The Garden of Scripture

A Storm of Perfection

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.
—Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Growing up in Minnesota, experiencing thunderstorms was common. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed most of them for one reason or another. Sometimes, when I tell that to others, they give me a strange look, but I never let it bother me. As a child, I particularly enjoyed the storms I could see far in the distance. One of the cool things about living on the northern plains is that the land is level enough so that a person can see storms that are miles away. For whatever reason, my parents told me the lightning we could see from those storms in the distance was called “heat lightning,” which never entirely made sense to me but added to their mystique. Those storms always seemed to strike at dusk and in the deepest part of summer. There was just enough light left in the sky that when lightning illuminated the cloud, it took on a curious orangish-white marbled quality that clashed with the deeper blue parts of the thunderhead. Gazing upon those storms in the distance was like looking into a different world; it was great for inspiring the imagination.

The thunderstorms I usually preferred, however, were the ones that directly impacted us, especially the ones that hit at night. They were never dull. In these storms, one of the main things I enjoyed was how one bolt could light up the surrounding darkness. For the briefest instant, when the lightning struck, I could see every detail of my neighborhood almost as clearly as in the day.

Those childhood memories got put on the back burner. As I moved across the country to the East Coast, thunderstorms were less frequent, and my attention turned to creating and facing my own inner storms. Eventually, I would give my life over to Christ, get married, move to the Southeastern United States, get called into ministry, and go to college and seminary to study theology. With my arrival in the South came the return of natural thunderstorms, ones that, if I can be honest, are terrifying because cloud–to–ground lightning is more common. And trees are everywhere, frequently knocked down by heavy rain and bursts of wind. But they did bring back the memories of watching the lightning illuminate everything.

Then God did something that would make storms relevant in a way I never imagined; he showed me Psalm 119:105. The verse says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” When I say that God showed it to me, I’m not saying I wasn’t aware of the verse; it was a popular worship song when I was a kid and was commonly used as a memory verse in Sunday school. What I mean is that God illuminated it when I studied it in Hebrew. The word for light in Hebrew, Or, can mean lightning. Finding that out immediately brought me back to my childhood memory of seeing my surroundings lit up. It revealed to me that the light God provides through his word doesn’t just allow us to see a few steps before us but can illuminate our path almost entirely.

As good as that is, lightning is only temporary. Its clarity lasts for a second, and everything goes dark again. When it comes to the direction our lives should go, the major decisions we make, or even the everyday situations we face, we can make the case that we need this type of illumination from God, however brief it is. If we return to Psalm 119:105, God has much more light to give us. Or does not just mean the brightness that a flash of lightning offers. The word also denotes the light at daybreak, the full light of the sun, and the light of glory, and is even linked to the pillar of fire that Israelites followed coming out of Egypt.

The imagery of lightning and fire almost seems counterintuitive because they are destructive forces, but God is Lord over them and can use those powerful elements. Yahweh himself appeared to the Israelites as a terrifying dark cloud containing lightning and fire. In his ominous interaction with Israel, however, God gave them his Instruction, the Torah, that showed Israel how to love and honor him and each other’s lives (Exod 19:16–19), and that’s why Or also means the light of life. The overall lesson from Psalm 119:105 is that the light God provides through Scripture is supposed to be stable and consistently shining, leading to a life of love, joy, and eagerness.^[1]

Little things like the Hebrew word for light demonstrate how God’s word is perfect. In Evangelical Christianity, we have a strange relationship with that sentiment. By expressing that the Bible is perfect, we usually mean that it is without error and sum it up with a doctrine called Biblical Inerrancy. But that is such a limited view of perfection for Scripture. The Old and New Testaments are perfect not because they don’t make errors but because they are the perfect collection of books that speak to humanity’s need for salvation. Then it is perfect for speaking to every situation we face because it speaks to the root issues of what causes those situations, doesn’t offer a solution found in ourselves, and mainly because it reveals Christ. The little word Or implies that our light and lives are sourced and sustained by a perfect God.

