Nope, because the scientific method is not a tool for the exploration of spiritual realities or God’s action. Science is limited to the natural world and that is all it is equipped to probe and describe. You need to use other epistemological tools and I personally do not place premium value on empirical testing and logic. I think experience, imagination, and intuition provide access to truth.
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The Bible also broke my faith many years ago. I will share something from a writing I am working on:
All or Nothing: Cherry Picking in the Bible
As I was reading Gregory A Boyd’s book, Inspired Imperfection , I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own conversion to Christianity and then subsequent crisis of faith. Boyd recounts how in his Church the Bible was considered inerrant and literally true, and anything else was unacceptable. He remembers his pastor saying, “If the earth wasn’t created in six literal days, then the whole Bible may as well be a book of lies.” Xi Boyd then recounts how he read a few apologetical books of the fundamentalist variety, then went off to university and took a course on evolution and one on the New Testament. In his hubris and religious zeal, he thought he would overturn the establishment but quickly went through the same thing many other conservative Christians go through. In his own words, “my year-old faith came crashing down once I found out the Bible is plagued with all sorts of errors.” Xii In a similar vein, I too, once set out to explain every single Bible contradiction and alleged errors and show that the Bible was clearly the inerrant word of God. After all, if a collection of 66 or 73 (depending on who you ask) distinct books written over thousands of years by many dozens of different authors from all walks of life was error free, it clearly had to be the inerrant Word of God. Humans make mistakes and there is no way a purely human text like this could ever be error free. My conservative world came crashing down and with a real lack of guidance or access to sources that knew what I was going through, I slowly turned from a conservative evangelical into a liberal and then finally into an agnostic/atheist. The peace, love and as Boyd puts it, “blissful certainty and sense of purpose” were gone. I was left with what I felt was a largely meaningless and bleak materialistic universe–again.
The idea that the inspiration is equivalent to inerrancy is very deeply rooted in many churches today and even in the minds of non-Christians. There is a remarkable, albeit silly tendency, to think that if any part of the Bible is in error, it is all in error or none of it is trustworthy. Christians will often ask, if it has errors, how do we know what is true? If it has historical or scientific errors, how do we know it is not wrong when it comes to salvation? While this question seems forceful upon first hearing it, I’m not convinced people seriously consider this objection before raising it. Where in life do we have inerrant sources? What book, magazine, historical document, doctor, mechanic, school teacher, pastor or church is inerrant? We use erroneous sources all the time and are quite adept at doing so. A work does not need to be inerrant to be useful. It just needs to be reliable for its intended purpose. Clearly, the Bible was not written to be a scientific text or strict historical biography in the modern sense. Its purpose is to preach the good news so that we might be saved by it. Its purpose is bringing salvation to people. Its record speaks for itself in that regard so we can deem it reliable and useful for its intended purpose . Historical, scientific or normal human errors do not impugn upon this belief in anyway. Orthodox Christians generally believe Jesus is the key hermeneutic to understanding scripture and that the broad strokes of salvation history, particularly in the life and death of Jesus, are beyond dispute. Couple that with the Holy Spirit guiding believers and I am not sure why it is thought the Bible has to be inerrant to be useful? It is a non sequitur .
—I cut out a few paragraphs —
In responding to the hypocrisy of the all or nothing charge, Paul J. Achtemeier wrote that, “. . people do not operate in other areas of life on the principle that one mistake or error renders all other statements or acts coming from that source totally untrustworthy. One’s trust in a friend is not irrevocably shattered if one finds that in some matter of historical information that friend should prove to be in error. Life has a way of continuing to function, even in the absence of absolutely certainty, and whatever else the Bible may concern, it is surely about life.” The Inspiration of Scripture pg 36-37
Don’t despair, I’d be willing to bet there are millions of Christians with broken Bibles.
Vinnie
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Agree (
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I respect that point of view, and perhaps I just disagree on the definition of Truth. 
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Thanks for sharing that, @Vinnie. That’s insightful.
YES -that’s where I am recently.
Good summation.
The whole Book of Job is obviously a story, perhaps something like a parable of Jesus. It is almost like a philosophical excursus on the problem of evil in the Bible. Ditto Revelation.
I think this more challenges your version of Christianity rather than Christianity. You simply misunderstood the genre of the texts.
An anthology of speculations from people without any more insight than I have?
Would you really call the Book of Job a speculation? To me, it is an unbelievably deep story that probes into the suffering of humans, evil, and God’s role in all of it. This is an amazing video on the subject by one of the best channels that help defend Christianity:
The author of the video is now pursuing a philosophy PhD at Arizona. I’m really interested in getting your thoughts on the video.
