In response to David Philips' essay, "The nature of the Bible," which defends the Bible as the Word of God, we have seen that the Bible is not the Word of God, big "W" but, as the Confession of 1967 says, it is "the word of God written," small "w". Christ is the Word of God, and the Bible is a witness to Christ. It is subordinate to him. Inspiration in the Bible does not mean the Bible is perfect but rather that God is creatively at work, present; inspiration does not result in perfection but in new or renewed life. At heart, the view that the Bible must be perfect in order to be authoritative reflects a Greek philosophical tradition that became current in Western Christianity well after the books of the New Testament were written.In sum, the view that the Bible as the Word of God must be perfect, infallible, and inerrant is but one way to understand the Bible. It has a history of its own going back tens of centuries to a time when the church learned to adapt its understanding of Christ to the religious and philosophical thought of the Roman Empire. It is an ancient, honorable "artifact" of our ability to think about Christ in new languages and cultures, which many of us find in no longer compelling. Platonic Christianity clings to a world that we no longer live in and that, for us, no longer even exists. While we don't understand why many faithful Christians continue to find it meaningful, it is clear that they do, and as best we can we try to honor that fact. We really don't intend to scandalize and upset them, though obviously we do.
But, in any event, we need to move on. Just as those who first turned to Platonism did so seeking fresh insights and new ways of thinking about Christ, so in our scientific age with its vastly enlarged universe and incredible insights into reality we seek to do the same thing—learn again how to see Christ with the eyes of our time. We have been given two eyes to help us do so: the eye of the Bible, our original faith document, still spiritually compelling today; and the eye of our scientific age, intellectually compelling in our day. Our prayer, the prayer of every generation, is that with our two eyes we can see Christ, the Word, clearly and in focus for our time. Amen.
