the so fallible Bible
October 4, 2013 at 11:33 am
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2013 at 11:48 am by xpastor.)
SavedByGrace has been teasing me with promises to start a thread on biblical inerrancy, my very favorite topic. However, he just keeps pumping out this crap on evolution which makes it plain that he has never read a book on the subject by a real scientist. Guess I'll have to do it myself. It's a rainy day in Central Ontario, and I have nothing to do except occasionally take out our six-month old puppy.
In truth, when I write on this subject, I am castigating my younger self for extreme intellectual carelessness. I explained what happened in my introduction to the forum. To elaborate a bit, when I first became a Christian in university, I was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis and others of that ilk. Which is to say, my theology was conservative (God can do miracles) but not fundamentalist (the Bible may contain errors and legendary accounts). Back then there were lots of weird views being put forth by liberal Christians, and I began to feel that there must be a rule of faith, and what else would qualify but the Bible? So I slid into an acceptance of inerrancy without ever having read it in its entirety. However, before I went to seminary at age 36, I had read it twice—sort of.
I explain why I never picked up on all the garbage with a metaphor: I read with my mind on cruise control. The Bible really makes no sense on its own when you read it cover to cover. It may seem to make sense when an apologist or a Bible study leader cherry picks from the whole thing to come up with his brand of theology. I already knew the theology, so I skimmed through the boring shit with little or no attention to detail, just stopping when something resonated with me. More battle stories, and not nearly as well done as in Lord of the Rings. Ten pages down in two minutes as my eye flickered over the text. Ditto for boring details about the Israelite sacrificial system.
I went to seminary, 3 years of academic work plus an intern year. I was getting vaguely uncomfortable about some things by the end of my first year. However, I had quit my job and uprooted my family, and it seemed inconceivable that my faith would weaken after 15 years, so I soldiered on and was ordained.
There were social aspects of being a minister that bothered me, but on the theological side, here was the big problem. When I read the Bible, I could no longer cruise through it. My mind lingered over the meanings. Often I checked out the text in the original language. It wasn't so much the contradictions and historical problems in the Bible which bothered me. It was the sheer evil. I kept coming back to 1 Samuel 15:3 where God—the loving God!—commanded King Saul to kill all the Amalekites, men and women, children and nursing infants, and just for good measure, their oxen and sheep and donkeys and camels, and then got thoroughly pissed off with Saul when he didn't follow orders to the letter. Only one genocide of many, supposedly commanded by God.
My case is probably atypical of those who accepted biblical inerrancy. I see two groups.
The first and largest don't even know the word inerrancy, but they have a notion that the Bible is perfect. They may not even go to church any more, but when they were in Sunday School 30 years ago, all questions were settled by reference to the Bible. And if they were in a liturgical church (Anglican or Lutheran) the Bible was surrounded with a lot of pomp. After the gospel reading the priest would intone, "This is the Word of the Lord" and the congregation would chant back "Praise be to Thee, O Christ." Besides which, the Bible contains the Ten Commandments, and everyone knows they are the foundation of western civilization, the basis of all morality.
The second group really scare me, fundamentalists who have made biblical inerrancy the center of their theology. So they are dataphobic about evidence against the historicity of the Bible, will do intellectual headstands to avoid admitting to an evident self-contradiction, and worst of all will do moral somersaults to justify the most evil narratives, killing babies is commendable for the ancient Israelites but of course a teenage girl who gets an abortion is a murderer.
This is a big topic. When I deal with something like that, I prefer to divide it up into several posts, so that is what I plan to do here.
Fundamentalists seem to assume that THE BIBLE™ descended from heaven in its leather covers clearly identified as the Word of God, in fact the only source of the Word of God.
My first question for them is which Bible do you mean? They of course assume it is the Protestant Bible with its 66 books. However, the Wikipedia article on the Biblical Canon lists 10 different Christian churches with different collections of books: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Slavonic Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Orthodox Tewahedo (Ethiopian), Assyrian Church of the East.
I won't go into all the details. Just one example from the Western tradition. The Roman Catholic Bible contains 8 "apocryphal" books not in the Protestant canon, plus substantial additions to the Old Testament books of Esther and Daniel.
