One Writer's Thoughts

"The icon of the Bible as God’s textbook for the world is as bankrupt as the idea that it stands for, of religious faith as absolute black-and-white certainty…the cultural icon of the Bible often becomes a substitute for a vital life of faith, which calls not for obedient adherence to clear answers but thoughtful engagement with ultimate questions. The Bible itself invites that kind of engagement. The iconic image of it as a book of answers discourages it."

"Paul suggests that gentiles can practice a law written in their hearts, which will be seen as not only equal to but also above the written Torah…It should be remembered that in Paul’s day the only religious law for Paul was that of the Jewish Bible, in Hebrew… Though Torah and the New Testament, including Paul’s letters, will eventually shape church law, the New Testament’s books are not in themselves composed as law. They are not a self-consciously composed constitution. They contain no Ten Commandments in form or statement."

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According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 78 percent of all Americans say that the Bible is the “word of God,” and almost half of those believe that, as such, “it is to be taken literally, word for word.”

Polling data from the Barna Group indicate that nearly half of all Americans agree that “the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings” (88 percent of all “born-again” Christians believe the same), and the Gallup Poll finds that 65 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible “answers all or most of the basic questions of life.”

-Yet-

Less than half of all adult Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis, in Hebrew Bereshit) or the four Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). More than 80 percent of born-again or evangelical Christians believe that “God helps those who help themselves” is a Bible verse. (It is not.)

Biblical scholar and author Timothy Beal suspects that many would also say that “The Serenity Prayer” and the “Footprints in the Sand” parable are in there somewhere.

More than half of graduating high school seniors guess that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and one in ten adults believes that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. (Those two must’ve been multiple-choice questions.)

Almost two-thirds of Americans can’t name at least five of the Ten Commandments. Some of these people, moreover, are outspoken promoters of them. Georgia representative Lynn Westmoreland, cosponsor of a bill to display the Ten Commandments in the chambers of the House of Representatives and Senate, could remember only three when Stephen Colbert asked him to recite them on The Colbert Report.

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"The Pauline question whether circumcision is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation."

"We must admit that we are without secure foundations for knowledge. In the end, there are no guarantees that we or anyone else will not use the [Biblical] text unethically. There are no reliable foundations. The answer to that problem is not just to keep insisting that there are but to learn to live faithful and ethical lives without secure foundations… I outline my belief that foundationalism is ethically dangerous. Foundationalism often leads to unethical practices because it masks the very real interpretive agency of the human interpreter and thus allows the interpreter to avoid responsibility for the truth, goodness, morality, and social effect of her or his interpretation."

"Whereas for many modern scholars, the literal sense is that intended by the author, Augustine’s test for whether a biblical text is literal or figurative is whether it accords with true doctrine or ethics: “We must first explain the way to discover whether an expression is literal or figurative. Generally speaking, it is this: anything in the divine discourse that cannot be related either to good morals or to the true faith should be taken as figurative. Good morals have to do with our love of God and our neighbour, the true faith with our understanding of God and our
neighbour.” Texts that accord with Christian doctrine and an ethic of love are literal; those that do not are figurative: “If scripture seems to advocate love, it is literal; if it seems to advocate malice, it is figurative.” So Augustine interprets the first part of Romans 12:20 (“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink”) as literal, but the following phrase (“For by doing this you will pile coals of fire on his head”) as figurative. For Augustine, the interpreter may indeed take the human author’s intention into account, but that is certainly not what establishes the literal sense of the text. The literal sense is established by ethical and doctrinal criteria. This is not what modern scholars mean by the “historical sense” or the “author’s intention."