"What Canst Thou say?" is the perennial question for Friends, the question put by Fox to his earliest hearers, the question that echoes for us. I have worked in Bible study for several years, above all because I believe it can help find Friends discover our individual and corporate answers to that question.

While working among Friends on Bible study, I have watched many people, including myself, go through three distinct stages in their encounter with the Bible. Not everyone goes through them, and they are not presented here as an ideal to be followed; but I have observed them often enough to think a description may be helpful to Friends still unfamiliar with the Bible:

The first stage I call Detoxification, because many Friends come to the Bible with much negative baggage. This can range from a reaction against sentimentalized Sunday school images, to experiences of persecution at the hands of fanatics using the Bible as a weapon.

Early Friends knew about this oppressive use of the Bible too, from hard firsthand experience. For some among Friends today, such encounters have soured them permanently on the Bible; and who can blame them? But others eventually come to suspect that there is more to it, and they are now curious enough about the book to put some effort into understanding it.

Crucial to this detoxification stage is the finding of a supportive and nonjudgmental study environment. That, for example, is what we hoped to create at the Friends Bible Conference; and it is what a good self-directed Meeting study group can provide as well. In such a safe setting, it becomes possible to examine both the Bible and our notions about it, to see if there is any potential value in the text for us.

If we do find the right environment, usually the Bible is quickly shown to be very different from what we thought it was. It is a very diverse set of texts, sometimes appealing and sometimes repulsive, but more and more intriguing throughout. There is often a sense of discovery, and perhaps some anger at the teachers or authority figures who left us with an image of Scripture as a flat, narrow, cold or sinister document.

With this process of discovery we pass into Stage Two, which I call Uncovering a Resource. As study continues, a sense of the counterpoint and depth of the texts begins to emerge:

There are gripping stories here, and prophetic poetry that rings true and powerfully even after 2500 years; there is clear-eyed confrontation with the essential ambiguity of life and theological efforts to make sense of it; there are appealing characters--even Paul has his points, and then there is the enigmatic carpenter's son he came to call his lord.

And there is even the experience of seeing Scripture challenge and criticize Scripture:

In the Book of Jonah, for instance, the Israelite religious and cultural chauvinism is sharply challenged; in the New Testament there is a underlying tug of war between universalist and particularist interpretations of Jesus' message. Then again, the celebration of war and even genocide in some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures is clearly rejected by the teachings of Jesus and the practice of his first followers.

Even the predominantly patriarchal attitudes of much of Scripture are called into fundamental question, by many of Jesus' actions, in the Song of Songs, and elsewhere.

In sum, as the Bible is approached with open eyes, it is revealed as the enemy of the easy answers that so many of its purported champions seem to find in it. But this truth, among most "detoxified" Friendly readers at least, only enhances its appeal and usefulness. The Bible is useful in life because it is like life.

Furthermore, over time parallels typically begin to emerge between issues and stories in the text and aspects of our own lives. This outlook was well expressed by the Quaker theologian Robert Barclay in his Apology of 1676: "In the Scriptures God has deemed it proper to give us a looking glass in which we can see the conditions and experiences of ancient believers. There we find that our experience is analogous to theirs....This is the great work of the Scriptures, and their usefulness to us."

At some point, however, some of us have begun to realize that the Bible is taking on a deeper dimension for us. This typically does not happen quickly or dramatically, although it can; it is more like a slow dawn, or the sprouting of a plant.

Exactly what to call this new phase can be a problem, because often there is a reluctance to use traditional terms. I call this third stage Godwrestling.

It is based on a growing a sense that among these stories and images, with their many layers of meaning, are passages that seem especially directed at the reader--at you or me--texts which speak to our condition in a manner unlike, and deeper than, other written sources. This often takes the form of a conviction of being personally addressed or called through the medium of the text.

In this third stage, moreover, the traditional idea of the Bible as being divinely inspired begins to make a certain kind of sense. This idea of inspiration is similar to that set forth in such passages as Second Timothy 3:16 and Romans 15:4:

2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness...."

Romans 15:4: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." (Both quotations from the Revised Standard Version.)

The first passage is a favorite of fundamentalists who favor the Inerrancy theory, according to which every statement in the texts must be factually correct. But the text actually makes no such claim; instead, it says that the inspiration of the Scriptures makes them "profitable". The Greek term here can also be rendered as "beneficial," "advantageous," or simply "useful."

But a text can be useful in many ways without being historically factual. This point was not lost on the biblical writers.

The thrust of the passage from Timothy becomes even more evident in Romans 15:4. Here Paul again describes the scriptures in almost a utilitarian way. But the utility of Scripture has a more tender emphasis here than in Timothy. These writings are not only for "instruction" in a pedagogical sense; they are a resource which is to be explored with steadfast attention.

The word here rendered as "steadfastness" has also been translated as "patience" and even "endurance;" in this Paul shows sensitivity to the inner difficulties and uncertainties that can beset a religious quest, especially one which is trying to make sense of the Bible.

