Over the past two years or so I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my thoughts on the bible and what it is and my views on it. From sitting down with concerned pastors, questioning friends, seeking unbelievers to curious ministry partners I’ve attempted to explain my view on the Bible and the place it has in my life.

I’m going to attempt to explain it, maybe in a few posts maybe in one, we’ll see where the length takes me. The point though isn’t to through it up there so you can say ‘see, that’s what Nathan thinks, he’s a heretic.’ Instead it will be put up to challenge and for me to be challenged. So leave comments or challenges on the post and let’s help come to a better understanding of this wonderful book. I also have done a number of posts on the bible before, so I’m going to try and not repeat myself in detail, so you can check those out below. So this is more of a continuance of this series. There is also lots of discussion on those posts as well.

Bible: More than a Category
Bible: The Answer Book
Bible: The Rule Book
Bible: The Christian Britannica Encyclopedia (66 volume set)
Bible: The Word of God

Going to York has challenged my belief on the bible even more than when I was studying it on my own. I am under teachers that don’t believe the bible is anything more than a fantastic story with tons of depth. They believe that it is very one-sided; meaning that whoever the author is was biased to their beliefs and their orientation. They point out contradictions all throughout the bible almost as to rub it in the evangelical face. They show the brutality of some of the stories, the brutality of our God and show how so much of the bible can be found in other ancient texts that have been circulating for much longer than the bible ever has.

Many people in Christian circles call the Bible the Word of God. This I think does not do justice to what the bible actually is. The bible itself never actually calls itself the Word of God, but instead refers to Christ as the Word of God (John 1:1). So it is not the Word of God as a text. However the bible also talks about the word of God as being some sort of message (Acts 11:1, Acts 12:24, 1 Cor 14:36, Eph 6:17, Heb 4:12) or ‘good news.’ This is interesting because if the Word of God is Jesus, well he is also the good news, so that makes sense to call the good news and Jesus, which is a parallel statement the Word of God.

So where does this leave us with the 66 books of the bible; the stories of the Israelites and the Torah. Where does this leave us with the Psalms and the Proverbs and the Prophets? Well if there is one thing that I absolutely love about the bible is that there is such a wonderful message through every single book. The message is redemption. The bible is a book of redemptive history. The bible shows us God’s interactions through history and his plan unfolding to the salvation of humankind. The bible is an unfolding story. The bible shows us God’s work from the beginning to now. If you study the Israel history, or character narratives such as Job or Esther, or study the Psalms or the creation account or the gospels or the Pauline letters it will be unmistakable that there is a point to each book and they each come together to present us with one message; more specifically, one person; Jesus Christ.

The bible points to Jesus Christ in every story, in ever genealogy, in every law. The bible itself is no more than a pointer to the point of itself. The point is Jesus. The point was never to be the bible. The bible has become an idol is so many churches today where we lift up its words higher than Jesus himself. The bible was never meant to be the cornerstone; Jesus was. I love how Rob Bell puts it: that the church suffers from biblidolatry. Where we have got the messenger and the message mixed up. We need to put the bible in its right place in our lives and within the church. Not to a place where we put it on a pedestal overriding all of our actions but where instead we allow it to point us to Christ where he teaches us what it means to truly live a life without the need for a book full of rules but instead live a life that is powered by Him.

So tonight was an interesting night. Donald Miller (author of Blue like Jazz) was at Tyndale tonight and he spoke. After we had our small group with a few new additions. All went well, and then after small group Nathan came out and then we started talking. No better subject than talking about the Bible, it gives me content to write about on here.

But first to respond to Joe’s comment, he disagreed on my last post, so I like to respond to comments.

“i disagree. nothing could be more demeaning than to classify the bible as a texbook. in doing so, it is robbed of it’s true essence. textbooks are about questions and answers. the scriptures are about revealing God. and to take it a step further, none of us ‘read the scriptures’…the scriptures ‘read us’. think about that…”

In response to the above of what Joe said, I don’t think it is that demeaning to classify the Bible as a textbook. I think that it might be restrictive though. To classify the bible as only a textbook, then yes of course, it’s not a textbook, it’s the bible. But I think what I mean by classifying the bible as a textbook I mean it helps us understand something, that something being God. It helps us understand his history, his relationships, his interaction with humankind, his redemption and his love. And yes, it does have answers but the point of the book isn’t about the answers, it’s about the questions and the information it reveals about the subject. The bible for me at least does not give me as many answers (maybe I haven’t found my way to them yet) as it brings up more questions.

