Tag Archives: bible

Errant Notions Part Five: A Perfect Tradition

2 Replies

The latest in a series of posts dissecting common arguments for “biblical inerrancy,” the assertion that the Bible is without error in everything it teaches.

“Inerrancy is nothing more than what the church has always believed.” That’s the battle cry of the inerrantist defender, and it is the fifth argument that we will be exploring in this boring series. It is also the first of our arguments that might actually pertain to the canonized Bible as we know it, for what it’s worth. While previous arguments have been focused on figures or sources that originate before the texts of the Bible were collected and canonized, this one regards the writings and opinions of the early Christian fathers (who were themselves the forgers of the canon) and the reformers (who inherited the canon). The question is this: did the church fathers and Protestant founders teach biblical inerrancy as the singular and unanimous view of mainstream Christianity?  Continue reading →

Share

Three Bible Words That Don’t Mean What We Think They Mean

37 Replies

OK, so the headline isn’t fair. More and more Christians are educating themselves in the origins and contexts of the Bible, and no one can pretend to have any special secret knowledge that isn’t readily available to anyone. At the same time, in mainstream American Christian culture, these words (and many more) are often locked into unhelpful, non-biblical settings that obscure their true depth of meaning. These concepts are long overdue for some clarification. This isn’t “everything you know is wrong!,” I simply offer a few educated considerations.

1. Angel

What We Hear: Thanks in large part to the imagination of medieval Europe, most people in the western world today envision angels as shimmering, winged Caucasians who live up in the clouds. When our English Bibles say, for example, that “an angel” or “the angel of the Lord” appears in a narrative, we immediately picture a flying Osmond in bleached robes. Some Christian traditions teach that there are classes of angels, like archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, each with different stations and privileges. Clarence Odbody, AS2.

But Consider This: The Hebrew and Greek words translated “angel” in our Bibles simply mean “messenger,” or “one who brings tidings.” In these texts, “angels” are just people, at least in appearance, and they are usually on a mission to deliver important news. These are the “men” who visit Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18, or the messenger Gabriel who comes to Mary in Luke’s nativity. These angels are never said to have wings, and usually appear in broad daylight among people in the real world.

In quite a different category we have strange creatures like seraphs (beings made of flame), cherubs (winged lions), and various “beasts” which inhabit visions and apocalypses. These beings often have wings but are never called angels. Our inherited readings of the Bible have conflated both categories into a single race of heavenly sprites. In reality, they inhabit a wide range of meanings, contexts, and genres.

2. Satan

What We Hear: Satan, or the Devil, is the personal enemy of God, the supernatural lord of evil who rules over hell, thwarts God’s plans, and tempts boys and girls to sin so they won’t get into heaven. Many Christian traditions maintain that Satan was once an exalted angel named Lucifer who rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven along with his legions of demons. Most people assume that this is part of the Bible’s storyline, but apart from a few possible cryptic references, it’s not actually there. It grew out of Jewish legends, literature like the Book of Enoch, and the biblical interpretations of church fathers like Origen.

But Consider This: “Satan” in the text of the Bible is never a proper name, but always a descriptive title with a definite article: “the satan” or “the accuser” in Hebrew, “the devil” or “the slanderer” in Greek. This label is applied to many things in many contexts. In the book of Job, the accuser is one of God’s heavenly employees whose job is to prosecute and torment humans. The satan only appears a couple more times in the Hebrew Bible, as in 1 Chronicles 21 where it’s a negative spiritual influence that causes King David to make an unwise decision. (Though in the alternate telling of the same story in 2 Samuel 24, it is God who incites David to make the same decision.)

In the New Testament, “the slanderer” appears to Jesus in his desert vision quest, tempting him to abandon his earthly ministry before it begins. Jesus calls one of his closest friends, Peter, a “satan” for doubting him. In the book of Revelation, the accuser is depicted as a great red dragon which corrupts and manipulates the Roman Empire until it is defeated and destroyed once and for all. In each of these different formats and contexts, the one thing connecting all depictions of “the satan” is a spirit of condemnation and shame. Whether the satan is a singular figure, a spiritual reality, or a state of mind, it always brings accusation and oppression. It is the opposite of mercy and forgiveness.

3. Apocalypse

What We Hear: The end of the world! An apocalypse, according to its modern usage, is a cataclysmic event that brings either society as we know it or the entirety of space-time to an end. Zombies, aliens, horsemen or climate change, something inevitable is coming and all we can do is hope to survive and be on the winning side when it’s all over. When it comes to the Bible, the apocalypse will be the holy war to end all holy wars, a series of trials and battles that are already preordained to the smallest detail. There is nothing we can do to stop it from coming, but we should still accuse everyone we don’t like of hastening its approach.

But Consider This: In biblical terms, an apocalypse isn’t an event but a type of text, a genre of literature. The word “apocalypse” means “hidden,” and these texts employ visual metaphors and poetic imagination to “reveal” the hidden spiritual reality behind an earthly crisis in the author’s own time. The first biblical apocalypses (eg. portions of Ezekiel and Daniel) emerge after Israel’s exile in Babylon and later Persia. Both of these cultures produced apocalypse-style texts, suggesting perhaps that Israel’s artists and prophets were subverting the cultures of their captors and adapting them for their own purposes. And those purposes, despite the connotation of “apocalypse” today, always involved bringing hope to a people in trouble.

We might think of apocalypses as the political cartoons of the ancient Near East. They are certainly more serious and consequential, but they function in a similar way. In Revelation, the only extended apocalypse in the New Testament, Rome is satirized as a monster and a whore, while Jesus is depicted as a slain lamb. The metaphors are mixed and the images are impossible, but the coded message of hope in the face of political turmoil would have been crystal clear to its original readers. None of this precludes apocalypses from being spiritually inspired or communicating timeless truths, but it does suggest that they are products of ancient historical crises and that they will always speak louder in those contexts than in our own. And when they do speak, their true voice is one of expectation and rescue, not inevitable doom.

