MysteriousFaith

Infallible and Inerrant - Exploring Hermeneutics of the Bible

What do we mean when, as Christians, we use the words “infallible, inerrant, inspired” to characterize the Bible? Have we reflected not only on what these words actually mean, but the implications to each of them on the teachings within Scripture? If we were, would we not find ourselves forced to embrace teachings like those within theonomy or reconstructionism? For those not familiar with these teachings, (becoming increasingly well established within the American Christian fundamentalist church) they advocate returning America fully to Old Testament law - stoning for rebellious children, holy war and all else.

Infallible and Inerrant - Exploring Hermeneutics of the Bible

“It is no longer possible to believe that every word of the Bible was inspired by God. Fundamentalists still do, but they can keep up such self-delusion only by scrupulously avoiding all forms of scientific inquiry. They must also maintain a tight rein on their own senses, for, even without access to modern biblical criticism, any reader might wonder at the patchwork nature of the scriptures, their conflicting norms and judgments, outright contradictions, and bald errors. But even without resorting to modern scientific methodology or noticing what an inconsistent palimpsest the Hebrew Bible can be, we must reject certain parts of the Bible as unworthy of a God we would be willing to believe in. We read, for instance, in the Book of Joshua that God commanded the Israelites to put all Canaanites, even children, to the sword; and in the Psalms the poet regularly urges God to effect the brutal destruction of all the poet’s enemies. Though the people who wrote such words may have believed they were inspired by God, we cannot.”

The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, by Thomas Cahill, page 245.

What do we mean when, as Christians, we use the words “infallible, inerrant, inspired” to characterize the Bible? Have we reflected not only on what these words actually mean, but the implications to each of them on the teachings within Scripture? If we were, would we not find ourselves forced to embrace teachings like those within theonomy or reconstructionism? For those not familiar with these teachings, (becoming increasingly well established within the American Christian fundamentalist church) they advocate returning America fully to Old Testament law - stoning for rebellious children, holy war and all else.

Most of us have fallen into one of two camps in an attempt to reconcile difficult and culturally dated parts of Scripture - we explain them away through the typical fault lines between classic liberalism or systemized theology. Is it no wonder that advocates of dispensationalism have found such a willing base of believers? This systemized theology offers a set of beliefs that explains what God had in mind as a means of revelation of His character in the Old Testament. The very troubling questions this poses of a God whose character, revelation, moods and inspirations poses can not be seriously investigated for this theological system to be maintained. Is it any less of a heresy to suggest that we open our minds to acknowledge the cultural parts of Scripture versus what literalists advocate - that all of Scripture is cross-cultural and trans-historical? Are we not completely safe resting in the knowledge that all truth is God’s truth?

As with some of my other essays, I ask you to read this article with the belief - even the prayer - that your spirit be rightly challenged and that my heart be properly rooted in a desire to know God fully - not a God of my making, but the true God. This article is not an attempt to encroach on orthodox Christian belief nor a desire to traumatize people who rigidly believe in inerrancy. It is an attempt to reconcile things I do not understand within Holy Scripture. I have for too long not answered these questions for myself - in not doing so, I have opened up multiple opportunities for disbelief to crop in, the justification for sin never being far behind this spiritual dryness. I have also found that in being honest over these conundrums, many people who had previously lost interest in Christianity are drawn back both by their own thorny questions being answered, but also by Christians being willing to acknowledge the difficulties posed by brittle arguments over inerrancy and literalness.

Christians are taught that the Bible is God’s Word. We venerate our Bible - holding it as the ultimate and final arbiter of all truth. We hold out three parts to this teaching - that the Bible is infallible (what it says can never be wrong relative to progressive revelation of other teaching, philosophy or science), that the Bible is inerrant (that internally it has no errors or contradictions - that it is factually accurate on every point), and lastly that it is inspired (that God so revealed Himself to its authors as to make the claims of inerrancy and infallibility possible).

I would propose to you that Christians are not honest about several questions most have as to these ultimate truth claims. Let me suggest to you that many of the questions need to be answered if we are to have both a pure and full personal spiritual life and if we are to reach those who find such questions incompatible with orthodox Christianity:

