Better News — Part 2
Part 2 — Also, A Very Brief Introduction to the Bible
Truth
There was this moment when I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8, when the definition of “truth” started to be a bit fuzzy for me. I was in a department store, shopping for school clothes with my mom and dad, when the topic of conversation between my parents turned to someone they knew who had gotten pregnant before getting married. Mind you, this was in the early 90’s when the idea of getting pregnant outside of marriage, especially within evangelicalism, was not only frowned upon, it was deserving of ostracization from the community one belonged to (for women in particular and rarely the man, which is its own topic of conversation that I’ll deal with in chapter 4). I remember asking them, “how can someone get pregnant before getting married?” This question came both from a place of innocence as well as brainwashing. I remember believing that it was physically impossible for a person to get pregnant before getting married because I understood neither the mechanics of sex nor the reality that there existed people outside of my immediate sphere of influence, which was evangelicalism, who did not adhere to our principles. My dad’s response was simple, “well, according to the bible, they can’t.” I didn’t ask another question because I knew better. Questioning an inherent contradiction was anathema and typically incurred the wrath of my father, which was often a spanking or being yelled at. Neither of which I wanted. So, I left it alone and wondered to myself how this was possible.
I bring up this story because I think it perfectly illustrates the type of environment people such as myself were raised in: a rigid adherence to an individual’s particular interpretation of the bible coupled with psychological danger in questioning the authority of that interpretation. Whether it was at home and the threat of physical or psychological punishment, or at school and the threat of educational punishment (e.g. detention), there was no room for questioning the authority of the bible, or at least the authority figure’s interpretation of it. God’s word was the source of truth. For everything and anything. The major theme here is that the bible is god’s word, divinely inspired and sustained by the holy spirit and exists today in an unblemished, consistent, and whole form, so that everyone who reads it will come to the same conclusion: we have all sinned and the only path back to god is through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Sound extreme? Not to tens of millions of evangelicals. This is their bibliology.
The Grand Tour Of The *ologies
Bibliology (the study of the bible) is a broad and deep theological topic that we will not be examining exhaustively. Rather we will take a brief tour, similar to what we did with the progression of our understanding of basic psychological needs. Instead of a chronological tour and progression of understanding, however, we will take a look at one foundational principle that guides evangelicals in their understanding of the bible. Namely, that the bible is the inspired word of god. This belief is the basis from which all other beliefs come from and hopefully it will help explain the reasoning for the “I” statements covered in Part II.
Divine inspiration is a bit ambiguous, so let’s be more clear. There are actually several different types of “divine inspiration” that theologians discuss when talking about the origin and transmission of the bible, but the one that most evangelicals adhere to, and all the literalists I’m aware of, is what’s known as verbal, plenary inspiration. Which is a quicker way of saying a few different things:
- God revealed Himself to the authors of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments through the holy spirit in the words of those authors.
- The Holy Spirit effectively and completely transmitted that revelation in the very words of the Bible.
- Those words are authoritative in the lives of believers and non-believers alike, and convey the good news of Jesus.
Let’s take a look at each of these beliefs in turn.
God Reveals Himself
Evangelicals are steadfast in their belief that God has revealed himself in the 66 books of the bible — 37 in the old testament and 29 in the new. For clarification, this particular manifestation of the bible is the protestant manifestation. Catholics actually have 73 books, the Greek Orthodox have 79, and the Ethiopian Coptics have up to 84. Why the differences? Its beyond the scope of this book to examine it in depth, but the simplified (and obviously non-nuanced) version is that the history of Christianity is such that different splits within the church at different times produced different versions of what those specific sects considered “canon,” meaning measuring stick (think a ruler). You might see how there would be entirely different sects of christianity if the members of the church couldn’t even agree on what books were considered representative of the “rule of faith” within the church. So, Protestants, of which the thousands of denominations and non-denominational evangelical churches are descended from, believe the 66 book version of the bible is the version that reveals God and his message of the gospel.
This idea of revelation is an interesting one. To Christians, God actually reveals Himself in several ways other than the Bible. Non-exhaustively:
- He can reveal Himself in nature. This is a common refrain in the book of Psalms, for example, Psalm 8:3–4, which says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them.” It is not that God and nature are the same, it is that God is communicating something about himself through nature. In the case of the verse above, God is seen as communicating himself as the creator of everything and yet cares for humankind.
