Biblical Truth..an Oxymoron?
It has always been interesting to me how so many churches can claim Biblical truths but interpret scriptures vastly different. I have to laugh..I heard a priest today say that the Biblical truth is always in a state of flux. How does truth change and who makes the decision that truth is no longer valid and that the new wisdom is correct? I grew up with the belief that the Bible was the infallible word of God. WHY? Because that was what my parents and church told me to believe. As I have grown in my own faith, I see how ridiculous it is to assume that the Bible is the unquestionable, written Word of God. I am in no way saying that it is not, however, I am equally saying that the possibility that the Bible is a document written by fallible men is also a distinct possibility.
After a great deal of research, I find that the Bible was written by men of God who chronicled observations of the events of their day. The gospels written in the later years of the authors’ lives, possibly to preserve the record of Christ’s life, before their deaths. Others were letters written to churches and individuals and were incorporated into the messages delivered to the early christians. Much later, the scriptures were finalized by either tradition (including books by historical precedence) or as a formal canonization by consensus. Armed with this knowledge, when did the idea that the Bible was in infallible occur? Good question. I have found no credible authority to convince me that it did not merely happen within the sermons and teachings of subsequent preachers. However, in that the Bible shows example after example of man’s inability to follow God and demonstrates how God’s people have largely been a disobedient lot, why would we not believe that scriptures were written by mere men?
Here’s one possibility: The Bible is literally the only authoritative text that those who preach the scriptures have to validate what they want their congregations to believe. Without that authority, how does a minister convince his flock that what he says is true? Absent biblical infallibility, the individual is left to sort out the writings of those who lived before and after Christ and to determine for themselves what Christ’s true message was. I believe that our adherence to church doctrine may have caused us to miss the true message of Christ.
I will always add the caveat that I am a layman, and being such will never tell you what to believe, i.e. Adam and Eve, the flood, etc. What you believe is totally between you and your God. I will let you know what I believe. However, I want you to question your faith and live with conviction, those truths you find as you study the scriptures, and much more importantly, the life of Christ.
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I think you can find indications within the Bible itself of support for the view of God infallibly inspiring fallible humans to speak his message without error. For example, the test of whether someone is a genuine prophet in Deuteronomy is whether every prediction comes true. Psalm 119′s ways of speaking about the law of God, which in this case at least includes the five books of the Torah but may well include God’s word as a whole (sometimes the word is used for that), indicates that it’s very reliable, completely trustworthy, and entirely true. I Timothy describes all scripture as God-breathed. So the idea of God inspiring fallible human beings to produce writings that reflect what God wanted us to have is certainly not new with later Christians.
I beleive you just made my point. You cannot, by any measure, use scripture to validate scripture. By that standard, Joseph Smith, writer of the Book of Mormon, could be equally justified in saying that he was speaking for God as he wrote. What I would like to get some agreement on is that it is very possible that the Bible was written by man and that, although, inspired by God may not necessarily be exactly what God wanted printed. Is it not possible that man misinterpretted God…? I will again add that it may very well be the literal word of God but if it is not, then could we not then use Christ’s life as a template for how we must live our lives?
Do you really believe in the Adam and Eve story and that there is no other interpretation? How about Noah? Jonah? If one could be a story passed down from age to age and not necessarly literal…which do we believe without question?
My reason for pointing this out is that I would not be astonished to find out that we have gotten Christ’s message wrong…and if not wrong maybe slanted by he writer.
I wasn’t using scripture to justify scripture. You were saying that you didn’t think there was any evidence that anyone even had a certain idea before a certain point. I pointed out that the idea occurs long before that point. The fact that the idea happens to occur in the Bible doesn’t make any difference to the point I was making. If it’s in the Bible, then it’s before the point you were declaring.
You could similarly refute the claim that there was never any idea of God living on another planet as a physical being before the 20th Century by pointing to the Book of Mormon. You don’t have the think the Book of Mormon is true to make such a point. My argument isn’t anything like trying to prove that the Bible is inspired by saying it’s inspired. That would be circular if that were all I was doing.
Now I think there are arguments you could give to use the internal evidence of the scriptures as support for it, but that isn’t even what I was doing. I do think you could argue that the contents of the Bible are so coherent in message despite being from across such a large swathe of time and with so many genres of literature that you might count it as evidence that one being is behind it all. Or you might argue that the fact that it gives prophecies that came true after those prophecies were given counts as evidence for the Bible’s truth. Or you might argue that human beings wouldn’t come up with something like the Bible on their own, because it’s message isn’t one anyone would (in our human nature) really want to hear, because it would require us to change our lives.
I’m not defending all such arguments (although I’ve defended some arguments like them here), just pointing out that you can use the contents of a text to argue for the text’s truth without it being the simplistic and circular argument that you charged me with making. The argument I was actually making was neither this non-circular kind nor the circular kind, though. It was simply pointing out that your statement is false when you claim that the idea of infallibility in the text might have come much later than the time of Jesus. The entire Hebrew scriptures existed before Jesus’ time, and you find it in them.
I hope you do not feel I am charging you with anything. What I am simply trying to convey is that it is entirely possible that the Bible is “not”, in it’s entirety, the literal Word of God. I am similarly saying that it is entirely possible that it “could” be. However, in coming posts, I am presenting ideas that assume that the Bible is God-inspired but not necessarily literal.
If any verse is questionable, then all verses are questionable. We can then conclude that it is by faith we believe. So many Christians believe because someone has told them what to and never delve any deeper. I feel this is weak and can only result in a shallow faith. As for biblical truth, my contention is that we have a fairly reliable account of the life of Christ and a non-Jewish, antagonistic account (Josephus) to validate the gospel writings. I believe Mark was the first of the gospels to be written. Because of the closeness of the four, I feel it is probably safe to assume that the three subsequent gospel authors had Mark’s texts to refer to when writing theirs. If so, since it was still fresh in their minds and if Mark had misstepped, I would like to believe that one of them would have refuted him. The gospels tend to agree.
It is Christ’s life and teachings that I find the most important to our lives today and that some interpretations of His life and mission may be erroneous. I stress “may” because as a lay person, I may be totally off base. But that is why I am writing this blog. I want honest discourse, hopefully to help me solidify my beliefs and in turn help others with similar questions, solidify theirs.
From my work with young people, I also believe that it is the use of certain absolutes that cause many would be believers to question and eventually reject christianity. I find this heart-breaking and would like to those individuals see Christ as I believe He would want them to.
Please feel free to continue to address this post and I will add another soon. I hope we can get others to join in.