Scared Scripture

Each night, I have to read for 10 minutes with my son. As a joke, I said to him you could read my university textbook. It was a joke. Honestly. I’m not that mean. But he thought it was a brilliant idea, which is how my son came to be reading my textbook out loud.

My son tends not to look at the words too carefully. So he’ll say what he thinks the word says or should say, rather than what it actually says. So when he came to the words ‘sacred scripture’ he said ‘scared scripture’ instead.

It was cute and it was funny. But it also made me think. In what way could scripture be scared?

Now obviously scripture cannot be scared at all, either as simply a book or as the Word of God.

But people can – and have been – scared that the authority of scripture is under threat.

I don’t have the time to go into everything with too much detail here. But as I have been thinking about the authority of scripture, I would like to briefly look at some of the possible reasons why people may believe that the bible is no longer authoritative.

The first and most obvious one is that some people do not believe that God is real or that Jesus was God’s son. For those that do not have faith in God or Jesus Christ, then it’s hard to find any reason why they should consider it authoritative.

However, another statement that comes up sometime is that no-one should consider it authoritative because some people do not believe it is the word of God. So for instance, say someone asks another person why they believe a certain thing is wrong. The person answers because the bible says this. The first person says well that’s not a good reason because I don’t believe in the bible.

But many people do base their beliefs on what is right and wrong on the bible. And if they are asked why they have certain beliefs, the answer is the bible – whether other people believe in it or not. This could almost be a post in itself. But I better leave it or I will run out of room.

Another threat to biblical authority is that people believe it doesn’t match up with scientific fact. Whether this be the creation story or Jesus’ resurrection or miracles or the flood. And some people think they can no longer believe any of it because they see certain parts of it as unscientific.

The first point to make here is just because something seems to go against our idea of science doesn’t mean it did not happen. If God is intervening, one would expect that the natural laws of science would be suspended. That’s what makes Jesus’ resurrection a miracle. If people rose from the dead all the time (under properly conducted experiments in science laboratories) then it wouldn’t be that much of a big deal. In fact, then you’d probably get people saying well I don’t believe Jesus was the Son of God because he never did anything that special.

The second point is that the bible is not a science book. And if someone were to ask me whether the bible was an authoritative text for learning about science, I would have to say no. But then if someone were to ask me whether a science text book was an authoritative text for learning theology, I would also say no. And yet many people do reject the bible because it fails to match what the scientists say.

I would also say that the knowledge of science is limited. Science tells us about what we can see and can know. But it can’t tell us of Heaven or God or spiritual intervention in our lives. And considering that science is limited to what is here on earth, it seems foolish to use it to reject a book that is not limited to what is here on earth. The bible is more concerned with heavenly matters. Science is only concerned with earthly ones – and can only examine earthly ones.

Another threat to biblical authority that is related to this is that the bible seems to contain errors or that certain passages in the bible do not line up with other passages. So for example, the Gospel of John sometimes seems to contradict Matthew, Mark and Luke. The idea is that, if the bible really were the Word of God, then it would not contain any errors or contradictions.

Again, I go back to the fact that the bible speaks of theological truths. I believe it was divinely inspired. And that God ensured that there were no errors in theological matters. However, it was written by humans, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And humans have limited understanding. It is possible that God allowed them to make errors (due to their limited understanding), providing that they did not make errors that were of importance to any matters related to faith.

Here’s an example. One problem for the church is times gone past was the idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Because in Joshua, it says that the sun stood still. So that’s one error that people might point to and say that the bible is not divinely inspired, because if it did, it would not contain that type of error. However, we need to consider people’s limited understanding of astronomy at the time. If God was to ensure that this error was not in the bible, he would have had to sit the writers down and given them an astronomy lesson that they would not even have understood.

And if we go back to the Gospel of John. What was important for John was that he conveyed spiritual truths in an accurate way. Some of the contradictions may not really be contradictions at all. It is also possible that some of his gospel may not contain the type of strict, factual reporting that you may find in a court transcript, for example. And yet it may be truer because of that. A transcript may be accurate, but it does not always reflect the truth. The comparison has been made between a photograph and a portrait. The Gospel of John perhaps seeks to present a spiritual portrait of Jesus that may be a truer representation than a photograph would be.