- God can reveal himself through miracles. The phrase, “it’s a miracle” has a more secular tone in the contemporary world, but that’s not the meaning intended here. MW defines a miracle as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.” Whether that is a miracle recorded in the bible like Jesus walking on water or turning water to wine, or a miracle more like The Virgin of Guadalupe, a miracle is a way for God to communicate something about Himself.
- Another form of revelation would be through Jesus. Being both god and human (what’s known as the hypostatic union) Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God Himself. Jesus’ life and works communicated everything humankind needed to know about God in order to be saved. This is the point and message of Jesus’ life, and you’ve seen the verse displayed in all manner of settings, John 3:16, “For god so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
God’s revelation of Himself through the Bible is a critical one for evangelicals. It is where all other beliefs must emanate. To refrain from giving the bible primary importance in the life of faith of the believer would be essentially the same as ignoring god speaking directly to you. Which brings up an interesting question: how do evangelicals know that what they read in their bibles is the true revelation of God?
The Word Of God Has Been Effectively Transmitted
The belief that the bible is the true revelation of god is founded in the theological idea of inspiration. Specifically, that the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the bible to write down the very words of god, in order to properly reveal himself to the world. Further, that the transmission of these words was also guided by the holy spirit, so that the christian can trust that what is written today is exactly what god intended. The simple answer to the question of how a christian can know that this is true is that it’s a matter of faith. But that’s not very helpful is it? To support this idea of biblical inspiration, evangelicals typically rely on a few soundbytes to support the belief that what they’re reading is really the revelation of god: the bible is historically accurate and supported by archaeologists and historians, the bible is internally consistent, and though the original texts of the bible have been lost they have always been treated with such care and reverence that it would be reasonable to rely on the idea that they are free from errors impacting the essential message of the gospel. Let’s take a look at these in turn:
The Bible Is Historically Accurate
I remember learning from my bible college professor, who was a trained archaeologist with a PhD from U.C. Berkeley, that she knew of archaeologists who would use the texts of the bible as a reference point for where to dig. She would tell stories about wanting to know where a particular ancient site might be, would refer to the bible to determine its location, would dig there, and proceed to reveal exactly what the bible said should be there. As an 18 year old college student, who had already been brainwashed, this was compelling. It served as evidence to me that those who would deny the truth of the bible were just willfully denying that truth. Nevermind the fact that simply because the bible contains true things doesn’t undermine that it also contains untrue things (hi there, fallacy of faulty generalization). As just one example, and a rather big one that most evangelicals don’t know or if they do know, they ignore, is the fact that there is no evidence that Herod the Great ever slaughtered infants, as described in the book of Matthew. Flavius Josephus, who was a Jewish historian in the first century C.E. and chronicled the life of Herod (including the murder of his sons), makes no mention of the murder of infants. Maybe he left it out? I guess, but it’s kind of a big deal. Rulers don’t go around slaughtering infants every day. As a matter of historical importance, it’s unconscionable to not have recorded it, if it happened. Additionally, considering that Nicolaus of Damascus, who was a friend of Herod also doesn’t mention it, biblical scholars view this event as allegory and not history — even though the “plain reading” (we’ll deal with this phrase in a second) of the text would indicate the author intended it to be read as history.
The Bible Is Internally Consistent
There are a couple of different ways that evangelicals view the internal consistency of the bible. One is that it is consistent in every possible way. Meaning, nothing stated in the bible, chapter and verse, ever contradicts anything else in the bible. This is the view of the literalists. It’s rather difficult to reasonably hold this as a belief, though, due to the fact it just simply isn’t true. One needs only to provide a single example, but there are many. So, here’s one. 1 Chronicles 2:15 says, “Joab reported the number of the fighting men to David: In all Israel there were one million one hundred thousand men who could handle a sword, including four hundred and seventy thousand in Judah.” So, there were 1,100,000 fighting men, which is inclusive of the 470,000 in Judah. 2 Samuel 24:9 says, “Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.” So, there were 1,300,000 fighting men in all of Israel (800,000 plus 500,000 equals 1,300,000). I’m not an expert at math, so I plugged those numbers into my computer and found that 1,100,000 doesn’t equal 1,300,000. There are some fun word-smithing “solutions” to this discrepancy, but they require an a priori belief of “there are no inconsistencies in the bible,” which is then liberally applied to a smattering of other verses and potential interpretations of all of them combined. So much for the “plain reading” of the text. No serious student of the bible asserts that the bible is consistent in every way. From my experience in evangelicalism, many assert the second position: the bible is consistent in its essential message of the gospel.
