Did you ever wonder why HuffPost articles on the Bible elicit such strong reactions? Almost any piece about the Bible typically receives a couple of hundred comments and some garner far more. Why? I have a hunch it's because our attitudes about the Bible reveal our attitudes about religion more generally. The Bible is, after all, a primary religious authority and so how you react to it discloses how you feel about the religion it mediates.
So what kind of book do you think the Bible is? While there are any number of possible ways to answer this question, I've outlined four that seem most typical of the responses I've read to my recent posts and conversations I've had over the years about the Bible. Read them over to see if one reflects your beliefs about the "good book," and then take the survey below to register your opinion and see what others are saying.
Two quick caveats: 1) Because I'm most familiar with the Christian Bible, that's the one I have in mind, though I suspect the categories below will transfer to the scriptures of other faiths. 2) The categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive -- one might, for instance, believe the Bible is supernatural and a book of moral guidance, or that it is no different than other sacred texts but also provides good guidance for living. If you decide to take the poll, select the choice that gets closest to capturing your core belief about the Bible. Okay, with these two notes in mind, here are four options.
1. Supernatural Revelation of God's Eternal Will
This view of Scripture believes that the Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant in terms of doctrine, morals and history. It is in this sense quite literally supernatural in that it is not of the natural order but instead was written by God (working through human agents) to reveal God's eternal and infallible will for all people. Therefore, if the Bible says the world was created in seven days, then the world was in fact created in seven days. Similarly, the laws the Bible contains -- unless superseded by newer ones (as when Jesus says some ritual laws no longer apply) -- are valid for all people in all times and places.
2. Inspiring Moral Guide
Although adherents of this view may not believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, they nevertheless find much inspiration and moral guidance within its pages. The Psalms bring comfort, for instance, and the Proverbs give good advice. The Ten Commandments and teachings of Jesus offer excellent moral counsel that would contribute to a better world if more people followed them. At the same time, there are some pretty strange rules and regulations that clearly no longer apply. One therefore needs to bring some common sense to the reading of Scripture and sift through some of the outdated material to find timeless wisdom and inspiration.
3. Sacred Literature Like All Other Sacred Literature
From this point of view, the Bible represents the sacred literature of a particular religion and is no different than the sacred literature of any other religion. One therefore may profit by studying the Bible in order to understand the religion it represents. Similarly, one may be interested in the historical and cultural influence the Bible has exercised or in reading it as great literature. But all notions of its divine or supernatural status are at the very least misplaced and may in fact be dangerous as they can invite blind obedience to one religious faith and lead to intolerance toward others.
4. Faithful Confessions and Family Album
What holds all the various parts of the Bible together, from this point of view, is that they all represent faithful attempts of persons to witness to their experience of God. Taken together, all these different confessions of faith provide something of a record, or album, of the history of one people and their beliefs about God. Not unlike a family scrapbook that's been passed down through the generations, the various bits and pieces combine to tell a story about this particular family of faith and the God they worship. In this way, the Bible invites readers to enter into the narrative truth it provides and make this story their own.
Given the diverse ways to think about the Bible, it's no wonder that articles about Scripture elicit such strong opinions and engender so much conversation. What we say about the Bible inevitably says something about us -- about what we believe or don't believe, and about the place faith holds or doesn't hold in our lives. So now it's your turn. What kind of book do you think the Bible is? Can you find a view that represents what you believe? Take the survey below and let us know.
Bible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PARTIAL TRUTH: It engenders contradictions, eg. the 5 blind men and the elephant. Truth is completed by overcoming the contradictions. The entire edifice of knowledge is conceived as a process of comprehension, ascending stage by stage into widening ranges of apprehension.
PERCEPTION: In perception (sensed) there is indeterminate perception when we sense a datum afresh and the scope or generality of its characters is not grasped. But when the pervasive features linking several particulars into a class are grasped as such and the particular datum is noted as characterized by them, we have determinate perception. Error is superseded by indeterminate perception.
INFERENCE: Inference is rooted in perception, but it goes beyond the sensed particulars and gives rise to understanding extending beyond them from the point of space, time and generalities.
REVELATION: There are truths beyond both perception and inference and they have to be ascended to through revelation. Revelation is of value in so far as it does not run into contradiction with perception and reasoning. There is no dogmatism or superstition, but is a genuine source of knowledge as it fulfills the criteria of novelty and non-contradiction, and all other sources are admitted precisely on those grounds. Within the body of revelation answers should be sought for questions for which perception and inference are incompetent to answer conclusively. Example - Creation as a whole, soul, God, etc.
After analysis, only the Bible from Genesis to Revelation remains as the Standard for all mankind.
Claiming the Bible is myth seems to take away any responsibility to engage the text in a meaningful way. Many people seem to get so angry, and seemingly scared, about a book they claim is ridiculous.
God has chosen the foolish things of the world to reveal his righteousness and to shame those who think they have all the answers.
The bible (new testament and tanach), the Qu'ran, book of morman, etc are believed and adhered to by billions of people. Those people, blindly following their scriptures, make decisions and act in such a way to influence the lives of the rest of the inhabitants of this blue planet. I really think it is the right of all of us to know the extent to which our fellow citizens will interpret those "holy words" to deprive me or my loved ones of our rights.
In the US the America Baptist Convention has become the "de facto" established religion. It is self described as fundamentalist. The line between fundamentalist and extremist is very thin! We have no difficulty in acknowledging this when the subject is Islam; but we can't see it in christianity.
We are fast becoming a theocratic nation. Is it too late to halt this train wreck?
2 Timothy 3 "...the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. "
Hebrews 4:11- 12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Certainly a more coherent and consistent mythological construct. The human-divine relationship is clear. The role of humans is clear and challenging. The grandeur of the story is second to none. And through it all the characters have devotion to their gods.
The more difficult question is well the Bible as served humanity. One the one hand, it did inspire a certain moral code. The monasteries were furtile ground for re-gathering knowledge and the arts after the fall of Rome and it wasn't until the Renaissance that the fog lifted. Whether this was fostered more by secular humanism or the Church is debatable.
On the other hand, the Bible has fostered a dense, dualistic world-view which continues to be a main source of war in the world today. (This of course has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ, but everything to do with the elite who claimed ownership to him).
The Renaissance occurred despite the best efforts of the church to silence people like Galileo.
I just heard an interview of someone who also said that Christianity heralded the Dark Ages, however, I'm not sure that is intellectually honest. It just so happened that Christianity began as the Roman Empire was collapsing– which threw the West into disaray. So is that the fault of Christianity?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was particularly helpful. At about the same time of Hypatia, the first Council of Nicaea was underway consolidating the Bible into a tool of political power, so it certainly was not helping the Dark Ages, but was it the sole cause?