The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

What Is Biblical Spirituality? 129
8.4 The way in which latter-day spiritualities draw on the Bible
One of the greater concerns in our time is that the faith put
in/related to the Bible leads to the Scriptures becoming a fetish of
power, either in its US Bible Belt form or in its cultural, for
example, African fundamentalist, 51 varieties. Though these are
certainly forms of spirituality that draw in very specific ways on
the Bible, namely directly and uncritically, the exegetical,
hermeneutical and theological difficulties such approaches elicit
must be pointed out. The historical situatedness of all spiritualities
must be acknowledged fully, in order for the different strands of
Christianity, of other religions, and of non-faiths, to understand
themselves and others. We cannot claim, for instance, that our
matrix of beliefs-and-actions comes from the Bible alone: 52
In sincerity we have to acknowledge to ourselves that our faith
and practices are born “neither from the whole of the Bible, nor
from the Bible alone.” 53 Our faith is rather (in)formed by
(expanding here on Wogaman 54 ) Scripture, Christian history
and tradition, experience, our thoughts and actions and those of
others, the church, philosophy, societal norms and practices—
all these and more, in different and ever changing measures.
51
The latter is demonstrated, for instance, by the song quoted in T. Maluleke,
“The Bible among African Christians: A Missiological Perspective,” in To Cast
Fire upon the Earth. Bible and Mission Collaborating in Today’s Multicultural
Global Context (ed. T. Okure; Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2000), 97:
Aka na mandla uSathane (Satan has no power)
S’omshaya nge vhesi (We will clobber him with a [biblical] verse).
52
Quote from Lombaard, “The Bible in the Apartheid Debate,” 86.
53
See F. E. Deist, “The Bible—the Word of God, or: Searching for the Pearl in
the Oyster,” in Scripture and the Use of Scripture (ed. W. S. Vorster. Pretoria:
Unisa, 1978), 58.
54
See J. P. Wogaman, Christian Ethics. A Historical Introduction (Louisville:
John Knox, 1993), 1–22.