Hi Penelope —
Historically, the Bible is a mixed-use document:
From a post-modern perspective yes, but not from the viewpoint of the original author, nor of the community to whom the writings were addressed. The Old Testament is the testimony of the religious vision and experience of a people, the New Testament is the testimony of the witness of Christ. The materials of the New Testament were not written with posterity in mind, but to address specific contemporary issues. That they were recognised by the community as serving a broader purpose is something that occurred later, but then the community in question, mostly Jewish converts, had a long scriptural tradition behind them.
Paul's letters, for example, written to tackle issues arising is specific Christian communities, were copied and passed around, and soon were read as part of the Liturgical celebration of the community as a whole, but that was not Paul's intention in writing them. In fact, we know he wrote three letters to Corinth, but only two survive (although possible the second is a compilation of the second and third) — had the intention from the outset been to write a bible, or that any particular book was immediately regarded as a sacred text, then much greater care would have been taken.
1. A pragmatically useful document in training the faithful.
I'm not sure why you say 'pragmatically' or 'useful' — the texts are the foundation of faith, all faith relates to Christ, so the Apostolic testimony is key — in that sense 'useful' or 'pragmatic' doesn't apply.
The arcane nature of its meanings are revealed while the young are being educated in catechism toward "Confirmation" in the faith.
The engagement with Scripture does not cease. The catechumen, after baptism, became neophytes ('new shoots') — and it was understood the growth in the spirit has just begun, and is one that never ceases. This was called 'mystagogy' in the ancient Church, as it is in the Catholic and Orthodox today. This aspect has largely been forgotten in the wider world, in which the Mystery of Christianity has been eroded by the continued rationalisation of the message — the post-Enlightenment assumption that the Mystery itself is incomprehensible and inaccessible. In effect Christianity has largely been reduced in content to little more than a humanist ethic with Jesus tagged on.
The neophyte was bound by the 'disciplina arcani' to keep secret those aspects which would undoubtedly cause confusion if not properly transmitted, received and understood — such as the Eucharist, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and so on— and they did so quite successfully until the Arian dispute, at which point the most profound aspects of the Mystery became the topic of street-corner conversation.
So implicit in your own comment is the fact that the texts are not self-explanatory — common sene really — rather thet they are multi-layered, and the deeper, spiritual meaning, the typological, the analogical and the anagogical, belonged to the oral tradition and then the later emergent commentaries of the Fathers.
Why anyone assumes that because they can read something, they understand it's every dimension, escapes me. Most people need poetry explaineds to them, let alone the sacred texts of a spritual tradition. I doubt one in a hundred understands the interior meaning of the Illiad, for example, or Shakespeare ...
2. Evangelical promotional literature for potential converts.
Not really. This occurred much later.
(To be found in hotel bedside tables or in the hands of men in suits knocking on your door or on chairs in homeless shelters.)
See above. This is the typical American response — the commercialisation of religion. At best it's generosity, at worst it's a good way to make a buck.
3a. Is the Bible just a pragmatic tool, in the hands of the faithful and potential converts, which points to the Sacred?
No.
3]b. Or is the physical Book, or certain Chapters of it, or the Words contained within it (some of the words? all of the words?) ... Sacred in-and-of-themselves? ...
I think you're looking at it the wrong way, trying to find some empirical, quantitative determination .... this is the text critic route, focussing with forensic detail on every minutiae of the text until the sight of the whole was lost completely. The Bible is a Sacred Text, but if you want to examine every word, and give it a value on some scale of sacredness, you've missed it by a mile — the meaning and message is in the spirit of the text, not in the letter.
Where does God - where does the Divine - sit in relation to the Bible?
It's inspiration.
Is the Bible necessary?[/B] - for instance.
No. That God chooses to reveal Himself to creation is not necessary, it is a free and gratuitous gift. That God chooses to dailogue with His creature is doubly so. The Bible reveals God in a way that is inaccessible to the human intellect, and reveals something of Himself, and something of man that he could not know. Without Scripture we would be dependent upon Tradition alone, and the evidence suggests, in the detail of doctrinal and theological disputes, that Scripture is an invalid and indeed infallible source of reference in their resolution.
Can you come to God directly?[/SIZE
No. Man can only come to the fullness of its own nature, or a lesser nature ... man cannot come to a higher nature. Transcendence in that sense is not something self-effecting — if it were it would be common to the nature and not transcendent to it ... transcendence in the Monotheist traditions is only possible by the higher drawing the lower into Itself, the lower cannot project Itself into the higher.
... Talk to God? - thru prayer? or thru ecstatic experience? or by some other means? ...
There are many ways to talk to God. Simply talking to God is talking to God. The trick is in the listening to God, or a spiritual engagement with the Divine. 'Ecstatic experience' might well be the by-product of 'system overload' as it were — ecstatic experience is nothing in itself, and shouldn't be read as a sign of anything else — that's the latest thinking in some Catholic circles. Certainly not all mystics are ecstatics.
Flagellation of the body?
There is a line in the practice of ascesis when one over-steps the mark. I think self-flagellation is a dubious practice personally ... but on the other hand I trained in martial arts where we were taught to accept a degree of pain as part of the process, so it is not utterly without justification. I used to carry bruises that were spectacular rainbows of colour, and I'm sure if anyone saw them, they'd doubt my sanity. As ever, excess should be questioned. Certainly I think the stylites of old, flagellant monks, fakirs in India who perform all manner of feats is in itself a waste of time. Context is all.
difficult pilgrimages? tireless good-works? missionary work? ...
Context! If done so demonstrate how pious one is, then a waste and indeed, a sin. If not, then maybe part of the spiritual tempering process.
Or are any and all of these merely Secondary religious devotions? Substitutes for connecting directly with the Divine?)
Prayer first ... why work for someone you never bother to speak to? God is not a man, but although anthropomorphising the Deity is always dangerous, the gift and grace of a Diety that chooses to communicate with its creature through the most intimate medium, that of the creature's nature, renders the Deity interior to the creature, and invites the creature into the interiority of the Divine 'nature' (allowing that the Deity is not a nature in the strict sense of the term).
But work can be a prayer ... A worker might indeed have a more intimate dialogue with the Divine than a mystic ... it's just the mystic ticks the boxes of what society expects of a mystic. When I was a kid, we knew a missionary who worked in a leprosarium, never mentioned a mystical word as far as my folks can recall, but the phenomena that surrounded him was something else.
But prayer first, and above all ... you'll not find a spiritual master east or west that says otherwise ... I go with them.
Thomas
