Well, here it is anyway :-)
Submitted by GCF on September 8 2001 23:18:59
In reply to Would you like to hear what I think? submitted by GCF on September 6 2001 02:37:57
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This thread intrigued me so much, that I could not resist writing out my own thoughts in response to it myself, just to clarify my own beliefs on the matter. I felt that after taking the time to write it out for myself, I might as well post it here and share with the rest of you, even though this thread has stopped for a while. For the record, I am neither a fundamentalist Christian, nor a liberal Christian. I am something else. Evangelical, but politically more libertarian than anything else. I guess it would be best to say that I have a core set of beliefs that are fundamental with regards to the gospel, but that many of my other beliefs, outside these core ones, are not the same as the fundamentalist position. Anyway, here is what I wrote as I thought and prayed over the question of: what is the ultimate source of authority for a Christian? The question of the role and authority of the Bible in the life of a Christian is important. Misunderstandings about the purpose and usefulness of the Bible can lead to unintentional (or perhaps even intentional) sin, if the Bible is used in ways that are contrary to God’s will—for example, if scripture becomes a block somehow that stands between people and God. It is possible for this to happen, if obsession with the intellectual understanding of Scripture takes precedence over intimate knowledge of Christ, or if words of Scripture are taken in such a way that they leave a person feeling condemned and unforgivable in the sight of God, to the extent that forgiveness of sin is no longer sought and the person is cut off from God because of what they have perceived the Bible to say. The Bible may also be used as a weapon, in which scriptures are sought out to justify one’s own prejudices, to put other people down, or to build up a false sense of holiness based on self-righteousness and religious “achievements”. All these are examples of sinful use of scripture. That scripture can be used for evil purposes is obvious, since even Satan himself used Bible verses to back up his arguments when tempting Jesus in the desert (see Matthew 4). Therefore, it is important to understand God’s intended purpose for the Bible, so that as Christians we do not misuse it. It is not God’s intention that the Bible should either take his place, or be used in ways that serve only to drive people away from him, or that encourage any other kind of sin. The purpose of the Bible is to give people insight into God’s will, to offer knowledge of God through the revelations of Scripture. However, the words of Scripture by themselves are insufficient to impart such a revelation. The meaning of the words must be properly comprehended, in order for them to accurately convey knowledge of God and God’s will. That is to say, in order to properly read the Bible, one must seek to understand what God meant for the words to convey, not simply to assume that whatever they appear to say at first glance must be the correct interpretation. The Bible intends to communicate God’s actual will to us, not for us to interpret what we think God’s will is based on our own imperfect human intellectual capacities and assumptions. Thus it is important to distinguish between the words of the Bible, the interpretation(s) of the words, and the actual meaning that God intends for it. These are three different things. It is always important to remember at this point in the discussion that God is real. God is a living Spirit, separate and beyond all created things, although all created things exist through and for God. It is important to remember that God is alive, and able to communicate with human beings directly, not requiring a book to get in between. God does not need the Bible to communicate with us--he may speak directly to human beings through the Spirit, if he so chooses. The Bible is another means of revelation in addition to this, but the Bible does not deny or supersede the ability of God to reveal things by direct communication with people. Indeed, the Bible as such is a collection of revelations that were imparted directly. That is to say, the written-down Bible is a record of God’s interactions with people in history. But it is wrong to assume that the revelations recorded in the Bible are the only times when God ever communicated with humanity, or that God cannot speak to people in other ways or at other times, including the present. The words of the Bible exist in the text as they stand, as either a translation or a manuscript, both of which are going to have some imperfections due to copying, glossing (translating) and interpreting over the course of history. I believe the words themselves, are not “inspired” or “inerrant” in the usual sense with which these words are applied to the Bible. I certainly do not believe for a second that the words of the Bible were “dictated” verbatim by God himself. Only a very stupid and ignorant (not to mention evil) god would actually say word-for-word some of the things that are in the Bible! Rather, the Bible was written by human beings. It represents the best effort that these people could make to faithfully record the truths that God had revealed to them. I believe that it is possible for manuscripts and translations to contain errors due to human mistakes. Such errors are usually of minor consequence relative to the overall context in which they occur, so it is not a very big deal in the long run that they exist. The grace of God is