Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Biblical Inspiration

  • The Human Face of Scripture

    Psalm 137 came up in the lectionary for this week. Now there was a time when we would get this Psalm at least with the final verse left out. That verse reads “Blessed is the one who seizes your little ones and dashes them against a rock.” One should understand, of course, that this was a Psalm about/by Jewish exiles in Babylon, and that the Babylonians had done precisely that sort of thing to them. One strong element of the Psalm is revenge.

    I was teaching a class on the Old Testament, drawn from the book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? once, and I asked people in the class whether they would feel the way the Psalm describes if someone had come into their community and killed their children. Would they want their attackers to suffer the same fate?

    Person after person in the audience expressed their desire to be forgiving, and their disapproval of the attitude expressed in the Psalm. Then one lady, a grandmother, interrupted the flow. “I think many of us are lying to ourselves,” she said. “I would feel bad that I wanted it, because I know what Jesus said, but I would want them to suffer the same fate.”

    Several people changed their minds. That one lady had given them some cover to be honest with themselves. The fact is that Psalm 137 is a very human Psalm, and a very real Psalm. It makes us uncomfortable, but I believe part of that discomfort is that we know that those feelings are not far from many of us.

    Does this justify a search for vengeance? That’s another matter. It is an expression of the true desires. Perhaps what we need to do when we have such feelings is express them and then seek the grace to forgive. That’s another subject. My point right now is that the Psalm expresses who we are.

    This Psalm makes me think about what the Bible actually is. I’m amazed at how frequently we decide what the Bible ought to be, and then try to force it to be whatever it is we think it ought to be. But we have the Bible itself and we can observe that it doesn’t fit these prescriptions we make for what it must be. People decide it must contain hard information sent from God by means of verbal dictation. Humanity should not have any real involvement. A little personality here and there, but no impact on the actual message.

    But in fact the Bible displays a range of human attitudes, emotions, cultural baggage, and even mental capacity. God’s commands are not merely God’s commands; they are what people heard God commanding them to do. And communication is limited to the capacities of the least capable end of the line. Scripture displays both a human and a divine face. (See The One-Ended Cord.)

    I also recently read a post titled Minimising mistakes in the Bible (or not). This is a good discussion of a minor Biblical error. The “error” a problem for inerrantists, who have to find a way to work around it. I would suggest, however, that it’s a natural part of the human face of scripture. The message comes through clearly, while there is a minor glossing over of fact.

    People often assume that I don’t believe in inerrancy because I have a long list of errors in the Bible. But that is not my problem with the doctrine at all. For those who want to ask me for my list, I don’t have one. I’ve encountered many things that I put down to “the human face of scripture,” but I don’t keep lists of them, because to me they are not very important. I suppose that if I did not reject inerrancy on other grounds, such a list might become important to me. But as it is, I think inerrancy simply misses the point of a communication between a perfect God and imperfect (or at least limited) human beings. Such a communication is simply much more dynamic than can be described in the phrase “error-free.”

    Scripture is divine, because it involves communication with God. It’s human because it is communicated through and to humans. Because it is what it is it requires careful and prayerful–Holy Spirit guided–interpretation and application, accomplished, of course, by humans, who are hopefully aware of their own limitations.

  • Defining Explicit Teaching

    Wayne Leman has published the first part of his report on the survey he has been taking on Biblical teachings about headship. While this was not a scientific poll it did point to some interesting things. I’d suggest reading it with a primary focus on what people understand as an “explicit teaching” of scripture. What does that phrase mean?

    It appears to me that people use the phrase without any concrete meaning, but that’s just my general, unscientific observation!

  • Bible Translation and Fundamentalism from a Wesleyan Perspective

    Dennis Bratcher, of the Christian Resource Institute, has an exceptionally good article on neo-fundamentalism, with a focus on the TNIV and Bible translation, looking particularly from the Wesleyan tradition. (He is Nazarene). There has been a frequent tendency amongst Wesleyans to borrow theology from the Calvinists, but not to go as far on certain points. I would note also that sometimes Wesleyans who are not part of the charismatic or pentecostal groups borrow some theology back from those sources, often without careful consideration of how it all fits together.

