Christian Biblical-ism.
Biblical-ism as practiced by religious
biblicists within Christendom today, emphasizes the approach that the
Bible, including their interpretation of it, is the exclusive authority for
denominational belief, is without error in content and translation,
is infallible and is the guide for their particular flavor of religious belief and activity.
I am not questioning the the role of
scripture as to its authority or historical value, nor its use when
applied in the manner God provided the scriptures to validate His
intent for the Community of the Redeemed within the Community of
Humanity.
However, if it worked as religious
denominations believe, there would not be the myriad of different
religious sects or the variety of different interpretations that denominated biblicists have reached in their interpretation of the bible. The
idolization of the bible to where it is placed above the living Word
(Christ) is the result of misguided approach of biblical-ism and its
inability to live up to its proponent claims.
Living under “bible authority”
rather than the authority of Christ has led to bible idolization to
where a believer's spiritual status is determined because of supposed biblical inerrancy in
the matter of its content and translation, as to everything that a
denomination claims it affirms regarding doctrine, theology, history,
ethics and christian living.
With this approach the bible becomes a
rule book that enslaves people just as the Jewish people became enslaved to
the Torah...their scripture...as John 10:34-35 reveals. The Pharisees...the Torah biblicists...misused the Torah to oppose and discredit
Jesus, today we have religious denominations hiding behind the
supposedly inerrant infallibility of the bible to oppose Jesus and His gospel
of grace and the freedom that He brings.
Bible idolatry is an act of worship of the bible
that should be ascribed solely to God (John 9:35-38). The scripture
has no saving ability of which the Christ-denying Pharisees were
informed of in John 5:39...only faith in Jesus has saving ability
(Rom. 3:22-26).
The Bible is therefore to be valued because of its testimony to Jesus Christ. The Bible is absolutely trustworthy and reliable for the purpose it was given...pointing us to Jesus and our salvation through faith in Him (2 Tim. 3:15).
We need to stop misusing the Bible as though it were a source of inerrant proof-texts by which people are brought into bondage to religious traditions rules and regulation or to shoot down other people who do not agree with our denomination's interpretation of it. In reality the only inerrancy defended by denominations is the inerrancy of religious traditions and the denominated way of interpreting the Bible. Believers should not be using the Bible like Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final authority. Religious biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter of the law, not the new way of the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 7:6).
You say and I quote The scripture has no saving ability of which the Christ-denying Pharisees were informed of in John 5:39...only faith in Jesus has saving ability (Rom. 3:22-26).
ReplyDeleteWhile the Scripture alone is not able to save it will as Apostle says in 2 Tim. 3:15 make a person wise unto salvation.
You say and I quote The purpose of Scripture is to bear witness to Christ (John 5:39; 20:31). The Bible in itself is not the Word of God. The Word of God is a person (John 1:1). Neither does the Bible have life, power or light in itself any more than did the Jewish Torah. Life is not in the book, as the Pharisees supposed, but only in the Man of the book points us to (John 5:39).
What you fail to remember is that Jesus said that the words He spoke unto us are Spirit and life.(Jn. 6:63) We have the same words that He spoke recorded in Bible and He still speaks today through His Word the Bible and when he speaks to us through His Word then these words are still alive today and not enough devils in hell or modernist preachers that do not believe in authority of Scriptures can convince us otherwise if we have the word of God hidden in our hearts.
I agree with you when you say that the purpose of Scripture is to bear witness to Christ but it is not the only purpose of Scripture.
Here is what Paul says about the Scriptures in 2 Tim.3: 16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
But the sad fact today is that in modern day Christianity many do not want to be corrected or reproved so the heap unto themselves teachers having itching ears that just tell them what they want to hear.(2Tim. 4:3) As a result we have a lot of seeker sensitive churches.
