were every copy of the bible destroyed
I came across a new blog today courtesy of Leighton. And I was struck by the eloquence of this post. It was hard to select a part of it to quote as it is all well worth reading and commenting on, in the interests of engendering a positive discussion of the differences in viewpoints about the bible. So here is a taste anyway:
I want you to know that I am not anti or against the bible. I do not view it with suspicion, I do not think that it cannot be trusted. It is my family history, a legacy that has been handed on to me from the very friends of Jesus who lived and travelled with him for those three years. It has been handed down from one generation of Christians to the next because each has recognised its value and worth in telling the story of Jesus in a way that is faithful and true, written by friends and loved ones who were faithful and true to the best of their ability. The community of God’s people have always upheld the scriptures’ worth and value for the Christian, and I do not deny it. But what the scriptures do is lead me to the God, not contained in its pages, but described in its pages who in fact cannot be contained! My study of the bible allows me to learn new things about the character of God, and his dealings with humanity. But ultimately if all the bible does is inform me about God then it has failed, or I have failed it. The bible exists to help me establish and maintain a relationship with the true and living God. Were I to lose my copies of the bible, that relationship would remain. Were every copy of the bible in the whole world to be destroyed, God would be none the less. Had the New Testament never been written, Jesus Christ would still live, and reign. He would still build his church, and people would still bow the knee to him. Christianity is served by the bible, but it does not depend upon it. Christianity depends upon the loving faithfulness of God, of which the bible is but one example in so many.
Anyway, go and read the whole post and comment on it there.
March 31st, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Brilliant! I’ve always wondered what our faith would look like if we didn’t have the Bible?
The way I’m viewing the Bible at the moment is the lens through which we interpret and understand our experiences of God, and the lens through which we look at the stories of others. But its something I’m still working on…
April 3rd, 2005 at 7:13 pm
No we would not know Jesus without the bible nor would we know how to build the church.
Jesus recognised the O/T as the word of God and Peter says the same thing of Paul’s letters ie they are the word of God.
Without the bible god would not be able to talk to you.
April 3rd, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Homer, I am sorry that you feel that God is dead.
In my own life, I am in relationship with the living God - the God who has been experienced by many people through out the ages - as recorded in the Bible. This Living God is also living now - it is the power of the resurection and God speaks now, lives now and is open to have a relationship with now.
The same God that Jesus recognised and the God that Peter recognised is alive today and is not mute.
April 3rd, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Phil,
I didn’t say that.
I might add another reason for the bible being here was to show the relationship between the O/T and N/T.
I agrreb he speaks now as he speaks to us through his word in the bible.
April 3rd, 2005 at 9:44 pm
So, does God say anthing new or does the revelation end in the Bible?
April 3rd, 2005 at 9:51 pm
Since the Cross and Ressurection what more does he need to say?
April 3rd, 2005 at 10:08 pm
That is a non-answer.
There is no doubt of the power of the message of the cross and ressurection..
The message is that Jesus is alive - he is living among us. Why do you want him to be mute aside from the biblical record of his life?
Do you not see any revelation of God since the the canon was closed?
Do you not hear any word of God since the canon was closed?
Do you not see, do you not hear God since the canon was closed?
Why reduce God to such a lifeless state that God is not speaking outside a collection of writings?
God is bigger than that. God is more alive than that.
April 4th, 2005 at 12:18 am
I agree with some parts of Leighton’s post and disagree with others. It does however touch on a huge subject.
Some notes I made ages ago from J. I. Packer’s ‘God has Spoken’ which - while perhaps not totally satisfying to some, and contestible by others - seem pertinent here:
# Basic to the claim of the NT is that Christianity is a revealed religion. The greek word apokalypto translated ‘reveal’ means to unveil something previously hidden, to bring into view something that before was out of sight.
# Christianity rests on the unveiling of the hidden Creator himself; the process whereby He revealed himself to men through his dealings with a single national family - Israel - found its climax in the person, word and works of Jesus of Nazareth Heb 1.1f.
# The Bible is both product and proclamation of this revelation
# The opening words of Hebrews presents the work of revelation to be :
## the work of God - it is not a discovery, dawning of insight, emergence of an idea. It is not man finding God but God finding man, showing us Himself, sharing His secrets with us. God is both agent and object of revelation. He speaks, He speaks to us, He speaks for Himself about Himself. In Christ, God has spoken a word for the world to which all are required to listen and respond
## verbal - ‘God spoke’. Statements, questions, commands, spoken either in His own person or on His behalf by His own appointed messengers and instructors
## cumulative - many use the term ‘progressive’ to speak of God’s revelation, but that can imply some evolutionary process, from a ‘crude’ understanding of God (as a tribal war-god) to something more refined (the loving Father taught by Jesus). Packer prefers the term ‘cumulative’ - the progress of revelation through history builds on on God’s words that have gone before; the later can only be interpreted in the light of the series as a whole and in particular the final word - God’s Word spoken by His Son.
# You can see then why God would provide for unified record of God’s earlier words in a permanent and accessible form - the Bible - which stands as a full explanatory narrative of the saving words and deeds of God. The books we now call the Bible are an integral and indispensible part of God’s self-revelation - without a record of God’s earlier revelations, His later words, and most of all, His last Word could not be fully understood. God’s word written, which records those events is part of that process.
My own take at this point in my understanding is this: by the time of Christ, the OT had already been canonized. Jesus quoted it frequently, as did the NT authors, telling us the events, and the words which recorded those events spoke of him. The earliest Christians ’searched the scriptures to see if these things were true’ etc etc. In other words the first Christians used the written word (at the time, what we now call the OT), to help them understand who Jesus was just as much as Jesus used it himself to speak about himself.
