Theological filtration systems, and the lenses they create, do not just inhibit what is seen but also what is thought to be possible. They place a governor upon the biblical text, a ceiling, a limit on its meaning.
Most modern believers assume that the way that Christianity is “practiced” today isn’t too far afield from how first century believers practiced it. That besides the technological differences, the liturgical format is relatively the same. This assumption would be mistaken.
Modern Christianity and that of the first century believers described in the New Testament are in more ways different than they are the same. I’m not the first to notice this. Many have brought this discrepancy to light. Yet very little has been done to correct it. Why? Because most believers read into the biblical text modern practices and programs. In other words, they assume that what is being described by the biblical writers is what they are doing.
This is an error en masse that is reinforced by doctrines, denominations, theologians, and local pastors. And it is an error—a lens—that has, in my view, become the chief error of the modern church. It is the assumption that what is now being done is what was being done and, therefore, there is biblical justification for continuing to do what is now being done. Clearly circular reasoning, but that’s not all.
Very few among the greater body of believers in America adhere to, let alone even know of, the supernatural worldview held by the majority of first century believers. Even fewer actually do things “by the book”, as they say. This presents a problem. At least, it would if it weren’t for the solutions presented by filters and lenses.
The range of theological filtration systems and lenses is not limited to data. It also affects interpretation. That is, TFS’s and lenses often determine not only what pieces are acceptable but what they all mean, and more importantly could mean, both individually and collectively. Essentially, they decide the interpretative options.
It’s not just doctrines like Liberation Theology or Cessationism that, to coin a term, desupernatrualize the content of scripture. Most believers, while mentally assenting to the idea of the “supernatural”, consider it functionally irrelevant. Ascribing to the possibility of supernatural or miraculous occurrences is not synonymous with the belief/faith that informed the lifestyle of first century believers. In reality they are antithetical to one another.
While a desupernaturalized expression of Christianity may be the predominant modern experience, it is not biblical Christianity by any stretch of the imagination.
[If you would like to explore this topic further, see the references given at the end of this post. However, be advised, the sources are given as an indirect defense of both the case for a supernatural worldview and a supernatural expression of Christianity. The authors themselves do not all make the latter assertion explicitly.]
While I could go on, for now it will be sufficient to show how this correlates to the subject of filters and lenses.
Filters and lenses are, by nature, prejudicial and exclusionary. They determine which aspect of biblical data is most important and then diminish the rest. As justified as their defendants will argue them to be, filters and lenses cannot account for the matrix of ideas that is biblical theology, let alone decipher its grand unifying theory or metanarrative. This is due, in no small part, to the elevation of a singular aspect of the whole.
To exclude or diminish components because they clog our filters or discolor our lenses is intellectually dishonest, no matter how esteemed the creator of a preferred filter or lens may be. The reality is, as with textual criticism, the best interpretation is the one that makes sense of all the component parts.
As such, a type of reasoned eclecticism, what I call the mosaic interpretative method or approach, must become the hermeneutical norm. This method allows for the whole of biblical and theological data (i.e. historical, cultural, political, economical, religious, and theological context) to be taken into consideration. And they must be taken into consideration if we are to attempt to understand the world in and to which the biblical authors wrote.
If I were to summarize the mosaic interpretive method in a phrase it would be this:
“If you remove the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
As it pertains to our discussion, “impossible” is defined, not as what is truly impossible but what has been deemed an impossibility or, as I stated earlier, what is thought to be impossible. That is what filters and lenses actually do: decide what is biblically, theologically, and interpretively possible.
In order, then, for the truth to be seen, filters and lenses, and the impossibilities they create, must be removed and discarded. Otherwise, we run the risk of missing it because it has been reckoned, not just impossible, but unreasonable.
The Unseen Realm by Dr. Michael Heiser
5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ by Alan Hirsch
Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola & George Barna