On the “Decline” of the Church in America: Devil Worship for the Sake of the Common Good, by Allan Bevere, with a zinger for an ending!

So much ado has been made about a recent Pew Research Center report on the decline of Christianity in America. Many have weighed in on what the results of the research mean. Many things I have read are insightful, such as United Methodist Bishop Ken Carter’s post on the matter. I have found other analyses to be extremely wanting (I won’t link to any of those posts). All I want to do here is throw out some random thoughts on this matter for your consideration. What I say is certainly not the last word (I am not smart enough to have the last word on anything.), neither are my musings beyond refutation (let the refuting begin). Rather, I am just posting some thoughts as a pastor of thirty years and a professor of twenty, who finds all this stuff of interest.

First, there is really no definitive evidence that active worship attendance in the United States has declined over the past two centuries. Dean Merrill in his book, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church, written over twenty years ago, has demonstrated that active church attendance in the U.S.A. has always hovered between thirty to thirty-five percent of the population. Whatever percentages we have today are approximately the same as two hundred years ago.

Second, the church in the United States is imbued with the model of Western consumerism. We are not nearly as interested in the hard work of making disciples as attracting people who will basically assent to Christians beliefs, putting enough money in the plate to sustain our current ministries and especially our buildings. The focus on prayer, devotion, and service must be at the center, or we will end up not the disciples of Jesus who desire to serve, but consumers who are only interested in how they can be served by the church.

Third, and let’s talk about our buildings… let’s be frank… for many of us pastors, we are so focused on keeping up the viability of our physical plants that it so often drives our ministry. We have to make sure that whomever we minister to and attract to the church must also have the financial ability to support the budget, that we too often ignore the ministry opportunities to the poor and disenfranchised living around us who need ministry. Yet, they are ignored because we are only interested in people who can help us pay the bills. So our ministry is focused not on who needs Jesus, but on what can they do for us. I will never forget the Sunday a couple of years ago when we took in seventeen new members of our church. Two of them were homeless. I was so proud of the fact that two homeless people were so accepted by our church that they wanted to formally belong. After worship during our welcome reception, I had two different people come to me and say, “So what that they joined the church. They don’t have any money to put in the plate.”

Let’s admit that our buildings are too often an albatross around our collective necks. The church needs to be driven, not by the monthly utility bills, but by the kingdom vision being displayed each week.

Fourth, and finally, let’s finally admit that the church in America is a product of Christendom. I don’t care whether as a Christian you call yourself conservative, evangelical, liberal, or progressive, you are mired in a context in which you think it is more important to influence the state than for the church simply to be a witness in its life and mission of what the kingdom of God looks like without nation state politics.

Let’s be honest– when Christians of all earthly nation state political stripes hear the word “politics,” they don’t think church, but nation state. Too many Christians are more beholding to Reinhold Niebuhr than Jesus Christ. The Church of Jesus Christ cannot be what God wants it to be until it sheds its conservative/liberal, evangelical/progressive posture to focus on what God really has in mind in Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 4:8-11. we read,

Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

I will tell you this– when I listen to nation state political activists on the left and on the right, if they were with Jesus at his temptation, they would be arguing to bow down to Satan that they might control the kingdoms of the world for the common good, for social justice and for traditional family values. After all, what’s a little devil worship if it will bring social justice and family values to the world?

Chapter 5 of Mark Harris’s book The Nature of Creation: Examining the Bible and Science looks at the biblical framework of creation. The concern is not so much the act of creation, but the way in which the bible’s authors talk about the nature of creation, especially time and space and the theological significance of this discussion. The challenge is to try, as much as we are able, to project ourselves back some two to three or four thousand years and imagine how the ancient Near Eastern audience pictured creation and God’s relationship to creation. Harris starts with two ideas that should guide the approach to scientific topics – including time and space – in the Bible.

First, we need to move away from a neat division between natural and supernatural.  The Israelites certainly knew that there were a range of normal, regular processes in the world. However, they did not draw a neat line between God’s action and these “natural” processes. The rising and setting of the sun, the downward flow of rivers, and the progression of seasons were known to be regular and “normal” – but they were not viewed apart from God.

In short, there is often no easy division between the natural and the supernatural in the texts of the Bible. Such a division stems from much later philosophical developments and is more at home in our modern scientific worldview.  Let us take an example. Can we say that Yahweh’s creative work in making “springs gush forth in the valleys” (Ps 104:10) is of a different kind from that which miraculously stopped the river Jordan flowing so that Joshua and the people could cross (Jos. 3:16)?