Meditative Reading

Our perfect God is willing to give us as much light on his Word as we are eager to ask for, and we should ask. Sometimes, though, I think God nudges us in unexpected ways. He gives us seemingly perfect moments to reflect on. These perfect moments are typically not easy to define until an individual experiences them, and they are subjective. Perhaps your moment is hearing the first cry of your just-born child or the moment your spouse said “I do” at the altar, or maybe when you realized what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. Whatever those moments are, whenever they do happen, they are engrained in your memory forever.

In an important way, I believe the practice of meditating on Scripture can be described as a haunting of God’s Word that won’t let you go until you spend time with it. Or, at least, maybe that’s how we should treat it. When I was a child in the 1980s and ’90s, the word meditation certainly would have had a similar connotation with haunting because of its affiliation with Eastern spirituality and New Age practices. However, I have seen the Christian form of meditation become more widely accepted in churches that honor it as a practice within the historical church. But with us having built a society where instant gratification can be met on demand, I wonder if meditation is lacking in the lives of many believers. With so many ways to distract ourselves to prevent us from reflecting, is it any wonder that biblical literacy has significantly declined?

Whenever it’s done well, however, meditating on Scripture leads to powerful insights that we read about in some of our favorite classic Christian books, such as The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster describes the practice of meditation as the “ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word” out of a desire to fellowship with God.^[2] Foster pulls from the Bible to note the importance of meditating on Scripture by highlighting the word’s use in Psalm 119, where David declares, “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long” (119:97) along with other Old Testament appearances.^[3] In meditating on God’s word, David found his wisdom had increased significantly and that he could sense his Lord’s sweetness, which we don’t often take the time to comprehend (119:103). This mirrors the church father Jerome’s account of his friend Marcella saying, “whatever in us was gathered by long study and by lengthy meditation was almost changed into nature; this she tasted, this she learned, this she possessed.”^[4] As a result, when Jerome left his station, Marcella was sought as an authority when issues of Scriptural interpretation arose.^[5] So, in a biblical context, meditation doesn’t require us to empty our minds or detach ourselves from reality, but it invites us to fill our minds with God’s truth to attach ourselves more deeply to him.^[6]

Something palpable happens to us after we begin meditating on God’s Word; Scripture starts to haunt us. Theologian and educator Cheryl Bridges Johns laments that in this modern age, Scripture doesn’t keep people up at night, nor does it seem to fill their days with “images and stories.”^[7] To cope with that, Johns notices that modern society, Christian or secular, has found alternatives to enchant themselves through popular media or activities driven by lust and has become disenchanted with Scripture. And so, instead, we let a plethora of other harmful things haunt us. With my whole breath, however, I would argue that what the Bible offers us, especially in the revelation of Christ, is beautiful beyond comprehension. We should let such beauty haunt us instead of pain and regret, and it is a shame when we consider the latter more real and tangible than the inhabiting of the Spirit and Word within us. I believe, however, that intentional (which is just a buzzword that means to do something on purpose) meditation is one way to alleviate the issues Johns raises.

But what do I mean by that? Out of contemplation will hopefully come the understanding that Scripture is multifaceted. Each line of Scripture tends to link to other portions of Scripture, forming a connective tissue we banally call themes. If we begin to comprehend specific themes, things like the nature of God’s love, faith, the beauty and glory of God’s Kingdom, other biblical riches begin to accurately take shape in our hearts and minds. Although the Apostle Paul promises us we’ll see through a mirror darkly until Christ’s return (1 Cor 13:12), the picture God is communicating to readers of Scripture can become more apparent in meditation.

When the Bible’s messages become visible, it’s easier to become swept up in its narrative. That is a good thing and arguably what God wants. A common belief among Christians in the West is that we must interpret God’s word objectively so that we don’t insert our own experience into the text; that would be something called eisegesis. However, the unintentional effect of objectivism is that faith becomes an intellectual ascent rather than one that permeates a person’s whole self. That is a problem since God is after a person’s entire being. Consider Moses’ command to the Israelites, saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5), a command that Jesus echoes in Matthew 22. A question we can ask is, if we believe the God revealed in the Bible is powerful enough to create the universe, is he powerful enough to transform us through reading his word?

