I will be taking a slight aside from my normal rants about the Ancient Near East for a short little post on my view of the divine inspiration of the Bible and in particular, 2 Timothy 3:16.
2 Timothy 3:16 (New American Standard Bible)
16(A)All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
It is inevitable, that if I begin to discuss my views regarding the first chapters of Genesis (and other areas of the Bible which I have yet to discuss) with a fundamentalist, they will pull out this verse and quote it in such a way as they expect I will have to relinquish my position to the fact that the Bible must be historically and scientifically accurate. However, using this verse as proof for the scientific and historical accuracy of the Bible is fraught with problems.
The first is within the verse itself. Nowhere in the verse does it specify that all scripture is useful as a scientific historical document. Many fundamentalists interpret 'inspired by God' as being useful as a scientific document; a far stretch of the verse to say the least.
Secondly, when Paul was writing this, he wasn't referring to the Bible as we know it. He was referring to the scripture that the Jews had at the time, aka the OT. Thus, it would seem, that only the OT is inspired by God and not the NT, according to our Bible. The canon of the Bible was put together after the writing of this letter. When Paul was writing his letters, he had no idea that later generations were going to collect them, put them together with the OT and call it scripture (if Paul did know his letters were going to become scripture, I daresay he probably would have been more careful in what he wrote).
Also, even if this verse did refer to the Bible as a whole, this verse is still not proof for the inspiration of the scripture. One cannot say that it is inspired, simply because the scripture says that it is inspired. For example, let's say that Sally (a completely fictional character) claims that she is a platypus. However, as we look at her we can see that she is definitely a normal human being (despite the fact that she has an identity problem). Sally then goes on to say that she can prove she is a platypus, and her proof is, "because I said so". Well, you can imagine what the reaction to that would be. Call the men in white and get Sally a nice cozy padded room where she can safely live out her days thinking she is some kind of freaky cross between a duck and an otter. From this example, we can see that this text cannot be used as irrefutable proof for the divine inspiration of the Bible. If you want to believe that the scripture is divinely inspired by God, you will not be able to find proof. It comes down to faith. You simply have to believe by faith, as you will not find proof. In my mind, this is totally fine. To believe that it is inspired by God (by faith) is perfectly legitimate, but do not try to prove it as you will end up looking foolish and embarrassing the rest of us Christians.
The canon itself is somewhat problematic as well, as not all Christian communities agree upon that either. For example, the Book of Enoch is accepted by some and not others. So how can we know that the canon we have chosen is the one and only inspired book of God? The answer would be that we can't, and one can't prove that it is either. Fundamentalists would say that yes it can be proved, just look at 2 Timothy 3:16. However, I would refer them to the earlier paragraphs.
I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, however it was written by humans. I also believe that it is possible that there may be human error while writing the Bible as well as in the compilation of the canon (possibly we rejected some that shouldn't have been, and accepted some that we shouldn't have). How many of us can understand God so well that we can claim to be the voice of God? All humans are fallible, even those that wrote the Bible.
I believe that God did inspire the humans that wrote the Bible, that it is useful for training in righteousness. However, to take everything in the Bible at face value, to implement everything in the Bible blindly obeying for the sake of obeying without using our brains is a dangerous road. The Bible has been used to purport many things which we would view as ungodly. Slavery for example. Those who had slaves believed that it was biblical to do so. Or, some believe keeping women out of leadership positions is 'biblical'. I believe that God did inspire the writers of the Bible, but I also believe God gave to us as humanity a conscience and intellect that we are meant to use.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
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15 comments:
Here you hit upon what I think is the most important issue for evangelicalism in North America today. So few people who call themselves evangelical have spent any real time thinking about what Scripture is, where our Scriptures came from, and in what way they are true.
