December 15, 2004

The Rev. Dr. Richard Foster
RENOVARÉ
8 Inverness Drive East, Suite 102
Englewood, CO 80112-5609

Dear Richard:

Many thanks for sharing with me the hesitations that RENOVARÉ partners have had about a Spiritual Formation Bible that includes the Deuterocanonical books (the Old Testament Apocrypha), and for your pastor's heart where these partners are concerned. As a United Methodist elder teaching at an evangelical Protestant seminary, I also minister in a setting where colleagues and students have mixed feelings about that collection of texts, and where a number of sisters and brothers are rather uncomfortable having these books included in a "Bible." They correctly remember from their study of the History of Christianity that the leaders of the Protestant Reformation moved away from the larger Old Testament canon functionally embraced by the Roman Catholic church toward the shorter canon affirmed by Rabbinic Judaism on account of their emphasis on the importance of Scripture "alone" and on account of certain abuses in church practice that were alleged to have support from a few verses from Apocryphal texts. Rarely do they recall that those same Reformers were so reluctant to throw out the baby with the bath that they continued to translate and print the Deuterocanonicals within their Bibles, and even to recommend the reading of these books for moral edification.

I was truly excited to learn that RENOVARÉ was including the Deuterocanonical books in the Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible for a number of reasons, the first and foremost of which is that these books are devotional literature of the highest order. Completely independent of the questions of inspiration and canonicity, the reader of the Deuterocanonical books encounters a collection of texts that bear witness to the vital faith of the people of God in the centuries before the coming of Jesus down into the first century of the Christian church. If the period was "silent" in terms of the prophetic spirit, it certainly was "eloquent" in terms of God's people giving expression to their commitment to discover and walk in the ways that please God, to their experience of God's guidance and empowerment, and to their wrestling with the ongoing meaningfulness of their tradition (what we read as the Old Testament). The modern reader cannot help but be spurred on to love of God, to faithfulness in discipleship, and to thinking more deeply about how he or she will live out his or her commitment to God in the midst of the complexities of this life.

As a student of the New Testament, however, I anticipate many more benefits accruing to those partners who take up the RENOVARÉ team's invitation to engage these texts. Growing up Protestant and reading chiefly the Protestant canon, I had a skewed view of the Judaism into which Jesus was born. My canonical sources left me with the impression that the religion and ethics and problems of the minor prophets and Ezra and Nehemiah reflected Jesus' environment, not preparing me for the three centuries of vibrant growth and development that Judaism experienced "between the Testaments." It also left me with a skewed understanding of the relationship of Jesus and his disciples to their Jewish heritage. At that time, Jesus seemed to stand so far apart from—and over against—the Jewish people that his message seemed to have been "dropped out the sky." As I look back, of course, I can see how such a view jeopardized not only my understanding of Jesus' message, but Jesus himself (for it was the Gnostic movement, not the apostolic church, that worshiped a Jesus who, basically, "dropped out of the sky" and that de-emphasized his rootedness in the Jewish heritage).

Then, as I began to study the Deuterocanonical books, I was astounded to find a Jewish sage from 200 BC teaching his pupils that they must forgive their neighbors their sins if they hoped to be forgiven by God (Sir 28:2-4), something that I had hitherto thought an innovation by Jesus (Matt 6:12, 14-15). I was surprised to find the elderly Tobit instruct his son Tobias to give alms as the means by which to be "laying up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity" in an edifying fictional tale written two or more centuries before Jesus taught his disciples about how to lay up treasures in heaven, treasures that they would find after the great Day of necessity. This didn't make Jesus less special. It made him more "connected," as it were, to the work that God had been doing among God's people, and to the ways in which God was seeking to form them spiritually and ethically, from the beginning—and without interruption. It helped me take my understanding of the incarnation deeper, and to appreciate the need to immerse myself in Jewish literature from between the Testaments (as well as from the Old Testament) if I hoped to know this Jesus and his disciples better.

Finally, as a member of the Church Universal, I have to applaud any move that enhances our conversation with our larger Christian brotherhood and sisterhood, both reaching across the past two millennia in time and reaching across the boundaries that have divided the Church into Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Early Christians had a rather fluid canon—it had to be fluid to allow for the incorporation of all those new and helpful texts written by Paul, James, and other apostolic-period authors! It is evident that, along with the books that we would come to call the "New Testament," our early Christian forebears found the Deuterocanonical books to be of great value in their reflection on the person and significance of Jesus, as well as the ethics that would guide the Christian movement. For example, the stamp of Wisdom of Solomon is clearly evident where early Christians (beginning with the author of Hebrews) reflected on who the Son was and what he was doing prior to the incarnation. Intertestamental traditions about "Wisdom," who was the exact reflection of God's character and who was actively involved in the Creation of the cosmos, fed early Christian insights into the eternal character of the Son (Heb 1:2-3; Wis 7:22, 25-26; 8:4).

Reading and reflecting on the Deuterocanonicals puts us in touch with the resources that fed Clement of Rome, Irenaeus of Lyons, Augustine of Hippo, and the countless unnamed sisters and brothers who read the Septuagint, which contains all the books of the Apocrypha by the fourth century AD, as their Old Testament. It also puts us in touch with the full range of resources that our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters read to find nourishment for their faith and guidance for their walk. Just as reading the latest book by Max Lucado or Philip Yancey creates a connection between believers who have engaged those texts, so reading the Deuterocanonicals promises to create a greater sense of connectedness across the Church Universal, a greater unity of spirit that would make the powers of hell tremble. So, once again, I heartily commend the vision of the Editorial team of the Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible that led you all to include the Deuterocanonical books. I know that your partners will experience more deeply the riches of God in the canonical books through their engagement of these, the best examples of devotional literature.

Your partner in Christ,

The Rev. David A. deSilva
Ph.D. Professor of New Testament and Greek, Ashland Theological Seminary
Author of Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance