Sola Scriptura -- Really!

Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone).  It's a phrase originally made famous by the reformer Martin Luther.  I'm not clear on the historical precedent, but today I hear it most often from those who consider themselves part of the Reformed tradition--which now seems largely to mean modern Calvinism--when they recite it as one of the Five Solas.  Aside from the irony of having five "onlys" in anything,  the claim of Sola Scriptura is that only the Biblical texts are authoritative for matters of doctrine/dogma in the church.

Sola Scriptura.  Not "Scriptura et magisterium," scripture plus the authority of the church.  Not "scriptura et patres," scripture plus the authority of the early church fathers.  Not "Scriptura et Aquinas," "Scriptura et Augustine," not "Scriptura et Calvin" (and sorry, I don't know how to make those names properly Latin).  Not Scripture plus John MacArthur or John Piper or Mark Driscoll or N.T. Wright or Rob Bell or Greg Boyd either (and I hope I have enough "liberals" and "conservatives" to satisfy the reader that I'm not taking aim at a "side" here).  And not "Scripture and my pastor or my bishop or my elders," for these are merely a part of the local incarnation of the Body of Christ, and while we should seek to understand Scripture together in the local body, there is no valid hierarchy or authority among human leaders in biblical interpretation.  To the contrary, these and all of the body should have their words evaluated over against Scripture, by all their hearers.

Sola.  Scriptura.

No doctrine or dogma or teaching or credal test dare be claimed with certainty, that is not clearly derivable solely from the properly-exegeted text of the Bible.  My choice of the word "derivable" is deliberate.  It's not enough to determine that a doctrine is not inconsistent with scripture.  It's not even enough that the doctrine, once framed, can be supported by scripture, although in reality I find such claims often fail to withstand careful scrutiny anyhow.  I suggest rather that any doctrinal claim should be subjected to the following thought experiment:

Imagine we could find a reader who knew nothing about church history or dogma...one who had never heard of the various heresies and controversies and schisms of the church throughout the century.  Imagine further that, though ignorant of the faith, this reader was fluent in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and was able to read the texts and study them carefully.  Would this hypothetical reader be able to come up--solely from studying the biblical texts--with the doctrine at hand?  If yes, then we can and should ascribe it serious weight.  If no, then however helpful it may be in understanding a difficult passage or concept, it must be considered optional and not core to the faith.

(Even with "core" doctrine, I caution the reader with my previous warning about creeds).

Though it may seem counterintuitive, it is precisely this approach that has led me to dispute the common doctrine of biblical inspiration.  Among the areas where I believe scripture must have sole and unchallenged authority, is over the texts' characterization of themselves.  So when the text states "thus saith the LORD," we take it seriously as the word of God, but conversely when it says "this is a praise song written by King David," we accept it as a praise song and don't extract doctrine from it any more than we do (or ought) from a hymn by Watts or Wesley, or a chorus by Michael W. Smith or David Crowder.

It's also why I reject credal definitions of the Trinity, eschatology, and many of the other contentious issues that have been used to draw lines and divide people over the stained history of the church.  I contend that these dogmas cannot be derived without significant reliance upon extrabiblical authority, and in matters of dogma, there must be no such thing as an extrabiblical authority.  Sola Scriptura, taken seriously, leaves one with far fewer certainties and "essentials" than most statements of faith will countenance.  And if that makes me another in a long line of church-defined "heretics," well then, I'll just quote Luther again:

"Here I stand.  I can do nothing else, so help me God."

Tempted as we are?

A study group I've been meeting with has been asked to memorize Hebrews 4:14-16, and it's dug up an old, nagging irritation for me.  The writer of Hebrews states that our High Priest, Jesus, "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."  I'll come right to the point:  at least as that sentence reads in English, I cannot accept it as true (please read to the end of this post before freaking!).

I accept the teaching of scripture that Jesus lived a sinless life.  There are many witnesses to back up this claim, and frankly no serious evidence to challenge it.  But I am unable to reconcile the notion of a sinless life with the Hebrew writer's claim that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are.  There are too many ways in which "missing the mark" (ἁμαρτία, "hamartia") in one area is simply not a temptation unless one has well and truly screwed it up in a related way already.  No one can be tempted to theft, who is not already guilty of covetousness.  No one is tempted to adultery or sexual misconduct, who is not already guilty of lust.

One might attempt to parse the desire from the deed, and say that only the latter is sin.  To do so would be downright comforting, and frankly, to some extent I think most of us believe it (and those who don't, are likely burdened with massive guilt or depression).  Unfortunately, Jesus himself demolished this particular rationale pretty decisively in Matt. 5:27-28.  And if looking lustfully at a woman not one's wife is adultery, then the vast majority of straight men I've ever known, are adulterers (I do not therefore suggest we should just give up and do the deed).  And if, by his own definition, Jesus wasn't guilty of mental adultery, than he certainly wasn't tempted in all respects as we ordinary males are.

OK, so what do we do with this apparent contradiction?  I see three possibilities:

1)  The writer of Hebrews may be wrong.  The notion of Jesus' sinlessness is indispensable to a substionary atonement doctrine, but it's also pretty important in any understanding of the incarnation.  But the idea that he was tempted just as we, though it could be a comfort, is not so central.  Maybe in his quest for an appropriate simile the Hebrew author went overboard and misrepresented Jesus' earthly experience.

2) The Hebrew writer could be right, with the proviso that he was talking about Jesus' actions, not what might have gone on in his head--that is, for example, Jesus may have gotten an eyeful of a pretty girl as much as any guy, but never given in to that temptation by making an advance (or worse) on her.  This is more palatable, for sure, but in order to swallow this interpretation, we are then stuck with Jesus' own statements referenced above.  Although Jesus' standard is the harder one to handle, it IS the words of Jesus over against those of the author of Hebrews, and if I have to choose which to accept, Jesus' own words have to take precedence.

Either of these two options slam squarely into the notion of Biblical inspiration.  Readers of this blog already know I do not accept a flat-book dogma of verbal inspiration, but many Christians hold this teaching dear.  Is this one of those cases where God deliberately put a paradox in place to test whether we'd trust him over the brains he gave us?  (for the record, I don't believe God plays this sort of "belief trick," but some folks seem to give the idea credence--think young-earth creation vs. the fossil record).