    I have encountered people with cobbled together theologies made up of mismatched elements from the Calvinist, charismatic, and Wesleyan traditions. Now often United Methodists are loose enough about their theology to make it sort of work. But Bratcher calls on Wesleyans to at least ask how this might be view from a Wesleyan perspective.

    I’ll leave the rest to him. Go and read.

  • Reading Part 6 (On Inerrancy)

    I somehow got the idea that the inerrancy series to which I linked yesterday was in five parts. A comment from the author let me know that I was wrong on that point, and how I got the idea I do not know, consider that the statement “*Part 6 will conclude with reflections on why the doctrine of inerrancy is important.” occurs at the end of the notes to part 5. But such is life in the blogosphere.

    You can now read part 6, and it does tie the package together. I would like first to quote portions of the author’s comment to my previous post here to set the stage. After gently reminding me of the sixth part, he said:

    I don’t want to give the impression that some people, such as yourself, are “too far away” to connect with. This was a paper I wrote for seminary last year, and given the space limitation I had to narrow down my argument rather strictly. To engage every possible position on inerrancy was not possible within the scope of the paper, but I believe I had something original to say to those who claim some sort of “limited inerrancy.”

    This is a good point which I did note. Now I don’t find that the premises he lists at the beginning of part 6 catch me. When he says “The Bible’s claims about its own integrity are a matter of faith and practice” as the second premise, I’m not sure I’d agree, but then I’m truly not one of the limited inerrantists whom he is addressing, and thus I might not evaluate that statement properly. I reject inerrancy in all its forms and I have problems with the term “infallibility” in many contexts. I’ll write more about that below.

    I have been frequently shocked by positions held by people who do claim to accept inerrancy. There seem to be people out there who profess some form of belief in inerrancy who are more liberal in their handling of the scriptures than I would be able to accept. One of these points is the late dating of the book of Daniel, which I have grave difficulties reconciling with inerrancy. I commented on this point in Earnest Lucas’s fine volume in the Apollos Old Testament Commentary series, in which he doesn’t specifically affirm a 2nd century date for Daniel, but does argue that one can affirm inerrancy and yet hold to a late date. I’m supposed to be the liberal on this issue, and I accept a mixed dating, with a historical Daniel and some fairly old stories supplemented by later Hebrew additions.

    You said “it’s a bit odd to use either a proof-texting approach or the approach of systematic theology to determine what the Bible must be.” I’d like to clarify that the argument I presented makes no claims to what the Bible must be (or must not be). My argument is more modest in that I’ve only argued what the Bible claims to be. Whether or not the Bible is what it claims is an entirely different point, and I’ve yet to present any argument regarding that.

    On this point, I understand the objection to my comments, but in the broader picture, the doctrine of inerrancy seems to me to result from systematic theology more than it does from observation of the Bible. In fact, the claim of inerrancy produces a considerable effort in explaining those elements of the Bible that don’t appear to fit the picture. I’m not only talking about explaining errors or reconciling contradictions, but also looking at the process. The synoptic gospels, for example, display signs of copying from one to another. The simplest explanation for stories with slight variations is that they are the same story remembered or passed on with slightly different details. The doctrine of inerrancy forces one to explain how the details really worked. An extreme version of this is Lindsell’s explanation of the cock crowings and denials that reconciled the stories in the gospels. Now one can’t be absolutely certain that Lindsell was wrong, but it seems very improbable that he was right. (I see a reference to this here. I don’t have a copy of The Battle for the Bible on hand to check the accuracy of that reference, however.)

    My preferred approach is to sit down with the Bible and ask, “Just what does this book appear to be, and what does it appear to do?” Having gotten a start at answering that question, I will move on to what precisely it is, and then I have some basis on which to interpret and apply statements such as 1 Timothy 3:16-17 (which winds up being very important in my view of inspiration as well) or 2 Peter 1:20-21.

    Welll, I started this post with “Biblical inspiration” fatigue, as in I’ve written way too much on the subject recently. But I should still say something about what I do believe. (Note that this is not in response directly to Roger’s series. I simply feel that I should make a positive statement to connect with any criticisms, thus giving people equal opportunity to criticize my views.)