Several significant figures throughout the Bible suggest the answer to the question we just asked is yes. One prominent person is the Old Testament leader Joshua. Guess how Joshua says transformation through the Word should happen? He says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night,” and in doing so, it will allow us to act in accordance with what it says (Josh 1:8). We must also remember the context of Joshua to understand the significance of how meditating on Scripture can impact the whole person. Joshua had inherited from Moses the role of leading Israel into the promised land of Canaan. He led the Israelites in battle after battle against kingdoms who thought it was perfectly fine to sacrifice children to their gods to receive a fertile growing season. We know this because Moses gives commands to the Israelites, saying:

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18:9–12)

The kind of thinking and practice of those pagan nations is symbolic of a fallen world. To change such a way of living, the Israelites weren’t just required to “know the rules” but to embody the word of God, which would lead to their prosperity and even the prosperity of their neighbors. It’s not so different for Christians in this day and age. Despite Christ inaugurating his Kingdom, we still live in a fallen world and have societies steeped in destructive sin. If meditation could significantly aid the ancient Israelites, we who serve the same God can also benefit.

Although meditation has a profoundly spiritual connotation, many can be turned off by the word or become intimidated. There was and is a long tradition of meditation within the church, often called Contemplative Christianity, a term that can sometimes be code for Christian Mysticism. Like meditation, mysticism can be a polarizing word in some parts of the church because there are other forms of mysticism in different cultures and religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Historically, the church has been enriched by Christian mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, The Desert Fathers (St. Anthony) and Mothers, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, and many others. Most of the men and women listed lived a monastic life. They dedicated themselves to Christian meditation and other Christian disciplines because it allowed them to be fully devoted to God. Their writings have catapulted them into legendary status with lasting influence.

Yet, if Tim, a close friend of mine who owns a landscaping business, does it while mowing a yard, surely we don’t all have to be monks and nuns at a monastery. For Tim, meditation is about asking the Holy Spirit questions about Scripture; a fantastic one that he returns to often is the question of what happened on the cross. One could argue that Tim’s question is answered directly in the pages of the four gospels. That is true, but meditation is less about seeing what’s on the pages and more about dwelling on what the pages reveal, so it’s what happens after we see it. That is because the “central goal of Christian mysticism is to experience the ineffable splendors of the mutual indwelling of the soul in Christ,” as implied by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:20.^[8] The Spirit who inspired the living word invites us to seek with our own spirits the depth of God’s communion with us.

Also, consider this: the Hebrew word for meditate, hagita, means “to mutter” or to “say under the breath,” which brings a kind of lightness to the practice. There is a reason for muttering. Since most Israelites learned God’s word orally, it only makes sense that lingering on it would also be verbal itself. So, those who meditated on the Law would walk around or perform their duties while muttering Scripture under their breath in the process of understanding. Lots of us mutter under our breath, and usually, it’s by saying something passive-aggressive. Imagine, though, if we instead directed our thoughts and words towards understanding a verse or a passage we long to comprehend. I believe it would bring significant change to our lives and compel us to do it more and more as we seek to commune with God and obey him.
How To Meditate On Scripture As A Christian

So, how does a Christian meditate on their Bible readings? In this section, I’m supposed to offer several tips on how to improve your contemplative life. The fact is that it is difficult to flesh out concretely. The Bible, of course, is primary. Having the verse or passage fresh in our minds helps the process significantly as we seek to ask and dwell on its meaning. Richard Foster, who I mentioned earlier, writes about developing an interior life aided by time, place, and posture.^[10] Time is crucial because we have the physical and the emotional competing with the spiritual. The place is significant because it might be impossible to get a moment’s peace depending on our environment. Posture also impacts us because we can’t think or reflect well if we’re uncomfortable.

