The Bible is true.

In four short words I have said enough to need several books to explain what I mean and, in much of the contemporary Western world, to make my case.  So the first thing I ask is that you don’t rush ahead to assume that you know what I mean or what my politics are or what hidden agenda is about to be revealed.

Please be patient and walk with me one step at a time.  We won’t go on the long journey of several books, but we will look at some important ideas in good order in three successive articles.  In each article I will address by three questions: What is the Bible? How is the Bible true? What is Biblical authority?

Let’s start by getting clear about why I am writing about Truth and Holy Scripture.  As your Dean, I am devoted to helping you as individuals—and all of us as a community–grow in the knowledge, love, and service of Jesus Christ.  Jesus himself lived a scripturally saturated life.  In addition to being our Lord and Savior, Jesus is our model, guide and teacher.  Accordingly, following Jesus means allowing the Bible to shape our lives: our hearts, our minds, our wills, and our emotions.  In other words, our demeanor, our actions and our relationships should be Bible-besotted.

Now let’s drop the Episcopal version of the f-bomb: fundamentalism.

Some people hurl the words “fundamental,” “fundamentalist,” and “fundamentalism” at perceived opponents in church fights as the worst form of invective.  For the most part, I can’t really tell what they mean when they say it, since its usage almost always means something like this: “That ignorant, inflexible jerk who disagrees with me and uses the Bible as part of his or her argument.”

Its usage has become so vague and pejorative that “fundamentalism” and its variants have ceased to be helpful terms.  Google the term, by the way, if you wish to see its historical origins and briefly trace the way it has come to mean a state of mind that is vaguely sinister and clearly unsophisticated.  As for me, I would prefer that we set it aside altogether in this discussion.

Instead, let’s try to be clear about what the Bible is, what we mean when we say that the Bible is true, and what it means to say that the Bible is our principal authority (joined but not superseded by reason and tradition).

What is the Bible?

Much has been, can be, and will be written in response to this question.  I do not pretend to answer it definitively or exhaustively here.  But here’s a very brief answer nonetheless.  The Bible is the revealed word of God.  Even though for convenience we may speak of the Bible as a book, it’s important to remember that the Bible contains many books and that these books fall into different genres.  This will be significant later in our discussion, but for now let’s return to the belief that the Bible is the revealed word of God.

Much emphasis is placed on the human dimension of the Bible today.  From a human perspective, the Bible is a collection of historically distant texts, written (and redacted) by humans in ancient languages, and bearing the stamp of the assumptions and worldviews of the human authors.  The English-language Bibles that most of us read are translations of various manuscripts of varying reliability.  Indeed, scholars do not agree about how to render some important passages into our tongue from the ancient sources.

I don’t deny any of this.  But it is only part of the story and, if taken as the whole story, will lead us to unsound conclusions.

To put it succinctly, the Bible is not like any other book.  In the Bible, God the person speaks to us as faithful believers in a way that does not occur in any other text.   Books of poetry and scientific textbooks can speak to us about God.  The beauty of poetry and the order of nature bear his fingerprint, as it were.  In the Bible, God speaks to the believing heart.  The historical-critical method is very helpful in hearing God’s voice.  But we will never hear his voice in our reading of scripture as long as we listen only for human words that are given meaning only by historically distant contexts.

In next week’s issue I will turn to the second question: How is the Bible true?