Tag Archives: bible

What Do I Mean When I Say “Bible”?

A thoughtful reader noticed that I frequently leave the word “bible” uncapitalized in my blog posts and podcast transcripts and asked me to explain my thinking. For example, I might write about “what the bible says” or “bible authors.” While I do not deny that this is a conscious stylistic choice, I actually had to think long and hard about precisely why I do it, as I developed the habit some time ago. So am I grateful to my friend for the opportunity to self-examine.

My choice to leave “bible” uncapitalized is never an overt theological, doctrinal, or political statement, though it surely has all sorts of ramifications. Primarily, it has to do with what I mean by the term “bible,” and more often than not I am using the word as an umbrella or category rather than a proper title. I employ standard capitalization when referring to a specific text (“Revelation,” “Qohelet”), a specific collection (“Hebrew Bible,” “New Testament,” “Catholic/Protestant Bible”) or a published version of a Bible (“NIV Bible,” “ESV Bible”), but I intentionally type “bible” when referring to the broad category of biblical texts. In this way, in my mind, it’s interchangeable with a word like “scripture,” which just means “writings.” I’m talking about the texts we know as the canonized books of our “Bible,” but which also feature historically in other collections and contexts.

When I write “The Bible,” it activates certain presuppositions in the mind of a reader, most likely involving the printed English translation of the Protestant canon that is sitting on a nearby bookshelf. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but one of the major thrusts of my writing is the appreciation of texts in their original settings, with an emphasis on origins and first meaning. Using “bible” as a category rather than a proper name is my attempt to avoid getting stuck in some of our Christian presuppositions. Maybe a quick, practical example would be helpful.

I’ve talked about Daniel 12 in a couple of blog posts and podcasts. This is a passage about resurrection and judgment. In the context of the Protestant canon, it often serves as a proof text in discussions of rapture, heaven and hell. In the context of the Hebrew Bible, however, it is primarily about vindication for Israel and punishment for pagan empires in the wake of the exile. A robust discussion will consider a full range of context and possible meaning, and by referring to Daniel 12 as a “bible text” or “scripture,” I am inviting readers not to bypass its rich history and consign it by default to a modern post-Protestant context.

This distinction isn’t only important across Testaments or canons. In 2 Timothy 3:16, Paul tells a young pastor that “all scripture (sacred writing) is breathed by God and is useful for teaching, for rebuke, for improvement, for training in righteousness…” Far too often, I have seen this verse used to self-authenticate and self-validate the Protestant Bible, as if the author was aware that he was writing one of the sixty-six books of the Christian canon. Of course, not only was there no Christian canon at the time of writing, there wouldn’t even be a Jewish canon for another generation. There was some standard by which texts were considered “scripture,” but it is unknown to us. Paul is talking about “bible,” but not “The Bible™.”

This is not a hill that I will die on. It is not a stand that I’m taking against any traditional conceptions of the Bible. It is just my own attempt to navigate the often messy and complex straits of biblical literature without losing sight of the big picture. It’s the forest and trees and whatnot. I have no idea if it’s actually constructive or helpful. For all I know it might come across as obtuse or even disrespectful, but that was never my intention. I hope this gives you a little more insight into my crazy bible brain.

Reading Romans

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I’m cross-posting the transcript from my latest podcast, in which I attempt to read Paul’s letter to the Roman church with fresh and careful eyes. This was a very personal endeavor for me, as Paul’s presence loomed large in my religious upbringing. This might be the most boring thing you’ve ever read, but this is what catharsis looks like for me. Check out the podcast version if you want to hear me stutter my way through this text.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is, for many Christians (conservative Protestants in particular), the most beloved and load-bearing document in the whole New Testament. Of course the gospels tell the all-important story of Jesus, but it is Paul’s writing which (according to this popular view) explains and illuminates the gospel so that Christians know how they ought to interpret, understand, and believe it. And since Paul is writing to the church, his “theology” is seen as a sort of textbook for how today’s church should think and behave and – most important – evangelize. For many modern believers, Romans is their “desert island” bible book.

And to be sure, Romans is one of the most valuable texts to have survived antiquity, a spiritual treasure and an historical goldmine. It is one of the oldest writings (if not the oldest) in the New Testament, pre-dating even the earliest gospel, Mark. Scholars of many stripes affirm it as a legitimate work of Paul, meaning that we have what is almost universally regarded as an authentic text written by the most prominent apostle of the first wave of Christian churches. Romans is a profoundly valuable letter.

But it is a letter! When we read Romans, we are literally reading someone else’s mail. This is not a theology textbook. It contains theology (which simply means “God words”), but it’s not theology for its own sake, nor is it comprehensive. Paul is not writing a systematic treatise for all Christians for all time, he’s writing an apostolic letter to a community in crisis. His words are meant to address a specific First Century problem, and to help a group of First Century believers find a way through it. The biggest problem with the traditional Protestant view of Paul is that it tends to overlook or downplay the crisis context of his letters, providing its own context in which the apostle’s words are to be read and interpreted.

In the tradition in which I was raised, what I would call non-denominational evangelicalism, Romans is read and taught in a very specific way, according to an externally-imposed rubric that says the book is all about how to get saved and become a Christian so your sins can be forgiven and you can go to heaven when you die. In fact, we memorized a routine called the “Romans Road” that was designed to help us explain “the gospel” to others in five easy steps. And I still remember it, it goes like this:

Romans 3:23 – Everyone is a sinner…
Romans 6:23a – Sin leads to death…
Romans 5:8 – Jesus died for sinners…
Romans 6:23b – Eternal life comes through Jesus…
Romans 10:13 – Call on Jesus and you will be saved!

Putting aside the question of whether this list of propositions is true or helpful or coherent, even when I was a kid there was something obviously strange and wrong about our need to rip these verses out of context, chop one of them in half, and put them out of order just to tell our story. Paul does talk about sin, he does talk about Jesus’ death, and the life of the coming age and salvation. All that stuff is in the letter in some form, but it’s part of Paul’s bigger story, Paul’s argument, and – most important – it’s first and foremost for the benefit of the Roman church in crisis.

And what is the crisis? Let’s discover that together as we explore the actual letter that Paul wrote. Here is the opening salutation:

1 Paul, a slave of King Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for God’s good news, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the sacred writings – 3 the gospel about his son, who was descended from David’s seed in terms of flesh, 4 and who was marked out powerfully as God’s son in terms of the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead: Jesus, the king, our Lord!