    First, I do not think a doctrine of scripture, apart from a more general doctrine of how one discovers God’s will is likely to be valid. That is sort of like a view of how a house will be laid out sole by expressing the accuracy of the measuring tape. In such a case the measuring tape can be 100% accurate, but it’s practical accuracy is limited by the people who receive the information.

    This leads to my second point, which is that as human beings, we are always speaking of God’s word as we receive it. God’s word in God’s mind is always true and absolutely accurate. If we believe that God is infinite, his word in his mind is also without perspective, or perhaps more accurately with absolute perspective. We, on the other hand, never comprehend something without perspective, and those moments in God’s presence that simply hint at God’s absolute perspective are overpowering.

    Third, I hold that this perspective issue applies to the prophet who initially receives the revelation as much as to any other human. He will not absolutely comprehend the message, and based on recorded statements in scripture as well as observations of the written product, I see no validity in the idea that God’s inspiration involves dictation. (Now please don’t assume that I think inerrancy necessarily involves verbal dictation. The vast majority of inerrantists I know do not.) My particular point here is that the prophet understands and expresses the message as a human, and thus the received communication is itself limited. I would argue further that the received message is imperfect, but I have little time to follow that trail.

    Fourth, this results in the possibility of error at any stage of the transmission other than the thought in God’s own mind. The possibility of error applies to everything that is communicated because everything communicated goes through a human mind, is then copied by a human mind, and is later interpreted and applied by a human mind–all imperfectly.

    Inerrantists of my acquaintance accept that interpreters are all fallible, and certainly fallible in faith and practice as well as history and science. They accept that copyists may have made errors, though they would maintain those are few and of small import. I simply extend that one more step. Any human mind that transmits the word of God will do so in a limited way, i.e. imperfectly.

    So why read and depend on the Bible? Well, first, I don’t “depend on” the Bible as such. But generally this question tends to make me crazy. I depend on potentially fallible materials in my daily life. I am a fallible person who makes imperfect decisions, many of which I now know, from the eminence of 50 years (!) to have been really, really bad. I deal with imperfection. It is important to me that God is perfect, but I see no need for any human to be perfect.

    Now the Bible is a core element in my reception of God’s word, but by itself it is words on paper. I must bring all elements of God’s revelation together in order to have the faintest prayer of a chance of getting anything right. And that “prayer” of a chance is precisely what I do have. For me the Bible comes in a Spirit-filled community and is guaranteed to me not by the factual content of the text, on which I may change my mind in the next several seconds, but rather on the Spirit and the community with all the gifts and wisdom that God can give us. Even so I know that we will be in error from time to time.

    But even more importantly, I think we spend most of our times in the questionable areas, things on which we can quite reasonably disagree, while most of our actual problems come in areas on which we know what is right, and yet aren’t doing it. But again, that’s another point.

  • A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy

    Since I have staked out a pretty firm position as an opponent of Biblical inerrancy, I was interested in the series A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy on The A-Team Blog. The series comes in five parts:

    1. Part 1
    2. Part 2
    3. Part 3
    4. Part 4
    5. Part 5

    Some might expect me to go into a blow-by-blow refutation of such a post, but having recently written on it extensively in my book When People Speak for God (though that wasn’t my central topic), I really only want to call attention to it and highlight a few points.

    This series is well written and very clear, though some may be concerned that the author has covered a great deal of ground in large leaps. That is, however, the nature of essays and blog posts as opposed to multi-volume works on systematic theology. He defines inerrancy as he sees it very clearly. I suspect he would not include someone like me who denies inerrancy completely in the group he was addressing. As he notes:

    Even though the paper states so, I would like to make it clear that my argument is directed to those Christians who hold that the Bible is inerrant only in some areas (such as faith and practice), but not all areas in which it makes affirmations.

