the things that have to do with salvation. Those are necessary but not sufficient conditions. What is needed is a definite commitment.

The analogy itself supports this understanding. The author speaks of the same rain falling on two different types of land. One type produces “a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed” and is blessed, while the other type produces only “thorns and thistles” and is cursed. The warning, in effect, is to both types of land: Don’t think that you’re going to be blessed just because you’re receiving all this rain; what kind of crop are you producing as a result of it?” So the “tasting” and the “sharing” that all the people in the church have experienced are like the rain. They are not the crop.

So I think in the end I would agree with you that these warnings are not addressed so much to people who are genuine followers of Jesus as to people who are part of the believing community but who have not made a definite commitment. The danger of “falling away” (from participation in the life of the community, not from salvation itself) was very real for those who were not committed, since, as the author warns, there had already been persecution of Christians in this place and time and there was going to be more. So the warnings are to count the cost up front and realize that the glories of the salvation that Jesus brought, which the author describes throughout the letter, are worth far more than the suffering that followers of Jesus may experience in this life.

What were the names of Solomon’s wives?

Q. The Bible says that Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines. What were their names?

We only know the name of one of Solomon’s wives, and that is because she is mentioned in the account of the reign of her son, Rehoboam, who was Solomon’s successor. Her name was Naamah, and she was an Ammonite. This suggests that she became Solomon’s wife as the result of a marriage alliance that Solomon made with the king of Ammon.

Solomon’s wives are said to have been “princesses,” that is, daughters of kings, and so we can infer that there were marriage alliances in each case. We know that these wives included princesses from Egypt, Moab, Edom, Ammon, Sidon, and the Hittite kingdom. So while we don’t know their names, at least in these cases we know something of their identities.

Unfortunately, Solomon’s attachment to them led him to build altars just east of Jerusalem to their foreign gods. His wives worshiped at these altars, and he joined them in doing so. The altars remained in place for over 300 years, until King Josiah finally destroyed them. The law of Moses specifically forbade the king of Israel from making such marriage alliances—“he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away”—and doing so led to Solomon’s downfall and the breakup of the Israelite kingdom.

But on a brighter note, as I suggest in this post, earlier in his life Solomon may have married Abishag the Shunammite, and this may have been a happy marriage for many years. It is unfortunate that Solomon did not obey the law of Moses and refrain from making the marriage alliances that ultimately ruined him and his kingdom. He already had all that he really needed.

Why did Jesus order his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Messiah?

Q. Matthew records in his gospel that after Peter declared, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus “ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” Why did Jesus do that?

I think that if Jesus’ disciples had started proclaiming at that point that he was the Messiah, people would have misunderstood what this meant. People would have thought that Jesus was the kind of Messiah they were expecting. As I say in this post, they would have been expecting a Messiah who would “see his primary role as that of meeting the physical needs of people” or who would “do dazzling daredevil feats that would win admiration and an audience” or who wold “try to achieve his purposes by obtaining political and military power.” The devil tried to tempt Jesus to see himself as the Messiah in these ways.

But after Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead, the disciples were not only free to proclaim that Jesus was the Messiah, they were commanded to do so. The fact that Jesus had willingly undergone these things showed what kind of Messiah he actually was, and so people would not have misunderstood the disciples to be proclaiming that he was a different type of Messiah, along the lines I have described. The fact that Jesus willingly underwent these things also showed what kind of Savior the world actually needed.

What was Rebekah’s reward for helping Jacob?

Q. Thank you for the extensive discussion in your post “Why didn’t God give Esau back the blessing that Jacob stole?” Please I want to know the reward of Rebekah, considering her dangerous role in reshaping the history of her children against the will of her husband Isaac.

I think a good case can be made from the Bible that Rebekah recognized that the future of her family depended on Jacob rather than Esau being the head of the next generation and that she worked to help Jacob at some risk to herself, since her husband Isaac favored Esau. At the end of some biblical stories, we are told what the rewards were for people who advanced God’s purposes. We are not told anything like this specifically about Rebekah. But perhaps we can come to some conclusions about it.

While Rebekah was still expecting her twin sons, “the babies jostled each other within her,” and “she went to inquire of the Lord” about why this was happening. The Lord revealed to her that her sons would be the patriarchs of “two nations” and that “the older will serve the younger.” The Bible does not say of Rebekah, as it does of Mary when God revealed things to her about the destiny of her son Jesus, that she “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” But we can certainly imagine that she did.

