Living with Mystery05 Biblical Authority
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This section is potentially contentious. I am tackling this subject since I am a free agent and not answerable financially or contractually to other people. For instance, I do not write for a publisher, and I am not an official in a denomination. If I were I should be reluctant to tackle the material I am about to engage with since I might lose out financially or be thrown out of office. So, as a free agent, I will attempt to tackle a thorny subject with the greatest respect for the bible and its authority.
inspiration
Biblical authority comes from the scripture itself. Here Paul relates the reason for the authority which the bible has:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)
Its authority comes from its Divine origin. The translation here is fairly literal, giving its origin as ‘God-breathed’. This expression is often translated as ‘inspired’. This makes scripture inspired. However, some people do change the order of the words to imply selective inspiration of scripture. Hence, they get this translation:
For all scripture given by the inspiration of God is profitable to teach, to convict, to reform, and to instruct in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16 NMB)
Or put another way: ‘every God-breathed scripture’. This has allowed those who like to use the bible in a liberal way to pick and choose which scriptures they want to have full Divine authority. I don’t think this holds up; Paul wrote “inspiration” to apply to all scripture.
So, if like me you accept that all scripture is
inspired, we can note that this inspiration is ‘God-breathed’ and not
God-dictated! That is an important distinction: the use of the word “breathe”
relates scripture to inspiration by the Holy Spirit. It also allows for
the written words used by the authors to carry the stamp of the authors’ personalities and particular ministry. If the words were just dictated by God, we
would expect them only to express the ‘personality’ of God. But when we
read scripture, we notice there are varieties of expression used which
reflect the writers. This is how God works in us: He expresses His Word through
people; there is a symbiotic expression of the Divine Word through fallible
human vessels. This does not dilute the authority of scripture as the Divine Word
but explains the flavour of scripture. Scripture is a testimony to the variety
of God’s creativity in the richness of human personalities. This is one reason
why we all have our favourite bible books. It is not simply that we prefer some
expressions of God’s Word over others, but that we more easily imbibe
some authors’ expressions compared to others. I like Isaiah since he
wrote in memorably vivid expressions full of humanness. By contrast,
Ezekiel wrote with vivid visions which seem to come from another dimension
of human imagination. Jeremiah wrote long passages of prose full of incidents
and information with a melancholic streak: we have even created a word
to describe despondent writing as being “jeremiad”. Hosea relates personal anecdotes
and lessons from them. Zechariah sees spiritual and memorable visions
much like those found in Revelation.
record
We need to apply this principle to the New Testament as well. The nine or ten different authors who were responsible for compiling the book and letters of the New Testament also expressed their own personalities and gifts in what they produced. I will not go into details regarding all the authors or the reasons why books and letters are attributed to them, but we can draw some general observations. Firstly, there are the three ‘synoptic’ Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. They are called synoptic since they were all written from a similar viewpoint or synopsis. Mark appears to have used the Apostle Peter as his main source of material. There was an early belief that Jesus would return to earth within the lifetimes of the Apostles, but when this appeared to be incorrect, then there was a concerted effort to record the life, miracles and teaching of Jesus in written form. Mark’s Gospel is snappy and relates much of what happened around the experiences of Peter. It is honest and, even though Peter was seen as the head of the church, it mercilessly exposes Peter’s mistakes as a disciple. Mark’s Gospel is also odd in that the last chapter sudden finishes mid-sentence at verse 8. The rest of that chapter was compiled by later writers to complete the story. Matthew incorporated much of Mark in his Gospel and added other material. Matthew appears to have constructed his Gospel especially for Jewish readers. He makes a special point of referencing Old Testament scriptures as part of his account. He also appears to divide the whole Gospel up into five sections to reflect that same structure in the Jewish Torah. Luke’s Gospel was composed for Gentile readers in Europe. He emphasises the work of the Holy Spirit and makes many references to how important women were to Jesus. He adds in many explanatory details for his readers since they might well not be familiar with life in the land of Israel. Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a follow-up to his Gospel.
