The Sacred Chain | The Challenge of the Bible - BioLogos

Faith & Science Conversation
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Interesting observation!

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Yay! Someone who pounces on R. C. Sproul as I do! I don’t remember what work of his I first read but I remember being horrified by it and thinking, “How can this be called Christian?”

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Good point. I should have wirtten: “These sources were not necessarily inspired.” For example, the Ten Words were given directly to Moses by God, clearly a divine source. And there must be many stories, prophecies and visions that didn’t make it into the Bible (John 20:30, 21:25).

Although I would argue the core is the same most of the time. For example, with the exception of groups such as the Saducees and the Marcionites, all Jews and Christians accept the 39 (or 24, if you count the Jewish way) books of the Hebrew Bible.

And the sea monsters are now created beings in Genesis 1. Yahweh rules!

It is amusing that pharaoh says to Moses that if he sees his face again, he will die (Exodus 10:28). But the next time Moses visits, nothing happens (11:4,8). It is clear that Pharoah does not have any power over Moses. It is only Yahweh who’s face cannot be seen (33:19-20).

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The whole discussion of faith vs. works always seems like a kind of weird logic. We are told over and over and again that we are saved by faith alone, but then we are also told that faith without works is dead. So, when someone questions the “faith alone” argument, we are told that a “genuine” faith will have works automatically so it’s sort of impossible to have faith without works. Which, to me, feels like a rhetorical trick to get around what - again, to me - feels like works being required for salvation. If you can’t have true faith without works, then you can’t have salvation without works, right?

I don’t know. I’m probably just too illiterate to understand the numerous nuanced articles I read about this subject. All I know is that the churches that I have attended that emphasized faith over works so strongly are also the churches that have the most people who don’t do the dang work.

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Genuine faith may be more rare or plentiful than observed. It is certainly ironic like that. I did however find an interesting reading of Matthew 7:14 recently and it stuck with me.

Faith and works to me is like seeing how wretched you are and understanding that you are saved by the righteousness of Jesus. Yet it is impossible to be with Jesus and not be changed by him. Or as one the great truths in the Bible is, we become like what we worship. One has to love God in order to want to be with him. No one believes the Gospel except that they want to be with God. And it is impossible to love God and to hate a fellow person.

I have often thought it ridiculous how much disagreement there is over whether a person is saved by faith and works or a faith that is not without works. Maybe ridiculous isn’t the right word. Ironic? It’s important that the emphasis is correct for the person who sees that there is nothing good within them.

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I think you can compare it to love. If you really love your spouse, you wouldn’t mind it at all to e.g. stand up early and surprise him/her with breakfast on bed. If someone already gets annoyed when only thinking about having to do that, I wonder whether his/her love is genuine.

But just doing the “works” without actually loving your spouse is also wrong. (I don’t know whether this ever happens. Of course you have gold diggers.)

I also like this passage in Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

(Luke 19:1-10, NIV)

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I haven’t read Walton’s book yet, so maybe my comments are redundant, but I find this request of Paul’s, and also his request to bring his scrolls, especially the parchments, and to try to get here before winter–to be so very endearing. Reading these requests in his letter reminds me that this is a real letter from a real person. Paul seems so close and so dear at those moments. There are other tiny statements in scripture here and there that have this effect, but 2 Timothy is my favorite. These things make scripture closer to my heart and far more believable.

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I guess I just worry that when we put so much emphasis on the faith aspect of it that dummies like me will take that literally and not make the changes needed to have a “real” faith. I had a pastor once tell me that if cops just get saved then they won’t be racist and violent towards weak people. I said they still have to be taught not to be those things because there are plenty of “saved” cops still doing this stuff out there.

Maybe my beef is with those churches not teaching what kinds of works Christians should be doing and instead focusing solely on evangelism as the highest fruit of a good faith.

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This quandary over works or faith is foreshadowed in Matt 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven…” It makes me think of people who make a business of “doing good.” God sees the heart; that makes the difference. Humans are so keen on judging each other by what we can see. We all try to kid ourselves and our friends; that won’t work with God.

