INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE: A LIBERAL VIEW

Posted November 18, 1997

INTRODUCTION

Christian orthodoxy has traditionally warranted its assertions  through a combination of three authorities: scripture, tradition  and reason.

Catholicism has emphasized the tradition, interpreted through an  infallible Pope. Protestantism has emphasized the Bible, conceived by the conservatives as inerrant.

I suppose my own tiny UU denomination - in which less than 10% of  its membership would characterize themselves as Christian - would  probably cast its vote for an inerrant reason :-)

But while I am the holder of a minority liberal Christian position in a minority, heretical church (God bless 'em), I suspect  my position is well represented in many of the mainstream, orthodox (yet largely liberal) Protestant denominations (i.e., the  UCC's, the Moravians, the Episcoopalians, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, etc.)

In any event, it seems impossible to assess the truth of the  claims of Protestant Christianity without first examining its  claims regarding the Bible as an inspired, authoritative (and, to  some) inerrant book.

THREE CONTRASTING PROTESTANT VIEWS OF SCRIPTURE

The Conservative View:

Alternately spoken of as the fundamentalist, reformed, or presuppositionalist view. While some might call it the orthodox view,  one could probably only buy this if one considered most of the  mainline denominations  - which would certainly modify this view  - to be unorthodox.

[Some presuppositionalists in the xtianity discussion list have  sought to distinguish their view of scripture from that of the  fundamentalists. I personally think both are encompassed by what  follows, but I am certainly open to clarification on their part.]

This conservative view considers general revelation, or knowledge, of God to be available to all. It is sufficient to convict  a person of their sin and need for redemption, but insufficient  for them to be saved.

Special revelation, knowledge of which (and positive response to)  is necessary for salvation, is to be found in the biblical narrative of Israel and the Church - a narrative whose focus is God's  revelation in Jesus Christ.

Inerrancy is a doctrine held by conservatives (though not, I  suspect, by mainline protestant churches). It states that as God  is perfect and without contradiction, so is God's revelation in  the Bible perfect and without contradiction.

It is without internal contradiction (either within or between  its various books), nor does it contradict either natural or  historical science. It cannot contradict morality, for God is the  source of morality - apparent contradictions of this sort merely  show our human limitations in understanding the mind of God.

Where apparent contradictions exist in Scripture, a method of  harmonization is used in which the truth of both can be affirmed.  Sometimes a verse that is considered clear is used to interpret a  verse that is considered obscure.

Apparent contradictions between Scripture and the sciences  (natural or historical) are similarly resolved through harmonization. Should scientific data resist such harmonization, minority  scientific theories may be utilized - their greater congruence to  Scripture being considered an epistemological point in their  favor over more mainstream theories (e.g., Creationism).

Most documents are interpreted via some prior understanding or  external criterion of meaning or truth. This, to conservatives,  is unacceptable with regard to the Bible. There is no yardstick  of truth against which the Bible can be measured, as the Bible IS  the yardstick. Therefore the Bible is considered to be self- interpreting and self-authenticating. "The Bible says what it  means and means what it says."

Needless to say, as this truth about the Bible cannot (almost by  definition) be arrived at via deductive or inductive reasoning,  one can only arrive at it via the direct revelation of God to the  believer.

The Skeptical View:

The Skeptical View is easily presented - there not being any  deities involved :-)

Simply put, there is no revelation - special or general. The  Bible's value is - at best - a literary and historical resource  no different in kind or in treatment than any other literary or  historical resource.

The Liberal View:

The liberal view is difficult to characterize because liberalism,  almost by definition, is open to and accepting of the truth  contained in alternative points of view (in theory, if not always  in practise :-) The idea (whose source is either Samuel Taylor  Coleridge or F.D. Maurice) that people are generally correct in  what they affirm and generally err in what they deny aptly captures the liberal style.

Therefore the liberal is confident in the truth's ability to  witness to itself (which is actually not all that dissimilar to  the conservative's views regarding self-authentication and self- interpretation of God's revelation), open to the truth wherever  he or she may find it, and open to alternative expressions of  truth. Or, if you prefer, a commitment to a unity of truth underlying apparent diversity in the expression of that truth.

So while it is undeniably true that not all conservatives think  alike and not all skeptics think alike, it is true in spades that  not all liberals think alike.

All this being said, my presentation of a liberal view of biblical inspiration and authority is going to face two hurdles -  first, that I can speak for no one other than myself, and second,  that both skeptics and conservatives will unite in agreement that  the liberals may as well be atheists.

The only difference being that the skeptics will mean it as a  compliment :-)

A LIBERAL VIEW OF THE BIBLE

First of all, global IMHO turned ON :-)

A second preliminary comment is that in the argument that follows, I will be looking primarily at how the Bible functions to  inform liberal theology and ethics. Those who are interested in  such questions as the central message of the Bible, the relationship between the biblical message and the modern worldview, the  biblical meaning of concepts such as "supernatural" and  "natural", or even why would a modern person believe in God in  the first place, are referred to my web page.

Those skeptics who have read my postings over the last 2-3 years  in talk.religion.misc, talk.atheism or, more recently, the xtianity group, know that I have not been shy about expressing my  views - at length - on those subjects.

There are many differences between modern worldviews and biblical  worldviews, and though I value both the moderns and the ancients,  I do not believe that one can uncritically accept the presumptions of either.

