Why
I am not a Fundamentalist
Ian C. McKay,
November 2004
I was brought up
in Glasgow among Exclusive Brethren, whose perception of Christian doctrine was
unequivocally fundamentalist. When I was about five years old my older brother,
then aged about 10, told me that everything in the Bible is true. I was
startled by this concept, and thought about it for a long time. I never forgot
it. Even at the age of five, I could see that this principle, if true, was
rather important. I did not doubt my brother’s word: he was usually a reliable
source of information.
The label Fundamentalist dates from the
early 20th Century, when a series of 12 volumes were published in
Los Angeles under the collective title of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to
the Truth, edited by a board chaired by R. A. Torrey. These volumes set out
a meticulously detailed account of Christian doctrine, broadly similar to what
the Exclusive Brethren believed at the time. Versions of the volumes have been
reproduced on the Internet, e.g. at https://archive.org/details/fundamentalstest17chic
The most distinguishing characteristic of fundamentalist doctrine, as
exemplified by these twelve volumes, is that it is based on a more than usually
literal interpretation of the Bible. Most mainstream Christians and most Bible
students regard the book of Job, for instance, as a brilliant epic poem that
delves into deep and dark dilemmas of faith, and grapples passionately with the
perennial problem of why God allows evil to exist. By contrast, fundamentalists
read it as both poetry and as literal history. Even the passages in which God
and Satan make wagers about how Job will react to disaster, are construed as
literal verbatim transcripts of actual historical conversations.
Figurative
language
To be fair, of
course, even fundamentalists do make some small concessions to the existence of
figurative language. When Jesus says he is a door, or a road, or a vine, then
they all accept that these are purely metaphors. When he describes how a
mustard seed grew into a tree, some of them concede that this may not actually
have happened in a literal sense, and when the Bible says that the earth cannot
be moved (Psalm 93:1; 1 Chronicles 16:30) and that the Sun moves round the
Earth (Ecclesiastes 1:5), they are now mostly agreed that this is a description
of what appears to happen, not the best astronomical account of what actually
happens.
Nor do fundamentalists such as the Exclusive Brethren ever make the
mistake of assuming that the literal historical meaning is the only meaning.
Indeed, they are much more ready than most Christians to see several meanings
both literal and figurative in the one passage.
Fundamentalists also mostly accept that the Bible contains some
transcription errors. None of the original manuscripts has survived: the
earliest of the known manuscripts large enough to be studied by textual
analysis are third or fourth generation copies.
At the time of the translation of the King James Version, the
translators knew of about 2000 New Testament Greek manuscripts sufficiently old
to be relevant to the job of trying to reconstruct the most probable original
text, but no two of these manuscripts agree exactly.
More than a third of all verses in the New Testament contain variants,
according to Aland, The Text of the New Testament, with the variants
being particularly concentrated in the Gospels and the Revelation. Stroebel (The
Case for Christ) mentions having seen estimates of about 200,000 variants
in total, which sounds rather a lot, when you consider that there are only
about 138,020 words in the Greek New Testament.
By contrast, the Old Testament, despite having been through far more
generations of copying than the New, contains fewer transcription errors. Until
the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest Old Testament manuscripts
known dated from the 9th Century AD, and showed relatively little
variation among manuscripts. Owing to the discoveries at Qumran, we now know
that some Old Testament books changed very little in 1000 years.
There are now more like 10,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts known,
and these have shed further light on what the original sources may have said.
From these we know that some of the verses in our current New Testaments were
probably not written until about the 5th Century, because they are
absent from all of the earlier manuscripts. Among the late additions discussed
in The Text of the New Testament, by Kurt and Barbara Aland, are Matthew
5:44, 6:13, 16:2b-3, 17:21, 18:11, 20:16, 20:22, 20:23, 23:14, 25:13, 27:35;
Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46, 11:26, 15:28; Luke 4:4, 9:54-56, 17:36, 23:17, 24:42;
John 5:3b-4, 7:53-8:11; Acts 8:37, 15:34, 24:6b-8, 28:16, 28:29; Romans 16:24
and 1 John 5:7-8.
An extreme case of very late addition is seen in the words in heaven:
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness
on earth. These words occur in no Greek manuscript earlier than the 9th
Century, and yet they are still found in the King James Version, the New King
James Version and the 21st Century King James Version (1 John
5:7-8). The obvious suspicion is that they may have been inserted to provide
support for the doctrine of the Trinity.
The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) is an
intriguing example. In our modern translations it occurs only in John, but it
is not in any of the earliest manuscripts of John. It is also absent from the
Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Sinaiticus and most of the later Greek manuscripts.
Nor is it in any of the earliest translations of the Bible (Syriac, Coptic and
Armenian). On the other hand, it does occur in a few early manuscripts of Luke,
coming after Luke 21:38. It is written with a style and vocabulary
characteristic of Luke.
This example creates problems for people who think that the Bible
derives its authority from the direct divine inspiration of the original
authors, faithfully preserved by copyists. But it creates no problem at all for
most Christians, because the story carries its own moral authority, and its own
hallmark of divine compassion, regardless of its authorship or its date.
The earliest versions of Mark’s gospel finish with the women finding the
empty tomb, and do not mention Jesus’ appearing to his disciples, or his
ascension into heaven.
Fundamentalists also mostly accept that the Bible contains some
translation errors. If the consensus opinion among Hebrew scholars is that A
virgin shall conceive is more correctly translated as The young woman is
with child, then so be it. If the King James translation of Job 21:24, His
breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow, was
changed in the revised version to His pails are full of milk, and the marrow
of his bones is moist, then most people can accept the change without a
major crisis of faith.
A few examples are given by Bruce M. Metzger, a textual scholar of
Princeton Theological Seminary, in his book The Bible in Translation. Many
other examples can easily be found by comparing different translations of the
many verses that pose problems for fundamentalists.
Jeremiah seemed to be aware of deliberate attempts to falsify the Bible:
How can you say, `We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But,
behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. (Revised
Standard Version, Jeremiah 8:8)
To be fair to the NIV, I should also say that it incorporates some
useful new insights and meanings that have arisen from modern bible scholarship
and are absent from most other translations, and it has achieved a commendable
beauty and dignity in its style of prose.