Paul begins his letter by identifying himself as an apostle of Jesus and articulating “the gospel” as he understands it: that the Jewish prophet Jesus, who was killed, was revealed to be God’s son through resurrection from the dead and is now king. This is Paul’s gospel – not a plan of salvation or an atonement theory or a theology of justification – but the simple and bold declaration that the vindicated prophet Jesus is now king of the world. It’s important to get this right now for two reasons: 1) to keep it simple, so we don’t get bogged down in some of Paul’s more convoluted arguments, thinking his gospel has gone off the rails, and 2) to draw a more organic connection between Paul and Jesus. Throughout history, many have struggled with the question of how to reconcile Jesus’ message of selfless love and humility with the way their own church presented the seemingly complicated soteriology of Paul. But I think the answer is right here in a fresh reading of Paul’s own words. Jesus said “the kingdom of God is here,” and Paul says “Jesus is king.” That’s the gospel.

Another title Paul assigns to Jesus, beside Messiah and king, is “Lord,” kyrios in Greek, and this prompts me to mention something I wish I’d pushed a little harder in the Acts podcast. Much of the language employed by Paul and the other apostles is language ripped from the political realities of their time, specifically the Roman imperial reality. Terms like “lord” and “gospel” and “salvation” are all jargon straight out of Caesar’s empire. Paul and company know this, and are surely being provocative by choosing these words. In the imperial cult, Caesar is the divinely appointed “lord of the world,” the “son of god,” and the “gospel” or “good news” of his reign is that he will bring “salvation” to the people he conquers. The early Christians frame their proclamation of the Messiah as a countercultural, anti-imperial protest. Jesus, not Caesar, is this world’s true “lord,” and the “good news” is that he brings real “salvation,” not a program of lies and violence. This is an often overlooked dimension of Paul’s writing that brings it into sharper focus. Of course, these words also have explicit Jewish parallels as well, as we’ve seen before. The fact that Paul’s words operate and resonate in these two spheres simultaneously – classical Judaism and Roman imperialism – is no coincidence. It’s a central and integral part of his whole message and ministry, which we shall presently see.

Before launching headlong into the purpose and argument of his letter, Paul takes care of a little business and mentions how badly he wishes he could travel to Rome and see the letter’s recipients in person. This is significant because most of Paul’s other letters are written to congregations in churches he himself had planted on his missionary journeys. In Romans, he is writing to a group with whom he has no personal experience, and it seems to frustrate him that he can only try to help them from afar. Then in verse 14 he gets to the point:

14 I am under obligation to non-Greeks as well as to Greeks, you see, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 That’s why I’m eager to announce the good news to you too, in Rome. 16 I’m not ashamed of the good news, it’s God power, bringing salvation to everyone who believes – to the Jew first and also, equally, to the Greek. 17 This is because God’s righteousness is revealed in it, from faithfulness to faithfulness. As it is written, “the just will live by faith.”

Paul says that his gospel – the announcement that Jesus is king – is good news for both Jews and Greeks, because in it God’s goodness is revealed, and that, as the prophet Habakkuk has written, “the just will live by faith.” What is the point? It’s this: In the first Christian communities, as we saw in Acts, both Jewish Messiah believers and Greek converts come together to become a new and strange kind of family. Each of these groups comes with its own ideas of what it means to believe and belong. Jews have the Torah law, Sabbath and circumcision, and Greeks have the pagan practices and pantheon. The underlying tension of that early church and of the letter to the Romans is, how can these two fundamentally different groups of people possibly live together as the “people of God”? It must have seemed impossible, but Paul’s argument is and will be, that it comes not through any religious rituals or practices, Jewish or pagan, but through a living trust in the good news about Jesus. “The just shall live by faith,” not by making sacrifices or cutting themselves or building temples… And, argues Paul, this is what the prophet already said long ago. This is the message of Romans, and every argument that Paul is about to make – and some of them go in strange directions – will be in support of this central thesis. Let’s keep that in mind as we continue with Romans Chapter 1 and discover Paul’s first and most drastically misunderstood argument.

After saying that Jews and pagans are both equally saved by their trust in Jesus, he seems to go off on an angry rant against the pagans and their wicked practices. At first glance it seems to undermine his entire premise, and some modern Christians have been only too happy to use this material for their own purposes in condemning “worldly” behavior they find unacceptable. Here’s what Paul writes:

18 For the anger of God is unveiled from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice performed by people who use injustice to suppress the truth. …
22 They [pagans] declared themselves to be wise, but in fact they became foolish. 23 They swapped the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of the image of mortal humans – and of birds, animals, and reptiles. …
26 So God gave them up to shameful desires. Even the women, you see, swapped natural sexual practice for unnatural, 27 and the men, too, abandoned natural sexual relations with women, and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men performed shameless acts with men, and received in themselves the appropriate repayment for their mistaken ways.

This is one of a handful of what are sometimes called “clobber verses,” bible passages that appear to patently condemn homosexual behavior. And while we should be realistic about how a First Century apostle and former Jewish Pharisee would have felt about same-sex relations, we must also be careful and precise about the text we are reading and how it works. Paul’s words about “unnatural desires” come as part of a long screed in which he also condemns making images of birds and reptiles. In fact, Paul’s rant looks like a boilerplate criticism of pagan religious practices, including idolatry and temple prostitution, in which heterosexual men and women would “exchange” their “natural relations” for a same-sex experience as part of a religious ritual.

But whatever the case, we’ve interrupted Paul before he can make his real point. Unfortunately, Chapter 1 breaks at the end of this rant, and so most modern readers have stopped reading and taken Chapter 1 to be the “we hate pagans and gays” chapter. But of course, chapter breaks are superficial divisions added centuries after-the-fact, and Paul’s argument actually keeps on going into Chapter 2. Here’s what he says, coming right out of the “unnatural” rant:

1 So, you have no excuse – anyone, whoever you are, who sit in judgment! When you judge someone else, you condemn yourself, because you, who are behaving like a judge, are doing the very same things!

Well here’s a different kind of “clobber verse”! Paul’s whole point, it turns out, is not “God hates pagans,” but rather “Jewish Christians have no platform from which to judge Greek Christians based on common pagan stereotypes.” That’s a very different message from the way this passage is traditionally understood. He goes on to talk about God’s judgment, and how it – just like God’s love and salvation – is impartial and universal. This is not unlike Jesus’ “sheep and goats” parable: those who do what is right to their fellow human are judged to be God’s people, and those who do not, are not, regardless of religious affiliation. This is remarkable, and something we should hold on to as we read on.

