Sort of…
I totally acknowledge the third box, but given what we have seen humans do throughout history to distort the truth in order to further their agendas, I have to approach the human part of that third box with skepticism -and since its difficult/impossible to say which part is human, this casts doubt on the entire third box. (for me, that is)
If you think humans have done bad things with the “third box”, then you should have absolute nightmares about what people have done with the first two! Those boxes with things that we’ve nailed down as “certainties” and absolutes for ourselves and everybody else too? Those have been altars for a good share of the carnage through human history! Keep your skepticism around! And don’t just apply it to the “third box”!
We are never off the hook for discernment and testing of the spirits.
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What’s the main stuff you’re skeptical about. The stuff that you believe must be absolutely true and literal.
When it comes to the Bible it’s over 40 authors snd several thousand years all pointing towards the messiah. Before Christ was here, we can still see the same stories in the Bible pointing towards him.
The people who first spread the Bible around and shared the stories were predominantly poor people who were outcasts.
So we can simply take the agenda of someone like early slave owners and say they invented it to control the masses because it was around before them… instead, they took what was there and misused it.
So I am a bit hard pressed to think all these authors over thousands of years had this end goal in mind.
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I resonate with your concerns, and am encouraged by some of the responses you have received. I also have enjoyed some of Peter Enn’s writings like How the Bible Actually Works to help understand the place of the Bible.
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I want to slide in and say that the Truth is always in the middle
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I think if the story of God’s involvement with the world had ended with the closed canon, we would be in a much more difficult place. But it didn’t. As N.T. Wright describes it, we, the church, are improvising the third act, writing the history of God in our own times and places and testifying to the ongoing mission of God on earth. God is still transforming lives, providing signs, imparting wisdom and amazing people with love, grace, and healing. I don’t think it’s enough to move from seeing the Bible as a bunch of facts to be fact-checked to seeing it as the story of God and God’s people. You also have to see it as your own story, one that is continuing and that you are now playing a part of. The Bible apart from the Holy Spirit’s continuing work in the lives of humans reconciling people to God is just a book.
Or you could look at it as those who have gone before and are inviting you to encounter the same God of their history in your own. The fact that they maybe they aren’t as special as you once thought could be a source of encouragement from a different perspective. God has always related to imperfect, limited humans. The communication has always been muddled to some degree by our fallibility and finite minds. But that hasn’t stopped the work of redemption and God’s relentless love continues to pursue humans, even with our track record of failings and misunderstandings. He still extends us the privilege of the opportunity to encounter the divine and transcend our humanity through union with Christ. This leaves me more humbled and in awe than the thought that God delivered a perfect revelation and then left us to figure it all out and work up enough mental will to believe it at which point our work was done.
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If a particular article comes to mind by Enns I’d be interested to check it out. No rush.
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I am not sure what your background s, but my Christian upbringing had me sitting in the church listening to sermons about hell fire and the unpardonable sin and the rapture, etc. I had panic attacks after some sermons. Personally I feel I can dig the concept of God being love, but the whole idea of mainstream understanding of hell and the “hiddenness “ of God leave me squarely in the atheism camp.
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But how do we know God is transforming lives? I have seen some pretty amazing beachbody transformations but they are usually hard work. Same with anything else.
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…and perhaps understandably so? If God is not good in any meaningfully recognizable way for us, after all, what would be the point?
I don’t think people should place any of their faith in mainstream “traditional” understandings of hell, but instead look entirely to the loving God revealed in Christ. It fascinates me that some Christians declare they have problems with millions or billions of years of death and suffering, and yet many of those same Christians in the next breath declare that God will be spending an eternity seeing to the torture of the vast majority of all who have ever lived (“few” will find the path to life after all, they say); making the large proportion of God’s relationships be about virtually nothing but torture (of the kind that, far from conquering death, actually manages to make death look really, really good). Billions of years of suffering and death would be as nothing but an insignificant blink of an eye next to all this. These Christians ask us to strain out a gnat, but then swallow a camel.