    Since I don’t view the Bible, as such, as inerrant in any area, perhaps I’m simply too far away from his point of view to connect at all. The standard difficulties occur. First, as I argue in my book (p. 16ff), it’s a bit odd to use either a proof-texting approach or the approach of systematic theology to determine what the Bible must be, when we have the Bible itself which we can examine, asking questions like just how it came together, how the prophets or other authors got the words that they wrote, how much those words are impacted by the surrounding culture, and so forth. The text of scripture itself tends to deny the results of systematic theologians; the Bible simply doesn’t operate the way they seem to think it should. How, for example, should one believe that all the words in the Bible are the words of God when the Bible clearly identifies many of them as the words of other people, often people who should not be believed? I know that sounds like an unsophisticated response. The inerrantists are sure to point out that they are not so stupid as to assume that when the inspired writer says that Satan, for example, says something, that must be true. It must, of course, be true that Satan said it. But even so that points to the Bible being something quite different than “the words of God” and suggests a more sophisticated approach.

    Second, the procedure of taking any Biblical text and applying it to all of the Bible, such as the usage of the favorite 1 Timothy 3:16-17, is questionable at best. Roger, our A-Team blogger, avoids this, but only partially, claiming that 1 Timothy 3:16-17 would apply to the Old Testament. I assume then that he would extend that application to the New Testament in forming his doctrine.

    But the process of canonization was not complete, even for the Old Testament at the time 1 Timothy 3:16-17 was written, so the assumption that the statement can be applied to the entire corpus of scripture is just that–an assumption. It happens to be an assumption that I would tend to agree with, though I understand God-breathed differently, but it is an assumption nonetheless. And would I agree with it in reference to the same canon? That is hard to tell.

    I would point out also that it is not primarily textual criticism that has brought inerrancy into question, but in one major way I think it should. In general, other higher critical methodologies are more of a challenge to inerrancy, as is historical study of the ancient near east. Because inerrancy as commonly defined applies to the autographs, textual criticism doesn’t really impact that definition.

    Or does it? I find it very odd that inerrantists claim that in order to have authority the Bible must be 100% without error. Even a slight error as the original author writes that autograph is fatal. Yet “essential accuracy” is what is required of those versions of the Bible that we have today. So apparently if manuscripts of the book of Acts differ by 10%, as the western text does from the Byzantine and Alexandrian texts, that’s OK. It’s textual variation. Through textual criticism we know what the text was to a very high degree.

    Now that is an assumption as well, because we have applied generally good principles of textual criticism and come up with the text that we have, but what about the poor early Christians who had the wrong text. Was it important that various Christians had differing texts for the book of Acts? Generally, inerrantists tell me know, pointing out that the variants are not doctrinally important. That’s a questionable point in itself, but is not critical here. The argument is that as long as it wasn’t done by the author, that 10% variation is not important. Even though it’s important that there was an inerrant autograph somewhere, nobody actually needs that inerrant autograph in order to have the truth–according to the inerrantists own arguments. I admit I just don’t get that argument.

    So let’s take a specific variant. According to 2 Kings 24:8 Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he began to reign. According to 2 Chronicles 36:9 he was 8. Now I like this variant because it is so obviously trivial. But it’s an interesting one from the point of view of inerrancy. In both Chronicles and Kings we are probably dealing with a compiler/editor who created the autograph. According to the doctrine of inerrancy, this variant is unimportant if it is the result of a copyists error. But supposing that the compiler of Chronicles, the one more likely to be wrong in this case, actually slipped up and wrote eight rather than eighteen in the autograph. Would that invalidate the truth of all of scripture? I find it astonishing that one can suggest that it’s critical if the error was made by the author, but unimportant if made by a copyist. The result in terms of the Bible I read, is the same.

    Obviously, I’m brushing past huge amounts of the argument in the series. I did want to call attention to it, however, because I think it’s a good summary of the other side on this issue.

  • Pope Benedict XVI on Creation-Evolution Controversy

    My sister e-mail me a link to this article on to me via e-mail.

    Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.

    The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.

    Now while I agree that there is much evidence for evolution (I think “scientific proof” is a poor use of terms), I have to say that I don’t think the debate is an absurdity. For folks like Dr. Kurt Wise (author of Faith, Form, and Time, who believes as an article of his faith that he must take Genesis 1-11 as accurate scientifically and historically, it does make a difference. I might call him bullheaded, but I shouldn’t call him stupid. Given that one assumption, the debate isn’t absurd, because from his point of view, the Bible must be false if evolutionary theory is true.