such that despite the errors that the Bible contains, it still is capable of communicating the “gist” of what God intends for it to say. The Biblical text is not factually “perfect,” it is simply good enough to do the job that God wants it to do. Despite the impression that one may get from observing Christians debate the issue, in truth God himself is not anal-retentive and uptight about the Bible (or anything else). God is perfectly willing to let mistakes slip by, if they are minor and irrelevant to the overall picture, if they do not hamper his overall plan. Secondly, beyond the text itself, we have the interpretation of the words. This refers to the meanings that people understand when they read the text. Different people may arrive at differing interpretations of the text. Who is to say which interpretation is the ‘correct’ one? Only God can know for sure. Therefore, it is not accurate in my view to characterize any particular interpretation or belief as being of divine origin, or inerrant, based solely on the claims of any human authority. So, if the words are imperfect, and the interpretations are imperfect, how may one arrive at useful and trustworthy meanings from reading the Bible? I believe that the answer to this question is that to do so requires faith in God. It is only with the help of God that the Bible can be correctly interpreted and its meaning correctly comprehended. In this context, the word “correct” means, to me, simply “according to what God himself wants”. To read the Bible with correct understanding means to read it with God’s help, from God’s point of view. The correct meaning of the text is the one that God intends to reveal through it. How can this be known? How can a human being know the mind of God? How can we know what God means by something? This is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by the gift of the Holy Spirit that the Bible may be read with understanding and that its truths may be revealed to the human mind with accurate comprehension. In reading the Bible through the Holy Spirit, one does not simply read the words and use one’s own intellectual capacities to figure out the meaning. Instead, one listens to the voice of God speaking through the text. Reading the Bible this way means surrendering all preconceived notions of what God wants to say, and simply being willing to listen to what God does say. You have to read with your heart as well as your head. It is important at this point to recognize that the inspiration is what I am describing here. Much weight is given to the notion that the Bible is the inspired word of God. But what does that actually mean? It means more than people usually think. It is not enough for only the original writers of the text to have been inspired. The reader must be inspired as well. Biblical texts are inspired by the Holy Spirit both at the time of their writing, and at the time of their reading, if the reader has prayed for such inspiration and is willing to receive it. Thus it is possible by direct communication with God through the Spirit, to perceive and understand the words with the mind of Christ. We may understand scriptures in this way, because God himself is telling us directly what is the meaning that we are to get out of them. God is speaking to us through the text…we are not merely reading it on our own. (See Luke 24:45) Central to my understanding of the Bible is my belief that at the center of the Christian faith lies the personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Christianity to me is not primarily about doctrine, or the church, or moral rightness, or doing good, or anything else…it is centrally only about the relationship between humanity and God. The individual relationship of the believer to God, and the relationship of the human race as a whole toward God. These are the central themes of Christianity. God’s first desire has not to do with anything created that is external to us, but is simply that we should know him personally. We are God’s children, and his love for us is his primary concern. After one has entered into a relationship with the Lord, then there are any number of other issues that God may wish to address in our lives. But everything else is of secondary importance compared to the simple matter of knowing God. God wishes above all else to know and love his children. To be with them, instead of separated from them--to be their God. The other matters of what is going on in our lives will be addressed as well, but only after the question of relationship is settled. God does not concern himself with anything else in our lives as much as the question of the basic nature of our relationship to him. God asks, Do you want to be my child and know me, or not? Every person is free to answer this question however they wish. God gives complete freedom to all to know him or not to know him, as they choose. God loves and blesses everyone, even those who choose not to know him, but God is only able to give his greatest love and blessings to those children to wish to receive them. And one must come to God and know God before this can happen. Anyone who knows God and loves God is saved, even if they make many mistakes and are imperfect; anyone who does not know God cannot love God for who he really is, and is not saved, even if they appear quite pious and perfect on the outside. Returning now to the Bible, it ought to be understood as a tool that God has given us so that we may know him better. The purpose of the Bible is not merely to reveal how to live, or even truths about God; the ultimate purpose of the Bible is to help us get closer to God in our personal