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Along those lines, I think the problem is to some extent focusing on the works, and not focusing on the heart and making disciples so that the works flow out of a heart aligned with Christ.
I think that was exemplified by the purity movement and culture of years past. Churches were teaching “purity” rather than teaching sanctification and type of life that comes from having a heart for Christ. And the unstated purpose of the purity movement was to keep kids from getting pregnant and sexually transmitted diseases rather than helping them grow in their walk with Christ. And predictably, it often failed miserably.

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But some accept more books, sometimes ranking them as inspired but less trustworthy than the “first rank” – a position which right there shows a non-binary view of inspiration.

Or as I like to summarize the point of the polemical function of the first Creation account, “All your gods are belong to Yahweh!”

That was a direct slap in the face of Horus, Aton, and Ra since the pharaoh was considered an incarnation of all three. Yahweh’s errand boy walks into the court of Egypt’s god-on-earth, and . . . nothing. That told everyone present, “Yahweh rules!”

It always awes me how much the scriptures have to tell us if we just read them in their original context.

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I look at “faith alone” as a judicial assertion, nothing more: the judge looks at faith, rules against prison, and then passes us to the probation officer. If we work well on probation, the foundation is the faith; if we don’t, well, that won’t save us.

I can think of a couple of exceptions to that, but they were a bit extraordinary.

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The Orthodox in me would say that faith without works is pointless and works without faith are useless.

I like to think of the “Do you love me?” song from Fiddler on the Roof.

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Well, yes. Reading and hearing how they often frame the issue nowadays, I feel the same - it is rather weird. But the contention point becomes more clear if one utilizes the more “technical” and precise terms, which were elaborated by the Reformation theologians of the 16th century - justification and sanctification.

The proper biblical context of the discussion is Romans 5:1-2. Here the apostle explains what “being justified through faith” means.

First of all, it means to be reconciled with God through Christ and to receive, through the same Christ, the direct access to divine grace; in other words, faith enables the faithful to encounter the merciful presence of God revealed in Jesus Christ. But to remain faithful, one must get inspired by this merciful presence and shape one’s life in line with this inspiration. The one who refuses to live in harmony with this inspiration hence departs from the proximity of Christ.

All the major Christian denominations would more or less agree with this idea. But the Reformation and the Rome have emphasized the different aspects of it.

The Roman theologians have stressed (at the Council of Trent) that to be granted access to merciful presence of God in Christ and to remain in this presence is a single process that leads the faithful to eternal bliss with God; therefore, they called this entire process “justification”.

The Reformation theologians have on the contrary emphasized the obvious logical distinction between the stages of the process: to remain in the merciful presence of God, one must be first granted access to this presence. To live as a beloved child of God, one must be first accepted by God as a beloved child. To highlight this distinction, the Reformation has called the first stage “justification” and the second stage - “sanctification”.

Why was it important to point out the distinction between justification and sanctification? There were two reasons, the first of them pastoral: a Christian who has yet to attain to perfection needs to know that God is near; all the faithful are already accepted by God: beloved by the Son, adopted by the Father, and supported by the Holy Spirit in their struggles unless they would ultimately reject this Spirit themselves. The knowledge of the Spirit’s assistance is what gives a Christian strength to live, develop, and grow as a follower of Christ.

The second reason was ecclesiastical: there are no second-rate Christians among the faithful, everyone is the member of the same people of God.

I would say that both reasons are still valid, although they don’t need to remain as controversial as they were in the 16th century.

It seems to me that the post-Vatican II Roman Church is looking for ways to acknowledge and incorporate the same theological insights. But, of course, there are a lot of internal controversies in the Roman Church that have still to be settled.

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It was a Lutheran priest/pastor who in a sermon told the people that when Paul wrote that God prepared good works beforehand for us to do, he wasn’t talking about twice or three times a year, but probably twice or three times a day – and if we weren’t doing that many, then we needed to pray to have our eyes opened.

I’m still not very good at it; most days I only find one, sometimes two.