It is universally agreed that printing errors also occur. One edition
had, in Exodus 20:14, Thou shalt commit adultery. So perhaps there was
just a touch of justified irony in the misprint of another edition, which said Printers
(instead of "Princes") have persecuted me without a cause, Psalm 119:161.
But apart from transcription errors, translation errors and printing
errors, the Bible, according to fundamentalists, contains no other errors. The
original manuscripts when first written were perfect and infallible. The
authors were not merely motivated or inspired by God: what they wrote were the
very words of God.
The text most commonly quoted in support of this doctrine are the words
in 2 Timothy 3:15-16, And that from a child thou hast known the holy
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness (King James Version).
What exactly were these scriptures that the author was referring to? The
fact that Timothy had known them from childhood tends to rule out the New
Testament. Most probably he was referring mainly to the Septuagint, which was
the best-known version of the Old Testament in 1st century
Palestine. When Jesus or the Apostles or the Evangelists quote from the Old
Testament, the version that they quote from is usually the Septuagint.
But the 66 books that most fundamentalists recognise as perfect and
infallible do not in fact include all the books of the Septuagint that the
author of 2 Timothy was probably referring to. When Martin Luther was preparing
his German translation of the Bible, and later some other translations, he
decided to relegate to an appendix all those Old Testament books that were not
available in the Hebrew language; in some cases because their original Hebrew
text had been lost, and in some cases because they had originally been written
in Greek or in Aramaic. The appendix was described as containing books good to
read, but not equal to holy writ. Nearly all fundamentalist churches and sects
took this a stage further and entirely excluded from their Old Testaments all
those books that Luther had classified as apocryphal.
If fundamentalists insist, as most of them do, that 66 books and only 66
books are divinely inspired, they must explain why the Epistle writer did not
qualify his advice to Timothy. He did not say All scripture is given by
inspiration of God, except for those written in Greek or Aramaic. They must
also have some reason for believing that Martin Luther made the right decision.
Was Martin Luther also in some sense inspired?
If so, it seems a frail and inconsistent sort of inspiration. He also
wanted to exclude from the canonical section of his bible the books of Job,
Jonah and Esther; and in the New Testament he and his followers also excluded
Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation for more than a century, on the grounds
that they were not in fact written by apostles, and had no apostolic authority.
Some of his followers for years also excluded from their canon the second
Epistle of Peter, and the last two Epistles of John, but eventually they
decided to restore some of them to full canonical status.
In view of the fact that nearly all churches have accepted the reversal
of some of the decisions of Luther and his followers, it is worth perusing the
Old Testament books that he excluded to see what sort of books they were. A
collection of them have been published several times under the name of The
Apocrypha, and most of them have always been part of the versions of the
Bible used by most Christians, including members of the Roman Catholic and
Greek Orthodox Churches. You can read most of them in the New American Bible,
available online at http://www.usccb.org/bible/books-of-the-bible/index.cfm
Some of these apocryphal books, to me, do not ring true. The first book
of Esdras is attributed to Ezra the Scribe, but clearly was not written by him.
It contains some rousing language, some beautiful and uplifting sentiments and
some poignant allusions, but the best parts of it have just been copied from
other Old Testament books. It is almost as plagiaristic as the Book of Mormon.
The second book of Esdras is apocalyptic in style, rather like the Revelation,
but I would describe it as imaginative rather than inspired.
Most of the apocryphal books are written in much the same style as the
other Old Testament books, incorporating history, legends, poetry, exhortation,
prophesy and doxology. In places they get a bit dreary. But a few are
unequivocally, stunningly, awesome. I challenge anyone to read the Book of
Wisdom, or the book of Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach) and tell me
truthfully that they are not as beautiful, uplifting and inspirational as any
books of the Old Testament.
Do you remember that wonderful poem in Proverbs 8, where Wisdom
reminisces about her early existence before the World began?
The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
Or the primal dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His inhabited world,
And my delight was with the sons of men. (new King James Version)
If you appreciate this kind of poetry, then you will enjoy reading the
Book of Wisdom and the book of Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), which contain much
that is written in the same style and is just as hauntingly beautiful.
The book of Judith is another apocryphal book that I would recommend as
well worth reading. It is essentially a short historical novel, written with
reverence, and portraying vividly the virtues of piety and courage. As its
drama unfolds, it becomes more and more difficult to lay the book down; and the
same may be said for the additions to the book of Daniel. The First Book of
Maccabees is of considerable historical importance, and it provides the only
scriptural basis for the Feast of Dedication, or Hannukah, which Jesus appears
to have attended (John 10:22).
The main relevance of all this to fundamentalism is that if you are
simply going to accept by faith a particular set of books, and regard them as
in a unique class of their own, then you first have to decide which set of
books to accept. And if you are honest, you will admit that some of the people
who chose the various different canons may not have chosen very well. The
boundary line between inspired and uninspired books is not actually as obvious
as we would like it to be.
Do the books of the Bible claim to be the actual words dictated by God?
Well, some do and some don’t. Many of the Old Testament prophets repeatedly
used the phrase, Thus saith the Lord, as in 1 Samuel 15, for example, Thus
saith the Lord of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare him not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass.
One has to ask whether God was really inciting his people to conduct a
campaign of genocide, or whether Samuel just thought so. Can we really feel
comfortable about attributing to God the same sort of policy as was instigated
by Adoph Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Genghis Khan and other mass murderers? Is
it not wiser to assume that Samuel, along with the authors of Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges and Jeremiah, was merely using God’s name to lend support to
military campaigns and slaughter of children?
The author of Luke’s Gospel, on the other hand, seems to indicate that
he did not get his gospel directly from God. He begins by describing how he
researched the written records and verbal accounts handed down to his
generation by those who witnessed the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus.
And we know from studying the rest of the gospel that his account of events is,
as he indicates, based partly on earlier documents. One of these earlier
documents that he probably used was Mark’s gospel, many verses of which he
reproduces or paraphrases. What he does not say is that he just wrote what God
told him to write. If this gospel were simply written to miraculous dictation,
there would have been no need to research the evidence, and he would not have
needed the written and verbal accounts handed down from eyewitnesses.