In Chapter 3 Paul strings together a series of quotes from various Psalms to further illustrate his point: no one is righteous, even those who have Torah, so Jews and Greeks find themselves in the same boat. And here we find verse 23, the first stop on the “Romans Road” that says “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” In our evangelistic presentation, this was meant to illustrate our premise that all people are guilty of sin and hence condemned to hell. But let’s pay Paul the respect of actually reading the second half of his sentence in the next verse: “and by God’s grace they are freely declared to be in the right, to be members of the covenant, through the redemption which is found in the Messiah, Jesus.” Paul’s premise isn’t that everyone is hellbound (he doesn’t really talk about hell in his letters), but that Jews and Greeks are both “members of the covenant,” part of God’s family, because of their common trust in Jesus and not because of any special rituals or status.

In Chapter 4 Paul begins a new argument, the first in a series of appeals to the Hebrew Bible. He uses the example of Abraham, the great father of Judaism, and quotes Genesis 15 to make a fascinating point: Abraham lived before Torah, but God “counted his faith as righteousness.” If it was possible for Abraham to be “righteous” without Torah, it must also be possible for Greeks! For anyone! In fact, says Paul, the covenant, the promise to Abraham that his family would be great and bless the earth, came before Torah as well, and so he argues that non-Jewish believers can be grafted into this family apart from Torah, by faith in God through Jesus that is counted as “righteousness.”

Paul moves into a new argument in 5:12, shifting from Abraham to Adam. In Adam, says Paul, sin and death entered into the world. But Jesus is a “New Adam” who brings life instead of death, and grace instead of sin. Where sin increases, grace abounds, though Paul is quick to add that this is no excuse to commit more sins. Paul’s writing style can be funny sometimes, as he rants, changes his mind, and frequently answers his own questions. The apostle’s personality is all over this text, which is actually sort of endearing. In Chapter 6 he throws out a bunch of metaphors for the relationship with God that is made possible because of Messiah: we no longer resemble death, we resemble resurrection; we are dead to sin, and alive to God; we are no longer slaves to sin, we are slaves to God. We may find that last one less than inspiring, but class-based slavery was commonplace in Paul’s world and is one of his favorite metaphors.

In Chapter 7, a new metaphor. He compares Jewish Christians to abused wives who were bound to a bad husband by the law, but the husband dies and they are now free. Torah, he says, was the abusive husband, and in Messiah’s death his people have also died, and are now free from the law. Paul clarifies that this doesn’t mean Torah is bad or sinful, but that it brought awareness of sin and the consequences of sin, since no one could keep it. The law was good, but it shined a light on Israel’s failure. It brought only condemnation. But, according to Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation for those in the Messiah Jesus.” Paul goes on to describe the role of the holy spirit (which he sometimes just calls “the spirit” or “God’s spirit”), in leading and guiding the Messiah’s people. They no longer live according to what Paul calls “the flesh,” their own will and experience, but they have access to “the spirit” and live according to it. This isn’t the same as dualism or gnosticism, which literally separate matter from essence into two warring realms. It’s more of a metaphor in which these new Christians can conceptualize their living. And, frankly, it’s an attempt to answer the question of how they can possibly expect to know right from wrong without Torah.

I can already tell I’m going to run long today, but I have to quickly mention something else here at the halfway point (of the letter, if not the podcast). Something very subtle and interesting has been going on in the last few chapters, not unlike what Matthew did with the opening chapters of his gospel. In Chapter 5 Paul talks about Adam, in Chapter 6 he talks about slavery and rescue, in Chapter 7 he talks about the law, and in Chapter 8 he talks about God’s spirit “leading” believers in the metaphorical wilderness of life. Paul’s arguments seem manic and off-the-cuff, but they actually appear to follow a sequence, a sequence that hits all the same beats as the story of Israel.

Still in Chapter 8, Paul takes his argument in yet another unexpected direction, and introduces a topic that is too often ignored in treatments of this letter. The apostle explains how creation itself – the physical world of trees, mountains, and oceans – is anticipating salvation. This is verse 22:

22 Let me explain. We know that the entire creation is groaning together, and going through labor pains together, up until the present time.

In Paul’s imagination, creation itself longs for deliverance, groaning like a woman in labor, ready to give birth to a beautiful new world. This is like the Gospel of John’s “new creation,” and it’s a radical framework that challenges the traditional, conservative view of eschatology which says the earth is doomed, and our goal is to get ourselves “saved” so we can escape to paradise. That is not Paul’s eschatology. He expects this world to be transformed and rescued, and he believes the Messiah’s people bear the “firstfruits” of that new world. This may sound like pie-in-the-sky stuff, but here’s the big question of eschatology: how different do faith and life look when people believe the earth will one day blossom into new life and glory, instead of burning away into oblivion? When the question of “eternity” has as much to do with nature and ecology as it does with the fates of human beings? Paul’s vision of “new creation” also provides a powerful foundation for the message of this letter: how is it possible for Jewish and Greek Christians to share a life together? It’s possible because they are both part of the same creation, with the same ultimate, glorious global destiny. Chapter 8 concludes with a beautiful poem about the confidence the apostle finds in following Messiah:

35 Who shall separate us from Messiah’s love? Suffering, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …
37 No! In all these things we are completely victorious through the one who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, you see, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in King Jesus our Lord.

Stirring words, but then in Chapters 9-11 Paul acknowledges an elephant in the room, and wrestles with a very difficult and formidable question raised by his own theology: what about Israel? What about mainstream Judaism and the majority of Jews who do not accept that Jesus is Messiah? Paul argues violently with himself on this topic for three chapters, and in the interest of time and sanity I’ll try to summarize his train of thought:

Jews are “Israelites,” the original recipients of the promise and covenant, and the Messiah is one of their own. (9:1-5)
But not all “children of Abraham” are true Israelites. Even in the Torah, God said “I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.” God’s thoughts are mysterious, and he will choose his own family – even from among the Gentiles. (9:6-24)
During the Exile, the prophets said repeatedly that only a remnant of Israel would survive, anyway. (9:25-29)
Pagan nations have been granted membership in the covenant while Israel has failed to keep it. (9:30-33)
But Paul’s deepest desire is for Israel to find salvation, which is accomplished not by keeping the letter of the law but by trusting in the Messiah. (10:1-15)
God told this “good news” to Israel through the prophets, but they did not listen, and now others are listening. (10:14-21)
So, has God abandoned his chosen people? Not at all! Paul and half of the Christians are Jews! There is a remnant, selected by God’s grace. The remnant are blessed, and the rest have been “hardened,” but not forever. Paul believes that all Jews will see the glories of following Messiah and become “jealous.” (11:1-15)
The family of God is like an olive tree – Israel is the root, and Gentiles are grafted branches, replacing natural branches that had to be cut off. But don’t worry – even those old branches will eventually be grafted back on as well! (11:16-24)
This is why, Paul concludes, “all Israel will be saved.” (11:25-26)
And it will happen because of God’s boundless mercy. (11:27-36)

You’d think Paul would be tuckered out and ready to end the letter, but you’d be wrong. Chapters 12 through 15 are a sort of practical application of Paul’s central argument, an answer to the question, “what do we do now?” Paul tells the Roman Christians to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” which sounds kinda creepy and religious, but Paul elaborates:

12:3 … don’t think of yourselves more highly than you ought to. Rather, think soberly, in line with faith, the true standard which God has marked out for each of you. 4 As in one body we have many limbs and organs, you see, and all parts have different functions, 5 so we, many as we are, are one body in Messiah, and individually we belong to one another.

