The following is an excerpt from the chapter on the Bible in my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. An e-version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.
Christians have long believed that
the Bible was inspired by God, basing this doctrine on Second Timothy 3:16,
which states, “All scripture is inspired by God.” The word translated as “inspired” literally
means “God-breathed,” and although the author of these words would have been
speaking specifically about the Hebrew Scriptures, Christians would most
certainly include the books of the New Testament as those inspired by God. But what do we mean by “inspiration”?
Most seminary students can list
the various theories that have been proposed to describe the action of divine
inspiration. From those theories that
view the scriptures as produced by gifted human authors, to the idea that God
gave a message to the author, who then used his own words in writing the text,
to the theory that God dictated every particular word of the text, each
hypothesis has been debated by theologians across the range of Christian
thought. Indeed, schisms in
denominations and local churches have happened over disagreements over how one
defines inspiration. Moreover,
professors of theology have been fired from their institutions and
excommunicated from academic societies based their definition and explanation
of divine inspiration.
While 2 Timothy 3:16 clearly
states that “All scripture is God-breathed,” this does not mean that we must
accept the idea that every word was dictated by God to the human author, who
then recorded those words. Again, if we
take the author of 2 Timothy seriously, we can only admit that this verse is in
reference to the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.
Yet, even if we recognize the New Testament as inspired by God, it is
not compulsory to believe that every single word of the text was inspired by
God. One’s critical approach to
scripture or to any theory of divine inspiration does not in and of itself
negate one’s faith in God or the Bible as a source of faith. To view the text of scripture as having a
human origin as much as a divine one does not make one less faithful in one’s
belief in God, and is really more intellectually honest with the evidence.
In fact, the texts of scripture
actually give more evidence to human involvement in their production than they
do of divine inspiration. This does not
mean that we need to throw out divine inspiration altogether. But we must ask two very important and
interrelated questions if we are to define, at least at some level, the idea of
inspiration. Why did the writers of the
books of the Bible write and why did they write what they wrote?
Those holding to verbal or literal
inspiration would answer that God led these biblical authors to write what they
wrote. This may be true at some level,
but there is no way for us to know this.
In fact, a critical and historical investigation of the Bible, as I have
suggested above, leads us more in the direction of concluding that these
authors chose of their own free will to write and to write what they
wrote. Thus, it might be helpful for us
to answer the questions about why these texts were written, and why the authors
wrote what they wrote, by considering why the two communities that produced the
two portions of the Bible would have done so.
In approaching the question from this angle, we are being more
intellectually honest with the text.
Obviously, we must speak here in
generalities when we talk about ancient Israel, from whom we received the
Hebrew Bible, and early Christianity, from whence comes the New Testament. Across the time and space of both of these
communities, but particularly ancient Israel, there was much diversity that has
become a part of the text of scripture.
The people of Israel viewed
themselves as different from the other nations that surrounded them. They believed their God was supreme over
other gods, and that their God had created the physical world from nothing and
had chosen them as a covenant people.
This belief certainly influenced their understanding of the world and
other peoples, but it also influenced the telling of their stories, both orally
and then through written texts.
To put it succinctly, Israel’s
texts of scripture came forth from the people of Israel in response to what
they believed about God and what God was doing.
In other words, they were theologically interpreting history and they
were telling their history from a theological point of view. Their understanding of God and the world influenced
the way they told their stories, from the creation story, to the flood story,
to the Exodus story, to the stories of conquering the land of Canaan through
violence, and the stories of their Exile and their return.
In approaching an understanding of
the writing of the New Testament books, we must remember two things. First, the earliest followers of Jesus were
Jewish, and hence any faith that would develop from their experiences must have
some connection to ancient Israel and its texts. Second, because these earliest followers of
Jesus believed him to be the promised Messiah of Israel, they must be able to
explain this in relation to God’s working in the life of ancient Israel as
expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures. To
state it differently, early followers of Jesus needed to make their texts point
to Jesus as the promised Messiah and they needed to tell the stories of Jesus
in ways that harmonized him to their texts.
In holding onto these two
important ideas, the authors of the books that would become the New Testament
searched the Hebrew Bible in an attempt to understand and explain Jesus. While we like to think that the Old Testament
foretold the coming of Jesus, it is probably better to say that those earliest
believers in Jesus saw in him what they believed was described about the
Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. In other
words, in their experience of Jesus, they re-read their ancients sacred texts,
looking for texts that made sense to their understanding of Jesus, and then
applied those to Jesus. They then
formulated their stories about Jesus to define his life, teachings, death and
resurrection as the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises. Thus, their experience of Jesus influenced
both their reading of the Old Testament as well as their writing of the New
Testament.
Yet, what also influenced the
writers of the New Testament was the current situation of the churches to which
they wrote. As stated above, the
documents of the New Testament for the most part were shaped as much by the
needs of the communities of faith as they were by the stories that were passed
down about Jesus. Certainly we are aware
that Paul’s letters, as well as the other epistles, were written to churches
that were dealing with issues. But we
must also be aware that embedded in the Gospels and other New Testament books
are the situations of the followers of Jesus during the time of the writing.
What all of this means is that the
text of scripture, what we call the Bible, is the Word of God in the sense that
it contains the stories of how God’s ancient peoples believed God to be working
in the world. For these two communities
of faith, the writing of these texts was the formation of a theological
explanation for the existence of the world and humanity, a theological
diagnosis of the human predicament, and a theological explanation for
overcoming this predicament. The Bible
contains the explanations of the mysteries of God envisioned by these
historically situated humans, but no more.
Their understanding of God, humanity, and the world is much different
than our own. Though we can learn from
them and are influenced by their stories and texts, we must approach these
texts critically in order to assess how the Spirit speaks through scripture
today.
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