You will often hear fundamentalist Christians lamenting that many Christians
today are slipping away from believing in the authority of the Bible. They point out that when Christians adopt
non-fundamentalist views on things, they often end up sliding down a slippery
slope into serious error.
This is absolutely true. It
cannot be denied that there are many professing Christians in our day who gradually
move further and further away from biblical principles in various ways.
Of course, fundamentalists argue that the solution to this is to
adopt their understanding of the Christian faith. Become a fundamentalist – problem solved!
For those of us who are not persuaded by fundamentalism, however,
this is not an option.
Problems with
Christian fundamentalism
Personally, I find Christian fundamentalism to be exasperating. It tends to treat issues very simplistically. It is very poor at distinguishing between
what is important and unimportant. It often
forces a modern, Western mindset onto the ancient Jewish texts of the Bible. And, perhaps above all, it constantly
explains things away in very unconvincing ways, especially the meanings of
biblical passages. I find it to be very
dishonest.
I sometimes almost wonder whether new Christian converts in fundamentalist
circles are actually told that explaining things away is part of what being a
Christian is all about. There is so much
of this that goes on. And I think that
fundamentalists get so used to behaving in this way that they lose sight of
what they are actually doing. They think
they are defending biblical truth, when really they are just making excuses for
things.
To explain things away, however, is to be dishonest. And dishonesty is a sin. So we should always fight tooth and nail to
be as honest as we possibly can be about everything, including our
interpretation of the Bible.
What is more, when non-Christians think they see Christians being
dishonest, they usually run in the opposite direction. This means that fundamentalist approaches to things
frequently put people off becoming Christians.
Fundamentalists can also quite often be found telling people that
they can’t become Christians unless they agree with some very specific view on something
that is really not very important. So
fundamentalism puts unnecessary obstacles in the way of people’s salvation.
And finally, when fundamentalists explain away the meanings of
biblical passages by taking very unnatural interpretations, this gives a great
big green light to those who want to do so in other passages too. So ironically fundamentalism actually
encourages people to misinterpret the Bible.
Preferring
non-fundamentalist evangelicalism
In my firm view, we do much better to take a non-fundamentalist
evangelical approach to the Bible. This
avoids all the problems I have just mentioned.
But it allows us to get all the goodness out of Scripture.
My own approach to the Bible is very simple. When I read any passage, I am constantly
asking God, ‘Why did you put this in Scripture?
What do you want me to know from this passage? And what do you want your church to know from
it?’
I find that if I do this, I get from the Bible all the evangelical
doctrines and all the traditional moral teaching of the church. I get all the goodness out of Scripture that
a fundamentalist gets. But I avoid all
the dishonesty and explaining things away of fundamentalism.
Refusing to explain
things away
It is true that if we refuse to explain things away, matters are
often not as neat and tidy as we might like.
For example, having spent many years of studying the Bible
closely, I am convinced that it contains some mistakes in minor issues.
Actually, even fundamentalist Bible scholars almost always agree
that minor errors have crept in to the text since it was written. I agree with this. But I am also sure that there were minor
errors in the text to begin with.
Crucially, however, none of these affects anything that is of importance
for life and faith.
Similarly, it is clear that the authors of the Bible were often
much less precise about things than we tend to be in modern Western culture. And when they came to write history, they clearly
felt a liberty to modify their sources to a certain extent. This means that narrative in Scripture is not
intended to be strictly historical in every detail. Again, however, this is not something that
affects anything that is important.
There is also some strong evidence that not all the books of the
Bible were written by the people who are traditionally believed to be the
authors. But again, this isn’t really all
that important.
I think too that there may well be good scientific evidence that
God used macroevolution as a means to do some of His creating work. However, if He did create in this way, it is
a far cry from theories of random evolution, where the world and people
originated by chance. So there is
nothing really dangerous about thinking that God may have used macroevolution
to some degree.
Of course, fundamentalists would object to all the points I have
just made. But I am convinced that in
order to do so, they have to keep on explaining things away. And this is so dishonest and harmful.
Taking great care not
to go wrong
There are, then, big problems with Christian fundamentalism. Nevertheless, fundamentalists are absolutely
right to point out that when Christians adopt views like the ones I mentioned
in the previous paragraphs, all too often they end up sliding down a slippery
slope into serious error. There are many
professing Christians who would agree with me about the things I listed above, but
who have not kept believing in the authority of Scripture. Instead, they are now in reality against God
on serious issues. Some are even tragically
paving their own roads to eternal destruction as a result.
Christians, like myself, who accept that there are minor mistakes
in Scripture, must not be deceived into thinking that the Bible contains errors
in anything that matters. And if we allow
modifications around the edges of some of what the church has traditionally
believed, we must make sure that we don’t go too far. We must be very careful not to end up denying
the authority of the Bible.
‘The Manual for the
Human Life’
God has given us Scripture as ‘The Manual for the Human Life’. What this collection of documents teaches us
about anything of importance is consistently true. Everything it teaches about God, Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, sin, salvation, the church, morals, etc., etc. is always correct. And it therefore needs to be believed and
acted upon. As 2 Timothy 3:16 states:
‘All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in uprightness.’
We must not allow ourselves to lose sight of this. Rather, as we read the Bible we should
constantly be praying, ‘Lord, what are You teaching me and Your church in this
passage? What do You actually want me to
know here?’ And then we must alter our
beliefs and actions accordingly. If we
start thinking that the Bible is wrong in what it teaches about things that are
important for life and faith, we are the ones who have actually gone wrong.
If, then, like me, you are someone who takes seriously the claims
of mainstream Bible scholars and scientists, and you are open to understanding
Christian things in the light of these claims, please be sure that you tread
extremely carefully. Watch out that you
don’t slip away from believing in the authority of the Bible.
See also:
