Emerging Africa

Gert
Thank you for allowing us in to this interesting process.

My contribution is a recent article and associated discussion on emergent village, entitled "So Long Sola?"

Cori

Thanks for this personal sharing, very good to see I am not the only one! This may be a common problem for those who have studied or read somewhat on the theology on the Bible. The problem is that evangelicalism prizes study of and on the Bible very highly (provided it is done at an evangelical institution), but very few people actually do the trouble of studying up on the Bible's origins, etc., especially reading material outside the conservative printing press.

Mostly it is only the pastors who engage in such reading and study, and then in my cases having conservative scholars training them to deconstruct these "liberal" theories (but not deconstructing much of the evangelical theories to the same extent). The leader of our Bible study group is a good friend who just finished further study at our denomination's seminary/college and he also told me about being exposed there to the work of "heretics" like Karl Barth and some of his neo-evangelical disciples. Both of us used to think our denomination take the correct stance on these issues of dispute but he has also come to see the merit in some of their viewpoints, although I think he is still more conservative than I (and in any case due to the nature of his work as pastor required to take a conservative point of view).

My situation is slightly different as a non-leader, the positive being that I don't need to talk as much (and authoritatively) as you and my friend do and thus feeling that you talk falsely. But thanks for the advice, it makes a lot of sense and I think I may touch upon it when I send another post on Monday!

Gert

Stray, thank you for entering this conversation. Your raise some very stimulating and profound questions, and perhaps some potential troubling implications of a non-inerrantist view of the Bible.

You bring up the question of whether some Christian books may be seen as inspired on the same level as the Bible, or whether all literature should be judged against the measure of the Bible, to see how “biblical” it really is. Let’s take the bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren as an example. Many Christians, especially from conservative evangelical backgrounds, have read this book and found great value in it – new meaning and direction on how to live the Christian life. Most of them probably believe the Bible to be inerrant. Most probably, Rick Warren (as a bona fide American conservative evangelical) shares that belief with many of his readers.
But not all Christians agree on Warren’s biblical exegesis. The rector of my church has felt uncomfortable with Warren’s use of Scripture and thus proceeded to write his own Bible study notes on the various themes or chapters covered in Warren’s book (when we were doing the book during our mid-week Bible study meetings). Gary Gilley was even less diplomatic, writing a very strongly-worded critique of The Purpose Driven Life and some other popular Warren writings. In fact, I bought that booklet for R10 at that Biblical Worldview Conference in 2007 where speaker Gilley introduced me to the emerging church! The main problem for Gilley is that Warren uses more liberal Bible translations (e.g. Living Bible) that paraphrases the original text for contemporary audiences and sometimes have the tendency to distort the text. Warren, in Gilley’s view, sometimes tend to use Scripture selectively (and with these paraphrases) to tell what he want to say. Gilley has written another book on his view of proper biblical hermeneutics, where he launches a devastating critique of another Christian bestseller, Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez (which I bought at the same conference). In the foreword or preface to Gilley’s book, another concerned Christian writer mentioned that he attended the same Bible College as Wilkinson, where he was taught (among biblical inerrancy, no doubt) how to do proper biblical exegesis (note that Gilley regards himself as a Calvinist focusing in his ministry on proper exegesis) but this “biblical” Bible training did not prevent Wilkinson from distorting Scripture as he saw fit. Hank Hanegraaff, another popular Christian writer, chose a more subtle approach and instead wrote a book titled The Prayer of Jesus (in the same mini-format and with the same typography, etc. as Wilkinson’s book) in order to provide a more “biblical” view on prayer.

