‘Can You Take the Bible Literally?’

9th June 2013 Evening Service SERMONRev Allister Lane

‘In 1993, archaeologists dug up the first outside-of-the-Bible reference to King David. Up until then, only the Bible talked about King David – there were no inscriptions, no archaeological digs, no other documents, nothing, that ever mentioned David. Does that mean that Christians could not believe there was a David before 1993? It does not work that way. Christians believe there was a David because the Bible is the Word of God.’[1]

The Bible has central place in our life as a church.

It is the ‘supreme rule of faith and life and the supreme standard of the Church’.[2]

In this sense it is not relegated to antiquity; merely an historical document – the Bible has a role in the rhythms of life we share, as people who constantly seek to follow Jesus Christ. In this capacity it has been a consistent guide and reference point for genuine faith for centuries.

Here at St John’s the way we worship expresses the place the Bible has as our supreme standard. The reading of the Bible is at the centre of our corporate worship; we listen carefully to readings from it and, through the sermon, seek to discern what God is saying through them.[3]

However...not everyone regards the Bible this way.

The Objection:

People say that there are many good things in the Bible, but you should not take it literally.

In other words, you must not insist that it is entirely trustworthy and completely authoritative because some parts of the Bible are wrong, historically unreliable, and culturally regressive.

And so we consider the question of faith in our series ‘Can You Take the Bible Literally?’

Some consider the Bible is a historically unreliable collection of legends.[4]

Let’s take the four Gospels of the New Testament.

These are critical books for Christian faith. They provide the accounts of the person of Jesus Christ – what he did and said. It is critical that these books are historically reliable for us to have faith in Jesus. They are helpful also in answering the question ‘Can You Take the Bible Literally?’ because in them we see Jesus trusting the rest of the Bible that goes before the Gospels; the Jewish scriptures, also called the ‘Old Testament’.[5]

So, the first of three reasons I want to summarise, as to why the Gospels in the Bible should be considered historically reliable rather than ‘legends’, is...

  1. The Timing of the Gospels is too early to be legends

Luke wrote his account of Jesus’ life thirty to forty years after the events, and he records the fact that many who saw Jesus were still alive, and that his readers could therefore check his accounts with eyewitnesses. (Luke 1:1-4) In his opening to his Gospel account, Luke explicitly shows he knows the difference between writing an orderly account, as opposed to spinning a tale.

The author of John’s Gospel also explicitly cites eyewitness testimony when describing what happened at Jesus’ death. (John 19:35)[6]

The timing of the Gospels is too early to be legends.

  1. Literary form too detailed to be legends

In modern fiction we are used to details added to create the aura of realism, but that was never the case in ancient fiction.[7]

In Mark 4 there is detail about Jesus being asleep on a cushion in the stern of a boat. In John 21 it says that Peter was one hundred yards offshore when he saw Jesus on the beach. And goes on to tell how Peter jumped out of the boat, and how together they caught 153 fish. The best explanation for why such details were recorded (when they are irrelevant to the meaning of the narrative) is because these details had been retained in the eyewitnesses’ memory.

The Gospels are too detailed to be legends.

  1. Content too counterproductive to be legends

The argument goes that the Bible does not give an account of what actually happened; instead, it is what church leaders wanted people to believe in order to consolidate their power and build their movement. Is that what we actually see in the Gospels?

We know of the very early arguments in the church. For example, was it necessary for Gentile Christians to be circumcised? This debate caused huge conflict, and yet there is no record in the Gospels of Jesus saying anything about circumcision. The most likely reason is that the early church did not feel free to fabricate things and put words in Jesus’ mouth that he didn’t utter.

Why would the leaders of the early Christian movement make up a story like the crucifixion if it didn’t happen? And listener in the Greek or Jewish culture would have had deep problems with anyone crucified as a criminal.

Why make up the part on the cross when Jesus cries out that God had abandoned him? These things would only have offended or deeply confused prospective converts at that time.

Why have women as the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection when, at the time, women’s testimony was not admissible as evidence in court?

The only possible explanation for the inclusion of these accounts (along with many other possible examples) is that they actually happened. Otherwise they are totally counterproductive.

That’s all I have time for to respond to the question about thehistorical reliability of the Bible.

I want to go on to address the question people also raise about the Bible being ‘culturally regressive’. In other words, in addition to questions about whether the Bible is trustworthy and authoritative, people have objections aboutwhat the Bible claims;the content of the Bible raises ethical objections for people. The Bible is said to defend violence, to mandate repressive sexual morality, and to support slavery. Why, then, would anyone in the 21st century take it seriously?

Someone new to the Bible might read Ephesians 6:5 and find it objectionable of offensive:

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ.”

But if we slow down and look carefully into a passage that, at first sounds objectionable, we discover that it may not actually be saying what it first appears to be saying. Many passages people find offensive can be cleared up with a decent commentary that puts the issue into historical context.