Even the concept that they might be true in more than one way, or that there are multiple kinds of truth is terrifying to most evangelicals. The funny thing is that, as you say, this has nothing to do with what the Bible says about itself. This is cultural baggage, a brand of modernist philosophy that has permeated the Western Church so deeply that it is all but indistinguishable from traditional Christian beliefs.
By the by, what communities of faith still hold Enoch in the canon? None that I know of. Also, regarding the state of the canon when Paul wrote 1 Timothy, it's not actually accurate to say that the OT cannon existed at the time. Even using a word like "canon" is something of an anachronism. It's more accurate to think that there were many varried streams of the Jewish faith (from extremists like the Sicarii and Essenes to extremely liberal groups like the Sadducees) all of which had their own Scriptures which they held as sacred. The Sadducees, for instance, did not accept any of the Prophets or Writings as sacred and held only the Torah. Groups like the one that lived at Qumran, however, clearly found value in a great many pieces of holy literature that never made the "final cut" for the Hebrew and Christian canons as it were.
Any conversation about the normativity of Scripture is clearly fraught with complexity and, as you say, goes far beyond simplistic proof texting.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church still has Enoch in their canon. You are very right regarding the OT not being "canonized" at the time Paul was writing, (it was merely simpler not to get into that) which makes his statement about scripture even more broad. Thanks for the comment! I always need to be kept in check.
Ahhh, of course, the Coptics! To whom we owe the very existence of the Enochic corpus. How could I have forgotten. If you ask the right Ethiopian Christians they will also tell you that they have the Ark of the Covenant in their possession ;).
Regarding Enoch I really do think that anybody who wants to read the NT in general, and the Apocalypse of John in particular should have to read 1 Enoch at least.
Anyways, good stuff.
Another question, however, and I really do mean I would be interested to hear (read) your thoughts on this. When we consider shifts in the way we view Scripture like the ones you're talking about, how then do we think about Scripture as a normative document? How, in a practical way, does it inform our lives?
I have struggled with that very issue you have now forced me to speak on. I would say, follow Jesus' example. No matter what you believe about him, whether he was divine, or human, or a reconstruction of Dionysos (more on that to follow), the life he led as laid out in the gospels was one of conscience and morality.
I don't want to diminish the salvation aspect of Jesus' life, but I would say that his teachings on how to live a moral life and on how to serve others is often subservient to the salvation story. I do believe that the Bible can speak into our lives today, that it can be used as a guide and model of how to live our lives, but I would also be careful about what aspects we say we have to follow. Short answer to a big question. Perhaps it will be dealt with more extensively in a later post.
Then the question now is, following your short answer, aren't we just Humanists who are fans of Jesus? If so why Jesus over and above anyone or anything else?
I'm actually not a huge fan of this kind of thinking. I do understand it, and all of my favorite atheists and agnostics are Humanists, but I've never seen the sense in this particular brand of atheism and agnosticism. Though I despise Nietzsche and all of his toadies (whether academic, political, or popular) his way does seem more sensible to me. Evil, but sensible.
I think you also run into trouble when you talk about following Jesus' moral example while disregarding or reinterpreting other components of the canon, particularly the OT. From what we know of Jesus as an historical figure (admittedly a topic of intense debate) he may well have been a pretty big fan of the literature that we call the OT and so it's hard to speak about his words as normative when the literature that he thought of as Holy Scripture is not normative (or less normative).
I don't mean this as a rebuke but just as my contribution to the muddied waters you're talking about here. I freely grant that the traditional evangelical/fundamentalist view of Scripture is terribly simplistic, but the rationalist/liberal view is very often guilty of precisely the same offense.
In answer to your question, why Jesus above anybody else? I think it is because that is what I choose to believe. It is a choice for me. It's true, that if you follow that line of liberalist thinking to its end, you end up with a view of all religions being the same, and worshipping the same God. It is a very fine line to walk, and I admit, I don't have all the lines worked out into a neat little system. But, then again, neither do the fundamentalists.