And while there are many questionable biblical presumptions  concerning nature and history, there is a modern presumption that  needs to be at least temporarily bracketed if one wishes to even  understand - much less accept - biblical interpretations of  reality.

This modern presumption is that subjective and objective components can be distilled from an event, with the objective given  great value and the subjective discarded. This Enlightenment view  of truth must be at least provisionally put aside if one wants to  make sense of a pre-Enlightenment Bible in which events are  portrayed as coherent, meaningful totalities by people who are  fully involved in the narratives they write.

Modern scientific objectivity is no virtue to the biblical authors.

From a liberal perspective, as one scans the diversity of the  biblical material, one is struck by the notion that God's revelation - a theme which runs from Genesis to Revelation - is not a  communication of knowledge or doctrinal assertions, but rather  the experience of God's presence itself.

That is to say that the revelation of God in the Bible is primarily an encounter with God - it is God's presence, rather than  some supernatural knowledge - that biblical people affirm throughout the legal codes, historical narratives, poems, letters and  Wisdom literature of the Bible.

And the arena of God's self-disclosure to humanity is the totality of human experience - good and bad, beautiful and ugly, religious and secular. Again, when one considers the scope of the  biblical materials, it would appear that no corner or aspect of  human life - not even the nasty bits - fails to witness, to some  degree, to the God who created and redeemed it.

It should be noted that, for the liberal, the arena of God's  self-disclosure is not limited to the Bible or the Church. So for  a liberal to state that the Bible is an inspired book and Christians the children of God is not to deny that other books may be  inspired as well, nor that other people are children of God.

In contradistinction to inerrancy, liberalism asserts that God's  self-disclosure has a hidden, or subjective quality. We do not  have direct access to God's self-disclosure to the ancient peoples in the Bible, we only have direct access to God's self- disclosure to us.

But, what we DO have in the writings of the Bible is the human  witness to God's self-disclosure - a self-disclosure that is  known as the Word of God and that finds its source in Jesus  Christ.

The ancient peoples of the Bible witnessed to the Word of God, as  do we, through the totality of their thoughts and actions. Yet  there are two aspects of their witness that particularly concern  us now - they told stories (which were eventually written down)  and they formed communities.

Now while liberals would agree that God is radically free with  regard to Creation (or, as we moderns would call it, reality),  the witness to the Word of God by the ancient Israelites and  Christians, is not.

In the words of St. Paul:

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as  Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it  is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who  has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of  the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this  treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent  power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Cor. 5-7)

So while liberal Christians would agree with their conservative  brethren of the catholic and protestant persuasions that God's  revelation (or self-disclosure) is self-interpreting and self- authenticating, they would not accept claims regarding either an  infallible church nor an inerrant scripture - as they would  discern the "earthen" quality of the human response to revelation  in both.

Earlier I stated that liberal Christians are open to extra- biblical witness to God's self-disclosure. So while they consider  the Bible inspired, they do not necessarily deny that other  writings are inspired.

If that is the case, than what is it - to the Christian liberal -  that makes the Bible "special" or authoritative in some way that  other books are not?

The answer is to be found in the contingent quality of the human  response to God's non-contingent disclosure.

In the Israelite community as well as the Christian community  which came to see itself as an heir to that tradition, we find  the community stabilized by the same process of norms and sanctions that ANY community adapts to maintain its identity.

ALL communities have rules for identifying those who are of the  community and those who are not. It is in THIS context - the  norms and sanctions of the Christian community - that the Bible's  authority is understood. Out of ALL the possible writings in  history that might witness to the Word of God, the church (as a  human community) has determined that the writings of the Bible -  and JUST those writings - are the standard against which other  witnesses to the Word of God are to be measured.

That is to say that I recognize a witness to the Word of God in  the writings of Buddhists or Wiccans or atheists BECAUSE of my  own encounter with the Word of God in the Bible. (Which is not to  say that I believe that ALL writings are of the same quality in  their witness.)

So, the issue of scripture is inescapably entangled in the issue  of church and the issue of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that a  liberal recognizes the authority of the Bible for thought and  action, they recognize their connection to the Church. They  affirm their belief that for all the Bible's alleged inadequacies  from a modern point of view, and despite the human character of  the Church's canonization and creedalization process, the Church  somehow managed - in broad strokes - to get it right :-)

So what does all this accomplish for the liberal?

It allows us to take the Bible seriously without being constrained to take it literally. Rather than constructing elaborate  rationalizations on how Isaiah REALLY taught that the earth is  round, or how slavery might not be such a bad thing, or that just  because God occasionally commands His followers to commit genocide doesn't mean he doesn't love us - to name just a few examples of recent vintage - liberals are able to affirm the human  nature of the biblical writings WITHOUT denying the encounter  with God to which the writings bear witness.

Does this not mean that the liberals have lost a certain, objective foundation for faith and ethics?

Sure, but no more than the conservatives. For the conservatives  ALSO maintain that no reading of the Bible - no matter how  scholarly - can adequately communicate its message of salvation  without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And as the Holy Spirit is not something one can go out and hit  with a rock - human subjectivity is implicated in the entire  process of interpretation from soup to nuts.

And while that may be problematic for the conservative Christian  or - for different reasons - the skeptic, it is not a problem for  a liberal Christian. For the liberal Christian believes God  capable of authoritative self-disclosure though a balance of  scripture, tradition AND a redeemed reason which values the  subjective as well as the objective aspects of human existence.

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Bill Bekkenhuis

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