Share

Errant Notions Part Four: Jesus and Scripture

4 Replies

Latest in a series of posts exploring common arguments for “biblical inerrancy,” the belief that the Bible was authored by God and is without error in its every statement.

If you want to win an argument about theology or the Bible or really anything, your best move is to demonstrate that Jesus is on your side. Somewhere on the social Internet at this very moment, someone is posting something glib and ill-researched about Jesus’ politics, his views on gun control, or which shows would fill his DVR. For evangelicals defending the inerrancy of the Bible, it has become quite popular in the last few years to claim that Jesus himself was the original biblical inerrantist.

Different forms of this argument have come from different corners of Christian culture, but most of them say something like this: Jesus believed and taught that the Bible is the inerrant, verbally inspired Word of God, and so must we. The specific claims attributed to Jesus here are that all the words of the Bible are a) perfectly true and without error, because b) they were supernaturally transmitted to their authors by God Himself. In a moment we will consider sayings of Jesus that are commonly used to support these claims.

You Know The Drill

If you’ve been following this series you know what comes next. Before we can assess the prooftexts for this argument, a major technical clarification has to be made. Our first question, of course, is what “Bible” or “Scripture” might have meant to Jesus. It certainly cannot have included the New Testament, the contents of which would not be written for some decades after his departure. To complicate matters further, there wouldn’t even be an official canon of Hebrew Scriptures until that same later period. Jesus quotes many of the familiar Hebrew texts from our “Old Testament” and surely considered them sacred scripture. Still, it must be established here on the outset that “the Bible” or “the Scriptures” did not and could not mean precisely the same thing to Jesus as they do to the Christian inerrantists who invoke his endorsement.

Now let’s look at the two most popular passages of New Testament scripture used to demonstrate that Jesus affirmed the inerrancy of the Hebrew Bible.

Matthew 5: Every Jot and Tittle

In the Gospel of Matthew, in the famous “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus says the following:

“Don’t suppose that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy them; I came to fulfill them! I’m telling you the truth: until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot, not one tittle, is going to disappear from the law until it’s all come true. So anyone who relaxes a single one of these commandments, even the little ones, and teaches that to people, will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But anyone who does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 5:17-19)

We have every reason to believe that the “law” and “prophets” Jesus refers to are portions of the same Hebrew Scriptures we know today. And as to whether his comments constitute a claim to the “inerrancy” of those scriptures, it would frankly be difficult to suggest otherwise. The real issue, however, is how this “inerrancy” might work and what it means and accomplishes. In a sense, it is ironic that modern inerrantists would appeal to this passage, which calls for strict obedience to a law that no Christian feels compelled to keep today. But their point, they’ll say, is that Jesus believed the law (and thus our biblical record of it) to be perfect and infallible.

But surely his unequivocal endorsement of the law must be weighed against Jesus’ radical re-interpretations of it, which enraged and scandalized the “inerrantist” watchdogs of his own day. Jesus’ claim is not merely that the law is true, but that it is going to “come true,” that every squiggle and dot of it will be “fulfilled,” and he will personally make this happen. He then presumes to reframe and reshape the law on his own authority, in many sayings like this one:

“You heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: don’t use violence to resist evil! Instead, when someone hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one toward him.”
(Matthew 5:38-39)

So which one is inerrant, “an eye for an eye” (from the written law) or “turn the other cheek” (from Jesus)? They represent two very different responses to evil. The jots and tittles say one thing, Jesus says another. It appears that the ultimate fulfillment and truth of the law, according to Jesus, is not to be found in the aging scrolls or their classical interpretations, but in the person and perspective of Jesus himself.

John 10: Scripture Cannot Be Broken

“We’re not stoning you for good deeds,” replied the Judaeans, “but because of blasphemy! Here you are, a mere man, and you’re making yourself into God!”

“It’s written in your law, isn’t it,” replied Jesus to them, “‘I said, you are gods’? Well, if the law calls people ‘gods,’ people to whom God’s word came (and scripture cannot be broken), how can you accuse someone of blasphemy when the Father has placed him apart and sent him into the world, and he says, ‘I am the son of God’?”
(John 10:33-36)

So this one is interesting. Basically, some of Jesus’ neighbors want to execute him for calling himself “son of God” (something he only does in John’s gospel, but that’s another discussion). Jesus defends himself by quoting Psalm 82, in which God incidentally refers to a group of mortal beings as “gods.” However, it is Jesus’ parenthetical statement that “scripture cannot be broken” that has become a slogan of the inerrancy movement. This too is rather ironic.

The overall point of Jesus’ words seems to be that scripture can be used to condemn or to rationalize almost anything. By the scriptures an angry mob can set out to murder a blasphemer, and by the same scriptures the victim can defend and justify himself. Both Jesus and his attackers agree that “scripture cannot be broken,” what sets them apart is what they choose to do with it. Unbreakable scriptures can be a weapon or an instrument of salvation.

This passage is also understood by some to support the “plenary verbal inspiration” of scripture, the belief that God supernaturally dictated the words of scripture to its authors. But I have to chalk this up to a (willful?) misreading of the text. The “people to whom God’s word came” are not the inspired authors of the Psalm, but the “sons of the Most High” in the context of the Psalm, the ones God called ‘gods.’ On this point it’s a bit of a stretch.