The passage ‘Slaves obey your masters’ does not refer to the historical abominations such as the African slave trade a couple of centuries ago, nor the contemporary horrors of human trafficking and sexual slavery in parts of the world today.

To understand the meaning of such a passage we must understand the context of social and economic norms in first century Roman Empire, where there was essentially very little difference between slaves and the average free person.

  • slaves then were not visibly distinguishable
  • they were not segregated from the rest of society
  • they made the same wages as a labourer, they weren’t necessarily poor
  • they could buy their freedom, and so very few were slaves for life
  • Basically the masters of these first century slaves only owned their productivity – their time and skills.

And so other historical situations that share the term ‘slavery’ are quite different by nature, and have rightly been opposed on biblical grounds.

So some passages may not actually be saying what at first they appear to be saying.

But what if, even after careful consideration, someone still finds a passage objectionable or offensive? What should they do then?

Timothy Keller (whose book this series is based on) offers some advice:

It’s necessary to distinguish the major themes from the minor themes in the Bible. Just as we have said that there are different genres of writing in the Bible, some subjects are more foundational to faith.

By way of example, the Bible talks about the person and work of Jesus Christ, and also about how to relate to widows in the church. The former is a major theme, and the latter is a minor theme.

How do we know that? Well, up to half of each Gospel focused on the last week of Jesus’ life – that tells us something important about why the gospels were written, doesn’t it?

Also the Church Creeds can serve us as a guide, showing what the central teachings of the Christian faith.

Timothy Keller paints this picture:

“If you dive into the shallow end of the biblical pool, where there are many controversies over interpretation, you may get scraped up. But if you dive into the centre of the biblical pool, where there is consensus – about the deity of Christ, his death and resurrection – you will be safe. It is therefore important to consider the bible’s core claims about who Jesus is and whether he rose from the dead before you reject it for its less central and more controversial teachings.”[8]

“To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense?”[9]

We’ve considered some challenging questions about the Bible – and I’m pleased you’ve listened so well to how these are considered.

We’ve seen that far from being legends, the Gospels are historically reliable:

  1. The timing of the Gospels is too early to be legends
  2. Literary form too detailed to be legends
  3. Content too counterproductive to be legends

We’ve heard the warning about being too quick to label the Bible culturally regressive because of any passages that at first reading might seem objectionable or offensive.

Appropriate humility will allow us to be open to receive wisdom greater than ourselves.

Let me finish with this thought...

Shouldn’t we expect God — in that he has greater capacity and capability than us — to take stands and reveal purposes that run counter to our sense of how things should be done?

1

[1]The Reason for God: Discussion Guide, Timothy Keller(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p9.

[2]

[3]In our morning service, which has a particularly strong emphasis on symbolism in the church space and the actions and drama of worship, the Bible (BIG Bible!) is carried into the worship space to begin our worship, and leads us out in to the world as it is carried out at the conclusion.

[4]In response to that view, it’s important to be clear what sort of collection of writings the Bible is. Some of the books in the collection are historical narratives; but others are poetry, wisdom, letters and prophecy. These others are not intended to record historical events, and so we need to be careful what expectations we bring to them. That’s not to say these writings aren’t reliable, but just that they aren’t intended to tell historical truth – they are intended to tell truth for expressing and building in a sovereign and loving God. So what about those books in the Bible that are historical writings? Well, we do expect those to be historically reliable, and so this question ‘Can You Take the Bible Literally?’ is an important one if we are to trust in the Bible, as the ‘supreme rule of faith and life’.

[5]The Da Vinci Code suggests that the four Gospels were only part of an early diversity in Christian faith. That the ‘Gnostic’ gospels of Thomas and Judas, which have been given lots of attention recently, were suppressed after a ‘power struggle’ between contradictory views in Christianity. Not only that, Dan Brown suggests that the four Gospels were embellished to support certain power interests in a church hierarchy. This idea creates great intrigue to carry the plot for a bestselling piece of popular fiction, but is not credible in any important sense.

For a start, the four Gospels of the Bible were written much earlier than the so-called Gnostic gospels, which can be dated to 175 AD – more than a hundred years after the time that the four gospels were in widespread use.The so-called Gnostic gospels appear so late they no more challenge the Church’s faith than would a document opposing the Treaty of Waitangi written in the early 1900s challenge the covenant made with the Indigenous people here in New Zealand.

[6]And in Mark’s Gospel we are told that the man who helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary was ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’. (Mark 15:21) There is no reason for the author to include such names unless the readers know them, or know how to find out from them. The author is saying “Alexander and Rufus can vouch for the truth of what I am telling you, if you want to ask them.”

[7]If you read ancient fiction like Beowulf or The Iliad you don’t see characters ‘noticing the rain’ or ‘falling asleep with a sigh’. This is a feature of modern novels which make it seem like eyewitness accounts, but ancient epics and legends were high and remote – details were only included if they developed characters or drove the plot.

[8]The Reason for God, Timothy Keller, p113.

[9] Ibid., p112.