McLaren also talks about the scriptures reading us, it was a really good point and really interesting, I just don’t get where it comes from? It sounds great and all, and is very tempting almost, yet I don’t get it really. What I do get though is how we can let the bible teach us about ourselves even, because it’s our history wrapped up into it also, but maybe if we could define what we mean by the bible reading us.

Anyway, back to tonight, Donald Miller talks about how we as a postmodern generation are always asking the question why. Why we are ‘why’ generation. Yet, the modern church reads the bible as a ‘how’ book. He says that we need to show them the why questions in the book and stop focusing on the how’s because our generation now doesn’t care. I thought there was a lot of truth in these statements. Yet for some reason, i have a hard time classifying the bible as a book that just answers questions. Why do we have to look at the bible as a ‘how’ or ‘why’ book? Why doesn’t it have to be a any-kind-of question book.

We started talking about this tonight and it started to get pretty interesting. Of course I pull out my skeptical questions trying to bring out new answers and new ways of looking at things and I think I just got more confused. This whole Bible issue is really starting to get to me, and it’s more starting to get to me after I talk to people about it. The only option I seem to be getting to is accepting it by faith. So is that what happens, when you can’t find any answers then faith is just the final straw?

I was challenging the way we read the bible and how we read into it. We read it as a rule book, or an encyclopedia and all these other things listed below, and is that ok? I was saying that we should only read the bible through the filter of the purpose it was written for. Everyone agreed yet Nathan was on to something I think. He started talking about how the Bible is more than just this or just that. For me to say that the bible is a story book and that’s how we read it, does that derive it of having answers and thus being an answer book?

This really started me thinking. Maybe all these posts about the bible not being a rule book or the bible not being an answer book are kind of naive. Why do I find a need to put the bible into a category or classify it as a certain something? I was starting to come to a conclusion of what the bible was, and to be honest I had one in mind since I started these posts, but I’m starting to question it. It’s hard for me now to classify it as one specific thing. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, but if it’s not then that makes it a lot harder for me to read. If I don’t know why it was written it, then I don’t know how to read it. Yet maybe that’s where Joe and McLaren’s point comes in, maybe the point of reading it isn’t so we can necessarily read it but it’s supposed to read you.

I think that we established some things, at points I think we raised more questions, either way we are making progress. The next point that McLaren makes is pointing out how the modern church also takes the bible as a rule book.

For the most part I think this makes sense. The first books ever considered as important were the first five, the Torah. For the most part if you read through this, it is full of rules. Sure it’s narrative and it tells us a story about Israel but it also tells us every single rule that the Israelites were expected to live by. I think that maybe this concept of the canon was transferred over into our Bible as we see it today.

If anything, the bible shows us all these rules and then explains how those aren’t the point. Jesus fully broke some of these rules but did he break them just to make some more of his own? It’s interesting because I find most Christians use the bible to back up every moral claim they have to make. It’s always controversial ones too that they have to use the bible. You don’t need to use the bible to tell me that murder is wrong, or I shouldn’t steal. You don’t have to use the bible to show me that adultery is wrong either. Yet it’s almost as if we use the bible to support every conviction we have. I’ve heard it used to show us why it’s WRONG to date non-Christians, drink alcohol, kiss before I’m married, and get a tattoo or a piercing. Yet for some reason I’m not convinced. I don’t even see the bible itself making those kind of claims.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that any of those things that I listed above are good or bad or sinful or not sinful. I’m not even saying that morals can’t be found in the bible or that Jesus didn’t teach us tons with his words. Yet once again, I don’t think the point of the Bible is to give us a new list of rules to show us how we need to live. Maybe this will sound real Pentecostal of me, but I think there is high value in living by the Spirit.

Romans 7:6
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Galatians 5:18
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

I’m not really sure how all this plays out, or how we should live by the Spirit as opposed to the law. Obviously the law isn’t the bible, but I think there are parallels. I don’t think that we are freed from the law to live by a new law either. There has to be something that differs between law and spirit, even the new law and the spirit.

