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By Alan Reynolds
DO YOU BELIEVE that the earth is round instead of flat?
That the earth travels in an orbit around the sun? That the stars are
other great suns far off in space?
If so, then you do not believe the Bible – at
least you don’t accept the scientific understanding of the universe,
the world view, given us in the Bible.
Genesis
The picture we have in the opening chapter of Genesis
– the cosmogony of Genesis – is typical of the Old Testament as
a whole.
The earth is not exactly flat, but shaped somewhat like
a saucer or bowl, with hills (towers) around the edge. The earth itself
rests on pillars, while over the earth, God placed “the
firmament” (really a very solid sky – the Hebrew
word means “to beat out with a hammer,” like sheet metal).
In the firmament, God attached the sun and the moon and
the stars. Each evening, God “brings out the starry host one by
one, and calls them each by name” (Isaiah 40:26).
Over the firmament and under the earth are the salt
seawaters of primeval chaos.
In the story of the Great Flood, the waters came from
both under the earth and from over the firmament (Genesis 7:11).
Creation was a little pocket of order in an eternal chaos of darkness
and swirling saltwater, “without form and void.” (For the
Hebrews, fresh water was a blessing, salt water a symbol of primeval
chaos.)
Picture of the universe
If we read the Bible simply as a science book, it is
true that, simply as science, modern theories of the Big Bang or
evolution do conflict with the biblical account of creation. We simply do
not have the same worldview, the same understanding and picture of the
universe today.
As a result, so very many people have come to reject
the Bible as untrue.
The Bible is not a science book. Any attempt to
reconcile the ‘science’ of Genesis with present scientific
theory is bound to be fruitless.
The words of God?
Most of us have come to believe the Bible is ‘The
Word of God.’ But often, this has come to mean the Bible is the words of God. This is not what the
Bible means.
In popular understanding, the Bible was written by God,
who dictated to people (men) who acted as scribes – and who wrote
down, word for word, everything that God said to them. Therefore the
whole Bible is ‘literally’ (letter for letter, word for word)
true and must be ‘believed from cover to cover.’
Such an understanding of inspiration is ancient, going
back beyond Christian times – for instance, to some Pharisaic
beliefs.
It is truer of Islamic understanding, of how the
Qur’an is inspired, rather than the Christian understanding of how
the Bible is inspired. In Islamic understanding, God (Allah) spoke to
Muhammad the prophet and instructed him to “recite” exactly
what God spoke to him. For Muslims, then, the Qur’an is exactly ‘the words of
God (Allah).’
Scientific age
I believe any attempt to understand the Bible
literally, as the words of God, raises more problems than it solves.
Certainly it raises difficulties for people in this ‘scientific
age.’
Anyone who has taken a high school science course is
aware that there seems to be a major conflict between the creation story in
the Bible and contemporary scientific theories – evolutionary
theories – of life’s origins. Students in grade school ask:
“Who came first – Adam and Eve, or the cave men?”
We reject the view that the Bible is ‘the words
of God’ – not because it raises scientific problems, or because
God must then be said to be self-contradictory, but because such an
understanding of the Bible misses completely what it means to call the
Bible ‘the Word of God.’
What the Bible means
To understand what the Bible means by ‘the Word
of God,’ we go to the Bible itself.
First of all, recall the 27th chapter of Genesis.
Notice in this account how important it is to Esau to
receive his father’s blessing.
Esau and Jacob were twins, but Esau was first-born and
therefore could claim the right of the first-born, the right of
primogeniture.
Jacob (the name means ‘usurper’) was born
with his hand clutching the heel of Esau, the first-born. This story tells
how Jacob (who was later called Israel, and hence the father of the
‘children of Israel’) usurped the father’s blessing.
A few simple words
Esau, the rough and ready man of the fields and
mountains, wept like a baby because he had been deprived of his
father’s blessing, a few simple words of an old man. And Isaac, the
father, having spoken the blessing on Jacob, could not repeat it for his
first-born son, Esau. It was Jacob he had blessed: “yes, and he shall
be blessed!”
Next, turn to the book of Numbers, chapters 22 –
24, the story of the prophet Balaam.