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The main message I get out of Job is about keeping faith in God at all times in life, the good and the bad. Despite common views to the contrary, God sends his rain on the just and unjust and being faithful does not indicate bad things won’t happen to you nor is the opposite true. What I find even more remarkable about Job is that I think it lacks belief in an afterlife and still maintains a high level of faith in suffering.
I think the story is deep and has a lot to offer but the bookends are certainly tough for a lot of people. A family (at least Job’s children) is murdered and a man is tortured over an apparently whimsical wager and then at the end Job gets a new family (more property??) like that is supposed to make it all better? Obviously we can imagine God teaching Satan a lesson out of love here, at the expense of Job and his children, of course. But his children seem replaceable like the livestock he had that doubled. But that was par for the OT course. Thank goodness it is only that, a story with a message and not literal history!
Vinnie
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I think the story is deep and has a lot to offer but the bookends are certainly tough for a lot of people. A family (at least Job’s children) is murdered and a man is tortured over an apparently whimsical wager and then at the end Job gets a new family (more property??) like that is supposed to make it all better? Obviously we can imagine God teaching Satan a lesson out of love here, at the expense of Job and his children, of course. But his children seem replaceable like the livestock he had that doubled. But that was par for the OT course. Thank goodness it is only that, a story with a message and not literal history!
Yes, that last sentence is wee bit important since God doesn’t actually play bets with Satan. Think of it this way for a Christian: you may suffer in your lifetime, but in the end, God will reward you.
Some of my thoughts are this.
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It’s not cherry picking to recognize the genre and literary tools being used by the Bible. By saying that i don’t believe genesis 1-11 , Jonah, Esther, psalms or revelations being litter does not mean I’m picking and choosing what’s in the Bible. I accept it all. I just don’t accept it all as literal.
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Sort of piggybacking off of that is the issue with inerrancy. First of all, if inerrancy even was part of the Bible it would apply to the original texts and words. Again, the scriptures were first oral. It was preaching that was then written down. Since then, the original copies have been lost and we have been making copies of other copies and translating them and making copies of translations and so on. These copies are not perfect.
But that’s ok. Because history is always a bit messy. If I want to know about WW2 I won’t just read books by Americans. I’ll read books like My Struggle and her diary. I’ll read books written by Germans, Americans, Jews and even from Japan. Once I have all that data, I’ll reconstruct it and go through it.
- I don’t think that going from conservative to liberal is moving towards atheism. I try to avoid labels like conservative and liberal as biblical paradigms and rather focus on what does it actually say and what does it actually mean.
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Huge assumption. Why couldn’t any “corrections” to scripture have been the inspired inerrant version? Surely the version of the text the Church canonized must be a likely candidate for inerrancy – if you want to go that route. I’m going with the Vulgate.
Maybe Mark originally ended at 16:8 and God wanted more added to it later. Maybe he wanted the story of the women caught in adultery in there? Or maybe its the textus receptus that’s the only true inerrant version.
We can’t even assume all of the texts were even written all at once and didn’t undergo multiple revisions and versions by the original authors. How do we even know there was an autograph? This reminds me of the MT vs Septuagint. Which one is inspired? Given that the latter is a translation where different passages take on a new meaning not found in the MT, this is a rather important issue. Most of the NT citations of the OT come from the Septuagint as well.
That the autographs that no has ever seen, that may have never even existed and that we must presume God’s literary activity is limited only to first drafts, are inerrant is one of the biggest myths of modern evangelical scholarship.
Vinnie
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I would say my the sentence is pretty clear.
First of all, {if inerrancy even was part of the Bible} it would apply to the original texts and words.
I’m not sure how to better break that down. No assumptions needed. Unless the assumption is that you believe the original was incorrect and the translations were…
and I am asking on what grounds you make the statement “it would apply to the original texts and words.” How on earth do you know that? Are you privy to the inner workings of God’s mind? Im questioning your assumption in presuming to know, without the slightest shred of evidence whatsoever (literally zero!) what versions of these works God may have chosen to inspire as inerrant if he in fact did do so. For all we know there could have been an early version of “Mark”. Someone else, maybe Mark, under the full influence of the Holy Spirit decided to add to it and correct some things. Maybe this same author, under the influence of the holy spirit wrote several versions of it. It is quite clear many Biblical authors made use of sources in their works. Maybe an NT book was written and had errors and someone under the full guise of the spirit updated it. Maybe it’s the updated version that is inerrant. Given missing manuscripts the first 100 years or so for every book, maybe it’s the updated versions and not the autographs that are sometime inerrant? Or maybe its the Latin Vulgate just like the Greek Septuagint? Or maybe not.