The first is a normal occurrence, while the second had a specific purpose, but it isn’t clear that there is a theological difference between the two descriptions.

…the point of both is that the phenomena they describe occur because God is “Lord of all the earth” (Josh. 3:13). To distinguish God’s natural activity from God’s supernatural activity is thus to imply two mutually exclusive views of divine activity, which goes beyond what the biblical authors claim, at least in these two texts. (p. 84)

This isn’t to say that the biblical authors were ignorant of regular behavior and many workings of nature – including the science necessary for agricultural practice. They could and did distinguish between God’s normal activity and new or novel action. The description of the demise of those who belonged to Korah in Numbers 16, for example,  makes a distinction between natural events and a miraculous event (a “new creation”). God’s activity, however isn’t viewed as confined to these miraculous events. Normal, “natural” processes are also given theological explanations “The people of the biblical world were capable of thinking in scientific ways not so far removed from  ours in some respects, but also capable of expressing a thorough-going theistic theology when it came to literary expression.” (p. 86)

Second, we need to avoid thinking about the ancient authors and audience as “primitive.”  This is more a problem for scholars than Christians, but nonetheless is important to point out. While there are difference in perspectives between the modern and ancient world, the divisions are not as clean as many would like to claim. The naturalistic point of view prevalent among scholars today carries much less weight among the wider population. Likewise there is evidence for skepticism in the past. Harris points out that Josephus realized that many would be skeptical of the Exodus account and tailored his argument accordingly.  The modern scholarly stereotype of ancient ignorance and superstition is wrongheaded.

The differences in ancient and modern outlooks are more subtle than such terms as primitive and enlightened convey.

While our view of cosmic order is heavily influenced by the natural sciences, Israelite thinking sees creation in terms of distinctions between order and disorder which we barely recognize, especially between “clean” and “unclean” states of existence, prescribing social and ritual interactions, which foods can and cannot be eaten, and so on. It is not that the Israelites lived in a mystical world where myth was inseparable from reality … but in a world which was differently conceived from ours in terms of order and propriety. (p. 89)

One key point relates to the distinction between natural and supernatural described above. The distinction between deism and theism is a modern invention. The tendency to push God out of natural normal occurrences is deistic and “any tendency to towards Deism in our interpretations of the Bible should be carefully highlighted and evaluated.” We may, simply, be missing the point.

So how did the biblical authors and audience understand such “scientific” concepts as time and space?

Harris runs through a number of aspects of time in the bible. Time isn’t simply a linear scientific concept related to cause and effect and process. On a grand scale time – as we experience it at least – is contingent on God as part of creation. There was a beginning to time (as we experience it). There is an end of time – but “it is perhaps not a final end so much as a completion or fulfilment: the beginning of the new creation.” (p. 93) There is a flow to time, but time is best described in terms of fixed points and theologically significant events. Historical time is not an impersonal and objective parameter. “Rather, it is the arena in which God’s personal will and purposes are revealed.” (p. 93)  Although it is common to view God as outside time, this seems to be more of a philosophers move than a biblical move.

[T]he biblical texts … suggest that God is inside time, experiencing it in ways outside our ken. God engages fully with it and in it, but is by no means constrained by it.  It might be better therefore, to use a relational metaphor rather than a spatial one, to say that God exists in relationship with time rather than outside it.  God relates to time in analogous ways to those in which God relates to other created entities being both transcendent and immanent with respect to it. (p. 97)

The view of eternity – the age to come – is ambiguous, but reflects the point of view of God who is drawing us forward into his presence. This is particularly true in the New Testament. “God relates to created time from eternity by reaching back and redeeming time so as to bring it into eternity.” (p. 99) And Harris concludes: “An ontological view of time is replaced by a relational view. God’s transcendence relates to eternity, while God’s immanence relates to time.” (p. 99)

Dates and numbers in the Bible reflect this relational view of time. These often carry a significance that prevents accurate numerical calculations of the passage of time.  As one example, Bishop Ussher’s calculation of the age of the earth from biblical genealogies overlooks the way that dates have been systematized to convey general concepts rather than precise passage of time. There are patterns that convey cultural and theological meaning. The non-random nature of the ages in the genealogies, using multiples of 5 and 60, for example. Another example is the common use of forty and its multiples to describe spans. Rain fell for forty days and forty nights. Moses was in Egypt for forty years and then in exile for forty years and led Israel for forty years. The time from the Exodus to the building of Solomon’s temple is given as 480 years, and many reigns of kings or judges were forty years. The common occurrence of forty is especially obvious when reading (or listening to) the books of the Old Testament in large chunks rather than isolates bits and pieces.