In this strange story, Balak, king of Moab, placed more
confidence in the power of the spoken word of the prophet (Balaam) than he
did in his own army.
Notice also that Balaam, who was a true prophet, could
speak only what was given him by God to speak. He couldn’t
pronounce a curse on Israel as Balak wished, he could only bless them.
“How can I curse whom God has not cursed?”
The power of words
What seems to be the outstanding feature these stories
have in common? Isn’t it that in both stories words are
understood to have a power in themselves?
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The Hebrews, you see, held the belief that words did
have power in themselves, power to accomplish what they said. Words
of blessing did indeed bless, and the expression “God damn
you!” – so common in our society –
would have been considered a most dangerous and terrible thing to
say.
Why? Because to the Hebrews, a person’s spirit
resided in his or her breath.
The Hebrew word nephesh means spirit, life or breath. When people died,
their life, their spirit, their breath, went out of them.
A puff of breath
When you stop to think about it, a word is a puff of
breath. It is a going out from the person of her or his spirit. It
therefore had power in itself to accomplish what it said, according to the
power of the person who spoke it.
In the family, the words of Isaac, as patriarch and
head of the family or tribe, would have the power to accomplish what he
said. In the nation, the king would possess appropriate power. And the
prophet, who spoke for God, possessed immense power – if indeed the
prophet was a true prophet and spoke as God commanded.
This is why the father’s blessing was so
important to Esau. This is why Balak, king of Moab, put so much
confidence in the words of Balaam, the prophet. And these are only two
examples of many we could use.
All-powerful Word
Now if the power of ordinary mortals, even patriarchs
and kings, possessed such power, surely any word of God would be
all-powerful. What God said must be so! Notice, in the story of creation,
that God didn’t do anything but speak: “And God said,
‘Let there be light!’ And there was light.”
(Genesis 1:3)
Now remember the first chapter of the gospel of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.”
What does it all mean? Why is ‘Word’
spelled with a capital letter? Look at the next verse. Notice
that it says ‘He’:
“He was in the beginning with God. All things
were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was
made.”
Who is this ‘He’ and
‘Him’?
By this time you will perhaps have remembered the 14th
verse and figured it all out for yourself:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth; and we beheld His glory, the glory of the One who
came from the Father.”
Christ the Word
Of course! The Bible refers to Jesus as
‘the Word of God.’ As words (in Hebrew understanding) are the
self-expression of the person who utters them, the going-forth from them of
their purpose, their heart and mind – so in Jesus Christ we see the
going-forth from God of the Spirit of God, the mind and heart of the
Creator.
In Jesus we have the complete expression of God’s
‘Person,’ of God’s power and love.
“The name by which He is called is the Word of God.”
(Revelation 19:13).
But why do we call the Bible ‘the Word of
God?’ We are not done yet.
If Jesus is the Word of God, then why do we speak
– how can we speak – of the Bible as ‘the Word of
God?’ To answer, we turn to some words of Jesus: “You
search the scriptures, because you think that in them you can find eternal
life. But it is the scriptures which testify to me!” (John 5:39)
Pointing the way
This verse is sometimes understood to say that we find
‘eternal life’ in the Bible itself. But Jesus is saying
to the scribes and Pharisees that they will not find eternal life in the
scriptures, because that is not what the scriptures are for. The scriptures
are to point the way to the One who can give eternal life.
Jesus’ words on this occasion are directed,
according to the testimony of John, against those who – though they
may be very religious and hold the scriptures in reverence – deny the
One to whom the scriptures bear witness: Jesus Himself, the personal
expression of God’s Spirit.
“Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have
life,” he finished (John 5:40).
True, the Bible is ‘the words of men’
– our words, human words. It contains history, drama,
poetry and many others kinds of literature.
But through the Bible, we see the witness to the One
who presents to us the full and perfect expression of God’s will for
humanity, the One known as Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, ‘the Word of
God.’
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. In pointing beyond itself to him, it is therefore ‘the
Word.’
Based in Richmond, Alan Reynolds is author of A Troubled Faith (Word Alive,
2006), which is recommended by Eugene Peterson, Walter Brueggemann and
others. The second part of this article will appear next month.
November 2008
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