The Bible is Reliable
By Charles Scriven

A Commentary on the Sabbath School Lesson for April 21–27, 2007

God’s word is truth. So says John 17:17.

After that it gets complicated. But you really don’t know, from the quarterly, just how complicated.

Right now Sam Harris, a sharp and persistent heckler of the faithful, whatever their religion, is everywhere—in bookstores, on television, in the blogosphere. The lesson authors, who seem blissfully unaware of deep challenges to Scripture, fail to take note of the kind of skepticism that Harris, author of The End of Faith, now represents.

Here, from beliefnet.com is just a sample of what Harris likes to say:

Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism.…Read scripture more closely and…you find reasons to live like a proper religious maniac—to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc. Of course, one can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love one’s neighbor and turn the other cheek, but the truth is, the pickings are pretty slim, and the more fully one grants credence to these books [the Bible and the Qur’an], the more fully one will be committed to the view that infidels, heretics, and apostates are destined to be ground up in God’s loving machinery of justice.

Whew!

It happens that I have been conversing with two seminary professors on the matter of biblical authority, and a short essay on the conversation will come out in the next issue of Spectrum, now at the printer. The question of biblical reliability comes up right from the start, and I argue a position that would make the basis, I believe, of an honest and plausible reply to Harris and similar adversaries of faith.

If you’re looking for discussion, you might consider Bible passages that raise hard questions about inspired writing (I’ve made a list of such passages at the end), and then ask: "Is the Bible reliable in the sense of being perfect?" Or is it better to ask this question: "If God in Christ is reliable—and God alone can be fully reliable—what is the role of Scripture?"

I try as often as I can to make the point that Adventism is a Radical Reformation faith, and one Radical reformer, Bernhard Rothmann, remarked once that the "whole content of Scripture is briefly summarized in this: Honour and fear God the almighty in Christ his Son."

To me, that remark is wonderful.

What follows will appear under the title "Is Christ Captive to Bibliolatry?" Read on. Whether you agree with me or my two friends, you can get up a conversation about all this.

Can a theory of biblical authority undermine the Lordship of Christ?

The question weighs on me, and seems especially pertinent now, with the focus on Scripture in the current Sabbath School Quarterly.

I’ve been conversing—in print, online, and by telephone—with Richard Davidson and Roy Gane, both of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary and both widely respected, on the question of how to read the Bible. Both of them understand the Bible, as a whole and in all its parts, to be, as Professor Davidson has written, the "utterly reliable word of God."1

In an e-mail, Davidson suggested that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount makes no advance on the moral standard, familiar from the Pentateuch, of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.2 Although Jesus appears to contrast his own vision with that of the so-called lex talionis, the Sermon, Davidson said, does not call us "to a higher ethical standard. The same call for personal love for one’s enemies Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount" can be found "throughout" the Old Testament.3

Davidson wants the Bible’s authority to be flat across all its bits and pieces, so he has to show that Jesus does not disagree with what you find elsewhere in the book. And it is true, certainly, that the Old Testament expresses the ideals of love for the stranger and reconciliation with the enemy. It is also true that Jesus himself was a lover of the Hebrew Bible. But the suggestion that the Old Testament gives voice "throughout" to the ideal of enemy love is, to say the least, debatable.

To take the severest counterexample, you can find in Scripture calls to…genocide, calls as unmitigated as they are horrific.4 This fact is one reason why the most influential scholars agree that Jesus’ reading of the Old Testament takes Jewish moral thought in a distinctive direction. Even if some disagree, the consensus on this is as wide as the sea.

Davidson and Gane both resist granting authority, over Scripture, to fashionable human reason. But when they deny, or seem to deny, that some parts of Scripture have more authority for Christian life than other parts, they take issue, I think, with Jesus himself. Despite what Holy Writ clearly contains, Jesus never called anyone to genocide, nor, for that matter, did he promise happiness to those who dash their enemies’ "little ones…against the rock."5 Instead, building on the ever-widening embrace of Hebrew prophecy, he called us to love of enemy, and embodied that call, on the cross, by asking God to forgive his own executioners (Matt. 5:38–48; Luke 23:34). What is more, he championed this vision while living under Roman brutes who flexed their muscle by dotting the roadside with crosses and the crucified who hung on them.6

Shocked into new perspective by the Resurrection, the New Testament writers said that this Jesus is alone (!) the "exact imprint" of the divine being, alone the true light, the Word made flesh, the revealer of the Father’s heart.7 They knew the Bible’s variety of vision, and knew its potential to be confusing; henceforth Jesus would be, to Christians, the basis for the Bible’s fundamental unity.

Davidson has said that criticism "is appropriate for everything in the world except the Scriptures."8 But saying this is just the problem. Criticism is appropriate for everything in the world except…God! What Davidson says of a document that by its own account is not God (Isa. 55:8, 9) comes perilously close to bibliolatry.

I always wonder why this is so hard to see. In the Bible’s own testimony, Jesus is the Word of God—the final criterion of Christian truth, the canon, as you might say, within the canon. And you do not bow to fashionable human reason when you say this; you acknowledge what the Bible itself declares.

