THE HUMANNESS OF THE BIBLE
This article caught my eye this morning, mostly because my former neighbor and fellow congregant was quoted in it: "Bible Professor Suspending Over Teachings." I haven't read Peter Enn's book, and theological debates are water far deeper than I can tread, so I won't say much here, but it saddens me that the humanness of the Bible is cause for knee-jerk opposition. Wasn't the whole point of the Protestant Reformation that the Bible deserved to be accessible to the common man? Wasn't the King James version written accordingly, in salty tones? And isn't the sanctity, uniqueness, and validity of the original Hebrew and Greek verified and not contradicted by the fact that that original Hebrew and Greek was common and earthy in its feel?
Don't get me wrong: if I'm to accept a statement of Christian faith, it has to have the word "inerrant" in it. In today's relativistic mores, the Bible is still the absolute truth. I'm just lamenting that that can't peacefully co-exist with a read of it that savors and doesn't squelch the fact that that ultimate authority passed through the hearts, minds, and hands of finite and sinful people. Isn't that consistent with the glorious, provocative, and unprecedented nature of the Christian faith itself: that a perfect God chose to dwell in the form of a Jewish carpenter, and that He continues to dwell among and work through the weak and messy and unglorious?
This article caught my eye this morning, mostly because my former neighbor and fellow congregant was quoted in it: "Bible Professor Suspending Over Teachings." I haven't read Peter Enn's book, and theological debates are water far deeper than I can tread, so I won't say much here, but it saddens me that the humanness of the Bible is cause for knee-jerk opposition. Wasn't the whole point of the Protestant Reformation that the Bible deserved to be accessible to the common man? Wasn't the King James version written accordingly, in salty tones? And isn't the sanctity, uniqueness, and validity of the original Hebrew and Greek verified and not contradicted by the fact that that original Hebrew and Greek was common and earthy in its feel?
Don't get me wrong: if I'm to accept a statement of Christian faith, it has to have the word "inerrant" in it. In today's relativistic mores, the Bible is still the absolute truth. I'm just lamenting that that can't peacefully co-exist with a read of it that savors and doesn't squelch the fact that that ultimate authority passed through the hearts, minds, and hands of finite and sinful people. Isn't that consistent with the glorious, provocative, and unprecedented nature of the Christian faith itself: that a perfect God chose to dwell in the form of a Jewish carpenter, and that He continues to dwell among and work through the weak and messy and unglorious?
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