Sunday August 18, 2019
Step 2 in our quest for a religion which doesn’t require us to pretend anything has to do with jettisoning ancient texts. What follows goes for any of them but focuses on the central text of Christianity, because that is the writer’s religious tradition.
If ever confronted with the common evangelical question Do you accept the Wholly Buy-Bull as the Authoritative and Inerrant Word of Gawd?, it is very important to answer No, of course not. Why would I?
Here’s why you wouldn’t.
First. Jesus didn’t have a Bible and Christianity got along just fine without one. Take those paintings of Jesus holding the Holy Bible in the crook of his arm and file them along with other anachronisms, such as presidential statements about founding fathers securing airports during the American Revolution. Centuries separated the life of Jesus of Nazareth and anything bound on the left remotely like a Holy Bible.
The things generally required for a member of the Christian faith to believe are listed in two similar and compact creeds, known as the Apostles’ and Nicene. Neither contains anything like “I believe in the Holy Bible, the authoritative and inerrant word of God.”
Second. The Bible doesn’t ask us to accept it as Authoritative, Inerrant, or the Word of God. Those claims are made for it, not by it. Although he’s the most often quoted source for the holiness of the Bible (having written as a sideline that all scripture is inspired by God), what would Paul say at a modern church service upon hearing the Reading of the Epistle? He’d probably jump up and shout “Hey, that’s not the Word of God, that’s just taken from one of my letters!” One man’s correspondence is another man’s scripture.
Bible is a word meaning book. The Bible is a type of book called an anthology, or collection of books. There are two versions in common circulation and they don’t contain the same number of books. So much for authoritative. Authorship of the individual books is not generally a mystery. The names of the authors are on many. None claims to be the Book of God. Some of the more important books, the Gospels, differ on central issues – such as what day Jesus was crucified. There goes inerrant.
Belief in the holiness of ancient texts is simply idolatry in literary garb and needs to be called out as such. Invisible gods are a hard sell, ask any missionary, so tangible talismans come in handy. The Bible and the Cross are the two most powerful talismans in Christianity. If you find yourself falling off a cliff and can only grab one, grab the Cross. In it may be your salvation (more on this in a future post). The other is just a book.
MOE
M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity