Where do I start?!
Submitted by Jules on August 22 2001 19:05:41
In reply to Bible: Authoritative from God or Religion? submitted by Collin on August 21 2001 17:26:16
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Collin, You've asked a good question. To set the scene I'll say that I consider myself an evangelical, but have never really used the term 'fundamentalist'. (In fact to those of us East of the Atlantic, 'fundamentalism' isn't really an major issue.) I think most of my evangelical friends would agree with what I write here, at least those who've thought about the subject or studied it. Is the Bible authoritative? I say yes, but only in so far as it points to something else even more authoritative. The Bible is a record of God's involvement with humanity over the years, leading up to his ultimate involvement in the events of Jesus. It records the acts and words of God, and people's reactions to God. The Israelites believed that God had spoken to Moses on mount Sinai. Their scriptures recorded this event, and included the words God spoke to Moses. The scriptures were only authoritative because they recorded the spoken word of God, which was itself the real authority, the real reason for their faith. The same applies to the later prophets, who spoke the word of God first, and then wrote it down. However, as the years went by, and especially when they were in exile in Babylon, unable to carry out the temple rituals, Judaism emerged as a religion of the book in which the exact words of scripture itself became the authority. To some extent this was inevitable. When Jesus lived, died and rose again, his apostles went out to preach it, first to fellow Jews, and then to the rest of the world. They didn't start by writing a full account of Jesus and the gospel, they preached it by word of mouth. As time went by, they began to write about it as well. They wrote letters to particular churches to encourage them and to correct problems, and they wrote organised accounts of Jesus' life. But all these documents were only written to back up the message they were already preaching (perhaps especially as the first generation of eye-witnesses began to die). But even after writing, the apostles' authority for their own message was containted in the original events of Jesus, not in the documents they had written. Inevitably, when the generation of the apostles had died, the church began using their writings as a primary source because they contained the eye-witness accounts. When the books of the New Testament were selected, two of the factors used (among others) were whether a book came from an apostle (an authentic eye-witness) and whether it was accepted by the church at large. In this way, the authority of the New Testament comes from the apostles and the early church, not the other way round. The authority of the early church, in turn, of course comes from the events of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Over the years, and especially at times when people have doubted the validity of the preaching of the church, the Bible has been elevated as the ultimate authority, and even used to argue against the church and establish a new church. This was never the intention of those who collated the books of the Bible. Of course, if it can be shown that the church is totally astray, the Bible can be used in this way, but it is a mistake to place the authority in the Bible itself. The Bible is only authoritative in so far as it points to the actual involvement of God in the world. If you ask me where I find the ultimate authority for my faith, I'd say it's not the Bible but the resurrection of Jesus. 'Ah,' you say, 'but you only know about the resurrection because of the Bible.' Well, that's only partly true. I believe in the resurrection because of the combined evidence of a number of historical documents (most of which are in the Bible but not all). But I do this without first accepting any of those documents as the word of God. Simply by treating them as historical evidence, I come to believe in the resurrection; then as a result of that I believe in the message preached by the early church, and I accept the authority of the documents it wrote and later canonised, because I trust the operation of the Holy Spirit in it. Each step contains a measure of faith. I don't see any other way of doing things that has both faith and intellectual integrity. I can't use the authority of the Bible as the starting point, because there is no reason to believe in it without first looking at the resurrection of Jesus and at the church. Any attempt to prove the authority of the Bible from itself is nonsensical. So is the Bible the 'word of God'? Yes, but not in the 'fundamentalist' sense you are asking about. How can the same words be 'God's word' both to the first century and to the 21st century? The Old Testament is God's word to B.C. Israelites. The New Testament is God's word to the first century Mediterranean world. God's word to the 21st century western world can only be found by comparing the Bible and its world with the world of today, and deciding which things are eternally valid principles, which things were specific only to features of their own day, and which things in our world would be the equivalents. This is the task of the church, and it is a task undertaken with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is as the Bible is read, studied and meditated on, that God's word for today is heard. I believe this is what Karl Barth meant when he said that the Bible becomes God's word when it is preached. Of course the church is not infallible. It can get it wrong. But I believe this is a risk that God takes. It's a risk God has always taken with humanity, right from the beginning. I think we should get away from the unspoken assumption that God planned out exactly the history of the church from the day of Pentecost to the thousands of denominations there are today, or that God planned the canonisation of the New Testament books to happen over many centuries. If he'd planned it, why on earth did he plan it this way? Who knows what could have happened differently! What if the apostles had reached the whole world in one generation? What if a vast majority of the world had responded? What if Jesus had returned within one generation? Where would the New Testament be then?! I don't believe the Bible to be 'dictated' from heaven. If God wanted an exact text that would say exactly the same thing to every generation, why would he bother to use so many different authors? Why not just reveal the exact text, like he is supposed to have done to Mohammed or Joseph Smith?! No, the God revealed in Jesus isn't that sort of God. He's the sort of God who lets us play our part in the whole thing. That's as far as I can go today! Hope it helps you think things through a bit. I've just realised that I haven't answered the question of why 'fundamentalists' believe what they do, but justified my position instead! But there you go, I've written it now :-) With Christian love, Jules |
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