Joe sent me to a article by N.T. Wright one of my more favourite scholars. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Here are some things I liked more specifically.

Let me offer you a possible model, which is not in fact simply an illustration but actually corresponds, as I shall argue, to some important features of the biblical story, which (as I have been suggesting) is that which God has given to his people as the means of his exercising his authority. Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.[5]

Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities. Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I shall explore and pursue elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus. The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material. Such an appeal—and such an offering!—would of course require sensitivity of a high order to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be (of course) inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections. Such sensitivity (cashing out the model in terms of church life) is precisely what one would have expected to be required; did we ever imagine that the application of biblical authority ought to be something that could be done by a well-programmed computer?

That, in fact, is (I believe) one of the reasons why God has given us so much story, so much narrative in scripture. Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’. That, actually, is what the parables are all about. They offer, as all genuine Christian story-telling the does, a world-view which, as someone comes into it and finds how compelling it is, quietly shatters the world-view that they were in already. Stories determine how people see themselves and how they see the world. Stories determine how they experience God, and the world, and themselves, and others. Great revolutionary movements have told stories about the past and present and future. They have invited people to see themselves in that light, and people’s lives have been changed. If that happens at a merely human level, how much more when it is God himself, the creator, breathing through his word.

In the church and in the world, then, we have to tell the story. It is not enough to translate scripture into timeless truths.

The story has to be told as the new covenant story. This is where my five-act model comes to our help again. The earlier parts of the story are to be told precisely as the earlier parts of the story. We do not read Genesis 1 and 2 as though the world were still like that; we do not read Genesis 3 as though ignorant of Genesis 12, of Exodus, or indeed of the gospels. Nor do we read the gospels us though we were ignorant of the fact that they are written precisely in order to make the transition from Act 4 to Act 5, the Act in which we are now living and in which we are to make our own unique, unscripted and yet obedient, improvisation. This is how we are to be the church, for the world. As we do so, we are calling into question the world’s models of authority, as well as the content and direction of that authority.

I’m having a hard time with all these posts on inerrancy. I guess in my challenges of inerrancy everyone thinks that I automatically default to the bible being errant. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that either though. My theology, many of my beliefs, my God, my Saviour and even a majority of my posts on this website are based on and from the bible. My challenges against inerrancy aren’t because I’m trying to prove the bible as errant. That is why I am hesitant to give examples of contradictions (cause Andrew you’re right, just go to any website and Google and I could pop up hundreds). People seem to think that because I’m challenging inerrancy I’m disregarding everything about the bible and any faith based on a non-inerrant document is worthless.

I hinted at this a bit in my post about language. What if trying to label the bible as errant or inerrant it’s like trying to label an orange a dairy product or a meat product? What if inerrancy or not isn’t the question? What if we try so hard to pin these terms to the bible and we got so comfortable with them that we just think that it has to be them or the opposite? In other words, we get so comfortable with the term inerrancy and pinning it to the bible that any challenge against it we automatically assume they are arguing for the bible being errant. Of course we think the worst also. If it is errant it must be so errant that it is unable to produce any truth. This is furthest from what I’m trying to get at.

What if possibly the bible is errant and inerrant? As stupid and illogical as that sounds, the bible is full of paradox’s itself why can’t it be a paradox?

I think it is C.S. Lewis that said something along the lines that it is the devil’s favourite trick to get people to focus on one truth in exclusion for another. I’m not sure exactly where I land on this issue at all. I’m far from being able to make a decision. I just don’t see inerrancy as a logical conclusion for me. I don’t see the bible being errant as one either. Maybe it is in the middle somewhere, whatever that means or looks like. I’m not sure. Why do we have to give it one of these two terms? Terms that the bible itself doesn’t even use.

Ok, after Keith’s questions he wants to understand why I can’t see the bible as inerrant, I my as well post this for everyone to read since lots of people seem to be interested in this post.

There are a number of reasons.