Many other biblical passages also contain evidence of having been
derived in part from earlier writings. The "sayings of the wise"
(Proverbs 22:17-24:22) consist of extended proverbs, each introduced by a
preface. This section contains several sayings that appear to have been derived
from a piece of Egyptian wisdom literature, The Instruction of Amenemope,
(about 1100 BC). The Hebrew author appears to acknowledge this existing work as
a source that he quotes from. The Egyptian work comprises 30 chapters, and the
Hebrew text refers to its thirty sayings. (Proverbs 22:20 Have I not written
thirty sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, New International
Version). The same Egyptian work appears to be a source of several other
Biblical passages. You can read a detailed, objective, scholarly study of the
Egyptian-Hebrew influence in the dissertation by James R. Black (see especially
Chapter 4) at http://www.shemtaia.com/diss.
If the writer of Proverbs were writing simply to direct divine
dictation, would he have used an earlier Egyptian document as source material?
Did the Egyptian writers have direct divine inspiration too? Is it not more
likely that his inspiration amounted to something rather less direct than
verbal dictation?
The story of Noah’s ark closely parallels a much more ancient story that
occurs in various forms, including the Epic of Atrahasis and the Epic of
Gilgamesh, written in cuneiform scripts on clay tablets, one of which (Gilgamesh
XI) is usually on display in the British Museum. These epics and the story of Noah undoubtedly had
a common source, and that source, whatever it may have been, existed many
generations before the book of Genesis was written.
A history book, a scientific textbook, a book of poetry, a novel, a
drama, a hymn book, a discursive essay, a book of practical advice, a book of
collected letters, a book of statute law, a recipe book, an inventory of goods,
are all quite different in style and in purpose. All of them except the
scientific textbook are represented by passages in the Bible, and all of them
can be used to communicate truth.
Tolkien’s novels about hobbits, elves and other mythical creatures
portray vivid truths about the epic battle between good and evil; C. S. Lewis’s
Chronicles of Narnia contain deep spiritual symbolism: what Christian can read
about Azlan without recognising who is really being portrayed?
Most of the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Hosea, Joel,
Amos, Obadiah, Job, and large parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah are written in the
form of poetry. In translation, this is not always obvious to the modern
reader. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are of the genre known as wisdom literature,
which was well established in ancient Palestine, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The
Song of Songs is a love poem. The Psalms are a hymn book, intended to be sung
to music. The Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah were intended to be read as
history. Leviticus and Deuteronomy are largely books of law. And many of the
books are clearly prophetic.
What would happen if we accidentally put some of the books in the wrong
category? What if a misguided librarian put Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the
History section, and an equally misguided teacher used it as a textbook of
history? It would only be a matter of time before someone noticed that the book
mentions the sound of a clock striking, long before striking clocks were
invented. After sufficient research, other internal and external discrepancies
would be found, and the historians might decide that this Shakespeare guy was a
fraud, and his books were sheer rubbish.
What if a book of poetry was wrongly classified as a science textbook?
Consider the lines from Shakespeare’s 33rd sonnet, describing the
morning sun,
Kissing
with golden face the meadows green,
A literal interpretation of this beautiful verse would imply that the
sun makes physical contact with the meadows, and causes a chemical change in
the water of the streams, coating them with a layer of gold. A misguided
scientist might conclude that the book was riddled with error, and this
Shakespeare guy was an impostor pretending to understand chemistry.
These absurd misclassifications are to me no more absurd than what
fundamentalists have done with parts of the Bible, and the consequences have
been that some masterpieces of literature have been brought into disrepute. Lay
members of the public have been left with the impression that many parts of the
Bible were written by impostors and fraudsters.
Much has been written by others about misinterpretation of the early
chapters of Genesis, so I shall not weary the reader by going over old ground,
save to say that in these chapters Adam and Eve are symbols of early humanity,
and their story vividly depicts several salient messages, notably the creative
power of God, the essential brotherhood of man, and the role of sin as a source
of human suffering. It is not a history book, any more than it is a recipe book
telling you how to make humans.
Nor is it a literal physical description of the structure of the Universe.
The firmament of Genesis 1: 6-10 can hardly be regarded literally as an
inverted bowl over a flat earth, as the ancients imagined, keeping out the
water except when its windows were opened and the water fell as rain.
Jesus himself is on record as teaching people not to interpret biblical
passages too literally, materially or physically.
For example, on the basis of Old Testament prophecy (Malachi 3:1;
Malachi 4:1-6), the Jews expected Elijah to return to Earth before the coming
of the Messiah. Most of them probably expected him to look like Elijah, speak
like Elijah and answer to the name of Elijah. They almost certainly expected
him to arrive as a fully-grown adult, and be received with public acclaim. Some
of them probably expected him to return to Earth in the same manner as he was
taken up into Heaven, riding in a chariot of fire. But what they got was John
the Baptist, who arrived as a baby via his mother’s womb, lived rough, probably
looked scruffy, and denied that he was Elijah (John 1:21).
But Jesus taught that the coming of John the Baptist was in a spiritual
or figurative sense a fulfilment of the promised return of Elijah (Matthew
11:13-14; 17:12-13; Mark 9:13). Elijah and John both spent a long time in the
wilderness, both wore a hairy garment and a leathern girdle about their loins,
both began their ministry abruptly, and both were known for the sternness of
their reproof; so the metaphor was apt. But the fundamentalists of Jesus’ time
made the mistake of expecting something more literal, more spectacular,
something more like magic.
Similarly, Jesus taught that the
central theme of his ministry, the coming of the Kingdom of God, was to be
interpreted spiritually, not literally, physically and materially. His
followers made the mistake of interpreting Old Testament prophecy (Zechariah
9:9-10; Micah 5:2-6) as meaning that the Messiah would take military and
political power, establish himself as King in Jerusalem, and lead a military
campaign against Syria.
But in Luke 17:20-21 it says, And when he was demanded of the
Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The
kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here!
or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Similarly, in the Gospel of Thomas, 113, His disciples said to him,
"When will the Kingdom of God come?" It will not come by watching for
it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' 'Rather, the Kingdom
of God is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
There are also numerous passages where Jesus taught his listeners that
the Kingdom of God would be established during their own lifetimes (Matthew
10:23; 16:28; 24:34; Mark 9:1; 13:25-30; Luke 9:27; 21:32), which all help to
confirm that the literal, physical, material, political kingdom expected by
literalists was not the kind of kingdom that Jesus was talking about.
In 2 Samuel 7:16, God promised that Solomon’s kingdom would last for
ever. Well, in the literal, physical sense, it did not. It is in a spiritual
sense that the kingdom has continued to this day.