The value of this effort is primarily internal, even existential. It yields "encouragement," which can also mean "comfort," or even "consolation." And from this patience and encouragement Paul says we can draw something even more important, namely, hope--the ability to find meaning and promise in a situation where they had previously been lacking.

To me, this second passage has a distinctly contemporary ring. After all, to many Friends today the debates over biblical inerrancy seem irrelevant and even silly; we don't come to scripture looking for a science text or an error-free account of events more than two millennia past.

Rather, especially in the second, resource stage of study, what most Friends are looking for is much more personal: we're seeking glimmers of light in a world which is too often outwardly dark and inwardly uncertain. We come, that is, in search of encouragement. We come in search of hope.

A very profound French theologian, Jacques Ellul, has argued in his book, Hope In Time of Abandonment, that in our nuclear age, the form that authentic religious faith takes is not so much belief as hope; that is, it is shown more in the ability to find and sustain a sense of meaning and promise in life, than in the acceptance of doctrine.

I think Ellul is right, and his insight underlines the importance of this sense of inspiration: It is what enables the Bible to "speak to our condition"; the source of its ability, steadfastly explored, to bring us encouragement and hope.

Seen this way the Bible does not become an answer book, but rather an arena of ultimate engagement, even struggle, as well as a source of comfort and reassurance. As Barclay put it, "[The Scriptures] find a respondent spark in us, and in that way we discern the stamp of God's ways and his Spirit upon them."

So this third stage represents a qualitative change in one's relationship to the Bible. Scripture could now be described as a vehicle of revelation, or some equivalent term.

But why call the third stage Godwrestling? I have borrowed the term from a Jewish writer, scholar and activist, Arthur Waskow. Waskow, long a secular leftist activist, wrote vividly of his own journey along this path in a March 1, 1973 article in WIN Magazine:

"In the spring of 1968," he recalled, "I began an encounter with Judaism, Yiddishkeit; in the winter of 1972, that encounter deepened into one with God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob --especially the God of Jacob, who became Israel, the God-wrestler."

Waskow is referring to Genesis 32:24-30, in which Jacob spends a night wrestling with a mysterious figure, who is unable to overcome Jacob, even after dislocating his thigh. The figure tells Jacob to let him go, but Jacob says he won't let go until he receives a blessing.

The blessing he gets is a name change: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel...." (Gen 32:28) And the name Israel means "the one who has wrestled with God," or the Godwrestler.

Although it is only a few verses, this is a seminal passage in the Hebrew Scriptures. For one thing, in Hebrew life and religion, a name is a clue to essence and meaning. And it is no accident that in his new identity, Jacob/Israel becomes the ancestor of the "children of the Godwrestler", and later the nation of the Godwrestler, and still later the people of the Godwrestlers; and today even have the State of the Godwrestlers.

For Arthur Waskow, his own pilgrimage began quietly enough, with learning Hebrew and studying the Jewish Scriptures. How did Waskow know when he had made this transition?

"I knew how sharp a turning it was when I realized that for the first time in my life, I was writing poetry."

And this was not greeting card verse, either. Consider these lines from one of his earliest poems (Waskow, WIN, Ibid.):

"Wrestling feels a lot like making love.
Why did Jacob wrestle with God, why did the others talk?
God surely enjoyed that all-night fling with Jacob:
Told him he'd won,
Renamed him and us the Godwrestler,
Even left him with a limp to be sure he'd remember it all.
But ever since, we've talked.
Did something peculiar happen that night?
Did somebody say the next day we shouldn't wrestle? Who?
We should wrestle again with our Comrade sometime soon.
Wrestling feels a lot like making love."

This, then, was what one man could say as a result of his own passage through these stages. Waskow's continuing spiritual journey led him to become part of a Jewish renewal group in Washington, D.C. called Fabrangen, which tackled the Bible in just this way regularly in its Sabbath services. As Waskow puts it in a book called Godwrestling:

"...Every Shabbos morning, the Fabrangen wrestles God. Ourselves, and each other, and God. We do not simply accept the tradition, but we do not reject it either. We wrestle it: fighting it and making love to it at the same time. We try to touch it with our lives."

For me, Waskow's key sentence bears repeating:

"We do not simply accept the tradition, but we do not reject it either."

Such an ambivalent relationship to Bible the would hardly satisfy a fundamentalist; but it is a familiar one to most unprogrammed Friends. While such ambiguity and uncertainty have their price, the freedom they make possible is no small benefit.

Another crucial benefit of the Godwrestling image is that it brings into the open and legitimizes a task which I believe anyone who studies Scripture with their eyes open must tackle, namely confronting the Dark Side of the Bible. The issues raised there, the justification of oppression, the righteous cruelty, and the spectre of meaninglessness in life, are not simply literary or historical curiosities; they are very much part of life today.

