“The Bible is exactly as God wanted it to be”
John H Saturday 2nd June, AD 2007
My holiday reading last week included Bo Giertz’s book The Hammer of God (which I’ve read, and posted on, before), and I was struck by the following passage in which Pastor Bengtsson (an orthodox Lutheran) tells his more liberal colleague Pastor Torvik that what matters is not whether one has a “historical” view of the Bible (“historical” being code for “liberal”), but instead:
Everything depends on whether we have a religious view of the Bible.
When Torvik asks what this means, Bengtsson explains as follows:
That is faith in the Bible as the voice of God, so that if you read it to hear what God would say to you, you actually hear God speak. For my part, I have the simple belief that the Bible is exactly as God wanted it to be. That does not mean, perhaps, that every detail is set forth systematically for science, as in an academic treatise. But it does mean that every little detail has been given such a form that a human being who seeks salvation will be helped to find the truth.
The highlighted words express my own conviction on this issue as well. I’ve never felt comfortable with the term “inerrant”, largely because it carries connotations of the Bible conforming to a standard that we have set for it ourselves. But, equally, I find it intolerable to suggest that the Bible contains errors (even if some might see that as a necessary consequence of rejecting inerrancy).
Better to follow Pastor Bengtsson and affirm simply that “the Bible is exactly as God wanted it to be”; that it meets the standard that God has set for his written Word, regardless of how it measures up to whatever standard we might wish to apply.
There is then still plenty of work to do in understanding what that affirmation means and in resolving (or learning to live with) apparent contradictions or difficulties within the Bible. However, we are freed to carry out this work positively and from a position of confidence, rather than constantly having to do battle against the purported “errors” that, left unchecked, might undermine our faith in the “inerrancy” of Scripture.
Pastor Bengtsson also reminds us that the Bible was not written to satisfy our curiosity. Rather, “every little detail has been given such a form that a human being who seeks salvation will be helped to find the truth“. Many of our anxieties concerning apparent “errors” or “contradictions” in Scripture – for example, the differences between accounts of the same events in the four gospels – evaporate when we understand the purpose for which God provided the Scriptures.
As Pr Landgraf’s comment as quoted in my previous post reminds us, the gospels are not there to satisfy our curiosity as to what exactly Jesus said or did on any given occasion – in other words, they are not “fly on the wall” documentaries – but to provide four different perspectives on the more fundamental questions: why is Jesus considered a Saviour, and what is the “good news” concerning him? Much the same applies to the rest of the Bible.
[...] I just read an interesting post over at Confessing Evangelical about the Bible being “exactly as God wanted it to be.” I’m not sure what it all means. My first impression is that it’s all semantics — don’t call errors errors but use another, more euphemistic term. But I also feel that there’s more to it than I’m appreciating at the moment. I hope to be able to comment on it after it’s stewed on my back burner for a while. Sphere: Related Content [...]
I was reading Goldsworthy’s Gospel-centred hermeneutics, in which he deals with this question of inerrancy. If I read him right, I think his suggestion could be summed up as saying that we need to think less of a sort of propositional inerrancy, not least because Scripture contains far more than just propositions, and think of something more like the inerrancy of an arrow in flight (my image, not his). Which sounds very much like what you’re saying: the Bible hits the target God wants it to hit—and heck, he even tells us what that is somewhere in Hebrews.
[...] Posted in Quotes at 5:17 pm by Tim Confessing Evangelical » Blog Archive » “The Bible is exactly as God wanted it to be†That is faith in the Bible as the voice of God, so that if you read it to hear what God would say to you, you actually hear God speak. For my part, I have the simple belief that the Bible is exactly as God wanted it to be. That does not mean, perhaps, that every detail is set forth systematically for science, as in an academic treatise. But it does mean that every little detail has been given such a form that a human being who seeks salvation will be helped to find the truth. [...]
Dr. Wallace Shultz wrote an essay that touched on this a couple of months ago. The essay had more to do with the direction of LCMS World Mission, but in it he traced back a good number of contemporary issues to poor handling of the crisis in the late Sixties. What happened, according to him, was that the battle line was biblical inerrancy, but in reality should have been biblical efficacy. In other words, does God’s Word accomplish the things He said it would? This would have prevented the LCMS from walking hand-in-hand with Protestant Fundamentalists who, although they confess the inerrancy of Scripture, would not confess the power of the Sacraments to grant life and forgiveness of sins.
[...] We might also find ourselves called to more concrete forms of discipleship and begin to move towards a gospel that is more firmly rooted in praxis. We might also discover that the message of the gospel is not just concerned with the overcoming of sin and death, but also is about bringing humanity to the maturity that God had always intended for it. We might also find ourselves moving towards a more sacramental gospel. ***John Barach ponders the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the ten statements of Genesis 1. ***David Jones at la nouvelle théologie gives a list of links to material relevant to the recent Wilson-Hitchens debate on Christianity and atheism. There is also an interesting article in the Daily Mail, in which Peter Hitchens reviews his brother’s book [HT: Dawn Eden]. ***Al Kimel’s blog, Pontifications, has a new home [HT: Michael Liccione]. The RSS feed also seems to be better on this one. ***June 2007 Wrightsaid list answers. ***As someone who believes that the inerrancy debates are largely unhelpful, I found this post by John H quite insightful. The Scriptures are exactly as God wanted us to have them and fulfil the purposes for which they were given. They are trustworthy. In the comments to the post, it is observed that the Church would have been far better off fighting for the ground of Scriptural efficacy, rather than Scriptural inerrancy. The Scriptures perfectly achieve the goals for which they were given. A position centred on Scriptural efficacy also serves to remind us that fundamentalism is itself a threat to a truly Christian doctrine of the Word of God, generally denying or downplaying the saving efficacy of God’s Word in preaching, the sacraments and the liturgy. Thinking in such terms might also help to move us away from the overly formal doctrine of Scripture generally adopted by conservative evangelicalism. ***Matthew gives some helpful clarifications in response to my comments on his recent post. ***The Baptized Body, Peter Leithart’s latest book is released today. Buy your copy now! ***David Peterson, from Oak Hill, gives an introduction to biblical theology in a series of audio lectures. I haven’t listened to these yet, but some of my readers might find them helpful. ***Ben Witherington on Billy Graham. ***R.P. Reeves on evangelicalism: With Hochshild’s case, I was surprised to learn how bare-bones Wheaton’s doctrinal statement is, but as I’ve tried to think through the history of evangelicalism in a more comprehensive manner, I’m no longer surprised; rather, it’s exactly what I expect from evangelicalism. One of the characteristics of evangelicalism that I am working on developing is that it is first and foremost a renewalist, rather than ecclesiastical, movement. In 16th century Protestantism, the doctrinal heritage of the church (notably the ecumenical creeds) was explicitly reaffirmed, precisely because the Reformation sought to reform the church. By contrast, Evangelicalism seeks to renew the individual (and then, once a sufficient mass of individuals a renewed, this will renew the church, or society, or the state, etc.). Mixed with a primitivist suspicion of creeds and traditions, it’s not surprising that a basic affirmation of biblical inerrancy was believed to be sufficient boundary for evangelical theologians, nor is it surprising that this thin plank is proving to be a shaky foundation. [...]