This is the thread where we discuss the Five Big Ideas as a whole. As the gears in the introductory graphic above suggest, the five individual ideas in the FBIS model work together to achieve a single purpose—more about that later. It didn’t start that way, however. Instead, it began as a project to organize teaching material going back 20 years. While we were organizing though, we were also mindful of a strategic problem within our faith community—an increasingly urgent need for renewal. As we tried to make sense of and consolidate decades of teaching material into related groups, we gradually realized the fruits of our good housekeeping efforts were providing the answer to our strategic problem—something we could use to achieve the renewal our community needed. We, of course, loved the answer to that strategic need, but we didn’t know how to adequately describe the FBIS until we realized our model fits into the Three Arenas of Faith as a perfect example of “corporate faith.” That fit was made even sweeter in that it provided a serendipitous validation of our work.
“Corporate Faith” is a key concept in understanding the FBIS, so it’s important to have some familiarity with how the phrase can be used. See below for an annotated excerpt of a Logos search of approximately 10,000 religious books and journals for our comments on common uses of “corporate faith”:
Figure 1: FBIS: A Corporate Faith for a Believing Community
As shown above, the FBIS Model exhibits a “turning outwards” in showing “The Three Arenas of Faith” within the FBIS while also showing the FBIS within “The Three Arenas of Faith.”1 This feature of the FBIS suggests a built-in reflection, unlike other corporate faiths. Every community of faith needs to be more reflective toward its corporate faith and the hermeneutics2 that undergird it. The crucial role both play in shaping the internal lives of faith communities and their external relationships with other communities is hard to overestimate. It is, however, not hard to underestimate, with many groups denying they have a hermeneutic and decrying those who do. There are, however, no “divine perspectives” nor “zero perspectives.” toward scripture. That is to say, no one can approach scripture without any presuppositions toward it. Neither can anyone approach scripture with all-knowing exactitude on how it should be read. Those who insist otherwise risk a reputation of not being worth talking to.
As we’ve already noted, “corporate faith” is an unfamiliar phrase for some people, so we’ve created some examples to illustrate it—and “yes,” we forced them into a “Five Big” pattern just to make the comparisons simpler.
Figure 2: A Notional Corporate Faith for Classic Dispensationalists.
Figure 3: A Notional Corporate Faith for Classic for Reformed communities.
Figure 4: A Notional Corporate Faith for Roman Catholics.
Figure 5: The Three Major Activities in Hermeneutics
All of the preceding corporate faiths are the fruits of different hermeneutics—the science and art of biblical interpretation and application. The proper interpretation of scripture (“B” in the figure above) is essential to setting the boundaries for acceptable applications of scripture (“C” above). The interpretation of a passage is its meaning. The application of scripture is “the meaning of that meaning” (Figure 6 below). The development and maintenance of hermeneutical controls (“A” above) have the most influence on" “the meaning of scripture” and “the meaning of that meaning.”
Figure 6: Hermeneutics—the Meaning of the Meaning of Scripture
A corporate faith arises from a hermeneutic (a particular system of biblical interpretation and application). Ideally, biblical hermeneutics would lead everyone to the same conclusions, but the inputs, controls, and mechanisms for hermeneutics are so varied, fluid, and differently weighted in their early stages of use that in practice, results are not repeatable. This initial floundering may produce an attractive but mistaken gestalt3 that precludes a more correct one due to the better gestalt’s premature foreclosure by a mistaken one.
Figure 7: Hermeneutics—Control by Gestalt
Every hermeneutic, however, will eventually be captured by a gestalt which will then become the major control over future interpretations and applications. See “D” in Figure 7. This is a good thing if the gestalt is correct or at least open to improvement. If not, it could be a permanent burden. The gestalts of scripture within various faith traditions may work more to protect the doctrines of those traditions than to correctly interpret and apply scripture.
The FBIS model is the gestalt of our hermeneutic. We believe it is the correct one. As such, it functions as the major control over how we read, interpret, and apply scripture.
Figure 8: Generalizing the Five Big Ideas
Figure 8 pictures the FBIS model in its early stages, hence the presence of questions rather than answers in each box. Questions suggest immaturity. Answers suggest maturity. The present version of the FBIS is mature and has answers.
A subtle, but not insignificant feature of the FBIS model is how the four outer ideas surround and embody “Relational Righteous” as God’s ultimate concern in Creation and Redemption. Interestingly, each of the ideas also tends toward one of four types of speech:
God’s Inbreaking Kingdom: Proclaiming the faith (kerygma)
The Three Arenas of Faith: Contending for the faith (agonistics)
The NT Spirit: Teaching/Living the faith (catechesis)
Church as Contrast Community: Defending the faith (apologetics)
Wrapping Up: The FBIS model provides a gestalt of scripture that integrates the five most important things in scripture into a model of models with tremendous explanatory power. At the same time though, we remain wary of the power of a mistaken gestalt to hide the meaning of scripture rather than reveal it, so we welcome constructive feedback as the gift it truly is. In the meantime, we can’t help but enthusiastically embrace the FBIS model for its amazing explanatory power. That is what the “The Five Big Ideas of Scripture” can do for you, and we pray it does exactly that. In the meantime, here are the high points of FBIS “by the numbers”:
Relational Righteousness: Two Overarching Metaphors for Humanity’s Relationship with God
King: A God Who Wants, Makes, and Keeps Covenant
or
Judge: A God Who Wants, Makes, and Keeps Law?
God’s Inbreaking Kingdom: The Two Advents of Jesus
First Coming: The Inauguration of God’s Coming Kingdom
Second Coming: The Consummation of God’s Coming Kingdom
The Three Arenas of Faith
Personal: The Private Arena of Individuals
Corporate: The Communal Arena of Concrete Communities
Common: The Univeral Arena of all God’s People across Time and Space
The Church as a Contrast Community: Two Fundamental Relationships with God
One as Our Creator
and
One as Our Redeemer:
Four Expressions of God’s Indwelling Spirit
Through Charismatic Power
Through Sentimental Feeling
Through Sacramental Mystery
By Imitating the “One Anothers” Exemplified by the Spirit in the NT and by Godly Believers throughout the Ages
Each idea in the FBIS model operates to interpret and apply scripture within its domain while the FBIS as a whole transcends and organizes each of its lesser ideas into a single, overarching “big idea” that constitutes a powerful—some would even say “amazing”— gestalt of scripture.
— Bill Brewer
© historeo.com LLC
More specifically, as the corporate faith within the “Three Arenas.
The small figure inside the corporate arena represents the three activities that occur within a hermeneutical system: (1) create and maintain rules for interpretation and application, (2) interpret scripture, and (3) apply scripture.
Sense of the whole that gives meaning to its details.