Christian believers, who live in a different world from them and who try to understand them, have to make allowance for the important fact that their world was very different from ours. We want to understand their message, and we want to let God speak through their words. We also want to put the message about the God of whom they speak in our words, to relate the message about him to our problems. So we must interpret their message, understand their expression. We may do so because we experience through their words the revealing activity of the same God who revealed himself to them. To say this is to claim that we find the unity of the Bible in its witness to the revealing activity of God.
The Christian’s task is to make that clear and to find in the present time the means to speak intelligibly about the activity of God within the world.
Science resulted from the discovery of scientific method. Ancient peoples did not know what scientists of the seventeenth, eighteenth and later centuries discovered. Ancient writers did not know the scientific method. For example, the Bible writers did not know about the circulation of the blood, the constitution of the universe, the movements of the planets, and the diurnal motion of the earth as it makes its annual circuit around the sun. Their astronomy was geocentric.
What does it matter that they thought very differently about the way things are than we do, that they did not have the idea of nature which we have? How could they? For us the eighteenth century is history. But not for them! They could not, and therefore did not, think of nature in Newtonian terms, let alone in post-Einsteinian terms as we do. There is a distance between them and us. The temporal gap is also a cultural gap. We think of a universal order of nature with each event linked to every other in a chain of cause and effect. Our science does not speak of God nor of divine or supernatural activity as cause in any sense whatever, neither in physics, nor in psychology, nor in economics. We explain nature and history in secular terms. So our horizon is very different from their horizon.
9 MUST?
Christians sometimes speak of the Bible as the ‘word of God.’ ‘To believe the Bible’ means then to accept it as the means through which God ‘speaks.’ By using this analogy from human speech as communication, they convey the idea that God communicates with the human person through the reading and exposition of the words of Scripture. To have Christian faith is the product of this revelation of God through Scripture. But this does not entail belief in the literal accuracy of all the statements of Scripture.
To decide whether the Bible is the ‘word of God’ requires a different sort of approach than to decide whether its statements are true or false. If the Bible has proved to be the vehicle through which readers and hearers have come to have faith, the means through which that faith is strengthened, then there would be sufficient ground for a special claim about the Bible. But the Bible will have a quite different kind of ‘authority’ in this case from that which it would have purportedly in the case where someone says, ‘I will demonstrate why you have to believe the Bible,’ and then try to establish its factual accuracy. Or even, as one sometimes hears, ‘The factual claims of the Bible must be true, and therefore we can, in principle, show them to be true, as a necessary condition for accepting it as having authority.’ That is a most extreme position indeed!
No one can say in advance that every claim the Bible makes is true. You cannot reasonably believe an historical claim, unless and until you have evidence to establish that claim. You may be pre- disposed to believe it. You may hope that it will prove to be true. But it would be unreasonable to say that it must be true. Historical judgments are not necessary. They are contingent. That means that you cannot say in advance of having considered the evidence that claims will be true, or that they must be true. You have to test the claims and find out whether they are. You have to check the evidence and decide whether the historical (or other factual) claim is probably true. We cannot say a priori, before examining the evidence what the outcome of the investigation will be. Whether you wish it to be true or are predisposed to believe it true is neither here nor there. You can only reasonably believe a factual claim for which there is evidence that makes it probable. You must examine the particular case and follow the rules of evidence. You may then be able to decide whether the claim, explicit or implied, is probably true or probably false. The evidence may lead you to conclude that it is highly probable that it is true, or false. The probability may be such that you have good reason for being certain that your judgment is correct.
This is correct procedure in principle. That means that it applies in whatever context claims are made and so in considering the historical and other factual claims of the Bible. The Bible does not have a special status when it is a question of deciding whether its factual claims are true. It would be irrational to claim in advance of a reasonable consideration of the appropriate evidence that its claims must be believed. If that is accepted, and if a person says he is quite prepared to be irrational there can be no further discussion. For that person will believe what he wants and feel no obligation to give reasons for his belief. It is impossible to hold intelligent discourse with such a person.
One writer claims that the New Testament commands our unconditional obedience. He speaks of the ‘authoritative preaching and teaching of (the) apostles.’ Since Paul is an apostle his writing ‘therefore demands obedience.’45 But what does that mean? It just will not do to speak so vaguely about ‘the New Testament’ or ‘the Bible.’ Does the writer mean, ‘Broadly and vaguely, the New Testament commands our unconditional obedience,’ or does he mean that every command, exhortation or directive, wherever found and on whatever theme, commands our unconditional obedience? Speaking broadly and vaguely conveys little or no meaning. We cannot obey or believe broadly and vaguely. Our unconditional obedience is quite specific. Is every command or directive of an apostle’s teaching to be obeyed? Are women to remain silent in our churches?46 Are we to practice celibacy?47 Must we maintain rules and procedures regarding hygiene such as Jesus commended?48 Should one Christian never ever file a law suit against another?49 Is there to be no separation after marriage?50 And so on! Are Christians to take these demands as absolute and unconditional? The obvious fact is that they do not do so. So since they do not do so, that practice needs to be put into theory. They need to say how it is that they approach the Bible so as not to do what in many instances it says should be done. The words of the New Testament were written in particular contexts and addressed to quite specific situations. Those contexts and situations have passed and the advice and direction given to them may well be no longer relevant. However, there may be an important principle behind the particular directives. But that principle will have to be discerned. It will require a sympathetic interpretation of the text to show what that principle is. Does the Christian, if disagreeing when the interpretation is presented, reject the authority of the text? If you derive the principle from the specific instances dealt with in the text, is it the text or is it your interpretation which has authority?
The Bible does not lack authority because it is not verse by verse ‘immediately employable.’ For example, How does one apply the principle of love to difficult and complex personal and social situations? Where there is disagreement about ethical questions, one can hardly settle the matter from the text of Scripture when parties appeal to the same text but draw different meanings from it, different directives for action.
The following warning is appropriate here. ‘Authority is often confused with immediate applicability. It is then thought that every word and command in Scripture is forthwith obligatory for faith and conduct . . . The Bible is not authoritative because it is verse by verse immediately employable.’51
It is not an uncommon procedure to assert the authority of the Bible on inadequate grounds and then to demand unconditional belief or unconditional obedience. Take the following as examples of this logic:
‘The New Testament is clothed with his supreme authority and commands our unconditional obe-dience.’52
‘The most basic and fundamental of all claims made on behalf of the Bible, and that which it makes for itself, is that it is true. This means that whatever statements it makes on whatever subject are all true. The Bible is a book of truth not lies, of integrity not falsehood. The reason the Bible claims to be true is because what it contains comes to man from God. Holy and good men wrote the Bible, but what they wrote was not