Paul’s advice to a diverse and nervous group of Christians is to think of themselves as members of the same body – each with a different purpose, but part of the same whole. Everyone is needed, everyone has a special set of gifts, and everyone belongs. This “members of the same body” metaphor is fundamental to the way Paul’s own churches are set up, and we’ll learn more about that in some of his other letters. He rounds out Chapter 12 with some familiar advice: that those in the community should, above all else, love each other. This is where Paul sounds the most like Jesus:

10 Be truly affectionate in showing love for one another, compete with each other in giving mutual respect. …
14 Bless those who persecute you, bless them don’t curse them. 15 Celebrate with those who celebrate, mourn with the mourners. …
17 Never repay anyone evil for evil, think through what will seem good to everyone who is watching. 18 If it’s possible, as far as you can, live at peace with all people.

Romans Chapter 13 is another passage that has been read out of context with unsavory consequences. Consider verse 1: “Every person must be subject to the ruling authorities.” If Romans is a kind of universal instruction book or Torah law for all Christians, then this “commandment” has all sorts of dangerous implications. Does this mean that Christians ought to be supportive or complicit in war, genocide, and exploitation? Let’s remember the context. Paul is writing to a congregation that is having an identity crisis. How can Jews be Jews, Greeks be Greeks, and all of them be Christians? In addition to the advice he gave them in Chapter 12, Paul now advises them to be good citizens, pay their taxes, and not assume a default posture of revolution or civil disobedience. This is a general exhortation and pep talk, not a pledge of allegiance to empire.

In Chapter 14 Paul gets more specific about the challenges facing this particular congregation. He warns the Roman Christians against judging one another for their personal beliefs and practices, but also warns them against flaunting those practices in front of each other. For example, some of them are vegetarians, and some eat meat. Some observe certain holy days, and others do not. No one should be shamed or shunned because they do or don’t, and no one should think they are privileged because they do or don’t. God has declared that “nothing is unclean,” says Paul (recall Peter’s dream in Acts Chapter 10), so anything goes, but you musn’t lord it over each other. Think of your neighbor before yourself. And in Chapter 15 Paul reaches the climax of the letter, bringing all of his arguments to a glorious conclusion:

5 May the God of patience and encouragement grant you to come to a common mind among yourselves, in accordance with the Messiah Jesus, 6 so that, with one mind and one mouth, you may glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

The fundamental spirit of all of Paul’s ramblings can be summed in a single word: unity. He is pleading with this troubled congregation to find a common denominator in Messiah, so that their diverse beliefs and lifestyles can become an asset, not a source of conflict. Their devotion to Jesus is what makes them a family, not religious conformity or ritual. Paul concludes that Jesus has made it possible for different nations to come together in praise and brotherhood instead of resentment and violence. As he says in the last line of the letter proper:

15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the holy spirit.

There follows a bunch of postscript material in chapters 15 and 16, where Paul restates his burning desire to visit the Roman church, but explains that he must go to Jerusalem instead to deliver some much needed financial support to the poor Christians there. He introduces a deacon named Phoebe, who is likely the person who will actually present and read this letter to the Roman congregation. Lastly he sends greetings to a long list of names, fellow apostles in Rome, deacons, believers, and friends. We note the overwhelming number of female names on the list, which reflects a reality of the early church that might surprise modern readers. Since the earliest Christian communities met in people’s homes, women played a major role in both hospitality and leadership. Most fascinating is a reference to a female apostle named Junia, which should have had major repercussions for the modern church, except that most of our bible translations have chosen to quietly change her name to the male moniker “Junias.” A groundless and ideologically-motivated redaction, and not the only one to be sure.

After a short final blessing in the name of the Messiah, Paul’s letter ends. I hope I’ve given you what I was missing for years: a clear and simple exposition of the letter to the Romans in full, in order, and in context. Paul is not easy to read. He rambles and pleads, throwing every argument he can think of against the wall to see what sticks. It’s just easier to chop him up and do whatever you want with the bits and pieces, but it’s not really fair or helpful. The result has been a reading of Romans that is out of tune with the real heart of Paul’s message.

In the church of my youth, Romans was an instruction manual for converting others to the faith. But as we’ve just seen, this letter isn’t concerned with how to convert the lost, it’s about how those already in the church might find love, hope, and unity. And it’s specifically concerned with a social dynamic that is virtually unknown to churches in our time, as Jewish and pagan Christians – old enemies – were trying build a life together. Of course, there is plenty for us to learn from Romans about how Paul understood the gospel and the challenges of diversity in the church, and these are relevant in any century. But we should do our best to approach the material on its own terms. The sad and ironic thing is that while Paul so desperately wants the church to discover its freedom from law and embrace the grace of the Messiah, the church, it seems, would rather just turn Paul’s words into a new kind of Church Torah. It’s our problem, not Paul’s, if we’ve allowed his words to become a burden and a stumbling block.

Repent of Bad Religion! Part 3: Rescuing Salvation

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The premise behind this series of posts is that true “repentance” is not about feeling sorry for your misdeeds and trying to do better. (You should do that, but it’s not repentance.) Nor is it a display of shame and contrition that wins you favor with God or your religious overlords. Real repentance is both a forceful rejection of bad ideas and an embracing of better ones. I’m applying this definition to some of the central tenets of Christian religion and suggesting that some radical repentance is in order.

Please note that I’m not simply exploring arbitrary new ways of conceptualizing Christianity as some kind of thought experiment or act of contrarianism. I honestly believe that we can and should get closer to the true biblical and historical essence of these ideas and farther away from the often poisonous mutations of them to which the modern church clings. We started the series with a clarifying look at repentance itself, and then we tackled the all-too-often bad news of “the gospel.” Today I hope we can rescue the idea of salvation.

What is “Salvation”?

