The Bible: Inerrant?

 'You don't believe the Bible is true do you?'

And it was with those words that our conversation begun - and what a conversation it was - and the day became just a little more interesting. After all, who believes the Bible is anything more than a collection of good thoughts and some wisdom wrapped in a bit of poetry that might help us to live a bit better? It's not like it is the actual word of God is it?

Now before I go any further I think I should let you know my convention regarding Bible and 'word'. Bible is 'word' and Jesus is 'Word' - that is  logos and Logos - the written word and the living Word. Simple innit?

The conversation spun a bit and there were two words that kept coming up, from them not me I hasten to add, and these were: inerrant and infallible. So I let them talk to (for that read 'at') me for a bit and kept smiling - and they talked and I smiled, I smiled and they talked and . . .

Well actually before we get to the 'and' let's freeze frame and think what the two words mean first shall we, because (to be brutally honest) most of the people I find using them rarely have a consistent or even accurate definition to inform or legitimise their views. The problem is that (like sex and gender) the two words are used interchangeably and (as Alice in Wonderland shows) words can mean whatever you wish them to mean (and perhaps not mean too)!

I realise that within the time I have I can only do one word a day and so, if you're sitting comfortably, the words is:

Inerrant: Has no errors - does not 'err' (have error) or wander from the truth or facts. It is what the Bible is - that is not just 'not wrong' but 'unable to be wrong either - I liked the thought that it is not, and cannot, sin! In a nutshell - it is Truth.

There is a struggle here for the Bible is seen as a mirror to who, and what, and how, God is. If He is Truth (and 'All-knowing truth' at that) in all its forms - then that which comes from Him and reflects Him and speaks for Him and (well, I'm sure you get the picture) has surely to be true also. If it's not then conversely neither can God be. If it's a light to our path (psalm 119) then it's a true light and if not then it is surely a stumbling block and needs to be consigned to 'literature'.

Break the mirror and you only see fragments of God*

This is a real biggy when you think about it because taken to it's ultimate consequence we can but see God disappear in a puff of self-serving, God-crunching, pronouncement.

Our first problem is that we can translate stuff wrong (through ignorance and by design) and this can have a great impact on what is written and how we understand it.

The second problem is that we can take things out of context and apply our own assumptions (like 'they're primitives and we are sophisticated') which colour the way we interpret it - after all, most I find with a view on something in the Bible hold that view to deny something others or permit themselves to act under the warrant of the very same Scripture they would otherwise deny.

Indeed the Simon and Garfunkel gene is active and virulent in Christian world - so many of us hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest!

But we have a high degree of confidence in the manuscripts - and many who will tell me they were deeply edited and added to to sell 'Coca Cola' and support political and cultural views and are totally untrustworthy. There is a chasm extant between the word of god and the way we interpret it - one is 'holy writ' and the other (at times) is more like 'Holy Cow!' One is to be considered inerrant and the other just ain't and this is where the 'Let's revise the Bible for today's language, culture, and [implied greater] more sophisticated society' tumbles into error - for the Bible becomes 'Bible Lite' rather than the 'Full Fat' version that is inerrant.

When I posed this I was asked whether I believed 'Each and every word in the Bible was true?'

My response was that every word was true, because it is after all just a word. The question of truth only becomes valid when we put words together because it is the construction, materials, attitudes and the like that make the untruths appear. It is the heart and the intention that chooses the words rather than the words themselves.

'I do believe that sentences and clauses, when read and taken contextually point to truths (even when we don't want them),' was my summation. Something which was not as well received as I might have hoped! In fact it brought back the response, 'So you take it all literally?'

This in an invitation to greater joy in that in those few words more doors are opened, and even more lunatics enter, to make the circus just that bit more fun. The reason for this is that I don't take it all literally and, if Donald Guthrie (whose every word I used to hang on) is to be believed, we shouldn't! It is true in that it is true when I say I boil an egg for three minutes I am not employing a scientifically, to the millisecond, timing but what I say is indeed true. It isn't 'literal' but it is correct and this is where I find myself with the Bible.

Creation: Years, days or what - I know there are in the narrative distinct periods and these 'aeons' might have an arbitrary delineation and yet the delineation exists (and don't get me going about the order because I go from bang which would be light followed by sound and struggle from there depending on what book I've read!).

Literal or accurate: two sides of extremely different coins I would have to say and struggle to examine, critique, define and pack away everything and you end up with something as clumsy and confusing as the Athanasian Creed ;-). There's a middle of the road approach (but then again being part of the 'via media' that is the Church of England I would say that wouldn't i?).

Being Christian is about brains, faith, reason and tradition too (we call this 'orthodoxy') for we need to read the Bible contextually with regard to the author and the focus of His dealings (us) and to reduce it to equations, rigid 'literal' stuff is to make a sterile and impotent thing of the Bible. Conversely, to read it with stalled breath and hushed tone - as if each word itself was made of crystal and needed kid gloves and falling on the knees would be to render it overwieldy and underimportant.

Emphasis, context and balance - that's the way to do it (who let that parrot in?).

Seems to me that in the final analysis the problem is that some of the stuff in it we just don't want to understand, accept or live by - do we?

*discussion for another day - debilitating or delivering?