Conclusion

To sum this all up: It would be foolish to deny that Jesus had the highest possible view of the Jewish scriptures. But this is not a complete picture. He also shifted the onus of infallibility and authority onto himself and his teaching as the ultimate fulfillment of the scriptures. When today’s inerrantists use the Bible as an impenetrable shield against criticism and doubt, or a foregone justification of their own self-interested interpretations, they are at cross-purposes with Jesus. Jesus points us not to the static words of the ancient written law or to cold, unbending religious certitude, but to his own authoritative interpretation of the scriptures which always bends toward empathy and selfless love.

Using Jesus to establish the integrity and authority of the Bible gets it completely backwards. Jesus is our beacon of truth and authority, not the book. For Christians, Jesus is the inerrant word of God.

Share

Three Things We Never Noticed About Adam and Eve

2 Replies

In light of my previous post about the church’s interpretive exploitation of Adam throughout history, I want to briefly propose a more helpful and authentic approach to reading the material in question. By paying closer attention to a) what the text actually says and b) anticipated things that are actually not there, we might get closer to understanding something true about the strange, ancient stories we call Genesis. In the case of chapters 2-4 and the tales of the first humans, I’ll collect my observations under three subheadings.

1. Adam and Eve Are Israel

This aspect of Genesis 2-3 in particular seems so obvious, so explicit, and yet I had not even considered it back when I researched and recorded a podcast on the subject. The proposal is a simple one: the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a mythical encapsulation of the story of Israel in the Promised Land.

In the text, Adam and Eve inhabit an agricultural wonderland prepared for them by God, who dwells there with them and provides for all of their needs by the natural goodness of creation (not by magic or sorcery). There is a decree, a covenant by which Adam and Eve must abide in order to enjoy the full benefits of life in the good land. When they are tempted by pagan evil and break the covenant with God, they must leave the land. The abandoned land is guarded by cherubim (ancient symbols of divine authority), a sign that they cannot re-enter until God issues a new decree. This is the story of Israel and Exile.

Israel’s storytellers crafted this story, perhaps from ancient sources and elements, at the time of exile to explain and illuminate the defining crisis of their time. This does not mean that it cannot have more to say beyond its immediate context, but it does appear to be the primary setting of the story, a fact that should figure heavily in its interpretation.

2. Adam and Eve Are Exemplars of the Human Condition

The divine elements in the Garden story generate endless questions. Why would God make it possible for Adam and Eve to become more like Him, only to forbid it? How does God physically walk around in the world He created? Why does He promise them they will die “on the day” they eat the fruit, yet when they eat it they do not die? Why does God need to search around to find the humans? We’ll look a little closer at the portrayal of God in Genesis in the next section. For now, these questions appear to be unanswerable, and stand as major distractions from what these stories do offer with great clarity and insight: a distillation of the human condition. So much interpretive energy has been spent mining these stories for theology and cosmology while their rich anthropology has been largely ignored.

Before Adam and Eve eat the fruit, their life is defined by three realities: breath (a relationship with God), agriculture (a relationship with the earth), and sex (a relationship with each other). After they eat the fruit and begin to discern “good and evil,” the three beautiful relationships that shaped their idyllic existence turn out to be dangers and limitations. Life with God becomes contentious and complicated. Animals bite and thorns prick. Adam and Eve stand naked and vulnerable. In other words, Adam and Eve discover that they are human, they are just like us.

Christian interpretations, obsessed with cosmic notions of legal guilt (“original sin”) or Greek style dualism (“the fall of man”), can only imagine this condition as a divine punishment. But what if, as the text suggests, nothing changed for Adam and Eve but their perception of their own condition (“their eyes were opened”)? What is God’s “curse” (which targets animal and soil, not humans) after all but an adept description of what life is like on planet earth? What if this story is not about the crime that landed all of humanity in sin jail, but a frank and creative pageant of mortality, a song about the bittersweet realities of breath, food, and sex?

3. God Is a Friend and Protector, Not a Cosmic Judge

Finally, one of my favorite things whenever I revisit these texts is the fresh, strange, and fascinating implications of what they say and don’t say about God. I outlined some of the problematic oddities above, and now I’d like to highlight the unexpected goodies. In short, the God of Genesis 2-4 is a far cry from the angry cosmic punisher envisioned by Augustinian or Calvinist Christianities, for example. While the basic themes of disobedience and consequence are present here, God’s character and behavior are surprising at every turn.

In the Garden, when Adam and Eve breach their covenant with God, He is technically the offended party. But while most of Christian theology has focused on God’s offense and His just anger and retribution, that is not the focus of these early Genesis stories. This God does not damn Adam and Eve to eternal hellfire, nor does He demand that they appease Him with blood sacrifices. No, this God comes alongside them as a friend and guardian, explaining the natural consequences of their human fallibility. This is not the God of strict religion or fire and brimstone, it is the God of farms and families, the God of hard work and childbirth.

Likewise with Cain in Genesis 4, God’s role is not what we would expect. It is Abel’s blood which accuses Cain, not God. It is Cain who convicts himself and announces his own guilt, not God. And it is other humans who threaten Cain with retributive harm, not God. In fact, God only steps in to warn and protect the murderer. In Genesis, the greatest dangers faced by humans come from nature, society, and within themselves. God is a companion and provider who resembles the “Heavenly Father” of Jesus’ teaching more than the space tyrant imagined so often by our religion.

I’m not suggesting that these stories aren’t terribly strange and difficult to interpret, I simply want to suggest that there is more here than we have been willing to see. I want us all to feel free to revisit them again and again with our eyes, hearts, and minds open a little wider than they have been before.

Share

Errant Notions Part Three: The Self-Authorizing Book

1 Reply

Third in a series of posts examining common arguments and assumptions regarding “biblical inerrancy,” the belief that the Bible is without error in its every claim.

