Last November the following appeared in a posting. (Name & original subject
line not important now.)
> The Bible is more than a collection of nice ideas and good stories. It
> is that but it is also the inspired word of God. To reduce it from the
> Good Book to a good book is to undermine the Christian faith.
More recently someone commented: "... nobody else [on this list] is
currently standing up for a
Bible that contains anything more than a fable for Gen 1."
If I were a wise person, I would stay out of this exchange. However....
(following is a lightly edited of a posting I've kept in my "draft" file for
months.)
We seem to be offered here just two choices. Either the Bible is (1) "the
inspired word of God," or (2) "a collection of nice ideas and good stories"
or "nothing more than a fable."
Sorry, but I do not accept this short list as an adequate or exhaustive menu
of realistic options. (Perhaps "Unnamed" did not so intend it, but this sort
of either/or choice is very common; it has appeared on this list numerous
times.)
In conservative Christian communities, choice (1) ordinarily comes with a
trainload of additional baggage. The reference to "inspired word of God"
soon comes to mean, for all practical purposes, "effectively written by
God." To warrant this type of attitude there is an abundance of theological
activity dedicated to crafting theories (yes, that's the correct term) of
"verbal inspiration," or "plenary inspiration," or "authority," or
"infallibility," or "inerrancy," and the like. In the extreme, as we have
seen on this list, there are even people who have apparently dedicated their
lives to crafting all manner of numerological "evidences" that the Bible
**really is** the "inspired word of God."
For what it's worth, I count all of this as evidence for what I have long
called "biblicism, bordering on bibliolatry" -- biblicism (an inordinate
emphasis and value placed on the defense of humanly-crafted propositions
about the character of the text) that soon becomes bibliolatry (allowing the
text -- now presumed to satisfy all of these humanly-crafted propositions --
to become the object of idolatrous veneration, often far exceeding the
attention paid to the message that is presumably conveyed by the text or to
the daily experience of God's active presence). When the strident defense of
humanly-crafted propositions about the text appears to be more important
than living a life consistent with the principles espoused by the text,
something has gone wrong.
Choice (2) is usually phrased in such a way to imply that if the Bible is
not what (1) implies, then it is nothing more than idle "fluff" -- nothing
of great value, nothing worth reflecting on, nothing that will inspire
reverence for God, nothing that would inspire selfless service of others,
nothing of any real worth.
So, I find it necessary to reject both of the above choices and I am
inclined instead to move in the direction of another view of the Bible. (3)
The (Christian) Bible is a thoroughly human testimony to the authentic human
experience of the presence of the Sacred -- specifically, God, as
experienced by the ancient Hebrews and the early Christian community. As
such, the text is indeed "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness." Given this as the nature of the text, however,
it may neither be idolized nor treated as the last word on any matter. We
are called, I believe, not to craft theologies whose only source is this
particular ancient historical text, not to simply "say as they said," but
rather to "do as they did" -- that is, to experience the active presence of
God in our own lives and to tell others about it.
Howard Van Till
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