1. I’m not exactly sure what we are calling inerrant. Is it the original manuscripts (which don’t exist to us)? Is it the English KJV bible? Can we point directly to a certain manuscript? Well, no because the way the bible came together is by using thousands of manuscripts and majority wins. When we say inerrant we like to point to our KJV or NASB and hold it up and say this is the WORD OF GOD. Unfortunately that specific text has been through so much translation, taken from its original language and the way we understand that is far from the way it was intended (which is why its so great to take Greek and Hebrew classes). If I was to hold to any inerrant view I think it would be a useless Endeavour because I would hold that the original manuscripts were inerrant which we don’t have.

2. An example. When Matthew quotes Isaiah about Jesus being born from a virgin he is actually quoting the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT). The original word in Hebrew doesn’t necessarily mean virgin but means ‘getting pregnant after having sex for the first time’ (or something like that). We only know this now because we can see the Septuagint and the Hebrew Scriptures and we can see Matthew’s error. As far as I’m concerned Matthew made an error because the Septuagint made an error and that’s what he quoted. Oops.

3. For the last 3 months I’ve been doing an intense study on war and sex in the Hebrew bible. I’m having an extremely hard time reconciling the God of the OT scriptures with Christ of the NT ones. I’m having a hard time understanding how a nation that is told to be a blessing to other nations is then commanded to slaughter them, women and children and all. I’m not saying just because I have difficulties it makes it untrue, but I hope you can at least better see where I’m coming from.

4. I don’t understand how we can accept books that we don’t even know the author as the inerrant Word of God, more specifically NT texts rather than OT ones.

5. This isn’t a reason why I don’t think it’s inerrant, but it is a reason why I will challenge people in it. Inerrancy seems to breed arrogance. It gives people a sense of power and pride that results in misunderstandings and bad hermeneutics. I’m sick of people using the Bible to support their own theologies and rules and regulations. It’s been used to justify war and cruel slavery. That’s not a reason to disregard inerrancy but I think it’s a good one to challenge people on their view on exactly what inerrancy is.

6. I don’t understand the need to believe in inerrancy. Just because one can say that there ‘are no errors’ and can attempt to justify errors that show up doesn’t make it anymore inerrant than me saying that the bible has errors and me repeatedly showing examples makes it errant. I don’t think that inerrancy is fundamental nor as important as we think it is. Anyone who thinks it’s all that important I doubt they understand any other view because they are probably already labeled the person a heretic. Why is it so important to believe inerrancy? Does it make my faith weaker to not believe in it? No, I think it makes it stronger (whatever strong and weak may mean, probably a different post.

7. The bible is full of unexplainable tensions (like war, murders, opposite stories (creation, the flood), seeing God after being said you can’t see him and live, number differences, story differences, contradicting genealogies etc.) someone who believes in inerrancy HAS to reconcile every single one. To be honest most reconciliations are long shots in the dark but they don’t care because if it’s possible they believe it because the bible is inerrant. Inerrancy becomes the foundation of reconciling errors. When if you don’t believe in inerrancy you just accept the bible as it is. You accept the tensions in the text. It’s ok. What does someone who believes in inerrancy do with tension; they explain it. When maybe the point of it is to be an error. Maybe God wanted errors because constantly trying to understand these tensions helps us know more about ourselves and our creator. Only maybe.

I stayed away from examples for the most part, because that is just not my point whatsoever. We can’t solve this by going through example after example and you justifying each one. I will continue to find more tension and you would continue to study and research to come up with some kind of answer. I will nod and say oh that was a good explanation and it probably just won’t resonate with me. But it will with you, and that’s ok because you believe in inerrancy, and I don’t. Even Davis (genious philosophy prof at Tyndale) in philosophy based every single argument on contradictions in the bible based on the argument that.