These next two posts will explore what are probably the most popular arguments for inerrancy today, namely that the Bible is inerrant because it claims to be (this post), and more emphatically because Jesus said that it is (next post). These assertions are closely related but I think they deserve to be treated separately. Distinguishing the perceived authority of the Bible from that of Jesus is a helpful and fruitful maneuver and most relevant to my goals in this series and this blog in general.

Because It Says So

Before we can explore what the Bible may or may not say in reference to its own inerrancy, there are some questions to ask and clarifications to be made. As with most of the arguments we’re considering, there are technical considerations that eventually give way to the more subjective and spiritual questions at the heart of this debate. The first question we need to ask is how any text, let alone the Bible, can be said to authorize itself. If someone asks, “how can I know that this book is reliable and free of error?,” how satisfying is the answer “because it says so”? Texts can make all manner of claims, but the claims themselves cannot constitute authorization. This type of self-authorization is not legitimate in law, science, or philosophy, so why should the Bible be any different? Without verification from an external authority or, better yet, personal experience, how can any book convince us that it is not only good, not only true, but correct in its every affirmation?

What “The Bible” Can Say About Itself

This forces the bigger question of exactly how “the Bible” might be said to make such a strange claim in the first place. The scare quotes aren’t meant to belittle or disrespect, but to highlight the problem we have whenever we claim to represent what “the Bible” says on a given topic. The Bible is a diverse and multivocal library of texts; some are conversant, some represent conflicting points of view, some are surely unknown to others, and all are absolutely unaware of their place in the context of a future canon. How can any single passage be said to address the inerrancy of every other passage in the whole collection, even those of other times, places, authors and communities?

It is germane at this point to examine the popular passages frequently used to make the appeal for inerrancy. I will divide these into two groups: passages which use an approximation of the phrase “word of God,” and those which directly address the topic of written texts.

a. “Word of God” Passages

In many Christian traditions, especially those which emphasize a doctrine of inerrancy, the phrase “word of God” has become synonymous with “the Bible.” This is usually bound up with the notion of God as the true author of all canonized scripture, with no human voice or opinion strong enough to obscure the divine truth. As a result, any passage that uses this phrase (or anything like it) can and tends to be treated as a reference to the whole Bible and its inerrancy. But while the phrase does indeed appear in the Bible (unlike other doctrinal catchphrases like “the fall,” “original sin,” or “trinity”), we will observe that it never refers to the full collection of canonized texts we know as “the Bible,” and that it usually has something to do with the personal decrees and purposes of God. A few examples will illustrate this:

Psalm 12:6 – “The words of YHWH are flawless, like refined silver…”

In this Psalm, attributed to David, the poet laments the absence of “godly” and “faithful” leaders to care for the poor and disenfranchised in Israel, until YHWH announces in verse 5 that He will “now arise” and answer the cries of the needy. The “words of YHWH” in verse 6 refers to this promise to care for the poor. There is nothing here about written texts, just an artistic juxtaposition of human failure and divine faithfulness.

Proverbs 30:5-6 – “Every word of God proves true…; Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.”

Taken as an isolated statement and out of context, this might sound like a warning not to alter the infallible words of scripture. However, reading the full passage, we discover a text in the Hebrew wisdom tradition that is not concerned with written words or books, but with human integrity. God’s “word” is not a text but His wisdom and provision. Those who “add to” those words are greedy ones who seek more than what God provides, who chase riches, lie, and mistreat the weak. The human author of the text beseeches God to save him from these people and their folly.

Isaiah 55:11 – “…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose…”

This is our first example that presents God as the speaker, and this passage is ubiquitous in inerrancy culture as a pronouncement of the unflappable power of the Bible. In context, however, it’s not about the Bible at all, it’s about the end of exile and Israel’s return to her homeland. The “word” that goes out from God’s mouth is the promise that rescue and restoration are at hand, and that this particular historical nightmare is finally coming to an end.

b. Passages About Scripture

Other selections deal explicitly with issues of texts as sacred scripture. These actually do concern the authority of the text, though the major contention continues to be the breadth of that authority. Can any Bible passage be construed as referring to the authority of the whole canon? These are the two most likely candidates:

2 Timothy 3:16 – “All scripture is breathed by God, and it is useful for teaching, for rebuke, for improvement, for training in righteousness…”

In Paul’s second letter to a young pastor named Timothy (authorship is disputed, though not by most inerrantists), the apostle gives advice to his protégé on dealing with his troubled congregation. In this verse, Paul reminds Timothy that scripture should always play a role in his teaching and ministry. He declares that scripture is “breathed by God,” which is the closest we’ve come to the idea of God as an author, or at least an inspirer, of written texts. But a question persists: to which texts does “all scripture” refer?

It might refer to any of the Hebrew Scriptures, or just to the Torah, or to some unknown configuration of early Christian texts. We know that it cannot refer to the New Testament, which would not be fully written, collected, or canonized for at least another century. It’s also worth noting an alternate but valid translation of this verse which reads, “all scripture THAT is breathed by God is useful for teaching…,” which is even more ambiguous. In any case, this passage concerns the inspiration and value of some unspecified collection of sacred texts, not the inerrancy of every word in our Bible.

Revelation 22:18-19 – “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

Since it lands on the final page of our canonized Bibles, it’s been easy to assume that this warning applies to the whole collection. It’s pretty clear at face value, of course, that the author is referring specifically to the prophecies contained in the latter chapters of this book, and that his concern is the integrity of the prophecy, not the inerrancy of the text. At the same time, textual scholars shine additional light on something else that may be going on here. Authors and scribes of ancient texts would often include warnings to plagiarizers and forgers not to mess with the contents of a scroll. This might well be a warning to other writers or pastors not to co-opt or alter this prophecy for their own purposes.

