Emerging Africa

Hi all

Stephen asked me to explain why I don't believe the Bible is inerrant anymore. Roger suggested I re-post my answer as a blog of its own. Be warned, it's rather long since I wrote it for a UNISA assignment initially, but if anyone has the time, all comments are appreciated.

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What does it mean when we say that there are two streams in the Bible – one human and one divine? Does this conflict with the claim that the Bible is inerrant?
Many Christians see the ethical teaching of the New Testament as inerrant and normative. The Barna Research Group reported in 2001 that 81% of Pentecostal and 66% of Baptists believed that the Bible was totally accurate in all it teaches. Belief in inerrancy is viewed as a fundamental of the Christian faith by many fundamentalist churches.
However, inerrancy is less popular among more traditional churches. In 2001, The Barna Research Group also reported that only 40% of Presbyterians, 38% of Methodists and 26% of Catholics believed the Bible was inerrant. Tellingly, fewer church leaders and theology graduates believed in inerrancy than marketplace believers.
Pulitzer Prize winner Frederick Buechner once wrote an article in which he said, “All sorts of things jostle each other in the pages of the Bible, the sublime and the barbaric for instance.”
He mentioned the 137th Psalm where it begins, “By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept,” and ends, “happy is he who takes the little ones and bashes their brains out against the rock.”
“Here,” Frederick said, “is an example of the unspeakable next to the gorgeous.”
He received a reply saying, “Disparaging the Bible as you have, I can only wish that somebody would take your little ones and dash their brains against the rocks.”
In Christianity, there is a lot of emotion attached to the inerrancy of the Bible. After all, the Bible is the foundation of our faith. If we cannot trust it, how do we know that our salvation is real?
A close friend threw his first year theology textbook across the room in anger, and I remember feeling the tension build as my theology course forced me to study the apparent contradictions in the Bible.
Our view of the authority of the Bible is partly the result of socialization, partly the result of the work of God in our lives, and partly the result of our own capacities, predispositions and prejudices.
As Walter Brueggeman has pointed out, this means that the real issues of biblical authority and interpretation are not likely to be settled by intellectual argument, but live beneath our conscious intellect in “often unrecognised and uncriticized ways that are deeply powerful, especially if rooted (as they may be for most of us) amidst hurt, anger or anxiety.”
Walter continues, “Real decisions about biblical meanings are mostly not decided on the spot, but are long-term growth of habit and conviction that emerge, function, and shape, often long before recognised. And if that is so, then the disputes require not frontal arguments that are mostly exercises in self-entertainment, but long term pastoral attentiveness to each other in good faith.”
Unfortunately, books are better suited to frontal arguments.
When we approach the Bible, we must start by admitting that the Bible is interpreted by the fallible people who go to church, so in some sense the Bible is fallible.
Sincere Christians across the ages have interpreted the Bible incorrectly. Martin Luther, who kick-started The Reformation, used the Bible to defend slavery. Only 150 years ago, conservative Christians in the United States did the same. Nazi Germany used Matthew 27:25 to justify anti-Semitism. In South Africa, very recently, the story of Ham was used as the foundation of apartheid.
Because we need to be sceptical of church tradition, we need to be sceptical of traditional interpretations of the Bible. Because we need to be sceptical of ourselves, we need to be sceptical of our interpretation of the Bible. After all, even the devil quotes scripture.
Brian McLaren, one of Time Magazine’s 20 most influential evangelicals, points out, “If you have an infallible text, but all your interpretations of it are admittedly fallible, then you at least have to always be open to being corrected about your interpretations."
However, I think we need to go even further, beyond an awareness of the fallibility of biblical interpretation to an awareness of the flaws in the Bible itself.
The Bible contains errors. I know people have been burnt at the stake for saying that, but before you dismiss me as a heretic, let’s look at a couple of examples we can all agree on.
Firstly, the Bible is scientifically flawed. In Joshua 10, Joshua is at war with the Amorites. In the presence of all of Israel, Joshua prays to the Lord, “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” The writer of Joshua continues “So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, ‘til the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!”
I believe in miracles and something miraculous seems to have happened here.
But it doesn’t take much of a miracle for the sun to stand still, because it always does that. Most of the educated world agrees that the earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa, and that the world is indeed round.
The author of Joshua was a man of his times. In those days, people believed that the sun revolved around the earth. The author of Joshua was simply influenced by the flawed culture that he was in.
Similarly, the Bible is historically flawed. The Bible is not a strict historical document. For example, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contain two contradictory orders of creation.
The genealogy of Jesus is stylized at best, wrong at worst, and illogical at least, since Jesus’ descent is traced through Joseph, whose sperm was not involved in the Immaculate Conception.
Not only that, but most of the events in the gospels are introduced with a minimum of historical detail, and are written in Greek even though Jesus probably spoke Aramaic.
This suggests that the gospel writers were more interested in readability that historical accuracy.
This is good news, because the four gospels contain numerous contradictions, which would be problematic if they claimed to be primarily historical records.
For example, the Gospels have different sequences of events. In Matthew 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20, Luke 5:1-11 and John 1:35-42, we are given different versions of Peter’s call to discipleship. Did it happen in stages or is there confusion about its nature?
Or compare Mark 10:46-52, Matthew 20:29-34 and Luke 18:35-43. How many blind men were there? Did the blind man sit at the gate when Jesus entered the city, or when He left? What was the name/names of the blind man?
The examples are endless and flow from the Old Testament right through the New Testament.
Moreover, the Bible is contextually flawed. According to Paul, slaves should submit to their masters , women should wear head-coverings in worship and men should not grow their hair . We now see these commands as contextual concessions and as no longer binding.
The Bible might even be theologically flawed. Many theologians believe that the Bible is even interpreted wrong within the Bible.
In Matthew 2:15, Matthew says Joseph flees from Egypt to fulfil the prophecy in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” But as we read the next verse, it becomes clear that Hosea’s prophecy refers to Israel, not Jesus. Otherwise, Jesus “sacrificed to the Baals and… burnt incense to images.”
The Bible isn’t inerrant. Rather it is scientifically, culturally, historically and theologically flawed. Sinful, fallible human beings wrote the Bible. God was involved in and sovereign over the process, but he did not dictate the Bible word for word.
Luke says that he wrote his gospel “after investigating everything.”
On the topic of male-female relationships, Paul admits, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion.”
Not every word of the Bible is the exact word of God.
Rather, each book is written in a unique style, according to the human author’s personality and education, influenced by the human author’s strengths and weaknesses.
The book of Revelation is even an example of bad grammar. The end of Psalm 137 – “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock” – is David speaking, not God. Galatians 5:12 – “I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves” – is Paul speaking, not God.
Jesus is the only sinless human being: Paul, Peter and the author of Hebrews are all sinful human beings with limited capabilities. To claim the infallibility of scripture is to ignore the doctrine of original sin; it is to fall into the heresy of believing that humanity will be completely free from sin this side of the grave.
What if the Bible contains errors?

