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| A detail of the Saint John's Bible, designed and illustrated by Donald Jackson and colleagues. Monmouth, Wales, United Kingdom. Commissioned by Saint John's Abbey and University, Collegeville, Minnesota. A gift to Mayo Clinic by Stephen and Barbara Slaggie |
I’ve been reading an interesting book about the proper role of women in Christian churches. What actually interests me most about the book is not its conclusions about women in Christian churches, but how the author, a conservative Christian Bible scholar and the product of evangelical divinity schools, chooses to think about the Bible. Because of her theological education in this environment, the author believes not only that the Bible is a special and supernatural book, but that the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew words translated for us into English, were individually inspired by God.
In essence, the author works from the assumption that the Bible is not just God’s Word, it is God’s words.
Though this may be a common view in conservative evangelical Christianity, it wasn’t until reading this treatise on women in the church that I recognized how different is my own understanding of biblical inspiration. Readers of my blog will perhaps not be surprised to hear this, based on the past essays posted here (for example this and this and this).
I contend that the Bible should be understood as a scrapbook, not as a textbook.
Let me also be clear that what I am sharing here are my own opinions based on informal Bible study. I claim no formal divinity school training at all. I am not a Bible scholar. I read neither Greek nor Hebrew nor Aramaic.
And I could be wrong.
But, what I write follows from 40+ years of thinking and reading since I first understood that the remedy for my guilt and moral failings comes through accepting that Jesus Christ died in my place. My faith in him undeservedly grants me his righteousness forever.
Is the Bible God’s Word or is it God’s words?
I will begin by making it quite clear that the ancient texts collected and translated as our Bible are strikingly unusual with respect to the strong evidence for their faithful and accurate transmission over centuries. Though no original manuscripts are available, the copies of copies that have been handed down provide evidence of accurate transmission that far exceeds that available for any other ancient texts. It appears that these biblical documents have been transmitted with care and accuracy.
This, however, does not imply that the documents are supernatural or have been supernaturally preserved from error.
The faithful transmission of these documents also does not tell us if they are God’s Word or God’s words. That judgement requires a decision on our part.
We need to remember that what Christians now call the Bible was assembled through a process over multiple centuries. This process involved collecting separate documents and various committee discussions and eventually votes on the canon, i.e. the essential compilation.
The Muratorian Canon fragment is a barely-legible copy of a canon list thought to date to AD 170 , including most of our familiar New Testament books, but without the letter to the Hebrews, the letter of James, and the first and second letters of Peter. The fragment is also unclear about whether the three letters of John were included. This suggests that a somewhat shorter version of the New Testament collection was recognized perhaps 140 years after Jesus’ death (the same number of years that separates me from the birth of my great grandparents).
By AD 363, the Council (committee) of Laodicea had settled on the same Old Testament books that we recognize, plus the equivalent of our New Testament without the book of Revelation. Importantly, that council also recognized two Apocryphal books as belonging in the collection. These latter are books where the value and extent of divine inspiration were debated by the committee.
The current form of our Old Testament with five Apocryphal books and a New Testament canon with our 27 books is evident by AD 367 when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria summarized them in a letter.
The Council of Carthage (AD 397) affirmed this modern list as authoritative, including the five Apocryphal books.
Thus within 350 years of Jesus’ death (the same number of years that separates me from Isaac Newton) a canonical Bible collection had been assembled. It should be emphasized that the value of the Apocryphal books in this canon continues to be debated even now. Catholic and Orthodox churches have voted to retain them, and Protestant churches have voted that these questioned documents should not be included in modern Bibles. Thus, although the Apocryphal books are generally not considered to carry essential Christian doctrines, we must admit that the question of which documents really belong in “the canon” is still actually unresolved.
Interestingly, as recently as five centuries ago professor of theology, Bible translator, and reformer Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) disputed the value of certain biblical books, suggesting that all Bible books are not equally inspired. Luther proposed what amounts to a New Testament Apocrypha. He considered the letter to the Hebrews, the letters of James and Jude, and the book of Revelation to be disputed books with lower doctrinal value. Luther positioned these books separately in his German Bible translation, along with the traditional Apocryphal books.