relationship to him that we are already supposed to have. The Bible does not “do” anything by itself. Apart from God, the Bible is just a book. It’s words will only take on their true meaning and be truly useful to us, if we know God in real life. Take the analogy of a love letter. The Bible can be seen as a letter from God. Now, if you had a friend whom you had never met in real life, but had only corresponded with in writing, how well would you be able to say that you actually knew that person? Perhaps fairly well. A lot can be said and learned through words. Exchanging letters with someone could easily help you to get to know them. But no matter how long you wrote back and forth to them, would you really know them as well through their letters, as you would if you actually met them in real life, spent time with them doing things together, and talked with them face to face? Which type of friendship is more intimate, which type leads to closer and truer knowledge of the other person? Clearly the doing-things-together-in-real-life-friendship is superior to the long-distance-letter-writing-only friendship. It is the same way with the Bible. The Bible is a wonderful book, filled with much that is useful in its own right. I would never try to minimize the value of the Bible. It is important and trustworthy in the life of a Christian. But knowing God only through the Bible, without ever knowing him directly through personal contact, is a spiritually impoverished form of Christianity. It would be an insult indeed to a friend, if you had exchanged letters for years, and then he or she was finally able to come for a real-life visit with you, if instead of welcoming your friend and spending time with them, you said, “Sorry, I’d rather sit here and read your letters than actually talk to you.” That is what people do to God when they place the Bible above him. If the Bible becomes more important than God, then it has become an idol. Bibliolatry is a great sin, but it is one that is hard to detect, and may appear to be perfectly harmless, until it is too late. Is the Bible more important to you than the Lord? Would you rather read and understand the Bible than to pray alone and listen to God’s voice? Is theology more interesting to you than friendship with Jesus? Is doctrine more precious to you than love, justice, and mercy? Is knowledge about God more important to you than doing God’s will? Is your faith and trust in the Bible, rather than in God himself? Does everything you know of God come only from the Bible? If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then you are guilty of bibliolatry. I suspect that most sincere Christians are guilty of bibliolatry at least sometimes in their lives. I know there have been times when I have done it myself. But the Bible must not be worshipped. Would your relationship to God be able to thrive, would your Christian life be strong and secure, even if there were no Bibles around and you had no way to get one? Is the presence of God as real to you as any person that you know, so that you can communicate with him directly? If the Lord has made his home in your heart, surely the answer would be yes. Of course, one might say, the Bible could never contradict God. In one sense, this is true. But it is also true that the Bible is not God. The meaning that God intends for the Bible to have of course does not contradict what is in God’s own mind. But human ideas and interpretations about what the Bible says may very easily contradict God’s will. That is the great danger and trap of bibliolatry, which must be avoided. So, to the question of the authority of scripture. Scripture must not be the ultimate authority in the life of a Christian. That role is reserved for Jesus. The authority of the Bible comes from the fact that it may reveal to us his will. Apart from any situation in which the Bible does this, it has no authority of its own. Its authority comes from God, the living God, and not itself or some human conception of God that is actually an idol. It is the Spirit of God that is inerrant, not the text itself. It is God who inspires, and it is the lives of people who are inspired, and not the text itself. The text of the Bible is a vehicle for God’s spirit, a conduit for the knowledge of God’s will that may flow through it, but without God’s presence it is nothing special. To mistake the Bible for God, to claim that the Bible has authority or power apart from God, is to mistake the message for the author, to mistake the vehicle for the contents that it conveys. To mistake knowledge of the Bible for knowledge of God, is to mistake communication for communion. It is the person of God, the love of God, the will of God, the mind of God, the heart of God that Christians ought to be seeking, and not intellectual or emotional understanding of the Bible that comes only from human effort, human will, or human traditions. Every conception of God that is of human origin is small and pales in comparison to the infinite wonder of the God who actually exists. In the same way, religion is a small and pale substitute for authentic spirituality. The bottom line is that God is God, and without God, without the living Spirit of Christ, Christianity is nothing but an empty and useless religion. Jesus Christ is all in all for Christians, and anything that gets in God’s way or takes God’s place is a false god. In Christianity, God is Christ, and Christ is God, and God is the Spirit, and Christ is the Spirit. All are one. That is our true God, not our religious traditions or our scriptures or our church. So, I would say, yes seek God with all your heart, but seek him