While we figure out what we want to be our main focus to be, I thought I'd introduce a little side conversation to get us in the right frame of mind. I've been trying to stick to my goal of daily bible reading, I have not successfully completed my One Year plan from last year - but I'm still chipping away at it :-) So, I thought an appropriate conversation would be:
Bible = infallible word of God or powerful work of man inspired by God?
Deep question.
ReplyDeleteThis is a major point of theology that very much splits the church. Some are literals to the point of a 10,000 yr old earth. Some are work of man, to the point of it being primarily a history of a people and second a useful guide.
I am in the middle. For me it is both - infallible word of God AND powerful work of man inspired by God.
I feel that the bible is God given but that God gave it to people who had certain levels of understandings of how the universe works. It's as a 4 year old asks about the workings of things. Not lying we tell them how things work but we give a simple answer.
I think that God gives an elegant answer that has layers that speak to humans no matter what their intellectual ability or cultural background is but as we seek truth and we come to find God through scripture, it is also the Spirit of God that helps to reveal the meaning of scripture to us.
So I believe the nature of God, the desires of God and the diary of God's relationship with man is contained in scriptures but that is not found in the words of scripture per se but in the revealing and the relationship one has with scripture. And coming to scripture again and again we find deeper meanings and deeper understandings than what the words simply say.
I'm definitely more of the "work of man inspired by God" camp. I think the following thoughts make me lean more that way:
ReplyDelete* A lot of the Bible is stories that started as oral stories and were passed down by generations with the goal of preserving culture
* If it was only God's story (just written by man) then what would be the explanation for different versions of the same story (ie gospels)
* If it was only God's story, how do extra books fall in? (extra Catholic books and books that have been excluded all together)
* The Bible has been through so many translations that we can't be positive we always have the true intent - I mean c'mon, whole denominations have been created because of discrepancies over words!
But I do believe that the people who wrote the Bible were inspired by God to do so, and were probably at times writing words that came to them through divine supernatural experience.
I like your description of finding God in a relationship with scripture, rather than within the scripture itself.