I agree with Foster. I often meditate on Scripture when I’m alone and have ambient music playing while sitting at my desk with the blinds open so I can see my yard. That being said, I’ve also meditated when doing the dishes, cutting the grass, or vacuuming. Anything that relies on muscle memory, or a “mindless activity,” frees our minds to focus on what we’ve read and be receptive to the Spirit of God. Notice here, too, in all these instances, as well as what Foster suggests, that I am wide awake. I like to think of meditating as studying in that it’s a process of learning, and I’m giving it the kind of attention needed to study well. It’s probably not impossible to meditate on Scripture lying in bed, but it’s less fruitful because of the temptation to doze off. Additionally, in times of meditation, you may want to write down the verse or passage so that you can come back later and add anything that God has shown you or if any of your other readings have contributed to your understanding.
Getting Results?

So far, I have described meditation as seeking answers and communing with God. We do this expecting that God will speak to us in return. But when can we expect an answer or see results? Whenever. I mentioned above that I, and others, have meditated during purposeful times or when doing mindless tasks. God also spoke to me in those times by impressing a thought that directly addressed what I was searching for in meditation. However, God has also spoken to me while I was in the middle of teaching my students. As I was writing The Fruit That Turns The World Upside Down, I’d been doing a lot of meditative reading. While teaching my high school students about the flood in Genesis, a thought literally popped into my head about how the flood metaphorically applies to our lives before we meet Christ and how Christ’s peace changes the effect of water to sanctify us.^[11] I believe I said, “holy smokes,” out loud while writing on the marker board. All that to say, I wasn’t expecting such a thought at that time.

If our meditation is truly about God, I believe he also gives us a way to confirm it. Countless times after meditation, questions have formed in my mind about God and what he says in his Word, and numerous times, that question was answered via a pastor’s sermon or perhaps something another Christian said, and usually in the same week. It is vital to confirm what we’re getting from meditation so we don’t slip into false beliefs and share erroneous things outside the bounds of Scripture. We need to heed John’s words to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Nevertheless, if we’re receptive to God, he will bless us in his timing, which, by our standards, may happen whenever.

We love mysteries, but more than that, we love solving puzzles. One of my favorite mystery-solving television series was Luther, starring Idris Elba, because it’s not Sherlock Holmes but is still set in London. As a detective, Luther faces off against some very dangerous and brilliant foes, especially Alice Morgan, but he always manages to crack the case. Part of what I love about mystery shows is misdirection. When the viewer thinks they’ve figured out who’s done it, the detective reveals who actually did the crime, and there is closure. Some people take the same approach when meditating on Scripture as if the rest of the church is getting specific passages wrong, but their meditation reveals what the Bible is really saying. We are not Gnostics who try to “unlock” secret truths in the Bible or who eschew our physical lives for a solely spiritual life. While Christian meditation involves a person’s mind and spirit, the practice rests in the God present in both Testaments. Through meditation, we embrace the tension of mystery, understanding that God may reveal some parts but not all.

It is like The Big Bang Theory episode called “The Closure Alternative.” In the episode, one of the main characters, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), is upset about his favorite show being canceled on a cliffhanger. Sensing his obsession with closure in many other parts of his life and thinking he needs to re-condition his mind, Sheldon’s girlfriend, Amy (Mayim Bialik), arranges a series of activities for him to complete but prevents him from completing each task just before he can finish. By the end of the night, Sheldon claims that her experiment worked and confesses, albeit somewhat falsely, that he doesn’t need the closure he sought.^[12]

Mystery is beneficial for our minds. Why shouldn’t we want to let our minds hold God and his love in awe and wonder? Because those two states of being lead to feeling overwhelmed, people often avoid such a crucial time of reflection. As the Norwegian Educator Paul Martin Opdal observes, awe and “Wonder…always points to something beyond the accepted rules.”^[13] That can be daunting, especially in the context of religion, where there are “rules” to prevent us from sliding into unorthodox beliefs. Yet, multiple times in Scripture, we are told that being in awe and wonder of God is more than acceptable. Opdal notes that wonder gives us “an inkling that there is more to it that tradition admits, and that this ‘more’ can be investigated.”^[14] The “more” can be described as the theology beyond denominational doctrine that can sometimes be too reductive in how it discusses God and what he does.

