It's been a while since my last post. After the election -- and Obama's landslide victory -- my desire for making statements seemed to wane a bit. I've been thinking about what I would like to post next -- what topic I would explore, or what thoughts I would have. I said in my initial post explaining the beginning of the blog and the significance of the title that I have wanted to in some way document my own intellectual and spiritual journey -- this was part of the purpose of the blog. I thought a while back I would like to post something about the Bible -- for a bit I was having interesting conversations with a couple of folks on thoughts about God, etc., and I was feeling compelled to spell out my thoughts on why I thought what I did about what it is that we know -- or think we know, about God, and even more specifically, how we know such things. So, the following post is an overtly religious one.
Systematic Theology was my focus in divinity school, and we would call this particular topic the doctrine of Revelation -- what we know about God, and how. For more orthodox theologians, this discussion would center around what it is that God has revealed to us -- meaning what God has chosen to let us know, and how we know it. For others, more progressive thinkers, revelation might be found in some places other than what one might expect, and could even take the form of what we can find out ourselves about God -- what might be there for us to know, which would presumably have been put there or at least allowed by God for us to know.
One of my professors used to liken systematic theology to a plate of spaghetti, when you pick up one strand, say Revelation (the doctrine, not the book), the others tend to follow -- for example, if I want to say what God is like (the doctrine of God) I could extrapolate that, but I would have to address somehow how it is that anyone has come to know what God is like. I would have to address how I can say the things that I say, that is, if I want to give reasons for it and not simply declare who and what God is by my own imagination. It would work the same way if, say, I wanted to talk about something like marriage in a theological way. I would have to address what marriage would be -- and thus I would have to discuss what it means to be a human person in theological terms (this would be theological anthropology). And again, inevitably, I would eventually need to justify what I have said by giving reasons for it and by justifying how I may make those claims at all -- how would one know these things -- again, revelation. It seems to be that many, if not all, theological questions are rooted in this doctrine. How does someone arrive at the conclusions they have come to about God and the world? Look at their ideas about how we know such things and you might find the answer. It sounds simplistic -- and perhaps it is. But it fundamentally informs ALL our theological ideas and opinions -- it fundamentally informs what we consider as TRUTH.
At any rate, this post is about the Bible -- and the upcoming Christmas season has gotten me thinking about it -- with the focus on the birth narratives of Jesus. As it relates to the above paragraphs, the Bible is considered by many Christians and especially by evangelicals as the primary source for knowledge about God and the world. Having grown up in the Southern Baptist Church, the Bible was spoken of as inerrant, and in many cases, literally true -- meaning that the Bible was accurate in all its accounts in every detail, including historical facts -- it was actually "the word of God" which many believed was in some way "dictated" to the authors of the various books -- biblical scholars call this the verbal plenary theory of inspiration. Now, this is certainly not the only theory of how the Bible is to be considered "inspired" -- other groups consider it inspired without having to be thought of as "dictated". Still, other Christians consider it inspired without that having the implications of "inerrancy" -- especially when it comes to matters of fact.
My journey began with the thoughts that I have identified as those associated with the Southern Baptist church -- this is what I was taught -- and it is significant to my own spiritual journey that I parted with those ideas and allowed myself to begin to ask questions, instead of simply believe out of command and fear. For me, one of the most difficult struggles I had in my earliest spiritual life was regarding the question of salvation -- specifically my own. My denomination taught that salvation was part of an experience of being "born again" which would culminate in entrance into heaven sometime after death. For whatever reason, I always questioned my own "born again" experience -- I was young, so there was no radical departure from a life of debauchery. I did what I was told I should and took for granted that it had worked, until sometime later when the question began to bug me. I searched the Bible for answers to my questions -- what did I need to do? How could I be sure? I read that all I had to do was believe in Jesus -- also that if I confessed with my mouth that "Jesus is Lord" and believed in my heart that God had raised him from the dead, I would be saved. But somewhere else, I read that I needed to repent -- which was something I had to do -- and had I truly done it? I didn't understand what that meant the first time I had asked God to save me -- did that mean it didn't work? The questions became very circular -- and no matter what I did -- no matter how many times I prayed -- I could not be sure about my own experience. And I was confused as to the lack of very clear instructions in the Bible -- did I do something, or did I only believe -- or both? It depended on which passage I read -- and I distinctly remember thinking in the pew of my church on a Sunday evening -- the Bible must not contradict itself, somehow it all fit together, even if I didn't understand it -- the pastors said that it did -- and they knew more than I did -- they understood the Bible. And there it was -- the first time I can isolate an experience of believing because I was told to believe, despite the facts, despite what I saw. I was telling myself not to question, but simply believe and it would work out.
That thought is now quite frightening to me. Believe despite the evidence to the contrary -- it seems incredibly dangerous. Yet, this sort of thinking gets lived out in churches all the time. Granted, it is often in a sort of non-conscious way -- many often don't literally pose the questions that way -- but they do it nonetheless -- or they simply never search the Bible enough to realize that thinking of it as "inerrant" or as literally true is problematic. How is it problematic -- why do I think that the Bible cannot be taken as literal in every sense or "inerrant"? So, I will attempt to delve here into my own thoughts on the doctrine of revelation.