To claim that the Bible contains error is not to say the Bible is unreliable. The New Testament can be described today as “the best investigated book in world literature” and most scholars conclude with excommunicated Catholic theologian Hans Kung that the Bible is “relatively reliable.”
When the Bible is used together with tradition, personal and communal experience, reason and revelation, it becomes even more reliable.
To claim that the Bible contains errors is also not to say that God was not involved in its creation. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says of the Old Testament, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Peter clearly views Paul’s letters on a par with “the other scriptures.”
In some parts of the Bible, God dictates the exact words to human authors. In other parts, the prophets hear what God wants them to say. The Bible tells us things the authors could not have known without divine revelation, about creation , angels and devils , the end of the world and what is going to happen in the future, such as the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus. Clearly, God was involved in the formation of the Bible.
Hebrews 4:12 also says, “The Word of God is living and active.” The Bible is inspired in terms of what the Spirit does with it, not just in terms of what it says. God spoke in the Bible and today God continues to speak through the Bible into people’s everyday lives.
To say the Bible contains error also does not mean that it is a worse book as a result. Rather, I believe the Bible is better for being flawed. In being both divine and human, the Bible becomes more helpful.
On the one hand, if the Bible were just a divine textbook that we could follow like mindless robots, it would absolve us of individual responsibility and of the need to contextualise and interact with God in the present moment. We would not need tradition or community or even our own reason, revelation and experience.
On the other hand, if the Bible were just a human account of man’s search for God, there would be no reason to trust it or listen to it.
By being both divine and human, the Bible avoids these extremes: it creates space for obedience and initiative, unity and diversity, security and wonder.
The errors in the Bible also keep us from idolatry. God cannot be contained in a book. As Rilke, the German poet, says, “God is the no longer sayable." God, by definition, is beyond definition. Religion must walk a tightrope between symbolism and silence. We proclaim that God is knowable, while admitting the finitude of our knowledge.
David writes, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”
Similarly, Paul writes, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Theologian Paul Tillich says:

