Chicken or the Egg?, or return to Sola Scriptura

We have all heard the question: What came first, the chicken or the egg? We as Christians could also ask another question: What came first, the Bible or the church? The Roman Catholic view on the this question is in favor of the church. When the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century rejected some long-held Catholic beliefs for their view of things like justification by faith based on what the Bible said, Catholics said that there would be no Bible without the church because the church chose which books were allowed into the canon of scripture. Hence, the church preceded the Bible and gave it authority. Therefore, the church (meaning to them the RC Church) is the authoritative interpreter of scripture and is thereby infallible.

Protestants rightly argued that the church only affirmed the Bible which is the written Word of God. The apostles and their immediate followers wrote the books of the New Testament. The church circulated those documents and most of them were immediately and universally accepted by the churches. Now, "the churches" here does not mean any organization that developed out of the earliest churches (i.e., the RC and Orthodox churches), but the people, including, but not exclusively, the ministers of the church. The four gospels and Paul's writings were accepted as authoritative writings right away. Even when the NT was still being written, Paul's epistles were being called scripture. "Paul also, according to the wisdom given him wrote to you; as in all his letters, speaking in them of these things; in which some things are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist, as they do the other Scriptures." (2 Peter 3:16)*

Some still note that it took time to write the New Testament and that the early church had no New Testament to read. True, but they did have the same Word of God that we do, only it was preached and not written down yet. The revelation of God's Word was given to the early church because the apostles had revelation from God and most of them were direct followers of Jesus. That same Word that they preached became inscripturated as they wrote down what God had revealed to them. The church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone." (Ephesians 2:20) The church is built on the Word.The written Word and the preached Word are the same thing in different forms. The church simply recognized the New Testament as the written Word of God based on the apostolic witness.

A New Chicken or Egg question: Do we put Jesus or the Bible first?**

The RC view and the Protestant view of this is clearly at odds. But now we have Protestants who are as confused as the Catholics. A prominent pastor recently said this, "The foundation of our faith is not the Scripture. The foundation of our faith is not the infallibility of the Bible. The foundation of our faith is something that happened in history." He means, of course, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. That might sound good, but it is wrong. It is true that we are saved by the crucifixion and resurrection, but our faith in that is based on the Word of God which we have in the Bible. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." (Romans 10:17) That is the Word preached by the apostles and made into scripture. That is the basis of our faith. We cannot be saved without this Word. If Jesus dies on the cross and nobody hears about it, it does us nobody any good.

Jesus, the living Word, is God's revelation to us, . That revelation was preached by the apostles and written in the New Testament. Some, like this pastor, think that they are exalting Jesus by lowering their view of scripture. That cannot happen. You cannot have a low view of the Bible and a high view of Jesus. Our attitude towards the Bible, the written Word, determines the place that Jesus, the living Word, holds in our life.

The Protestant Reformers held a high view of scripture. Part of that what was called 'Sola Scriptura', Latin for 'Scripture Alone'. This is "the teaching that Scripture is the Church's only infallible and sufficient rule for deciding issues of faith and practices that involve doctrines" (Theopedia). In other words, the Bible is not only perfect in what it affirms but it has everything we need for the Christian life.

Amen to that. No personal revelation or prophecy or education or enlightened conscience can or should be put above the Bible which is God's Word to us today.

*The church took a couple of centuries to bring together and approve the books that would be put into the New Testament. It was not done, as a famous novelist suggested, by a group of bishops wanted to insist on one of a variety of Christianities supposedly present in the fourth century. (I am referring to the Council of Nicea where the 27 books of the NT were accepted, but not newly accepted. The bishops only agreed that what had already been accepted was, in fact, correct.) The church used several criteria for what constituted the new (testament) scriptures. They had to be written by an apostle or the companion of an apostle. They had to be generally useful to the churches. In other words, they could not be a message to an individual or a church that had no application to other individuals and churches. And they must agree with the apostolic tradition passed down through the churches and originating with the apostles themselves.

** I am aware that the chicken and egg analogy does not work exactly in the second case where some Protestants tried to put Jesus 'above' the Bible. It's just a literary device, so I think it works anyway.

Inerrancy and Biblical Authority

Some who read this blog will be surprised that inerrancy, the idea that the Bible is free from any kind of error, is even an issue among evangelical Christians. Inerrancy is taken for granted by conservative Christians, but is coming into disfavor among some evangelicals.

Now I am not talking about people of liberal theology who deny the deity of Christ or His atoning sacrifice or bodily resurrection. I am talking about Christians with an orthodox faith who believe in the authority and inspiration of scripture. They believe that the scriptures are inspired by God and that it has full authority in our lives. But they see the seeming contradictions, such as the differences in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew and Luke and conclude that one or more of these lists must be in error.

They do not deny the truth that Jesus was born of the house of David, but they do not think that perfect historical accuracy is necessary to bolster the Bible's claims that it is God's truth. After all, they say, is not what is important the theological message of the Bible? A few facts wrong, to them, do not matter one iota. They want us to concentrate on the message and not on historical minutia. Why get caught up in defending historical details and trying to harmonize these parts of the Bible?

Because, as the saying goes, God is in the details.

I will now offer a good reason to desire perfect accuracy when it comes to historical detail and how it affects getting the 'message' right.

Some of you may remember a book called "I, Rigoberta Menchu". This book, that won the Nobel Prize for literature, is the autobiographical account of Ms. Menchu who became world renowned because of the story she told.