Peter also warns us that there are those who are unlearned and unstable who wrest, the Scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Then we have the Bereans in Acts 17 who placed such value on Scriptures that they checked everything that Paul said against the Scriptures and made sure that what Paul said was backed up by Scriptures. The amazing thing is that Paul commended them for it unlike the modernist of today who like to accuse such people as being in Bible idolatry.
Even Jesus placed great value on the Scriptures. What did he say in Matthew 5:
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Christ gives a warning here to modern day grace preachers who speak lightly of Christ commandments and give people the false impression that they are not for us today.
While they may make it to heaven because they have accepted the blood of Christ they will be least in kingdom of heaven as verse 19 says.
So I place the same value on Scriptures as Paul, Peter, the Bereans, Christ and all other Saints of God. If it means being accused of Bible idolatry then so be it.
Hubert, having elevated the Bible...or at least the interpretation you hold ...to the status of a magic book you and those who believe like you have demoted Jesus whom the bible claims is the “Word of God”. Your “god” is trapped in a book written by man, a book that was not even around in Jesus' day. You confine God to a cage of “bible inerrancy” somewhat like an animal trapped in a cage.
DeleteThe reason you can't admit that the bible has flaws because it was translated by flawed men is because you worship the book rather than God. So you spend your time trying yo convince others that the deception you hold to as truth is truth.
Why Bible idolatry is a blind spot for you is that, unlike earlier believers...at least in the more enlightened non-retributive threads of church history, you have forgotten and/or banished the idea that an oral tradition coexisted without a Bible within the life of the Church. You also have forgotten that some of the earliest believers wrote that God is not to be defined or hedged in by Bible-derived “theology,” even by descriptions about him by man-made bible interpretation. You have subverted the teaching and life of Jesus because the idea that love trumps theology makes you nervous.
If Jesus is God He transcends the book he’s trapped in. He does this because he is the perfect fulfillment of an imperfect human tradition. And the book in which his story is told is only enlightening when read retroactively through the lens of Jesus. If Jesus is the express image of God and no one before Him knew God then only reading the Bible through the eyes of Him will makes sense.
Jesus does not “fit” any “biblical interpretation,” which makes the text less important than Him. Jesus introduces the transforming possibility of nonviolence and forgiveness to our retributive primate way of being human that ensnares the rest of the Bible.
Jesus’ death is an act of grace not the violent continuation of retributive sacrifice. Jesus’ death stops the sacrificial principle...the dark side of religion...forever.
If Jesus is the “Son of God” (as Bible thumper you are claim but don’t seem to believe) then His “take” on the Bible and the “Law” must be our take. If we follow Jesus we have to believe Him and therefore edit and reject the Law (i.e., portions of the Bible) as Jesus did. His teaching was essentially anti, Torah. In evangelical terminology Jesus was a “backsliding Jew.” He attacked the “Bible” of his day.
Jesus attacked the idea of salvation through correct belief. He attacked the idea that only Jews were “saved.” Jesus said that the Good Samaritan was the only one in His story doing God’s will thus “saved.” Jesus broke the biblical Sabbath laws. He thumbed his nose at the church of his day and the keepers of the Law. In another instance Jesus said that “The Law says…but rather I say…” and then repudiated the Law in in favor of the woman “taken in sin.”
Repent Hubert and follow Christ who alone is the “Word of God”.
What seems clear from my reading of the Christian scripture is that Jesus was a rabbi that is a Pharisee. He believed in the oral Torah, angels and the resurrection from the dead. These are all pharisaic teachings.
ReplyDeleteWhat occurred in the 70s and 80s of the common era was the distancing between the Christian sect of Judaism from the rabbinic sect.
The New Testament can hardly be imagined to preserve the words of Jesus as almost every word of the text is in Greek and had to be translated from the Aramaic.
What we have in the New Testament are portraits rather than photographs. They are the interpretations of finite individuals of their understanding of the meaning of Jesus. We need to seek those meanings and apply them to our understanding of ourselves, and the universe of which were apart.