Let us turn now to some other important biblical passages that
fundamentalists and sometimes Catholics have taken too literally, thereby
bringing them into disrepute.
The nativity stories in Matthew and Luke conform with what was a well
established literary genre. Similar nativity stories had been told about many
religious leaders, including Krishna, Buddha, Dionysus, Mithra, Horus, Adonis
and Attis. Common elements often found in these stories include the appearance
of a new star, the birth of a child to a virgin mother and an adoptive father
in humble surroundings, often on a journey away from home, on a date equivalent
to our 25th of December, visitors who come to pay their respects to
the new child, a wicked king who plans to kill the infant, the adoptive father
being warned in a dream, an escape from the wicked king, and the slaughter of
other innocent children.
But is it possible that the nativity stories in the gospels, although
showing more than accidental resemblance to earlier stories, could also have
been historically accurate? Couldn’t the earlier stories merely have been like
prophecies, forerunners to a real epoch-making historical event?
It
is difficult to take this view, because if the nativity stories are construed
as literal history, it is very difficult to reconcile Matthew’s nativity story
with Luke’s. At most one of them could have been literal and historical. Matthew’s
nativity story is set in the year 4 BC, since the birth according to Matthew
occurred shortly before the death of King Herod (who is known to have died in 4
BC), whereas Luke’s story is set in the year 6 or 7 AD in the year when the
first census was held while Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. It is known that
Cyrenius became Governor of Syria in the year 6 or 7 AD and in the same year
there was a census held throughout Judea, which by that time was annexed to
Syria.
It is also very difficult to reconcile the genealogies in Matthew and
Luke. Both genealogies comprise a long list of men’s names, tracing Jesus’
ancestry back to King David and Abraham or beyond, via the male line. The two
lists of names show a fair measure of agreement from Abraham down to David, and
this part agrees not too badly with the Old Testament. But from David down to
Joseph (the father of Jesus) the two genealogies are very different in length
and, apart from David, Joseph and Jesus, there are only three names that occur
in both lists – and these three names do not occur in the same order. In other
words, in this section of the genealogies there is no more agreement between
them than could have occurred by accident.
Other aspects of the two nativity stories are also rather difficult to
reconcile. Matthew has the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt immediately after the
birth, and they remain there until King Herod dies, whereas in Luke they are in
the Temple at Jerusalem only days after Jesus’ birth, and go from there to
their home town of Nazareth. Matthew gives the impression that Joseph and
Mary’s home was in Bethlehem before the birth: there was no mention of a
journey before the birth, and the wise men visit the newborn child in the
house, not in a stable or an inn. Matthew explains that after the death of King
Herod, Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea, and so was afraid to
go there, so they went to live in Galilee in a town called Nazareth. Luke, by
contrast, says that Nazareth was their home town even before the birth, and
describes their journey to Bethlehem for purposes of the census. But he makes
no mention of a journey to Egypt, or the slaughter of the innocents. In Luke
they went to Nazareth not as refugees, but simply because that was their home.
External historical evidence is also difficult to reconcile with the
nativity stories. King Herod was certainly a brutal character, and his misdeeds
were well documented by historians, but none of them mentioned the slaughter of
the innocents, which, if it were historical, would probably have been deemed
worthy of mention.
The requirement for Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem to register
their names seems historically implausible, since the purpose of the Roman
censuses was to enable the Government to raise taxes. For this purpose they
would need each citizen to register in the town where he lived, not in the town
where a distant ancestor lived.
I could go on and on, but I think I have made my main point. It is that
the nativity stories belong to a literary genre that is quite distinct from
history, and I don’t imagine that their original authors intended for a moment
that anyone should construe them as history. The nearest type of literary genre
in modern times is the historical drama, whose purpose is to depict in a vivid
and stirring way just how important were the events on which the drama was
based. To the authors of the nativity stories Jesus’ birth was an epoch-making
event comparable with the creation of the world – an event to be treated with
awe and reverence. And their writings depicted this as vividly as they knew
how.
Their purpose may be compared with that of some great paintings of the
Nativity – an expression of the emotional and spiritual impact that the event
had, as perceived by the artist. Historical accuracy is not what a great
religious painting is about; nor is it what the gospel nativity stories are
about.
A more modern work that may illustrate what I mean is Milton’s Ode on
the Morning of Christ’s nativity. This poem is not his best known, but for
sheer quality and beauty I doubt that there is any poem in the whole of the
English language to match it. He depicts as no other English writer has done,
feelings of exhilaration, wonder and reverence; and he portrays as no other
English writer has done the sheer immensity of the event. But he would probably
be dismayed and distressed if anyone tried to interpret his poem as literal
history, for this would surely be to miss its whole meaning and purpose, and
potentially bring it into disrepute.
We have seen how Luke, as suggested by his own opening words and
confirmed by textual scrutiny, made use of earlier documents when composing his
gospel. There are indications from textual analysis that the nativity story may
have originally been written not by Luke, since its literary style and
vocabulary differ from the rest of the gospel. Nowhere in the rest of the
gospels or the epistles does Jesus or anyone else refer to the nativity
stories, which might indicate that they were a late addition to the gospels. In
a version of Luke’s gospel thought to be a copy of the version used by Marcion
around 140 AD, there is no nativity story, and the gospel begins with the
ministry of John the Baptist. Another distinction between the nativity story
and subsequent parts of Luke’s Gospel is that the latter appear to be based on
history more that the nativity story was.
The ministry of Jesus, unlike the earlier parts of the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke, did not conform with an established literary genre. It was so
original and so immensely moving that it hardly seems possible for four rather
ordinary men, the authors of the four gospels, to have merely made it up.
There are linguistic clues too that indicate historical authenticity.
Where the words of Jesus and John the Baptist are quoted verbatim, there are
clues to indicate that, unlike the surrounding narrative text, the direct
speech has been translated from Aramaic to Greek. For instance, when John the
Baptist says that from these stones God is able to raise up children, it seems
a strange choice of words in Greek or in English: why stones? Why children?
However, in Aramaic, the native language of 1st century
Palestinians, the word for stones is almost identical to the word for children,
and so the Baptist’s choice of words gave his preaching a memorable impact.
When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, the words in Greek do not form
any discernible pattern of rhythm or rhyme, but in Aramaic they appear to make
use of both rhythm and rhyme. Would Greek writers who just made up the story of
Jesus’ ministry have bothered to engineer such clues? I hardly think so.
