"What Is (Literal) Truth?": The Church and The Bible

For part 2 in the six concerns raised by Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus, But Not The Church, I’m going to go a bit out of order. I do this because concern #2 (the church’s view on homosexuality) and #4 (the church’s view on the role of women) both hinge (hopefully) on the Biblical view. While one can (and many do) disagree as to the Biblical view or whether to follow the Biblical view, is another issue. Those who are Christians, typically, base their beliefs, practices, and conduct on their understanding of the Biblical text. Because of that, I feel that it makes sense to deal with concern #3 (the church’s view of the Bible) before #2.

To begin, it is important to ask whether the book holds up as a trustworthy document. By that, I don’t mean does the story hold up or does one desire to live by it, but are the documents themselves reliable. Because of this, I refer to sources that deal in the historical accuracy of documents and not theologians. To say that the Bible is a reliable document because the Bible says it is, is what we call circular reasoning. So…

In his book, Can I Trust My Bible?, R. Laird Harris concluded, "We can now be sure that copyists worked with great care and accuracy on the Old Testament, even back to 225 B.C. . . . indeed, it would be rash skepticism that would now deny that we have our Old Testament in a form very close to that used by Ezra when he taught the word of the Lord to those who had returned from the Babylonian captivity."

In his book, The Bible and Archaeology, Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, stated about the New Testament, "The interval, then, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."

To be skeptical of the 27 documents in the New Testament, and to say they are unreliable is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as these in the New Testament.

All that to say that the documents were written at the time we say they were written and by those we believe have written them. Paul, who wrote the oldest parts of the New Testament, lived and wrote and died as the documents show that he did. A man named Jesus existed and had disciples who went on to tell his and their story and, eventually, wrote it down.

Now the question becomes, do we believe their story? For most Christians, the answer is “yes”. The only other options are that they all had multiple shared hallucinations (an unheard of occurrence, psychologists will assure you) or they chose to perpetuate one of the greatest hoaxes in history (also unlikely, given how many of them were killed for telling this story). For these reasons, reasoning Christians believe that the accounts of Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection are accurate and literal accounts. The issue is, of course, one of faith, but it is not a blind or unreasonable faith.

This then gets into whether most Christians take the entire Bible literally. The fact is that I have never met a Christian who takes the entire Bible literally, even if they claim to. If you meet a Christian who says they do, they would have to be telling you so from behind bars, since that’s where they would be after having stoned their children for disobedience.

Others would claim to take the New Testament literally, but not the Old Testament, given that Jesus Christ established a new covenant and set of laws when he came to earth. I would agree and disagree with this. Jesus, quite clearly, reworks laws concerning Sabbath, adultery, dealing with enemies, and so on. But he also calls himself “the fulfillment of the law”. He means to say that the law is his to reinterpret, but that we are still called to live as God’s people, not killing or lying or stealing or so on. Caring for the poor and the widow and the orphan.

So, what parts of the Bible do Christians take literally? I’d say that Christians are meant to take those parts literally that were written to be taken literally. They are meant to discern and allow for different styles of writing. If Solomon writes a love poem (as he does in Song of Solomon) where he says that his love has breasts like towers, we are to understand that this is figurative language and not that his love is horribly deformed. I believe (and many Christians would disagree with me) that we are also meant to read the Creation account this way. The account is written in poetic language and before a 24 hour day had even been established. The idea that the world was created in 6 literal days is not one that I have to believe in order to be a Christian. I believe that the truth meant to be conveyed through this account is that God created the earth and everything in it and created human beings in His image, in order to be in relationship with them. I believe there are important truths in the Creation account, but not all literal truths.

On the other hand, the gospel accounts of Jesus are not written in poetic language, but as literal histories. Exceptions would be (see how tricky this gets?) when Jesus tells stories called parables, which are told sort of like fables, and not meant to be taken as literal accounts. However, the general story is written in the way one might write a history or give personal eyewitness accounts (as most of these writers were). As such, when a writer tells us that Jesus rose from the dead, we are meant to take that literally. The idea that Jesus died and then came back from the dead is one that I have to believe in order to be a Christian.

As you can see, this is no simple task, the Bible wasn't written as a simple handbook for life for a person to digest in one sitting. There are clear truths that appear throughout the Bible (God is good, Jesus is Lord, man should live in obedience to God and was meant for relationship with God) and more difficult to discern truths that take intense study. As Ned Flanders once shouted to God in frustration "I obeyed the Bible, even the parts that contradicted the other parts".

Not only that, but then we approach the Bible with our own history and bias, which is why it is so important to be a Christian within the context of community. We are called to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” and, I believe, part of that is how we discern what the Bible has to say about who God is and who He calls us to be. We are also called to be led by the Holy Spirit in our discernment. This is also tricky, since the Spirit seems to lead some to certain conclusions and some to others. The important thing is to approach the text with humility and an awareness and acknowledgement of our history. Then we attempt to have Christ be the lens with which we view the Bible, seeking to do what falls into line with his command and example.

This can get tricky and good people can (and do) disagree. We’ll see this in the next two posts. The important thing is to remember that it is not our complete and perfect understanding of the Bible that saves us, but our willingness and desire to accept Jesus as Savior and follow him as Lord.