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Is the Bible the problem?
Date: 21st October 2007
Preacher: The Revd Canon Dr Jonathan Draper
Our reading from 2 Timothy this morning contains all that is necessary to destroy Christian unity. In the translation we heard a few moments ago from the NRSV it says ‘all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching’ and so on; in the REB translation I used to prepare this sermon it says ‘all inspired scripture has its use for teaching’ and so on. These not only read very differently, they can also take the reader in very different directions in their understanding and use of the Bible. The NRSV version seems to say that all scripture is inspired by God, and this is certainly the understanding that operated for me and the churches of which I was a part when I was growing up. And since scripture, in this view, is inspired by God – that is to say because God wrote it – we simply have to accept what it says and obey it. Of course one of the problems here is that when St Paul was writing this to Timothy the only scripture around was what we now call the OT: there were no gospels written, and St Paul was still churning out his letters.
The REB version appears to leave some room for making judgements. We seem to be able to ask, ‘what are the scriptures that are inspired and that can, therefore, be useful?’ The church leaders with whom I grew up were not interested in anyone making judgements about whether the scriptures were inspired or not, for that always, in their view, leads to theological and moral chaos. Part of the problem highlighted here is shown even more starkly as you go further into the reading. I can hear the preaching voice of conservative Christians everywhere when I read out this next bit:
for the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine or teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
In fact, I rather prefer the way the REB puts the end of that section: ‘but each will follow his own whim and gather a crowd of teachers to tickle his fancy. They will stop their ears to the truth and turn to fables.’ Somehow, of course, the AV version manages to make all this sound vaguely dirty: ‘but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears’.
The party line for many here is that if you don’t accept that all scripture is inspired you are simply pursuing a personal and sinful line, you don’t care for the truth, you are only trying to make a justification for your own sinful ways, you are morally degraded and you invent and follow fables which are simply congenial to your depraved and sinful ways.
This draws the Christian battle-lines pretty clearly, and the implications of these views are visible in all of the many conflicts that dog Christian mission everywhere. They stand at the heart of the debate about women in the church, about human sexuality, about abortion, church order, and even vestments. If Christians hate and revile each other about something it is usually because of the Bible and how they use it. If you view the Bible, or bits of it usually, in a certain way, then you feel free, on the authority of God himself, to use it for the reproof and correction of others. The Bible is often little more than a stick used to beat those with whom you disagree.
I must say, having fought this battle, as they call it in some parts of the church, for the Bible for most of my adult life, I grow weary of it. Those who believe that every word of the Bible comes from the mouth or mind of God himself are not going to be convinced by anyone that this is not the case. And those who are convinced that the Bible is a most remarkable collection of human reflections on God and on living a godly life, but are quite prepared to see parts of it simply as cultural baggage or as just plain wrong, they’re not going to go back to a pre-critical view of it either. The battle goes nowhere, with bloody outcomes everywhere, but it is the life and mission of the church that suffers. No wonder Dawkins thinks we’re all barking.
Some of you may recall the interesting and challenging Ebor Lecture delivered by Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok in March this year. Like all the speakers he was reflecting on how the texts of his faith, which for him is the Hebrew Bible, have their impact on what happens in our world. He paid particular attention to the present conflicts in the Middle East and the role the Bible might play in helping to sort them out. The surprising, and somewhat shocking conclusion he reached was that the Bible and disagreements about its use and meaning were so much at the heart of present conflicts that the only sensible thing to do was to leave the Bible out of the equation or there would be no hope for peace.
On the other hand, it was Bible study – together with a certain political will – which led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid is an ideology built on a particularly perverse reading of the Bible; and it is an ideology that created, as we know, a murderously repressive political system. And yet it is said that PW Botha was convinced through being helped to read the Bible in a different way that apartheid was wrong and that the system built on it had to end. If liberation theology achieved nothing else, it set the Black majority free in South Africa and is testimony to how powerful the Bible can be.
It’s not easy, therefore, to see where we can go with this. Those who think women ought to be subordinate to men in all things, for instance, will continue to do so on the strength of the Bible, for its all there in black and white; those who think that such attitudes are wrong and a cultural and intellectual nonsense, will continue to do so in spite of what the Bible says because they read in the Bible other strands of thought that might be seen as liberating rather than subordinating. So there is, on a whole range of issues, an interesting impasse reached; it centres on how other knowledge has an impact on our use and understanding of the Bible. This is not a new problem – Christians have been struggling with new knowledge about the world and its impact on the Christian faith for centuries. And Anglicans have had significant theological and intellectual resources for working within this dilemma by accommodating reason – other knowledge, as it were – within the sources and authorities for doctrine and church life, the so-called three-fold cord of scripture, tradition and reason working with and informing each other.
But new knowledge is never easy to assimilate because sometimes the resources of our faith don’t give us any help in judging the worth and quality and truth of that new knowledge. How were our forebears supposed to understand the new knowledge that the sun didn’t circle around the earth but that earth circled around the sun, that is to say that the earth was no longer the centre of the universe, when there was nothing in scripture or tradition that could help them understand that, and when they thought in a context where the Bible was the only trusted source of knowledge because it came from God himself? The Vaticanhas only just recognised that it may have got it wrong over Galileo, and many Christians still struggle somehow with the notion that the universe is billions years old and not created just the other day by God. This is a classic conflict between what the Bible says and the new knowledge we have about our world. And you can imagine the world of conflict that opens up through the new sciences of genetics: how are we going to handle that new knowledge about what it means to be human and the impact that might have on our theological understanding not only of ourselves, but on how we understand the humanity, and therefore even the divinity, of Jesus? We need to sort out our approach to the Bible before it destroys the credibility of the Christian faith in the eyes of the world we seek to serve.
Anglicans have traditionally held that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation, but generally speaking have refused to define too closely what those things are. Anglicans have traditionally created an intellectual and spiritual space within which disagreements can take place while still worshipping at the same altar and still sharing the common meal of the new creation. That generous space is now being squeezed and barriers of words are being created which make accessing that space ever more difficult. The Bible is being used as a weapon of exclusion, which seems somehow to me to be profoundly wrong.
Somehow we Christians have got to learn how to live within the tension of our differing views and find in that tension creative possibilities rather than simply the possibility of being right. The future of our faith, and maybe even the future of our world depends on it; for how are we to resolve the great conflicts of our age if we are unable to live with difference over the Bible? The great judgement parables of Jesus are not about who gets the most answers right in the heavenly Bible pub quiz; they are always about how we live the love of God in practical ways, even if we are Samaritans and not of the household of faith. By all means let us keep arguing about the Bible, but let’s not let it get in the way of living a Christian life.
Amen.