The biblical authors were not bound by our scientific worldview and our concern for technical and literal accuracy when citing numbers. But we should not set up too strong a distinction between them and us for two reasons:

1. The Israelites were as capable as we are of performing accurate calculations using elementary numbers … . The differences concern more their interest in the significance of numbers and dates. …

2. It should not be concluded from this discussion that every number and date recorded in the Bible is of symbolic value only, since some narratives show signs of careful historical research not unlike that of modern-day historians. (p. 101)

The approach the biblical authors took to numbers and dates reflected the specific concerns and literary forms of the various books and sources. We shouldn’t assume that they all reflect a technical historical accuracy.

The ancient Hebrew view of space. The ancient Hebrew view of the cosmos is as complex as the view of time. There are varied views on the construction of the world presented in the Bible. Ancient Israelite cosmology was not modern cosmology in disguise. It used common ideas from the surrounding culture. Most importantly, Harris argues that the ancient Hebrews had no simple, uniform understanding of a three-tiered cosmos with heavens above, the earth, and the realm of the dead below. He suggests that “most of the cosmological statements which are interpreted as evidence for in its favor are in fact metaphorical allusions to God’s relationship with the world.” (p. 104)  Most of the language used to describe the cosmos has more theological than scientific significance. The biblical authors were not particularly interested in describing the material world. Rather they were interested in the immanence and transcendence of God himself.  The three-tiered cosmology is symbolic way of talking about religious truths.  In fact, “many of the biblical interpretations of physical space are metaphors for the Creator/creation relationship.” (p. 107)  The various references to an “earthly Jerusalem” and a “heavenly Jerusalem” are another example of the metaphorical significance of physical space.

Conclusion. Our modern scientific preoccupation with the pernicious tyranny of literalism and a scientific worldview places something of a hurdle between us and the ancient biblical authors and audiences.  We expect them to communicate in ways that the simply did not understand or see as important.  Harris concludes:

Our modern scientific worldview has clearly drawn us into a much more deistic frame of mind than the early Israelites, or at least those who were active in the composition of biblical texts. If we find it straightforward to see the big picture of our world, of time and space, of boundaries and structures, without God active in it, then the early Israelites seem to have found it correspondingly harder to conceive of such a big picture. Their default big picture incorporated God’s activity as a matter of course. Ours rarely does. (p. 110)

Many of the difficulties in reconciling modern science with the Bible arise, quite simply, from this difference in perspective. The Bible won’t change. We need to understand this difference in perspective in order to faithfully interpret the intent and message of Scripture.

Do you agree with Harris, that the biblical authors were more interested in theological concepts than in the scientific ideas about time and space?

Does his description of the difference between modern and ancient perspectives ring true?

If so, how should this influence our approach to scripture?

If you wish to contact me, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

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Dennis Okholm is professor of theology at Azusa Pacific University.  He is the editor or author of several books including the well received, Monk Habits for Everyday People.

This interview revolves around Okholm’s latest book, Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins: Learning from the Psychology of Ancient Monks .

The interview was conducted by David George Moore.  Dave blogs at www.twocities.org.

Moore: I am going to begin with a somewhat personal question.  It really is not personal, I guess, because “Rate My Professors” is public!  In any case, I was perusing the many favorable comments from your Azusa Pacific students and want to hone in on the description of one student: “He is very relaxed…”  Is being “relaxed” or we might say being at “peace” part of your natural constitution or have you grown into that virtue?  If it is the latter, what specifically has helped you?

Okholm: First, I should admit that I never look at “Rate My Professors.” The reason precisely has to do with the subject matter of this book: I need to take precautions against envy and pride, and I know that if I look at my “ratings” it will lead to both vices—with are related, by the way.

But, to answer your question, I think it simply has to do with my personality, perhaps for two reasons. In high school a church youth leader shared with me for the first time that God accepted me as I am. That gave me a confidence that I hadn’t had before. In addition, my father was a very good public speaker, and I think that rubbed off on me in such a way that it added to the confidence. So I guess the confidence expresses itself in being “relaxed.” Beyond that, I just enjoy teaching and love being with my students.

