I have raised the idea of Scripture as an incomplete music score and an incomplete book or play. I have said that God invites us to participate with him in completing the missing parts. I find these to be useful analogies, but they are inconsistent with the reality of Scripture in a significant way.
The incomplete score or book has a laid-out progression that can be easily recognized. By contrast, Scripture is a hodge-podge of legal documents, poems, histories, letters, and philosophical writings written by forty authors over 2,000 years. The Bible does not read like a story with a missing episode. It reads like a bunch of documents in search of a story. So how about the following idea?
I have a great-great-grandfather who lived from 1837-1932 named William Cotton Holmes. I have diaries he wrote in 1858 and 1862 and a few from later years. I have census records for his household for each census year from 1850-1930. I have land deeds and a death certificate. I have a letter he wrote to my grandfather about his life. I have letters and diaries of other family members that mention him and what he was up to. I have histories of Plymouth, MA, where he grew up. I have his pension and military service records from the Civil War. I have family pictures. You get the idea.
W. C. Holmes died a quarter century before I was born. I had no personal contact with him; none of these sources alone can tell me who he was and what he was about. However, by examining the documentary footprints he left and understanding his context, I can get tremendous insight into his character and the flow of his life story. I have learned enough that this is one guy I would like to meet.
I see Scripture similarly with one important qualification. Scripture is the divinely preserved footprints of God in history. By looking at the testimony (testaments), we can develop a storyline about what God has done in the past, just like I have about my ancestor. We can construct a timeline and understand what God was about and where God was headed. But the qualification of this analogy is the best news of all. The one who left all that testimony isn’t dead! He is still among us advancing the timeline.
Scripture begins with God creating all that is. God then created humankind to begin a family he could lavish his love upon. The Bible is the primary documentary evidence for the story. It also gives evidence about how the story will continue to unfold. The family history is still being written, but what is most amazing is that the Bible draws us beyond the documents into the person who stands behind them.
What difference would it make if we understood Scripture in this way?
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