Is The Bible True All The Way Through - part 2

In our last episode we learned that there are two ways to study the Bible - with faith and with skepticism. It used to be that believing scholars would approach the scriptures as being completely trustworthy in every respect. When the scriptures spoke of spiritual realities or of historical events, it was assumed that it was all true. The skeptics of the Bible made no such assumption and even seemed to go out of their way to discredit the Bible whenever possible. They developed Critical methodologies to pretty much make the Bible into a good book though riddled with error and myth.

Then a new group of evangelical scholars (those who believe in the basics doctrines of the Christian faith like the Trinity and the atoning death and resurrection of Christ) began using the Critical methodologies to study the Bible, but with some significant differences. They did believe that the Bible contains the Word of God, that it was inspired and authoritative but that not all of it was necessarily true. They generally held fast to the fundamentals of the faith (for example, the Apostles' Creed) while questioning the accuracy of some of the historical narratives.

They also often accepted the Critical idea that some of the historical narrative should not be read as history but as myth. Myth, they say, is not necessarily "false" simply because it has no basis in history. Instead it is like fiction. Fiction does not mean, as some Christians think, something that does not tell the truth, but something made up that is supposed to tell a truth. There is fiction in the Bible. Now before you stone me consider the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In it Jesus tells us the truth about God's attitude toward those who have departed from Him and returned. He is overjoyed to see them. But the events in this parable did not actually happen. It is not an historical depiction of events that have transpired. A parable is often a form of fiction that conveys a truth the teacher wishes to convey. However, everyone listening to the story knows that it did not actually happen. Yet the parable is truth.

Can the same thing be said about myth, and can certain events in the Old Testament, like the Noahic Flood, be considered truthful and unhistorical at the same time? Is it a true myth? These new evangelical scholars would say "yes". The two most common so-called myths are, of course, the creation story and the flood story. They note that ancient peoples almost all have both creation and flood stories in their traditions. They tell about how their own god or gods made their community and also of a flood that almost wiped them out. The Bible, it is claimed, just has another version, a "true" version of these similar stories. One of them writes:

God adopted Abraham as the forefather of a new people, and in doing so also adopted the mythic categories within which Abraham - and everyone else - thought. But God did not leave Abraham in his mythic world. Rather, God transformed the ancient myths so that Israel's story would come to focus on its God, the real one [as opposed to the false gods of others].

So, according to this scholar the purpose of the creation and flood accounts are not to tell us what happened historically, but to tell us who we should worship. In this view, we should not expect historical truth but theological truth. That is the truth that really counts - in their view.

Skeptics of the Bible had already been saying for a very long time that the creation and flood stories of the Ancient Near East (ANE) are very similar to those in the Bible. They believed that the biblical writer (they don't even acknowledge Moses as the author) simply took the older myths and reworked them. The new evangelical scholars like the one quoted above agree that they basically copied the story, but that they changed who the God was.

Let's examine these claims. First, we should note that even historical legends and myths usually have an historical root even if many additions and alterations have been made. Take the Homeric legend of the Trojan War. Homer wrote about it hundreds of years after the events that were depicted. Scholars used to doubt that there ever was a place called Troy and thought the whole thing was made up. Then an archaeologist decided to look for Troy and he found it. It was right where Homer said it had been. So we realize that legends and myths are not always purely made up but there is something that really happened at the root of it.

ANE scholars have studied the myths like the creation and flood stories of the Babylonians. Their myths were written down before Moses wrote and it is likely that Moses knew about them. He was a very educated adopted son of Pharaoh and likely had learned about them. So, did Moses just copy them and change the God who did all these things? Or did Moses know the historical root, the truth, about the events depicted in Genesis?

How can we tell? It is actually very easy to tell which story is more original and closer to the truth of the events depicted in mythologies. As a story is adopted by one group from its origin, two things happen. All irrelevant details are stripped away, and the story becomes increasingly long and complicated. Which story is short and simple and which is long and complicated. There is no doubt about it. The Babylonian myths are extremely long and complicated. Therefore, they are the newer stories and Genesis has the earlier stories. In fact, the creation story is summed up very simply as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." There is more but it too is quite simple. So Genesis has by far the earlier stories and along with every Bible-believing Christian, I say they are the original, true-to-history stories.

So this idea of "true myth" does not bear up under close scrutiny. Besides this, the new evangelical scholars also claim that all of Genesis chapters 1 through 11 are mythological while the rest is historical. There is a problem that any language teacher will point out. All of Genesis is written as historical narrative. There is no break or distinction or even change in writing style or genre between the supposedly mythical parts and the historical parts. They are written in the same manner. So there is no grammatical reason to claim one story as myth and another as history.

