Should SJD Affiliate with the AAC?

Can Christianity Be Credible If Scripture Isn't Supreme? (Yes)

Many traditionalist Christians rely on the primacy of Scripture, and specifically of the New Testament, as the foundation of what they claim to be the historic apostolic faith. (To me, there's an issue how much of that faith was actually held by Jesus or his original followers -- Peter's speeches in Acts raise some interesting questions, especially in view of what he did not say -- but that's a topic for another day.)

Does it matter whether Scripture has primary authority in all circumstances and at all times? Would Christianity still be a credible basis for life without it?

Troubling Inconsistencies in the New Testament

The orthodox give a preemptive spiritual and moral authority to the books of the New Testament. But those books disagree with each other in a number of respects.

Some of the disagreements are trivial. Others, however, raise questions just how much the New Testament authors actually knew -- or even whether they were "spinning" their stories to promote some agenda.

The existence of these questions suggests that an overly-exalted view of the New Testament may not be wise.

L.A. Bishop's Speech

From a Los Angeles Times article:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - In a ringing defense of an openly gay bishop and same-sex unions, Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno declared here that the Episcopal Church is "a roomy house" for all, and warned that those who leave would be leaving "the presence of God."

* * *

"Our written Scriptures have limitations. They cannot be equivalent to the incarnate word of God in Jesus," Bruno said. "They convey God's word in a particular cultural and historical context. And these Scriptures are the word of God in the words of human beings."

Local color: Bishop Bruno is a former Burbank police officer who also used to play for the Denver Broncos.

Manuscript Reliability in the New Testament

We don't have an original copy of any book of Scripture. The surviving manuscripts of the New Testament contain significant differences in text. You can find references to such differences in the footnotes of any NT chapter of the New International Version or New Revised Standard Version.

These manuscript differences give rise to troubling questions about the theological trustworthiness of the New Testament versions that we use today. A few examples of such differences are listed below.

Revelation and "Sunrise"

Maybe God teaches the human race in something like the way our parents taught each of us -- gradually, in an on-going process.

Consider how, as children, we first learned about night and day. Adults, of course, know how that actually works: The earth rotates in space, and consequently any given area of the planet moves in and out of sunlight on a 24-hour cycle.

But is that what our parents first taught us when we were toddlers? I doubt it. No, our parents probably used more "developmentally appropriate" language -- they told us that the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night. Then later, when we were more capable of understanding, our parents and teachers explained to us what really happens.

The Bible as a Library of Lab Notebooks

The Rev. Dr. Sir John Polkinghorne, a distinguished Cambridge University particle physicist turned Anglican priest, has said that:

Scripture is not an unchallengeable set of propositions demanding unquestioning assent, but it is evidence, the record of foundational spiritual experience, the laboratory notebooks of gifted observers of God's ways with men and women.

J.C. Polkinghorne, Faith, Science, and Understanding, Yale Nota Bene edition 2001, ch. 2, p. 37 (emphasis original).

What a marvelous metaphor! It's not perfect by any means, but it suggests some fascinating possibilities. It might help us find a way past some of the serious evidentiary difficulties of the various documents comprising the Bible (see, e.g., this posting and this one).

At the same time, just as scientists give primacy of place to real-world data, we can continue to give spiritual primacy to Scripture, in accordance with the classical Anglican view of authority -- while still recognizing that the map is not the territory and that new data may sometimes require a revisiting of old explanations.

Scripture and Salvation: What the 39 Articles Don't Say

Article VI of the Episcopal Church's Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, adopted in 1801, states:

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

To me, what Article VI does not say is important. Its omissions leave room for each of us to be prayerfully judicious in the weight and importance we assign to different passages in Scripture.

Scripture, Stonings, and Homosexuality

[Update 12/17: I posted a link to additional scriptural citations in a comment below]

Traditionalists often argue that homosexuality is supposedly condemned by the Bible, and that's that.

But it seems to me that, if the literal words of Scripture held the once-and-for-all answers to all moral questions, then we would still be stoning rebellious sons at the town gates, as commanded by Deut. 21:18-21.

(I mentioned the stoning business to my mother on the phone not long ago. No doubt remembering my adolescence, she laughed and responded, "so?")

Bibliolatry

To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, Scripture is an invaluable laboratory notebook, in which are recorded a multitude of data about God and man.

We can even make the judgment that everything we need for salvation has been recorded in that notebook.

But just as the map is not the territory, the lab notebook does not completely define the reality.

Scripture: Word, or Logos?

Scripture is often said to be the Word of God. I wonder whether that statement ought to be phrased a bit differently.