November 7th, 2004 The Authority of the Bible
Declaration 6 of the Montreal Declaration of Anglican Essentials states:
The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are "God's Word written," inspired and authoritative, true and trustworthy, coherent, sufficient for salvation, living and powerful as God's guidance for belief and behaviour. The trinitarian, Christ-centred, redemption-oriented faith of the Bible is embodied in the historic ecumenical creeds and the Anglican foundational documents. To this basic understanding of Scripture, the Holy Spirit leads God's people and the church's counsels in every age through tradition and reason prayerfully and reverently employed. The church may not judge the Scriptures, selecting and discarding from among their teachings. But Scripture under Christ judges the church for its faithfulness to his revealed truth.
A mother sat next to her first grade daughter during morning worship one Sunday and noticed her looking down at an open Bible. In a low whisper, the little girl asked, "Did God really write that?" "Yes," the mother quietly whispered back.
Looking down at the Bible again, she said in amazement, "Wow! He really has neat handwriting!"
Citation: Susan Wright, DeBary, FL. "Heart to Heart," Today's Christian Woman.
Many adults in the church voice similar amazement to the notion that the Bible is actually the Word of God. They have difficulty believing in the actual miracle of the written word as declared in the words of St. Paul to Timothy in his second letter, Chapter 3: 14But as for you (Timothy), continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The revisionist scholars say that the Bible was humanly written and humanly inspired and does no more than give an account of the writer’s particular encounter with God. Because of this it is not authoritative for different times and different peoples and therefore is not authoritative for the church. One revisionist bishop of Episcopal Church wrote a piece called Rescuing the Bible from the Fundamentalists and his “fundamentalists” were simply those who maintained the Bible meant what it said. The revisionists have no room for the supernatural or miracle.
They are like the Sadducees of today’s Gospel reading who had no belief in an afterlife, let alone a resurrection. Jesus responded to them in Matthew 22:29 saying, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God.”
I will say the same words of Jesus to the revisionists within the church: “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God.”
But how can we be sure the Bible is the written Word of God? and secondly,
Is it all that important?
As we learned last week when we looked at the Holy Trinity, the things of God are not always easy to understand or accept. The orthodox view of the Bible, which the church has proclaimed for the past two thousand years, is no exception. It says in Deuteronomy, Chapter 29, verse 29 that, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” We say that the Word of God has been revealed to us in Holy Scripture and it remains unchanged, as it says in Isaiah 40, verse 8, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." From the earliest time in the history of the people of Israel as they sought to record the work of God and through Moses and the Prophets the Law of the Lord was documented and remains for us in the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. This is the Bible Jesus read.
When we wonder about its authenticity it is helpful to look deeply into the Scriptures.. We see human nature described accurately, often in its ugliness, even when it applies to key and heroic figures like King David. A falsified account could and would easily make spotless heroes. When we look closely at the prophecies - things that will happen in the future revealed by God - we see them demonstratively fulfilled and especially fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Some argue the writers could have manipulated the accounts but eventss like his birth and death are not easy things to arrange.
What we want to say is that to read the text helps us to believe it is the Word of God and when we have faith to believe it is the Word of God we can then accept it as authoritative as Isaiah the Prophet says in Chapter 55, Verse 11, “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
Some question the accuracy of the Biblical texts we have today, suggesting they have been manipulated either by adding to them or hiding difficult passages or texts. The question of the accuracy of the tradition of the Old Testament was decided in the finding of the ancient texts with the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s. Accuracy in the copies was established and archaeologists continue to make discoveries supporting the history recorded.
Accuracy of the texts of the New Testament are decided by a science called “textual criticism”. It works like this. Of the tens of thousands of books, letters, pages, passages and fragments that remain of early New Testament texts, each is compared to the rest to determine what if any changes have taken place in copying. Evidence of addition or deletion is also a goal, but remarkably little if any notable discrepancy exists. The Bible as we have it is reliable.
Some suggest that other writings which suggest a different approach to the gospel, like the apocryphal (questionable) Gospel of Thomas have been suppressed or even destroyed by the Church. My suggestion: read them against the Biblical accounts of Jesus and you will quickly discover that they lack a sense of beauty and truth; let the Holy Spirit lead your conclusion.
St. Peter writes in his 2nd Letter, Chapter 1, “20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Martin Luther, the great reformer, who lived from 1483 to 1546 wrote:
I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt……. I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.
Citation: Luther's Works (vol. 44, p. 207)
The second question we wanted to ask is whether the authority of the Scriptures is really all that important anyway.
Actor Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the blockbuster Lord of the Rings, confesses,"Whenever I stay at a hotel, I always check to see if they have a Gideon Bible, and if they do I tear out a page," says the openly gay actor. "I turn to Leviticus 18:22 and rip out that page, which is directed against homosexuals……. I think by now I must have ripped out a few hundred."
His motives, McKellen adds, are purely altruistic. "Who knows? There might be someone who has insomnia……who reads the Bible because they have nothing else to do and who might be especially vulnerable to what I really think is Leviticus's pornography."
Citation: "Talk about an Abomination," Citizen (March 2002), p. 11
Here we have an instance where the teachings of Scripture collide with someone’s world view and McKellen’s response is to dismiss the Bible and hence allow his own view to reign. This instance concerns homosexuality; the real danger lies is that any sin could be treated in a like matter. If it offends, simply discard it. But the Apostles had a different approach.
St. Paul says in Romans, Chapter 1, verse 16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
What is at stake is the value of Christianity. Pure gold, refined in the fire, or subjective theology. The power to save or simply to say what we think about God. It is all rather a simple question:
Is it true or is it not true?
Imagine yourself convinced that it has all been the work of manipulative men who falsified remembrances and created new ones. How strongly would you hold a hope of heaven? What would you then read from the words attributed to Jesus in John, Chapter 3, Verse 16:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
In discarding the teachings we find hard to accept we also risk losing the promises we are told God has made to us. The Christian life is a life of sacrificial giving - what is the motive if it is based on a lie? The Church must maintain an interpretation of Scripture, intelligently informed, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to continue the true work of the Gospel.
(To continue a purely Anglican perspective look a t Articles VI, VII, VIII and XX found on pages 700, 701 and 706 of The Book of Common Prayer)