    I don’t have that same problem, because I don’t understand the Bible as a whole, or Genesis 1-11 in particular in the same way that he does. Yet while I continue to have a very low regard for scientific arguments in favor of young earth creationism, as I’ve indicated in several recent articles, and I object to young earth creationists identifying their one interpretation of Genesis as “the Christian faith,” it is obviously quite possible for people with substantial IQs to disagree.

    From the point of view of Catholic Biblical interpretation, it may, in fact, be absurd to come to a problem. I know that my wife, who was raised Catholic, never even saw this as an issue. I lack the knowledge of Catholic doctrine to comment intelligently on that fit. One assumes that Pope Benedict does not suffer from that deficiency, and that one can take his statement that the argument is absurd from that perspective as fairly definitive.

    The primary debate, however, is not between Catholic theologians. It is rather between Christian fundamentalists and some conservative evangelicals and other protestants for the most part. And there we have a simple divide.

    Tim LaHaye, in his book How to Study the Bible for Yourself states as his first rule of hermeneutics (p. 159), “Take the Bible literally.” In my copy of his book I have circled that statement and simply written “WRONG!” And there’s the key point of the debate. I don’t like the literal-figurative continuum as a single way of discussing how to take Biblical meaning. I prefer to discuss the types of literature involved, and what one might expect to get from those particular forms. As commonly understood, however, “literal” generally means “in the most concrete sense possible,” thus suggesting 7 literal 24 hour days, and accurate recording of all generations in the genealogies, for example. “Taking the Bible literally” in that sense of the word will result in support for young earth creationism.

    The controversy is real, and not absurd, however shocking certain positions in it may seem to any one of us.

  • Reacting to Biblical Criticism

    How does Biblical criticism relate to faith? How does one relate this to the work of the Jesus Seminar, for instance? Scot McKnight has an excellent answer in his post A Letter to a Question-full Christian (HT: Pseudo-Polymath). McKnight doesn’t deny the differences in the gospel texts (the main issue at hand), but he also uses some common sense explanations about how such things occur, and how that might relate to historicity.

    I do disagree with one sentence:

    No one dies for a myth, or at least they shouldn’t.

    I believe it is precisely for the myth that people are willing to die. But I am absolutely certain I am using the word “myth” in a different sense. If Jesus was simply a guy who died and was raised, there would be nothing to believe in. Think about his life. There is nothing there that has not at least been claimed of someone else, and except for the virgin birth, you can find similar experiences in scripture–martyr’s deaths, even resurrections. None of that convinced us that Jesus was God.

    We commonly use the term “myth” to as a sort of synonym for “wild fictional tale without historical foundation.” (OK, I exaggerate slightly, but allow me the fun.) I’m referring to the part that “ostensibly relates historical events usu. of such character as to serve to explain some practice, belief, institution, or natural phenomenon, and that is esp. associated with religious rites and beliefs” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary). The point is that we give greater meaning to the story of Jesus than the apparent physical happenings would warrant, even were all of them proven true. In my view nothing in the record would make us decide Jesus was God. We would probably decide he was the most impressive of prophets.

    But the myth that grows around him, that builds in the meaning and relates it to me now. Thus history can be flexible–not absent, but malleable–as Christians understand the mythos that results from Jesus.

    McKnight’s conclusion is great:

    Now, here’s where I have come: I believe in the Gospels and what they say about Jesus not simply because I have learned that they can be trusted on the basis of historical methods and inquiry, but more importantly because God has spoken to me through those records, because I have found Jesus to be utterly saving and wonderful, and because the Spirit who speaks to me is the Spirit who has spoken to others — beginning with the apostles who put down these sayings and events into words in such a way that the Church — the Church that is led by the same Spirit — has constantly told just this story about Jesus. It is the only story of Jesus I know; it is the story of Jesus that tells my story. Faith, my friend, is always involved in everything we confess in our faith, including the truthfulness of the story about Jesus. [emphasis mine]

  • Absolute Theology; Flexible Science

    One of the interesting things I note about creationists of various stripes is that they display a tremendous flexibility in interpreting physical data, they generally take hold of one approach to Biblical interpretation and nothing can move them. One of the clearest explicit statements of this position comes in the first three chapters of Kurt Wise’s book Faith, Form, and Time, and especially the second chapter “The Biblical Standard.” The entire section is titled “God’s Word on the Matter.” Wise is to be congratulated for stating his foundation honestly.