1. the bible is inerrant and without error
2. it seems we have run into an error
3. there HAS to be an answer or explanation because the bible is inerrant

I can’t do it like that. It doesn’t make sense for me or my faith to accept inerrancy. Does this mean I disregard the bible as useless or redundant? Nope. Does this mean that the bible is not a good tool anymore to understand who Christ is? Nope. I love the bible and I think it is full of truth and it helps reveal Christ and God’s redemptive story. Without it we’d have some serious problems understanding our history. We wouldn’t. I will continue to teach from it and study it. I will continue to encourage people to read it and memorize it and better understand it. I just can’t come to the conclusion that is inerrant.

I think this is going to be my last post on the subject for a while. If you want to understand more on a subject such as this there are other authors/theologians that hold similar views (as far as I know) on the Bible. One to try if you want an easy read is Brian McLaren in A New Kind of Christian and also a Generous Orthodoxy. Another person, though a lot harder to read is Karl Barth is his Church Dogmatics (early 20th century theologian).

I was asked a few questions in my last post by Ollie, so I thought I would summarize my beliefs with a brief explanation, but hopefully my past 8 or so posts helped set me up for this one.

Does the bible have contradictions?
I would say yes. I could point you to numerous examples, For example:

Who incited David to count the fighting men of Israel, Satan or God (2 Sam 24:1; 1 Chron 21:1)
In the same two chapters, how many years was threatened of famine; seven or three?
How old was Ahaziah when he became king; 22 or 42 (2 Kings 8:26, 2 Chron 22:2)
Was John the Baptist Elijah or no? (John 1:19-21, Matthew 17:10-13)

Obviously this is very few. However, I have a large list of them if anyone wants me to send them to them. I’m not by this trying to show that the bible is wrong, or shouldn’t be revered. I’m trying to show that the view that the bible is without error is inaccurate, there are hundreds of errors. From different numbers, to different wording, to different people being present at certain times to complete contradictions the bible has all kinda of errors. This is a reason that I can’t believe that the Bible is this holy book that floated down from heaven directly from God’s spirit. The point isn’t to say that the bible is wrong, the points is that a perfect God did not write or inerrantly inspire these text or NONE of these errors would exist and it would be 100% inerrant and infallible.

Do I believe that the same errors existed in the original manuscripts?
Once again I would have to answer yes. There is simply too many of them for all of them to be by copy errors and we have way too many manuscripts that all have the same text on them. Some however do hold the view that the original authors of the original text on the original manuscripts were the ones inspired and only the original manuscripts can be considered the Word of God, but we don’t have any of those anyway so what would be the point?

I don’t think the point is ever if it has errors in it. Anyone who actually studies the text can’t deny these errors. The errors never change the point though. They are not serious enough errors that it invalidates our story. The point of pointing out errors is to show that it didn’t come from God directly to us.

Is the bible God-breathed?
This is one of the more difficult questions I think to answer. I’ve heard it explained like this which makes sense to me. In the same way that Adam was God breathed, and the disciples were Jesus-breathed so is the bible. In other words the disciples had Jesus breathe on them and then they went out in power with the message of the gospel. Adam had God breathe on him and it gave him life, freedom and purpose. I think the bible fits into these categories. The bible is God breathed in meaning that it has power (because of the gospel that is found in it), that it brings freedom (because of the gospel that is in it), and that it gives life (because of the gospel that is found in it) and it has a purpose (because it is God’s story). Was Adam perfect, inerrant or infallible? Were the discples inerrant or infallible?

What about all the verses that lay claim to its authenticity?
First, its kind of hard to give credit to a book because itself gives it credit. It’s circular and needs more than that for its claim to hold. Second, the bible never existed when each individual books were written. Third, the bible doesn’t give itself nor are they found anywhere in the bible terms such as inerrant, infallible or authoritative; they are words the church has applied to them. Forth, most claims talking about scripture are talking about the Hebrew Bible anyway, which almost all Christians would argue that most ‘laws’ in there aren’t for today anyway (which is odd if it is the inerrant Word of God, how do we pick and choose which ones we follow or not?)