Traditional American Christianity really wants everyone to get saved. After all, the bible itself enthusiastically announces that “salvation” comes through the name of Jesus Christ alone, and so job one for believing Christians has been to pound the pavement and make with the savin’. Problem is, it’s not always clear what exactly this “salvation” is, on a technical or practical level. Questions abound: Is it literal? Is it a metaphor? What are we saved from? What are we saved for? Who decides who’s saved and who’s “lost”? How do I know when I’m saved enough? Can salvation be lost once it’s unlocked? Do we have to dress and think and act and vote alike once we’re all saved? And, while we’re at it, will you save me some pie?

Traditional answer to these questions are problematic to say the least, and betray a host of muddled assumptions. Let’s briefly examine two bad models from the Greatest Hits collection. (They’re ultimately two versions of the same bad model, but please indulge me…)

Bad Model #1: “Saving Souls”

The classical European and American model is all about “saving souls.” Even though the bible only uses the words “save” and “soul” once in the same sentence (James 5:20), this has been the official way of talking about salvation for centuries. It goes something like this: Your body is mortal, but inside of it resides an immortal spiritual object or essence called a “soul.” When your body expires, your soul will live on for eternity. Because of original sin, all souls are doomed by default, and getting saved is the only way to guarantee a pleasant journey on the other side. This model boils down to a toggle switch inside of you that must be switched from the factory setting “lost” to “saved” before it’s too late. This is typically achieved by praying a prayer, professing to believe certain things about Jesus, getting baptized, and/or joining the right kind of church.

In addition to a less-than-compelling view of humanity and spirituality, this model has a much bigger problem for Christians: it’s not at all biblical. The notion of an immortal, immaterial “soul” that will exist forever in a state of either compromise or perfection is Greek philosophy, not bible theology. It’s Plato, not Jesus. To be fair, it’s easy to see how these Greek ideas might have been imported into early Christianity, as the word “soul” is indeed pervasive in both testaments. But in the (very diverse) world of biblical thought – that is, in the worlds of Ancient Israel, Second Temple Judaism, and First Century Christianity – “soul” meant something very different. In both Hebrew and Greek, with a great deal of range and nuance, “soul” means something like “life” or “breath,” and is a poetic way of referring to an individual mortal person, a “self.” I had a seminary professor who summarized the biblical soul as “the whole you as only God knows you, body, heart and mind.”

When we strip away foreign and anachronistic ideas from our understanding of biblical salvation, we move away from the first “bad model” but perhaps closer still to the second:

Bad Model #2: “Saved From Hell”

OK, so the “immortal soul with a toggle switch” model isn’t plausible nor is it biblical. But the bible does say that unsaved sinners are going to burn in hell (right? probably?), and so for many Christians this is the primary motivation for “sealing the deal” of salvation. Despite its popularity, however, this model has numerous serious problems. For a start, the word “unsaved,” ubiquitous in conservative Christianity, is completely unknown in the bible. It’s a silly non-word that betrays a wrongheaded adherence to the “salvation as status” model. (Not to mention how arrogantly dismissive it is of billions of human beings.) Meanwhile, setting aside the huge question of how the hell language in the bible actually works (something I had a lot to say about elsewhere), it turns out that the link between “salvation” and a “ticket out of hell” is not as clear as we assume it to be. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the bible never explicitly links salvation to the avoision of eternal punishment.

In the gospel texts, salvation is always a positive promise of rescue for Israel and the world through Jesus, never a threat. Jesus came to “save his people [Israel] from sin” (Matthew 1:21), to “save the world” (John 12:47), and to “save” countless individuals by healing and liberating them (eg. Luke 7:50). Nothing is ever said about salvation from hell or punishment. The Book of Acts is an account of the earliest Christian evangelists and their mission to bring the gospel of Jesus to all corners of the Roman Empire. The salvation they preach is the same positive, rescuing, life-renewing salvation that Jesus preached. It’s never “become a Christian or you’re going to hell!” Not once. Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul in his letters does use language of life and death when arguing about the power of salvation, but he never once invokes the threat of hell. If the bible never makes this connection, we should probably stop making it ourselves.

There’s a lot more to be said about this model and its problems, but I’m eager to move on and very briefly unpack just what I believe the bible is really getting at when it talks about “salvation.”

Salvation In The (Whole) Bible

First, a surprising fact: forms of the words “save” and “salvation” appear exponentially more often in the Hebrew Bible than in the New Testament. To be sure, the HB is a much much bigger collection than the NT, but the point is still important. “Salvation” isn’t a Christian innovation, it’s an ancient, biblical, Jewish idea. And like so many ancient biblical Jewish ideas, it is rooted in a specific historical reality, the event we know as the Exodus. Salvation was what happened when Israel’s God showed up and rescued his people from slavery in Egypt. This salvation became a metaphor for the rescue of individuals from dangers both temporal and spiritual (Psalm 35:3; Psalm 42:5), and the template for anticipated national rescue during times of exile, invasion, and occupation (Psalm 14:7; Isaiah 62). And by the time of Jesus, Roman oppression and internal division were so devastating that hopes were high for a “New Exodus,” for a new act of salvation from above. Jesus’ message was that the long-awaited salvation had finally come in the form of the kingdom of God.

Meanwhile, the Roman Imperial cult had its own ideas about salvation. The package of benefits promised to compliant subjects of the empire was rhetorically said to bring “peace” and “salvation,” available exclusively through submission to Caesar. This brings many New Testament statements about Jesus and salvation into sharper focus (eg. Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”). Rome promised to “rescue” you even as their noose tightened around your neck. Jesus and his followers proclaimed a salvation of true peace, of real rescue from the violence and sin embodied by Rome.

In light of these examples, a few observations about biblical salvation: 1) it is something everybody was already waiting and hoping for, 2) it affects individuals, nations, and the entire world, and 3) it involves physical and temporal rescue as well as spiritual liberation. In the bible, salvation is the too-good-to-be-true news in answer to the hopes and dreams of people who desperately needed to be rescued. It was never a mechanism for soul preservation or belonging to the correct religious group, it was always rescue and renewal and new creation and happy feelings and kittens and powerful God stuff, and it was all unleashed in the words, deeds, life, martyrdom, and resurrection of Jesus.

And there’s nothing we can do about it. The dam has broken and the unstoppable force of God Rescue™ is oozing through the cracks in our world. The bible invites us to embrace this new reality. The first step to embracing salvation is to accept the impossibly ridiculous notion that a kingdom of peace and love and joy could actually be a real thing, and that it could actually take over this world. That’s the Jesus way, the way of salvation. Only religious people could turn this amazing proclamation of unbridled hope into a burden, or worse, a weapon. God save us.