When I first started studying ANE stuff years ago, I found out all this junk I've been posting about and my idea of Christianity as I knew it was completely demolished. I was left with two options. Stop being a Christian altogether, or rebuild my faith in a new way. I chose the latter, and I am still in the process of rebuilding. Needless to say, it is not an easy task.
How would you deal with this issue we are talking about?
p.s. Even if it was a rebuke, I wouldn't care. I'm just happy that there's a discussion going on here, which is what I wanted to happen with this blog in the first place. :-) I like to have people give me their different views. Otherwise I start thinking I'm the smartest person in the world.
Well, you're damn near the smartest person I know, which is honestly saying something.
I actually answer the question similarly to the way that you do. I agree that seeing Christianity as a choice among many viable options is the key. The fundies and conservative evangelicals (aka fundagelicals) reject this notion and argue that Christianity is the clearly preferable choice and that it can be demonstrated objectively. The flip side is the true Liberal who says that he/she can objectively demonstrate that Christianity is but one of many ways to know god(s) and that all are acceptable.
I dislike both of these because of the appeal to objective knowledge. The problem is epistemological as I see it. You'd have a tough time convincing me that there's any such thing as true objectivity, and you haven't got a hope in hell of convincing me that any kind of objectivity really applies to conversations about history or about theology. The only recourse that I see is something along the lines of an existentialist choice, a decision to believe something. This need not be arbitrary and I do think that there are legitimate reasons that can be presented for the varied choices one might make, but a choice is what it is. Another way to say it is to call it faith.
All of this is my way of saying that I don't really care that Genesis 1-7 is probably not literally (which is to say historically, biologically, geologically, physically) true. I also don't really care that there are significant parallels between the concept of Jesus' death and resurrection and some Greek or Persian myths (I'm thinking of Dionysus and Ahura-Mazda). I don't see why this demonstrates that Christian theology is necessarily dependent upon Greek or Persian theology. That's just a good old fashioned post-hoc fallacy.
By the by, there's an interesting new book that I just heard about that might be up your alley. It's co-authored by two NT scholars, Mike Bird and James Crossley. I haven't read it, or any reviews yet, but from the snippets I've seen it looks like a history of the development and birth of Christianity written from the point of view of a Christian (Bird) and a non-believer (Crossley).
Oh, and I mean all of this to say that I don't see this as a Fundie/Liberal either/or choice. There's not just a middle road, there are thousands of middle roads. My favorite so far is a kind of modified Neo-Orthodoxy with splashes of Radical Orthodoxy and post-liberal thought. Karl Barth is still my favorite theologian. You might also be interested to read The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Leslie Newbiggin, I found it very helpful when I was working all of this stuff out. Okay, time for bed now. Cheers brother.
I have been THOROUGHLY enjoying this here conversation between you two brilliant men.
My question for you, Colin, is how do you take this sort of faith and live it out in your church? How do you attend a church and fit in? We just feel like if anyone at church knew what we thought about all of this, they'd think we were headed straight for H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, and we don't like knowing that that's how people feel about us. And so, we stopped going. And we're frusterated, because we need a place of worship, but the kind of place we're looking for just doesn't exist. BOO BOO BOO.
So, I just wondered how you live this out... and how about Jinny? What does she think about all of this too?
I can't answer for Jin but I'll mention that you asked. As for church, what you need is a community where people are open to debate and discussion. Try something other than evangelical churches I'd say. An awful lot of people like us are ending up in Orthodox and Anglican churches. That's actually where Jinny and I are going on Sunday, our first church try here in Hamilton and our first Anglican worship experience. And also, if someone tries to make me feel worthless and unchristian I usually either ignore him or challenge him with uncomfortable truths until he leaves me alone :). I've come to realize lately that I'm not alone, and not even all that uncommon, in thinking things like this in evangelical churches. Let's just say that in my last small group I wasn't the only person who thought that 6 day creationism was silly...not by a long shot. I'll try to remember to pray for you guys as you search for a community.
