Answers to Frequently Asked Questions - 2

Doesn't the Bible say all scripture is inspired?

2 Timothy 3:16 says all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.  This passage, however, raises two questions.  

First, when Paul wrote these words what did he mean by "scripture?" We know he meant the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the scripture of the Israelites and their descendants, the Jews, because this is the scripture he quotes from in his letters. He couldn't have meant the gospels, because they were not yet written. If they had been written, surely Paul would have referred to them in his letters, although not as "scripture." Paul's letters and the gospels were not read as "scripture" in churches until the middle of the second century, and their status as scripture was only authorized in the 4th century. These facts help us to understand that "scripture" is an historical concept. What is "scripture" for us is not the same as what was "scripture" for Paul and the first Christians. 

Second, do we know what Paul meant by inspired?  He doesn't seem to mean that scripture is to be taken literally, because he reinterprets very freely the Jewish scriptures that he's reading as scripture. Moreover, he argues that the Law of Moses, which is the cornerstone of Jewish scripture, has been set aside by the revelation of God's grace in Christ crucified.  Paul claims inspiration from the risen Lord for his creative understanding of Jewish scripture, but he also argues his case using all the tools of rhetoric and reason at his disposal.

Saying that scripture is inspired does not relieve the church of the responsibility to interpret scripture.  Paul is our model for that.  Moreover, we can see that the authors of the gospels also interpreted scripture in the light of their faith in the loving act of God in Jesus Christ.

How can there be inconsistencies in the Bible?

The Bible contains inconsistencies, because its books were written at different times for different communities of faith. In the New Testament, for instance, Jesus is reported in Mt. 5:17-20 to say that the (Jewish) law will apply until heaven and earth pass away. But Paul says in Romans 10:4 that "Christ is the end of the law." In the gospel of Mark the narrator says Jesus set aside the dietary laws of "scripture". (Mk. 7:19) The passages from Romans and the gospel of Mark are consistent with each other, but each differs from the gospel of Matthew.

We can understand this contradiction by realizing that Paul's letter, the gospel of Mark, and the gospel of Matthew were written for different Christian communities to address different problems. Paul letters and the gospel of Mark support the growth of the church among Gentile Christians, whereas the gospel of Matthew was written for a largely Jewish Christian congregation that believed the law of Moses was not rejected by Jesus but should be applied in the life of the church. 

This example also shows clearly that contemporary churches interpret the Bible. No Christian church today enforces all the requirements of the Jewish law, which is what Jesus commands in the gospel of Matthew. Centuries ago the church decided that Paul's teaching and the position of the gospel of Mark represented the word of God, and therefore it interpreted the teaching attributed to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew as referring only to moral laws and not dietary restrictions. 

The Bible says we are not supposed to judge, so how can you say that the Bible is not infallible?

The Christian Bible doesn't rule out making judgments. It calls us to choose what is loving, forgiving, faithful, and just, which takes careful thought as well as good intentions. We all make judgments. The interpretation that scripture is infallible is itself a judgment. What we need to consider is how to evaluate our judgments.  I suggest that we need to understand the words of scripture in the context of the entire Christian Bible and its interpretation in the life of the church.

The Bible does not use the word "infallible". It does use the phrase "word of God." The church for centuries has taken upon itself the responsibility of interpreting the word of God. Not long ago many Christians read the Bible to justify slavery, even as "God's word"! So, history shows how easy it is to read into the Bible our desires and temptations. In reading scripture let's be humble and test our understanding by the forgiving love of God. 

Could a God of love create cancer cells, rattlesnakes, and earthquakes?

Out of our love, my wife and I created three children, who will face suffering and death, as we will. The fact that we suffer and die does not make our love less real. Why should suffering and death mean that the love of God is a foolish notion?  Could God have created a world without suffering and death?  We have no way to answer such a hypothetical question.  All life that we know includes suffering and death. Why should we imagine that God can create life that is only everlasting bliss? 

The Bible is about the God of this world, who is known to people of this world, and who is revealed through the life of this world. The God of the Bible is eternal and powerful, but not omniscient and omnipotent. The God of the Bible learns through the experience of suffering and love.  