Therefore, meditation can and does serve as a direct link to awe and wonder. In fact, we could say that meditation allows us to dive into the depths, swim in the mysteries Scripture presents, and enjoy that God is wholly other than us and who makes us whole.
What Meditation On Scripture Isn’t

The spiritual practice of Christian meditation is not a trend either. Trends depend on the consensus of popularity and are driven by influencers. For example, at the time of this writing, it is 2023, and a famous haircut from the early 1990s, the mullet, is gaining popularity because of some musicians and professional athletes. God willing, the trend will die out again, too. Although Christian spiritual practices have ebbed and flowed within the church for the last two thousand years, and some believers have promoted spirituality for their own benefit, practices such as meditation are a core component of the faith. As I have already demonstrated, meditation has been part of biblical faith since its inception, with its first appearance in Genesis 24:63. For Christians, intentional practice within the church was emphasized in the patristic period, if not before. Christopher Hall writes:

The [church] fathers never split theology off from spirituality, as though theology was an academic, mental exercise best practiced in one’s study, while Christian spirituality was more appropriately focused on the heart and centered in a church sanctuary. Any split between mind and heart, theology and spirituality, study and sanctuary would have been met with scant toleration from the fathers.^[15]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer utilized meditation as well. A commonly shared quote from him states, “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian.”^[16] That is because Bonhoeffer believed it to be an excellent way to tame the flesh, the fallen nature that tries daily to creep up in believers and distracts us from forming good Christian discipleship.^[17] He knew that our spirits are all too willing to follow the path of discipleship, but the flesh is “fearful,” causing us to create distractions and excuses as to why we can’t grow in our love toward God and our neighbor.^[18] Carving out time for meditating on Scripture is a practical discipline for our faith as we humbly submit ourselves to “move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the word of God.”^[19]

Lastly, meditation is not for our self-elevation and self-promotion. Social media can sometimes be a great place for Christians. Through it, I’ve gained a lot of relationships with people that wouldn’t be possible without the platforms. On the other hand, social media is also rife with temptation, which includes the temptation to appear more pious than everyone else. With the surge of re-discovering the patristic and medieval period of Christianity in Evangelicalism, one of my worries is that some believers would co-opt the spiritual practices and theology of the church fathers and lord it over others who were less informed or use their spiritual practices to skirt moral and ethical issues Scripture warns against. We do not have to look too far to see examples. However, the flaunting of Christian spirituality and its misappropriation makes it void. Meditation done well should drive our pretensions away rather than enable them. Therefore, the more we meditate on the Word, the more it can be mapped over our lives since the practice’s goal is the application of Scripture. In short, meditation helps us decrease as Christ increases.

PR

This chapter is an excerpt from Tim Tschida’s book, The Garden of Scripture: Growing Your Confidence in the Bible (Resource Publications, 2025). Used with permission.

Coming Next from Tim Tschida: “Illusions And Fullness”

Notes

[1] Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, 161–162.

[2] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 21. Foster dedicates a whole chapter to the discipline of meditation and deftly cites Scripture to support its use in the Christian life while dispelling misconceptions of the practice.

[3] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 20.

[4] Jerome, Epistle 108, CSEL 55.334, as quoted in Hall, Scripture with the Church Fathers, 44–45.

[5] Jerome, Epistle 108.

[6] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 25.

[7] Johns, Re-Enchanting The Text, 3.

[8] McColman, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, 50.

[9] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 28.

[10] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 31–33.

[11] Tim Tschida, The World Upside Down, 13–14. In the end of the first chapter, I link God separating the waters of chaos in Genesis 1 to God flooding the world in Genesis 6 because our sin seems to desire chaos, so God gave the chaos they wanted by giving them the flood waters. In this day and age, the chaos caused by sin can flood our lives, and God lets us experience that.

[12] Lorre, The Big Bang Theory.

[13] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[14] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[15] Hall, Theology With The Church Fathers, 10.