3) There is, of course, a third option.  We could take a look at what "temptation" actually means.  The usual working definition of "enticement or desire to sin" may be our real problem here, and actually, I think this is the case.  According to Young's Analytical Concordance, the original word here (πειράζω, peirazw) occurs in some form about 38 times in the New Testament.  Twenty-eight of those times it's translated "tempt" or "temptation" in the King James version (I don't have statistics for other versions), but in several others it's translated something like "test" or "prove."  It's actually easier to understand if we think of the old English metallurgist's concept of "trying" an ore; that is, applying heat to it in order to see how much gold comes out.  This idea of "trying" can be described as applying difficulty in order to reveal the content, or character, or purity of a substance.  It's no leap of logic to go from assaying an ore ("assay" is another way peirazw can be translated), to assaying human character, and in fact that's what is often meant.

For example, the same word peirazw is used in John 6:6, where Jesus suggested to Phillip that he procure bread to feed the five thousand.  John tells us he did this to "try" Phillip...Jesus already knew what he intended to do.  2 Corinthians 13:5 is another example, where Paul exhorts believers to "examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith."  The word translated "examine" is the same word as the one in Hebrews 4!  I hope no one thinks Paul is suggesting that it's healthy to put ourselves in a position where we could be induced to sin, just to see how strong our faith is!

To wrap it up, then, the Hebrew writer is not suggesting that Jesus had the same problems of temptation humans wrestle with to varying degrees.  What he is saying is that Jesus understands the tests and discouragements of life, because he went through them too.  This is why the first half of the same verse states that we "...do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin (NRSV)."  Change "without sin" to "without failing the test" and we're probably closer to the actual meaning of the text.  Or as my Mom put it last year, "he didn't flunk!"

This, of course, fits nicely with Philippians 2:5-11.  It was because Jesus remained faithful--obedient--to death, that God has highly exalted him.  The glory follows the passing of the test...and that's why he's now our High Priest.  This, I have no trouble believing.

If Spirit = Breath, what of Theopneustos?

Those who know me well may have seen this coming...but now that we've looked at the Holy Spirit, not as a "being" but as the Wind/Breath of God (see this post if you haven't already read it), it's time to take another look at an old friend.  I refer, of course, to θεόπνευστος ("theopneustos") from 2 Tim. 3:16.  Those who already know Greek will know, and the perceptive among the rest of you may notice, that this is a compound of θεός ("theos," god--not necessarily the Christian one) and a form of πνεῦμα ("pneuma", wind or breath or spirit as previously discussed).

The usual translation of θεόπνευστος, as nearly everybody knows, is "inspired" or "God-breathed," and is the source of the common notion that what Paul was saying to Timothy was that the scriptural canon was breathed out by God...that is, that God is the source of "all scripture" (I've previously argued--1 & 2--that this statement cannot legitimately be read as an imprimatur on the entirety of our current canon).  Unfortunately, it appears that Paul coined a word that has no antecedent in classical Greek literature and only occurs once in the entire biblical text.  We are therefore stuck with the task of deducing what he meant by taking the word apart into its constituent parts, and one possibility (of course) is that the translators are right, that equivalents of "breathed out by God" are in fact correct and that Paul is saying that those scriptures which "are able to make you wise unto salvation" (v. 17) actually come from God.

But what if θεόπνευστος is not "breathed out," but rather "breathed upon" or "breathed into?"  Might Paul be suggesting that the written words, lifeless in and of themselves, become profitable--even powerful--when they are infused with the life-giving Breath of the Father?  Perhaps it's not an issue of writings being "inspired" at all, but rather what happens when these writings become "in-spirited" in the context of believers individually and collectively seeking God through them.  It stands to reason that any writing, whether by the canonical authors, by modern believers, or even by secular writers, becomes highly profitable if and when it's enlivened by the Breath of Life.

This is not to suggest that God is not the actual source of any of the biblical writings.  2 Pet. 2:20-21 is one good example of how God clearly and specifically moved prophets to write and speak specific words to his people.  Our task as believers is to discern those words--and the spirit within them--and to pray that God will yet again breathe upon us as we seek to be equipped for his work.

Rightly Dividing the Word -- A Summary

I was under the illusion that I had completed my occasional series on Biblical Inspiration until several friends pushed back on my "ROCK" summary of my faith distinctives.  Reading back over my posts I see that I never really wrapped up my position, so this is a shot at doing so.  I shall not attempt to fully justify my position in this post; interested readers may want to go back to earlier posts in this series for more of the foundation behind what I'm claiming here.

In contrast to most Evangelical statements of faith, I reject the claim that the Bible--either the Protestant or Catholic canon--is the Word of God.  In fact, I believe that insistence on treating the Bible as God's Word is at the root of a great deal of error, as well as the foundation for many "endless controversies" that both create division and strife within the body of Christ, and drive many who otherwise might believe, from the faith.  The dogma of "Verbal and Plenary Inspiration" (VPI) and its variants (including the companion dogma of "inerrancy") tend to lead to what I call a "flat book" interpretation of the Biblical texts, whereby any phrase, anywhere in the text can become the foundation (dare I say, the pretext?) for doctrine, often without regard to either its textual or historical context.  But beyond the errors of "flat book" interpretation, I primarily object to calling the Bible the Word of God because to do so is, on the very face of it, UNbiblical.  At its worst, this error devolves to Bibliolatry--ascribing divine status to an object.  Listen carefully to the arguments on VPI from many Evangelicals and you'll find they're often not far from Bibliolatry.

The Bible does not call itself God's word--therefore, neither should we.  Specific places--particularly the prophets with their "Thus saith the LORD" declarations, highlight that at the particular point thereby designated, they are repeating God's word.  If we believe anything at all about Jesus' divinity (a topic for another time), then Jesus' own words certainly rise to the level of God's words...and of course Jesus himself is described as the Word of God become flesh.  The apostle Paul referred to "all scripture" as "theopneustos" ("God-breathed?"or "God's breath?"  Paul unfortunately coined a term or borrowed a rare one, and neglected to define it); however, careful thought makes it quite obvious that whatever Paul was referring to by "all scripture," he wasn't prospectively endorsing our current canon.

In contrast to flat-book Bibliolatry, I hold to what I have come to describe as a "Word of God hermaneutic" which I have also described as "Rightly Dividing the Word."  In choosing this phrase, I freely admit that I've borrowed a phrase from the King James version of 2 Tim 2:15, even though the Elizabethan English phrase "rightly dividing" does not mean what I think it means (inconceivable!).  I find it a helpful way of encapsulating the notion that we are to approach scripture in an inquiring mode, searching within its texts for that subset which actually is God's word.  As a rule of thumb, I hold to a hierarchy of authority among the texts, where the words of Jesus as reported in the Gospels take supremacy, and shortly behind them, the words of the prophets where they explicitly highlight their message as the "Word of the LORD."  Explicative works like the epistles follow behind these, and historical reporting still further behind, with wisdom and poetry such as Proverbs and Psalms bringing up the utmost rear (well, along with apocalyptic literature which frankly nobody really understands any more).