In April 1933, leaders of the German ecclesiastical establishment released "guiding principles" that put God’s sanction behind the Nazi obsession with "race, folk and nation." They said that Germany must protect itself "against the unfit and inferior." They anathematized Jews as "alien blood" in the "body politic." And in defense of all this, they said that "Holy Scripture is…able to speak about a holy wrath and a refusal of love."

The few German Christians who were then resisting Hitler met in Barmen in1934 to express both their dismay and their conviction. The statement they jointly issued said: "Jesus, as he is testified to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we are to hear, which we are to trust and obey in life and in death."

They were calling German Christians to test the church’s words—the church’s life—by this one Word of God, and to accept only what was consistent with that Word.9 The call went largely unheeded. But it was true then, and is still true.

Or so it seems to me. And that is why the question I began with won’t go easily away.

Enough of the essay. Here’s some data from Scripture:

On Scripture:

• 2 Timothy 3:16—"All scripture is inspired…useful for teaching…for training in righteousness."
• 2 Peter 1:21—"…no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."
• Luke 1:3—"I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you.…"
• Hebrews 1:1–4—"Long ago God spoke…by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken…by a Son [who] is…the exact imprint of God’s very being.…"

• Isaiah 55:8, 9—"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
• 1 Corinthians 13:9, 12—"For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part.…Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face."

• Genesis 12:2—"’I will bless you…, so that you will be a blessing.’"
• Ecclesiastes 1:7, 9, 14—"All things are wearisome…there is nothing new under the sun…all is vanity and a chasing after wind."
• Isaiah 2:2, 4 / Micah 4:1, 3—"In the days to come…they shall beat their swords into ploughshares."
• Joel 3:9, 10: "Prepare war, stir up the warriors.…Beat your plowshares into swords."
• Matthew 5:13–16—"’You are the salt…[and] light…so that [others] may see your good works and give glory to your Father.…’"
• Matthew 6:10—"’Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’"
• Matthew 25:27—"’…you ought to have invested…and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.’"
• 2 Corinthians 5:17—"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"

• Numbers 24: 2, 7, 8—"Then the spirit of God came upon [Balaam], and he uttered this oracle, saying: [Jacob’s] kingdom shall be exalted…he shall devour the nations that are his foes and break their bones."
• Deuteronomy 10:17, 18—"For the LORD…executes justice…loves the strangers.…You shall also love the stranger.…"
• Deuteronomy 20:10–16—"When you draw near to a town [distant from where you will live] …if it…surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not submit to you…you shall besiege it…you shall put all its males to the sword.…You may…take as your booty the women, the children, livestock.…But as for the towns [in your inheritance], you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.…"
• Deuteronomy 21:18–21—"If someone has a [persistently] stubborn and rebellious son…all the men of the town shall stone him to death."
• Matthew 5:38–48—"’You have heard…’An eye for an eye’…But I say to you, Do no resist an evildoer…Love your enemies.’"
• Romans 12:17, 21—"Do no repay anyone evil for evil…overcome evil with good."
• Romans 13:8—"Owe no one anything, except to love one another.…Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."

• Genesis 1:27, 31—"So God created humankind…male and female.…God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."
• Exodus 20:17—"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house….wife…ox…donkey."
• Luke 10:38–42 —"Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet.…But Martha was distracted by her many tasks…’Mary has chosen the better part.…’"
• Galations 3:28—"There is no longer…male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
• 1 Timothy 2:12—"I permit no women to teach…she is to keep silent."

• John 1:1, 14 —"In the beginning was the Word.…And the Word became flesh and lived among us.…"
• Romans 1:3, 4 —"…the gospel concerning his Son, who…was declared to be Son of God…by resurrection from the dead. …"
• Colossians 1:15—"He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God.…"
• Ephesians 1:20:21—"God seated [Christ]…far above all rule and authority and power…not only in this age but also in the age to come."
• Hebrews 1:3—"He is…the exact imprint of God’s very being. …"
• Hebrews 13:8—"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever."

Visit Spectrum’s Message Board for an ongoing discussion of this quarter’s subject, "The Bible for Today"

Notes and References

1. The quote is from his "Interpreting Scripture According to the Scriptures."
2. See Exod. 21:23, 24; Lev. 24:19, 20; Deut. 19:21. Jesus refers to these passages in Matt. 5:38f.
3. Points made by e-mail communication, dated March 21, 2007.
4. Roy Gane noted this theme in his "Israelite Genocide and Islamic Jihad," Spectrum 34.4 (2006): 61–65.
5. This from the heartbreaking, if revengeful, Psalm 137, one of the so-called Imprecatory Psalms.
6. I rely on James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 83.
7. See Heb. 1:1–3; the other phrases allude to John 1, and numerous New Testament passages make the same point.
8. "The Authority of Scripture: A Personal Pilgrimage," Spectrum 34.3 (2006): 42. This essay first appeared in the Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 1.1 (1990):39–56.
9. The 1933 statement of the "Evangelical Church of the German Nation" may be found in Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962): 222, 223. The Barmen Declaration is accessible on the Internet and is quoted in numerous works of church history.

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