    One of the critical issues for Wise is the meaning of “kind,” to which he dedicates a chapter (“After Their Kind”). This is an area where old earth creationists and young earth creationists share a common problem. I’m not planning to delve into the whole area of baraminology, which I think will ultimately be fruitless, but simply to use it as a starting example of theological inflexibility combined with a view of the data that is so flexible it could almost be described as “formless and void.” I blogged about this some time ago, and simply noted that if one took “after their kind” phenomenologically, something that many very conservative Biblical interpreters will advocate for certain obviously non-scientific Biblical statements, one has no problem.

    “After their kind” simply states what we observe to be the truth on a day to day basis. Interpreting this phrase to mean that there is somewhere a barrier that genetic variation cannot cross is a variety of theological inflexibility. Inflexibly holding to a particular view of “after their kind” creationists are then forced to be hopelessly flexible with the physical data in order to create boundaries that do not appear to exist.

    I was reminded again about this when reading the Summary of Reasons To Believe’s Testable Creation Model and a response to it, and even a negative response from the young earth side. It’s especially interesting to see the young earth and old earth people tear one anther apart over Biblical interpretation. Old earth creationists are more flexible in their Biblical interpretation and more willing to hear scientific evidence, but they are still demonstrate the quality I’m discussing.

    It is not just the literary genre of Genesis that is taken as obvious, though that is the starting point. A certain set of Christian doctrines is also beyond discussion, and the assumption is made that if Genesis is not taken as narrative history, those doctrines will also fail.

    Let me just take an example from the Answers in Genesis document 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution. (I have taken the document form ChristianAnswers.net, but its origin is on AiG.) It would be fun to take this document apart point by point, simply because it so blatantly misrepresents evolution in general and theistic evolution in particular. Today, however, I want to note only one point, from their point #6:

    Theistic evolution does not acknowledge Adam as the first man, nor that he was created directly from “the dust of the ground” by God (Genesis 2:17). Most theistic evolutionists regard the creation account as being merely a mythical tale, albeit with some spiritual significance. However, the sinner Adam and the Savior Jesus are linked together in the Bible – Romans 5:16-18. Thus any view which mythologizes Adam undermines the biblical basis of Jesus’ work of redemption.

    Even in theistic evolution, there will be a “first man” somewhere, and there is no difficulty whatsoever with calling that first man “Adam.” Of course “created directly from ‘the dust of the ground’” is precisely where the disagreement is, but while they include that special item in their objection, they don’t explain how “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” harms the doctrines of the incarnation and redemption, which is what they are trying to defend. I have no numbers on how many theistic evolutionists regard Genesis as a “mythical tale,” but as someone who is a bit cautious with literary terms, I certainly don’t call Genesis 1 “myth” even though it has some elements of myth. Rather, it is theology, and specifically liturgy. As such, it not only has some “spiritual significance,” it is designed to present spiritual truths and to pass them on from generation to generation through worship.

    Creationists seem to think that if humanity took a considerable period of time to appear on the scene, then it is impossible for there to be a fall. But the fall, as described in Genesis, can very easily be understood as a fall from grace in a primitive state. Without the efforts of artists to make it look sort of like a modern nudist camp (with only two people and with trees and hair positioned strategically), all that Genesis implies is a primitive state in which the first humans managed the garden. There is an element here of the rural vs the urban that suggests that the story comes out of the period of early urbanization. One notes that after making himself into the ultimate bad guy, Cain heads off and builds a city (Genesis 4:17). None of this requires that the fall of humanity not be a historical event, though personally I think that this passage should be read with even more flexibility.