Let me say that I tend to share Gilley’s (and my pastor’s and yes even my mother’s!) unease with Warren’s use of Scripture and strong disagreement with the prosperity gospel apparently proclaimed in Wilkinson’s book (although I must confess I haven’t actually read the book myself and thus base my view on hearsay, thus reflecting the prejudices of others). This is partly the problem with popular, inspirational Christian books, and this (for once) is where conservative evangelical and more liberal scholars (or at least serious thinkers) fully agree. They have a mutual disdain for outlets such as CUM Books. The professor at Stellenbosch University who coordinated my Bible Interpretation degree program is currently involved in the new official Afrikaans Bible translation sanctioned by the Bible Society. A year earlier, he said that at this moment they haven’t even started yet translating the Bible but are still working out a translation strategy! But CUM Books decided to publish their own Afrikaans Bible translation and according to this professor created the misperception that this was the new Bible Society translation. He thinks they saw the lucrative potential of Bible sales and hurried to get into the market as quickly as possible to make a quick buck. I am sure my conservative pastor (supporting inerrancy) would fully agree with this liberal professor (against inerrancy). Next Sunday (8 February) evening our church will have a talk on the mega-bestselling phenomenon The Shack which (according to my pastor) is selling like hot-cakes at CUM Books. This talk will attempt to see how “biblical” the book is in the light of Scripture, and I think (I haven’t read the book but judging from the negative reviews on the book, including Mark Driscoll and, yes, Gilley himself in his Think on These Things emails) the talk may be quite predictable – perhaps a few positive remarks on the writer’s courage to try and contextualize the gospel for contemporary readers (even Gilley had a few positive comments at the beginning of his review), followed by a “biblical” refutation of the writer’s worldview and theologies and certain features or narrative storylines of the book.

I have noted in his Think on These Things emails that Gilley is a dispensationalist. I wonder whether he reads (or endorses) the popular Scofield Reference Bible. I was amazed to see, in Stephen Sizer’s Road-map to Armageddon? (a critique of Christian Zionism by a British evangelical), how the author and/or later editors of this “Bible” inserted particular interpretations into the main text (paraphrases of the original text) so that the impression is created that the original text (inspired Word of God) expresses the commentator’s dispensationalist views. And I am sure that everybody involved in the Scofield Bible supports biblical inerrancy.

I think the point that I am trying to make is that a strong belief in biblical inerrancy (which Wilkinson, Warren, my pastor(s), Gilley and Hanegraaff all share, although I don’t know about the convictions in this regard of the author of The Shack) and a so-called “high view of Scripture” do not guarantee a proper, sound exegesis of Scripture, let alone agreement on the interpretation (and even proper translation – literal v/s paraphrase) of the Bible. Moreover, the abandonment by the mainstream Bible scholarly community of a belief in biblical inerrancy has NOT necessarily led to the abandonment of attempts by the same scholars to judge both popular Christian books and (especially in their profession) specialist scholarly work on the Bible by using the original biblical text (in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) to evaluate whether the author (or scholar) accurately red and interpreted both the biblical text and the history and nature of extrabiblical documents (e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls). Thus, evangelicals are not the only ones who voiced disagreement in the massive book response that followed the publication of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code: Bart Ehrman (a former evangelical who has since embraced biblical skepticism with a vengeance, even wrote books about the “lost” scriptures, etc) wrote a book Truth and Fiction of the Da Vinci Code, where he points out the various errors (obvious to any Bible scholar, e.g. Brown claims that the very Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls are Christian documents and that there were more than 80 gospels that were destroyed by the Church) and sloppy research that plagues this (non-Christian) bestseller, using the latest scholarship and arguing that the Bible is still the best and only (but not in his view inerrant) source that we have on Jesus. The fact is: scholars (of whatever religious persuasion) try (at least in theory) to get at the truth, some truths are more obvious than ever, but scholars seldom follow the extreme postmodernist notion of “everything goes” (Feyerabend).