If the bible is given to us to give us a bunch of rules of how we need to live our life than I think we have a lot of problems. Especially if we try to use contextual arguments to try and explain why women should be able to teach and show us their hair. The purpose of the bible is not to give us new rules that set a new standard for living. Instead I think the bible points to something beyond that…

Bible- The Christian Britannica Encyclopedia (66 volume set)

This is my first post of many for the upcoming posts on the Bible. I’m more looking to spark a conversation to reveal more truth than simply trying to tell you what I know. I did this earlier about church in the last days of Dec, I’m sure you can check it out on the archives if you’re interested. I think though that this might turn a lot more heads if anything.

Before I start, I just want to make mention to read the comments on each of these posts. There has already been some good posts, I particularly like Andrew’s about faith, on the last post. So keep yourself updated and stay critical to everything that is being said and make up your own mind on the issue.

I’m going to start by taking apart McLaren’s rant about the bible in A New Kind of Christian. From that I hope to work out some posts that will make myself and all of us think. After going through his little nugget, I will expand much further beyond his paragraph.

“That oft quoted passage in Second Timothy doesn’t say, ‘All Scripture is inspired by God and is authoritative.’ It says that Scripture is inspired and useful—useful to teach rebuke, correct, instruct us to live justly, and equip us for our mission as the people of God. That’s a very different job description that we moderns want to give it. We want it to be God’s encyclopedia, God’s rule book, God’s answer book, God’s scientific text, God’s easy-steps instruction book, God’s little book of morals for all occasions. The only people in Jesus’ day who would have had anything close to these expectations of the Bible would have been the scribes and Pharisees. (McLaren 52)

As I try to deconstruct each ideal of the bible we have I don’t mean to disrespect it or devalue it in anyway. Rather I hope to find the place that it should really hold in my life. This isn’t just a search for information so I can win debates; it’s a very personal journey, one that I’m going on because I need to know for myself. Each one is obviously a generalization, and I’m not pointing fingers or saying everyone does it, I’m just summarizing what I’ve seen. In deconstructing these ideals I hope to construct one that will be more practical to the believer’s life.

The first ideal of the Bible that McLaren points out and that I’ve seen a lot of; is us treating the Bible like God’s encyclopedia. I don’t know how many seminars and youth presentations and sermons I’ve heard using the bible to prove archeological facts, geographical facts, scientific proof and other attempts for knowledge in this area. Don’t get me wrong. The Bible is the most amazing history document on the face of the earth. For some reason though I don’t think it was meant to show us the things we are trying to dig out of it. Was the bible written for a go to guide to prove all our scientific and geographical data? Or was it written for something different. Should we look to the Bible as inerrant and infallible on something that it was never meant to show? There are numerical discrepancies and environmental discrepancies. If we look at the Bible as infallible, we have to overlook this. If we don’t, if we allow it to become what it was meant to be, then these discrepancies don’t mean an absolute thing. It’s quite hard to take scientific facts that we hold has fact in any of the amazing Greek epics, so why do we try to make these claims with the Bible?

Is this right to say? Can we toss out the Bible as an encyclopedia? I’ll leave you with this.

“In matters of science ask the scientist. In matters of religion, ask the Bible.”
-Donald G. Miller (not the Donald Miller that wrote blue like jazz and is coming to Tyndale in a few weeks, one that writes on biblical challenges.

I have done a series on the Bible on the subjects below, inerrancy, infallibility and authority. Check it out here.

Sorry about the lack of posts over the past little while. It’s been quite hectic coming into the new semester with classes and volleyball. I also just finished writing and putting together the third issue of Canon 25, so that is always exciting. I am going home this weekend, so that is extremly exciting. Sarnia here I come!

I thought I would leave you something to think about. Something that I have been thinking about for quite sometime now. I am challenged in my belief in this quite often by other people (Christian and not) and also just be life experiences.

Why is the Bible considered the Word of God?
Is it inerrant? Infallible? Authoritative?

Ravi Zacharias said that if you ask most mainline evangelical leaders (tv-show hosts, event holders, pastors) why the Bible is the Word of God, they won’t have an answer for you. To be honest, I haven’t talked to many people, if any, who can give me a believable answer to why the Bible is this valuable.

I will post my thoughts on the subject soon, but I thought I would challenge you first. Think about that.