• Many Old Testament patriarchs, including King David and Solomon, were polygamists. This is wholly against the teachings of monogamy in the Old and New Testament. Explanations for this range from the need to populate the world (making multiple marital partners not only fun but necessary), to God allowing this sin within the Israeli culture of the day. The New Testament is stridently monogamist - while Christ talks about divorce, we have no record of His teaching on polygamy - leaving the question unresolved. Solomon is condemned for having foreign (non-Israelite) wives in I Kings 11:1-13; but not for the practice of polygamy - only for his allowing these foreign wives to take him away from belief in the one true God of Israel.
• The Old Testament’s treatment of slavery is weak. While some theologians have argued that you can find a progressive redemptive plan at work in the Exodus passages related to the law on slavery, this poses some significant problems: if Scripture is God-breathed then why the need for progressive revelation versus ultimate truth? When did God need to look at mankind and work within the sin of the day? If slavery is wrong now based on Christian ethics, then it has always been wrong.
• The Canaanite genocide smacks of nationalism, not Divine inspiration. Theologians like Norman Geisler have addressed this by arguing that Israel could not maintain their purity with the Canaanites in the land. If that is the case, then why evangelize? Why not only destroy? More to the point, any serious student of contemporary Israeli Zionism can see how the Old Testament is still being used to justify heavy-handed militarism. It is wrong now, and it was wrong then.
• The entire issue of the Old Testament Law is a very, very thorny issue for most Christians who are willing to be honest. We have a very general understanding that Christ came to “fulfill the Law” and that we “live in a day of grace”, but if asked to explain this stumble around ambiguities that are completely at odds with the specificity of the Law itself. It is a hypocrisy not unique to religion in general, but very problematic relative to living the ultimate spiritual truth of the Law.
• The Genesis record of creation is a point of contention along similar lines. Modern day cosmology points explicitly to a designer - a Creator with a plan in mind for a universe of His making; however, accepting the clear signs within science towards the reality of God require accepting the science that led to such signs. Literalists argue for a literal 7-day creation, posing thorny problems for modern-day science, which points to a very old universe.
• Eschatology (the teaching of last things) is also problematic for Christians. R.C. Sproul in his book The Last Days According to Jesus reinforces the point that the famous atheist Bertrand Russell did not believe in the divinity in Christ, in part, because of Christ’s teaching on the immediacy of His glorious return. Paul also clearly anticipated the return of Christ within his lifetime. The machinations evangelicals have gone through in an effort to explain what Christ and Paul meant have led to a set of teachings that are a mix of embarrassment and heresy.

So what is a thinking Christian to do? Are we to set aside all of these struggles and simply “believe”? If so, what exactly are we believing in? Certainly we do not have all the answers in order to believe - the ultimate reality of God is outside of our knowing - He is fully the other.

Interpreting Through The Figure of Christ

For me, the historicity of the Divine figure of Christ - His divinity, His resurrection, His life and His miracles are the cornerstone of my faith. Within this Christological experience, His teachings color my entire understanding of the Bible and how I am to live with and towards others in this world. He told us He came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it - a conundrum no more difficult to understand now as it was then for the first century Jews.

I am wholly content that it is within the teachings of Christ that I must go to first when establishing doctrine and understanding the ultimate spiritual ethos of the Bible. It is within the character of Christ that I find discontinuity between passages in the Old Testament advocating genocide or those that are unable to rise above the standard of slavery within that day. I would challenge others who disagree with me to answer this question: why is it that Christ could consistently rise above the religious and cultural discourse of the day and speak to the absolute heart of the matter but these difficult Old Testament passages can not?

He could penetrate the exterior arguments, the fallacious hyperbole and see immediately into the darkest recess of the human heart. His teaching was always insightful - an insight that can come only from the Divine. Why is it then that we can point to Old Testament passages like the one on slavery and not see that same penetration from the light of truth? It is only in the transcription of the life of Christ by men who walked with Him that we can fully understand what was of man and what was of God from within the Old Testament. I can see no other meaningful contribution to the debate over the Law and thorny issues specific to the Old Testament than to establish the hermeneutic principle that all must be interpreted through the figure of Christ.

Inspiration and Personal Experience

My own spiritual journey has been marked by a number of difficulties - questions I have been unable to answer, spiritual experiences I have not had. No more complicated and misunderstood component of my faith experience has been what Christians refer to as their “Holy Spirit experience.” I have asked friends and fellow Christians about this; in most cases in a moment of honesty and candor they confess that their “God-moments” are subtle, quiet and certainly not of the nature of having God speaking into their ear. They are moments that are at best a feeling - a leading to do something in a way that is almost not expressible. Within these more subtle expressions, an experience I can more easily connect to and share, I still must interpret, shape and guide what the meaning and substance of this feeling is. To the extent that I can point to experiences I believe were distinctly God-directed, I must also confess that my own spirit, mind and motives came immediately into play when the time came to interpret and act on this moment of inspiration. For whatever reason - perhaps because few Christians are willing to be honest about the dryness and subtleness of direction that a life of faith can require - this same part of the Christian experience that guided the formation of Holy Scripture is not assumed to be consistent.

