Yesterday we looked at what I was taught in Bible College and Seminary about “The Canonization of Scripture.” By way of summary, Canonization is the process and standards by which the early church leaders selected which documents to include in the New Testament.

Over the next few posts, I want to question and critique what I was taught, asking the questions about Canonization that I had neither the time nor the courage to ask while in Seminary.

Before I ask these questions, I do want to make it clear that I am personally glad that the early church undertook this process. I agree with their conclusions, and I am glad that we have the 27 books of the New Testament that we do have, and no more.

Having said that, I will show in the next few posts that the process and standards of Canonization undermines nearly everything else we evangelical Christians believe about the Bible, and so we must either change our view on some of these other things (such an inspiration and inerrancy), or we must decide that the process of Canonization was wrong. But we cannot logically maintain everything we have traditionally taught about the Bible and remain consistent.

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Have you ever wondered how we got the Bible that we have? One of the steps by which we got the Bible we have is called the canonization of Scripture.

Did you ever hear that there were other books, letters, and documents that were written near the time the books of the Bible were written, claiming to be by authors like the Apostles Andrew, Thomas, Peter, and Paul,  but which are not found in our Bible?

I own several of these other books and have read them. Many of these books are found in the New Testament Apocrypha. They make for interesting reading. While some of them sound very similar to what we read in the New Testament, most do not, especially some of the stories about the childhood years of Jesus as found in the Gospel of Thomas.

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The biggest problem in Christianity today is that we try to obey the Bible too much.

I know, I know. Most pastors and Bible teachers say exactly the opposite, that the problem with Christianity today is that we don’t obey the Bible enough. 

But I disagree. I believe we try to obey the Bible more than we should, with the result being that we almost completely disobey God.

As we continue to look at the issue of inerrancy, we have seen that the Bible does not contain errors, but that this idea has led many people to read the Bible wrongly. When we understand how the Bible functions, why the Bible was written, and how the Bible is true, we see that the Bible was not written to us, but is a book which shows us what people of God have done in the past, and how this affected God’s mission in the world. Even the accounts of Jesus were not written so that we can follow His example blindly, but so that we can live in our day, and our time, and be Jesus to the people around us, NOT try to be like Jesus as He was 2000 years ago.

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Jesus is the greatest example in Scripture on how to live according to the will of God.

But notice that even though He is the greatest example, this still does not mean that we are to live and act exactly like Jesus. Aside from being impossible, any attempt is just foolish.

Why? Because we live in different times, with different cultures, and are facing different issues. The life of Jesus is the perfect way of living for a Jewish Rabbi in the First Century AD who lived in Palestine under Roman rule. If all this is true of you, then go ahead and try to exactly follow the example of Jesus. And while you are at it, check yourself into a mental institution.

Yet while we cannot exactly follow the example of Jesus, we can nevertheless learn from Him, and how He lived, so that we can follow His example and live in similar ways in our own times and places and cultures.

So I don’t believe we are to live like Jesus as much as we are to live like Jesus if He were living in our time and place and culture.

And, in fact, He is. If you are a believer in Jesus, then you are to be Jesus in the world.

The question then is not, “What would Jesus do?” but rather, “What would Jesus have us do?”

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I hope I do not ruin your love for the Bible, but you need to know that the Bible was not written to you.

We Westerners have a very egocentric view of life, thinking it is all about us, and we sometimes approach the Bible as if God wrote it as a “love letter” just to me, to give me guidance and instruction for my needs and my questions, and to help me get through my day.

Such a way of viewing Scripture has led to most of the abuses and misuses of Scripture throughout the history of Western Christianity. For example, when a king (in England or France or Spain in the Middle Ages) thinks the Bible was written to him, to guide and instruct him, he takes some of the commands and instructions in the Bible that God gave to other kings as things that he and his nation should be doing.

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Can the Bible be true and not true at the same time? We have seen already that it can. I now want to explain this concept in more detail.

We have been discussing the inerrancy of Scripture and how to read the Bible in a way that stays true to the way the Bible functions and why the various authors wrote what they did.

We are now at a place to discuss how the Bible is “true.” I stated previously that I agreed with what I was taught in seminary:

The Bible is a record of things as they actually were, and a true account of those things about which it speaks.

We need a better answer than “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Otherwise, we end up with the following problems:

Or this sort of logic (Which is quite close to what I have actually heard in some circles):

Is there a better way to read Scripture that still allows it to be true?

True Records of Untrue Ideas?

Some argue that the Bible is both completely true and mostly false, both at the same time. How is this possible?