Is the bible accurate as a historical document?
Of all the texts in the entire world of any writing at all I would put my trust in biblical documents before anything else. Thousands upon thousands of texts have been found and compared and what we have is more probably and more likely than any other texts in the history of the world The only thing we need to keep in mind is that most if not all authors of biblical text were Jewish, which would lead to a very ‘sided’ story of Jewish history.

I believe with all my heart that the God that created everything that we see around us is the same God that we are trying to understand through all of this. I believe that this God is a personal God that is in touch with his creation and working through it. I believe that the bible is only a fraction of what God has done in history and that he has done much more and will continue to. I believe that the God I serve is the God of history the now and the future.

What is the bible then?
The bible is the most remarkable, amazing, congruent, beautiful, bottomless, layered, consistent text that the world has ever known. It tells a story. It is the story of God. From creating Adam and eve to the flood to the covenant with Abraham to the exodus of the Israelites to the rise and fall of Babylon and the falling back and coming back to God of the Israelites. To the peak of Israelite history which is Christ where he saves mankind from itself and brings the Kingdom of God among us and gives us hope for the Kingdom of God to come. To the expansion of the first Christians all over the world. To the ethical and pastoral letters of Paul encouraging churches to keep the example that Christ gave and helping them live it out practically. This is our bible. It is the story that we are part of. We are nothing without that story. Without the story we will not find meaning or purpose or understanding. Without that story we would never know Christ. This story is the story that we are in the midst of now. The story is still unfolding in our lives and the church today. Our goal is not to box up the bible and study it like it is part of the past as something we need to understand better. Our goal is to let it loose in all of our lives and continually live out the story in our daily lives. The bible wasn’t meant to end at John, it was meant to unfold into our lives and into the future.

What place should it have in our lives?
The bible tells us about God. It shows us what he has done in the past and shows us what he has done to bring about reconciliation to him. Without this knowledge we aren’t going to be able to fully live in step with the lives that we were created to live. This isn’t knowledge like one day you know 2+2=4, instead it’s like the knowledge of the entire subject of math. You will never get to the depths of the bible and God’s story. It is not simply a equation to learn but a subject to chase after. The more you know and live it the more you are living in tune with God’s plan not just now but all through history. Study it, live it, understand it, question it, expand it, revel in it, rejoice in it but for heaven’s sake; don’t worship it.

So in short, I believe that the Bible is the God-breathed historical redemptive narrative that sums up, encapsulates, points to and reveals the authoritative, inerrant and infallible Word of God who is Jesus Christ.

The bible wasn’t originally written with verses and chapters. That may come as a surprise to many; others have already stopped reading because they knew that already. While chapters and verses have helped many remember where specific stories or ideals are in the bible and help keep our sacred text organized at times I think these consecutive numbers do us more harm than good.

I believe there are over thirty thousand verses in the bible. There are hundreds of commentaries on each verse of the bible. These are all great resources to help understand the bible more completely. However, I think sometimes that even these commentaries add to the confusion to what our bible is meant to be. We all will see bumper stickers, church signs, t-shirts, calendars and all kinds of other attire plastered with encouraging or point driven verse. We all know the common verses like Jeremiah 29:11, John 3:16 and John 14:6.

You will also notice when someone is trying to prove something theologically that they will make a statement and then list a few verses from all over the bible to prove their statement. Like this that I found on a denominational website:

The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.(2 Timothy 3:15-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Peter 1:21)

People will do this all the time in regular conversation. They will make a statement and then say; well it says it in this verse. Preachers will preach from the pulpit taking 30 different verses to make their three point sermon or to prove his statements. We are encouraged to memorize bible verses since the day we could start talking. We got stars for that sort of thing; gold ones. We put verses on our wall to remind us to do something, or be someone. We encourage each other in rough times by quoting verse like all things work together for the good of those who love Him or something like that.