Repent of Bad Religion! Part 2: Dismantling the Bad News Gospel

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This is the second in a series of posts about repentance. In the first post we clarified the notion of “repentance” itself, using Jesus’ message as recorded in the bible to demonstrate that true repentance means embracing good ideas and killing off bad ones, even (or especially) bad ideas about God and religion. Today I want to focus on a central but often poorly-defined element of Christian religion: “the gospel.” [NOTE: I teased last time that we would be talking about “salvation” in part 2, but I changed my mind (repented?) and chose a different topic. “Salvation” and “the gospel” are not the same thing, which is one of the points I will be pushing here!]

“The Gospel” in Contemporary Christian Parlance

In Christian nomenclature, “the gospel” is a phrase that carries a lot of weight but is often very flexible in its meaning. Most people in the church and outside know that “gospel” means something like “good news,” but what precisely that good news is changes radically depending on whom you ask. For most evangelical Christians (my people, that’s why I pick on them so much), the gospel is something like this: “You are a depraved sinner with a grim future but God loves you so much he provided the possibility of salvation!” Not only is this a specious representation of some important biblical ideas, the biggest problem is that this news isn’t very “good” at all!

Many factors (biblical misunderstanding? individualistic Western worldview? obsession with legal sin guilt and personal morality?) seem to have conspired to weaponize our gospel. The “good news” is actually the worst news you’ve ever heard: the universe itself is against you and we’ve got a bunch of hoops you’ll have to jump through if you want a shot at the “free gift of salvation.” In practice this gospel is little more than a burden we place on our neighbors, or worse a club with which we pummel them in the name of God.

Meanwhile, in the church, the meaning of “gospel” is stretched even thinner and it becomes a tool of destruction among those who consider themselves its ambassadors. Inside Christian culture “the gospel” has become a codeword for everything that will be lost or compromised if your terrible ideas and preferences win out over my terrible ideas and preferences. Don’t agree about which people should be excluded from our church? You’re compromising the gospel! Disagree with my stance on a social issue? There’s a hole in your gospel! Think the napkins should be blue? That’s an affront to the gospel!

When it comes to “the gospel,” some clarification is in order. If only there were some ancient documents we could consult…

The Gospel of Jesus

According to the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus’ “gospel” was a single simple (but huge) idea:

15 “You’ve waited long enough!” he said, “God’s kingdom is here! Turn back and believe the good news!” (Mark 1)

17 From that time on Jesus began to make his proclamation. “Repent!” he would say. “The kingdom of heaven is here!” (Matthew 4)

43 “I must tell the good news of God’s kingdom to the other towns,” he said. “That’s what I was sent for.” (Luke 8)

The gospel according to Jesus of Nazareth was the “kingdom of heaven” or “God’s kingdom.” As we’ve noted elsewhere, this is not a reference to a far off supernatural location but a present reality. God is becoming king of the earth. A million and one things pour out from this declaration, but if we want an authentic and pure definition of “the gospel” as Jesus understood it, here it is.

Of course, Jesus’ proclamation is only good news if the God it envisions is good. An angry and retributive God taking over the world is not terribly good news, and many before and since Jesus have imagined just that type of hostile takeover. But in his “kingdom manifesto” (in Matthew 5-7), in his “kingdom parables,” and in his boldly selfless life and death, Jesus insists that the God of this kingdom is a God of peace, love, forgiveness, and inclusion. In direct contradiction of the modern Christian sensibility, Jesus says that his gospel is good news for sinners and screw-ups and normal people – their rescue is here! – but bad news for the religious gatekeepers who would force others to jump through hoops to obtain God’s grace. Check this out:

13 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Jesus continued. “You lock up the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces! You don’t go in yourselves, and when other people try to enter you stop them!” (Matthew 23)

So Jesus’ gospel isn’t good news for a small number of devout VIPs and horrible news for everyone else. It’s excellent news for all of creation, and bad news for anyone who doesn’t want to live in a world where peace and forgiveness flow like a waterfall. Most of all, it’s bad news for religious spoilsports who would wield “the gospel” as a weapon against their fellow humans.

But what about the apostle Paul? Most contemporary Christian defense of “the gospel” appeals to the thoughts and writings of Paul. Notwithstanding our tendency to overemphasize and even absolutize Paul’s message to the point where it threatens to eclipse even that of Jesus, the question is pertinent: what is “the gospel” according to Paul? Is it different from the one proclaimed by Jesus?

Paul’s Gospel

The temptation with Paul is to allow Reformation theology (and its many modern mutations) to put words into the apostle’s mouth or to perform origami on his epistles until they say what we’re expecting them to say. Most of us who grew up in the American evangelical church have been trained to think that Paul’s message is about “justification by faith, not works” according to a multi-step “plan of salvation” that moves the individual from the “damned” column into the “saved” column. As a result, it has been difficult for some of us to reconcile the radically simple and joyous gospel of Jesus with the seemingly technical and burdensome “gospel” of Paul. Are the two really so different?

We don’t have room in this short essay for a full exploration of Paul’s thinking and writing (though something like that will happen soon on the podcast). For now, however, it’s quite possible to get a handle on Paul’s understanding of “the gospel,” as he was kind enough to spell it out for us in the opening verses of his letter to the Roman church:

1 Paul, a slave of King Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for God’s good news, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the sacred writings; 3 the good news about his son, who was descended from David’s seed in terms of flesh, 4 and who was marked out powerfully as God’s son in terms of the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead: Jesus, the king, our Lord! (Romans 1)

Paul’s gospel is Jesus himself, the embodiment of the good God he proclaimed, and the king of the good kingdom he announced. The message is the same, though the focus is different. In historical context, it’s as if Jesus said “God’s kingdom is here, you don’t have to live in the Roman empire anymore!,” and Paul said, “Jesus is king, you don’t have to serve Caesar anymore!”

Paul does go on to craft many complicated arguments about life in the early church, mostly about how Jews and Gentiles could possibly live together and get along as followers of Jesus. But these arguments and their details should not be mistaken for “the gospel.” Paul’s gospel boils down to the same news as Jesus’ gospel: the peace, love and forgiveness of God himself have been unleashed into creation and it’s time to celebrate!

Conclusion: What Do We Do With This Gospel Today?

The way many Christians “preach the gospel” is actually antithetical to the good news found in the pages of scripture. Having clarified the fundamental goodness of the news proclaimed by Jesus and echoed by Paul, we might ask: how do we embrace, proclaim, and live this gospel today, here and now? Jesus himself gave us a beautiful glimpse at what life in God’s kingdom looks like. There is no anxiety (Matthew 6:25-34). Neighbors choose to love rather than condemn one another (Matthew 7:1-6). Evil is non-violently resisted and enemies are loved (Matthew 5:38-48). These things don’t come easily or naturally, and so this “gospel” manifests as a life-long journey rather than a forced, one-time decision.