The Gospel of Thomas is not well known among Christians, since it was
not discovered until 1945, long after the canon of scripture had been put
together, but its original version is now thought to be about as old as the
four canonical gospels, and this means that it carries some weight as a
possible source of historical evidence. It only survives in the Coptic
language, apart from a few fragments of the earlier Greek version, and even the
Coptic copy is incomplete.
It is largely a collection of the sayings of Jesus, and it serves
consistently to confirm the general tenor of Jesus’ teachings. Many of the
sayings in it are more or less the same as in the other gospels, but there are
other sayings unique to the Gospel of Thomas, and they all sound like the sort
of things Jesus might have said. They have an authentic sound to them, and they
include some deeply thought-provoking remarks. Their possible historical
authenticity makes them intensely interesting to anyone who wishes to follow
the teachings of Jesus. You can read them, along with other ancient Christian
documents, at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas.html
While I know of no reason to believe that all the details of words and
deeds attributed to Jesus in any of the gospels are accurate, there can be very
little room for doubt about the tenor of his ministry and his main messages:
they are just too consistent to have arisen from transcription errors or from
diverse authors, just too original to have been made up or plagiarised by the
evangelists, and just too precious to lose.
When we come to events surrounding the crucifixion, a comparison of the
four gospels gives much the same picture of partial but not complete agreement.
This is only to be expected if the four accounts were based on real historical
events but not written down for several decades. But some of the discrepancies
appear to be more than simple lapses of memory: they sometimes appear to have
symbolic meaning.
Take for instance the day and time of crucifixion, which all the gospels
record relative to the Feast of the Passover. To refresh your memory about the
Passover timetable you may wish to look at Exodus 12. The Passover was
celebrated once a year on the 14th day of the month Abib (later
known as Nisan), and the week from the evening of the 14th to the
evening of the 21st was known as the feast of unleavened bread. The
Passover lamb was chosen and segregated on the 10th day of the month
and slaughtered and roasted on the 14th day, which was called the
day of Preparation of the Passover. On the evening of the 14th the
whole household or group of households would then eat the Passover feast, which
would include the roast lamb.
Now, the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, record
unambiguously that Jesus ate the Passover feast with his disciples and was crucified
the next day: to be precise, they indicate that he was crucified at the third
hour of the 15th day of Nisan (about 9 a.m by our clocks), and he
died at the 9th hour (about 3 p.m.)
John’s gospel (chapters 18 and 19), by contrast, emphasises by repetition
that Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation of the Passover, i.e. on the
14th day of Nisan. To be precise, John indicates that he was
crucified shortly after the sixth hour (midday) on the Day of Preparation. The
symbolic significance of this timing is that Jesus was crucified at the time
allocated for the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. Thus the theme of Jesus as
the Lamb of God, which was introduced early in John’s gospel, now reaches its
climax, and its terrible meaning finally becomes clear.
None of the synoptic gospels mentions the title Lamb of God and none of
them draws the analogy between Jesus’ crucifixion and the sacrifice of the
Passover Lamb. Thus there appear to be spiritual and symbolic reasons for at
least some of the historical discrepancies between different gospels.
The Old Testament too contains hundreds, and perhaps thousands of
factual discrepancies, many of them in passages that were probably intended to
be factual and historical. For example, according to 2 Samuel 24:1, God caused
David to number the people. Yet in 1 Chronicles 21:1 it is Satan who causes
David to do this most evil thing. And from that point onward, these two
accounts of the same events continue to contradict each other.
But factual and historical errors in the Bible are not by any means its
only hallmarks or even its most important hallmarks of human weakness and
fallibility. According to the Old Testament authors, God instituted numerous
laws, commands and practices that hardly anyone today would see as morally
defensible. It is well said that the Lord gets the blame for a lot of things,
not only among today’s Christians, but also among the prophets, lawgivers and
chroniclers of the past. And there are also many evils that appear to be
condoned by the Bible, without being positively prescribed.
Today’s standards of morality in the Western World may leave something
to be desired, but at least most of us regard as morally indefensible such acts
as genocide, infant sacrifice, selling your daughter, the death penalty for
children, and the death penalty for relatively minor offences.
It is therefore disturbing to find in the Old Testament that the death
penalty is mandatory for anyone who curses his father or mother (Leviticus
20:9, Exodus 21:17), strikes his father or mother (Exodus 21:15), does any work
on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15), for example gathering sticks (Numbers 15:32-36),
blasphemes (Leviticus 24:16), goes near the Tabernacle (Numbers 1:51),
approaches the Sanctuary (Numbers 3:10), charges excessive interest on a loan
(Ezekiel 18:13), is found not to be a virgin when she is married (Deut
22:20-21), fails to seek the Lord God of Israel (2 Chronicles 15:13) or looks
into the ark. On the other hand, if a man beats his servant so badly that he or
she dies a day or two later, he is not to be punished at all (Exodus
21:20-21).
If a child curses his father or mother, wouldn’t it be better to try
some milder form of correction, short of the death penalty? I do not wish to
imply that the death penalty was in actual practice inflicted on children who
cursed their parents: in Matthew 15:1-4, when the scribes and Pharisees
criticise Jesus’ disciples for transgressing the traditions of the elders,
Jesus quotes this Mosaic law as an example of a law that even the scribes and
Pharisees did not obey. I am just suggesting, as I think Jesus was, that it is
unthinkable to take this particular Mosaic law literally.
According to 1 Samuel 6:19 God struck down some of the men of Beth
Shemesh, putting 50,070 of them to death because they had looked into the ark
of the LORD. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the LORD had dealt
them. Was this the same merciful, loving and forgiving God as was revealed
by Jesus, or was the Bible just wrong about the reason for the terrible death
toll?
The campaign of genocide, including the slaughter of children, incited
by God according to 1 Samuel 15:3 has already been mentioned, and seems by
today’s standards to be morally indefensible. But there are many similar
passages. For example, in Deuteronomy 20: 16-17 we read, of the cities of
these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou
shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them;
namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.
Our armed forces today sometimes disgrace themselves by mistreating
civilians and prisoners after a military campaign, but the breaches of the
Geneva Convention are usually the work of a minority of relatively low-ranking
officers. It is rarely that the command to commit an atrocity comes from the
top, and on those occasions when it does, the commander is usually prosecuted
for war crimes.