Stray, I think the point that we are trying to make is that we should look at the evidence about the Bible that we currently have, instead of formulating a particular doctrine (e.g. biblical inerrancy) and creating a whole industry of biblical scholarship (e.g. the New Bible Dictionary and New Bible Commentary) obsessed with defending this doctrine which may in fact has no scriptural support. The non-belief in inerrancy does not mean that the Bible is on the same level in terms of inspiration as contemporary Christian books – of course not, the Bible is the primary document for Christians worldwide. We should use it to correct false doctrines like dispensationalism and the prosperity gospel (even if 2 Timothy 3:16-17 refers primarily to the apostolic witness and not to our printed Bibles, the Bible is part of God’s Word to us as believers). One’s views on inerrancy will not necessarily be the main determinative factor influencing the direction of our thinking and writing on the Bible, i.e. inerrantists may still create “unbiblical” doctrines such as dispensationalism and non-inerrantists (along with their errantist brothers and sisters) will still use Scripture to correct such “erroneous” and “unbiblical” dogmas.
Also, one’s view on biblical inerrancy is not going to determine whether one finds value in Rick Warren’s books or not. Some inerrantist evangelicals will continue to find value in these books, although they will try to be cautious and discerning and “go back to their (more literally translated) Bibles” to arrive at a more “biblical” understanding of what Warren has written. Allert (in his book A high view of Scripture?) has in my view convincingly demonstrated from early church history that an appeal to Scripture (whether regarded as inerrant or not) has not prevented the emergence of heresies because the heretics (Gnostics, Marcion, Montanists) all appealed to Scripture. This problem was only resolved when the Church made an official decision that these groups and individuals were heretics and that they distorted Scripture. The church of that day did not only use Scripture as a “canon” (in the broader meaning of this word to indicate a rule or yardstick for proper doctrine) but also rulings by the bishops or church councils or whatever, to determine how one should interpret Scripture. Sola Scriptura does not in practice mean that anybody can interpret the Bible as (s)he finds it fit (that is extreme postmodernism, as Graeme Codrington pointed out at futurechurch) – there are always privileged interpreters in any tradition whose views or interpretations are regarded in high esteem and sometimes slavishly followed by their followers, in evangelicalism, these interpreters (identified by Allert) include James Dobson (concerned parents consult him about parenthood and “proper” films, so when he and Billy Graham endorsed The Passion of the Christ, my pastor endorsed it too and did a block booking for our church, before even seeing it or doing his own “biblical” critique of the film) and Rick Warren (Christians consult his “Purpose-Driven” books to, well, find a “biblical” sense of purpose in their lives).

Then there is another question also raised by your comments: Does God still provide us with direct revelation, like in biblical times? Many conservative evangelicals (my pastor, Gilley, etc.) say a definite “no”, normally quoting Hebrews 1:1-2 – God has spoken (directly) in the past through prophets (Old Testament) but has fully revealed himself in Jesus (New Testament), and since then the Bible is fully sufficient to reveal God to us – no extra revelation is needed. Besides, how do you know God has talked directly to you about something not already in the Bible, such as what to do today? We can only find evidence in the Bible about what God’s will is for the world and then make our own decisions about what actions are in line with this revealed will of God – but God does not tell us directly today what to do. More charismatic/Pentecostal Christians tend to say a definite “yes” – a prominent example is the evangelist Angus Buchan, he once remarked that God is more of a reality to him than the chair on which he sit (or something like that). Once again, they (Gilley, Buchan, etc) all believe in biblical inerrancy, and yet they cannot agree on the nature of God’s revelation today.

I was thinking about God talking to us today, when at the Pretoria cohort meeting we talked about 1 Samuel (with Samuel getting it wrong three times before recognizing God’s voice). Does anybody want to raise their views on this complex matter?

Gert

In doing a little thinking about this subject yesterday I thought I would do a Google on the Orthodox Church's view of Scripture, and found some interesting things (Steve, you can perhaps jump in here).

Basically, the Eastern Orthodox don't believe in the 'inspired Word' as protestants do, seeing the Scriptures carry their authority not so much because of what they SAY but because of WHO WROTE THEM. In the Early Church, apostles carried a certain authority and passed down tradition(s) that were to be taught by the churches.

2 Thessalonians 2:15
So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

Basically, the Orthodox would see the Scriptures as having been written and framed within the Church community at large (true). So, they carry scriptures because those with authority wrote them, and those who wrote them didn't write them in a vacuum but were subject to accountability of others at the time (Peter or any of the other apostles could have refuted Paul's writings at the time, but we rather see Peter supporting them).

