Perhaps the most challenging undertaking in recalibrating Christianity is the understanding and use of the Bible in the light of its history and the role that science plays in shaping its application. Most Christians are not well versed in the history of the Bible. Most have an understanding of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, having no need of history outside of what itself describes. The fact is the Bible has a history as a collection of writings with regard to how it came to be and how we understand it today.
John Barton's "A History of the Bible - The Book & Its Faiths" is an excellent history of the Bible that covers its development, interpretations, and use in both Christian and Jewish settings. Barton's history is topically exhaustive and provides resources for those interested in doing further research beyond his text. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of the Bible.
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In Christianity, the Bible is the foundational source of its mission and worship. For two millennia the Bible has been the one source all Christian churches and denominations rely on to support their beliefs, their doctrines, and their practices. The Bible has been treated as a "stand-alone" and an unquestioned authoritative source for what Christians believe.
Understanding how the Bible came to be and how it was written and why it was written in the way it was written is essential to understanding its use and application in the twenty-first century. The understanding that the Bible is the Word of God needs to be replaced with the understanding that it is words about God and how such understandings shape one's understanding of human relationships with each other and with God. Christianity can no longer afford to treat the Bible as a "stand-alone" source. It has its own history amongst the histories of other cultures, religions, philosophies politics, and science. How do these histories shape one's understanding of the Bible?
As mentioned in another post, the Bible is best understood if it is treated as any other form of literature. For the most parts, Christians struggle with that concept. The concept that it is holy, immediately, puts it into a category of its own. It is not holy. It is human.
It is a human work inspired by the concept or the ideal of a being called God. Should such an "individualized" being exist it must have been created. It was.
It was created in the minds of human beings and if one reads the Bible, in particular, one can clearly sees this. When one begins to realize this, the Bible takes on a more significant role in understanding it and humanity's relationship to it. It becomes a brush-stroke amongst many other brushstrokes that paint a picture of what it means to be human.
There is no need to change the Bible. It can stand as work of literature amongst many literary works that bring meaning to who we are in relationship to the force that brought about the universe and us.
Speaking of "the force," the writers of the "Star Wars" movies and George Lucas were, I believe, deliberately on to something when they came up with the idea that there is an accessible force in the universe, ingenuously called, "The Force." All kidding aside, it seems to encapsulates the creation story as redefined in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word..." (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος in the Koine Greek original). The word "beginning" is translated from the the Greek word, ἀρχῇ, which also connotes power and by extension an active force.
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The universe in which we live may not have a beginning, as time itself is part of what is or what evolved as a result of gravitational forces. The universe may be eternal; a paradoxical timeless state of being in which time exists. We only pinpoint its age as being fourteen billion years because that is as far back in light years we can see. What we also know is that the universe is in constant flux; that galaxies come and go over billions of years in the macro Universe, but we also know that electrons in the micro (quantum) universe are virtually eternal forms of energy.
As I have noted in other posts, God is a nominal or pronominal term describing a verb; as in, an active force that could also be described as Being or Being-ness. That God is seen as a separate being, apart from creation, seems improbable to me. That God is "being" in which creation is manifest is less improbable and more understandable in the 21st century.
The Bible personifies God as a being because it is near impossible to relate to God on a personal or cultural level if God cannot be objectified as a divine being. What does that even mean? The Bible, itself, tells us that God is beyond description. The best we get in deciphering what God is in the metaphorical references to what God is like: God is a spirit (life-giving energy). God is light (intellectual and also life-giving energy). God is love (emotive and motivational energy).
Genesis is the singular most important book in the Bible; in that, it is the premise upon which the whole story of the Bible for both Christians and Jews evolves. To metaphorically understand the creation story of the universe in the Bible and its creation in the light of evolutionary science and psychology is important in recalibrating Christianity; just as understanding the New Testament as a largely metaphorical story about Jesus is important in making the teachings of Jesus relevant for the times in which we live.