The Essential Message Of The Gospel Has Been Effectively Transmitted
The essential message of the gospel, to evangelicals, can basically be summed up with John 3:16, which we’ve already seen — whoever believes in Jesus gets to go to heaven. Some evangelicals might be willing to admit that the bible contains discrepancies like the number of soldiers in an army in a couple of places in the Old Testament (Old vs New Testament is a whole other thing that we don’t have space for), but something all of them would agree on is that Jesus saves. From a 30,000 foot view, this is absolutely true. The New Testament makes explicit that the only path back to god is through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But, here is where things get interesting.
The process by which an individual is saved in evangelicalism is usually the same: “accepting Jesus into your heart as lord and savior.” What exactly this means is a bit murky, but the general idea is that a person needs to truly believe that there is no path back to god except through Jesus. So, basically, they believe that they can’t do it on their own and that no other god or religion will do it either. Once a person does that, they are saved (unless you’re one of those evangelicals that believes a person must be baptized before they can be saved, which we’ll deal with in a moment). Usually, this is supported by one of several different verses in the New Testament that talk about how salvation is a gift of god through the person and work and sacrifice of Jesus and is received through faith alone. For example, Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” There are a myriad of verses just like this one in the New Testament. We are saved by god’s gift to us and the vehicle of salvation is faith alone. So, it would appear the bible — or at least the New testament — is consistent in its gospel message. Appearances can be deceiving, however.
There is a parable in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 31–46. It’s called the parable of the sheep and the goats and it’s where Jesus describes the day of judgment and which people get to go to heaven and which ones go to hell. The short version is that those that did good works (the sheep) like feeding the hungry and inviting strangers into their home get to go to heaven, but those who didn’t do those things (the goats) get sent to hell. So, if salvation is by faith, then why is god separating people by this specific set of works? One evangelical response is that those who have accepted jesus as their savior have been “born again” and will do these things because the holy spirit inside them has compelled them to do these good works (remember, Activism is in the Quadrilateral) . Which, cool. But, the question then becomes, what about people who do those things, but haven’t accepted Jesus as their savior? Muslims, for example, can look to the Quran, 76:8–9, which says, “(The righteous are those) who feed the poor, the orphan and the captive for the love of God, saying: ‘We feed you for the sake of God Alone; we seek from you neither reward nor thanks.’” Pretty sure there are secular people that also feel compelled to feed the hungry, too. So, what do evangelicals make of this?
The second response to this discrepancy is usually that this is a parable, therefore a story to illustrate a point and not intended as a theological stance on justification. Even if we accept this response at face value, which we shouldn’t, the issue remains problematic. What about other passages of the New Testament that contradict the idea that salvation is by faith alone that are not parables? Matthew 19:16–17 says, “Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’ ‘Why do you ask me about what is good?’ Jesus replied. ‘There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.’” This isn’t a parable, it’s someone literally asking Jesus what to do to be saved and his response is to obey the commandments. Not, “accept me as your personal savior.” If that wasn’t enough, the gospel of Luke has something to add. Luke 18:18–22 says,
A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good — except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’” “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
Again, here is someone asking specifically how to get to heaven. Jesus’ response is not only to obey the commandments, but also to sell everything we have. Is salvation by faith alone? Is it by obeying the commandments? Is it by selling everything you have? Some might argue that Jesus is speaking to this man very specifically and knows already (Jesus is god, remember) that this man won’t do what he says, so his response is less a prescription for a means to salvation generally and more a lesson to be used to give to others. I’ve also heard it said that this man was being arrogant, so Jesus chose something he knew this man would never accede to. Which, if we accept, raises another problem of why did Jesus do that? Isn’t he supposed to save people? Isn’t that his mission? Seems rather counterintuitive that the way Jesus decides to save humanity is to…not give a person directly asking how to be saved the answer of how to be saved.