John’s Gospel stands alone in its content and style. Traditionally, it has been accepted to be the work of John the fisherman. The church fathers attributed the Gospel to John. However, recent work by Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) has proposed that the Gospel was written by another John, known as John the Elder. By careful inferences, he believes this John to have been a resident of Jerusalem or Judea and one acquainted with the priest class in Jerusalem. The material in John is largely focused on the Jerusalem and Judea area. It only includes Galilee for the Feeding of the Five Thousand and the resurrection appearance to Peter by the Sea of Galilee. I found Richard’s arguments compelling and am inclined to believe he may be correct in his conclusions. I am working on a chronology of the life of Jesus which is based on his conclusions, and which is very different from the traditional one. (It will form Section 7 of this treatise when I have completed it).
letters
The main author of the New Testament letters was the Apostle Paul. Some people like to dispute this conclusion based on the different writing styles employed in the letters and the specific vocabulary used. Most people who accept biblical authority also accept that Paul wrote all these letters. The differences in style can be explained as the writings of a very intelligent and gifted man who wrote in different styles depending on the particular people he was addressing and the reasons for writing the letter. For instance, Galatians is very corrective and abrupt. Ephesians is a summary of belief containing directions for Christian living. Timothy and Titus were written to individuals and friends. No one knows the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. Peter was the Apostle Peter and James and Jude were brothers of Jesus and children of Mary. The author of Revelation is called John, but the identity of this John is obscure since it is such an unusual book.
The scriptures have been accepted as inspired and trustworthy for
generations. The Church of England Articles summarises this acceptance. Article
VI says:
Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
That is a solid statement of biblical inspiration and was written in the 16th century. In the 19th century there was a further interpretation of the meaning of biblical inspiration; it came to be known as ‘biblical inerrancy’. In 1978, this was put into a document called the ‘Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy’. A brief summary of it is this:
Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms, obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises …Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching
I have underlined some of the key expressions to show the strength of the statement. It has led to expressions such as the ‘infallibility’ of scripture and ‘inerrancy’ of scripture.
tensions
The intentions of those producing this statement, I believe were good: they wished to create a bulwark of belief in scripture against the previous century of unbelief directed towards the bible. But there are areas in which it has created tensions. For instance, biblical inerrancy is often taken to mean that one must believe the whole universe was created in 144 hours (6 days of the 7-day creation story). Surprisingly, this literal view became a mainstream one as recently as the 1940s! This is flatly opposed to the discoveries of science in the last few centuries which reliably measure the age of the universe at almost 14 billion years old. 7-day creation would make the earth no older than 10,000 years. The fact that ice cores have been extracted from Greenland with annual layers laid down amounting to 800,000 years creates tensions for those who accept the discoveries of science and who also believe in the inspiration of scripture. Another discovery related to scripture which conflicts with inerrancy are the many manuscript differences which have been discovered and collated. Now if you have read the bible avidly for half-a-century like I have, you can’t fail to notice differences in the Gospel accounts. I think these things need addressing in a way which adds wisdom and importantly continues to uphold the necessity of scripture to reveal all things necessary to salvation!
What concerns me about the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is
that it appears to be used as a ‘shibboleth’. If you are not familiar
with that term, it comes from a story in the Book of Judges. There was civil
war in Israel and the men of Gilead laid a trap:
whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, ‘Let me cross over,’ the men of Gilead asked him, ‘Are you an Ephraimite?’ If he replied, ‘No,’ they said, ‘All right, say “Shibboleth”.’ If he said, ‘Sibboleth’, because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him (Judges 12:5-6)
It’s a dreadful story but the term shibboleth has historically become used when questions are asked in order to trap another person into being denounced. A modern example might be the questions asked of the Christian, Tim Farron, when he was a political party leader. He was continually asked about homosexuality when it had nothing to do with his political message. It was a shibboleth to trap him into being honest about his beliefs so that he could be denounced and attacked. I fear that biblical inerrancy gets used in the same way. Christians are asked if they believe that every word of the bible is without error and if they question such a literal interpretation they are denounced as inferior Christians. Bible interpretation should not be used as a shibboleth against those who are simply asking honest questions without any intention of undermining Trinitarian teaching or Orthodox Christian morals. In fact, forcing people to deny their own understanding or scientific knowledge has done great harm. Some of the more vocal opponents of evangelical faith were once believers who could not accept this strict fundamentalist interpretation of inerrancy. I also think that there is a degree of disingenuousness about inerrancy in that some organisations, including seminaries and universities, appear to subscribe to its literal belief because they are afraid of losing support or funding if they do not.