This is not to state that the rest of the Bible is either false or untrustworthy.  In particular with the Gospels, I find a great deal that leads me to the belief that they are the honest accounts of faithful human witnesses to Jesus' words and actions.  The Old Testament historical writings I'm less sure about, in that they so patently include stuff that seems awfully similar to the jingoistic, prejudiced attitudes that many similarly-ethnocentric peoples have displayed throughout history.  But here I argue principally that unless interpreting a text has demonstrable bearing on the life of the disciple of Jesus, it's really not that important just how true it is, or isn't.  (please take note I said the "life," not the "thought," of the disciple)



Valuable teaching can still be gleaned from much that is not the Word of God...for that matter from much that isn't in the Bible at all.  But we must learn to reserve the stamp of the divine for that which merits it.  When we do, our priorities tend to skew somewhat differently than those which hold sway in contemporary (and much historic) Christian thought.  It really IS all about Jesus!

2 Timothy 3:16-17 -- Even Further Thoughts

OK, so we've established that I was wrong in placing 2 Tim. 3:14-17 in a single sentence. But no translation I have EVER read portrays verses 16 and 17 as anything other than a single sentence, and this is important. Let's look:

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Hmmm... notice anything? What's Scripture given FOR? It's not for "right belief." It's not "that you may believe God created the world in six days." It's not "that you may have the correct doctrine of the Atonement." It's not even "that you may have the correct view of the Trinity."

So what's it for? SO YOU CAN GET ABOUT DOING WHAT GOD INTENDED YOU TO DO!!!

Funny thing about the Bible...it's way less confusing when you're looking for stuff to obey, than when you're looking for theories, systems, and beliefs. Wonder if it's because that was its purpose???

Important article on Biblical Inspiration

I just came across an amazing article on Biblical inspiration that goes into much greater detail, and with much more scholarly foundation, than my series has so far. I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet, but I will. I'll probably highlight bits of it in future posts.

The article is "Inerrancy, Inspiration, and Dictation" by Joel Stephen Williams, and it was published in the Restoration Quarterly, Vol. 37/No. 3 (1995). I had never heard of Williams before, but it appears he's an author and professor at Amridge (formerly Southern Christian) University.

Two quick quotes:

We must realize that the doctrine of inspiration is not the capstone of Christian theology. A fundamentalist view of inspiration does not insure orthodoxy. Many who hold to a fundamentalist view of inspiration are in extreme error on more significant truths such as the deity of Christ. Furthermore, many people come to faith in Christ and salvation without knowing even the rudimentary elements of a doctrine of inspiration.

And

Positive statements about the usefulness of the Scriptures in instructing mankind for salvation affirm more about the Bible than a negative statement that it is without error. The Bible is not the ultimate end. Instead, it is a witness to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. As John the Baptist pointed toward Christ, the Bible is a witness pointing toward God.

This comes very close to my own perspective, as I expressed it in an email to my Mom last week. Here, then, is my "doctrine of the Bible," if you will:

I prefer to say that the biblical (particularly N.T. and prophets) authors are faithful witnesses to what they saw/heard, and their writings are to be trusted as the testimony of a faithful witness. . .without blurring the distinction between the witnesses and the truth to which they are testifying.

2 Tim. 3:16 -- Redux, Correction, and Further Thoughts

Those who have read my series on Biblical inspiration know that I took issue with the use of 2 Tim. 3:16 as a prooftext for the inerrancy of the entire Biblical canon. I stand by my objection, but I have to do a correction nonetheless.

One of my suggestions in my prior post, was that perhaps 1 Tim 3:14-17 should be read as a single sentence, with verses 16 and 17 as a dependent clause on 14 and 15--that is, that the "all scripture" Paul is describing in verse 16 is merely an elaboration on "the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" in verse 15.

Well, I put that very question to the translators at the NET Bible, as I have read from several sources that they are scrupulously careful with the grammar and the text, even if the result is an unfamiliar reading. Here is their response, authored by someone named "mburer" (I'd give fuller credit if I could, but I don't know how...at least you can follow the link):

It is almost impossible for v. 16 to be a dependent clause. (1) Verse 16 is marked by asyndeton, and this is most normal for independent clauses. (2) Verse 16 has no marks of normal dependent clauses; there is no participle, infinitive, or subordinating conjunction to indicate dependency. (3) If it were dependent and meant to modify τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα in some fashion, πᾶσα γραφὴ would need to be accusative case as the original phrase is, but it is nominative. (4) The fact that the copulative verb is missing from v. 16 does not argue for v. 16 being dependent. When a verb is lacking in Greek, usually the indicative is implied, which would in fact make this independent. To make v. 16 a dependent clause the participle would need to be implied, and likely Paul would have written that in ful to make the sense clear if that were the case.

Now, I freely admit that the grammatical technicalities they gave here are way over my head. I have submitted this to one other Greek scholar I know who has told me that it's correct, however, so I must accept that my limited knowledge of Greek led me to an incorrect conclusion regarding the division of the sentence. I was wrong to suggest that 14-17 is a single sentence.

However, I still suspect it's a single thought, for the simple reason that the "pasa graphe" that Paul is referring to in verse 16 cannot truly mean "all writing." While it is true that "graphe" as a noun occurs in the New Testament as referring only to sacred writings, the fact remains that the word itself just means "something written down." In fact, according to lexicographers Liddell and Scott, no lesser sources than Herodotus and Plato use the same word to refer to drawing and painting, not to mention plenty of non-sacred written words including catalogues, archives, medical prescriptions, and legal writs. So Paul was using a generic word "writing" not a holy word "Scripture" in verse 16. He cannot have meant that "all writings" are inspired by God, so it remains likely that he's referring to the very writings he just mentioned in verse 14, simply because of context. As I have said before, to apply the statement in verse 16 to the entire canon of our modern, Protestant (or Catholic) Bible is only possible if you start with the presupposition that Paul was foreshadowing a canon he did not yet know about, when he wrote those words. In other words, it proves nothing you have not predisposed it to prove.

However, that's only the phrase "pasa graphe." We have not touched "theopneustos," the word translated "inspired of God" in the KJV, "breathed out by God" in ESV, "God-breathed" in NIV, and "God's breath" in the Pioneers' New Testament. It's a word that didn't get much play at all in Greek literature prior to Paul (if you have the energy for a long and convoluted analysis of the word, have a look at B.B. Warfield's article here). It's broken down, of course into the constituent words "theos" or god (not necessarily always God the Father of Jesus), and "pneustos" which comes from "pneuma" and/or "pnoe," two alternate forms of a word that can mean "spirit," "breath," and "wind" (I hope it's not too insulting, but according to Liddell-Scott, "pneuma"--the same word used of the Holy Spirit, has also been used in Greek literature to refer to flatulence!).