But the God of Christ is not such an evil monster. Nor do scriptures teach any such thing. We fear God, yes - knowing what we have harbored and still harbor in our hearts, and knowing that God is an impartial and utterly righteous judge. But we also know that this judge is always and ever a loving Creator as well. All the refining fires we face will be for our ultimate salvation, not our ultimate torture. Easter is a celebration of the subjugation of death to its proper place - not the inventions of yet more enemies that are so much worse.
Happy Easter everyone! He is risen indeed!
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I see God transforming lives. I don’t think it’s proof to convince atheists.
Again, apologies for my absence -I ran out of allowed BioLogos replies yesterday but am back and playing catch-up (o:
Dude. Good question, @SkovandOfMitaze . I’ll have to give a good hard think to exactly what I would need to be literal.
Off the top of my head, I’d say it starts back in Genesis. Was it truly Isaac who was the prophesied son, or was it instead Ishmael and the rest was simply propaganda to help morale during difficult times in Egypt/wanderings? That would change everything downstream, of course.
In a more general sense, I think the wisdom of God’s response to Job is applicable to the entire Bible: man cannot possibly fathom what God is thinking, or doing or going to do, so all the times in the Bible where human authors say ‘God did ______’ or ‘God will do ______’ are unreliable -which then affects how we look at everything leading up to the Messiah and end times.
And then also a few instances where individuals acted in horrible ways, justifying it by stating ‘God says’ (e.g., Exodus 32:27), when what they should have said was “I personally believe that we should kill all of these people”.
Thoughts?
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Hmm. Good point
Not just falliability -cruelty, selfishness, self-righteousness, etc. Humans historically will go to any means necessary to convince others that we are right/better, even if it means intentionally (not just mistakenly) distorting the truth or frankly making up stories to support what we are doing. Think about the nazi belt buckles with the inscription ‘God is with us’.
I’ll post my response here as well.
I definitely think it’s Isaac. It fits with the entire biblical narrative.
In genesis they were given two ways to do things.
Their way or the way of God. In the garden Eve have Adam the fruit and said isn’t it good? They did it their way. With Abraham he heard Gods promise and yet Sarah showed him Hagar and said isn’t she good? They did it their own way.
The main reason though for me is because it’s Islam that taught it was supposed to be Ishmael. That concept mainly popped up thousands of years later. Throughout all of the Jewish history, the belief was Isaac.
It all comes down to faith. But I think faith can still have some reason behind it, but that reasoning still requires faith.
I see it as we have the Torah. The Tanakh. The Hebrew Bible was here before the New Testament or before the Quran. The Quran came the last.
When reading through the Hebrew Bible we see patterns leading up to Christ. I believe that we Cannes a seamless and biblical flow from Judaism into Christianity, or the Torah into the epistles and gospels. But we don’t see the Torah, or the letters of the apostles, pointing towards the Quran. There is zero reason to believe that Quran is gods word in my opinion.
I believe that it God wanted to use the Quran, then it would have showed up first or either it would create a seamless flow leading from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. But instead, it says there is no Judaism or Christianity and that those should not have existed and they don’t have it right but we do, despite it showing up several thousand years after the Old Testament.
It would be like if someone steered a cult that got a gathering that said Paul was actually the son of God and then they changed several key verses and added a whole new book. People would mostly not believe it because it’s new, and it’s not seamless with the Torah or the Bible.
So for me if you believe in God, then it makes sense to believe that Isaac was the chosen son of Abraham.
Are you familiar with how the Bible was created?
The Holy Spirit influenced the prophets to share his word. So the prophet Elijah for years traveled around preaching the word. He would go to different cities and preach different things, but they all were consistent with one another. Scribes from all over would copy down his preaching. Sometime after he died, scribes acting as journalist traveled around and made copies of his speeches. They then brought them together and laid them out in order for the most part. Then more scribes acted as editors and made the several stories one story.
