Sunday, 27 November 2011
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Is the Bible the Word of God?
The Bible is a book of the Christian faith. Contained within it is an entire metanarrative that tells us the story of our salvation and good principles to keep the Church running and accountable. Within the metanarrative are stories, parables, letters, poems, proverbs, songs, and biographies. These are comprised together from all over the middle east and even southern Europe. Over the years, it has since been translated multiple times in a variety of languages, and dispersed throughout the entire world where today, it can be used by churches and revered by Christians.Throughout the many years that the Bible has been around, the concepts within have been hypothesized, evaluated, theorized, evolved, and understood in multiples of ways. There is not one clear understanding of scripture with all the many traditions we have today. Perhaps that is God's intent. I don't know. But to me, it's a beautiful thing that it is understood in all these different ways. Not everyone needs to agree with me. I don't need to agree with everyone either. The one thing that I know for sure though, is that God has all of the answers. God is the light where there is dark, and though I may not be able to see, I can know and trust that God will one day get me to the light where I will be able to see the mysteries he has for us clearly.
And this is my problem with the so-called "infallibility of scripture". There are too many mysteries in the Bible. There are too many mysteries in life in general. I can't even begin to count the mysteries of God, and yet, to many, it is to be believed that this book that was written in a variety of contexts and particular situations is infallible? I used to go along with that, but I no longer do. Only God is infallible; the actual "Word of God".Catholics have a different theology of scripture than most protestants (namely, Evangelical denominations as opposed to Mainline denominations). But there is a saying among Catholics that we protestants worship a paper pope. Normally, this is said in response to accusations that the pope becomes a sort of deity among Catholics. Honestly, I agree with the Catholics on this one. To many protestants, the holy trinity has become the Father, Son, and Holy Bible rather than Holy Spirit. And that, to me, has been poisonous to the Church.
Someone recently asked me, "By what authority [do you] believe you can strike some things from the Bible as not being His word and know which they are in the first place? Don't you think this might be a little presumptuous?"
My answer to that is rather simple- Really, by the same authority that tells someone the exact opposite. I mean, all of our traditions do this to an extent, and the reasons vary. My authority is the tradition of my church. I'm a United Methodist. We don't believe that the Bible is the Word of God, but rather that it reveals the Word of God. All that means is that while reading the bible, we can't just take it at face value. The Bible wasn't put together to be read, but rather, heard by those who've been through enough education to know that they can understand it. Now, I'm not saying that no one should read the bible... but that its intent has changed with the development of the printing press. Now, anyone is able to read it- and that's great, but sometimes, people misinterpret scripture due to the fact that the time, context, and situation of the text are not exactly easy to read. This changes many things.
Personally, I think it's a little presumptuous to assume that the Bible is the word of God to begin with. I mean, you won't find that in the Bible. This, in my mind, kills the work of the Holy Spirit. After all, God is a living, breathing God. The Bible is a good guide for living a Godly life, but the Bible in itself is not living. It does not breath. It has no room for change in a changing world. I believe some things are constant, but not all. Finding out what is constant and what is not takes study, reasoning, consulting tradition, and experience.
Please remember that Galileo once said that the earth was not fixed in place, as the scriptures said it was, but instead that it revolves around the sun. He was excommunicated from the Church for believing this. We know now that that concept is silly. Why? Because it's been proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. We also know now that the Earth is not set up on pillars. We also now know that the Earth is round. A lot has changed- including the ways the authors of the New and Old testament saw the world. It's a completely different world from back then, so I believe it would be best for us to look at scripture and instead of taking everything at face value, ask, "How is this applicable to today, in 2011, in this community, in this context?" And throughout Church history, this is nothing new. Many of our Church fathers and theologians taught from a standpoint that not everything in scripture is historically literal, or even in some cases, accurate. Martin Luther almost took James out of the canon, for crying out loud! Why? Because he thought it wasn't needed and he didn't agree with the letter's theology.
None of this is to say that scripture has no authority. Believe it or not, I have a very high view of scripture. I just don't treat scripture as if it is the fourth member of the trinity. As I've said before, I do think much of it is applicable today- but the way we read it today is very different from the way it was read in the first, second, and third centuries. So much more interpretation is involved, and the interpretation needs to fit around what we already know as fact.