To accept the Bible as the truth is a matter of intellectual assent in the form of belief. I doubt that most people accept the Bible as containing capital "T" Truth. Most of us can see truths about our humanity expressed through the stories in the Bible and in its depiction of the relationships human have with the idea of God through the perspective of the prophets, including Jesus, who gave God a human voice.
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For those who have followed this blog, you are likely to see that my views on Christianity are changing. I have used this blog to examine my own thoughts as well as others on the subjects I write about, and I have written several posts on the topics covered in this series on recalibrating Christianity. The Bible being the one source upon which Christianity is based should give any serious person pause to consider the ramifications.
The question that has been forming in my mind since beginning this blog is if it is realistic to continue to adhere to one book containing a collection of writings between two and three thousand years old which were based on an understanding of the world we live in as being the center of the universe and we humans beings the crown of God's creation in light of what we now know today? Have we not evolved as humans in what we know about creation; the universe, the diversity of life on earth, and ourselves? Should we remain tethered to concepts of the causes and effects of events that are based on human rectitude rather than their explanations found in atmospheric, biological, geological, and psychological science?
At best the Bible gives us a history of religious evolution of a tribal mountaintop god, amongst many others, to the one God of monotheism; a universal God who brought all things into being (a major leap towards seeking a unified theory of everything). Then there is the Christian scriptures of the New Testament that contains the teachings of Jesus and his understanding of the value of each human as a child of God and being an incarnation of God's image.
The Bible as a stand alone authoritative source has also been a source of humankind's inhumanity. Both the Old and the New Testaments have been used to justify wars and deadly persecutions throughout human history. In more recent years, it has been used to stoke what I have been calling "willful ignorance" which ignores science in all of its forms. In political circles, it continues to be useful tool to encourage fundamental Christian churches to back and justify movements aimed at establishing autocracies and oligarchies.
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While the Bible has been cited as the scriptural basis for civil rights and in general human rights, it is the Enlightenment (something disparaged by many Christian denominations and churches) that influenced Christians, particularly in the West, to seek a better understanding of its scriptures in its light. If Christians had not been influenced by the Enlightenment, slavery and the broad spectrum of human rights (the civil rights of all people regardless of race, gender, gender identity) would not have occurred, as the Bible does not mention such rights. The Bible contains language that is ambivalent on such subjects and particularly disparages the idea of homosexuals and women having any rights. At best, the rights of individuals is something derived from the teachings of the prophets and Jesus.
I need to add here that Paul's claim in his letter to the Galatians of there being no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or freedman in Christ was never meant to establish a social or world order. It is obvious in his other letters Paul was not ready to "unnecessarily" upset the social order of the times. He ordered women to remain silent, wear head coverings, abstain from jewelry, and sent a slave back to his master. The prophets, Paul, and even Jesus were products of their times and the places in which they lived. Where Jesus differs is in his emphasis on the importance of the individual; from a small child to a Roman Centurian, a Samaritan Leper, and a Syro-Phoenician woman. Like God, Jesus was a minimalist; one person at a time, every time.
The Bible will always remain central to Christianity, but in the 21st century it can no longer remain as a stand-alone authoritative source. It must be understood in the light of the ongoing effects of the Enlightenment expressed in science and emerging philosophies and thought. Christian theology needs to move beyond a naval-gazing activity that insists on continuity with the past as each age presents its challenges to long-held doctrine, practices, and traditions. For Christians, the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke must be distilled from their narrative setting and become the center piece of Christian life and worship, as opposed to the teaching about Jesus; such as, his divine birth, the meaning of his death and resurrection. It is the teachings of Jesus that have more relevance today than they have had in the past.
The Bible is an important literary artifact that is the foundation on which Christianity is based, but for Christianity to remain relevant, the Bible must be understood in the light of our rapidly changing world. It should not be used as a defense for what is no longer defensible. More important to its relevance is understanding it as literature about humans in relation to the concept of God rather than believing it to be the Word of God.
Norm
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