It’s the same as the gospels. The gospels openly say that Jesus did many other things but that they did not record them all. Instead you had Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all go out and do journalistic work collecting testimonies from others and collecting any worlds by scribes. Then once they had all these stories they edited them into their gospel. It was a expensive job though. So they were funded by others. Just like it says with Luke and Acts. So the journalists had two goals.
- Collect the truth.
- Select stories that focused on what the funding organization or individual wanted.
There was a great Botanist named Mohr. She studied the flora of southern alabama for years. If we go back in time, to when it was shortly after he died we could imagine different organizations wanting to have his story and what he did. If the Save the Oaks foundation contacted me to find out then what all happened I would begin to investigate. I would find his journals, get notes and interview his companions and things like the owners of the houses he rented and so on. As I gathered these stories, I would edit them to focus on oaks and oak habitats. He found thousands of plants and hiked hundreds of acres. But my focus would be on oaks. It would be on stories about how important oaks are and how he had drawers full of acorns .
If at the same time another man was was funded by auburn university to create a field botany program centered on Mohrs work for a class working on ferns it would focus on ferns. It would have very little personal stories. It would not be cinematic, but very technical. It would be a field guide with a map showing his traveling.
Then another person, a woman, was hired to do a series for the girl scouts k-4 ages that woman would collect a little bit of stories and a little bit of science and edit it into something like a fictional tale of a Girl Scout that hiked with her grandfather Mohr. The stories would be ones about how the girl learned to be independent, and what she saw and the story would be short and very kid friendly with lots of exaggerated art.
All three of those books would be centered around Mohr, and all three books would be focused on the truth, and all of them would be edited in different ways. One edited to showcase oaks and how important they are to the local environment. One would be devoid of most emotions and just a field guide to key out ferns and the last would be a fictional tale highlighting the true work of Mohr and presented as a kids short story series.
So regardless what was literal or not matter, but it’s going to be blended by the needs of the ones funding it. The Bible is similar in my opinion. Some of it may be fabricated, some of it may be very literal, some of it may be focused on invoking emotions of persecution and others focused on the power of victory. But it’s all true, even if some of that truth is explained in a fictional way.
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Though in true scientific method, wouldn’t it be better phrased ‘I see transformation happening; my hypothesis of interest is that God is doing the transformation, and the null hypothesis is that God is not involved’ and then seek supporting evidence? In following from there, we could look at retrospective data and either see association between God and change, or no association…though even if there is association, we can’t conclude that there was causal relationship since we’re talking about retrospective study. And unfortunately there’s no way to run a prospective RCT on this heheheh 
I recognize that, as Walton has stated, science is not appropriate to test things of spiritual nature, but this points out that the statement of God transforming lives is pure conjecture and belief -founded on the presupposition of God being loving and involved as we have been taught by scripture…which going back to my question I have developed rational distrust of manipulation by motivated human authors. Sigh. 
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As for exodus 32 I think one thing that people forget is that Israel was a theocracy. Sins were also crimes. All sins were also all crimes. Unlike countries like USA, where we are not a theocracy. Some sins ( murder ) is a crime and some sins (cheating on a spouse ) can result in public shunning but they don’t typically result with you being charged with a crime. Some sins are not a crime at all in USA. You can say god is fake and that god is stupid and cops can’t charge you with anything. You can worship a godmother than Yahweh and it’s not going to have you sent to prison.
In Israel though , especially during that time period as a nation of Hebrews, including them wandering around, all sin was also punishable as a crime. So idol worship was a crime.
In that chapter the first thing God does is want to destroy them all. Just like he does with those who come to face the lake of fire. But Mose pleads not too. So instead Moses goes to the camp and says who is on the side of the lord. Some came over including the sons of Levi. He then had them go inane carry out capital punishment. It’s not really thst far fetched of a story in my mind.
