Saturday, April 07, 2007

Authenticity of the Bible

Recently a friend of mine asked if it bothered me that there were so many challenges to the authenticity of the Bible. I responded that that these challenges don’t bother me, because if God is omniscient and omnipotent He certainly can control what we have come to know as His Word. If God doesn’t have these “omni” attributes, then he is at best irrelevant, and more likely non-existent—definitely not worthy of our attentions or worship.

Believing in the inspired nature of the Bible doesn’t resolve the issues that are raised in Dr Heidi's post early-christian-protest, it just challenges me to find a framework that fits. I cling to a few additional beliefs including:

  1. If a topic is important it will be repeated in the Bible
  2. There will be things about a non-created thing–God, that created things will not be able to understand
  3. The reason the universe exists is because God desires a relationship with us

My recent ponderings on the death and resurrection of Christ have revolved around the role of language in reaching a diverse and intellectually evolving world and wondering if the Passion of Christ was really an instantiated metaphor for what really happened before the beginning of time: Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men”. Phil 2:5-7

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love the distinction made here - God is so often understood in the manner of a "thing to be grasped."

Thank you also for your fruitful question on my post. The longing for the wisdom to ask better questions has long been part of my own path.