So what is the Word of God? The Word of God is the complete truth because God only speaks complete truth. It must be found within scripture through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is from Article IV in "The Confession of Faith, The Book of Discipline" of the United Methodist Church:
"We believe the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, reveals the Word of God so far as it is necessary for our salvation. It is to be received through the Holy Spirit as the true rule and guide for faith and practice. Whatever is not revealed in or established by the Holy Scriptures is not to made an article of faith nor is it to be taught as essential to salvation."
I think that that's a good way to sum up what I believe "the Word of God" is. In my opinion, it is not the Bible itself, but the Bible as it is read under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther considered preaching to be a form that the Word of God comes in... because it's teaching from scripture through the inspiration of God. One can say that all scripture is already inspired by God. I would agree- All scripture is inspired by God... but we also must reason with it. This is the work of the Holy Spirit who works within and through the Church. This is why its important to know your church's traditions.
Some of those reading this may not agree and think I'm being heretical. That's ok. I take joy in the fact that I don't need to have all of the answers. I like to paraphrase Tony Campolo at times like this: "If by heretic, you mean I've yet to see God in His full glory, than yes, I'm a heretic." Just know that my view is a traditional view and commonly held within many denominations, particularly those that are mainline.
Do you believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God? Why or why not?
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Comments (16)
No, I don't. There are subtle mistranslations that make it impossible to be inerrant. However, I believe it is mostly the word of God minus whatever the writers/editors/clergymen decided to leave out.
I think most people who call themselves devout would say yes, it is the word of G-d. Many haven't even read it and just rely on others to tell them the "important" parts. Sadly, most of these believers don't know there are some awful parts: slavery, stoning of children, smitting of full groups of people including children (aka, genocide), etc and etc.
As controversial as your point sounds, I'm not sure that it's anything but orthodoxy. It's the word of God, in the sense that it was inspired by God to rebuke, to correct, to inspire, and to train people in righteousness. It's infallible for those purposes. That seems like what you accept, as well. Where do we protestants disagree? It seems that you take infallibility and innerancy to be synonymous.
Also, there's a bit of a fallacy in going from "there are many beliefs about what scripture means" to "scripture is not infallible." It's a lot like saying "There are many beliefs about God" and concluding "There is no one exclusive God among the interpretations, but one God who reveals himself differently to everyone."
I would disagree with the statement that the Bible writers do not claim to be inspired. In 2nd Peter 3:14-18, Peter equated Paul's writings along with the other "scriptures".
But, perhaps most of all, I do believe that the Word of God is an inerrant and infallible testament of God's Word.
I can't tell how you would feel if I came to you with a supposed "revelation" from the "Holy Spirit" that contradicted, in some way, what the Bible reveals to us. If I were to say that women could be pastors, perhaps you might agree (and say the Bible was just wrong where it forbade that). Then if I said that practicing homosexuals might be perfectly acceptable and shouldn't be required to change at all (despite Paul's command to disfellowship from the immoral brother). But then, what if I denied that there is a Holy Spirit? What if I denied that there is a Father as distinct from the Son? Or, what if I came teaching something similar to one of the early church heretics and said that the Father was actually the "evil" god, and that Jesus was the "good god" who saved us from the evil god?
I suppose my point in this last paragraph is to, again, ask, how do you divine that there is a Jesus if you can't accept and apply the Bible as the inspired Word of God?
We know from simple common sense that there is only one Truth. There may be 25 versions of 1 + 1 = 2 in 25 languages, but the answer is always the same. So if you add 1 + 1 and get any other answer than 2, you have committed an error.
Jesus said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Even if you don't believe that he was divine, his reasoning is ironclad:
There is only one Truth.
So this is yet another Revelife post that fails because it violates both common sense and basic Christian teachings.
Here is a quote from one of those nefarious Catholic Popes on the precious and divine nature of Holy Scripture.
It comes from, "Promotion of Biblical Studies," by Pope Pius XII, 1943:
This heaven-sent treasure Holy Church considers as the most precious source of doctrine on faith and morals. No wonder herefore that, as she received it intact from the hands of the Apostles, so she kept it with all care, defended it from every false and perverse interpretation and used it diligently as an instrument for securing the eternal salvation of souls, as almost countless documents in every age strikingly bear witness.