It's certainly appropriate, based on the wide variety of usages of the pneuma/pnoe pair, to understand "theopneustos" as "God's breath." But we have to remember, when we do, that there is an element of "spirit" in the word as well. As such, Paul may be saying as much about the influence of the Holy Spirit in tandem with the content of the written word, as he's saying about the text itself.

The bottom line, however, is that grammar or no, to use 2 Tim 3:16, standing on its own, as proof that the Biblical canon is inerrant, is to lift a sentence out of context, impose rigid meanings on words with much broader history, and basically create a circular proof-loop where the evidence depends upon the conclusion that in turn is being supported by the evidence. That makes no sense.

David and Goliath Revisited - a textual analysis

And now, for something completely different, I want to highlight an article just published by Mike Heiser at Bible Study Magazine. Clash of the Manuscripts: Goliath & the Hebrew text of the Old Testament looks at the twin issues of Goliath's height, and an apparent textual contradiction in 2 Samuel 21:19 about who actually killed him (see also Mike's blog, The Naked Bible).

I won't bother summarizing the whole article, but those with interest in textual issues and how they might impact a perceived (though IMHO trivial) contradiction in the text, I recommend you wade through it. I did, however, want to highlight a very interesting observation Mike made, which I think adds to the compelling nature of the story itself.

We all know the sunday school story--young teenager visiting his brothers at the battlefield goes up against a 9-foot-plus giant using a slingshot, thereby proving the military truism that long-range weapons beat brute force (am I the only one who wonders if David had a slingshot corps in his army?). But what I didn't know was that the "six cubits and a span" height description comes from the Masoretic text, a Hebrew text that was solidified somewhere around 100AD, while the earlier Greek Septuagint (itself a Greek translation from Hebrew) reports Goliath's height at the far-less-fantastic four cubits and a span, which would put Goliath's height at somewhere between six and seven feet--which is still way taller than the average Hebrew at that time, but within the realm of observed human dimensions.

But the real point (for me) comes in Mike's reminder to us that Saul, too, was a giant, as 1 Samuel 9:2 tells us. Mike points out that by rights, the giant king of the Israelites should have been the one to stand up to a guy who was maybe a bit taller than him, but probably not the towering menace the Masoretic text would suggest. But instead, upstart David, who couldn't handle Saul's outsized armor (at least that's one way to read 1 Samuel 17:39), takes him on under the reasoning that anybody plus God is a winning combination.

No wonder when the people of Israel sang that "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands" (1Sam 18:7) Saul got his nose out of joint. He likely already felt the guilt of his own cowardice for not providing "someone his own size" for Goliath to fight.

So to my way of reading it, Mike's textual criticism gives us a story that is more probable, while bringing the conflict between David and Saul into sharper relief than the usual, fantastic version. Interesting how careful study can do that.

Insight from Boyd on Bringing Our Presuppositions to Scripture

I'm in the middle of Greg Boyd's excellent book "God of the Possible," an introduction to the "Open View of God" which I find quite compelling, but which I'm sorry to say some of my Evangelical friends have flatly rejected as heresy. I'll address the Open View in future posts, but for now I wanted to share a point he makes regarding our interpretation of Scripture.

Boyd clearly espouses a tighter view of Scriptural inspiration than I do--that is, he consistently refers to the whole Biblical text as the Word of God rather than searching for the Word of God WITHIN the Biblical text as I propose. Nevertheless I am in full agreement with the following statement (p 56-57 of the paperback edition), which he makes in partial response to the objection that if God regrets a decision he has made, he "must not be perfectly wise":

. . .it is better to allow Scripture to inform us regarding the nature of divine wisdom than to reinterpret an entire motif in order to square it with our preconceptions of divine wisdom. If God says he regretted a decision, and if Scripture elsewhere tells us that God is perfectly wise, then we should simply conclude that one can be perfectly wise and still regret a decision. Even if this is a mystery to us, it is better to allow the mystery to stand than to assume that we know what God's wisdom is like and conclude on this basis that God can't mean what he clearly says. (emphasis mine)

This quote highlights a problem that I believe pervades a great deal of theology, both modern and of long standing. Two observations that I think are key:

1. Our theology is far too intolerant of mystery. We seem to operate under the assumption that unless our system of belief has a complete explanation for every conceivable objection, we have not got it right. I regard it as the height of arrogance that finite humans could presume to fully understand the ways of an infinite God, yet in questions such as God's sovereignty we insist on explaining and analyzing it as if we were in fact the arbiters of God's authority.
2. The plain reading of Scripture is frequently far simpler (and, I submit, more likely to be true) than the contortions we force it through in order to fit our systematic theology. While it by no means always holds true, we would do well to start with the assumption that if a simple explanation fits the facts (or in this case, the Scriptural texts), it makes no sense to look for a more complicated one.
   

Biblical Literalism according to Wright

I have been reading N.T. Wright's book "The Last Word -- Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture." This is a good read, shorter than usual for Wright, that discusses a number of issues surrounding Biblical inspiration in what I believe is a very healthy light. My quote of Wright in this post, while it links to an online article, is also in the text of this book.

I wish Wright went a little further than he has done in his analysis of the historical perspective on Scriptural authority. He does offer a great deal in explaining the ways in which the church fathers throughout the last twenty centuries saw that authority in a variety of lights, none of them much like the current perspectives of either "liberal" or "conservative" Christianity. However he appears (and I qualify this by saying I'm only about 2/3 of the way through at this writing) to completely hop over the synonymization of the concepts "authoritative scripture" and the "word of God," which concepts, as I have previously argued, ought not to be conflated. I had hoped that the evolution of this conflation would be part of his history and it is not.

Nevertheless, I came across a couple of very interesting passages today (pp 68-74 for those who have the book) in which he informs us that even the term "literal interpretation," so hot among fundamentalists in the past century and today, meant something very different to the 16th-century reformers, and before them, to medieval theologians. Medieval scholars saw four different "senses" in which to interpret various parts of Scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical, and the moral (Wright is not advocating this structure, in fact he points out potential error in it). In medieval usage, "literal" meant the original meaning of the words as actually written (same Latin root as our words "literature" and "literary"), as opposed to any other means of interpretation. As Wright points out, the "literal" interpretation of one of Jesus' parables does not mean that we approach the events of that parable as though they actually happened (which is what would mean in modern English if we took the parable "literally"). Rather, we accept that the writer is representing that Jesus told a parable--a story that may or may not be factually true but illustrates the real truth Jesus was trying to convey.