None of these things are wrong in themselves. Nevertheless, they all point to the ethos of the church today and how we read the bible. We’ve think the bible is a bunch of verses meant to benefit us. We’ve taken the bible apart into over thirty thousand different pieces and now we have thirty thousand different bibles that we can just pull out of anything whenever we need to place authority on something.

The bible was never meant to be like this. The bible was written as sixty-six different books all telling one story, all pointing to one person. When we start to pick apart the bible and use it to support our own statements, use it for our own comfort and use it for our own agenda it becomes a device that was created for our own selfishness. The bible is meant to be read as a whole. Every verse and chapter fits wonderfully into the whole, not vice versa.

The Pharisees were the ones that used the bible for their own agenda. They would take it out of context of what God was really trying to say and put burdens on people and refuse to help them. The church has done the same thing. We constantly use the bible to heap rules and standards on people and we miss the point, the message behind the story as a whole. I don’t want to be a Pharisee church; I don’t want to think like they do. We need to desperately try and not miss the point of Scripture like the Pharisees did and read the bible in light of the message instead of trying to read the bible into our own theology.

***added after John’s comment
I just noticed that John posted on my previous blog, and he made reference to a scripture (yes two verses). Read it in context to get the full picture, but it is interesting to see that Jesus points his finger and says that the Scriptures got in the way of the message of Christ and eternal life. Has this happened with us?

John 5:39-40 (New American Standard Bible) 39″You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.

There is some discussion resulting on the last post on the Bible, so you can read it there. I will comment on some of the posts soon. I’m going to post as I have time, and when my mind is working properly, so that might end up being two a day, or one a week.

Before I scare anyone away with my title, let me explain. A myth is not something that is false necessarily. The second us in culture here the bible or the creation account or something of the like called a myth we automatically conclude that the person using the word is calling it false, and that is far from the case. Many ran into this error in their studies of York thinking everyone thought everything in the bible was false because they were calling it a myth, but this was not even remotely the case. My uncle forewarned me, so that was beneficial to know coming here.

The bible encompasses the most amazing story ever known. There is so much information packed under the text that scholars are still discovering the complexities and concepts that have been there for hundreds of years. The way that the books synchronize together helps protect the historicity of the text and affirms what is there is accurate. The way that the 66 books correspond with each other, through fulfilled prophecies and similar messages from different authors gives a confidence to the reader that they aren’t just reading a story that came to the mind of some crazy man in the woods.

The bible isn’t without its problems though. The bible does have contradictions (despite what zealous preachers or conservative evangelicals may say). Typically they aren’t anything major, anything that distorts the story in a way to change the meaning or the main points. Just in the gospels account of the resurrection story alone, there is many discrepancies about what actually went on just reading the four different accounts. There are many thousands of manuscripts for each book in the bible, yet I believe that not for one of them do we have the original manuscripts. There are many books that we don’t know the authors of them. There are parts of texts that we think are missing and some that we think are added. The authors personalities ring true in almost every book. Authors argue over what is right and wrong in other books.

The bible never uses terms like infallible, inerrant or authoritative in its texts; these are terms that we give them to try to encapsulate what we think of it. The bible is actually remarkably silent about the role that it should play in our lives besides a few verses here and there like in Paul’s letter to Timothy and Old Testament passages which of course are usually talking strictly about only the Torah.

With all these problems; one thing remains. The bible testifies God’s story. Without the bible we would know nothing about how God has worked through history to bring about his redemptive plan for humankind. That which testifies to the story is errant. That which testifies to the story is not infallible. It is the story that holds these qualities. It is God’s story/plan that holds all authority. It is God’s story that can’t be replaced by anything else. The story is found in the bible, the bible is irreplaceable, but it doesn’t replace or have the same characteristics as the story itself. You read a book about Cinderella, the book and the words aren’t the story, the story happened already and the book just explains what happened with the story.

That is the way I view the bible. As the irreplaceable, priceless texts that point to the story of God’s redemptive plan in history which points to Christ.