    Note that in the same document even progressive creationism (see their point #1) is regarded as dangerous. Thus the extremely strong evidence of an old earth must be disregarded totally in order to maintain a set of beliefs, including a literal garden of Eden, a historical moment of the fall, a “direct” creation of the man, and so forth. All of this is required in order to maintain the belief that Genesis 1 is narrative history.

    And yet with a little bit of flexibility, one could maintain the garden of Eden, as there must be a first human being, and there is nothing to require that God didn’t communicate with that human and direct him to some location. There is also nothing to say that God did that, outside of the Bible read as narrative history, but that’s beside the point. One could then have a historical rebellion by that first couple, followed by, of course, the story of redemption. Evolution does not interfere with the picture at all, unless of course one is incredibly rigid in reading literary materials.

    Essentially if the creationists would exhibit any of the flexibility they show in reinterpreting scientific information when they turn to their Bibles, they would find it easy to construct a doctrinal picture that would be in accord with orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, for them, facts produced by researchers in the field and the lab are to be treated with less respect than their literal, detailed, interpretations of Biblical texts.

    It’s not the Bible that’s the problem here so much as people who refuse to let the Bible speak in its own way in its own time. In ancient times it spoke to a pre-scientific culture. It could speak today in a scientific culture, but for it to do so, one must be ready to restate its principles in the context of new knowledge and new discoveries. Otherwise it simply becomes a barrier to knowledge.

  • Links on Biblical Inspiration

    A discussion of my book When People Speak for God is taking place on the Compuserve Religion Forum. At the same time, Amazon.com has dropped the price to $12.23 ($17.99 suggested retail).

    I have also just written some notes on Justin Holcomb’s book Christian Theologies of Scripture over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. While this book didn’t have an impact on mine, as I received my copy too late, I consider it an excellent resource for those interested in studying the inspiration of scripture.

  • Book: Christian Theologies of Scripture

    Note: This is a repost due to the database crash. I believe this is the only post that was not part of the restored backup, so we should now have all entries.

    Having just turned from a book which I did not find very helpful, I’m happy to present one which I consider an exceptional gift to the Christian community, Justin Holcomb’s Christian Theologies of Scripture.

    I wrote a short blog entry immediately after hearing about this book, promising that I would read it and then comment further. Well, that time has come. This book is everything I had hoped it would be.

    I have read selections from most of the authors referenced, but with my specialty in Biblical languages, grounded in ancient near eastern languages, I often miss things that happened after about 100 CE. I’m more likely to know the name of an Egyptian or Babylonian king than one from Medieval times. It’s easy to get an unbalanced perspective on a theologian by reading only selections of his work. I’d mention Aquinas as a good example. It’s exceedingly difficult to acquire a passing acquaintance with his work–he’s just too complex for that.

    For people like me, who are very interested in the topic, but who need some overview, Holcomb has managed to provide a superior learning opportunity. I would go so far as to recommend that anyone who takes discussion of Biblical inspiration, or who thoughtfully considers inspiration in connection with Bible study, should read this book. Part I, dealing with patristic and medieval theologies is worth it by itself. There is an overview followed by overviews of Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas. The reformation/counter-reformation section is worthwhile if for no other reason than to correct the common misconception of “sola scriptura” as understood by the reformers, and its twin misconception that Roman Catholic Bible study of the period was dead.

    I found Part IV, Contextual Theologies of Scripture least helpful, but that is not the fault either of Holcomb as editor nor of the selected authors. I just have to admit that for me, many of these views of inspiration just get a bit too wild, and so I have a hard time understanding why one bothers. Scripture in the African-American Christian tradition was an exception to that assessment–I found that chapter extremely helpful, and I think many preachers could learn something about preaching and applying scripture from that chapter. I must warn white guys like myself, however, that using African-American approaches to scripture can be hazardous. I was teaching once in an African-American church, and I was using some liberation vocabulary and applying some Old Testament stories to modern situations. One lady became more and more agitated until she raised her hand and interrupted me. “That’s all good enough,” she said, “But when are you going to deal with what it actually says?” She did have a point!

    In any case, I rate this one a clear 5 on my numerical scale.