[16] Bonhoeffer, Meditating On The Word, 22.

[17] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[18] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[19] Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word, 22.

The Garden of Scripture

Introduction

What do you think of when you hear the word Bible? Do you think of flamboyant televangelists? Do politicians courting a voting block primarily come to mind? Do images of well-meaning aunts who post “biblical warnings” on social media that accompany horrendous art dance through your brain? Or maybe it’s not so much those things, but you’re a new convert to Christ making your first journey into reading, and you’re nervous because you won’t understand everything right away? You could be put off by the time commitment it takes to read Scripture. If it isn’t that, is it that you’ve been reading the Bible, but there are a lot of loud voices in our hyper-online world casting doubt on its authenticity and relevancy? Maybe you’ve been turned off by the vehement arguments of fundamentalists and progressives? If any of those things resonate, this book is for you. Although, this book is also for everyone.

The truth is, there are a lot of loud voices out there, articulate and loud, who do have opinions on what the Bible is, how you should read it, and its relevancy. Because we spend a lot of time online, things like algorithms expose us to these loud, articulate voices, some who have no trouble telling us what we want to hear and who have no issue affirming our doubts, all for visibility and profit.

What are the quiet people saying, though? By nature, I am a quiet person, but if you were to ask me what I thought about the Bible and what in the world God does with it, I would love to share my thoughts with you. That is, essentially, what this book is; the things that I have thought quietly over the past fifteen years of studying Scripture personally and academically.

As to why I’ve written this book, I know of a few instances in which authors have been inspired to write. Most famously, Tolkien was inspired to write his myths about The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings because he studied languages and had created his own. For me, though, the inspiration came right in the middle of trying to explain a concept in front of thirty-six or so strangers at a Christian men’s retreat. I thought, “Hmm, this would probably make for a helpful book,” and the Lord agreed, or perhaps I agreed with him. So, when I returned home from the retreat, I set to begin work on what is now this book.

Although I didn’t segment this book into parts, it could be said that the first four chapters provide a pathway for the firm rooting of Scripture to take place in a person’s life. What I mean is that I offer ways to help people think about reading the Bible and provide thoughts on what God is doing when we sit down to read it earnestly. For example, this book’s opening chapter asks the reader to establish a slower and more meaningful process of reading the Bible. In it, I focus on the importance of meditating on Scripture while framing the practice in a biblical view and showcasing its benefits for the practical application of Bible reading to our lives. That means defining what meditation is in Christianity and what it isn’t.

In chapter two, I contend that Bible reading isn’t a single-sided process but one in which God is also involved. The reason for that is not because there isn’t any literature out there talking about it, but because it was genuinely life-changing when I came to understand it, so I want to pass on my joy to others. To accomplish this goal, I attempt to guide us through how Scripture supports the Holy Spirit’s aid in understanding the biblical text for the believer and how prayer can aid the process.

Suppose we accept that God is involved when an individual and the body of Christ are reading Scripture. In that case, it should open up the idea of acknowledging a supernatural strangeness when wrapping our minds around what’s happening in the Bible. Chapter three then examines that type of strangeness and how defining human imagination can help us connect with the strange things written within Scripture. Hopefully, this will guard against any attempts of over-rationalizing, over-reasoning, and over-allegorizing every weird thing away.

When we stop reasoning everything away as if it’s swamp gas reflecting the light of the planet Venus, we open ourselves to the fullness of what God is doing in the Bible and through its reading. Chapter four explores the idea of fullness in Scripture and introduces the first of three successive short stories. This chapter’s story is aimed at helping us think more deeply about the Bible itself, its themes, and its events in terms of a relationship. For we can’t grow in relationships if we only understand a person in a “plain sense.” So, we should also determine to understand Scripture beyond a “plain meaning” to approach a fuller relationship with God.