This sense, for the reformers, put them at odds with Catholic theology in that, to the Catholic interpretation, the literal sense of Jesus statement "this is my body" provided the foundation for the dogma of transubstantiation, while the reformers argued that the literal interpretation (remember that Wright says "literal" means "the sense that the first writers intended" rather than our modern definition of the word) recognizes that the text is relating truly a metaphorical statement by Jesus.

Obviously this difference in approach could be applied all over the place--so that a "literal reading" of the Genesis account of creation could be as the poetic narrative of God starting things out good, and humans jealous of God screwing it up, rather than justifying the seven days, the talking snake (apologies to Bill Maher), and other things that create so much heartburn in cosmological circles.

As Wright states, ". . .we need to note carefully that to invoke 'the literal meaning of scripture,' hoping thereby to settle a point by echoing the phraseology of the Reformers, could be valid only if we meant, not 'literal' as opposed to metaphorical, but 'literal' (which might include metaphorical if that, arguably, was the original sense) as opposed to the three other medieval senses (allegorical, anagogical and/or moral). This is one of those many points at which the later appeal to the rhetoric of the Reformation needs to be scrutinized rather carefully. Today, when people say 'literalist,' they often mean 'fundamentalist.' The Reformers' stress on the literal sense by no means supports the kind of position thereby implied."

I'm not suggesting that literalism in any form is necessarily a biblically-derived concept anyhow--although in its medieval sense I think it has a lot more going for it than in the modern sense of the same word. But it is important to understand how terms of art have evolved before going off half-cocked about what some historical authority is saying.

Required reading by N.T. Wright

I have just got to promote this article by N.T. (Tom) Wright, bishop of Durham in England:

http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=334

Thanks to my friend Ben for sharing it. Wright has outlined so many things in this piece, that have also been bugging me, that I don't even know what highlights to quote. It's long and a bit heavy at times, but seriously, take the time to digest it.

I will offer a couple excerpts that, to me, resonate with some of what I've been trying to say here:

Consider: How does what we call ‘the authority of the Bible’ relate to the authority of God himself – and the authority of Jesus himself? When the risen Jesus commissions his followers for their worldwide mission, he does not say ‘all authority in heaven and earth is given to – the books you people are going to go and write.’ He says that all authority is given to him. When we say the closing words of the Lord’s prayer, we don’t say that the kingdom, the power and the glory belong to the Bible, but to God himself. And when Jesus commissions the disciples for mission in John 20, he doesn’t say ‘receive this book’ but ‘receive the Holy Spirit’. Authority, then, has a trinitarian shape and content. If we want to say, as I certainly want to say in line with our entire Anglican tradition, that the Bible is in some sense our authority, the Bible itself insists that that sentence must be read as a shorthand way of saying something a bit more complicated, something that will enable us to get some critical distance on the traditional shouting-match.

And a little further down:

When we say ‘the authority of scripture’, then, we mean – if we know our business – God’s authority, Christ’s authority, somehow exercised through the Bible. But what is ‘God’s authority’ all about? To look again at scripture itself, it is clear that one of the most common models assumed by many in today’s world simply won’t do. We have lived for too long in the shadow of an older Deism in which God is imagined as a celestial C. E. O., sitting upstairs and handing down instructions from a great height. The Bible is then made to fit into the ontological and epistemological gap between God and ourselves; and, if it is the Deist God you are thinking of, that gap has a particular shape and implication. The Bible is then bound to become merely a source-book for true doctrines and right ethics. That is better than nothing, but it is always vulnerable to the charge, made frequently these days, that it is after all only an old book and that we’ve learnt a lot since then. The Left doesn’t get it, and often all the Right can do is to respond with an ever more shrill repetition of ‘the Bible, the Bible the Bible’.

Spiritual Innoculation

One of the things that originally got me on the subject of what the Bible actually says about itself was my frustration about how people in the church use it. . .and these are things I have encountered in a wide variety of Christian settings, not just evangelical/fundamental ones. I refer here to the devotional rituals described by some as "time with the Lord" or "quiet time" or "time in the Word." Whatever the terminology, conventional usage has invested a regular, periodic time of Bible reading with the power of a "Spiritual Discipline" that may be anything from a source of divine guidance to direct communion with God. Perhaps the worst, most insipid form of this practice is in the statement "the Bible is God's love letter to you."

I do not discount that familiarity with and study of the Biblical texts is essential to anyone who intends to model his or her life after Jesus--for as I said before, the Biblical record is the most complete account we have of Jesus' life and teachings. Nor do I disallow the possibility that the Holy Spirit may prompt vital thoughts or guidance in the believer while reading their Bible, though I believe the Spirit may just as well guide one's thoughts while one is reading non-Biblical literature (even the news). But the mystical properties often ascribed to the Bible are silly at best, and are certainly not supported by the texts themselves.

The most compelling argument against the mystical efficacy of Bible reading has got to be the ol' "by their works you shall know them" one Jesus used so effectively in his dissertation about false prophets in Matt 7:15-20. The "wolves in sheep's clothing" likely refers to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, as he used similar terms to describe these groups elsewhere. They were among the most scripturally-trained and studied individuals of the time, and perhaps any time. These were the guys of whom he said:

"You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf." (John 5:39, NRSV)

Just as in Jesus' time, so also in ours, there is no correlation between people who regularly read their Bibles and discipleship behavior. Though there are certainly many people trying their level best to follow Jesus, many of the purveyors of the greatest hatred and vitriol in the name of Christianity today, are people who at least publicly subscribe to the regular-time-in-the-word discipline. I'll bet that George Bush reads his Bible regularly, and it didn't help him in the slightest to see past the perpetration of endless lies and the shedding of a great deal of innocent blood in the name of a "Christian" nation. Nor did it prevent him from blasphemously replacing Jesus with America when he misquoted John on 9/11/02 "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it" (last line of the speech--cf. John 1:5), or when he misquoted Isaiah while promoting his education program (note, this document is no longer on the White House website and I can't find another online archive - it was Bush speaking at the White House Education Summit in 2005 or 2006, I believe) "children living in darkness would see a great light" (cf. Isaiah 9:2). Not only Bush, but American Evangelicals, also supposedly regular readers of their Bibles, have failed to call him on repeated, blasphemous conflation of America with Jesus.

Of course I'm not blaming the Bible for the sins of its readers. I'm merely arguing that it's got no intrinsic power apart from (1) the working of the Holy Spirit in the mind of the reader, and (2) the openness of the reader to be worked upon. But it's worse than that. Misuse of the Bible--that is using it other than it was intended, can actually work at cross purposes to God. Here, finally is perhaps one of the greatest insults to God's word committed by the church.

