A quote from my forthcoming book, The Atheistic Theist, from a chapter on the Bible and inerrancy: While I once sought to cure my doubts about the scriptures being an occasionally errant, yet inspired and revelatory collection of texts, I’ve now come to accept it as central to the Christian experience. Instead of seeking out cures, I’ve come to accept that seeing the Bible as a book containing much human opinion and sometimes even misunderstanding, which is at the same time revelatory and inspired of God, is not a sickness needing to be cured, but a healthy and sound view that takes the Bible very seriously and seeks to understand it as it’s numerous accidental authors probably would have wanted for it to be understood. While some would argue that such a view doesn’t take the Bible seriously enough, I’d argue the exact opposite. It is such a view that takes the Bible seriously enough to recognize it for what it actually is, instead of what a century plus of fundamentalist influence would have us to believe it is. The view that insists that the Bible is a single book, written by a single author (God) does not take the text seriously enough, trivializes it, and makes it into a magical thing, and sometimes even into an idol. However, to view the Bible as a library of books containing the opinions of multiple authors, written down over a long period of time in which customs, culture and theology changed, in which man attempts to ask questions about and define God, only to have God contradict and correct his oftentimes faulty opinions, is the healthiest and most logically sound way of approaching it. To see it as a divinely inspired collection of questions and answers, hits and misses, opinions, contradictions, critiques and corrections, is, to me, the very definition of taking the Bible seriously.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 22:31:06 +0000
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