Humble Texts, Infallible God

These texts make strong claims, some about their own value, most about the character and goodness of God. What none of them do is assert or establish the inerrancy of the entire library in which they will one day be collected. No single text in the canon was ever equipped or positioned to do such a thing. The value of these ancient works is not their own inherent integrity, but their inspired witness to divine faithfulness. The texts of the Bible testify to the goodness and infallibility of God, not the other way around.

Here’s a reminder that my criticism of the inerrancy doctrine in no way constitutes an attack on the Bible. Quite the contrary, it is the claims of inerrancy which mischaracterize the Bible and sabotage an honest and fruitful reading of scripture. By imposing false uniformity and foregone infallibility upon the books of the Bible, we actually damage the witness of the individual components of the Bible and thwart opportunities for authentic learning and genuine revelation. The authors of biblical texts would surely be disheartened to know that the onus of glory and power had been transposed from God to their books.

Share

Errant Notions Part Two: Misfiring the Biblical Canon

2 Replies

The second in a series of posts examining common arguments and assumptions about the doctrine called “biblical inerrancy,” the claim that the entire Bible is without error in all that it affirms.

Some Christians assume that canonization was an indication and perhaps even a function of the Bible’s inerrancy. We are so far removed from the world and church which produced our canon, we presume a great deal about what it even means to have a canon. We might easily imagine that the texts of the Bible had been subjected to some kind of lab test for infallibility and stamped either “BIBLE” or “HERESY” by church technicians. In reality, canonization is not about the inerrancy or divinity of the texts, but about ownership and authority. A canon is a “standard” or a “measure,” and the biblical canon is the standard by which certain texts are designated as belonging to the church. These are our texts, and not some others. But the journey to a Christian canon was far more fluid, subjective, and “open source” than we might imagine.

Canon Criteria

Christian communities in the second century CE were geographically scattered and had no mass market publishing or real-time correspondence between them. Each community had their own apostolic leaders, their own storytellers, their own scribes and, eventually, their own texts. These included gospels, letters, creeds, hymns, histories, legends, and apocalypses. No two communities had the same collection, and each considered its own library to be authoritative and sacred. These contained the books we know and cherish as “the Bible,” some that we study as “apocrypha,” and many that are now lost to history.

Later in the second century, as the church grew in numbers and began to organize itself as a governed network of communities, and as a stream of “orthodox” Christian doctrine emerged, canonization became a necessary project. The process of forging the canon involved debates and decision making by prominent presbyters, who developed a set of criteria for determining which books might make the grade. These included:

  • Which texts were the most widely read and copied?
  • Which texts were older?
  • Which texts were most likely to be authentic works of apostles or companions of apostles?
  • Which texts best conformed to the emerging orthodoxy?
  • Which texts were least likely to be used to proliferate heresies?

There is nothing scandalous or unexpected about these guidelines if you are familiar with the early history of the church. For the purpose of our discussion, however, we note that each rule represents a subjective criteria based on the judgment of a human thinker which implicitly acknowledges the subjective human origins of all the texts in question. Even as the goal of the process was to identify trustworthy and authoritative documents, the only means of selection was for human beings to employ collaborative personal discernment. These decisions were made by people, concerning books written by people.

The Long, Rough Road to a Canon

The process of canonization, as subjective as it was, was also drawn out and often contentious. It took two more centuries for the canon-as-we-know-it to solidify, and debates continue to this day. (I gave a quick overview of the history of the canon in this podcast.) On the one hand, the orthodox canon was never very different from the collection of 27 books we read today. At the same time, small variations and ongoing disagreements indicate that a very different form of Christianity might have taken shape if not for the tenacity of some opinionated church fathers. Here are some eye-opening facts:

  • The first known Christian canon was actually developed in 140 CE by a man later branded a heretic. Marcion of Sinope assembled his own (butchered) collection of texts which conformed to his very eccentric docetic views. Some scholars speculate that this was the impetus for the creation of an official orthodox canon.
  • Early versions of an orthodox canon from the second century contain books like the Letter of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter. The former is a virulently anti-Jewish screed and the latter features a grotesque vision of the torments of hell that goes far beyond anything in our Bible in detail and cruelty.
  • In the 16th century Martin Luther expressed a desire to remove four books he found either offensive (Hebrews and Revelation) or inadequate (James and Jude). Ultimately he decided to respect the historical canon, but Lutheran Bibles still group these books together at the back.
  • The Letter to the Hebrews was canonized because it was believed to be another epistle of Paul, and Revelation was accepted as a work of John the son of Zebedee (the “Beloved Disciple”). Scholarly consensus now considers both attributions to be mistaken, and some in the church have called for those books to be removed. Technically, the church has the authority to alter the canon at any time, but it is highly unlikely that this will ever happen.
  • Uncanonized books were not burned or repudiated, they were simply not transmitted as part of the canon proper and so most disappeared with time. Many remained beloved by their communities of origin and some have been preserved as apocrypha or deuterocanon.

Reliable and Material, But Not Inerrant

The effort to produce an orthodox canon of Christian texts was a monumental undertaking drawing on the full resources of the early church, and we are its beneficiaries. However, we cannot delude ourselves that decisions made by fallible humans in centuries long past relieve us of our obligation to engage the texts of the canon today with diligence and humility. The canon is a gift from our forerunners, a robust and living witness to Christian origins. These books did not fall from the sky (unless dropped from a lofty window).

Nothing in the history of the canon suggests that Christians should not trust the decisions of the church fathers and receive the books of the Bible as authentic and reliable witnesses to the earliest traditions of the church. At the same time, the clearly subjective and contentious nature of the process means that canonization cannot possibly speak to the Bible’s inerrancy. The canon does not represent divinely assured infallibility, but the result of human collaboration to reach a consensus decision. This is a story about a community forging its own identity. That they did so with God’s blessing and under the guidance of His spirit is a matter of belief, hope, and trust.