My professional background is in public health, and for a number of years I worked in the field of immunization. As most readers will know, the process of immunization involves taking a bacterium or virus that causes disease, either weakening it or killing it, and then innoculating a person with a small, controlled quantity of that weakened (attenuated) or killed disease agent. When the body is exposed to the vaccine, the immune system generates antibodies which are then available to respond to the full-strength "wild type" agent if ever it is encountered.

This is such a parable for the way the Bible has been used on and by Christians. Our sermons, Sunday Schools, and devotionals extract bits of the Bible, strip them of any properties that might do any harm, and then repeatedly expose believers to this attenuated gospel until we've built up such an immunity that the real thing has no effect on us.

Like most analogies, this one breaks down if pushed too far, so I will refrain from expanding it further. However, we do need to carefully re-examine our use of the Bible, not only to discern the will and word of God within it, but to be sure that we are not perpetuating the process of innoculating ourselves or others against the genuine movement of God.

A different take on Inspiration - Blumhardt

While looking for the source of the quote in the previous post, I came across the entire text of Vernard Eller's compilation of the writings of Johann Christoff Blumhardt and Christoff Heinrich Blumhardt, Thy Kingdom Come: A Blumhardt Reader. This excerpt from the section entitled "The Bible" is relevant and interesting:

People speak much these days about "the inspiration of scripture"; and this is good. However, I prefer to speak of "inspired people." God be thanked that we have scriptures that came from those through whom God's Spirit spoke the truth. Yet it is the prophet who is inspired, not the letter of scripture. And if the letter is to lead to the truth, so must you also be led by the Spirit of God as you read.

Conversely, today's natural man knows nothing of the Spirit of God and so gets himself quite confused regarding the words of the inspired prophets. But thus, also, a man like Luther could, for his time, personally witness to the God-intended truth of that for which other writers of his time could find no meaning nor make any sense. He was ruled by God and the Spirit, not by biblical texts. But if we all attend only upon the revealed life of God, and if each person is zealous only for his own gifts regarding God's truth and steadfastness, then we do not need to be in conflict over the inspiration of scripture. We then can find ourselves in reciprocal agreement.

Why it matters

Though I'm far from exhausting the issue of Biblical inspiration, I think it might be useful to turn aside for a moment and look at why I'm going down this road at all. I already stated at the outset that one primary reason is that we have no business making a doctrinal-level claim that cannot be conclusively supported on Biblical texts alone. That is, if the Bible itself does not define itself as the word of God (and I contend it does not), then we have no business so defining it.

Nevertheless there is another reason to which I have alluded several times: Many (perhaps most) of the doctrines taught in our churches today, are based on a few Biblical passages--even single verses--taken out of their larger context and expanded into complex theologies. (I should clarify here that I use the term "doctrine" not in the literal sense of the Greek didache, which is simply "teaching," but rather in the more-common English sense of basically a synonym of "dogma:" that is, a proposition to which the believer is asked--or even required--to give intellectual assent).

By contrast, the passages highlighted in both Old and New Testaments as the "word of God" tend to have a great deal more to do with how we live, than what we think (I know, this brings up works-vs-faith salvation for many of you. I'll address that in a few days). Particularly with the prophets, but also in Jesus' own words, we learn a great deal about what makes God happy, and what pisses him off. A reasonable person, reading these words, would probably conclude that making God happy is a good thing, while upsetting him, not so much. It's not rocket science.

Let's look at a couple of examples. According to at least one source, the Bible references money over 800 times, and whether his numbers are correct or not, he's on the right track. Quite a few such references are by Jesus himself, or in the prophetic "thus saith the Lord" passages I referred to in my prior post. Even a cursory survey of such verses gives us a pretty good clue what God thinks about money: we shouldn't be driven by it, we should be careful not to harm others in the acquisition/use of it, it easily becomes an idol, etc. In other words, taking these passages seriously leads to ACTION: doing some things, and not doing others.

On the other hand, the contention that God knows the whole future (whether because of his planning or simply divine foreknowledge), while not absent from the Bible, is much less common. Though I have yet to do a full survey of the subject, I strongly suspect that:

• It's mentioned a lot less than 800 times and probably less than 100
• Mention of God's foreknowledge generally (not exclusively) is not in the "thus saith the Lord" parts of the Bible so much as in literature of other types
• Most importantly, it does not occur in passages--regardless of who's talking--that carry an expectation of behavior that would change because of God's knowledge.

It is this last point I would emphasize the most strongly. Whether or not one believes (as in, gives intellectual assent to the proposition) that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of events that will happen is an entirely intellectual mind game, while on the other hand, whether or not one believes (as in recognizes it matters to God) in the Biblical view of money can and must have a direct impact on our behavior.

Nevertheless, I have heard more teaching on God's omniscience than I have on God's opinion about economic justice. If you attend (or know someone who attends) an American evangelical church (maybe a lot of other churches too), I'll bet you've been exposed to a similar imbalance. This is one way the church grossly misrepresents the God it claims to worship.

When God actually took the time to speak, and to make clear to his hearers that he was speaking, it was not to get their "doctrines" as we use that term, in order. It was to get them to do something or to stop doing something else. Perhaps the greatest violence that theology has done to the faith of Jesus, is by re-defining faith as a mental exercise in believing propositions, more than a lifestyle of discipleship. Though this redefinition has many roots, I believe one of the keys has been the misapplication of the "word of God" imprimatur to the Biblical canon, which in turn resulted in theologians feeling the compulsion to tease out the meanings of isolated phrases and concepts found in every corner of the text.

Years ago I was given a quotation that I have since lost, which says it best. I believe that the author may have been one of the Blumhardts, but sadly I cannot say for sure, and so far Google has been useless in turning it up. If anyone can help me with a citation I shall be grateful:

"God's word is given in order that we shall act in accordance with it, not that we shall practice the art of interpreting obscure passages."

Biblical Inspiration part 4 - Rightly Dividing the Word

I have contended in previous posts that the conventional Christian position designating the entire Biblical canon to be the "Word of God" is in error. But this is not to say that we do not have the Word of God available to us. . .quite the contrary. The role of the "workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15, KJV)" is to understand what, out of all the Biblical writings, is God's own word, and be sure to live by it.