style
As I stated at the beginning: the bible is the book God wanted us to have. I find no contradiction in that statement with my own observations as both a bible lover and a science lover. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I will not close my mind to reading the bible intelligently as well as spiritually. When I was a young Christian, I noticed that older Christians were very jumpy about acknowledging differences in the biblical accounts. They did not want to upset anyone’s faith which was commendable. However, if our faith is based only on the bible and not on a living relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, then we are on shaky foundations. Remember that the first Christians only had the Old Testament available to them and that many of those Christians were illiterate anyway. But they did have the Holy Spirit and their faith was rooted in spiritual experience and power. We must enlarge the base of belief from words in a book to life in the Spirit. Those first Christians experienced the Kingdom of God in power. Now it is true that the Spirit creates the Kingdom of God in line with scripture, but the Kingdom is not confined to interpretations of scripture. Otherwise, the Spirit’s work would be constrained by the understanding and experience of bible teachers. The Spirit will never contradict the scriptures, but He lives and moves in power in every age.
Another thing we need to consider is that the style of
writing in the first century was different from what we expect of writing
styles today. When we read a history book, we expect it to be full of dates
and often to be written in chronological order – one event following
another. This was not how writers in the first century produced biographies.
There were no internationally agreed dates and so they mentioned important people
or events instead to give some idea of when things happened. Luke often
mentions Roman officials to give dates; and famously, in the Nicene
Creed, it says that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It mentions him,
not because he was a noteworthy person, but because it is a historical reference
point. Biography in the first century was written in a way which revealed the personality
and qualities of the one being described. Events were grouped together
to convey that message, which meant that they did not have to be carefully
ordered chronologically. If you like, their writing style was done in a way that
tried to create a visually memorable record so that people reading the
biography would be able to imagine being there and witnessing what was
being written about. In order to do this, the writers sometimes took liberties
with the events in order to convey the message. This would explain the
different order of events in the different Gospels and at times some
differences of detail. The writers were not trying to deceive the
reader but to disclose the personality and finer aspects of the person
they were writing about. There is no problem with God being able to use
either the personality of the writer or their style of writing and editing when
breathing inspiration into the authors. We should not sideline the
authority of scripture just because it does not conform to modern styles of
literature.
authenticity
A good way of illustrating ancient biography is to liken it to a film. Some films are based on real people and events, but they are qualified with the statement: ‘based on true events’. For cinematographic reasons, some events are altered or even excluded. The result is still that the film reveals a portrait of the characters and personalities of the people being portrayed even if things are shown which are not strictly accurate. Ancient biographers would alter numbers and create dialogue to help convey this portrait of their subject. If a film recreates a dialogue, it is almost certainly not exactly what the subject ever said word-for-word. In that case, we do not accuse the writer and director of lying provided they are communicating the story of the person accurately. If I am asked about a conversation, I had with someone, I am not accused of lying if I do not reproduce it word-for-word but instead give the gist and meaning of the conversation. When the Gospel writers cover the same events, sometimes one of them compresses the story while the other enlarges on it. The point is that although they are describing the same event in different ways, it was an event that happened. Also, those ancient writers sometimes used idioms or metaphors which we no longer understand. Obviously, when Jesus said that “not a hair of your heads would be lost” even though some of them would be killed, he was not really thinking about their hair but about God’s sovereignty over events. If you would like to study this in detail, then Michael Licona’s book ‘Why are there differences in the Gospels?’ is a good place to start.
In the light of all that God has provided in the bible, we should
be careful to avoid using the scriptures in a ‘pick-and-mix’ way. That
means believing the verses you like and ignoring the one’s you don’t
like. The scriptures are a whole and should not be diced up selectively. In our
day for instance, people don’t like the restrictive commands in 1 Corinthians 6
where Paul makes it clear that sexual relationships are exclusive to
marriage between one man and one woman. Many people try to remove the divine
authenticity of such passages and suggest they are the ideas of ancient and
unscientific people. But they are the Word of God and should be obeyed
as such. However, there are some Old Testament passages which we are no longer
required to obey such as the food laws. But the reasons for excluding
these are explained in other places in the bible and they are not simply some
individual’s decision.