scriptures

So if the Bible is not "the Word of God" (see previous post), what is it?

And please, please, please:  DO NOT MISREAD ME!  I am not in any way, shape or form demeaning or undermining the Bible.  I revere the holy writings; I love the scriptures.  I have been a scholar of the Bible all my life.  

I am merely trying to put scripture into its proper perspective.  I believe that two thousand years of Church history has elevated the Bible into a place never intended by God.  As I have said in previous posts, too many Christians have become worshippers of the Bible instead of God himself.  Jesus condemned that in the Bible-worshippers of his time, and I believe has the same attitude to Bible-worshippers of our time as well.

So, some thoughts on the scriptures.  My pastor last Sunday in his sermon held up the Bible, referring to it as the inspired Word of God.  I cringed inside.  You know my position on "the Word of God" from my previous post.

And "inspired"?  2 Timothy 3.16, if I am correct, is the one verse which speaks to the "inspiration" of the writings.  "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for. . . ."  But think about that, my Christian sisters and brothers.  What was the "all scripture" which the author was referring to?  What "scripture" existed in the time this was written?  The only scripture to which this could possibly apply was the Hebrew scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament.  The Church teaches that this applies to the entire Bible.  But that is not Biblical!  Arguing from the Bible itself, you can only claim inspiration for the Old Testament.  Most of the writings which make up the Christian New Testament had not even been written when this letter to Timothy was penned.

So, I still view the scriptures (including the New Testament) as special writings.  I read them, study them, learn from them, understand God through them, etc. etc., just as I have done all my life.  But I view them a bit more realistically than I have before!

I once heard a respected Biblical scholar say that the Bible is a Church document.  When I first heard this phrase, I was a bit threatened, taken aback.  And that was many years before I came to the understanding of the scriptures I have outlined above.  But I truly think that it was that statement which started me down the road to truth.  After all, I still remember it!  Decades later.  And that is something for a greybeard like me!

Yes, a Church document.  It was the Church who put together the scriptures as we have them today.  This process began around 300-400 AD.  But even in Reformation times (1500's) there was still room to argue for the inclusion or exclusion of certain writings.  The official Roman Catholic Bible contains books that Protestant Bibles do not.  And there are other Hebrew writings which the Jewish people would accept more readily than we Protestants.

In other words, there are writings which were being circulated among churches which were excluded from the official Bible.  Once this decision was made, often those writings were destroyed.  Many of the discarded writings are beginning to come to light in our day.  And the Church is still threatened by them; they seek to keep them under wraps and prevent their wide distribution.  Is God trying to say something by allowing all these "heretical" writings to be rediscovered?

More thoughts on the scriptures:  I believe that God speaks to us through the things which have been written.  But I do not believe that the Bible is the only way God speaks to us.

I believe that God can and does speak today in words which are just as "inspired" as any we find in the Bible.  I don't think God is any different in the present than he was in the past.  He still works in the same way, still speaks in the same ways.

The scriptures, especially the "inspired" ones (the Old Testament), began as oral tradition, not written.  God's Word is alive, active, etc.  Once it was written down it became static, unchanging; not the dynamic, alive thing that the Word is.  Is it coincidence that the Old Testament prophets pretty much disappeared from history around the same time that the Old Testament scriptures were written down?  This happened around 500-400 BCE.

And what does the fact that the scriptures come out of an oral tradition mean?  Does knowing that information and truth was passed on orally change anything for us?  In our current society we emphasize the veracity of written documents; "a man's word" is not worth as much as his signature on a document.

Putting the Bible into its proper perspective also helps with some of the current-day misuses of scripture.  The Bible was never, never, never intended to be either a science text-book, or a history book.  It is a worship document.  It details the story of God's dealings with humans.  When the Bible is used to try and force an artificial view of the beginnings of this planet and life on it, it is a grossly sinful misapplication.

And history:  the Bible records a very specific history: that of his dealings with his people.  It is not intended to be a comprehensive history of the entire world.  It records only a small slice of time and looks at a narrow slice of human society.

But once again, I come back to my "vision".  Even with all my frustration over the gross misuses and misapplications of scriptures in modern-day Church, I still have to trust that God is overseeing all of us in love.  He loves us in our foibles and our feeble attempts to grow in understanding of just who he is and who we are.