Moore:Briefly tell us the difference and relationship between the eight deadly thoughts and the seven deadly sins.

Okholm: The list of seven deadly sins stems from Gregory the Great’s Morals on Job (6^th century). But he derived that from the work of Evagrius (4^th century) and John Cassian (5^th century). Evagrius talked about eight “thoughts” that are universally aspects of human life but which interfere with a healthy spiritual life. Cassian took that list and reflected on it further in his work The Institutes. Then Gregory revised the list of eight into seven: essentially he combined two of them as “sloth,” distinguished pride from vainglory and made it the fountainhead of the seven, and added envy.

Moore:There is immense insight and practical help to be gained from Christian writers in the ancient era.  Why are so many of us ignorant of these riches?

Okholm: Great question and one that concerned me enough to write the book. There are probably several reasons to be given in answer to your question, but no doubt one is because we are captivated by whatever it is contemporary in our consumer-oriented culture. We see that in the church’s worship, for instance. C. S. Lewis wrote about this in the Introduction to St. Vladimir Seminary’s edition of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Everyone should read this. Lewis was singing the praises of old books that have been time-tested, and he recommends we read one old book for every new book; but, knowing that is probably too much to expect, he suggests one old for every two new.

There are other reasons. Some of it has to do with our own pretention: namely, that the latest is the best. Another has to do with translations: some read well and some do not. I think folks like Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove recognize this, so that he, for one, composed a paraphrase of St. Benedict’s Rule that encourages people to read what they might have found cumbersome to digest otherwise. (Benedict is in the same tradition with Evagrius, Cassian, and Gregory.)

Sadly, our church leadership does not often encourage us to look to the past for wisdom from the Christian tradition, yet it is our own tradition that has so much to offer. So one of the reasons I wrote this book is to help Christians realize that we have been studying what we call “psychology” for centuries and that we have been doing it from a Christocentric perspective. In fact, I discovered that much of what these early monastics wrote is corroborated by contemporary findings in the social sciences. I wish more of our Christian psychologists were encouraged to read this ancient literature in their training, but, sadly, they often are not. For instance, it would be wonderful if they would be assigned Gregory’s On Pastoral Care. I used to assign it when I taught the one theology course that was required by Wheaton Graduate School at the time for all students in the M.A. Clinical Psychology program.

Moore: American Christianity tends to promote a behavioristic model of Christian growth.   What are a few problems with this approach, and how do the ancient monks offer a better way?

Okholm: It may be surprising for many to learn that ancient monks were very holistic in their thinking. There was some Platonic or Neo-Platonic influence that tended toward a dualism at times, but as one of the monks put it (to paraphrase), we need to treat our bodies as if we will live for a long time and our souls as if they will be required of us tonight.

While I do agree that there is a “behavioristic model” of Christian growth at work in our churches today, I think that what is more prevalent is a kind of Gnostic dualism. N. T. Wright talks about this in Surprised by Hope. The danger is that it splits what is spiritual from what is embodied and material. But God always meets us through the material. This why I think embodied habits are good for the soul (whatever the “soul” is). The ancient monks certainly saw this in the way they consumed food, for instance. On the one hand, they recognized that gluttony had to do with our thought life. (In fact, I discovered that gluttony is not just about overeating, but it could be about undereating. It has to do with our thoughts about food, which is why what the monks talk about jibes with what a lot of what we talk about when it comes to anorexia and bulimia—a connection I make in the book.) But the thought life also is connected with our practices, which is why moderate fasting was prescribed by the monks.

So, one thing I have learned from the ancient monks is a more holistic approach to spiritual formation.

Moore: Respond to William Cavanaugh’s arresting observation that “Consumer culture is one of the most powerful systems of formation in the contemporary world, arguably more powerful than Christianity…”

Okholm: Cavanaugh does a great job talking about such things in Being Consumed. He insists that we are not so much attached to our stuff as detached, because we consume—we use up and replace. What the ancient monks were ultimately talking about is our loves. (In fact, askesis—spiritual discipline—was to cultivate apatheia—control of the passions such that they don’t interfere with one’s prayer life—which allows us to exercise agape. For example, as long as my thoughts are preoccupied by food or anger or envy, I cannot give myself completely to someone in love.)

Our loves or desires are what our consumer culture goes for. That’s why the information you need to know about certain pills is in small print in the television commercials, and why the lifestyle those pills are supposed to make possible is dramatized for your attention.