Share

Errant Notions Part One: No Autographs!

9 Replies

In this next series of posts I want to consider the major arguments made by proponents of “biblical inerrancy,” the belief that the Bible is without error and infallible in all that it teaches. These are the arguments I intend to address:

I will say this as often as I can throughout this series, but I want to say it clearly here at the start: I do not enter this debate because I have a low regard for the Bible or because I wish to undermine its authority for the Christian. I value the Bible highly and recognize its essential role in the formulation of Christian belief and practice. But that is precisely why I am a vocal critic of the inerrancy doctrine, which I believe to be a smokescreen of false certainty masking deep insecurity and doubt. Instead of engaging the Bible for what it is, inerrancy proffers a shortcut to certitude, as if deep spiritual convictions could be foregone, predetermined by a formula apart from soul searching and rigorous study. I believe as all Christians do that God can and does speak through scripture, but the presumption of inerrancy actually limits the extent to which we are willing and able to listen.

Nothing Tops The Originals!

In a way this first one is the most compelling argument for inerrancy. And yet, in another more accurate way, it is an utter non-argument. You’ll see why. The claim is this: “The Bible is inerrant, but only in the original autographs.” That is, only the original compositions written by the hands of the authors (or their scribes) are truly infallible and constitute the word of God. We’ll tackle the phrase “word of God” in a future post, and for now we’ll focus on the substance of this claim about the original manuscripts.

This argument is rather convenient in one sense and awkwardly inconvenient in another. On the one hand, it is helpful in dodging questions about canonization or scribal transmission or the interpretation of difficult texts. Forget all that noise, only the originals are perfect anyway! On the other hand, the original autographs do not exist, and we will likely never have access to them. No one outside of the Bible has left us a record of seeing or reading or handling the original texts, and our oldest copies of New Testament books are scribal copies of copies of copies made more than a century after the originals were written. The argument cannot be demonstrated or tested. The post could end here on a technicality.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

But this is not really a technical argument. In fact, it’s not an argument at all, it’s an assertion. A religious claim. And that’s OK! Religious claims make great religious claims, but they usually make lousy arguments. This claim ultimately forces a question of personal belief: Do you choose to believe that the original biblical autographs are the infallible words of God Himself, perfectly true in everything they affirm? Each hearer must answer that personal, spiritual question for him or herself. I have great respect and brotherly affection for my Christian friends who answer “yes,” even as I must answer “no.”

For me, the evidence is the texts themselves. They are too obviously the product of diverse human personalities to have all been secretly authored by God, and even as they reveal Jesus they also seem to affirm too many horrors and ambiguities to be called “perfect” in their every teaching. If God actually did write them, that remark is wildly out of line. If, however, inspired humans wrote them to express their beliefs and experiences of the divine, it only makes sense. But this is where we discover that inerrancy isn’t really about the nature of the texts themselves, it’s about the will of the person who wants to appeal to their authority.

Without inerrant, unquestionable proof texts, our claims over the lives and destinies of others have no solid basis. We are left without a platform, with no posture of superiority, forced to rely on our own discernment and humility and experience. But isn’t that exactly where a Christian servant and follower of Jesus ought to be: vulnerable and teachable and selfless? This is ultimately why I reject inerrancy; it represents a false and self-serving front of arrogant certainty that denies our own humanity as much as the Bible’s. It doesn’t just misrepresent the living texts of scripture, it threatens to turn the believer into a fossil of empty certitude and an agent of unrighteous condemnation.

Hiding Behind the Text

The original autographs of the New Testament texts don’t exist and likely never will. But that’s why and how they have become a sort of safety net or trump card for those who seek to justify themselves with the Bible. We can prove that manuscript copies contain errors. We can demonstrate how even our best translations fall short. We can wrestle with voices in scripture that seem to promote retribution and hate. But we will never be able to scrutinize those originals, and so they provide a safe place for insecure believers to lay low, an impenetrable shield behind which to hide. It’s far easier than engaging messy reality with humility and an open heart.

I do believe that God speaks to us through scripture, but He does so as often in spite of what the text affirms as through it. In hindsight, I might have made this the last post in the series, since it gets so swiftly to the heart of the inerrancy debate. There is much more to say, but it will all hearken back in one way or another to this point: that inerrancy is a calculated rhetorical assertion, not a fact.

Share

Three Ideas That Saved My Faith

2 Replies

I’ve never been much of a skeptic or a doubter. At the same time, I’ve never found science or scholarship to be threatening. I find reality more interesting than conceit, and trust that whatever seems reasonably true and good is something I should embrace. God and Jesus have always seemed as true to me as history and photosynthesis.

After seminary and some personal crises of faith – mostly involving the Bible and politics – my faith in the traditional formulations of Evangelical religion in which I was reared began to crumble. My esteem for Jesus wasn’t on the chopping block, but almost every other aspect of my Christian identity was. At one point, I would have been very happy to drop the label “Christian” and just be a Jesus fan. The tenets and strictures that were being torn down on a daily basis far outnumbered new and constructive ideas. I was almost done.

But in the last five years or so, I’ve experienced the surprising excitement of reading, listening, praying, conversing, and thinking my way into some new arenas of Christian hope and identity. They are new to me, anyway. There are many ideas that have invigorated and sustained me as a Christian in this new season of my life, but here are three that changed everything and rescued my dimming faith.

1. The Bible as a Diverse Library

This is the main topic of this blog, so I won’t oversell the idea here. But the reason I’m so intent on calling my fellow Christians to reexamine their approach to the Bible is that my own spiritual progress remained stalled and stifled until my view of scripture had been radically transformed.