Aren't you substituting your understanding of the Bible for the word of God?

Faith is trusting in God, not trusting in our understanding of the Bible. This is a truth that must be faced both by those who interpret the Bible literally and also by those who interpret the Bible historically and figuratively.

Doesn't the Bible say that the Sabbath is Saturday?

Scripture doesn't say that the "seventh day" was "Saturday," and in fact Genesis and Exodus were written before the Greek and Roman Empires and thus before their calendars (and "Saturday") existed. So, we are free to understand the Sabbath as "God's (seventh) day" and not as a particular day on a particular calendar. (There is no calendar in the story of Genesis or in the Torah's Ten Commandments, although the Israelites reading the story and later the Jews would have assumed their own calendar.) The point is that we are to set aside a day each week to God, not that "Saturday" is the day that God has chosen for the Sabbath. 

Wasn't the Bible written by the Holy Spirit?

In Galatians 2:9 Paul refers to James (the brother of Jesus), Cephas (Peter) and John as those "who were reputed to be pillars" (of the church). Is this sarcastic remark the "word of God" or "the words of God"? I think these are Paul's words, for he was engaged in a conflict with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem having to do with the requirements of the Jewish law to be required of Gentile converts. Christ is the Word of God.  The Christian Bible is the church's witness to that Word.

Isn't the word of God unchanging?

If God's holy word is unchanging, then Christians should keep all the commandments of the Jewish law that are in the Old Testament. This would mean keeping all the kosher laws about foods and so forth. The New Testament is a new interpretation of God's word, as presented in the Hebrew scriptures. We cannot understand that new interpretation, if we read the Bible as the literal word of God.

How could human beings have any understanding of God that is free from the limitations of human understanding? Scripture is writing, and writing is human. Words have meaning to human minds. What could the word of God mean apart from human understanding of that word? God by definition transcends our understanding, but scripture is an account of attempts to understand. 

Isn't the attack on the truth of the Bible a subtle way of saying that faith is "nice" but false?

I am not attacking the truth of the Bible but suggesting that understanding this truth requires a closer reading than assumptions about the literal, or inerrant truth allow. If we read the Christian Bible carefully, we will see that there were diverse understandings of truth in the early church - as there are in the church today.

Why do you say there was conflict among the apostles?

Paul teaches that the risen Christ revealed to him it was no longer necessary for Jews to keep Jewish law in order to be faithful to God.  Moreover, he argued that it certainly was not required that Gentile converts be circumcised or keep kosher dietary rules.  The apostles in the church of Jerusalem, who were the disciples of Jesus before his crucifixion, do not agree with Paul. They do not cite teachings by Jesus in defense of their position, but they knew Jesus and apparently did not recall any teaching by him that would justify Paul's position.  Paul does not claim that the historical Jesus rejected the Jewish law, but only that the risen Christ revealed this "new covenant" to him. You can see this for yourself by reading Acts and the letters of Paul. 

Paul teaches as though he knows almost nothing of the life and ministry of Jesus, because he is converted by the risen Christ and not by Jesus of Nazareth. He affirms that Christ is Jesus of Nazareth, raised from the dead.  But it seems that the life and teachings of Jesus, an Aramaic-speaking Jew who taught primarily in the villages of Galilee, are of little help to him in preaching the gospel of the risen Christ to Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles in cities of the Roman Empire.  All the apostles including Paul and the former disciples are preaching salvation through Christ, who was crucified and rose from the dead.  They agree that this is the good news.  But Paul does not agree with the former disciples of Jesus about the place of Jewish law in the life of the church.  Read Galatians 2 and then Acts 15. The author of Acts thinks the conflict was resolved during the life of Paul, but Paul's letters do not say that.  And Paul is arrested in Jerusalem because of his teachings about Jewish law.  For more details about this conflict please see the commentaries on Galatians 2 and Acts 15 on this web site.

Are you saying that the gospel authors lied about Jesus?

