Contemplating the Word

I was unfamiliar with the practice of Lectio Divina until I read a post from Tim Challies criticizing it.

According to Wikipedia, Lectio Divina is:

“a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God’s Word. It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the Living Word.”

This particular practice takes four phases:
1. Reading the Word (Lectio)
2. Meditating on the Word (Meditatio)
3. Praying the Word (Oratio)
4. Contemplating the Word (Contemplatio)

The second sentence of Wikipedia’s introduction to the practice makes clear the intent and focus of Lectio Divina versus other approaches to Scripture: “It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the living Word.”

Challies’ criticism of Lectio Divina, drawn primarily from David Helms’ Expositional Preaching, comes from a strong belief that the Scriptures are texts to be studied – and that the study of Scripture should be our primary relationship with it.

I struggle.

I believe strongly in studying the Scriptures. I love inductive Bible study. I delight in asking questions of the text and using the text to answer those questions. I enjoy cross-referencing and digging deeper into the meanings of words and phrases, looking at how one writer uses a phrase and how another does. I am a fan of expositional preaching. Studying the Word is important to me.

Yet I am also something of a mystic, one who sees Scripture as the Living Word of God, capable of working with our reason but also beyond our reason. Often Scripture is poetry, except more living than any man-turned-phrase, poetry that acts as a balm for hurts reason cannot touch. It is a sword, piercing beyond the brain to the will.

Why must we approach Scripture as either/or? Why cannot we approach it as both?

I prefer to. If I had to describe my favorite approach to Scripture, it would be as a scholastic Lectio Divina

I read the word (lectio) and questions or connections come to mind. I dig into the Word to find answers to those questions or to evaluate those connections.

I meditate on the word (meditatio) and other Scriptures, related words, sometimes disparate thoughts from what seems like nowhere arise in my mind. I jot them down and then dig into the Word to evaluate connections or contrasts between the current text and the new Scriptures that came into my mind. I look at both the words of the text and the new related word that came into my mind, evaluating how the words are used similarly and differently, how the one sheds light on the other – or perhaps doesn’t. I evaluate my strange thoughts in light of the text and sometimes find that they shed light on the text or encourage me to dig deeper, while other times they seem just rabbit trails.

I pray the word (oratio), putting what I’ve learned and seen into my own words and asking God to help me internalize (through attitudes) and externalize (through actions) His living truth. Sometimes He reveals attitudes or actions that are in disobedience to His word, and I am called to repentance. Sometimes He reveals specific actions that I must do to apply His word, and I am called to put them into practice. Sometimes He directs me to go back to the word yet again to dig for something I’ve missed.

I contemplate the Word (contemplatio) as God reveals Himself the Living Word through Scripture. I worship Him, sometimes through thoughts which run through my mind, my pen, or my voice – but sometimes through simple, incomprehensible wonder.

Yes, this is my favorite approach to Scripture – I recognize it as I read through the steps of the Lectio Divina. Yet even as I write it out in my own words, I long to experience this scholastic Lectio Divina more often, more faithfully. Instead, in the busyness of the days, I settle for just reading and possibly exploring one or two questions or connections, without taking the time to meditate, to pray, to contemplate.

Challies is undoubtedly right that emphasizing mystical connection with the Word to the exclusion of empirical study of the Word is dangerous, but I am grateful that his criticism brought to my attention the four steps of the Lectio Divina and reminded me of the value of not stopping at the first step but taking the time to truly savor the Word of God – yes, in the text itself, but also in the Living Word that it proclaims.