The Bible: Just Another Book? Maybe Not

There is quite a wide range of viewpoints regarding the significance of the Bible, ranging on the one hand with the belief that it is just a largely irrelevant collection of writings put together by primitive people who didn’t know what we do now, and on the other hand raising it to the status of the third person of the trinity (as in Father, Son and Holy Bible).

The first viewpoint is absurdly arrogant. The Bible talks about how knowledge puffs up, and how right it is. It is true that mankind has gained a huge amount of knowledge regarding how to harness the forces of nature, but each item of knowledge is actually held by only a small portion of the world’s population. The majority of the population of the developed world relies on the knowledge of others to support it, and have very few of the basic survival skills that our ancestors had. Overall, I would suggest that the world’s population has become less knowledgeable than people of ancient times, particularly the vast sea of TV-watching couch potatoes (which doesn’t include anybody reading this, of course). I would say it is particularly true of the society we live in that it has lost its way morally, which is in stark contrast to the authors of the Bible.

At the other end of the scale are those that read the Bible like tea leaves, taking the view that the only way God can speak to us is through the Bible while we are reading it. And so, the Bible is read to get specific answers about current specific situations, which is dodgy because most of the Bible is story or commentary on things that happened. It’s like the Bible was really written to bring overall understanding and wisdom about God and life in general, with the aim of our being able to intelligently apply the knowledge learned in circumstances that crop up.

When I first heard the Bible referred to as the Word, I thought they were cracking a joke, because the Bible has more words in it than any other book. Whereas the Roman Catholic church views the pronouncements of the Pope to be infallible, evangelicals regard the Bible as infallible. The trouble of this concept of infallibility is that it relies on the receiver having the same understanding of what is said as the person who spoke or wrote it. That simply doesn’t happen to really quite a large extent, particularly when a few thousand years and no-longer spoken languages are involved.

On the other hand, if you just pick and choose which bits of the Bible you think are true and which bits you think they got wrong, then you are just founding a new sect; the very thing the Bible was bound into a single volume to avoid. It is true that everyone reads the Bible through their own coloured spectacles (some more coloured than others, perhaps, particularly if their doctrine or theology differs from our own) but there are some parts of the Bible that are written in no uncertain terms and cannot be subject to interpretation. Yet there are many people around today who claim to be Christians and yet put themselves above unambiguous principles that have been undisputed for thousands of years.

The best way to tackle the parts of the Bible that appear to fly in the face of reason, is to take the approach that there are things that the authors knew or took for granted that we don’t currently understand, and that more revelation from God is needed to reconcile the apparent contradiction. This is in contrast to the arrogance of thinking we know better.

So, do I personally think the Bible, all the way from Genesis to Revelation, is completely true? Yes, and not without reason, and not just because the Bible itself says it is (which is a circular argument), and not because I’d be excommunicated if I say otherwise.

The primary reason for my believing this is because I know God personally, and what’s written in the Bible ties in closely with this experience. The other main reason has to do with how the Bible came into being. It’s worthwhile knowing this, because is was not just put together by an isolated bunch of grey-haired cronies in the dark ages. Its contents are actually based on widespread agreement and acceptance.

Taking the Old Testament first of all, the first five book form the constitution and statute book of the ancient nation of Israel. Then there’s all the history concerning how they didn’t keep to it to a large extent. After that there’s the wisdom they didn’t often apply, followed by the prophets whom they largely ignored. By Jesus’ time the Old Testament was brought together as an official collection of recognised authoritative writings, although they did also have lots of unwritten traditions as well. There were lots of other books in common circulation which didn’t form the official set, but were still held in high regard, including some more recent history books of the time. Many of these still survive to this day in the Apocrypha. (The Roman Catholic Church incorporates the Apocrypha into the main Old Testament, but this adoption is relatively recent in historical terms.)

All the books of the New Testament, and several more besides, were in very wide circulation amongst the churches almost from the moment they were written, and formed the body of the apostles’ teaching . There was particular emphasis on retaining the teachings of those who were with Jesus, as that was regarded authentic and authoritative. The apostle Paul also gained this status, even though he didn’t meet Jesus (except on the road to Damascus). It was later on that it was felt necessary to formalise the collection for all time, so that the official teaching wouldn’t become corrupted. Of the books that were widely accepted, a sub-set was chosen which the appointed group of people felt would be least likely to be misinterpreted down the ages, and there was quite some debate over one or two of them.

There are some important features that all of the books of the Bible share in common. The first is that they are all regarded as being inspired by the Holy Spirit from beginning to end. In other words, there is nothing that is merely the opinion of the writer included in the text. It is the wide recognition of this from early on that caused each particular book to be accepted and incorporated.

The other important feature is that of precedence. Nothing that comes after can contradict what went before. God does not change his mind, so if what went before was inspired by the Holy Spirit, what comes after will not contradict, and the New Testament is at pains to explain how it is not a contradiction of the Old. The concept of precedence is one of the key reasons why we, as Christians, need to get to know the Bible well. Those who practice law know that much of what influences the outcome of a court case is case history, and lawyers spend a lot of time researching and learning case history, as precedents are set by this means. The same is true of Christian teaching. The Bible is by-and-large case history which sets precedence and, in the same way, must be known by those who teach (which is all of us, especially if we have children, both natural or spiritual).

There’s on final thing which I should mention, and that is the verse-leaping-out-of-the-page phenomenon, the sense of something startling new and revelatory coming out of reading the Bible. This is what convinces most people that the Bible is not just any old book. For my part, I get this too, but mostly it confirms principles that God was already showing me through other means.