Chapter six is sort of a spiritual sequel to the second chapter. It begins with a short story about how a diverse yet united people can turn against each other. Additionally, instead of solely narrowing in on the Spirit himself and his direct illumination of Scripture, I found it essential to widen the scope and highlight how the Spirit works within the global body of the church in terms of understanding Scripture. This is because of the Scriptural importance of seeing the body of Christ as a community and how different parts may have a helpful perspective on Scripture we may not have considered before.

We cannot discuss Scripture without acknowledging Christ because he is the Ultimate Word, whereas the Bible is the penultimate. Chapter seven, then, focuses strictly on Jesus and two specific things the Bible says Jesus is and what those mean for humanity. Incidentally, it’s also the longest chapter and, in my opinion, the most important to understand in terms of our identity in him and union with him.

Lastly, chapter eight deals with the writings in the New Testament beyond the gospels. For the willfully ignorant, the New Testament’s epistles, or letters, are accused of distorting Jesus’ teachings. Instead, the chapter demonstrates how the moral and ethical teachings within them are essential for the continuing work of salvation, which we call sanctification, in the lives of believers.

PR
 

This chapter is an excerpt from Tim Tschida’s book, The Garden of Scripture: Growing Your Confidence in the Bible (Resource Publications, 2025). Used with permission.

Coming Next from Tim Tschida: “A Storm of Perfection”

Editor Introduction to The Kingdom of God As Scripture’s Central Theme

Part 1 of The Kingdom of God As Scripture’s Central Theme

Editors Introduction: This is part 2 of David Burns’ proposal that the Kingdom of God is the central unifying theme of Scripture. First published in two parts in the print version of Pneuma Review in 2001, we invite all readers to continue the conversation now that it has been brought online. Please leave your comments under the article.

The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament

The Kingdom of God is at the heart of the Old Testament. Throughout its pages God is presented as the undisputed Sovereign who reigns over all he has created and who administers the rule of his Kingdom through covenant. In our brief survey we will show how the Kingdom of God developed in the Old Testament and focus on texts that speak of his kingship. From there we will move on to discuss the coming of the Kingdom under the New Covenant.

The Kingdom of God in the Pentateuch (Torah)

The fall of man in the garden led to evil becoming rampant (Gen. 6:1-5,11-12). The great flood of Noah’s day effectively reduced evil in the world by destroying all life. Yet God assured the advancement of his Kingdom by delivering the righteous Noah, his family, and two of every creature safely through the flood (Gen. 6-9). They became the recipients of another covenant wherein God promised to never again flood the earth (Gen. 9:11). The Noahic Covenant was essentially the Adamic Covenant reformulated to fit a sinful world. The creation mandate of multiplying and ruling is restated (Gen. 9:1-2), but the rule of man now has an element of dread for the creatures (Gen. 9:2). In fact man’s entire role as “image” is in jeopardy due to his failure as God’s representative on earth. Thus the sacredness of that image must be protected by placing a just penalty upon any living being that would take its life (Gen. 9:5-6).

Editor Introduction to The Kingdom of God As Scripture’s Central Theme

Editors Introduction: David Burns’ proposal that the Kingdom of God is the central unifying theme of Scripture was published in two parts in the print version of Pneuma Review in 2001. Brought online in October 2014, we invite all readers to begin a conversation on the Last Days (eschatology) and approaches to biblical theology by leaving comments under the article.

Introduction

Have you ever wondered what God is doing? What is He up too? In this article we will be answering those questions by taking a look at the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the primary theme that binds the Scriptures and indeed all of history together. Only the kingdom theme flows easily from the pages of the biblical writers. It alone does adequate justice to the progressive unfolding of biblical revelation by viewing the historical covenants of redemptive history as keys to revelatory development in the Kingdom of God. It is also the only theme that incorporates within it all the major and minor subthemes of Scripture without doing violence to any of them. The Kingdom of God places our Lord Jesus at its center and emphasizes covenant as the vehicle of our redemptive relationship with God. In that respect it considers the Bible not only to be a book about covenant, but a covenantal book itself, governing the relationship of God with the subjects in his great Kingdom. Thus the Kingdom of God becomes the unifying theme of Scripture with covenant providing its structure.