This exercise reminds us that the Bible itself provides no table of contents. Humans are responsible for that. Christians trust that God’s wisdom influenced table of contents committees over the centuries. Those committee debates still aren’t quite settled.
I argue here that while the original Bible documents could be a supernatural and miraculous collection of God’s words, this is not actually a claim of the Bible authors, and it is not a necessary assumption for Christians who take the Bible seriously and seek to study it as God’s Word.
Instead, I see the Bible as a fascinating and complex collection of ancient documents representing many different kinds of literature written by many different authors for many different reasons over many centuries. I see the Bible as an extremely valuable collection because it tells a transcendent story that explains our purpose in the universe. This is one thing that science cannot explain. The stories told in the Bible are braided into one over-arching message of rescue and redemption. I think it is the most compelling story I’ve ever heard, and I think that’s why I believe it. It’s too beautiful not to believe.
Though there are facts to reference, my faith is inspired by an aesthetic argument, perhaps a surprising confession from a scientist.
The Bible is worth studying as the Word (that is, message) of God, but is it the words of God?
Beyond the story that God worked alone to inscribe the Ten Commandments on stone tablets in the book of Exodus, the Old Testament writers sometimes claim other forms of divine inspiration, using phrases like “Thus says the Lord.” In other cases, God’s voice is quoted. This doesn’t clarify whether what was inspired were ideas or individual words.
The New Testament claims about inspiration are more interesting. The author of the book that motivated this essay had been trained in a system where the original words of the Bible books are assumed to be supernatural and inerrant, so any biblical claims of inspiration must therefore be true.
What are these claims? I pick four examples (showing the New International Version translation):
2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
This familiar passage makes a claim for all Scripture, but it is entirely debatable whether Paul thought that his own letters or other documents later collected as the New Testament should be considered to be included as what he meant by Scripture. Evangelical Christians choose to adopt this view, but it is not at all self-evident. It seems more likely to me that Paul was referencing the Jewish Scriptures. We don’t know. Moreover, it is not clear what Paul means by God-breathed. It is not necessary to interpret this as God choosing words. God can inspire in many ways to convey a message. God inspires actions and he inspires creativity in forms other than writing. God inspires art. This inspiration is not limited to written words. God is far more powerful than that.
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
This powerful passage does not help us distinguish between the Bible as containing the Word of God or the words of God. It says that whatever is meant by “word of God” is powerful. Does this refer to the Jewish scriptures? More? Less? We don’t know. One thing is clear, there was no New Testament when this passage was written.
2 Peter 3:15-16
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
The conservative author of the book that inspired this essay uses this verse as a proof text for the Bible being the words of God. According to this reasoning, if Paul claims that all Scripture is God-breathed, and if Peter considers Paul’s letters to be like other “Scriptures” then Paul’s letters, at least, should be considered as word-for-word God-breathed Scripture. I see this as unnecessary circular reasoning to justify a narrow view of how the Bible is inspired. It's pretty much saying: “Why do I think the Bible is inspired? Because it says it is, and because the Bible is inspired then it must be true. And because ‘inspired’ must mean that every word was given by God then the whole Bible must be understood as word-for-word true.”
Sorry. Not convincing to me.
2 Peter 1:20-21
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Here again we are confronted by uncertainty about what Peter considered to be Scripture? The Jewish Old Testament? Paul’s letters? Peter’s own letters, including this one? And which prophets are being mentioned? Old Testament authors? It is again not at all clear that this passage can be applied to itself and to other documents only later collected as the New Testament. Regardless of which prophecies of Scripture are described, the inspiration resulting from being “carried along by the Holy Spirit” need not imply word-for-word dictation. That assumption has been added by conservative scholars. Why not inspired in the same sense that music, painting, sculpture, and dance are inspired?