Besides all this, there is a great danger here. Despite the insistence of the new evangelicals that they firmly believe in the resurrection of Jesus, what is to stop someone from saying that it is one of these "true myths"? One could say, and some have, that if what is inspired in the Bible is theological truth and not historical truth, then how do we know for certain if Christ was raised from the dead. There are already those who say that Christ's resurrection did not actually happen in an historical sense but it is a spiritual truth only. So it is easy to see where such an approach can lead - to the denial of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith.

Is The Bible True All The Way Through? - part 1

The Bible is a controversial book. Some proclaim it as the Word of God and others deny it. This is not news to most people. Additionally, most Christians have been aware that in our elite academic institutions there are few, if any, scholars in the departments of religion that believe the Bible to be true. They no longer believe in the atoning death and bodily resurrection of Jesus nor that He is the Son of God.

Luke Timothy Johnson in his book, The Living Jesus, says that whether or not you believe that Jesus is alive determines how you will approach the Scriptures. A believing scholar will look to the Bible as revealing to us the truth about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. An unbelieving scholar will bring his own presuppositions to the Bible and tell us what he thinks is true or not true according to his own logic and reasoning. He will develop methods that will try to ferret out, for example, what they believe Jesus said or did not say. What Jesus did or did not do. Some of Jesus sayings they accept as authentic and others they believe have been added by his followers. The miracles, naturally, get short shrift. Of course, to them even if they accept something as coming from Jesus that does not mean that they will accept it as true. These methods are together called the historical-critical method, or simply Critical Scholarship.

I was born-again when I was 15 years old, but did not read my Bible or go to church until I went to college. So for a long time I was unaware of these divergent ways of studying the Bible. Wanting to learn more about the Bible, I took a college class on the New Testament. I had no idea what I was getting into. The class was taught by the chaplain of the college, an ordained minister, a professor in the Religion department. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. The textbook laid out the methods of Critical scholarship which questioned everything written in the New Testament. They questioned whether Paul had written all the letters that bear his name. They questioned whether Jesus said this or did that. They questioned what "really" happened after Jesus died, implying that he could not possibly have been raised from the dead. They brought doubts about the "miracle stories" without even considering that they might be true. While today I could easily defend my faith against this barrage of unbelief, back then it felt like I was drowning. But I did not give in. I simply refused to use the Critical method and I knew that the professor could flunk me as a result. Too bad. I defied him. (And I passed.)

Fortunately, I had help. My youth group at school led me to resources and to believing scholarship that affirmed the truth of the Bible. I read apologists like C.S. Lewis and great Christian thinkers like Pascal. The leadership of our youth group was firmly grounded in the Bible and the foundational truths it contains. I learned much from them and I am very grateful for the foundation they put in my spiritual life.

On the other hand, they were Calvinists. I was introduced to their theology based on notions of double predestination and the denial of free will in salvation. However, I did not simply dismiss their theology because it is so contrary to the way we think today, but I studied it thoroughly and determined that it was wrong in key respects. Their theology regarding the Bible and justification were very good and I accepted that. But they were wrong in what we call Calvinism, the idea that God only chooses certain individuals to be saved and He damns the rest. His is sovereign and He makes all the decisions.

I have to say, though, that Calvinists are nothing if not persistent in their views. They are not really happy unless you become one of them. So many arguments with them ensued. At one point, I ended up having a debate at a lunch table with many witnesses against a world famous theologian, John Gerstner. He was one of the most prominent Calvinist theologians of that day. He was a mentor to R.C. Sproul, who just passed away, and to our adult youth leader.

So I ended up having to battle both an unbelieving professor and my Calvinist friends. And I do mean that I consider them to be friends and brothers in the Lord. I appreciate the firm stand they take for the Bible and for justification by faith. God has used them greatly in this area.

So, it used to be simple. You had the unbelieving skeptics of the Bible who denied the deity of Christ along with His atoning death and resurrection, and you had Bible-believing scholars and church leaders who accepted the whole Bible as God's Word. Unbelievers were interested in the Bible had their scholars; we believers had ours. We tend to stay in our own circles often vaguely aware of each other. In most of the churches I have attended these things did not even come up. We agreed that the Bible was true. We just had to let the Holy Spirit teach us and apply it to our lives while unbelievers tried to figure everything out in their foolish heads.

Those were the good ol' days. Things are more complicated now. Today, we have those who hold to the historic truths of the Christian faith - Christ's deity, death and resurrection - but who use and accept the methods of Critical scholarship. Part of the goal is to show the unbelieving scholars that their methods do not have to lead to unbelief but can even support the things the church has believed right along.

What could possible go wrong? {We will pick this up in the next post.}