I found this view resonating very much with me as well as giving some important clues to this rather complex matter. First of all, it is true that evangelical circles have interpreted the Bible in ways that are outside of its context (NT Wright is strong on this, where he is trying to frame the Gospel in its historical context). In this sense, evangelicals have forgotten that the Bible was written in a larger community that all had a say in whether what was being written was, in fact, what was being passed down by leaders within the church at the time (am I making sense?)

Now I may argue, as a side point, that the 'traditions' mentioned in Thessalonians do not have to refer to liturgical traditions but rather the teachings of the Gospel (Steve may have something to say on this point). Still, the argument holds a great deal of water in explaining the authority of the Bible - it's not so much that the words are inspired than the PEOPLE were inspired and commissioned by God to be leaders of the church at the time, to lay foundations at the time that we ought to follow.

Now, in our current context, I believe God still speaks and I believe he speaks through extra-biblical writings. But why should those writings carry less weight? Well, they simply do not date back to the original early church and they are not written (or endorsed) by people who ate and lived every day with Jesus. So, the Bible carries more weight because each of its books were endorsed by the apostles of the time and were endorsed by those who knew these apostles as rightful and true, passed down for a few hundred years until it was decided that these were the most helpful and truest of all the letters/books written and being used in the churches at the time.

Therefore, the real authority is carried by the COMMUNITY-- as it was ultimately the COMMUNITY who decided what books/writings squared in with what had been passed down.

Fast forward to our present time, I wonder if this isn't our problem. See, we have one Bible teacher saying one thing and another saying another. Is this actually such a bad thing? Perhaps not - perhaps all the wrestling together over these things is part of what church is about, part of what God wants. Except that we, rather than committing to each other in our relationships, just break away from each other and form our own little churches where everyone will agree with what we have to say.

God's plan may not be one central theology but rather one central COMMUNITY, which carries the authority of what He is saying on this Earth. The community can check its decisions of what God would be saying through the communities of the past -- finally tracing it back to the original writings of those who God ordained to lay the initial foundations.

Ultimately, all of this should be done in the community and instead of approaching the Bible from an infallible/fallible point of view, we should rather approach it from a relational point of view - each book was written by a brother who God called to lay foundations for the church. Do I agree or disagree with that brother? (Not that letter, but that brother?) If so, what basis do I have to disagree with him? I didn't live at the time, and so should consider the words of Peter to carry more weight than my own.

And perhaps we shouldn't be attacking the validity of the Bible but rather the validity of our RELATIONSHIPS. Why is it that if someone believes something different about theology that suddenly we can't be friends and worship together? Is there no such thing as discovery together? Sure, if someone doesn't want to believe what my brothers wrote in the Scriptures 1900 whatever years ago then we are going to have a problem - because, how committed is that guy to the church? How committed is he to the brothers and sisters of not only now, but also the past? How committed am I?

Which brings me back to something about heresy... I am more convinced that heresy isn't so much about WHAT you believe but WHO you believe - do you believe in Jesus? Well, then you're cool. Heresy is whether you are IN the community of Jesus (the church) or OUT. All the heretics of the past (well, especially those of the early church) weren't guilty so much of what they believed as much as they were guilty of trying to form something outside of the church-- outside of the community-- outside of the people where God has decided to make himself known. There's a mystery in this, but it's a beautiful one.

www.ryanpeterwrites.com
"The Glory of God is man fully alive" - St Iraneaus

Thanks Gert
I have tried to go through your responses to the questions raise by my friends and I just want to thank God so much for you for using you as an eye opener to those who still doubt that the Bible is God's word.
Accepting whether the Bible is inerrant or not actually lies on our view of God to those who strongly believe in the inspiration of the authors of the Bible.
My strong believe is that the Bible does not only contain God's word but it is God's word.The word is portrayed in two ways in the Scriptures. First, it is the person of Christ as in John 1:1,14 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, secondly it is God's speech which comes in different ways either being given personally, in written form as in occasions in Exodus or by using human beings to portrayed it to them like in the case of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:9. If this is true then a true God can never lie whatsoever.