As the boys grew into young men, it became clear, as I say in the post you mention, that Jacob “was much better suited to assume the leadership of the Israelite family as it began growing rapidly into a group of tribes that would become a nation.” While Esau was the older of the two, “his responsibilities as the firstborn son weren’t important to him and he was likely to neglect them.” So Rebekah did, as you say, reshape the future of her descendants by helping Jacob to move into the position of leadership of the next generation.

However, she needed to overcome Isaac’s inclinations in order to do this. The Bible tells us that “Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” In other words, Isaac seems to have favored Esau because he brought him the kind of meals that he liked, and this led Isaac to overlook the faults in Esau’s character.

As I also say in the post you mentioned, even after Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, Jacob still needed to obtain the paternal blessing that went with it. When Rebekah saw that Isaac was about to give this blessing to Esau, she told Jacob to go to Isaac and trick him into thinking that he was Esau. Jacob initially resisted. He objected that if his father realized who he was, he would curse him rather than bless him. Rebekah replied, “Let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say.” This statement can be interpreted in a number of ways, but one of them is that Rebekah was willing to risk even the curse of the family patriarch in order to promote the son she recognized would be the right leader for the next generation.

Esau became so angry when he discovered that Jacob had stolen his blessing that he vowed to kill Jacob. To save Jacob’s life, Rebekah needed to send him far away to live with her brother. He was gone for 20 years. The Bible does not mention Rebekah after Jacob’s return to his homeland, and some interpreters speculate that she died while he was away. We don’t know that for sure, however, and we should not read too much into the text where it is silent. It would be nice to think that she was still alive when he returned and that she was able to witness the reunion and reconciliation of her two sons. Hopefully she also saw her many grandchildren and realized that she had every reason to expect a bright future for the coming generations of her family. The text allows for that just as much as it allows for other possibilities, and if that was the case, then this itself would probably have been all the reward that Rebekah would have asked for.

Is Richard Moulton’s literary analysis of the Bible still useful today?

Q. I notice that in your book The Beauty Behind the Mask you reference The Modern Reader’s Bible, edited by Richard Moulton, and you offer some criticism of his choice of book order and book titles. I own a copy of that book, as well as Moulton’s book The Literary Study of the Bible, both of which I purchased years ago at a used book store. He has other books about the Bible and literature that can now be found online. Moulton aimed to lay out the text of the Bible according to the literary structure—perhaps a forerunner of The Books of the Bible edition. Although I do not regularly read from The Modern Reader’s Bible, I do refer to it to notice how it lays out the poetic structure, and I notice that Moulton in his notes has an overarching system of the literary forms of the Bible, from simple to complex. My question is how valid and useful are his views, his literary theory of the Bible, and his Bible edition, all more than 100 years old, considered today? Did he have insight that is still valuable and been forgotten, or has modern scholarship rendered it obsolete?

The short answer to your question is that Moulton’s analysis, in my opinion, is still very valuable. While, as you noted, I differ with him about some details, overall he is asking the same questions and pursuing the same goals as we did in producing The Books of the Bible.

Now here is the long answer to your question.

God gave us his word in the Bible by using not only existing human languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—but also by using existing human literary forms: psalms (songs), epistles (letters), parables, proverbs, stories, visions (dreams), and so forth. If we really want to understand what God is saying to us through the Bible, we need to appreciate the Bible for what it is: a collection of literary compositions. That is what the Bible is made of.

Unfortunately, most people who engage the Bible treat it as if it were made of something else. One common way to engage the Bible is as if it were made up of “verses.” These are taken to be short doctrinal propositions or “precious promises” or “thoughts to live by.” Since Bible verses each seem to have their own indexing (e.g. John 3:16), and since published versions of the Bible number them right in the text (some editions even print each verse as a separate paragraph), they seem to be intentional divisions of the text—the basic building blocks of the Bible.

But as I point out in The Beauty Behind the Mask, chapters were only added to the Bible around the year 1200 and verses were only added around 1550. They are late, artificial divisions introduced for convenience of reference, most often for the sake of reference in the course of discussions and debates. It is not a coincidence that verses were added to the Bible around the time of the many theological debates of the Reformation. A friend of mine calls the chapter-and-verse Bible a “debater’s Bible.”

But that visual presentation suggests that the Bible is something that it is not. Suppose that all you had of Shakespeare was a collection of “famous quotations.” For example:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2.
“What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2.
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” Twelfth Night, Act 2, scene 5.
These are certainly interesting and valuable thoughts to consider and apply to life. But what Shakespeare wrote was drama for the theater. If you haven’t seen his plays acted on stage, you haven’t engaged his writings for what they are. Similarly, if you only reference “Bible verses,” you haven’t engaged the biblical writings for what they are.