Both the Old and the New Testaments describe
our existence in relation to God as one of
waiting. In the psalmist there is an anxious
waiting; in the apostle there is a patient
waiting. Waiting means not having and having
at the same time….
The condition of man’s relation to God is
first of all one of not having, not seeing,
not knowing and not grasping. A religion in
which that is forgotten, no matter how
ecstatic or active or reasonable, replaces God
by its own creation of an image of God.
Our religious life is characterized more by
that kind of creation than anything else. I
think of the theologian who does not wait for
God, because he possesses him, enclosed
within a doctrine. I think of the Biblical
student who does not wait for God, because
he possesses him, enclosed in a book. I
think of the churchman who does not wait
for God, because he possesses him, enclosed
in an institution. I think of the believer
who does not wait for God, because he
possesses him, enclosed within his own
experience.
It is not easy to endure this not having God,
this waiting for God. It is not easy to preach
Sunday after Sunday without convincing
ourselves and others that we have God and can
dispose of him. It is not easy to proclaim God
to children and pagans, to sceptics and
secularists, and at the same time to make clear
to them that we ourselves do not possess God,
that we too wait for him.
I am convinced that much of the rebellion
against Christianity is due to the overt or
veiled claim of the Christians to possess God,
and therefore, also, to the loss of this
element of waiting, so decisive for the prophets
and the apostles….
They did not possess God; they waited for him.
For how can God be possessed? Is God a thing
that can be grasped and known among other things?
Is God less than a human person? We always have
to wait for a human being. Even in the most
intimate communion among human beings, there is
an element of not having and not knowing, of
waiting.
Therefore, since God is infinitely hidden, free,
and incalculable, we must wait for him in the
most absolute and radical way. He is God for us
just in so far as we do not possess him.

As Hans Kung says, “In order to be defensible, faith no more needs a guaranteed infallible knowledge at its disposal than love does. Like all human knowledge, the knowledge of faith is also fragmentary. Only when faith remains aware of this does it remain free from arrogance, intolerance and false zeal.”
John Wesley, the inspiration behind Methodism, highlighted four ways of knowing: reason, tradition, scripture and revelation.
All four of them are fallible. They are like ropes, which can each carry a heavy weight, but all reach a breaking point. The four ropes together can hold a heavier weight than each rope individually, but even all four together occasionally snap under extreme pressure.
We are so accustomed to evangelical Christians defending absolute truth, that we are surprised when we read a man as wise as the apostle Paul humbly admitting, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Objective truth shapes our subjectivity; but our subjectivity shapes the objective truth. Objective truth exists, but we cannot reach it objectively.
However, while we need to wield our perceptions of truth humbly, we do need to wield them. As James writes, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault; and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”
Sometimes the most important thing is not being correct: it is being obedient. We ask God, we use all the resources He puts at our disposal, then we make the best decision we can and act on it.
The Bible claims the truth will set us free, so we need not fear honest lies. Every time we speak what we believe, we create the possibility for our own misconceptions to be corrected, and we create the possibility of correcting others.
Similarly, we need not fear wrong actions. As Martin Luther wrote to Melachton in a letter, “Be a sinner and sin boldly! But believe in Christ, and rejoice more boldly still.” Decisions and actions should always be provisional, but decisions must be made and action must be taken.
As a pastor I know often says, “It’s easier to steer a moving ship.”
I believe I speak the truth, but I’m open to correction if you think it’s a bunch of lies. As such, please read my views critically.