The Christian understanding that the Bible is the Word of God is a doctrine that unites Christianity.
I don't believe so, because I have no reason to think that it is. It doesn't have any moral or intellectual propositions that couldn't have come from mere men (with no divine or otherwise privileged knowledge whatsoever) of each book's respective time and place of origin. You would think that a book that was inspired by the infinitely powerful creator of the universe would be amazingly far ahead of the human zeitgeist and contain all types of timeless wisdom, far beyond what you would imagine priests could write without alleged divine inspiration.
To the comment about the Bible and homosexuality, I would refer you to Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality, by Jack Rogers. It may not change your mind, but it will give you something to think about. We often take scripture as though the context were what we would want it to be, out of it's cultural or greek or even hebrew text, and that's why I find the Bible to be full of errors. You cannot take a plethora of men, and have the book translated over 600 times, and act like it all means exactly what it did in that day. It's just impossible.
Women cannot become pastors? Are you referring to Paul's admonition to the noisy women at Galatia? Where they'd never been allowed to meet in public before? Never been in public with their husbands before? Where the cultural norm was for only prostitutes to cut their hair? Why did you not reference women cutting their hair, or wearing jewelry? Because those were customs, silly, and not commandments from Jesus. And when did Paul travel with Jesus? And when did Jesus refuse to use women in his ministry, yet even have them traveling to other towns for him? We need to look through the lens of Christ when we start talking about the practicing church, and stop looking through one or two speeches given by Paul, who clearly had trouble controlling large crowds. These concepts are so foreign to fundamentalists that it just blows my mind. So mind controlling are they, that they have women actually believing they shouldn't be pursuing doctorates in theology if the spirit is guiding them to. That they have people standing by the roadside with horrid placards, like that's going to bring people to Christ. After becoming a Christian at 35, I went the full gamut of attending churches, and never felt so much judgement as I did at a particular evangelical church, after someone turned me in to the pastor for my political beliefs.
I'm definitely offended by that picture of Dr. Dobson, since he's not ordained and never presents himself as a pastor or theologian. Even I disagree with him on occasion.
"Personally, I think it's a little presumptuous to assume that the Bible
is the word of God to begin with. I mean, you won't find that in the
Bible."
Then why can't I read the Old Testament without seeing "Thus says the Lord" hundreds or thousands of times? Jesus is God, and His words are all over the Gospels. I don't understand that argument.
But, I guess it's impossible to reconcile those misunderstandings. I've bumped up against other United Methodists, who don't even seem to agree with Wesley, and wrote me off as a "fundamentalist." In fact, I don't see Christianity as a bunch of denominations, Catholic vs Protestant, evangelical vs "mainline" ... All I can do is obey the command to contend for the faith (singular), given once for all, and hope God sorts out the areas where other believers are confused or doubtful.
Yes. Because it is, but not because I say it is. What more needs to be said?
it amuses me greatly everytime i ask a christian "who wrote the bible?"
and they reply, "God".
The Bible is the ultimate tome created by the Jews as a method of control. It deserves to be burned just as much as the Qur'an does.
Nothing makes me laugh more than idiots who worship a book that actually tells them they are second-class citizens, after the Jews. After all, does it not claim the Jews are God's 'chosen people'? That makes you chopped liver, my sad and stupid children. Your God insults you, and you respond by worshipping Him. *ROTFLMAO*
If the Bible was written as a method of controlling others then why would they include so many things that condemned themselves? And why would they have their messiah die upon a cross at the hands of the Romans? Have you ever even read the Bible? It's obvious even from one reading that it wasn't written for that purpose.
Oh, and we are not second-class citizens, but all those who are in faith in Christ are citizens of heaven. It's not the natural-born Jews who are heirs, but those who are children of God by faith in Christ. I guess you would know that if you read the Bible but it seems haven't and merely resort to one line soundbytes.
@TouchDefiles@xanga - If God is dead then why are you wasting your time on a Christian website. I don't believe in trolls or dragons and for that reason I certainly don't waste my time replying to websites that do. Perhaps you are just angry at God and have to find someplace to vent those feelings.