Another way people engage the Bible is as if it consisted of short articles on various topics, like an encyclopedia. Printed editions of the Bible foster this understanding by separating the text into sections that each have their own headings. People tend to read section by section, and preachers often preach on one section at a time, so this is another answer people have implicitly in their heads to the question of what the Bible is made of. Just by looking at most Bibles published today, they can only conclude that it is made of “sections.”

But these sections do not do justice to the literary character of the compositions in the Bible. Translation committees and publishers create and label them not with a view toward literary structure but simply with a view towards subject matter or topic. These titled sections encourage “dipping in” rather than experiencing the biblical compositions as a whole. They also suggest an objective, distanced approach to the topics that are apparently taken up, as in an encyclopedia, rather than that the writers are immersed in the situations they are writing about, sometimes literally in a life-and-death struggle. So engaging the Bible through “sections” is also not engaging its writings for what they are.

Yet another way that people engage the Bible is as the subject of an academic discipline. This is what you were asking about specifically in terms of an assessment of Moulton’s analysis. It’s important to realize that when we engage the Bible, there is a “world behind the text,” a “world of the text,” and a “world in front of the text.” The world behind the text is the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written. Much of academic study of the Bible deals with that. The world in front of the text is the reactions and responses to the text by all the people who are receiving it in various ways. In academic circles, this would be all of the scholars in the field of biblical studies and their various publications. Much of the remaining part of academic study of the Bible has to do with addressing what various other scholars have said about the Bible. Engaging the biblical works as literary compositions is often regarded as outside the scope of biblical studies, as something that falls within the realm of literary studies instead. (And indeed, courses on the Bible are a required part of many college literature majors, since the Bible is such a foundational influence on the literature of many languages and cultures.)

The structures of biblical books sometimes are discussed within the field of biblical studies, but my personal feeling is that this is not done in a progressive or cumulative way. In other words, I do not feel that we have come to understand these structures better and better as biblical studies has progressed over the years, so that anything Moulton might have written over a century ago must of course be obsolete by now. Rather—and again, this is a personal feeling—as biblical studies takes up various suggestions about structure in the course of its own conversation, different views come in and out of vogue as the conversation progresses.

So for myself, to assess Moulton’s contributions, I would instead ask how the people who, over time, have engaged the biblical books as literary compositions have seen them to be put together on their own terms. This question of literary structure is one (along with the questions of circumstances of composition, literary genre, and thematic development) that Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren encourage readers to address in their classic work How to Read a Book. It is also a question that various approaches to inductive Bible study encourage readers to pursue first, in light of an overall reading of a book: what are its major and minor divisions? Those are to be determined independently of chapters and verses and of any divisions that publishers have introduced.

When we approach the Bible this way, we find, as I show in The Beauty Behind the Mask, pp. 139–143, that the various people who, down through the years, have sought to offer literary-structural presentations of the biblical books have ended up identifying essentially the same outlines, even though these may differ in some smaller details. Richard Moulton is one of these people, and I would say that his overall approach is still one that we can learn much from today. We certainly saw him as someone who helped blaze the trail for The Books of the Bible. Indeed, we knew we were standing on his shoulders as we did our work, and we were and are grateful for his contributions.

Let me conclude, therefore, by quoting from his preface to The Modern Reader’s Bible: “The revelation which is the basis of our modern religion has been made in the form of literature: grasp of its literary structure is the true starting-point for spiritual interpretation.”

Do the blank lines of varying widths in The Books of the Bible signify book sections of varying sizes?

Q, I have a question about The Books of the Bible. I notice that there are blank lines between text, and that sometimes there is one blank line, sometimes two, and sometimes three. Do these correspond with the structure used in Inductive Bible Study? So do three blank lines separate the divisions, two blank lines the sections, and one blank line the segments? I am looking at the Gospel of Matthew. I notice that there is sometimes a blank line separating what I would call paragraphs, and not segments. Thanks.

You are correct. The blank lines identify literary units of varying sizes. In the Gospel of Matthew, three blank lines (and a large capital letter) mark off the largest units. These units are described in the introduction to Matthew: “five thematic sections consisting of story plus teaching,” with a genealogy preceding and a narrative of Jesus’ sufferings, death, and resurrection following. I think you would call these largest units “divisions.”

Two blank lines mark off the next-largest units. Each thematic division begins with a story sequence, followed by a speech sequence (discourse) that elaborates on the theme of those stories. So two blank lines separate story from discourse within thematic units. I think you would call the story and discourse units “sections.”