It is therefore disturbing to read that Moses treated prisoners with
atrocious cruelty, and apparently with total impunity, and the biblical record
does not contain so much as a hint of disapproval. Numbers 31:14-17 (King James
Version) tells us that Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with
the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the
battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold,
these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit
trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among
the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little
ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the
women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for
yourselves.
Perhaps cruelty to children is the crime that provokes the most extreme
revulsion in most of us. So can we consider the prophet Hosea to be divinely
inspired when he wrote Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled
against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in
pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up (Hosea 13:16), or was
the Psalmist divinely inspired when he wrote O daughter of Babylon, who art
to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones?
(Psalm 137:8-9)
The mistreatment of children is particularly disturbing when the deed is
committed by the children’s own parents. But Exodus 21:7 appears to condone
selling one’s daughter into what was effectively slavery, And if a man sell
his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do,
and Judges 11 appears to condone Jephtha’s sacrifice of his own daughter. And
then, of course, you have Lot, a just and righteous man according to the Second
Epistle of Peter. On one occasion (Genesis 19:8) he offers his virgin daughters
to a crowd of rapists and on another occasion (Genesis 19:32-36), when drunk,
he gets his own daughters pregnant.
Have you ever noticed just how often drunk men tend to repeat
themselves? Well, so do careless editors, if they accidentally incorporate the
same source document more than once into an anthology. This can also happen if
one of the documents used as a source was plagiarised by its author from one of
the other authors. All of these things can arise from the weaknesses and errors
of fallible authors, but you do not expect it to happen in a divinely inspired
book, especially one comprising the very words of God. God does not get his
needle stuck in a groove, or accidentally press the photocopier button twice.
There are, of course, many examples of repetition used very effectively
in the Bible for emphasis, and as part of a poetic structure, as in Psalm 136.
Some verses occur as many as twelve times, quite deliberately (see Numbers
7:12-83).
But there are other examples of passages that occur twice without any
such plausible excuse. In most instances the repetition does not look like the
result of infallible, direct, verbal inspiration: it looks more like a simple
human error. For example, Isaiah 37 (the whole chapter) is an exact copy of 2
Kings 19; and Isaiah 38 is an almost exact copy of 2 Kings 20:1-8. Also, 2
Chronicles 9:11-26 are a repeat of 1 Kings 10:12-27, as are several passages in
Chronicles and Kings. Psalm 53 is an almost exact copy of Psalm 14. The last
two verses of 2 Chronicles are the same as the first two and a half verses of
Ezra, and the Chronicler ends the last verse abruptly in mid-sentence.
It has been
suggested to me that a study of predictive prophecy and its success rate would
be a test of biblical infallibility. There are three serious limitations to
this kind of study.
First, many
prophecies are open-ended, with no time limit set for their fulfilment. In a
sense, such a prophecy is safe to make because it can never be conclusively
falsified by subsequent events. For example, Isaiah 19, in the prophecy against Egypt, predicts that the waters of
the Nile will dry up completely. As far as I know, this has never happened, and
it would create mayhem, or possibly annihilation of a whole population if it
did happen, but a fundamentalist could always say that we just have to wait a
bit longer and it will happen eventually. Given global warming, maybe he would
be right.
Another prophecy against Egypt that has not to my
knowledge ever been fulfilled is seen in Ezekiel 29:9-12. Again, maybe we just
have to wait a bit longer. Mind you, where there is an open-ended prediction
that a certain event will not happen, then this is a bolder prediction
than saying it will happen, because it is potentially capable of being
falsified by events.
Secondly, where prophecies appear to have been fulfilled, we sometimes
have to depend on bible scholars and archaeologists to tell us whether the
prophecy was written before or after the event predicted, and this may lead to
irresoluble argument. This is a particular problem with the prophecies in
Daniel, which was possibly the last of the Old Testament books to be written.
A third thorny problem for the proposed test of inerrancy is that many
prophecies are written in somewhat figurative language, so it may not be
possible to agree about what event or person the prophecy refers to. This is a
particular problem with the Old Testament verses referred to by the author of
Matthew’s gospel. Although Matthew very frequently quotes Old Testament verses
and applies them to the Messiah, which is reasonable enough if done in a
metaphorical sense, a close examination of the context of the verses that he
quotes shows that their immediate, or literal, application is nearly always to
someone else.
Despite these three limitations, there are still, in fact, some
prophecies that could perhaps be used as a test of inerrancy: namely those
prophecies that are fairly unambiguous in their meaning and are accompanied by
an explicit or implied time limit for their fulfilment, and were probably made
before the event predicted. And there are also those prophecies that predict
that a certain event will not happen. But when I study these, my
impression is that they weaken rather than strengthen the fundamentalist’s
case.
For instance, when Ahaz the King of Judah was faced with the task of
defending Jerusalem against a combined assault by the Kings of Israel and
Syria, Isaiah gave him a reassuring prophecy, which he said was from God, to
the effect that the attempted conquest would not succeed (Isaiah 7: 1-7).
1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of
Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and
Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war
against it, but could not prevail against it.
2 And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria
is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his
people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.
3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to
meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the
upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;
4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear
not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for
the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.
5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah,
have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let
us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the
son of Tabeal:
7 Thus saith the Lord GOD, It shall not stand,
neither shall it come to pass. (King James
Version)
But according to II Chronicles 28: 5-8 Ahaz
was in fact defeated in the attack by the kings of Israel and Syria, with more
than a hundred thousand men slaughtered; and the assailants took hundreds of
thousands of prisoners and plunder back to Samaria and Damascus.
5 Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand
of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of
them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the
hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter.
6 For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an
hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because
they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers.
7 And Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, slew
Maaseiah the king's son, and Azrikam the governor of the house, and Elkanah
that was next to the king.
8 And the children of Israel carried away captive
of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took
also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria. (King James Version)
Ezekiel 26:7-14
prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city of Tyre.
7 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon
Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with
horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people.
8 He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the
field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee,
and lift up the buckler against thee.
9 And he shall set engines of war against thy
walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.
10 By reason of the abundance of his horses their
dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and
of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men
enter into a city wherein is made a breach.
11 With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down
all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong
garrisons shall go down to the ground.
12 And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and
make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and
destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and
thy dust in the midst of the water.
13 And I will cause the noise of thy songs to
cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard.