I remember my Old Testament professor at Truett Seminary (Baylor University) starting out the class with some readings on how Baptists interpret scripture. Now, remember Baylor is not what I would call a liberal or progressive school. She began by pointing out that the idea that Scripture was inerrant was an idea or concept that Scripture NEVER claims for itself -- this is an idea imposed on the text by its interpreters. Now already a scripture may come to some minds that says "All Scripture is inspired . . . useful for teaching . . . etc,." Yet, to what Scripture is this referring? At best it can only be referring to the Old Testament, for when Paul wrote this (if indeed he wrote it) the New Testament did not yet exist -- not even the Gospels. The idea that the Bible we have now -- from Genesis to the book of Revelation -- is a well-defined and deliberate volume -- consistent and without internal contradiction, as well as accurate in its historical detail -- is not found in the Bible itself -- and well, is a notion that is easily refuted. In fact, one need not even take external evidence -- like the lack of historical and archeological corroboration with Biblical stories, like the narrative similarities between the Bible and other ancient texts, like the historical accounts of how the Bible as we have it was put together -- to see that this idea of inerrancy is shaky. One need to only consider the Bible itself. The Bible itself provides ample evidence that it cannot be taken literally in every sense -- and cannot be understood honestly as "inerrant".
I will provide a couple of examples: Starting with Genesis -- the first two chapters contain what appears to be two distinct creation stories -- each has its own order of creation; in one human persons are the last created, in the other they are the first. So, the question arises, which is it? Did God create humanity as the crown of the creation -- last and most important? Or, did God create a man first, search for a partner for him amongst the animals, and then as an afterthought, create the woman? They are both there in the text. Which is it?
Another curious example is the story of Noah, which is almost certainly a borrowed story from other ancient flood narratives -- older than the Biblical story. In one account, Noah takes in the animals two by two. In another there are seven of each. Which is it? 2 or 7? In the church we sort of mish-mash all these accounts into one overarching narrative -- like the way we think of Jesus life -- which is actually a conglomeration of the four gospels -- but in reality each gospel presents a different aspect of Jesus' life and intentions -- yet we think of these stories as one continuous narrative, when in fact there are four.
That takes us on a leap into the New Testament where the four gospels give us different accounts of the details of Jesus' life. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and John disagree on many details concerning the passion, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. There are numerous other factual discontinuities in the Bible -- and the point here is not to catalogue them all -- they can be found on many sites and in many books of detailed studies of the Scripture. The point here is that the factual discrepancies -- that is the internal inconsistencies in the Bible -- not to mention those things which clearly contradict ALL other sources of information and evidence -- basically put to rest the notion of an inerrant text and/or a text that should be understood as literally accurate. Or at least is SHOULD put those notions to rest.
So, where does that leave the Bible? Well, it certainly DOES NOT mean that the Bible should simply be thrown out -- although I wouldn't argue too much with some passages being seriously questioned -- like the offering of Lot's daughters to be raped -- or the rape of the concubine who is subsequently hacked into pieces and sent throughout the kingdom of Israel -- neither of which God seems to have a problem with. There are others, but that would be a digression here. Even though there are questionable passages, it doesn't mean that we have to throw out the baby with the bath water. What I think has to be done is to find some sort of interpretive fulcrum for the Scripture -- say, what Jesus said that the law and the prophets were all about -- love God and love your neighbor as yourself. A Christian could take this as an interpretive fulcrum and weigh the rest of Scripture from this. And I think this would be an adequate Christian reading of Scripture.
How one would measure what amounts to the love of God and neighbor would be less clear and concrete -- it would take some thought -- some weighing out -- perhaps some dependence on the Spirit -- which Paul was so adamant about -- instead of relying strictly on the law -- but to look to the Spirit within the person to guide them into right action -- the mature would live by the Spirit, not by the law.
But I would go further also -- by stating that there are other ways we know about things -- not just from revealed Scripture -- or from the leading of the Spirit -- but also by what is clearly given to us -- some may call it revealed by nature. And there is no better interpreter of nature that we have -- nothing that has been so successful in leading us into knowledge about the world than science. So, I would also include science as a source of revelation -- at least about the world -- and maybe even about God -- at least by deduction. I am an advocate of an integration model of the relationship between science and religion -- ultimately, in my opinion, they should say the same things and not contradict one another. The model of science is one that is open to correction -- to progress. Unfortunately, the model of religion has often not been open to correction, but has enforced static codes and laws once and for all -- because it believes that it has received them from God -- even if they are internally inconsistent and contradictory. This, in my opinion, is why religion has so often taken a beating from science -- because science has allowed itself to progress, while religion has dug in the trenches and attempted to conserve itself, rather than look for where it could have been wrong. Honestly, does it not seem interesting that Bronze Age myths and stories are still guiding our beliefs about how the world originated and continues to operate? Can we learn from those stories without having to accept them as LITERALLY true? Of course we can! I think definitely!
Now, this post has gotten ENTIRELY too long! And the last bits are probably not fully fleshed out enough, but hopefully the ideas are there. Here is my tiny little doctrine of revelation -- or just some thoughts on it. It is not meant necessarily as an attack on thinking about the Bible as inerrant or literal, but as a catalogue of my own thoughts on the subject -- and that was the beginning point of my own thoughts about the Bible, and where I have journeyed from after years of study -- personal, devotional, and academic. I personally have taken Jesus' comment on the law and prophets as my own fulcrum for judging the Scripture from a Christian perspective. That means for me that some passages have more weight than others, some are questionable, and some could just be thrown out as guides for moral and ethical behavior. The Bible is a wonderful book -- full of stories useful for reflection and teaching -- sometimes for what not to do, sometimes for what to do. Sometimes its meaning in ambiguous -- and sometimes its different passages contradict each other. Best of all and where it is most inspired, I think it can help to tell us how to love -- but it's not black and white -- but the Scripture was never that anyway -- with it's many shades-- the moral world of the Bible has always been gray -- even if we have not understood it to be so.
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