Three blank lines mark off the smallest units, which are the episodes in the stories or the rhetorical passages in the discourses. For example, there are single blank lines between the episodes of Jesus’ birth, the preaching of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, and the temptation of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, there are single blank lines between Jesus’ discussions of fulfilling the law, the practice of piety (alms, prayer, fasting), and money. I think you would call these units “segments.”

In some cases an episode is brief, only one paragraph long, so in that case a single paragraph also constitutes a “segment.”

These divisions work bottom-up. If a biblical book has literary units on only two levels, then the edition will use only spaces of one and two lines. For example, in 2 John, there are two-line spaces between the opening, main body, and conclusion of the letter. The conventions of letter-writing in the opening and conclusion (sender’s name, addressee, blessing; travel plans, greetings) are separated by one-line spaces.

In The Books of the Bible, there is a brief introduction to each book, and it discusses, among other things, the literary structure that this edition uses blank lines to mark in that book.

I hope this is helpful. Enjoy your reading!

Is it blasphemy to throw a Bible in anger?

Q. If a person is angry and throws the Bible, would God consider that a form of blasphemy? If He would, then am I to assume this person is going to hell?

God takes extenuating circumstances into account. We know this because Jesus himself said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Anger is an extenuating circumstance. When people become very angry, they say and do things that they don’t really mean. God would recognize that a person who threw a Bible in anger was not making a definitive choice to reject him or his word. People go to hell for choosing—consciously, deliberately, and definitively—against God. They don’t go to hell for losing their temper.

Jesus also said, “People will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” It’s important to understand what Jesus meant by both parts of this statement.

As for “blasphemy against the Spirit,” as I say in this post, that phrase refers to “the act of attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. The reason this sin ‘can’t be forgiven’ is not because the person has done something so bad that it’s beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness. The Bible stresses that Jesus’ death on the cross is sufficient for the forgiveness of any and all sins that any human being might commit. Rather, if we attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan, then this will make us resist the work of the Holy Spirit, and His gracious influences will not be able to bring us to repentance and salvation. In other words, Jesus isn’t saying that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. He’s saying that it can not be forgiven, because it separates us from the very influence that’s meant to lead us to forgiveness.” I don’t feel that this describes a person who throws a Bible in anger.

The other part of Jesus’ statement, about “speaking a word against the Son of Man,” refers to people, both in his time and in later times, who don’t realize at first who Jesus is and so deny that the is the Savior. Jesus is saying that he will not hold this (or any other word or deed of disrespect) against them. Instead, he will always seek to draw them to himself as the Savior. I think there is a valid analogy here. If blasphemy against the living Word of God, Jesus, can be forgiven, then words or deeds against the written word of God, the Bible, can also be forgiven. So there is not a danger here of an “unpardonable sin” that would inevitably make a person go to hell.

The Bible does say further, however, “Be angry but do not sin.” Anger, in and of itself, is simply an emotion. There are many good reasons to become angry (at injustice, for example), and the powerful emotion of anger can serve as motivation to help us make changes in the world and in our own lives. (People sometimes say, “I got good and mad at myself and finally did something about it.”) So the real issue is what we do with our anger. If we “lose our temper” (that is, we let our anger get out of control) and we say and do things that we don’t really mean and that we regret afterwards, then that is probably the kind of anger that the Bible considers sinful. That is certainly the case if we say or do things that are hurtful or harmful to other people.

But there is a remedy for sin. The Bible promises us, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So I would encourage someone who had thrown a Bible in anger to apologize to God and ask forgiveness. That person could be confident of God’s forgiveness based on the promise I just quoted. It would then be good to ask “how did this happen?” and try to establish new patterns in life that would keep anger from getting out of control.

One final observation. As a wise person once told me, when it comes to human expressions of emotions toward God, “God can take it.” God isn’t going to overreact to his own creatures’ blustering. In fact, God wants us to express our emotions to him, across the entire range. The Scriptures themselves provide us with many examples of this, particularly in the Psalms. David says at the start Psalm 13, for example, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” He is certainly expressing frustration and disappointment, and perhaps impatience and even anger. Yet the Bible presents his prayer to us as a model for our own prayers to God. So those should be honest, heart-felt, and yes, emotional. God already knows what we are feeling. So there’s no reason why our prayers shouldn’t reflect and express those feelings.

But our prayers should be respectful. One “fruit of the Spirit” in the life of believers is self-control. While we should feel what we feel and express what we feel, we should also look to God to build the character of Christ in our lives so that we don’t lose control of our emotions. So I guess I would say to a person who had thrown a Bible in anger that there is both a promise of forgiveness for genuine repentance and an opportunity for spiritual growth that the episode is pointing to.