At the Living Word Uganda conference last week I was teaching on handling the New Testament letters and my main point was that they are real letters written by real people to other real people in particular places at particular times dealing with real issues, and therefore we should read them as we would read any other letter or email or sms.
By way of illustration (those who were at the last Raising the Bar conference will have seen this before) I read the following telegram (source: US Library of Congress).
On it's own there's not much that you can tell. It was clearly sent about 140 years ago from a Spafford in Paris (France) to a Spafford in Chicago (USA). Are they brothers, sisters, husband/wife, father/son? When the Spafford writing talks about being "saved alone" and others "lost" is he/she talking about salvation or getting lost from a group during a tour of Paris? There's the desperate question "What shall I do?" and then that cryptic bit about "go with Lorriaux" - is that a command or a question or a statement? Is Lorriaux a person or an animal or symbolic?
It's only when you know the story behind this telegram that it makes sense. Only when you know that the names here are real people - Anna Spafford writing to her husband Horatio, the "children" being their own Annie (age 11), Maggie (9), Bessie (5), Tanetta (2) - drowned in the mid-Atlantic - only then do you get the full awful impact of this piece of paper. In fact I have trouble telling the story without tears.
My point was that it is the same with the NT letters. It is only when we know that Paul and John and Peter and James are not words but real people, men who knew the living Jesus, sinners, missionaries, men of action, full of love and tears and passion; only when we know they are writing to real churches in real places with real issues; only when we know the story of Acts and the story of the Bible; only then will these become real living letters, immensely powerful and intensely relevant.
The full conference notes on NT letters are here.
By way of illustration (those who were at the last Raising the Bar conference will have seen this before) I read the following telegram (source: US Library of Congress).
On it's own there's not much that you can tell. It was clearly sent about 140 years ago from a Spafford in Paris (France) to a Spafford in Chicago (USA). Are they brothers, sisters, husband/wife, father/son? When the Spafford writing talks about being "saved alone" and others "lost" is he/she talking about salvation or getting lost from a group during a tour of Paris? There's the desperate question "What shall I do?" and then that cryptic bit about "go with Lorriaux" - is that a command or a question or a statement? Is Lorriaux a person or an animal or symbolic?
It's only when you know the story behind this telegram that it makes sense. Only when you know that the names here are real people - Anna Spafford writing to her husband Horatio, the "children" being their own Annie (age 11), Maggie (9), Bessie (5), Tanetta (2) - drowned in the mid-Atlantic - only then do you get the full awful impact of this piece of paper. In fact I have trouble telling the story without tears.
My point was that it is the same with the NT letters. It is only when we know that Paul and John and Peter and James are not words but real people, men who knew the living Jesus, sinners, missionaries, men of action, full of love and tears and passion; only when we know they are writing to real churches in real places with real issues; only when we know the story of Acts and the story of the Bible; only then will these become real living letters, immensely powerful and intensely relevant.
The full conference notes on NT letters are here.
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