I wouldn’t say that Christianity per se is at fault, but the Christianity we practice (or fail to practice) is at fault. One of the questions that Cavanaugh asks that Jamie Smith picks up in Imagining the Kingdom is how a farm boy can be convinced to go to a foreign country to kill people he doesn’t know. Then Smith asks how a Christian could be convinced to be a martyr for Christ, suggesting that the answer is the same—liturgies that shape us. But what haunts me is that most U.S. Christians would sacrifice themselves for their country, but be less inclined (if at all) to be martyrs for Christ. I think this is related to the issue of our consumer culture. The nation has captured the supreme love of many because it has appealed to our desires, while, especially in Evangelical churches, we communicate information about the Faith while appealing to desires that have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, such as candy encased in plastic eggs dropped from helicopters as one church around here does at Easter.

Moore: How do you make Protestants less suspicious of ancient teachings which sound too (Roman) Catholic for their comfort level?

Okholm: This is precisely the concern I addressed in the second chapter of Monk Habits. One of the points I make is that these ancients belong to the church universal, not just to Roman Catholics. They came long before we officially split into Eastern and Western brands of Christianity, let alone before the West officially split into Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Just at Protestants appeal to Augustine (whom Calvin cites more than any other ancient source in his Institutes), so we can appeal to and draw from the ancient teachings of folks like Evagrius, Cassian, and Gregory. I think once most Protestants read something like Gregory’s On Pastoral Care in a good, contemporary translation, they will realize what a trove of treasures await them that they never knew lay deep in the soil of our Christian tradition. And, by the way, every pastor should read the fourth section of Gregory’s book; his advice would enhance the way they live out their calling.

Kyle Roberts, a former professor at Bethel who has since left and is now teaching in other venues, has a post up on the Progressive Christians portal at Patheos about the problems with inerrancy. At one time this was called “deconstruction” though technically speaking this is not deconstruction.

If you read the whole or Kyle’s post you will discover a tension — between his clear affirmation of Scripture of God’s Word and his critique of the term “inerrancy” as a good descriptor for what Scripture is.

I will post Kyle’s serious and clear set of problems for inerrancy below, but before that I want to offer my approach to such matters. Christians read the Bible as God’s Word, and he affirms such admirably in his conclusion. Reading the Bible as God’s inspired (another word he affirms here) Word requires a positive hermeneutical approach to Bible reading.

My years of teaching Bible to both Christians and non-Christians, and often to struggling Christians, led me to believe that the problems require a context or one runs the risk of actually deconstructing a person’s faith from the inside out. A focus on the problem then tends toward the deconstruction of a person’s (using the Bible itself to turn one against the Bible) faith rather than toward the open admission of problems set within a context of a hermeneutic for faith and the church.

I believe Roberts has the terms but not the focus of that kind of hermeneutic when he says in #1 below this:

the positive impulse behind the term is better served by words like: “true, trustworthy, effectual, powerful,” and–perhaps most importantly–inspired. 

But this implies for the teacher in the church, especially for the one who is teaching those in their formative years, to form a larger hermeneutical approach that sets those problems in the context of “true.” By the way, I too find the term “inerrancy” problematic — the term, mind you. Kyle says things here about this term I totally agree with it: it is modernistic, it is empirical, it tends toward defending the Bible (when the Bible defends us!), it tends toward debates about what is historical and what is not (I find his question about the axe head largely beside the point), etc.. Every term — inerrancy or true — begs for definition and delineation, but the word true is noble and biblical and historic and a part of the human thinking system. The other term is not.

So, I sympathize but I want more at the end (and perhaps Kyle will provide that) — and I want to see those problems set in a hermeneutical approach that encourages us to trust that God speaks to us in Scripture. In other words, I want the more of a constructive approach to Scripture that can be used by churches and individual Christians.

Many of us, and I suspect Kyle is in this camp, think the best approach is narratival (see my The Blue Parakeet).

My last comment is that these problems, too, need to be set in a context of how the best proponents of inerrancy explain such problems in the best of ways (and some of them are question begging and sloppy thinking designed to protect what does not need protection). One cannot ask too much of a blog post, so this is not a criticism of Kyle’s post or what he himself thinks, but an added point. Over the years, while I have occasionally said that the term inerrancy is so problematic that is difficult to use, I have found great collegiality with those who do affirm it. I find the spirit of inerrancy true to Scripture: we stand under the Word to listen to it as God’s obedient church. We do because what God says is true.