Coming to grips with them is, I believe, part of what serious Bible study is all about. And when we do that, we join a company of honest Jews and Christians who have wrestled with them for centuries; and we will also find that some of the deepest, most searching of these struggles take place in Scripture itself.

One further potential benefit of wrestling with the Dark Side of the Bible is that it can help keep us humble about our own interpretations of the texts. The writers, even while talking with God, remained human and fallible, and so did their writings. Are we any better? I doubt it. As Paul admits in one of his humbler moments, "we have this treasure in earthen vessels." (2Cor.4:7) Humility is appropriate even as we are obliged to stand up for our convictions.

Can we find examples of Godwrestling in our Quaker tradition? Well, take another look, for instance, at the early chapters of George Fox's Journal: the years of wandering, questioning, and struggles with despair depicted there sound an awful lot like an extended bout of Godwrestling. And throughout these years, remember, the Bible was Fox's constant and main companion, and the realm in which this long match was played out.

The contemporary British Friend and religious scholar John Punshon, in his book Encounter With Silence, tells of picking up the New Testament shortly after his father died. He too was thoroughly familiar with the text, having read and studied it often. Yet when encountered outside his conventionally religious and intellectual frame of mind, in the flush of his very personal loss, he suddenly found the gospels speaking to him directly, in a way that took hold of him and permanently altered his understanding of himself as a religious person.

To reiterate, not everyone who begins Bible study goes through these same stages of Detoxification, Uncovering a Resource, and Godwrestling, and in describing them I do not mean to set up an ideal pattern to which everyone ought to conform.

But as you pursue your own course of Bible study, George Fox's ancient challenge to his early audiences will remain: what, as a result of encounter with the Scriptures, canst Thou say?

If, as I believe along with Robert Barclay, there is something in the Bible that can strike "a respondent spark" in the human soul, then if you study the Scriptures with the steadfastness called for by Paul, it ought to be of use and encouragement to you in discovering what you can say; and when the time comes, it can help you to stand up and say it.

FOR FURTHER READING

Coleman, Richard J. Issues of Theological Conflict. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980. A very illuminating survey of the divisions between liberal and evangelical Christians, with much emphasis on Biblical issues. Quakers who think they are above such squabbles are usually kidding themselves.

Ellul, Jacques. Hope In Time of Abandonment. New York: Seabury, 1973. A stunning example of how seriously evangelical faith, and devotion to Scripture, can also be politically trenchant and culturally revealing. A landmark. And if you like this book, don't miss:

Ellul, Jacques. False Presence of the Kingdom. New York: Seabury Press, 1972. The best, most telling critique of religious social activism I ever read, made all the better because it is not at all conservative in its underlying outlook.

Ellwood, Gracia Fay. Batter My Heart. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #282. I doubt if a feminist perspective/critique of Scripture has ever been put so pungently and concisely. A mistresspiece, not to be missed.

Fager, Chuck. A Respondent Spark: The Basics of Bible Study. Falls Church, VA: Kimo Press, 1984. My own modest contribution to the field, designed to equip Friends new to the Bible with the tools needed for beginning self-directed Bible study.

Freiday, Dean, ed. Barclay's Apology In Modern English. Available from Barclay Press, Newberg, Oregon. Although this basic Quaker theological treatise is over 300 years old, there is much in its sections on the Bible that so-called "modern" biblical scholarship is still trying to catch up with. Still radical after all these years.

Punshon, John. Encounter With Silence. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1987. While about more than the Bible, this account of a modern Friend's ongoing religious pilgrimage shows how important a resource the Bible can still be.

Soulen, Richard N. Handbook of Biblical Criticism, New Expanded Second Edition. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1981. This is a detailed dictionary of technical Bible scholar's jargon, which will make for much easier sledding if and when you begin to wade into heavyweight Bible scholarship.

Swartley, Willard H. Slavery, Sabbath, War & Women. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1983. A probing, enlightening examination by a Mennonite scholar of how several crucial issues have been treated in the Bible and by Bible interpreters through the centuries.

Waskow, Arthur. Godwrestling. New York: Schocken, 1978. First class; a Jewish perspective on the Bible that no Christian should be without.

Bibles and Commentaries:

The New Catholic Study Bible, Catholic Bible Press, has probably the most progressive theological perspective, includes the important Deuterocanonical books which Protestant Bibles leave out,(to understand more about why these books are important, see Cynthia Taylor's essay on Sophia elsewhere in this book) and presents all in the easy-to-read Today's English Version.

The Master Study Bible, Holman, packs the most helps between two covers(including an 800-page biblical encyclopedia) and its commentary, while conservative, is not mindlessly so.

The Interpreters Bible, Abingdon, is the old reliable commentary among non-fundamentalist scholars, and rightly so. Its twelve volumes and 10,000 pages may look formidable on the shelf, but it is easier to use than you think, and is loaded with illuminating historical, theological, textual and linguistic information. Its $300 price tag is steep for a personal collection, but no Friends meeting library should be without it.

Copyright © by Chuck Fager. All rights reserved.

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