The Bible is a collection of diverse, disparate texts, often in explicit or implied dialog, often in disagreement, all unaware that they are destined to become part of a collection known as “the Bible.” These are ancient works of persuasive human creativity which we consider to be inspired and sacred, but which bear the markings of the human personalities which crafted them. To read the Bible as a unified, monolithic whole is to miss the trees for the forest. The “perfect” Christian Bible that teaches a simple, straightforward, linear theological plan is a fiction. This error has kept us from a) learning to discern and appreciate unique individual voices in scripture, b) comparing and contrasting those voices, discovering harmonies and confronting tensions, and c) isolating and embracing the uniquely authoritative voice of Jesus.

2. The Anti-sacrificial (Nonviolent) Reading of the Bible

Traditional readings of the Bible which deny or obscure its diversity and polyvocality almost inevitably confound the message and work of Jesus with elements of ancient sacrificial religion which pervade the canon. In this popular view, God really does require blood sacrifice and punishment to keep Himself satisfied, and Jesus is the ultimate human sacrifice, the one that finally got (some of) us off the hook. This reading, accepted by millions of Protestant Christians as the only responsible and correct one, does great injustice to the character and reputation of God and dilutes and complicates the gospel of Jesus Christ. It sees violence as woven into the very fabric of the universe, and divine violence as the inevitable climax of human history.

Through the work of writers, teachers, and luminaries like Brian Zahnd, Brad Jersak, N.T. Wright, James Allison, Walter Brueggemann, Michael Hardin and René Girard (to name just a few), I have encountered various strains of nonviolent and anti-sacrificial theology. These are careful and faithful readings of scripture that understand Jesus as a corrective and liberating revelation of God’s true nature. Girard (for example) identifies in the Bible two unique voices: the mythical voice of the “vengeful victim” (eg. Abel) and the fresh voice of a “forgiving victim” (eg. Joseph) who interrupts the cycle of human retribution. This reading sees Jesus as the ultimate forgiving victim, who exposed the violent sins of religion and empire on the cross, and announced divine forgiveness upon his peaceful resurrection. In a nutshell, it takes “mercy not sacrifice” very seriously.

Such an interpretive scheme doesn’t pretend that the whole Bible is inherently nonviolent or anti-sacrificial, as if to impose modern liberal sensibilities back onto the text (an easy but lazy critique). Instead, it finds prophetic threads of anti-sacrifice and forgiving victimhood inherent to the texts and identifies these as the divine voice by which all others are challenged. To my heart and mind, this reading illuminates and animates the texts of the Bible in shocking, beautiful and unbearably profound ways. It accounts for the true nature of the Bible and does not impose a false uniformity. It exposes the true depths of our sin and the staggering extent of divine forgiveness. It gives voice to victims and reveals God as a loving co-sufferer rather than a doer of harm. It illuminates the way to true salvation and peace.

3. Hopeful, Open-ended Eschatology

As a child I would lie awake at night, terrified that the rapture would happen at any moment and my life would be over. Of course, as a Christian, I understood that my “real” life would only just begin at that moment, but I didn’t care. The prospect of leaving behind the world of friends and movies and cartoons and girls and going to the boring eternal church service in the sky was horrifying. Likewise, for many conservative Christian adults, the “end times” are a terrifying and violent inevitability, a doomsday brought about by the rampant sin of unbelieving people. But for Christians who claim to believe in this imminent reality, shouldn’t the revelation of God and the culmination of His purposes be a thing of beauty and delight? Something is very wrong.

Embracing a diverse, human Bible and exploring its inherent witness to a nonviolent theology also opens the possibility for a more holistic and hopeful eschatology. If the Bible is not a strict, flat, literal blueprint for an immediate and bleak future; if God is not a bloodthirsty punisher; if salvation encompasses all of creation and not just civilized, self-interested humans; if religious war and divine violence are not the inevitable climax of history; then there is room for hope. There is as much room for human progress, climate rescue, and “peace in our time” as there is for eternal salvation, new creation, and the peaceable kingdom of God. There is real hope, not that we might survive Armageddon, but that we might reject it and choose life instead.

Share

Brief Follow-up to Yesterday’s Post

Leave a reply

I anticipate that, for some of my readers, my third “Break Your Bible” post may have gone a little too far with its suggestion that we should apply moral discernment to our reading of the Bible. The objection is something like, “but we get our morality FROM the Bible, we can’t sit in judgment OF the Bible.” I want to offer a response in two short parts.

1. It’s not untrue that we derive ethical and moral principles from scripture, but one of my main goals in writing what I do on this blog is to illustrate that interacting with the Bible is not as simple as reading a constitution or instruction manual. The canons represent libraries full of ancient texts that often stand in conversation and even tension. The Torah laws, though not followed fully or strictly by any Christian community known to history, give us a glimpse into Israel’s ethical framework. And Christians have the teachings of Jesus and his commandments of love, which ought to shape our morality more than anything else. But as I have attempted to illustrate, scripture is also filled with narratives and themes and voices that need to be checked against the moral standards of Jesus. That is not an inappropriately critical approach to the Bible, it is a Christian one.

2. I would take this even farther and contest the notion that it is inappropriate to judge a source or teacher of morality by its own standard. Isn’t this precisely what we must do? I touched on this in an earlier post, but when Jesus sets forth his principle of judging a prophet or teacher by whether or not they bear “good fruit,” is he not inviting us to watch his life and hold him accountable to his own teachings? Is this not how we discover that he is good, that he is authentic, that he is worthy? Does he not follow his own standard of selfless empathy to its brutal climax? It is precisely through discernment and judgment, based on “biblical principles,” that we determine Jesus to be Lord. The notion that we could find or embrace truth without moral discernment – even or especially when it comes to the Bible – is absurd. Unexamined or inherited Christian identity alone cannot build or sustain a healthy moral character. It is only when we grow and learn to discern for ourselves – in partnership with the written teachings of Jesus, his living spirit, our own reason, and one another – that we can make sound moral judgments.