If we simply let the Biblical texts speak for themselves, this isn't really terribly complicated. First and foremost, of course, as John makes abundantly clear at the beginning of his gospel, the ultimate word of God is Jesus himself, the Word become flesh. Anything we presume to understand from the written Biblical texts (or for that matter from anywhere) must be subjected to the character of Jesus as he lived and taught while present on earth. In any case where there is any perceived disagreement or discrepancy, Jesus wins because Jesus is the fullest revelation of God in history. So for example, when Jesus taught a variety of "you have heard it was said. . .but I say to you" throughout the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), it doesn't really matter whether what he was doing was clarifying an earlier point that God had revealed, or correcting a human doctrine. Either way, Jesus' own authority was and remains paramount. It is impossible to make a Biblical case for rejecting or discounting a teaching of Jesus, and it is equally impossible to be obeying Biblical teaching in any way that leads one to live or behave contrary to Jesus' character.

In this regard, we must operate under the faith position that Jesus' words and actions, as represented in the four gospels, are faithfully recorded. Without these, Jesus is no more than a significant historical legend who may or may not have taught certain things or done certain deeds. The various revisionists that try to parse out the "historical" Jesus from that recorded in the Gospels may be performing an interesting academic exercise, but faith in Christ depends on a faithful account of who Christ was.

(I should note here that there are plenty who get into the subject of apologetics to determine the historicity of Jesus. This is an interesting subject, and one I may take on at some point. But it's not the point of this series. I am speaking here to those who accept--or at least are willing to entertain the possibility of--the divine nature of Jesus' life and work on earth. My argument is which parts of the Biblical text are to be taken as the word of God, which PRESUPPOSES that there is a God, there is a word of God that must be followed, and so on. This is hermaneutics, not apologetics).

Parenthetics out of the way, what am I saying? Very simply, if there is a "word of God" at all, at the very pinnacle it must be the words of Jesus, God's incarnate son.

After Jesus, there are other places where the Biblical texts explicitly say that what they are relating are the words of God. We find this mostly in the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and others say over and over in their texts "this is what the Lord says," or "the word of the Lord came to me," or similar phrases. These designators--highlighting that here it is no longer merely man's thoughts but God's own communication--are followed by very clear condemnation of evil, occasional praise for faithfulness, and unmistakable directions for action.

Frankly, if our churches spent as much teaching and study effort on these parts of the Bible where it actually says it's God's word, instead (or even in addition to) their emphasis on other parts that make no such claim, we would be looking at a radically different faith. The troubling, encouraging, exciting thing is that the places where we have these words recorded, tend to be passages that talk a lot about justice and right behavior, and not so much about belief in doctrinal propositions.

On the other hand, and in stark contrast to these declaratory passages, the Psalms are a man's words. They are full of David's praise to God, as well as his prayers, the venting of his frustrations, and so on. In many ways it might be accurate to look at parts of the Psalms as David's "prayer journal." But the Psalms also relate plenty that is flat-out un-Godly. Probably the best examples of this are the so-called "imprecatory psalms" such as Psalm 109.

When he is tried, let him be found guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin. May his days be few; may another seize his position. May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit. (v. 7-10, NRSV)

When David is saying these things he's being bluntly honest with his feelings toward his enemies. But no one who's paid any attention to the character and teachings of Jesus can make the case that these feelings are remotely Godly--certainly they're not something we are taught to emulate or bring about.

So are they in error? No, it's not an error to have included them in the text. While God may not have inspired David to write those words (evil thoughts like those have a very different inspirational source), I do believe God inspired the canonical council to include them. They are profitable for teaching, because they give us an unvarnished look at the range of feelings--perhaps the range of depravity--of a man who served God faithfully for much of his life. But this rant cannot in any stretch be characterized as God's word. It is, in fact, antithetical to God's very being.

So study your Bible, and learn to "rightly divide" that which is God's word from that which is also profitable for teaching. We'll talk more about what this division may mean in future posts. Peace until then. . .

Biblical Inspiration Part 3: But what about 2 Tim. 3:16?

Note, please see the follow-on to this discussion linked at the end of this article.

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. . ." (NRSV). Doesn't this verse conclusively state that our Bible comes straight from God?

Well, not exactly.

First of all we have to look at the word "Scripture." While in modern English that word has the meaning of "sacred writing," the Latin word "scriptura" is much more pedestrian--it just means the written word. In addition to the religious word "scripture," we also get our words "scribe" and "script" from the same root. Similarly the Greek word "graphe" used in the original text is a pretty generic word. You're reading my "graphe" right now, but at least it has some spiritual content. If my wife puts a note on my dashboard reminding me to pick up milk on the way home from work, that's "graphe," too. I doubt the grocery list is inspired by God!

Now it's true that in the first century a lot fewer people were literate. Added to the fact that pens and paper were a whole lot rarer and more costly, and writing back then was likely reserved (mostly) for more significant stuff than the grocery lists, but we have plenty of examples of "graphe" from Paul's time that were most certainly not holy!

But the real key to this passage leaped out at me when I first read it in the old American Standard Version from 1901. Though it's not the most readable version I've ever seen, the 1901 ASV is regarded by many scholars as possibly the most literal translation ever, of the Bible into English. Here is the same verse from the ASV:

Every scripture inspired of God [is] also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.

Notice the difference? That little verb "is" got moved three positions to the right, and it completely changes the character of the sentence. Instead of declaring that "every scripture comes from God," the ASV tells us the somewhat-obvious fact that "anything that comes from God is profitable." The ASV's translation is equally valid because the verb "is" doesn't appear in the original text at all, in either place. A literal translation of the Greek text is more like ". . .every (or "all") writing God-breathed and profitable. . ." Both the translators of the ASV and other English translations inserted the "is" because the sentence doesn't make much sense in English without it. But with apologies to Bill Clinton, where the "is" is, makes a huge difference in the meaning!

The more I think about it and look at this passage, though, the more I suspect that both sets of translators got it wrong. Their error (besides "already knowing what it means" before examining the text) was assuming that verse 16 and 17 are a single sentence separate from verses 14 and 15 before them (and forgetting that Paul is legendary for run-on sentences). If, instead, verse 16 is a dependent clause in the same sentence as 14, we don't need an "is" at all to understand it. Consider this alternate reading of the passage (picking up in verse 15):

". . .from childhood you have known the holy writings (which have the power of wisdom to produce faith in Christ Jesus): every writing inspired by God and useful for teaching. . ." etc.

In other words, the writings which Paul is saying have the power of wisdom to produce faith are those writings which (1) are inspired by God, and (2) are therefore profitable for teaching and all the rest of it. That is, Paul is using the fact that a given writing is God-breathed (as opposed to all th other writing "out there"), as a point of qualification for it's being used for teaching the believer. Stated plainly, "If God inspired it, then it's worth using for teaching." Put that way, it's kind of a no-brainer, don't you think?