One more verse, but only because I think the idea of internal consistency within the bible around the gospel message is really important to literalists and someone reading still might not be convinced. Remember what I mentioned about baptism above? There are a large number of evangelical churches, including ones that I have preached in and members of the church I was a pastor in, that believe baptism is necessary for salvation. They derive this belief from the bible in various places. For example, in what’s known as the Great Commission, as recorded in Mark 16:15–16 says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Seems pretty explicit. Not only is belief a prerequisite, but so is baptism. So, how consistent is the message of the gospel, actually?
You might be asking at this point, “wait, I thought the point here was that evangelicals could trust that the holy spirit guided the origin and transmission of the bible and the essential message of the gospel was effectively communicated?” Yeah…I did say that. And that is what evangelicals believe, literalists in particular. The inherent contradiction here is rooted in an a priori belief that the bible is the highest authority.
The Bible Is Authoritative In All Matters, For All
I can hear the evangelical refrain to my assault on the essential message of their faith now: “you’re taking those verses out of context!” When someone says this, they are responding in a way that implies someone (me in this example) lacks the proper tools to interpret the bible in the way god intended or is willfully ignoring what those tools are revealing. Which, in and of itself, is rather problematic given that there isn’t a manual on how to interpret the bible that is divinely inspired in the same way that the bible is divinely inspired. As far as I’m aware. So, what this hypothetical person is saying is that they know what god is trying to say in the bible, but I don’t. As you might imagine, there are different approaches to interpreting the bible depending on the sect of christianity one is a part of. For evangelicals, generally speaking, there are two main focuses for interpretation: exegesis and hermeneutics.
Exegesis
Exegesis is a fancy way of asking the question, “what does this passage say?” When evangelicals ask this question, they are really asking about historical context, literary analysis, and authorial intent. In other words, they want to know what other bible passages have to say about the one in focus, what are the original hebrew, aramaic, or greek words exactly for this passage, what does history say about the time period that this was written in, and what did the author intend for their readers to understand. Answering these questions is quite time consuming. As someone that has preached many times and wrote lots of papers (granted, I wrote them almost two decades ago), I can attest to how laborious this process is. This only indicates how seriously evangelicals take the reading of the texts of the bible. This critical care in reading the texts of the bible is a logical consequence of believing that the bible is the literal word of god. If the bible is how god reveals himself to humanity, then they would have a strong desire to take every word seriously.
So far, I haven’t said anything that is particularly unique to evangelicals. Christians generally have a great reverence for the bible and apply similar techniques when studying it. What’s unique for evangelicals here, and literalists specifically, is the belief that because the bible is the “literal” word of god in every word, then that must mean god’s revelation to humanity through it must be interpretable for everyone. This may sound like a bit of a leap, but if we take a step back and look at the historical context (very briefly) and note how readily evangelicalism absorbed a cherry-picked version of Scottish Common Sense philosophy, which came about around the same time as the First Great Awakening, which is widely seen as the birth of the American evangelical movement, we might notice something. Namely, an inherent belief that God’s revelation of himself through the bible would be “common sense” to all those who read it.
At the risk of oversimplification, Scottish Common Sense basically says, “I can trust my experiences via my senses.” You might think, “duh,” but it’s actually rather important in philosophy. One of the avenues in which philosopher’s find themselves veering towards is what’s called skepticism, which basically says, “I can’t prove that my experiences are in fact real, therefore, they might not be.” Again, oversimplified and not formed as a logic statement (this isn’t a philosophy book), but if you’re contending with that kind of philosophy where a proof is required, then you’ll need something else to just not go insane. Enter Scottish Common Sense (called that because its founder was Thomas Reid, a Scottish philosopher). “I can trust that my experiences are real.”