She wrote about the civil war in Guatemala, particularly about her family's involvement in it. She reports how the government forces oppressed and murdered members of her family. She said that the government stole their land and murdered her father who was on the side of the guerrillas. The most incendiary story was the one she told of her own torture at the hands of the army. She reports being tied to a chair naked for weeks while being beaten.

Once her story became widely known she was invited to many US colleges to tell it. She became a sort of superstar in left-wing circles because she exposed the evils that the guerrillas were fighting against. Then someone decided to investigate her story and find out if it actually happened. It turns out that much of the story was simply made up, including the part about her being tortured.

As for the land that was seized by the government, it seems that it was "taken" by a judge in a land dispute and given to her uncle. Her uncle and father inherited property next to each other, but there was a piece of land between them that was in dispute. Each claimed it for himself. The uncle, who took the government's side in the dispute with the guerrillas, went to the courts for a judgment. The father took the side of the guerrillas, perhaps because of the result of the judgment. Anyway, it is questionable that the government targeted her father and murdered him, since he died with other guerrilla supporters while occupying the Spanish embassy in 1980.

Ms. Menchu was eventually forced to admit "changes" in her story, in other words, falsifications. So, what was the reaction of the people in the US who brought her to the States for a tour of colleges? Did they publicly denounce her? Ask for their speaking fees back?

No. They continued to bring her in to tell her story. They continued to celebrate her for her 'speaking truth to power'. This astonishes me. To me, her falsifications undermine her claims to "truth". The left-wingers who still support her say that it's her message that is important, not mere historical details.

But I still think that God is in the details. If a person cannot tell the truth about mere "facts", then their "message" cannot be trusted. God's message and the inspired historical details in the Bible can be trusted. The two go together.

When we try to separate them (something only moderns do), we end with strange theologies like those of Karl Barth and his student, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They claimed faith in the resurrection of Christ, but did not believe that it actually happened in history.

This kind of thinking may seem "deep" to some, but to me it is self-defeating. (Theological) liberals use the so-called errors of the Bible to undermine its message. It is really not that difficult to harmonize all scriptures with historical fact and with other scriptures. Is God just a God of theology, or is He a God of history as well?

I hope that all orthodox Christians who have rejected the notion of inerrancy to reconsider the importance of the historical veracity of the scriptures.

Divine Inspiration and a TV show

You might be wondering what a television show has to do with divine inspiration. And I am not talking about some inspiration that you and I might receive, but I refer to the divine inspiration of the scriptures. The television that I refer to is the new show "Unforgettable". It is about a woman detective who has perfect memory. She remembers absolutely everything in her life. She goes to crime scenes and remembers even the most insignificant details that later turn out to be the key to solving the case.

The show is based on a piece done by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes. She interviewed five people who are known by scientists to have this ability. They remember every detail of their lives and can recall in vivid detail everything they have experienced. Remarkably, Lesley Stahl had a friend who she said also was like this. They tested her friend and now there are six people known to possess this ability.

Now they admit that this ability is both a blessing and a curse. Not only do they remember all the good things that have happened, but the bad as well. This can be very painful. They are unable to forget terrible things that have happened to them. The rest of us bury these things deep within to protect ourselves. They cannot do this.

While reflecting on this, I thought about what it will be like in the resurrection and we have new, perfect bodies. Will we all have this ability? I think we will. Yet I think it will be much better since "the former things", the bad things in this life, will not be remembered. We will only remember the goodness of God in increasing measure throughout eternity.

Then again, I began to think about something that Jesus said to his disciples. "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said. (John 14:26) So one of the reasons that God sent His Holy Spirit was to allow the disciples to recall exactly what Jesus had said. In the light of what we now know about the possibilities of human memory, we ought to realize that the disciples would remember perfectly what Jesus said. Certainly, the Spirit of God can give a person perfect recall to anyone as well as reveal information previously unknown to that person.

By means of divine inspiration, Jesus' words could be recorded with fullness and exactness. That is what we have in the four gospels. How different this is, though, with modern theories about what we have in the gospels.

The higher criticism, as it is called, claims that we do not always have Jesus' exact words, but we have altered versions of what actually took place. Supposedly, the gospel writers had traditions passed down and edited them according to the theological point they wanted to make. But in order to accept this, one must accept the notion that the gospel writers were neither the disciples of Jesus nor those who had done careful interviews of those same disciples.

The historical evidence passed down from the church fathers and accepted by biblical scholars until modern times is that two of the gospels writers were among the twelve disciples and that two were close followers of the Twelve. Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus, and Mark wrote based upon Peter's teaching. Luke explicitly says that he wrote what eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry told him. And since we know that Luke is considered by even secular historians as the most accurate of ancient historians, we have no reason to disbelieve him.

Now I want to say that I do believe that the gospel writers had a theological purpose in what they selected to include their respective gospels. John himself said, "There are also many other things that Jesus did; which, indeed, were written one by one, I supposed that not even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written." (John 22:25) So instead on one really long gospel, we have four gospels that tell us all we need to know about Jesus' ministry and teaching.

A further note about who the gospel writers were: If we believe in divine inspiration (at least of some kind), it seems hard to believe that God would not use the Twelve or their immediate followers to write the New Testament. Why would God use someone who used oral traditions and secondary sources? Were the disciples theologically challenged or something? Could only later generations truly interpret Christ?

NO! When we read even the undisputed writings of the apostles, we see that they were quite able to interpret these things. Jesus told them that the Holy Spirit would lead them into ALL the truth. I think He did so. Later generations just followed the apostles the best that they could.

Absolutely, the Holy Spirit can bring to remembrance whatever Jesus has said to us. I believe this promise even in my own life.