For most evangelicals, their view of the Divine inspiration of Scripture rests in a view of the act of transcription from God to man I would humbly suggest has not been fully thought through. I was taught the classic Christian view of “infallible, inerrant and inspired” - nothing caused me more trouble that the use of the word “inspired.” It was a word loaded with meaning, but ambiguous as to its manifestation. Did the scribes of the Bible go into a trance where God entered their mind, controlling their pen, guiding their actual pen so that the words themselves became inerrant and infallible? That smacks to me of the “automaton” most Christians are so quick to decry - because such a robot requires that God work through man as if we had no free will - a horrific implication to a species so fixated on our own ability to self-actualize.

Once we admit to a looser form of inspiration, we must begin to recognize what that means. I would propose to you that we should view the use of our term “inspired” in a way that is more spiritual and less scientific. For too long we have confused spiritual seekers through our use of words that are wholly outside of their personal experience and totally at odds with reason.

However, by subscribing to a looser form of inspiration, I believe we can free ourselves from some of the difficulties of the Bible - and not those difficulties that are most important such as matters of salvation, eternity, essential doctrine and so on. Rather, we can free ourselves to view the ultimate meaning - the ultimate spiritual ethos if you will. This mindset affords us the opportunity of taking into account the culture of the day, the politics of the day, the worldview of the people who were given these precious Scriptures and it allows us to be honest when it comes to critical questions posed to Christians - some contextual, some theological, and some forensic.

For me, I hold to the view that the Bible is divinely inspired in the same way I hold to a Christian Teacher who seeks out the face of God preparing to teach a class. I believe that the Bible is composed by men who walked closely with God, sharing an intimacy with Him that - while not any more physical than you or I have experienced - did make their minds more fertile soil for the mysteries of God to be planted in. But these men were then, and teachers of today now are, susceptible to mistakes and errors - to being bound within the cultural confines of their day. It makes no sense to me that slavery - an obvious inhuman institution that has no justification within a Christian ethic - would be accommodated if your view of Divine inspiration is such that God whispered into the ear of the scribes. It makes much more sense to me that these passages (reference Exodus 21 and my essay on cultural hermeneutics) are written by a man walking with God who senses that slavery is wrong, proposes a progressive standard relative to the norms of the day, but still can not find the courage or grasp the significant need for the complete abolition of slavery. For those who hold to a tighter grasp of inspiration, a complex and convoluted systemized theology must be developed to deal with these passages - something I would suggest to you makes an understanding of the ultimate truths and genuine spiritual insight within the Bible that much more difficult to penetrate.

A Suggested Hermeneutic

If I may, let me suggest to you some basic principles and disciplines that I believe should go into properly discerning Holy Scripture.

1. Interpret through the figure of Christ. Proper theology requires that we maintain a certain amount of tension and paradox - recognizing that in the manifestation of God’s sovereign plan for the universe, much may happen that will not make sense to our finite minds; however, such statements can be misused through an effort to pressure others to set aside thorny issues. I would propose that no error can ever be made when the figure of Christ is placed at the center of a hermeneutic effort. Where we find passages - particularly those in the Old Testament dealing with arcane components of the Law and the advocacy behind the Canaanite genocide - I think we must be honest enough to state that such things seem diametrically at odds with the heart of Christ. To the extent that such a statement seems obvious, we should be no less willing to set these teachings aside as we would be if they originated from outside the church itself.
2. Commit your heart’s motives to God and ask Him to purify your mind and your motives as you investigate thorny issues - complications that make no sense to you. Pray that God will give you a willingness to accept His teaching even if it makes no sense - but beseech Him to give you clarity of mind and consistency of purpose as you engage Scripture.
3. Beware of systemized theologies. The God who made us is fully the other. His ways are not our ways. While this rightly should subject our minds to wonder at His sovereign plan, we need not set aside our minds in an effort to engage our world and to answer those questions we have in our minds. More than likely you will find that honesty in your spiritual journey will always result in you reaching another person who shares the same struggles, but has been unable to find Christians who will be honest about our own difficulties.
4. Believe that all truth is God’s truth. In embracing such a belief much of the threat contained within modernity - specifically the threats posed by cosmology, medicine and genetics can be set aside to focus on the greater value Christianity can offer to questions over motives, ethics and out-workings of each of these advancing components of modern science.
5. After you have laid the foundation of interpreting Scripture on a heart that desires to know God, lay on top of that a proper understanding and education on the culture of the day Scripture was written within, and of the history that shaped the societies and writers who transcribed the Bible. Cultural awareness will allow the ultimate spiritual ethos behind Scripture to become increasingly obvious.