Well, this argument states that while the Bible accurately records the thoughts, actions, and ideas of the various Biblical authors and the people to whom the various books were written, these thoughts, actions, and ideas may not actually be the thoughts, actions, and ideas that God endorses, nor the thoughts, ideas, and actions that we are to copy.

Maybe a practical example would help to understand this idea.

For thousands of years, Christians have struggled with how to make sense of the passages in the Book of Joshua where God tells the Israelites to go kill all the men, women, children, and even animals of various tribes and nations that were living in Canaan when Israel arrived there after wandering for 40 years in the desert.

It is possible that what is recorded in Scripture is an accurate and true account of what Joshua and the other leaders of Israel thought God was telling them to do, when in fact, He was not. So when Joshua wrote the book of Joshua, he accurately recorded his thoughts and ideas about how God was working in his life and in the people of Israel, to bring them into the “Promised Land” of Canaan.

In this way of reading Scripture, where would Joshua have gotten such ideas if not from the inspiration of God? Maybe from Egypt, or the culture of other nations that lived in that area, as “God as a Conquering Warrior” was a very popular way of thinking of God at that time.

In this view of Joshua (which, I should say, is not my view), Joshua “is a record of things as they actually were, and a true account of those things about which it speaks” even though this record does not accurately reflect who God is, or what He is like.

Examples like this could abound. Maybe Genesis 1-2 are an accurate and true record of how Moses and the early Israelites thought God created the world, but they were wrong. In this way, while we cannot view Genesis 1-2 as a scientific explanation of creation, it does accurately represent the theology and ideas of Moses and the early Israelites about God’s power and creativity. Of course, in this way of reading, even their theology about God might not be accurate.

We could go book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse through the Bible in such a way, seeing that it is an accurate, truthful, and inerrant record of what people thought, even though they might actually have been wrong.

A Useless Bible

I have thought about this way of reading Scripture for a few years now, and while I like that it upholds the accuracy and truthfulness of Scripture, I just cannot accept it as a right way to read Scripture. If the Bible is nothing more than an accurate record of inaccurate ideas, how does it help us at all? It would be useless.

Maybe that is just my conservative training and background being stubborn, but for me, this way of reading Scripture causes the bottom to fall out on too much of my theology.

No, this view of Scripture doesn’t help, because if Scripture is read in such a light, we are nowhere nearer to the “true truth” than we were before we read a single word. If the Bible is nothing more than a true and accurate record of human ideas, then it doesn’t help us much at all in knowing anything for sure about God, ourselves, our condition, or anything of eternal significance.

Descriptive, but Not Prescriptive

Nevertheless, there is one element of this theory about Scripture that I really, really like (which is the only reason I brought up this theory in the first place). The idea is this: While the Bible is a description of what people believed, how they acted, the ideas they held, and I would add to this what God actually did and said, it is not a description of how we should act, or what we should believe.

In other words, I believe that pretty much the entire Bible is descriptive, but not presecriptive. It describes what people did and thought and said, but does not tell us what to do, think, or say. In this way, the Bible is inerrant, true, and accurate, but is not a book of mandated beliefs and behaviors. Certainly, we will believe some of the same things, and behave in some of the same ways, but not simply because “the Bible says it and that settles it.”

I will explain this idea in more detail in later posts, but for now, what are your initial thoughts, ideas, concerns, or objections to such a way of reading Scripture?

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The problem with the Bible is not with the Bible itself.

The problem is with how we read the Bible.

When people expect to get history, science, doctrine, and ethics out of the Bible, but end up with nothing of the sort, or what they do get does not agree with science, history, or the doctrine of others, they either reject the whole thing as fiction, or they blindly believe and obey what they read, because they don’t know what else to do with the text.

Most people, both Christian and non-Christian alike, come to the Bible with completely wrong expectations about how the functions, why the Bible was written, and how the Bible presents truth. We will look at each of these three in the following posts, beginning here with How the Bible Functions.

How the Bible Functions

It has been said in numerous comments on previous posts, and I agree with them completely, that the Bible is not a road map to life. It is not a guide for living. It is not “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.”

Nor is it a book of science, history, doctrine, or ethics.

So what is the Bible? How does it function?

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I believe the Bible is true. I believe the Bible is inerrant.

I found the following statement in my seminary class notes, and I agree with it 100%

The Bible is a record of things as they actually were, and a true account of those things about which it speaks.

Yet while I agree with this statement, I probably do not agree with how many pastors and theologians understand that statement.

What do I mean?

Well, I believe that even if all the stories of the Bible were false, the Bible itself could still be true. In other words, even if all the facts were wrong, the Bible could be a true and accurate account of those things about which it speaks.

How can I say this?

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