Missions, Orality, and the Bible

About a month ago I made brief mention about oral based cultures and the dangers of using solely a chronological bible study approach. Dave Revnak added some helpful comments to my post offering good clarification. On his blog he also points to a recent article by John Piper entitled Missions, Orality, and the Bible. Here are nine questions which Piper raises.

1. Will we Westerners who have had the Bible in our languages for five centuries and who have access to Greek and Hebrew in which the Bible was verbally inspired keep this privileged position for ourselves?

2. Or will we humble ourselves and labor with all our might to help other peoples and cultures have the same access we have to a full and right understanding of the scriptures so that they do not have to depend on cultural outsiders telling them what God’s words say and what they mean and how they should be applied culturally and religiously and missiologically?

3. Will we tell pre-literate and less-literate peoples and cultures that all authoritative religious truth comes from God through a single inspired book, and that all oral communication about God and his ways, no matter where it happens anywhere in the world, depends for its final reliability on this book, the Bible?

4. Will we clarify for them that, although all other holy books may have some helpful religious insights, nevertheless they do not have any final authority from God, but only the Bible does?

5. Will we tell them that this Bible was first written in Greek and Hebrew, the languages that God used when centuries ago “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21)?

6. Will we make sure they understand that if they remain only oral and do not someday raise up a generation who can read this book and study it in the original languages, they will remain dependent on outsiders for the divine truth God has given only through the Book?

7. Will we joyfully concur that access to the words of God in the Bible in one’s own language is a blessing greater than health and life, and that the golden rule gives us the privilege and duty to give other people and peoples the blessing that has come to us without our deserving it or planning it?

8. Will we labor for the long-term strength of the church among all unreached and less-reached peoples, by empowering them with the ability to read and study the Bible in the original languages, in the desire that the Lord may come very soon, but in the sober possibility that he may delay his return for centuries?

9. Will we labor to reverse the Western cultural trend away from reading, in the conviction that, when one moves away from reading, one moves away from a precious, God-given, edifying, stabilizing connection with God’s written word?

It should be our supreme desire to have all the nations worship Christ and have the ability to study his word in the original languages. God has revealed himself in words and it should be our mission that others may come to know these words. More importantly to know the Word - Jesus Christ - who today is known through the word of Scripture.