So, Scottish Common Sense, arising around the time American evangelicalism did and being cherry-picked by evangelicals, influenced the uniquely american evangelical idea that an individual’s reading of the word of god could be trusted and that the “plain reading” of the biblical text is understandable to everyone. More importantly, the essential message of the bible, which to an evangelical would be the good news that jesus came to save us from our sins, can be known by anyone who will read the bible. This might explain why there are organizations whose whole mission is to put bibles in as many places as possible (hello, Gideons, thanks for brainwashing my dad). All of this to say that the study and reading of the bible is an essential focus for an evangelical. Not just to let the pastors or priests do it for you, but for you yourself to do it, so that you can see the revelation of god. Exegesis is the prescribed way to do this, followed by the application of what one has learned about god from the text, also called hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics
A logical next step from exegesis would be hermeneutics, which is the study of biblical interpretation. Though it may not appear this way on the surface, evangelicals are not ignorant of the idea that personal bias can impact one’s reading of the bible and thus influence their understanding of the revelation of god. As such, it is also important to have a particular framework when looking to apply lessons learned from the text to one’s life — aka, interpret the bible’s lessons for the here and now. There are several ways that evangelicals attempt to put guardrails around themselves here including things like understanding the historical or literary context, and authorial intent. Authorial intent means that the biblical text cannot have a meaning beyond what was originally intended for the readers at the time. Reading a biblical passage this way forces the individual into a place of putting their own biases aside as much as possible and letting the bible speak “for itself.” This circles us back to exegesis and understanding the historical and literary context.
When preparing for a sermon, I would often spend the majority of my time in exegesis — reading historical background, translating from the original greek or hebrew and noting any interesting word usages, etc. But the last bit of my preparation was a tour of what are called “biblical commentaries.” These books are texts written by famous scholars (or simply other pastors) of the bible that people such as myself would refer to when looking for what they felt this text meant for us in the here and now. These scholars and pastors, of course, would also be evangelical and oftentimes of the same theological bent as those reading them (hello confirmation bias, nice of you to join us today). Even so, I would often read several different commentaries and validate that my understanding of the text was in line with what others of the faith believed. The underlying reason for this being that the holy spirit via the author’s words would intend the same or similar and related messages for the audience to hear. I couldn’t just make up my own interpretation, especially if it wasn’t in line with what the rest of the faith community believed.
Circling back to the idea of internal consistency that we left hanging, this is where we can close that loop. When evangelicals talk about internal consistency, they are talking about internal consistency within their own hermeneutics. They are effectively saying, “well, I know that salvation is by faith alone, so when I do my exegesis I will keep that in the back of my mind and if I find a passage that seemingly contradicts that, then I will need to call this belief forth and determine how I can interpret this passage in light of that belief and then apply it to my life.” This is how you can speak to two different evangelicals, one who believes baptism is necessary for salvation and one who does not, and ask them both if they believe the bible is the revelation of god, if the holy spirit inspired the authors to effectively communicate the gospel message, if that message has authority in their lives and the lives of non-believers, and whether the bible is internally consistent in this message, and they will invariably say “yes.” Then ask them how to be saved and grab some popcorn.
Through exegesis and hermeneutics, evangelicals come to know the message god has for them today. If they believe that the holy spirit was effective in transmitting that message to them through the very words of the author and that message is an actual revelation of god, then that message would have absolute authority in their life. Not just their life but the life of everyone. This authority that the bible has over everything is what makes the interpretation of scripture so important…and so dangerous. As we’ll see in the rest of the book, there are dire consequences for the belief that the bible is the highest authority for everyone, for both the individual and society as a whole, especially when that authority is based on something as shifting as an individual’s interpretation.
Wrap It Up Already
Quick aside before concluding this chapter — you might note the underlying problem here in the question of who gets to decide first what the community of faith should believe? Short version, evangelicals don’t really have a leg to stand on here because they claim to not believe in the authority of church tradition in the same way that, say, Catholics do; therefore, they basically get to decide for themselves what is in line with the community of faith. The funny thing is that this is a feature and not a bug. As Mark Knoll notes, one of the distinctive features of american evangelicalism is voluntaryism, or, the belief that each individual believer volunteers to be a part of a church, any church, that they decide. They are free to form their own church and set their own rules and bylaws and beliefs as long as a majority of the members vote in favor of it. How democratic right?
For now, we can wrap up this probably too long overview of the evangelical position on the bible and the authority it carries for both the believer and non-believer. It’s important to really drive this point home though. The bible is the basis for everything for an evangelical, especially literalists. The bible is the revelation of god and that has enormous implications for modern day life when you think about the fact that the bible was written by many different people over a very long period of time, very far away, a very long time ago. The first implication of this belief, which we will examine first in the section ahead, is that the Bible contains the instructions by which believers should live their everyday lives and what that means for our psychological needs.