You guys aren't alone!!!!! Brian and I are right there with you.
We haven't been to church in a while either. It almost feels hypocritical to go.
Love this conversation and glad to hear others that we respect feeling the same way.
To answer Colleen...
I had a really hard time thinking through all these concepts and it's taken a few years and discussions with Colin to really get my head into it and to keep it from exploding from the fear of losing my grip on what it means to be a Christian in this world. There were a few times where I thought.."oh my goodness, what if Colin decides not to believe in God anymore and I'm married to a non-believer!" hahahahaha But then I understood where he was coming from and I wasn't worried anymore.
Church stuff has totally been hard for us. While a lot of people at our last church thought Colin was the crazy liberal guy, they still respected us and listened to what Colin had to say and let him preach and stuff. There were a few other people who believed what we did in some ways, so it was nice to get closer to them...but ya, some people really did stay away from discussions. Kinda funny.
I'm sorry that you guys are having a hard time finding a church that you can be yourselves in. I hope that you find one soon. Maybe you should just move to Hamilton. :) I'll be praying for you too. Being without a faith community is hard.
Hello All,
I just wanted to second what Amanda said about church.
I actually started going to church again for a while last year simply to make some friends and because I missed it, but the whole time I felt SO conspicuous and like SUCH a hypocrite. Not to mention my small group where everyone had such a fundegelical (that is so funny btw) stance that I often felt nauseous. I filter all of my new thoughts through the filter of my previous "super christian" self and I know what people will think.
I don't have any ANE knowledge except what Trevor shares but even without it the "old way" just doesn't jive with me anymore. It did occure to me when reading Colleen's post that maybe we don't all have to go find new Anglican churches (or other) maybe we can just get vocal about what we think? Easy for me to say, I don't live in my home town...
And Trevor, I would really like to hear your thoughts on "salvation" soon. I've been mulling that over lately.
I'd like to take another shot at the idea of how to live out the kind of faith we're discussing (as though it were one thing! :) ) in a church.
Leanne/Manders/Colleen, I totally resonate with what all of you have said. Finding a church where I would "fit" while not simultaneously lying through my teeth every time someone asked me a question was hard. Not hard in the sense that we looked and looked and then found a church with a magic sign over the door that said "Recovering Fundamentalists Welcome!"
The hardness was an internal struggle. My unwillingness to be singled out or challenged because of my "liberal" views (again, I'm not a liberal at all, but that's what fundies call me) was in many ways a product of my own inability to come to terms with how I really and truly saw the world and God's relation to it. I was unwilling to take any heat for my beliefs because I didn't yet believe that I believed them. But I did (believe them that is).
The day that I finally was able to give up the lie that I still believed in plenary verbal innerancy or six-day creationism was so wonderful that I can hardly describe it. It was like the first breath of air to a drowning person. Once that breath came I realized something. Not only was I still a Christian but I loved Christ in a way that was far more real and powerful than I ever had done before. This is because I realized that the Christ I'd loved before had been part real, part myth, and part lie. Not myths and lies told to me by others, but myths and lies I'd told myself.
After that had all happened I didn't care so much that people thought of me as the "liberal" guy. At our last church I actually embraced the role, seeing myself as someone called to challenge and push and prod all of the firmly held presuppositions of evangelicalism. It may seem arrogant to say, but I felt that I was taking up Isaiah's task for my local congregation.
That was an incredibly long answer and I really should be translating Judges right now but I need to say just one more thing. I don't see how it is possible to live out the Christian faith outside of a community. We need the challenge and the corrective influence of the Church. Not only that, and this is the really important bit I think, the Church needs your voice and the people in your local congregation need your challenge and your corrective influence. Never let the modern world convince you that you can go it alone. And never let conservative churches convince you that they can survive without your voice to challenge them either.
K, all done now. Damn that was long :).
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