The last threat I would like to discuss is one that often comes from Christians. And that is the belief that we don’t like what the bible says anymore, so we’ll change it to something we do like. In other words, they believe the bible is an authority, so long as it fits with their beliefs. But if it doesn’t fit with what they like, then it is no longer considered authoritative. And often this means changing the spiritual truths discussed in the bible to be more acceptable to today’s world.

It’s probably the scariest threat to scripture there is. This idea that the bible no longer fits with what we believe to be true. Therefore, it must be wrong. However, it might just be the case that what we believe not longer fits with the truth.

Anyway, I could probably go on for a few more pages at least, but this post is long enough.

Authority for Determining Christian Belief and Practice

Authority is not a word we like very much anymore. Unless it comes to questioning someone’s authority. The modern western world is very good at doing that. But when it comes to respecting the authority of others, or recognising someone’s authority to tell us what to do, forget it. Instead of respecting authority, we’re more likely to criticise or ridicule it. Instead of obeying authority, we tell them exactly where we they’ve got it wrong.

When it comes to Christianity, we need authority. Christians are called to believe the right things and do the right things. And although God may be in the world, he isn’t sending out media releases or doing interviews on The 7.30 Report. So how do we decide our right belief and right practice (orthodoxy and orthopraxy)? We need to recognise of the authority of other sources to speak on God’s behalf.

Not everybody would agree with this. In fact, one of the stumbling blocks for people coming to religion is that they do not want to recognise the authority of anything or anyone else, other than themselves. They want to make their own choices about what to do. They want to work it all out without any kind of guidance from anybody.

Related to this is the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some people prefer to rely either solely or partially on what the Holy Spirit is saying to them. They recognise God’s authority, but not necessarily the authority of other sources. The problem with this approach is that what God is saying to me may be different from what God is saying to you. How do we decide who is right?

I heard a pastor once say that if everybody is being led by the Holy Spirit, then there will be no disagreements in church meetings. And if anyone does disagree, then they’re not truly being led by the Holy Spirit. (As a person who tended to disagree, I got a little annoyed at this.)

But even though I believe his attitude was wrong, I think he had a point. If the Holy Spirit is guiding all Christians, then why do they disagree? Now if I believe God is telling me one thing, but it seems to be telling everyone else another thing, what do I do? Do I decide that God says different things to different people? Do I take the view that what God is telling me is more important than what it is telling everyone else? And what if the Holy Spirit seems to be guiding me differently than the way it has guided millions of believers through the centuries? What if it’s different to what the bible says? Am I the only one who has it right?

So unless we want billions of Christians, all with very different ideas about what it means to be Christian, and all convinced that their idea is the right one, we need some other authority to appeal to.

The bible is easily the most widely accepted source of authority for Christian belief and practice. God did not just create us and leave us alone. He interacted with us. And the bible is a record of what He has said and what He has done in the past. It is God’s word and divinely inspired. For some, this means it should be the only authority. Yet as history – and the many Christian denominations that now exist – shows us, people may read the bible and get some very different ideas.

Another source of authority is tradition. We do not just read the bible for ourselves and make our own decisions. We consider how Christians through the ages have interpreted the bible. We look at the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the past to help us decide on what we should believe and how we should act in the present.

I believe another source of authority should be the Church. Even with the bible and with tradition, there will still be many disagreements. The Church helps resolve those disagreements. And although I believe that the churches of different denominations can help guide the individuals within that denomination, I also believe that the Catholic Church is the only church that has the authority to speak to the body of believers as a whole. As with individuals, different denominations have different ideas about what it means to be Christian. The Catholic Church was the one church instituted by Jesus Christ and so would seem to be the church with the highest authority when it comes to determining matters of faith.