To use this passage as it has been used for centuries, as a divine imprimatur over a Biblical canon that did not exist for another 200-plus years is nonsense. I have been told before that "God intended to inspire the canonical council to put all these books together as His word, and so inspired Paul to state that's what they were." This is circular reasoning. . .saying that "the Bible is the Word of God, therefore it says it is the Word of God" only makes sense if you start with the assumption that it's the inspired, inerrant word of God. Paul in this passage said no such thing.

For a correction based on better grammatical analysis, please see this follow-on article.

Biblical Inspiration - Part 2: The Foundation of our Faith

One might reasonably ask whether, when I argue against the inerrancy doctrine of Biblical inspiration, I might not be undercutting the very foundation of our Christian faith. To this I answer an unequivocal "no." At its core, our faith is not in any text, but rather in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh who dwelt among us, "For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 3:11, NRSV).

Greg Boyd said it better than I can, in a recent blog post (note that he qualifies his use of the term "infallible"):

"My belief that Jesus is the Son of God isn’t rooted in my belief that the Bible is God’s infallible Word. Rather, my belief that the Bible is God’s infallible Word is rooted (mostly) in my belief that Jesus is the Son of God. I don’t believe in Jesus because the Bible says so. I believe in the Bible (mostly) because Jesus says so."

We have got to realize that the Bible's authority depends on God, not the other way around. The old song

Jesus loves me, this I know
for the Bible tells me so.

actually has it backwards. Put another way, you could take the Bible away and still have a sovereign God; but take God away and the Bible is meaningless.

This is not to discount the value of Biblical texts--after all, most of the little we know about God's very identity and character, we learn from the Bible. I said in my last post that anything we can't derive from Biblical sources (as opposed to extra-Biblical) dare not rise to the level of doctrine, and I stand by that statement.

But I don't think that it's accidental (or in error) that one of the oldest creeds of the Christian faith, the Apostles' Creed, begins

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.

There is no mention of the scriptures at all in that early creed. This is right, because it isn't the Scriptures in which we believe. . .they are the source of information and teaching and the words of the One in whom we believe. It's not an idle distinction.

Biblical Inspiration, Part 1 - The Error of Inerrancy

Most Christian churches teach a doctrine about the Bible that comes from outside the Bible itself. The Bible is variously described as the Word of God, the Inspired word of God, and similar terms. Many (most?) Evangelical and/or fundamentalist churches hold to a doctrine they call "Verbal and Plenary Inspiration," ("verbal:" the words are inspired, and "plenary:" all the words are inspired) which to many means that God directed the human writers of the Biblical texts to write the very words, grammar, etc. they used, so that the Biblical texts are "without error (inerrant) in their original writings" (a phrase found in many Evangelical statements of faith including the denomination I currently attend--here is an example).

There are, of course, widely divergent opinions even among those who claim to believe in Biblical inerrancy, as to exactly what they mean by the term. At the most rigid end are those who insist that every word and phrase in the Bible came directly from God, and must be literally true in the plain reading of it. At the other end are a number who develop a complex system of hermaneutics (fancy word for interpretation) that acknowledges that the Bible contains many forms of literature, including not only direct reporting, but also prophecy, apocalyptic (symbol-laden) writing, poetry, parable, and so on. This latter group may suggest that no Biblical passage is in error in what it says, though the immediate literal meaning may not be what it intended to say. One can debate whether this methodology really deserves to appropriate the "verbal and plenary inspiration" label (I think it's strained) but they still frequently make that claim.

Certainly, lots of Christians do not accept such rigid definitions of inerrancy. Some approach the Bible more devotionally than didactically; others interpret it all in terms of the culture of the times and/or try to adapt its message to our own culture and times. Among the more so-called "liberal" denominations there does not (to me) appear to be much of an issue with Biblical authority at all--if it doesn't seem right or reasonable, it must not be relevant today. It is not to this group that I speak.

But for those who consider Biblical authority important, I maintain that the doctrine of the Bible is still fundamentally flawed. Simply to apply the term "the Word of God" to the Biblical canon requires extra-Biblical authority, for nowhere in the entire text is there any evidence for that label. I have not yet had the time to research the historical use of the terminology, and I'd welcome comments with source material on this point, but I suspect that both the description of Biblical texts as "divinely inspired" and the label "Word of God" (not at all the same thing) come much later in church history--particularly as those words are now understood (more on Paul's use of "inspired" in another post).

There are numerous places within the Biblical record where certain messages are represented as God's word. Paramount of these are the recorded words of Jesus in the gospels. Close behind are the prophets in those instances where they state "Thus saith the Lord" or "the word of the Lord came to . . ." The apostle Paul himself clearly delineates places where he believes he has a word from the Lord vs. his own thoughts (see 1Cor. 7:10, 7:12, 7:25). Such delineation would be wholly unnecessary if the entire text were God's word.

I will get into specifics as to why I maintain the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy are incorrect, in future posts. For now let's look at why our doctrine regarding the Bible matters. Bottom line there are three reasons:

1. I maintain that if one is truly to respect Biblical authority, one must not assign doctrinal status to any proposition that cannot be derived exclusively from the Bible itself. In other words, if the Bible doesn't say itself that it's the Word of God, then we better not say it either. We must not go beyond what is written (1 Cor. 4:6).
2. The reverence with which many people approach the written word of the Bible, at least in its most extreme form, comes dangerously close to idolatry. The Bible is not God; it is not a fourth person of the Trinity (we may discuss the trinity in a later post, but that's another subject). Many Evangelical statements of faith actually have the doctrine of the Bible as the first point on their list. . .even before a statement of belief in God himself. It may be paradoxical, but "no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3) includes images, representations, even books of God himself, not just idols from other religions.
3. Insisting on Biblical inerrancy provides the targets and the ammunition for numerous unnecessary fights and controversies within the church, and between the church and the world. Let's face it, much of the battle over creation vs. evolution would be a total non-issue if we weren't trying to defend Genesis. The raging debates between churches about millenialism are of no consequence unless one has to build a doctrine around two obscure phrases in Revelation. Requiring the belief in inerrancy produces lists of doctrines to which one must give assent, but it does nothing to advance the cause of behaving like a disciple of Jesus. It is at best a distraction; at worst it actually drives people from genuine faith.

I want to close by clarifying something I am categorically NOT saying. I am not trying to build a case against the authority of the Bible. In fact, I hope that future posts will demonstrate that I am actually advocating a HIGHER authority for what the Scriptures actually say about themselves, in contrast to what Christians conventionally teach about them. The Biblical canon is a faithful record of God's dealing with his people throughout history, and "our full and final authority for faith and practice." That should be enough, without assigning to the entire collection, a divinity that it never claims.