A. Well, actually, I didn't know how to "A" this one, so I lobbed it to two different experts. I'd like to just quote them, but I would never quote anyone from "real life" on my blog without their express consent, so these are their answers run through the Milkweed filter.
Priest A makes the point that the Bible was never meant to be read through the lens of modern science, or even modern history. After all, Priest A posits, how rudimentary and out of date will our current historical and scientific information look in a couple thousand years? It is true that fundamentalist groups take an inerrant view of the Bible (and true that these groups are generally louder/more present on the world stage than the rest of us, says me). The funny thing is that while many people can't swallow inerrancy, they don't question the fundamentalist assertion that the Bible must be read this way.
Priest A continues by explaining how and when the Bible was written and put together. Many of the texts are composed of ancient oral tradition, some stretching back 5,000 years. Large portions are borrowed from or conflated with other ancient texts and traditions. Some parts of the Bible can be reliably pinned to a date and source or author, but many are anyone's (educated) guess.
Here's the big fat deal, though-- the texts as a whole work together to say something about the nature of God and God's loving relationship with his Creation-- something that Christians see as essential and amazing. It's not so much that we "believe" in the Bible as trust in its ability to be a true witness to God and his love for us.
Priest B thinks it is both helpful and respectful to use "I" statements when answering a question of this sort, and answers this this way: "I believe in God because I've felt God's presence in my life. A large part of why scripture is important to me is its ability to be a witness to others' experiences with and feelings about God. It's important to remember that just as I might be limited in my ability to use language to describe experiences of the Divine, the writers of the Bible were similarly limited." Priest B also points to the Psalms as a collection of some of the most beautiful and poetic attempts to describe "the beauty of holiness" (OK, I threw that in, but it's from Psalm 29). Priest B also reminded me of the Catechism in the back of The Book of Common Prayer (which is the Episcopal liturgy book, and online if you click here, then click on "The Catechism" and then "An Outline of the Faith").
I think that, taken together, these two responses give a marvelously nuanced response to the question above, the knee-jerk response to which I would give as "faith." And while faith is key, it's just part of the recipe.
3 comments:
I like this idea of the Bible as a witness to others' relationships with God, M-L! It's a nice way to think about it. I guess I just also want to read other books that provide such "witness" . . . (Hope you don't mind a non-exclusively Christian response!)
Oh, never, W-M. And I'm also interested in those other books, if through a different lens.
Hey M-L! I am trying to get back to reading blogs more regularly. Which means me reading you more regularly. yay!
I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about just this thing! A couple of responses to your Priest A/Priest B explanation:
Priest A : I, personally, find the Bible to overall be very confusing and contradictory. Sure, it talks about God's love, but also about his tendency toward genocide, jealousy, violence and demand for love. How do you reconcile this? Do you just choose to ignore the parts of the Bible that are confusing and contradictory as the "human" part of the text?
Priest B : If I am reading this correctly, you are saying that you believe the Bible is truth because it supports people's experiences of the divine. But that implies an assumption that experiences of the "divine" are supernatural and not born out of wishful thinking, brain chemistry, or some other scientifically explainable, uh...thing. :)
I think this is just a very difficult bridge to gap (it's been on my mind a lot lately), because there are people who can, and are willing to, believe in something they have no concrete evidence for. And then there are people who just can't, and have no frame of reference for understanding how someone could believe so certainly in something so intangible.
After 20+ years in the church, I cannot point to a single experience that I would identify as "divine". Beautiful, heart-stirring, etc. but nothing I would call otherworldly. I wonder if some people are just wired for this kind of thing? I remember reading somewhere that ENFP's are most likely to be very religious. So, possibly I am a broken ENFP. ;)
(p.s. one of the words i have to type to prove i'm not a robot is "severus". HP for the win!!)
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