I would be interested to hear any rationalizations from the bibliolaters as to why the One True Inspired Version should be the canon favored by the most recently formed of all the church traditions.
In truth, when I write on this subject, I am castigating my younger self for extreme intellectual carelessness. I explained what happened in my introduction to the forum. To elaborate a bit, when I first became a Christian in university, I was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis and others of that ilk. Which is to say, my theology was conservative (God can do miracles) but not fundamentalist (the Bible may contain errors and legendary accounts). Back then there were lots of weird views being put forth by liberal Christians, and I began to feel that there must be a rule of faith, and what else would qualify but the Bible? So I slid into an acceptance of inerrancy without ever having read it in its entirety. However, before I went to seminary at age 36, I had read it twice—sort of.
I explain why I never picked up on all the garbage with a metaphor: I read with my mind on cruise control. The Bible really makes no sense on its own when you read it cover to cover. It may seem to make sense when an apologist or a Bible study leader cherry picks from the whole thing to come up with his brand of theology. I already knew the theology, so I skimmed through the boring shit with little or no attention to detail, just stopping when something resonated with me. More battle stories, and not nearly as well done as in Lord of the Rings. Ten pages down in two minutes as my eye flickered over the text. Ditto for boring details about the Israelite sacrificial system.
I went to seminary, 3 years of academic work plus an intern year. I was getting vaguely uncomfortable about some things by the end of my first year. However, I had quit my job and uprooted my family, and it seemed inconceivable that my faith would weaken after 15 years, so I soldiered on and was ordained.
There were social aspects of being a minister that bothered me, but on the theological side, here was the big problem. When I read the Bible, I could no longer cruise through it. My mind lingered over the meanings. Often I checked out the text in the original language. It wasn't so much the contradictions and historical problems in the Bible which bothered me. It was the sheer evil. I kept coming back to 1 Samuel 15:3 where God—the loving God!—commanded King Saul to kill all the Amalekites, men and women, children and nursing infants, and just for good measure, their oxen and sheep and donkeys and camels, and then got thoroughly pissed off with Saul when he didn't follow orders to the letter. Only one genocide of many, supposedly commanded by God.
My case is probably atypical of those who accepted biblical inerrancy. I see two groups.
The first and largest don't even know the word inerrancy, but they have a notion that the Bible is perfect. They may not even go to church any more, but when they were in Sunday School 30 years ago, all questions were settled by reference to the Bible. And if they were in a liturgical church (Anglican or Lutheran) the Bible was surrounded with a lot of pomp. After the gospel reading the priest would intone, "This is the Word of the Lord" and the congregation would chant back "Praise be to Thee, O Christ." Besides which, the Bible contains the Ten Commandments, and everyone knows they are the foundation of western civilization, the basis of all morality.
The second group really scare me, fundamentalists who have made biblical inerrancy the center of their theology. So they are dataphobic about evidence against the historicity of the Bible, will do intellectual headstands to avoid admitting to an evident self-contradiction, and worst of all will do moral somersaults to justify the most evil narratives, killing babies is commendable for the ancient Israelites but of course a teenage girl who gets an abortion is a murderer.
This is a big topic. When I deal with something like that, I prefer to divide it up into several posts, so that is what I plan to do here.
Fundamentalists seem to assume that THE BIBLE™ descended from heaven in its leather covers clearly identified as the Word of God, in fact the only source of the Word of God.
My first question for them is which Bible do you mean? They of course assume it is the Protestant Bible with its 66 books. However, the Wikipedia article on the Biblical Canon lists 10 different Christian churches with different collections of books: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Slavonic Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Orthodox Tewahedo (Ethiopian), Assyrian Church of the East.
I won't go into all the details. Just one example from the Western tradition. The Roman Catholic Bible contains 8 "apocryphal" books not in the Protestant canon, plus substantial additions to the Old Testament books of Esther and Daniel.
I would be interested to hear any rationalizations from the bibliolaters as to why the One True Inspired Version should be the canon favored by the most recently formed of all the church traditions.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
GC
