|
By Keith Falconer
When I finished reading Alan Reynolds’ two-part
meditation on the Bible in the November and January BCCN, I was troubled by his view of what
it means to describe the Bible as the word of God.
He writes: “It is for this reason we call the
Bible ‘the Word of God.’ It is the Word because it bears
witness to God’s Word in Jesus Christ.” No problem there.
But Reynolds also says: “I believe any attempt to
understand the Bible literally, as the words (plural) of God, raises more
problems than it solves.”
Elsewhere in the article he stakes out his position on
the written words of scripture: “We reject the view that the Bible is
the words of God . . . because such an understanding of the Bible misses
completely what it means to call the Bible ‘the Word of
God.”
Hebrew Aesop’s Fables?
I could not disagree more. Was his intent to persuade
readers to treasure our God-given Bible, or to treat the Old Testament like
a Hebrew collection of Aesop’s Fables – where historical trustworthiness does not
matter, as long as we ‘get the moral’ of the story?
There are some areas in which I agree whole-heartedly
with Reynolds’ perspective.
As a pastor, I share his concern with explaining the
ancient writings of scripture to people in the present day, and helping
them understand the various types of literature that make up our canon.
God did not ‘dictate’ his words to mindless
robots. He used the personalities and styles of human authors to accomplish
his purposes. Each of the literary genres of scripture used by these
authors need to be interpreted in a way faithful to the writer’s
intent.
Reading all of the words of the Bible in a literalistic way does
not honour God. Most of us instinctively know this.
There is, however, a world of difference between
acknowledging the humanity reflected in scripture, and assuming this
humanity interferes, in any way, with the divinely inspired, trustworthy
accuracy of every single word of the original documents.
The Word made flesh
It is Reynolds’ conviction that Jesus
Christ is the central focus of the entire Bible – and that Jesus
is the Word made flesh. Here again, I agree with Reynolds
wholeheartedly.
This, in fact, is why it is so monumentally important
to determine how trustworthy the human words of the Bible are.
How do we know Jesus Christ? How do we know about
his character, his person, what he came to do, and what he said and did?
We learn the answer to every one of these questions in
the Bible. Those words are the only significant, written access we have to
the earthly life of the Son of God.
Does it not make sense, then, that if we want to know
how we should understand the nature of the Bible, the best place to go is
to Jesus? It would seem appropriate to let our conclusion be directed by
these questions: What does Jesus tell us? What does he think about the written Word?
What did he have to say about the scriptures?
Jesus’ trump card
If you examine the conflicts he has with the religious
leaders of his day, you’ll notice that Jesus has a trump card in
arguments.
Jesus’ trump card – his court of
final appeal in his verbal battles with the Pharisees and Sadducees –
is this phrase: “It is written” – the statement
that clinches the victory and ends the argument.
“Jesus said to them, ‘Is this not the
reason you are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power
of God?’” (Mark 12:24).
In other words, “If you know the scriptures, you
will never end up going the wrong way down a one-way street.”
Some people say they don’t have a problem with
scriptures that point to Jesus, as the Word become flesh. But
they’re not so sure about Adam; they also have trouble with
such things as Jonah’s big fish – gobbling, sheltering and
then regurgitating a prophet. Such people ask: “How can I believe
those fairy tales, in an age of scientific sophistication?”
Look at what Jesus says about the words of
Genesis. In Matthew 19:3, the Pharisees try to trip him up by asking about
divorce: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any
cause?”
Continue article >>
|
Jesus answers by taking them back to the Garden of
Eden, in Genesis 2:24. “A man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Who is speaking here? Moses is; he is writing,
summarizing what God has just done in creation. There is no “Thus
says the Lord”; there is only Moses’ narrative.
Back to Matthew 19, where Jesus says:
“Have you not read that he who created them . . . made them
male and female and said . . .”
Whoa, stop right there! Who said? Moses wrote down the words.
But Jesus is talking about the One who made humans
from the beginning; he is talking about God. He points back to words
written by Moses, and says: “God said a man shall leave his father and mother.”
Do you catch the significance of what is happening
here? Jesus is taking a portion of scripture from a most unlikely
spot, and saying: “This is God’s word” – or
better, “These are God’s Words.
One could point to many other places in the gospels
where Jesus quotes unlikely passages from all over the Old Testament, from
the Pentateuch, the historical books, the Psalms and prophets – from
every different type of literature, from poetry to prophecy to narrative.
Jesus says of every one of them: “These are the authoritative words
of God.”
Let me give just one more example: Jonah.
Many people would say, “Now here is a part of the
scripture that must be
a myth. A man is swallowed by a gigantic fish, lives three days in
its belly, with stomach acids eating away at his flesh – and then
gets vomited up, alive, onshore. Sure, and then he climbs on his unicorn
and rides into town!”
Could this be real history?
Jesus points back to this event in Matthew 12:40-41.
He is warning of the judgment to come, and says: “Just as Jonah
was three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son
of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The
men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and
condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah – and behold,
something greater than Jonah is here.”
Jesus is saying: “You want a sign to confirm who
I am? I’ll give you a sign – the same one God gave
through Jonah. I’m going to be dead for three days – and then
rise again.”
Do you think Jesus would say, “You had better
believe in me, and prepare for real judgment in the future – and to
prove that you need to be ready, I am going to point you back to an ancient
fairy story?”
Such a conclusion seems difficult to defend, logically.
The evidence points consistently to the contrary: Jesus believed the
words of every part of the entire scripture to be the words of God –
useful and true, in everything they say.
When someone suggests we can believe in Jesus Christ as
the Word of God, but
not believe in this entire book as the words of God – then as Christians, we need to think clearly
and ask ourselves: “If we don’t accept all of this book as
God’s word; if we don’t agree with Jesus (and his apostles),
that there are no errors here; if we think that we should pick and choose from scripture which words are
those of men, and which are the words of God – then we need to think
clearly about the logical consequences.
Which words do we choose? At
what point do we stop believing? Who will tell us what to believe and what
not to believe? Why was God able to send his divine Son into this
world – to teach the truth, heal the sick, raise the dead, give his
life and rise again – but was not able to make sure that what men wrote down were really his
true words?
I would suggest that the God who has revealed himself
in Jesus Christ is not only willing and able to use human creativity and
forms of speech – but in fact did that very thing, to communicate his words. Those words
matter.
Keith Falconer is the pastor of Maranatha Baptist
Church in Abbotsford.
February 2009
|