Those people, despite having personally witnessed the power of God decided to openly mock him, reject him, snd worship another. To mock the very power of god itself despite having witnessed it first hands is a terrible thing to do. It’s similar to what Jesus said about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
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Yes. Totally agree…my recent problem is that I find it easy to have faith in God, and exceedingly difficult to have faith in humans.
Point taken
This is the type of thing that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I understand that this is how it really happened, and what we’re given…and that’s just not what I feel I need in order to form my entire life and work on, heheh.
Great analogy for the Gospels. I’ll be honest, I have less (not none) skepticism of the Gospels (vs OT) b/c they were talking to a contemporary audience and there were living witnesses who they referred to
That’s fair…I’ll need to sit with this for a while (o:
Point well taken. And ANE cultures punished crimes brutally/capitally.
But would be more accurate to say 'the first thing Moses internally felt like God would want to do is to destroy them all"…? We can only attach God to it if we already believe that the Gen/Exo story overall is true. So again it comes down to faith in humans, not faith in God.
I think it’s for more than just the gospels. I think the entire Bible fits that way. I also think that’s how everything is. Biased visions drive everything. But just because something is biased does not mean it’s wrong.
Anything left out want change what’s there. You would just have more of the same info. I mean if we added two more war stories, or took any two war stories, and if we removed this or that person from the story and added this or that person what would it change for the most part?
Let’s say we removed the entire book of Job what would happen? Let’s say we took Moses’s brother Aaron out of the picture and everything Aaron did moses did alone instead including he had a bunch of kids with some woman and they came the priests. It really would not change much.
If we changed the story of Noah and removed the hyperbole and said that Noah’s village was flooded and Noah survived the flash flood because he built a boat ahead of time to hold a few dozen animals for a few months and then it continued with the ham , Shem, and Japheth nothing would be different except creationists would be less confused.
The fear that so many have is this.
If the Bible is able to have incorrect information it, regardless of it’s a lie or hyperbolic statement, then what if the claims of anything supernatural , including the resurrection, is false. That’s a natural fear.
The only answer I have is that because I have faith in God I have faith that he ensured that we understood his will and got the scriptures to us. I simply have faith that won’t die. No matter where I was at in my life, from good to bad, from living righteously to just consumed with sin, no matter how hard my heart got I believed in God. Now that won’t save me.
“ even the demons believe and shudder “ and “‘not everyone who says lord lord will be saved “ means i can 100% believe and still be destroyed because I don’t bear fruit of the spirit.
It upsets a lot of people but the truth is I don’t believe there is any evidence to believe in God or the Bible without faith.
Maybe what will help you is studying out how faith operates in the Bible. I think two often neglected parts of faith is realizing we are gods answers to other people. The woman who realizes she has no money in line and her spirit cries out in shame, anger, snd depression before she can even actively think to pray “ for the spirit groans for its needs” is met by me standing behind her knowing I can sacrifice getting headphones, a new horror t shirt and not vudu another film and can freely dish out the $60 to cover her groceries. When I just got off work, and it’s winter and I only have 1 hour of sunlight and so I am driving right at the speed limit to get to a trail to hike for 45 minutes and then I see a dude broken down on the side of the road carrying a gas can and then nearest gas station is 10 minutes away driving I know that I can hike another day and help him. The worse is being in a rush to get somewhere to hike because a storm is 3 hours away and I see a van with a flat tire with women and kids inside of it and I know that it’s going to take 90 minutes to get a doughnut tire, air it up, jack up the van, replace it, lower it, and write down the info for the tire they need and call a few places. The amount of people that don’t know what kind of tire to get is sometimes mine boggling.
The other thing that I often feel is neglected, especially during this pandemic, is remembering there is no lone Wolf Christians. We are a family. We are commanded to be in fellowship and not gife up and the Bible lines out even that we are to be under the authority of our local elders.
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It does if we take God out: Instead of “God appeared” we’d have “And then a volcano erupted” or instead of “God said to do ___”, we’d have “I think I should do ______ based on my own biases, motives and understanding of the world” 
Sounds silly but this is what I wrestle internally with
<3