The fact that Jesus spent a lot of time tearing down some of the superfluous ‘oral traditions’ and hearsay that had built up around the written word says something too (perhaps, that in as much as it is the nature of God from all eternity that speaking characterizes the communication within the Trinity, Chinese whispers characterises all the speech and hearing of fallen man?!)
April 4th, 2005 at 9:33 am
This only goes to show you just don’t understand the implications of either.
April 4th, 2005 at 9:40 am
Then explain it to me.
April 4th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Very simple Phil,
If anyone has the FAITH TRUST ( put your own synonym in) that Jesus died for their sins on the cross and has taken their punishment then they are justified.
This is confirmed ny Jesus rising physically from death showing he was without sin.
This shows he has conquered sin and is now KIng of this Kingdom.
After that what else is needed?
April 4th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
On this blog and in the world at large, there are a great many matters which arise which were unknown in bible times and on which we must hear what God is saying - technological advances, urban living, increase in complexity of financial markets, credit and so on.
I feel that God continues to reveal himself to us, in new ways and guide our thoughts and actions in these areas also.
We agree on the importance of the cross and resurrection, but I think that there is more revelation needed.
Otherwise we have a vision of a God who chose to become incarnate once and then reverts to a “watchmaker” creator content to watch the unfolding of history.
April 4th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
God is making history.
What else do you want or need to know?
April 4th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
If God is making history, then isn’t that an aspect of incarnation. Can we be taught, or receive wisdom by the way that God makes history? If so, then God continues to communicate with us.
April 4th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Dan,
you seem to want something in adition to Jesus.
I admit not to understanding this.
April 4th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Homer, you are right. I do want something in addition to Jesus. I want God, who I believe continues to reveal himself in and through is creation. I want a God that is intimately involved with humankind as he has shown himself to be and declared himself to be through scripture.
I also want the Holy Spirit, which Jesus says in John can come only after Jesus has left. The role of the Spirit is to guide us into the full truth and taking the message of Jesus and passing it to us. I believe that the Spirit guides and reveals to us the love and message of Jesus now and forever.
April 4th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Yes, you are right about the Holy Spirit but he does thst by enbling us to understand Jesus through the bible.
April 4th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
“Yes, you are right about the Holy Spirit but he does thst by enbling us to understand Jesus through the bible.”
Why do you think that?
April 4th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Because that is what Jesus promised.
April 4th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Jesus said “understand me through the bible”?
April 4th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
no try john 16
April 5th, 2005 at 2:37 am
Or Luke 24:36-49.
April 5th, 2005 at 8:10 am
It is interesting.. What I read as Jesus saying that the disciples were now able to understand the significance of Jesus and who he was through the reading of the prophets and Moses… something that is open to us too.
Has become the ONLY way to experience Jesus. It is like the Bible has been elevated to be not only the fourth member of the trinity but the most powerful member. I am not sure Saint what you would say about this but Homer’s insistance that God is silent if it weren’t for the bible seems to me to be a complete overreaction to those two texts.
There is no doubt that Jesus CAN be experienced (and understanding is part of that) through the biblical text but to extend that to be the ONLY way seems to be very limiting of God to me and actually puts Jesus back in his tomb.
dead bones, dead bones stuff.
April 5th, 2005 at 11:42 am
No Phil, you are saying that God is silent.
I am saying he is a talking god who talks to us every time we read his word.Axx Jesus said he is the Living God
how did those bones gain a body because Gos spoke throgh Ezekial.
How do we know about the Cross and ressurection? Through God telling us in his word.
April 5th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Where did I say that God is silent?
I said God speaks through the Bible and more!
April 5th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Homer, how did the three thousand at Pentecost become saved that day? Reading the Gospels? Come on, be serious.
April 5th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Through the word of God Luke which to us is now the bible. Just like the O/T.
Jesus tells us that Kingdom spreads through the word of God.
April 5th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
As I can’t possibly do it better than this guy, I’ll just post the link.
http://subverting-grace.blogspot.com
April 5th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Hi Homer,
How do you come to equate “the Word of God” as referring to the books we now hold as the bible? And how does this fit with John 1 describing the word becoming flesh as Jesus?
And what was the word of God, through which the Kingdom spread, before the New Testament documents were written? When and how did this change from whatever it was then (pre NT), and how did it settle on what we now know as the canon? Did we (reformed persons) then undermine the word when we revised the canon during the reformation, and threw out the apocryphal texts?
Your opening comment said that “we would not know Jesus without the bible nor would we know how to build the church.” Yet people both knew / discovered Jesus and built the church before the New Testament was written, let alone today’s canon compiled. Your view seems to suggest that somehow, something changed in that dynamic, whereby the bible has come to fill a role which either didn’t exist before the bible was compiled, or which existed but was adequately filled by something else (word of mouth?) prior to the bible’s existence. Now while that is not a view I share, I am very interested to know (a) if I have characterised your view correctly, and (b) how does that view work? When does the word of God become the bible? What was it before? Has what it was before now ceased to be the word? What about Jesus being the word?
I’d value you spelling it out for me, if you don’t mind.
Grace and peace.
April 5th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Luke,
that is merely a very long aticle to state that he doesn’t believe the N/T is the word of God.He is a bit al over the place with regard to the O/T.
He also seems to be unaware that writing actualy took a strong place in the N/T times hence the ‘word of God’ would have spread a lot by the written word or as today someone reading out the written word.