Popular Approaches to Understanding the Scriptures

Before we go on to present a Kingdom centered approach to understanding Scripture, let us look at the two main interpretative schools which have dominated the conservative Christian community this century—Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.¹ If you grew up in a Reformed church, you were taught Covenant Theology. If you grew up in an independent, Pentecostal, or Baptist church, you were probably taught Dispensational Theology. Each one of these approaches is helpful to understanding Scripture and has its good points, but in my opinion each also has its shortcomings. I have learned a tremendous amount about God and the Scriptures from the godly men of both schools. Any criticism of these systems in no manner implies disrespect. What better way is there to honor one’s teachers than to critically evaluate their teachings and to come to one’s own conclusions? To the degree that any of this author’s conclusions are accurate, they have been built upon the shoulders of his mentors. Any failure is due to his own shortcomings.

Covenant Theology

Covenant Theology generally sees covenant as providing both the unifying theme and the structure for Scripture. It is through covenant that God enters into relationship with man and brings salvation to him. Covenant Theology divides biblical history into two major covenants, the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. A third covenant, the Covenant of Redemption, is the covenant that stands above history and becomes the basis for the Covenant of Grace. The Covenant of Redemption is an everlasting covenant established between God the Father and God the Son in eternity past before the creation of the world. It provides for the salvation of sinful man through the sacrificial death of the Son.

The Covenant of Works historically began with Adam and continued until the fall of man in the garden of Eden, but legally it is still in force today. Under it God promised Adam eternal life as long as he perfectly and totally obeyed his commands, but death should he disobey. The Covenant of Works shows the inability of man to save himself by attempting to perfectly obey the laws of God. Jesus Christ was the only one who could perfectly obey the law of God and thus satisfy the requirements of a holy and just God.

The Covenant of Grace began at the fall of man and continues throughout eternity. It brings into history and puts into action the plans of salvation made between the Father and the Son in the Covenant of Redemption. It is through the Covenant of Grace that God begins to rescue the human race from its sinfulness. God does this through two different dispensations or administrations of the Covenant of Grace, the Old Covenant Dispensation and the New Covenant Dispensation. The various covenants under the Old Covenant are stages in the development or revelation of the Covenant of Grace. The two dispensations are not different in kind but only in degree. They are both part of God’s single plan to bring salvation into the world. Their difference lies in their place along the historical path of revelatory development. In other words, as times goes on God reveals more and more of his plan of salvation, until his greatest revelation, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes into the world.

Have you ever read something that gave expression to a number of thoughts you have had? When I first met David Burns and begun discussing with him his concept of Kingdom of God theology, I had that experience. Although a brief article cannot give full explanation to either David’s Biblical theology or any of ours, I would like to introduce this subject to you as something that may provide a new way of approaching God’s Word.

First of all, I want to reiterate that David’s Kingdom theology is in no way connected to what is called Kingdom Now theology. Please see his endnote on that subject.

Secondly, Biblical theology is something that I believe has been neglected by a large portion of Pentecostal/charismatic ministers. Well, what is Biblical theology? Biblical theology (not to be confused with the Biblical theology movement of the 1940s-60s) is a system of studying or investigating the Scripture by looking at themes that reach through all of God’s Word. One way of doing Biblical theology is by looking at the themes and theologies specific to certain authors like Peter (Petrine theology), Paul (Pauline), or John (Johannine) and understanding the motifs and recurring concepts that make their writings unique and yet unified with all of Scripture. David is presenting a new approach to Biblical theology by calling the kingdom of God the meta-theme of Scripture.

Understandably, you may not agree with everything that David presents here. Not only the readership of the Pneuma Review, but also the editorial committee have diverse views on eschatology, which is something this article touches on. This article is included in this journal for the primary purpose of engendering discussion and further thought.

—Raul Mock, Executive Editor

From the Winter 2001 issue of Pneuma Review
Part 1 of The Kingdom of God As Scripture’s Central Theme

From the Spring 2001 issue of Pneuma Review
Part 2 of The Kingdom of God As Scripture’s Central Theme