Re (1): (no subject)

Mark,

Thank you. Yes, there is much more that could be said about inerrancy. My purpose was to demonstrate as gently as possible what I believe is a non-issue, largely inspired by a series of informal debates in which I have recently been engaged.

Now then, to address the specific considerations you mention: namely canonicity and the recognition that we have not always had a Bible to call God’s word. It seems to me that concerning canonicity, it does not really alter the debate, merely steps it back one notch. The fact is, we are faced on one hand with God and on the other with everybody else. To say that people chose the individual essays to be included in the final anthology is little more water on the fire than to first admit that men wrote the individual essays to begin with. Either way, the Holy Spirit is the great equalizer, if equalizer there be. If God were to have written the Bible in a uniquely "God-language," no one would have been able to understand it. Conversely, if He were to write it in human vernacular with His own finger, skeptics would still doubt it: "I didn't see Him do it, therefore I will not believe He did without proof. Show me. Prove it." So, a God-language could not be understood, a human language cannot be proven to have been written by the hand of God. It makes sense to me that a book addressed to the people for the people would be written by the people, for again, we have but God on the one hand and everybody else on the other. If salvation be for humanity, it must be transmitted in human terms, just as Christ had to become a human to bear the atonement for sin: only God was perfect, only a human could atone for another human. Hence, God, who is perfect, became man, who was guilty, so that God and man could be united, perfection made perfect through imperfection. And, as Lewis writes in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, this was the deeper magic that was created before the beginning of time, the spell that works backward.

For the spell forward was that sin and death would enter the world. The counter-spell was that rebirth and holiness would reign supreme. On the one hand, you have disobedience and death. On the other, you are “born again” to life, not death (for no one is born to death, all are born to life) and this life is the higher life, a life characterized by goodness and mercy and peace and justice: in short, by the very antithesis of sin. So then, the spell of sin and death is reversed by the counter-spell of birth and holiness. Hence, perfection is made perfect in imperfection and the "thing that was not" testifies to that which is so that the wise might be shamed and God be proven true and every man a liar.

Now to another thought. We are here. How did we get here? If we are at all honest in our questioning, we will have to admit that it is, at the least, a great mystery. Now if Someone did fashion us, taking all that time and effort to create autonomous little rebels who are nonetheless imago Dei, it seems strange such a One would be apathetic to the daily cares of His creatures. Would the connoisseur of fine guitars lovingly handcraft the most well tuned and polished instruments the world over to see them shattered and broken to bits? You say "lovingly handcraft"? How do we know he "lovingly handcrafted" these largely mute instruments, for the only speech they utter is the one they are made to say, sometimes to great beauty, and sometimes (alas) not. Ah, good question. You see, the "lovingly handcrafted" aspect is stamped into every fine and exquisite detail, every laborious and painstaking process that resulted in this stringed labor of love, the hours it took to make such an instrument truly shine. If the maker of stringed instruments cares so for his creations, can we not suppose the derivation of human creatures, the most amazing creatures on the planet—machines that heal themselves and think and feel and love and hurt and cry and care and make choices and what is more and most amazing, live!—can we suppose that He simply put His creation on the refrigerator shelf as a sort of experiment to see what might happen? Or rather, do we not see Him at work in every detail of life? The Bible is one of the many ways He speaks, forever patient as He tends to such imperfect—yet nonetheless exquisite—creatures.

Now then, about the Bible being necessary for faith. I remember hearing of a man who tried an experiment for the course of a number of days (a month? six weeks? memory fails me now). He decided he was going to see how his relationship with God would fare if he removed all elements of worship and communed directly with God: no Bible, no church, no religious books, no rituals, sacraments, or other sacred rites of any sort. He confessed that while God was very gracious to him throughout the course of his experiment, his spiritual ribs begin protruding for lack of nourishment long before the experiment mercifully wound to a close. Just as all things come from God, God is ultimately responsible for fostering the gift of faith as well. He can use any medium He so chooses and frequently speaks to His children through and in everything and everyone they encounter if their ears be in tune and their eyes be filled with light. However, we would be very foolish indeed if we thought that this meant we should abandon all spiritual discipline: reading the Sacred Scriptures, fellowshipping with other believers, prayer: these and countless other acts that discipline and inform our faith. The man who knocks, our Lord says, will find the door opened, so knock we ought: loud, long, and hard.

I am reminded of a parable I once heard of a family caught in a flood. While praying desperately for God's intervention, a boat sailed by in the waist high water and offered the family a lift. No, they answered. We are waiting on the Lord. A series of interventions continued as the waters rose higher and higher: a rescue raft, a helicopter, the list goes on. Each time the family turned the offer down saying that they would rely on the Lord. Finally the waters closed over their heads and they breathed their last. Standing at the pearly gates they demanded an explanation. God replied, "I sent you a boat, I sent you a raft, I sent you a helicopter," and going down the list He concluded, "what more could I have done for you?"

While I may have butchered the story, the point, let us hope, remains intact. The Bible may not be required for faith, but given the fact that we now have it, we would be foolish to live without it. In any case, there is always more to be said: we shall never have the final word for I suspect that if all the things of our Lord were to be written down, books enough there would not be to contain it all. However that may be, I have said what I wished, crafted with the degree of care my time allows, offered as a prayer... Lord, bless my dear reader and friend. Goodbye and goodnight.

God bless,
Eric