The question pastor Adam Hamilton asks is "What is the Bible?" He begins to map the options right away: is it a collection of documents that describe the faith of ancient Israelites and the early Christians? Is it the Word of God, with every word chosen by God -- with the implication at some level that the authors were God's secretaries? Another question: Is all of the Bible marked by culture? Is only some of it marked by culture? Is it all marked by culture but still capable to rendering God's will for us today? One of my own ways of putting this is to ask if it is best to talk about the Bible as "timeless" truth or "timely" truth?Hamilton sketches the American history with the Bible -- marked as it is by the huge fight between the modernists and their use of "higher criticism" and the fundamentalists and their appeal to inspiration and inerrancy (or infallibility). Today's culture wars is marked by this debate to this day. Fundamentalists constantly worry about a slippery slope into liberalism and liberals worry constantly that if they start preaching about the need for personal salvation and the authority of the Bible that they'll end up losing credibility with culture. (It's more complex than this, yes, but these factors are at work to this day.)
Hamilton speaks of conservatives for whom the authorship of the books of the Bible -- even when not in the text (like Matthew -- the text itself does not say Matthew wrote the Gospel) -- is worth going to the mat for. They will also defend Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch as if it is central to Christian orthodoxy. On the other hand, I'm personally astonished how easily many are convinced that a biblical author, say James, didn't write James when the evidence for this kind of conclusion is so flimsy. Far better, I say to myself often, to admit that there's not enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion. Anyway, this stuff gets caught up in rigid debates and folks take sides -- and it has become political.
Liberals, Hamilton observes, focus on the humanity of Scripture; conservatives on the divine authorship.
Hamilton comes to this conclusion: The Bible "is a book written by people who lived in ancient times, with their own biases and limitations in knowledge, who had great insights and experiences of God ... And it is a book through which God has spoken and still speaks, one that is 'living and active' and through which God comforts, challenges, and inspires, the very reading of which has the power to change lives" (68).
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One and all...
Some are responding here to "Scott" (Lyons) and not to "One T" Scot (me, the blogger who hangs out here).
Great discussion on the nature of scripture. My essay (chapter) in Seeing Gray sought to offer a way of taking seriously the Bible's humanity while continuing to assert that it is more than a collection of texts written by religious people. I asserted that it acts as a means of grace due to God's involvement with its authors and the Spirit's use of the text as we read it in faith and with open hearts. As some noted earlier, I do find Barth's ideas helpful.
I find the dogma of inerrancy unhelpful. It has been used as a kind of litmus test by a host of churches, denominations and para-church organizations to determine who is "in" and who is "out." Most lay people who advocate it don't seem to understand the nuances and qualifiers placed on the dogma by the old Princeton theologians nor even that included by the drafters of the Chicago Statement. By the time these qualifiers are placed on the dogma it seems dishonest to me to still use the word "inerrant."
What's more, I believe inerrancy ultimately undermines the Christian faith for many. Some who have held inerrancy at one point in their lives, being taught that it is essential and that the Christian faith somehow rises or falls with this dogma, upon seriously studying the text find that the text of the scripture is not inerrant. Some of these have left the faith and become agnostics. In interviewing non-believers I find many who can easily point to the Bible's disturbing passages and because their view of scripture made little allowance for the Bible's humanity, they are left with a God that makes little sense to them.
This week I posted an article on my blog in response to President Bush's Nightline Interview in which he noted he was not a biblical literalist. Some of you may find it of interest. Here's the link (scroll down to the post entitled, "President Bush, Evolution and the Bible): http://adamhamilton.cor.org/.
Again, thanks Scott, for a meaningful discussion!
Jason,
I have found Sparks book helpful. He's a godly man and is trying to outline how evangelicalism needs to move forward in our understanding of how God speaks to us in the Bible, and what we can learn from scholarship in that regard. I agree with dopderbeck that he's a little harsh at times, but I think it's to make his point. At this years Society of Biblical Literature, Sparks talked about the book with Stephen Chapman, Pete Enns and Bill Arnold responding. If you can find the audio online (I had a friend record it for me), you might find the discussion helpful.
On a side note, dopderdeck mentions Provan, Long and Longman book "Biblical History of Israel," and I concur that it is a very good book by three fine scholars.
Scot (#55) - as I often say to my law students, aren't we slicing the salami a little thin here?
It all depends on definitions. If "truthful" means "completely true," and "true" means "corresponds to reality," then saying the Bible is "truthful" is the same thing as saying it is "inerrant." If "truthful" means merely "having a general character or virtue of tending towards truth," or if "truth" means something other than correspondence (a hotly contested issue, as we both know), then it's a different story. If I say "Scot is a truthful guy," I'm certainly not claiming Scot is "inerrant." But is that all we want to say about the Bible?
So offering a "softer" definition of "truthful" seems to me no different than offering a "softer" definition of "error" and pushing any tough questions into hermeneutics, which seems to be what most sophisticated inerrantists do.
Don't get me wrong: the word "inerrant" gives me agita (and moreover I think most popular correspondence theories of truth are naive). But we do have to admit -- don't we -- that "inerrant" and "infallible" are terms that have been used regularly in the Tradition, well before the Enlightenment.
Word of God... Jesus the Christ making the Father known through the power of the Spirit
Word of God... the event of God breaking into the world
Word of God... God speaking through God's people
Word of God... the written testimony to the above
Inerrancy... a bad word because it distracts us from the Word of God... which can be traced to ancient Greek pagan philosophy
Truthfulness... a better word
Truth event... a Truth that happens, breaks into your life, shatters everything, rearranges everything... the Word as event is based on the more biblical, Hebrew understanding of Word
The Word has power! Compare the power of these two words... Jonah was literally swallowed by a big fish... versus... will you marry me? The latter turns out to be more powerful than the former because the latter will change your life based on your response.
Duh-sciple
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