Authority is related to revelation. As we seek to determine what or who has the authority to speak for God today, we must look at how God has revealed himself in the past. The perfect revelation of God comes in Jesus Christ. Authority relates to power being invested in someone or something by another source. Jesus Christ was asked under what authority he performed his miracles. He did not answer, but we know that his authority came directly from God. In the context of Christianity, this investment of power should come from God or Jesus. Authoritative sources must not simply be made up out of thin air. We should consider where God or Jesus Christ have given authority to others.

Again, what immediately springs to mind is the bible. The bible is a written record of how God has revealed himself in the past. It is also a written record of Jesus Christ, what he said and did, what his purpose was and who He was. As most Christians agree that the bible is an authoritative source, I won’t spend too much time discussing this one. And yet the bible also helps us determine what else has authority.

It is worth noting that bible does not stop with the Gospel of John. It goes on. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see how the early church community developed and grew. And some of this involved working some things out. They could not simply turn to Jesus all the time and say well Jesus said this and so the way forward is plain. They needed to discuss things and come to certain decisions. And as we move past the Acts of the Apostles, we find many epistles, written to Christian communities. These epistles explain things and give advice. They talk about right beliefs and right practices. Those early churches often didn’t quite get it right. They needed to be pointed in the right direction.

When we use the letters in the New Testament as a guide for what to believe and how to act, we are essentially giving authority to the very beginning of Christian tradition. We recognise that people of the past have something valuable to say to people in the present. We learn from the theology of those that went before us. Now there is a difference between the epistles included in the bible and theology that was done afterwards. And I can see why some people would respect the first, but not the second. And yet it does seem to suggest that theology is an ongoing process.

This does not mean that theology needs to recreated for each new generation. Nor does it mean that we return solely to the bible to discover a theology for a new age. Instead, our theology must be built on the theology of others. Making decisions about right belief and right practice did not end after Jesus’ resurrection. Nor did it end after the last word Revelation was written. In fact, if it had, then we wouldn’t even have a bible to use an authoritative source. We also wouldn’t have the Church we have today. The first 500 years included a lot of differences and problems that needed to be worked through. And one of reasons why Christians believe the things they do today is because the people around then spent a lot of time resolving those issues.

I cannot finish this post on authority, without discussing where Jesus specifically gave authority to others. In Luke 9:1, Jesus called together the 12 apostles and gave them power and authority. It is very important that we think of this in deciding what or who has authority to act on God’s behalf today. Some people believe that the authority given here relates to all believers. Yet it seems important to me that he only gave authority to his apostles, not all his followers.

Before I go any further, I want to point out that I do not have a good understanding of this verse. And I tried looking for some kind of commentary on it, to get a better idea of what it actually meant. However, I couldn’t really find anything that was too helpful. But I am guessing that this relates to the authority given to the Church. Well in my opinion, it seems to. Maybe I might try and find out a bit more about that and do another one of my ‘I have no idea what I’m talking about posts’ a bit later.

But my ignorance here actually brings us to an interesting point. Because I have a verse in the bible and I’m not quite sure what it means. So what do I do now? Wait for the Holy Spirit to explain it to me? Search the rest of the bible in the hopes that I might find something that will shed light on it? Talk to people at my church – with the realisation that what the Catholic Church says about this verse is very different to what the Pentecostals would say about it? Check commentaries of other theologians to see what they have to say?

I can speak to other Christians, but in doing that, I may face differing opinions. What if one person says it means something, but another person says it means something else? How do I decide who is correct? I must then ask myself what basis they are using for their interpretation. If one person’s interpretation comes directly from the Holy Spirit, but another person’s interpretation comes from years of studying theology, do I treat both interpretations as equally valid?

So it seems that, although God speaks to us through the bible, we do need some form of further explanation to help us reach conclusions about what the bible is actually saying. And because there are many different explanations out there, we need to decide which explanations are correct. This can’t be simply a matter of choosing the one we like the best – tempting as this is to do. It must take into account the authority behind the explanations we receive? Do they link back to an authoritative source? Or are they simply one person’s opinions?


(Image details: Calling of the Apostles by Ghirlandaio Domenico (1481). Image is in the public domain.)