14 And I will make thee like the top of a rock:
thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I
the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
But historians, if they are to be believed, tell us that Tyre did not in
fact fall to Nebuchadnezzar. Eventually the siege was lifted and a compromise
peace settlement was agreed (Asimov, Guide
to the Bible, p587-588); but 240 years later Tyre was destroyed by
Alexander the Great and, in contradiction to the prophecy of Ezekiel, it was in
fact rebuilt (Howell-Smith, In Search of the Real Bible, p40-41). I am
not a historian, so I cannot give an expert assessment of the accuracy of these
facts, but I know of no historians that contradict them. Indeed, the New
Testament confirms that Tyre existed during Jesus’ ministry (Mark 7:24) and at
the time of Peter’s escape from prison (Acts 12:20). And according to the
Association for Rural Development Aid, Tyre still exists and had a population
of 132,111 in 1996.
Moreover, in
Ezekiel 29:17-20 the prophet seems by implication to admit that his prophecy
had not been fulfilled.
17 In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month on the first day, the
word of the LORD came to me: 18 "Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon drove his army in a hard campaign against Tyre; every head was
rubbed bare and every shoulder made raw. Yet he and his army got no reward from
the campaign he led against Tyre. 19 Therefore this is what the
Sovereign LORD says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth. He will loot and plunder the land as
pay for his army. 20 I have given him Egypt as a reward for his
efforts because he and his army did it for me, declares the Sovereign LORD.
In the process
of making this admission, Ezekiel has made another prophecy: that
Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt, an event that we would almost certainly
know about if it had ever taken place.
I sense that
this is getting a bit tedious. There are dozens of other examples that I could
quote. But let me just add a very brief example from the New Testament. Matthew
12:40 says, For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's
belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth.
The most natural interpretation of three days and three nights is a period of
about 72 hours, whereas the most natural interpretation of the gospel accounts
of burial and resurrection imply that Jesus was in the grave from the evening
of Good Friday to very early in the morning on Easter Sunday – a period of
about 36 hours. I have seen people indulging in verbal acrobatics and ingenious
chronological models in an attempt to reconcile these figures, but their
arguments always appeared artificial, contrived and ad-hoc. The simplest
explanation is that Matthew, as was his wont, was just applying Old Testament
verses inappropriately, even to the extent of putting words in Jesus’ mouth.
What does all
this mean for fundamentalists?
I once was a fundamentalist myself, and I ate, drank, breathed, prayed,
worshipped and preached among fundamentalists, so I know how they think. One of
the fears that lurk in their minds is that if we concede that the Bible is only
a human and fallible attempt to record the history of God’s relationship with
man, then what grounds do we have for believing anything, such as the existence
of God and the resurrection of Jesus?
The fear is that their faith may crumble away to nothing, leaving them
with no purpose in life and no guidance on how to live it. Roman Catholics do
not have quite the same fear, because their criterion of truth is what the
Church says, and particularly the Pope. The Taylor/Symington/Hales branch of the
Exclusive Brethren similarly need not worry about fallibility in the Bible,
because their criterion of truth is what their leader says. But for most
fundamentalists the fear is very real, and I have no wish to distress them.
Let me offer some constructive suggestions therefore to those
fundamentalists whose faith is built, not exactly on rock, nor on sand, but on
a thin, brittle crust of certainty, a crust that is liable to crumble if you
probe it ever so gently with the sword of truth.
First, you don’t need a perfect and infallible Bible in order to have a
living, active and fulfilling faith. Most Christians have one without the
other. There are reasons for belief that do not depend at all on a literal
interpretation of the Bible, and there are reasons for disbelief that do arise
from a literal interpretation of the Bible.
I once heard a Sunday School teacher expressing dismay at a lesson in
which children were being taught a very literal approach to an allegorical
bible story. She said, with a shake of the head, “This is the sort of lesson
that breeds young atheists.” She did have a point. Fundamentalism can bring the
Bible into disrepute. Fundamentalism has sadly been successful in convincing
many people that large sections of the Bible pretend to be history, when
clearly they do not pretend to be anything of the sort.
So what are the reasons for belief that do not depend at all on a
literal interpretation of the Bible?
After allowing for the insertions, deletions, confusions and maulings
that the gospel records have suffered, there remains a hard core of the
teachings of Jesus. While historical accuracy is no longer available to us,
there can be little doubt about the tenor of his ministry. It is consistent, it
is stunning, it is liberating; in places it is awe-inspiring. If you are
convinced that it is right and have experienced its power, and you feel drawn
by the words “follow me”, then do you need any more justification?
Some readers may feel that they do in fact need more justification for
belief. The classical philosophical
arguments have largely failed, and the argument from design has largely been
demolished. The Bible is no longer totally reliable, so where is the evidence
for God now?
Try looking deep within yourself and, as far as feasible, deep within
others. Have you ever encountered examples of sheer, pure, unconditional
goodness? Have you ever felt inspired to spread and communicate the love of God
to someone? Do you ever experience the Wisdom from above, which is pure,
peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and
sincere? Do you ever have a sublime experience of love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control?
If you have experienced these things, then you are not alone. The Bible,
with all its frail human imperfections, contains many records of people who
have experienced the same power guiding them, motivating them, acting in and
through them.
Admittedly, none of these experiences could be presented to a sceptic as
a proof of the existence of God. They are not a proof. Nor could you present to
a sceptic proof of the existence of love. Love is something that you have no
doubt about if you have experienced it, and no knowledge of if you have not
experienced it. I know of no way in which I could prove the existence of love,
or even describe it, to someone who had never experienced it.
In the Epistles of Paul, most of which are probably genuine, Paul
repeatedly refers to such experiences and attributes them to the indwelling
presence of the Spirit of God. He describes the Spirit as bearing witness with
our spirit. He describes our unvoiced prayers as the Spirit interceding with
groanings that cannot be uttered.
Isaiah 57:15 describes a God who dwells both in heaven and in people. For
thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, and whose name is
Holy: I dwell in the high and holy [place], and with him that is of a contrite
and humble spirit.
In Matthew 18:20, in a passage that appears to refer to the future,
Jesus is recorded as saying that he will be with his disciples wherever they
are gathered together. In Revelation 3:20 he is also seen as promising to dwell
with anyone who hears his voice and opens the door.