I realize many people don’t challenge this assumption but they should. That there was some inerrant original autograph is an assumption without any evidence backing it up. I am not even disputing inerrancy. I am disputing how you limit God’s literary activity. It amazes me that we can presume to know exactly how, when and why God would write and choose to inspire something. The Bible we have could be inerrant. There is nothing to suggest that the hypothetical autographs MUST have been what God inspired.
Vinnie
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Again.
I did not say there is.
I said if there was it would have been the original words. I even specified, “the original scriptures was oral”.
The NT gospels are not scripture. When you read the terms scripture in the Bible it’s a reference to the Tanakh and the Tanakh was journalistic work based off of preaching by prophets. Their actual preaching. Someone then practiced journalism, and went out to get notes on the original preaching and produced the tanakh…
I must be misunderstanding this then.
First of all, if inerrancy even was part of the Bible it would apply to the original texts and words.
I assumed you meant something similar to the chicago statement:
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
This usually means the document originally drafted by Mark Matthew, Luke, John in the first century are inerrant. This applies to all other works. I am questioning that assumption only. If the Bible we have today is inerrant there is no reason to assume it must have been so from the autographs or first versions. It very well may be. But I would never assume it must be.
Vinnie
Which God’s power was witnessed by the people? Did you know that the Bible has hints of polytheism? Those hints were likely more pronounced before the Scriptures were edited. Christian apologists would have us believe that one God simply has many names (El, El Elyon, El Shaddai, Elohim, Yahweh, etc…)
Here is an interesting video on this.
The power of God was the power he showed in freeing them.
I’ll maybe watch the video. Maybe not. Ive read a handful of books on the “supposed polytheistic “‘worship of early Christians as a standard and it’s simply not there.
They rely on silly things like Elohim, which is a type of being including gods, angels and even men. Or they cling to things like “god of gods” and try to insist that phrase implies multiple gods like we attach to the term god. When in reality, it’s more of a reference towards Yahweh being the head of the holy hosts ( angelic council ).
Lots of work has already been done on this by theologians and rabbis who are very well versed in the language and paradigm.
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I think I’ve read that book and have watched this video before.
I think the majority of people already knows, and agrees with accommodation, rather than concordism. I myself , and many others, has wrote that when Yahweh spoke to moses, the story that was generated was a story form ancient Mesopotamian beliefs. The book of genesis, is clearly building off of the mythology they already knew and accepted. But it also reversed a lot of it. Such as the sea dragon ( big sea creatures ) role being changed in the Jewish mythology from a powerful god to a mere creature of creation. Though later on in palms 74, we see the creation mythology revert to god battling it and killing it.
Personally, all of that stuff edifies my faith. Same as how everyone knows that the earliest Jews (Mesopotamians ) in general are all polytheist. They even reverted multiple times to polytheism which is what resulted in the whole exodus 34 problem.
If you want a really good book(s) on the this I suggest Jospeh Campbell’s “ Masks of God “ 4 part book. It shows how repeatedly the Bible has edited in these myths of other faiths. I’m glad they did. The Bible is a product of fiction and nonfiction woven together to create a beautiful and seamless story leading up the the birth of the son of god.
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It is precisely speculation. To say “God said ‘’” when He did not actually say “_” is speculating that that is what God would say in that situation.
Correct; and the realization of the truth (to me) makes the Bible less authoritative. Don’t get me wrong: I still believe that God exists, but I am less convinced that the Hebrew authors paint an accurate picture of who God is, what our relationship is, and what our eternity looks like. To me, the correction to my misunderstanding reveals that the anthology is speculation rather than definitive Truth with a capital T.
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I’m in the process of listening to this podcast, which seems helpful
Just got to watch the video -very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I think he is asking and answering a different question. He references my question and says that that is not his focus.
I don’t disagree that parables have meaning and can be useful teachings. I would pause on whether they are authoritative as the definite word of God. Gods name has been invoked by so many terrible movements (e.g., Nazi belt buckles, the inquisition, the crusades, etc.). The Hebrews committed their share of mass killings in the name of God and based on morals they strongly believed in, and if they Truely/literally were instructed by God to do these things then I would have no problem with it. On the other hand, if these acts were done of their own volition with just the speculation that God would support them…
Or did they? As long as we are calling the inerrancy of the Canaanite conquest into question, we should acknowledge maybe we have misunderstood the “facts” of the reported genocides.
Here is a good summary of some of that take on things.
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