Damascus Gate

In the book Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola and George Barna finish by talking about the dangers involved with the style of Bible study known as proof texting.  They also talk about how prevalent this practice has become, especially in the American Christian culture.  I am not going to get into too many details here and will only summarize their main suggestion in combating this trend.  Their recommendation is to seek a broader understanding of the Scriptures.

“We have been conditioned to come to the New Testament with a microscope and extract verses to find out what the early Christians did.  We need to abandon that whole mentality, step back, and take a fresh look at the Scriptures.  We must become familiar with the whole sweeping drama from beginning to end.  We need to learn to view the New Testament panoramicly, not microscopically.”

A quote from “Pagan Christianity:  Exploring the Roots of our Christian Practices” by Frank Viola and George Barna.

An even more practical remedy is to start reading the New Testament in the order in which it was written.  This will start to illuminate the “sweeping drama” that they talk about.  As per tradition at the time that the Bible as we know it today was compiled, the letters in the New Testament are arranged from longest to shortest.  The current order is:

Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, Philemon

The chronological order of the New Testament letters is as follows:

Galatians, I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Romans, Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philipians, I Timothy, Titus, and lastly II Timothy.

There are Bibles that arrange the books chronologically like this one.  After the Gospels, most of the rest of the New Testament follows the story of Acts with the letters of Paul, Peter, John etc. interspersed there they fall in the timeline.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 10:20 am and is filed under Matters of Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.