In the New Testament we read the words and observe the deeds of Jesus’
disciples after his departure. Some of their words and deeds are noticeably
Jesus-like. It is almost as if Jesus was still alive within his followers. We
get the same impression in some non-canonical writings, such as Clement’s Epistle
to the Corinthians. In ways that are not easy to define, he seems to breathe
and exude and communicate the love of God. And we can see that the history of
the world was radically changed by these people. Something very powerful was at
work.
Again, none of this could be presented to a sceptic as a proof of
anything. It simply suggests that in some sense the spirit of Jesus is still
alive in his followers. It does not tell us anything about what happened to the
atoms and molecules that made up his body. But then, maybe atoms and molecules
are not very important. Our atoms and molecules do not define our identity.
Even the atoms and molecules that make up a living body are continually being
lost and replaced.
Resurrection and life after death
are not very consistently depicted by the Bible. Some Old Testament passages
appear to contradict the doctrine. For example,
Job 7:9 As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he that goeth
down to the grave shall come up no more.
Psalm 6:5 For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave
who shall give thee thanks?
Ecclesiastes 3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth
beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other;
yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 The dead know not anything, neither have they any
more a reward.
Ecclesiastes 9:10 For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge,
nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
Isaiah 26:14 They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased
they shall not rise.
Isaiah 38:18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not
celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
On the other hand, other passages give examples of people who have been
raised from the dead. Elijah was said to be instrumental in the resurrection of
a child; Elisha in the resurrection of a child and a man; Jesus in the
resurrection of Lazarus and Jairus’s daughter. And we also have the report in
Matthew 27 that the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into
the holy city, and appeared unto many.
Maybe some of the conflicting passages could be reconciled by accepting
that resurrection does occur in some sense of the word, but not in another
sense. The exact nature of resurrection is not made entirely clear to us in the
New Testament. Paul’s account of what resurrection means differs somewhat from
other accounts. In 1 Corinthians 15 he says it is sown a natural body, it is
raised a spiritual body. And in 2 Corinthians 5 he says, For we know
that if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed, we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we
groan, ardently desiring to have put on our house which [is] from heaven.
In these passages Paul indicates a difference between the body that is
buried and the body that is raised. The body that is buried is destroyed, and
the resurrected body is a spiritual body, a building from God, a house not made
with hands … our house which is from heaven.
On the other hand, other descriptions of resurrection depict it in a
much more physical sense, as in the quotation from Matthew 27 in which the
bodies came out of the graves, not out of heaven.
When the Bible appears to deny resurrection in some passages, but
depicts it as a physical event in other passages and as a spiritual event in
yet others, it is not surprising that different Christians have differing
conceptions of what resurrection means. But do we really need to enforce a
uniformity of interpretation? The early
church leaders disagreed about some very fundamental principles, such as
whether gentiles could be accepted into the church, but they did not split into
two churches merely because they disagreed.
The Bible is a wonderful human record of the relationship between God
and man. Much of it is justly described as inspired, in the sense that its
authors were inspired and motivated by their faith, or by God. Parts of it have
great power to instruct, uplift and inspire the reader. But its text cannot
possibly be regarded as the actual words, perfect and infallible, dictated by
God.
The Bible contains many different literary genres, including allegory,
poetry and drama, which were probably never intended by their authors to be
construed as literal history. Their allegorical or poetic style can often
communicate complex ideas and feelings more vividly than plain prose could. But
they are not history. To insist that the authors intended them as history has
given many people the impression that they were written by fraudsters and
impostors. Fallible the authors may have been, but fraudsters and impostors
they were not.
According to the gospels, Jesus taught that the prophecies concerning
the return of Elijah and the coming of the Kingdom of God were to be understood
in a spiritual sense, not in the immediate, literal, physical sense that most
people thought. If Jesus did not interpret prophecies in their most literal
sense, it ill behoves us to be more fundamentalist than he was.
The Bible also contains a great deal of literal history, intermingled
with the marks of human frailty, fallibility, and error. The errors are too
great and too numerous to be explained away by ingenious, contrived, ad-hoc
explanations. It is better just to accept that the errors are there, and learn
how to distinguish truth from error, just as we have to do daily in everything
else that we read.
Different churches recognise different books as worthy of inclusion in
the Bible, and many different canons of scripture have been compiled in
different ages. Some of those books not included in the Protestant bibles and
others not included in Catholic bibles have great spiritual power, in no way
inferior to those that are included. So the content of any particular canon of
scripture cannot reasonably be regarded as final, God-given and perfect.
An infallible bible is not needed in order to have a living, active and
fulfilling faith. Indeed, the alleged infallibility of the Bible has often been
seriously damaging to the credibility of Christian teachings, seriously
damaging to the reputation of the Bible, and seriously damaging to faith.
If we do not have a universally accepted criterion of truth, of course,
there will inevitably be diversity of understanding of divine truth. But it is
acceptable to disagree. Separating from everyone who disagrees with you is only
a convenient way to avoid having your views exposed to scrutiny. And an
enforced unity of belief is only a sham unity. The early church leaders
disagreed about many things. Let us allow free and open discussion.
The human species is exceptional in its capacity for speech and thought.
To suppress freedom of speech and freedom of thought has a dehumanising effect
and is just not acceptable. I shall even allow fundamentalists to disagree with
every word I have written, and still regard them in the spirit of brotherly
love.
If you are a fundamentalist and are happy with your version of the
Christian faith, then I have no wish to persuade you to change. Persuasion is
no part of my personal mission.
My target audience are those who already feel that there is something
seriously wrong with the fundamentalist teachings in which they have been
brought up, but cannot find the words to explain to their friends exactly what
is wrong. I am writing this to provide support to those who wish to escape from
fundamentalism, either as seekers after truth, or as fugitives from oppression;
those who are in the same vulnerable, stressful condition as I was in 1968,
faced with the agonising choice between losing their friends, family and home
or losing their commitment to truth, wisdom and enlightenment.
The above essay is a revised version of one published in October 2004 at
peebs.net, where many contributors took
part in constructive discussions about it, which helped to make it clearer,
fuller and more accurate. I am grateful to all of them. My daughter Phyllis
gave excellent advice on how to improve the structure and style of the first
draft, and Google did a marvellous job in tracking down sources of information
for me. God bless them all.
Copies of this document can be downloaded in PDF format from http://www.discourses.org.uk/fundamentalist.pdf
and may be copied freely.