The gospel of the Good Kingdom of the Good God calls everybody to repentance. But this is not the shallow, burdensome contrition imposed by religious hypocrites. It’s a rejection of that poisonous gospel, that bad news, and all “gospels” of shame and domination. If it’s not good news that sets captives free – here, right now, today – then it’s not the gospel.

NEXT TIME: Rescuing ‘Salvation.’

Word-for-Word Translation!

More On Inerrancy, Because Monday

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My original post on Rescuing the Bible From Inerrancy has been read about a thousand times, and while it generated only a single comment here on the blog, there were Facebook comments and shares with more comments, a few emails, and (best of all) several real-life conversations. The feedback was mixed; some Christian friends were uncomfortable with what felt like an attack on the bible, and some non-Christian friends wondered what the big deal was anyway.

The feedback from Christians was the most interesting, and it came in two distinct flavors. Retorts from conservatives/evangelicals basically said, “No, you don’t understand – the bible IS inerrant because it HAS to be!” which only illustrates my point, I think. Agree to disagree. But the most helpful pushback was actually from like-minded Christian friends who said, “We basically agree, but why stress errancy? Why undermine people’s faith in the bible based on a technicality?” While I think my post did touch on this, it’s a valid question and worth revisiting.

My point was never about the technical errancy of the bible. In rejecting the modernist category of “inerrancy,” I’m also implicitly rejecting its counterpart “errancy.” I’m suggesting that these are not the most helpful terms when it comes to describing what the bible actually is, a collection of ancient documents. If I wave my hand and declare them to be “inerrant,” I’m fooling myself and stacking the deck against intellectual honesty. If I quarantine them as “errant,” I’m still playing into the notion of factual veracity as the primary gauge of a document’s value. What does it mean for a poem to be “inerrant”? For the self-defining stories of a community to be labeled “errant”? How do those labels help us engage with the actual content of the bible?

And this is the crux of the issue for me: it’s all about our POSTURE as we engage with the text. Are we open to an encounter with the weird and the unexpected? The disturbing? The divine? Or have we made up our mind ahead of time that it’s all somehow magically perfect, a database of categorized truths ready to be observed, memorized and enforced? Inerrancy is like an immunization against the crags and surprises in the text. It puts the text on a shelf so high we can’t see the fingerprints all over it. It turns the volume of our own doctrines and interpretations up so high that neither the text’s authors nor God Himself can cut through the noise and say anything new.

Here’s an obvious and practical example of the problem as I see it:

The bible says (or rather, the authors of Exodus 21 write, citing the law) “If there is harm, you shall repay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
But Jesus of Nazareth (in Matthew Chapter 5) says, “You have heard it was said, ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn him the other also.”

Two “biblical” principles: violent retaliation and nonviolent confrontation. They are, on the surface, at odds with one another. So which of the two is “inerrant”? Which one is an “infallible doctrinal truth” and the “foundation of our faith”?

Now, you can point out that talion (“eye for eye”) was actually a progressive (read “less violent”) ethic in its ancient context, and that seems to be the case. So when Jesus proclaims the godly ideal of nonviolence, we might receive it as a more pure and evolved but consistent version of the old principle. Maybe. Maybe not. We’d need to wrestle with it for a while. Meanwhile, it took our subjective evaluation and historically-informed interpretation to get us even this far. And once we’ve acknowledged the possibility of an evolution of ideas among the various conversant perspectives in the bible, inerrancy as a presupposition becomes at best unhelpful and at worst a hindrance.

We may insist that the principles and ideas we extract from this subjective process are “trustworthy” and even “infallible,” but the only way to prove them out as such is the same way we encountered them in the first place: open and honest encounters with other humans. You can’t just declare it to be true and go back to bed, you have to live it out for the rest of your life. “Truth” apart from relational experience is just an abstraction. Many “bible believers” throughout history have lived “eye for eye” as “inerrant truth” and spilled a great deal of blood. Jesus himself lived “turn the other cheek” to its perilous extremity.

I believe that God can and does speak through scripture. I believe we can encounter Him in its pages in authentic and spectacular ways. I believe that the bible is precious and crazy and human and divine and ancient and alive. I trust in it, even as I often toil to make sense of it, and I think you should too. But it does no good to engage it with our brains tied behind our backs.

Rescuing the Bible From Inerrancy

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A Plea For Honesty and Realism

Ask an evangelical Christian today what the center and heart of Christianity is, and they’re likely to say something like “Jesus is the Son of God,” or “Jesus saves sinners.” But they’re just as likely, in my experience, to say something like “the Bible is God’s inerrant and infallible Word.” A recent interview with Norman Geisler by the Billy Graham Institute underscores the intense manner in which many Christians are doubling down on “biblical inerrancy” as a sort of moral stand against non-believers and the greater culture.

So this is an awkward but opportune moment for me to chime in and explain why I do not subscribe to the doctrine of inerrancy and why I think it’s actually harmful to both faith and personal sanity.

Inerrancy Defined

Biblical Inerrancy is a Christian doctrine about the factuality, reliability and authority of the Bible. It comes in harder and softer flavors, the hardest claiming the text is infallible in all forms and softer versions asserting that the original texts were correct in every fact they affirmed. The major implication of the doctrine, according to its adherents, is that every teaching of the Bible is as true and reliable as every other, and that God’s own authority is carried by every word. This is meant to give the Christian believer a measure of confidence and certainty as they read and proclaim the Bible.

Inerrancy in History?

Proponents of inerrancy assert that it has always been a central part of historic orthodox Christianity. While it’s true that the inspiration and authority of Scripture have always been integral to the faith, “inerrancy” is a distinctly modern category. The early Church writers like Clement of Alexandria spoke often about the sacred and inspired nature of the Scriptures, but they had no concept of inerrancy (and many like Clement himself subscribed to mystical and allegorical readings of the Bible that most inerrantists would reject). The question of factual veracity as a measure of reliability and value is a product of post-Enlightenment thought.

Historically, biblical inerrancy is a major tenet of the American Evangelical movement of the 20th Century. The concept developed throughout the 1950’s and 60’s but was expressed publicly and explicitly in the “Chicago Statement On Biblical Inerrancy” in 1978 (within my lifetime!). This is not an ancient doctrine fighting against modern sensibilities, it is a modernist attempt to describe the authority of the Bible in the most extreme terms available.

Inerrancy in Scripture?