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This made me think of something I read about years ago: A church did a self-examination and one conclusion was that they weren’t effective in showing Christ’s love to their community, so they decided to organize to get members doing that. Their approach was to establish a group called “People Who Care”; as I recall they designed a logo and had jackets made with the logo. The group made a schedule so there would be a half dozen or more members wearing those jackets out around town most evenings. They were to watch for opportunities to do something for someone, however small. There was one primary rule when they were asked who they were: never give your own name, just give the group name, “People Who Care”, and the church name (I think they had business cards with the information). At first they only did little things like getting (and paying for) a taxi for someone in a crisis, walking the streets and looking at parking meters and putting a couple of nickels in any that had run out, carrying groceries for someone, and other such things. But they did such things often enough that word got around; they also realized that they were avoiding some critical places, primarily bars – so they started scheduling members to go to bars in pairs, where sure enough the level of needs people had jumped up several notches. I remember one example where two men walked into a bar, wearing their jackets with the logo, and immediately encountering someone who was suicidal; gathering their courage they intervened, convincing the person to come with them – and they woke up a psychologist/counselor member of the group at something like one in the morning to talk to the person; they also provided a safe place to sleep that night, and they spent a chunk of time on the phone arranging resources to deal with the situation that had made the person suicidal. After that the group started getting calls from bar managers to please send a pair of their members to be at their bar especially on Thursday through Saturday – and from there it was like a snowball rolling down hill, the ministry getting larger and reaching more people, helping people in more and more critical situations.
The church ended up putting a large version of the People Who Care logo on the church because people started showing up and often asking if they were at the right place. And the People Who Care got more members, some who’d been church members who hadn’t really been interested in the group but who got excited when they heard about some of the amazing situations the group was encountering and helping people, but more who’d been helped and wanted to do the same for others.
I tried to find them online but could only find a group apparently inspired by them, but in Australia instead of the U.S.
At any rate, that’s an example of what churches could/should be doing.

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Sort of back to how scripture was written, I was re-reading what Jim said about C S Lewis wrote and his observations (Look at the transcript just after the Part II heading for better context). He states:

“ So God didn’t drop the exact words of the Bible down from heaven. People in an ancient culture wrote what they experienced and believed. And their stories were taken up by God to be used in their religious communities to communicate important truths.”

I like it, and think I agree with that, but was struck today that we somewhat incorporate that when we say that God has kept his message intact through the ages, preserving what he desired to communicate to us through language changes and translations. Also, He kept it true despite edits and text variations and even scribal errors. Thus, the stoning of the adulteress as a later addition to John’s book it is not a problem, as God can use it to communicate.

A question arises in my mind, is how does that differ in nature from the assertions of the King James Only crowd who say that God divinely inspired that version and that version only as the true word of God?

I have my own thoughts, mostly related to Jim’s statement, “ Rather than a kind of universal answer book. It’s an ancient library full of wisdom from the perspective of the ancient cultures in which it was written.”. This view is similar to Enn’s view as I understand it, and is helpful in making ancient writing relevant to modern life.

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A couple of months ago I listened to a presentation by an Orthodox theologian on the matter of Theosis, a two-hour talk, and by the start of the third half hour I could grasp that faith and works are a single thing, that the West has somehow made a distinction without a difference. I’m going to have to find that online, because my mind is stuck back in the division between the two.

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A few comments:

  1. This quote by Bruce Metzger might be helpful:

“In short, the Scriptures, according to the early Fathers, are indeed inspired, but that is not the reason they are authoritative. They are authoritative, and hence canonical, because they are the extant literary deposit of the direct and indirect apostolic witness on which the later witness of the Church depends.”

Excerpt From
The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
Bruce M Metzger

This material may be protected by copyright.

  1. The scriptures never claim to be, in their entirety, inspired. The passage in 2 Timothy is about the holy scriptures that Timothy had known from his youth, the Septuagint.

  2. God has always used imperfect people, imperfect presentations, even imperfect writings to do build His kingdom.

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I agree with this perspective on scripture and would also add that the primary function of the text is to point us to Christ. We read the words on the page in order to come to a relationship with The Living Word of God which is Jesus. I do not “follow the bible”, I follow Jesus. So as long as the text is reliable enough to convey accurate information about Jesus, I dont get stressed by its grammatical form, inclusions of minor errors or brain farts by the authors, or by the lack of perfect preservation of every jot and tiddle.

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