personally. Pray, listen, ask and you shall receive. Develop a personal relationship with God. Get to know God as he is. Learn the depth of meaning in the statement, “I AM”. “I AM WHAT I AM”. That is how God named himself. Until you can see the infinity that is contained in that statement, your god is too small. Use the Bible as a guide. Learn through it, understand through it, but make sure your learning and understanding is in touch with your personal relationship to the real God, the one who actually created everything, not one of the false gods than humanity has created for itself.. Make that your primary concern, and the rest will take care of itself. (See Matthew 6:33) The bottom line: the Bible is a wonderful tool by which we may learn more about God’s will, but it cannot take the place of a personal relationship with God. Striving to understand the Bible and to do what it says, apart from God, is not the true Christian life. It is only possible for human beings to know and do God’s will by loving God in a personal relationship, and humbling themselves to receive the grace of God, which empowers them to carry out his commandments. Apart from God we can do nothing. That which is truly Christian proceeds from the living person of Christ himself. Anything or anyone that claims to be Christian that is not directly connected to Christ, is not actually Christian, but only a religious fake. In closing, I would like to quote from some authors who have commented on this issue, as well as from the Bible itself: From Watchman Nee, A Table in the Wilderness, © 1957: It has pleased God to say many things which leave room for misunderstanding, and not to explain them. Often in the Bible, there seem to be conflicting statements, or statements that seem to violate the known facts of life, and it has pleased him to leave them there. There are many scriptures we cannot clearly explain. Had we been writing we would have put things far more plainly, so that men should have before them all the doctrine in foolproof systematic order. But would they have had the life? The mighty eternal truths of God are half-obscured in Scripture so that the unspiritual man may not lay hold of them. God has hidden them from the wise to reveal them to infants, for they are spiritually discerned. His word is not a study book. It is intended to meet us in the course of our day to day walk in the Spirit and to speak to us there. It is designed to give us knowledge that is experimental because related to life. If we are trying through systematic theology to know God, we are absolutely on the wrong road. Some of God’s children lay great emphasis on rightly dividing the word of truth. Indeed Scripture itself tells us we are to do this (2 Timothy 2:15), but it also tells us his Word is to divide us. Where we may be wrong is in seeking to divide his word first, before we have allowed it to do its work on us! Are we aware of this living, powerful character of God’s word? Does it deal with us like a sharp, two-edged sword? Or do we handle it as though it were just one more book to be studied and analyzed? The strange thing about scripture is that it does not aim to makes us understand doctrines in a systematic way. Perhaps we think it would have been better if Paul and the others had got together to provide a detailed handbook of Christian doctrines. But God did not permit this. How easily he could have settled some of our theological arguments, but it seems he loves to confuse those who only approach the Bible intellectually! He wants to preserve men from merely getting hold of doctrines. He wants his truth to get hold of them. To the Pharisees there seemed to be a discrepancy between the teaching of Jesus that what God has joined together must not be sundered and the command of Moses concerning divorce [see Matthew 19:3-9]. Superficially of course there is a discrepancy, but there is no change in God. It is not that what was first forbidden became lawful in his eyes later on, and still later was forbidden again, as though God were capricious. No, when Jesus says, “From the beginning it has been so,” he affirms that, despite appearances, God’s will is consistent. It has never altered. Here is a most important principle. It is not God’s permissions but his will we need always to discover. We should ask ourselves what was God’s purpose from the beginning. We need to see things as they were when they proceeded in all their purity from the mind of God, not as they have become because of his people’s hardness of heart. From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, © 1935: It is possible to know all about doctrine and yet not know Jesus. The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine outsteps intimate touch with Jesus. Why was Mary weeping? [John 20:11-18] Doctrine was no more to Mary than the grass under her feet. Any Pharisee could have made a fool of Mary doctrinally, but the one thing they could not ridicule out of her was the fact that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her; yet his blessings were nothing in comparison to himself. Mary “saw Jesus standing and knew not that it was Jesus…”; immediately she heard the voice, she knew she had a past history with the one who spoke. “Master!” Have I a personal history with Jesus Christ? The one sign of discipleship is intimate connection with him, a knowledge of Jesus Christ which nothing can shake. The pietistic movements of today have none of the rugged reality of the New Testament about them; there is nothing in them that demands the death of Jesus Christ; all that is required is a pious atmosphere, and prayer and devotion. This type of