I’ve been looking at some ways that christianity is changing, including changing views of evolution and gay marriage.
But how much are christians free to change while remaining true to God and the Bible?
Many christians fear any change is a slippery slope that will lead them right away from being faithful to God’s revealed truth. Is change a slippery slope?
I recently wrote about how academics in christian universities and colleges in the USA are finding their professional conclusions coming into conflict with the faith statements of their colleges. But this is an issue that to some degree affects all christians.
How should we respond when secular learning seems to contradict traditional christian belief?
It seems inevitable that there will be a tension for christians between academic knowledge and faith. But sometimes the tension becomes very personal in its impacts, and feelings are high on both sides. These issues have come to a head a number of times in recent years at universities and colleges in the USA.
We are nearly at the end of this series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century. Today: in the light of all I’ve concluded so far, how should we read the Bible and apply it?
This is the tenth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century.
We have seen that the Bible claims to be an authoritative scripture which reveals God. We have also seen that it doesn’t seem to claim to be inerrant or the very words of God himself.
So what can we honestly believe about the Bible, and how does this help us?
This is the ninth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century.
Christians generally believe the Bible, and believe in the Bible, but what should we believe about the Bible?
Probably the strongest claim christians make about the Bible is that it is inerrant – it contains no errors. There are various limits put on this – e.g. it only applies to the original writings, it only applies to the meaning and intention of the writers – but within those limits it is perfectly accurate without the slightest inaccuracy.
Should we believe this? Does it matter?
This is the eighth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century.
We have looked at what Jesus, the Bible and the Bible authors say about the Bible and how they used their scriptures. Now it is time to see what we can conclude about the Bible, and whether some claims about the Bible can be sustained.
First, is it correct to describe the Bible as ‘the Word of God’?
I have looked at six topics so far in this series on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century. Before I move on to draw some conclusions, I want to sum up what I have learnt so far.
This is the sixth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century.
The Bible is divided into two ‘Testaments’. It is obvious that the Old Testament tells about Hebrew history and religion before Jesus, while the New Testament tells about the coming of Jesus and what happened next.
But is that all? Can the differences between the two Testaments tell us something important about the Bible and how we should read it?
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century. We have seen that the Bible doesn’t claim as much for itself as some christians do.
Now I test these conclusions by examining how Jesus and his apostles treated their Bible – our Old Testament.
This is the third in a series of posts on Understanding the Bible in the 21st century. It is important we begin not with what people say about the Bible, but what it says about itself.
We are all familiar with several contemporary meanings of the word “church” – a building, a Sunday event, a group of people or a denomination. But what did it mean in the New Testament?
The Greek word “ekklesia” is often translated “church”, but what did it mean?
.
I liked this NT Wright quote, posted on the Enough Light blog.
None of the four gospels explicitly states who the author(s) is/are, and the names given to them reflect the understanding of the early christians. So scholars are left to determine as best they can whether the names we have were indeed the authors.
Knowing the author probably doesn’t change all that much, but I have always found it an interesting question, especially regarding John.
I am looking at some of the core convictions of the Anabaptists, not because I am an Anabaptist, but because I think we learn from them. We have seen that they emphasise following Jesus, not just believing in him or worshiping him.
What does this mean for how we read the Bible?
I don’t believe in labelling myself, apart from being a follower of Jesus – Paul points out the dangers of this in 1 Corinthians 1-3. But it remains true that my formative years as a christian were within a moderate, moderately reformed, evangelical church. And I am very thankful for that time.
But evangelicalism is under attack, not just from without, but also from within, as evangelical believers increasingly question its underpinnings. This well-written, absorbing and thought-provoking book (A Restless Faith: Leaving fundamentalism in a quest for God, by Keith Mascord) is another milestone along that path.
Just a week ago I commented on the lack of archaeological evidence for Bethlehem at the time of Jesus – it was known only from about the fourth century on. I said:
“Archaeologists have found little that could identify the town of Bethlehem in the first century, leading a few to argue that it didn’t exist at that time. …. I don’t think this question has been resolved yet”
Sometimes a week is a long time in archaeology!
Another common argument used against christian belief is that the New Testament is unreliable and historically inaccurate. The argument focuses on a number of apparent inconsistencies in the gospel accounts, which, it is said, make the accounts unbelievable.
Is there any substance to these claims?
Bart Ehrman, a respected New Testament scholar who is not a christian, has recently written:
“Jesus is best understood as a Jewish apocalypticist from the backwaters of a rural part of the Roman empire, a Jewish preacher who got on the wrong side of the law and was executed for crimes against the state, how is it that within sixty years of his death his followers were saying that he was a divine being? And that within 150 years they were saying that he was the second member of the Trinity?”
What are christians to make of this?
Another common argument used against christian belief is that the New Testament has been significantly changed since it was first written, so we cannot have any confidence in we are reading. Who knows if it is an accurate reflection of what the original authors wrote?
Eminent scholar Bart Ehrman’s 2005 book Misquoting Jesus outlines his view of “how radically the text has been altered over the years”.
Is the situation really as ‘bad’ as that? What are the facts? I have spent some time checking the matter out.