Thus, I choose to believe that the documents of the Bible have been accurately transmitted through history as a wonderful scrapbook, not a textbook, and they convey God’s Word (message), not God’s words. This view is consistent with what the Bible authors, themselves, write. This view explains the complexities and cultural contexts in which the stories are embedded. This view requires that a lot of homework be done before trying to understand the documents that convey the message. This view implies that God’s Word is carried by the thrust and themes of the stories, not by their individual words. This view allows for misunderstandings, contradictions, errors, exaggerations, pride, prejudice, pre-scientific explanations, politics, myths, and folklore. All these aspects of human literature can certainly be inspired by God.
It is threatening to some to perceive that the thrust of a message is more important than its individual words. This means that work must be done to understand the main point and resist normalizing cultural and temporal references that are tangential to that message and that, in fact, can distract from it.
The conservative author whose book inspired this essay devotes hundreds of pages in preparation before confronting the following familiar (notorious?) passage from St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy:
1 Timothy 2:11-13
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
Whether or not it has been properly interpreted, this and other verses have contributed for generations to a Christian culture that represses women and minimizes female leadership. I admire her, but the conservative author whose book inspired this essay has no self-consistent option except to say that the words reproduced above are translations of God’s own Greek words. She then must engage in all manner of logical and linguistic and hermeneutical gymnastics to try to escape the plain meaning of the text. Indeed, she gets points for trying.
However, I find this wriggling to be tremendously unsatisfying and unnecessary. Paul was writing in a time and place separated from us by 20 centuries of scientific insight and cultural evolution. This particular section of his writing simply reveals that Paul, no matter how progressive, is a creature of his culture and particular circumstances in a land far away and long ago. We should expect no different from a historical letter transmitted accurately across the centuries. This does not require us to understand these to be God’s words to us, even though they are collected as part of God’s Word (message).
I am attracted by the idea that the Bible is a complex and beautiful collection of documents, organized later by wise but struggling humans doing their best to sort out texts that shed light on God’s beautiful thematic story. I have no problem believing that God’s grace somehow led to this collection, without me needing to accept the document as a collection of God’s words, and without me needing to take sides on debates about whether the individual documents in the collection are equally inspired.
The authors don’t claim that, and we don’t need to. The beauty and transforming power of these documents don’t require such a limited view.
Thus, I don’t have a problem with the passage above from Paul’s second letter to Timothy because I simply don’t think it applies in modern America. It may accurately describe Paul’s opinion at the time and place that it was written, but that’s it. It is our responsibility to do homework to determine what should or must or must not be applied here and now. We should not be surprised at all when culture and science have moved us past the context of the authors. We should read carefully and seriously, but then discern which particulars do and do not apply. This should not be surprising.
Inevitably it will be objected that picking and choosing will result from this approach. I agree. Picking and choosing are exactly what we should do with a complex collection of historical documents. If we are honest, we must admit that we already do this all the time.
What do we do to find common ground if the individual words of the Bible are not themselves supernatural, and if people disagree over what does and does not apply to our current circumstances so many centuries after these texts were composed? Easy. We focus on the major themes and the beautiful rescue message carried by the text. We avoid preoccupation by distracting minor topics where culture and history cast doubt on modern applicability.
This is one reason why the history of Christianity is marked by the composition of great creeds authored by committees, the same kinds of committees that voted on the canon of documents to include as the Bible collection. The goal of creeds is to place focus on the important teachable themes and set aside distractions. If we read the great creeds, things are simplified. For example, it was in AD 325 that a committee in Nicaea first decided on this creed:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
By whom all things were made;
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man;
He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And in the Holy Ghost.
The essay you are reading was motivated by soul-searching inspired by a thoughtful and analytical but fraught book by a conservative author struggling with a theology of gender relations in the modern Christian church, while adhering to the belief that the Bible is God’s words. I admire the author’s valiant attempts and consistency within her conservative theology. I appreciated her book because it helped me realize that the author and I love and serve the same God and have accepted the same undeserved sacrifice to set us free.
But we understand the Bible differently.
To me, the Bible is God’s Word, not his words.
12.22.21
