What to Believe about the Bible

Ninth Wednesday after Pentecost

Wednesday is theology day on the blog. I'm guessing that you didn't notice in my series on difficult things in the Apostles' Creed that I had nothing on the Bible. Yes, that's because neither the Apostles' Creed nor the Nicene Creed says anything about the Bible. As far as most of the early Christians were concerned, you were fine to believe whatever you wanted about the Bible. In fact, when the Apostles' Creed was written, it still wasn't entirely decided what books should be in the Bible. The ideas of fundamentalism, Biblical inerrancy, and Biblical literalism are not to be found in the hundreds of volumes of writings of the church fathers through the eighth century. They could get very literalistic and dogmatic about the Creeds, but not about the Bible. 

The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is a more recent invention, predominantly late nineteenth century. It was set in stone, as it were, in the early 20th century by a small group of professors from Princeton Theological Seminary as one of what they called the Five Fundamentals. The others are the Virgin Birth, The Bodily Resurrection of Christ and the Physical Return of Christ,  the literal nature of the miracles stories, and the Substitutionary Atonement. I don't remember the names of all the Princeton profs. I think there were five. I remember two. J. Gresham Machan wrote an excellent first year Greek textbook, which I used for a couple of years in my Greek classes. B.B. Warfield taught preaching and was considered a great preacher. OK, here's how old I am. B.B. Warfield's grandson, Ross Warfield, was my sophomore roommate and a fellow Greek student at Duke. Anyway, those original fundamentalists from Princeton left and founded Westminster Theological Seminary, which still operates and is best known for its Choir School.

So here's the big problem with inerrancy. It's wrong. The Bible has scores of contradictions. Here are just a very few. If you're reading the blog's Acts Bible Study, read about the death of Judas in Acts 1:18. He falls forward in a field and his bowels gush forth (yuck!). Then read Matthew 27:3-5. There he commits suicide by hanging himself. How about this one: In 1 Samuel 24:1-2, God tells David to make a census of the people of Israel. In 1 Chronicles 21:1 it's Satan who tells David to make the census. Read the fuller context of both. It's the same census. Different Biblical authors can see the same event differently. Read Mark 16:1-8, Matthew 28:1-10, Luke 24:1-11, and John 20:1-18. They are all accounts of the woman/women finding the tomb of Jesus empty on that first Easter Sunday. Note who tells her/them that Jesus is risen. In Mark it's one man. It Matthew it's one angel. In Luke it's two men. In John it's two angels. Or read the two genealogies of Jesus, Matthew 1:1-18 and Luke 3:13-38. Both are genealogies through the line of Joseph. They completely disagree from David to Joseph. 

So if we reject Biblical inerrancy, what do we believe about the Bible. Here are a few of my own principals of Biblical interpretation:

1. The Bible was written by fallible human beings. Some wrote better than others. Some had more accurate historical information than others. Some were smarter than others. Different people understand the same events in different ways. 

2. The Biblical writers were products of their own time. They had no understanding of modern day science. The Bible is not a science book. 

3. The writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit did not take away their fallible humanity. 

4. The New Testament is more important than the Old. The Gospels are more important than the rest of the New Testament. The words of Jesus are more important than the rest of the Gospels. This is not to say that anything in the Bible is not important. 

5. The Bible contains the foundation of the Christian faith.

6. Not just one interpretation of Biblical sayings and stories is correct. There can be multiple interpretations that are good. There can also be bad interpretations. 

7. Common sense is one of the best tools of Biblical interpretation.

8. Understanding the historical context of anything in the Bible increases our understanding of everything in the Bible. 

There is, of course, much much more.

Faithfully,

Christian