What does the Bible say about its own inerrancy? Keeping in mind everything we just observed, and setting aside the question of whether any text could conceivably establish its own “inerrancy,” it is helpful at this point to clarify a few things about the Bible and the way it talks (or seems to talk) about itself. For instance:

Our term “the Bible” does not refer to a single work of literature, but to a collection of ancient texts that were celebrated and preserved by religious communities and collected together many centuries after they were written.
In biblical texts, the word “scripture” does not refer to the canonized collection of texts we call “the Bible,” it simply refers to writings that were known and cherished by the author and community which produced that text. Many writings that were considered sacred to ancient communities were never canonized into the Hebrew or Christian Bibles.
The phrase “word of God” in Scripture does not refer to the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures it refers to the wisdom, decrees, and will of God expressed through creation, providence, and messengers like the prophets. In the New Testament, Jesus is the “Word of God” embodied.

And so, a few quick examples of how this affects our reading of Bible passages frequently quoted in support of biblical inerrancy:

“The words of YHWH are flawless!” Psalm 12:6. The poet David compares YHWH’s promises to refined silver.
“Every word of God proves true!” Proverbs 30:5. The prophet Agur celebrates God’s reliable character.
“All scripture is breathed out by God, and is useful for teaching, for rebuke, for improvement, for training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16. Paul implores a younger minister not to forsake the sacred writings of the early church community when teaching and serving his congregation.

Bible texts have much to say about God’s own “words” and the value of the “scriptures” cherished by the ancient Jewish and Christian communities, but the onus of authority and infallibility is always on God and never on the writings themselves.

The Heart of the Problem

You might assume at this point that I’m mounting a technical or scientific argument against inerrancy. While I think I’ve already demonstrated how that might work, it’s actually not what I’m on about. I certainly have no desire to convince my fellow Christians that their Bible contains errors, general or specific. I don’t find inerrancy to be historical, biblical, or technically tenable, but my real objection is to the ideological assumptions behind the doctrine.

The most revealing rhetoric about inerrancy, in my opinion, comes in response to the question, “Why do we need it?” Or more to-the-point, “What do we lose without it?” Norman Geisler’s answers in the interview linked above are typical:

“If we can’t trust the Bible, then we’ve lost the very foundation of our faith.”

“Once you deny the inerrancy of the Bible, you don’t have any basis for your teaching. And you’ve lost the power of God because if it’s not the Word of God—if what the Bible says is not what God is saying—then how can we preach it with authority and life-transforming ability?”

Not only does Geisler reinforce the traditional oversimplification that “God’s Word” = “the Bible,” his answers betray the fear and faulty assumptions at the heart of the inerrancy claim. If we lose inerrancy, he says, we lose the “foundation of our faith” and the “power of God” which gives us “authority” when we preach the Bible.

Two questions:

Why? Why would losing the claim of inerrancy cost us our faith? Is our faith a vulnerable and open-hearted trust in the good character of God, revealed in Jesus and testified in the Bible, or is it an anxious and tenuous faith in a system of facts, a house of cards that might come crashing down at any moment? Is our certainty just a mask to hide that fear?
Where did we get the idea that we need this “power” and “authority”? Did Jesus teach his followers to seek power and authority? Is the aim of our faith to dominate and control others into thinking and believing like us? Is the Bible a living and breathing testimony to the traditions of God’s people, or a magic trump card with which we can “win” the culture? Are we being pious or just arrogant?

My point is not that everyone who holds to inerrancy is just afraid and arrogant. In my experience the doctrine’s adherents are devout and godly people with the absolute best of intentions. But those lofty intentions are part of the reason why the troubling implications of the doctrine have gone largely unexamined. I think that an honest and humble reassessment is in order.

Finding A Better Way Forward

I understand the appeal of inerrancy, I really do. I love the Bible, and my desire to “prove” and “defend” its integrity is what led me to study it and ultimately to attend seminary. But the Bible I encountered in my studies was not a catalog of theological propositions and cultural truth bombs, it was a diverse library of stories and songs and poems and histories and visions that cried out across the millennia with a startling and broken humanity, even as they testified to the divine. Inerrancy, in my estimation, is part of a modern approach to the Bible that often silences those voices and even puts words in their mouths. There has to be a better way.

For the sake of discussion, I offer two examples of “better ways” of thinking about the Bible and its value and authority for the Christian:

N.T. Wright’s Scripture and the Authority of God is, in many ways, a very traditional and “orthodox” take on the question of Scripture. What I find so refreshing about it is the clarity and realism it has about the nature of the texts and how they work. Wright compares the Bible to a signpost, set up by helpful people, which points you on your way, but your business is ultimately at your destination. Wright’s full of stuffy little British analogies like that.
Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns is one of the more insightful and helpful books I’ve read on this subject. Enns suggests an “incarnational” approach to understanding what the Bible is and isn’t. If God’s infallible love had to be embodied as a mortal human being so that we could encounter it, surely we can appreciate the subjective, human origins of the Bible while still acknowledging its sacred payload. (Enns was fired from an evangelical seminary for his views.)

These are the first two examples I could think of, and they aren’t perfect. That is to say they are errant, but I’m afraid those are the only types of methods available to us. What they have going for them is a combination of intellectual honesty and intense devotion to the texts of the Bible.

My original title for this post was “Embracing Errancy.” I nixed it because it’s a bit misleading and over-the-top, but I still like the phrase. I’m not talking about embracing the factual errancy of the Bible, but embracing our own errancy, and the errancy of our traditions. Our beliefs and interpretations, like the Bible itself, can be powerful tools, signposts pointing us in the right direction. But we will always struggle with the temptation to trade vulnerability and trust for certainty and pride. That’s when our doctrines and even the Bible itself can become idols.

Welcome!

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Welcome to my new blog! My name is Josh. I recently completed a Seminary degree, and now that I know everything there is to know about God and the bible, I’m here to share it all with you, one post at a time, with helpful paragraph breaks and contextually-relevant GIFs from movies and TV shows you are guaranteed to recognize. You must be so excited! If there’s one thing this world needs, it’s more biblical, called, gifted, and anointed Caucasian men writing about Christianity on the Internet.

If you’re like most Christians, you’re probably very “concerned” about my qualifications. I understand. Seminary sounds prestigious, but who knows what garbage they’re actually teaching in those classrooms. You want to know if I’m an acceptable Christian role model, and you have the right to demand that information. You’ll be both thrilled and comforted to learn that I am married to a woman and that I am the father of a child. I think those credentials speak for themselves.

Thanks again for dropping by, and I look forward to Godsplaining the Universe to you!

F.A.Q.: What is the deal with the blog’s title?

If you’re baffled by the blog’s title, don’t fear. It just means you’re not entrenched in Christian culture. (The title is an amalgam of several popular Christian book series and media empires. It’s unbelievably clever and creative.)

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