The authors of the four gospels of the New Testament are telling the truth of the risen Christ in the form of a story that is "answering" many of the arguments of their time, which can be seen more clearly as arguments in the letters of Paul. The gospel writers are not biographers but faithful witnesses to the risen Christ. If they were biographers, how could the gospel of Mark omit entirely resurrection appearances of Jesus? By not reporting any resurrection appearances, the gospel of Mark undermines the authority of the disciples (who, in the church in Jerusalem are keeping Jewish law, attending the temple, and opposing Paul) and, therefore, the gospel of Mark implicitly points to Paul as the apostle whose ministry to the Gentiles fulfils the gospel. The gospels, like the letters of Paul, were written to support a particular view of the church and thus oppose one or more other views of the church. A careful reading of the New Testament will produce many examples of this.

If we suspect any one part of the Bible, does not the the whole become suspect also?

The church confesses that the Christian Bible is the authoritative word of God. This does not require, however, believing that the Bible is the literal or inerrant word of God, or that there are no inconsistencies in the Bible. It also does not require believing that the gospels are biographies of Jesus or that Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem all agreed about the gospel message. Affirming that the Bible is the authoritative word of God does require that we read it carefully and try to understand it more clearly.

God isn't the author of the Bible, God is the main character in the Bible. Understanding the word of God requires sorting out the testimony of the witnesses who wrote the Bible. If you read Paul's letters, you will see that he had to try to do that. Throughout history the church has always had this responsibility. Why should we believe today that the truth is self-evident in the Bible, when a close reading of the Bible reveals the controversies among the first Christians about the truth of God's revelation?

Aren't the New Testament gospels biographies of Jesus?

The gospels in the New Testament are not biographies of a man but narrative sermons that express the faith of the church. Anyone who thinks the four gospel accounts are factually consistent should read the resurrection account in each gospel. These four reports can't all be factually true. Might they all be spiritually true?  Yes, but surely we have to use our minds to understand this truth. 

The gospel of John reports that Jesus was arrested before Passover, but the other three gospels report that Jesus ate the Passover meal before he was arrested. The gospel of John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, whereas the other three gospels place it at the end. For more examples, read my commentary.

In addition, there are differences of opinion among the apostles about the truth of the gospel message. It seems clear that knowing and proclaiming the gospel truth requires dialogue, prayer, humility, and careful reflection on the scriptures.

Didn't Protestants have good reasons for editing the Catholic Bible?

The Protestant Bible was created partly to protest against the Catholic Bible. Protestants decided that the canon of the Hebrew Bible agreed on by the rabbis about 100 CE should be the basis for translations of the Old Testament, which meant omitting some of the books of the Septuagint.  (The rabbis excluded from their canon some of the books of the Septuagint, because they felt these books were written after the time of God's revelation.)  But Paul and the other apostles to the Gentiles were reading the Septuagint as their "scripture." In fact, the Greek-speaking church, which came to dominate in the West, began with the Septuagint as its only scripture. The Christian Bible used for more than a thousand years by all Christians and still used by Catholics has books in it that were excluded from the Protestant Bible.  This makes all talk about "the Bible" (which one?) as the literal, inerrant and infallible word of God seem rather silly.

Doesn't the Bible predict the end of the world shortly after the death of Jesus?

Statements attributed to Jesus (Mk. 13:30, Mt. 24:34, Lk. 21:32) about the world passing away in the life time of those listening to him obviously did not prove to be true. It is not clear that Jesus actually said the end would come within the lifetime of his disciples, because the gospels attribute words to Jesus that represent the understanding of their Christian communities but may not be actual sayings of Jesus. In the case of a prediction of the end of the world, either Jesus said it and was wrong, or the church taught (by writing the statement into the gospel) that Jesus said it and the church was wrong. In either case, the human authorship of the New Testament is unmistakable.

If the Bible isn't infallible, what proof do we have of salvation through Christ?

Paul's life was changed by an encounter with Christ. That is the "proof" he used to preach the gospel. There is no other evidence of the saving love of God in Christ other than the saving love of God in Christians with faith. Our challenge is not to prove that the gospel stories are factual, because largely they are not. Our challenge is to prove that our faith makes God's love real in our world.

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