Roberts:

(1) there are so many definitions of inerrancy that is has become a mostly meaningless word (perhaps like “evangelicalism” itself. As I suggested above, the positive impulse behind the term is better served by words like: “true, trustworthy, effectual, powerful,” and–perhaps most importantly–inspired. 

(2) It is mainly a political and “power” word, a shibboleth useful for maintaining boundaries and for gatekeeping who is in and who is out. We see this time and again.  We see the power-play, shibboleth narrative played out time and again in Christian denominations, colleges, seminaries, churches, etc. Often the conflict is over interpretations of Scripture, but very often the issue is directed back to assumptions about “inerrancy”–and to the way that is defined by those in power).

(3) The more literalist and propositionalist definitions of inerrancy just don’t square with the diversity, humanity (culturally embedded), and limitations of the text. They also make strong assumptions that the Bible itself proclaims its own “inerrant” nature. Upon closer inspection, it simply does not. Even the most widely used texts, like 2 Timothy 3:16-17, simply do not prove the more propositionalist (literalist) versions of the Evangelical position.

(4) The doctrine of inerrancy too greatly neglects the role of tradition and the “church catholic” in the formation of the canon. This is another way of saying that inerrancy undermines the humanity of the Bible. The portrait which emerges from “plenary verbal inspiration” is too often that of an impeccable, immune from human (fallible) input, book that just sort of drops out of the sky–rather than a collection of books that came to be stamped as authoritative over time through a rather messy process. And I haven’t even broached the issue of the contested canon between Protestants and Catholics!

(5) The doctrine of inerrancy is simply too modernistic and “objectivist” in orientation. As Donald Bloesch puts it, “”I am not comfortable with the term inerrancy when applied to Scripture because it has been co-opted by a rationalistic, empiricistic mentality that reduces truth to facticity.” In other words, inerrancy is bound up with a particular kind of epistemology: one which cannot account for the richness of truth and ways of knowing. Perhaps we should be looking to the Bible to do things other than (or at the very least, much more than, give us propositional doctrines, “rules for living,” even “theologies” of God that preclude mystery and that are very often bogged down by the humanity reflected by the biblical authors (i.e. Patriarchy).

(6) The doctrine of inerrancy is based on an epistemologically certainty that is simply untenable. It assumes that in the divine revelation given in Scripture, we have a kind of immediate access to the pure truth of God, shining through. But this is to neglect, as Gabriel Fackre points out in The Doctrine of Revelation, the “already and not yet” tension that the Bible itself teaches: “To hold that the original writings of Scripture in all the parts and on all their subject matter are so superintended by the Holy Spirit as to constitute them with an unqualified inerrancy is to confuse the present Dawn with the final Day” (170). This is why many Evangelicals reject the use of many higher critical methodologies: they have confused the “Dawn” with the “Day,” and are therefore looking to the Bible to give the the “Day,” right now.

(7) The doctrine of inerrancy too often accepts the biblical texts as they are rather than seeking to discern what they might be pointing us toward. If we were to only read the Bible literally (via the literalist doctrine of inerrancy), might have a difficult time denouncing some abhorrent things that the Bible does not denounce. War, violence, slavery, violent patriarchy, etc.). We need to think with–to theologize with and alongside the text. But we must also be willing to go beyond the confines or limits of a literalist, wooden reading of the text, as the Spirit leads us. To say this another way: a preoccupation with inerrancy can get in the way of justice and abundant life. What would Jesus want? 

On top of it all, or perhaps underneath it all, is the sticky problem that the Bible just does contain “errors,” of various sorts. Rather than ignore these historical, chronological, scientific, moral problems, let’s take them up into a larger vision of God’s revelation, God’s truth, God’s salvation in Christ and the Spirit.

The Christian canon is an irreplaceable document for Christians and for the church. And it is, in my view, the inspired Word of God that can leads us into the knowledge of God. But it facilitates that relational knowledge of God. And God is the authority–not the Bible. Kierkegaard suggested that perhaps there are errors in the Bible (errors of history or grammar, etc.) that were intentionally allowed by God to keep us from putting our faith in the Bible, and allow us to put our faith in God.

– See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unsystematictheology/2015/05/seven-problems-with-inerrancy-leaving-evangelicalism-2/#sthash.qgzmw2cp.dpuf