experience is not supernatural nor miraculous, it did not cost the passion of God, it is not dyed in the blood of the Lamb, not stamped with the hallmark of the Holy Ghost; it has not the mark on it which makes men say, as they look in awe and wonder—“That is the work of God Almighty.” That and nothing else is what the New Testament talks about. The type of Christian experience in the New Testament is that of personal passionate devotion to the person of Jesus Christ. Every other type of so-called Christian experience is detached from the person of Jesus. There is no regeneration, no being born again into the kingdom in which Christ lives, but only the idea that he is our pattern. In the New Testament, Jesus is Savior long before he is pattern. Today he is being dispatched as the figurehead of a religion, a mere example. He is that, but he is infinitely more. He is salvation itself. He is the gospel of God. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth is come…he shall glorify me.” When I commit myself to the revelation made in the New Testament, I receive from God the gift of the Holy Spirit who begins to interpret to me what Jesus did, and does in me subjectively all that Jesus Christ did for me objectively. Beware of any work for God that enables you to evade concentration on him. A great many Christian workers worship their work. The one concern of the worker should be concentration on God, and this will mean that all the other margins of life, mental, moral and spiritual, are free with the freedom of a child (a worshipping child, not a wayward child). A worker without this dominant note of concentration on God is apt to get his work on his neck; there is no margin of body, mind or spirit free, consequently he becomes spent out and crushed. There is no freedom, no delight in life; nerves, mind and heart are so crushingly burdened that God’s blessing cannot rest. But the other side is just as true—when once the concentration is on God, all the margins of life are free and under the dominance of God alone. There is no responsibility on you for the work; the only responsibility you have is to keep living in constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with him. The freedom after sanctification is the freedom of a child, the things that used to keep life pinned down are gone. But be careful to remember that you are freed for one thing only—to be absolutely devoted to your Coworker. Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many are partakers of God’s grace who have never seen Jesus. When once you have seen Jesus, you can never be the same; other things do not appeal as they used to. Always distinguish between what you see Jesus to be, and what he has done for you. If you only know what he has done for you, you have not a big enough God; but if you have had a vision of Jesus as he is, experiences can come and go, but you will endure “as seeing him who is invisible.” From the Bible: “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:25-26) “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statues and be careful to observe my ordinances.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) [Carefully note that the following of God’s ordinances and statues only takes place after God’s spirit has been given to the people.] Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, they they themselves are subject to no one else’s scrutiny. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:14-16) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ (Matthew 7:21-23) The Lord said, “Because these people draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while yet their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is merely a human commandment learned by rote—so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden. (Isaiah 29:13-14) “The Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from men. But I know that you do not have the love of God in you….Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?” (John 5:37-42, 45-47) The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made, so they are without excuse….It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, they, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires in written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all….A person in not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from men but from God. (Romans 1:18-20, 2:13-16, 28-29) Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel….Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. (2 Timothy 2:8, 14) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” (Matthew 23:23) God has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8) If I speak in tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all of my possessions, and I if I hand over my body to be burned so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3) [Note the uselessness of even good things, if they are done without love.] Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. (Matthew 5:17) All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “Tthe one who is righteous shall live by faith.” But the law does not rest on faith; on the contrary, “Whoever does the works of the law will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:10-14) You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly await for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. (Galatians 5:4-6) Jesus said to them, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. [All] the commandments…are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10) God is love. (1 John 4:8) GCF |
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