Share

Break Your Bible: 2 Thessalonians 1 and the Revenge of Jesus

4 Replies

The first post in this series examined Numbers 25 and religious zeal, a troubling text from the Hebrew Bible and the equally troublesome strand of biblical theology that it inspired. The second post explored Jeremiah 7, a text which seems to openly contradict one of the central tenets of Torah law. Those posts were intended to dramatically illustrate real conflicts between Bible texts and to highlight the problems with forced assumptions of biblical homogeny.

For this third (and final?) installment, I want to undertake something even more potentially unsettling for Christian Bible readers: I want to assess the moral integrity of a standalone passage of scripture, and one from the New Testament, no less.

“In Flaming Fire, Inflicting Vengeance”

Let’s get to it. Here is the text of 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 (ESV):

[5] This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering — [6] since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, [7] and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels [8] in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. [9] They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, [10] when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

I hope the difficulties in this text are as obvious to you as they are to me. Even if you feel compelled to affirm everything you read in the Bible, I truly hope that the content of this passage gives you pause. There is a gleeful attitude of retribution, vengeance, and an appetite for divine violence in these verses that is unbecoming of a Christian, much less of a prominent apostle like Paul. Am I out of line for suggesting this? Are we permitted to make moral judgments like these about what we read in scripture? If not, why not? Does this author get a pass because he is writing scripture? Is scripture good by virtue of being called scripture, or because it says good things?

The Impulse to Make Excuses

As an amateur Bible scholar, I am tempted here to offer up some caveats. 2 Thessalonians is a contested book, understood by some to be the work of an unknown author writing in Paul’s name. But this doesn’t get us off the hook. The letter is received into the canon as a genuine work of Paul, and whatever the case it is Christian scripture. It is ours, but what shall we do with it?

Another possible caveat: These early church texts often reflect a context of persecution and fear, wherein Christians faced brutal dangers at the hands of Rome. Given these realities, isn’t it understandable that they might write a desperate text like this? The premise may or may not be true; the level of persecution facing the church in this early stage appears to have been minimal, though specific campaigns against Christians were not unknown. The question persists: Even if we can discover a context that helps us understand the reason for the bloodthirst apparent in a text like this, must our sympathy make space for acceptance and approval? Are the expectations and attitudes displayed in this passage normative for all Christians?

Clarifying The Text

It is helpful (and necessary, in a case like this) to be as precise as we can about what the passage in question is actually saying.

Our author says that Jesus will return in fiery judgment against unnamed enemies of the community to whom the letter is addressed. This divine act of vengeance will be “just,” since the enemies deserve it for the way they’ve treated God’s people. Jesus himself and his “mighty angels” will dole out this punishment, which will apparently involve obliterating the enemies of the Thessalonians before Jesus is received and celebrated by his true followers.

Some aspects of the judgment envisioned by this passage may align with general Christian expectations and teachings. Jesus the king will return, whatever that looks like, and he will “judge” the world and dwell with his people. Jesus himself described a judgment scenario in the form of a parable (Matthew 25:31-46). The judge in Jesus’ parable, the “son of man,” doesn’t personally unleash a violent attack on those judged unworthy, but he does send them away into (parabolic) “fire.” At first glance, this seems at least somewhat compatible with Paul’s shocking oracle in 2 Thessalonians.

On closer inspection, however, the basis and standard of Jesus’ judgment are completely different from those implied by this passage. The coming judge, says Jesus, will judge people from all nations, not just enemies of this church or those who oppose them. And that judgment will be based on ethical standards of personal integrity and charity, not on how badly they persecuted his friends. It’s about human decency, not petty revenge.

Jesus’ parable of final judgment, in addition to being universal and ethical in nature, was meant to challenge his hearers and call them to repentance, not to give exclusive comfort to “us” while guaranteeing the destruction of “them.” In this way, the judgment scenario imagined by the 2 Thessalonians passage seems to profoundly misunderstand and misrepresent Jesus’ vision of judgment, and to misapply it as tribal rhetoric to rally and rattle an insular community. This is judgment not as a clarion call to all humanity, but as a screed against a hated enemy.

Reading The Bible With Moral Discernment

We might give Paul a pass for the fear and aggression which informed a text like this. He was a human being, and clearly wanted to instill his readers with hope. But where his words clash with the teachings of Jesus – regarding love of enemies and the nature of God’s judgment – I conclude that we must read them through a Jesus-shaped lens and acknowledge their folly.

Wrestling with a passage like this is not about “undermining the authority of the Bible” or “questioning God.” I simply suggest that we do not numb our minds or hearts when we read scripture just because we consider it sacred. In fact, its sacredness ought to demand our full sensitivity. A major Christian value is discernment, paying attention to whether something bears good fruit or bad. Why should this not apply to our reading of the Bible?

This might be the test of a vision of judgment: does it present the same challenge to me and my community of “true believers” that it does to all humankind, or is it designed to target those I hate the most while giving my tribe a free pass? The latter type has been pervasive in American Christianity in the last century. While Jesus emphatically decried the “us versus them” mentality, his followers throughout history have found it irresistible, and Bible passages like this one have fanned the flames.

2 Thessalonians is ours. We cannot mute it or snip it out. We can, however, face it head-on and look to Jesus to help us understand and interact with it in a constructive or even a cautionary way. It simply won’t do to read a text like this without discernment, allowing it to temper or compromise the message and legacy of Jesus. Protestants have a history of doing this, especially with the writings of Paul. Learning to read the Bible with spiritual and moral sensitivity in pursuit of divine revelation is our best and only hope. We may need to break our Bible open to get at its heart.

Share