The Authority of Scripture
Follow up to "Why does Christianity believe in Hell and Demonic Forces?"
This essay assumes you have read my previous essay, “Why does Christianity Believe in Hell and Demonic Forces?”
I’ve spent quite a bit of energy over the past few months examining interpretations of the Christian faith that are broader than the “fundamentalist evangelicalism” (FE) I grew up with, and even outside of “FE” much of this material explicitly starts with the assumption of the absolute authority of the scripture.
Scripture. God’s Holy Word. The Bible. Composed of The New Testament (NT) with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and The Old Testament (OT) with the Old Covenant.
My earlier essay’s initial premise contains the assumption that the Bible is the complete authoritative scripture, and thus the OT was the complete scripture for Christ and the NT writers. This essay assumes the the following is established from that essay:
The OT contains so little on the doctrines of a Segregated Afterlife (SA), Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT), and the Devil and his angels (DF for Demonic Forces) that it is effectively completely silent on the topics for the sake of providing a foundation for NT theology on the subjects.
Christ and the NT writers didn’t reveal these doctrines, but rather it was already existing tradition/theology
SA, ECT, and DF1 can be demonstrated as already having robust theological foundations before Christ by examining the teachings found in the Book of Enoch (BoE) among other non-biblical ancient writings.
The NT considers these teachings, particularly the BoE to be valid prophecy (I.E. scripture)
I left ramifications from those conclusions unsaid in that essay. I will explicitly say those ramifications here:
The theology of SA, ECT, and DF don’t originate from Jesus or the Old Testament. They come from extrabiblical theological sources.
I was told all through my religious upbringing not to trust these extra-biblical sources. When I brought up BoE to someone recently, they pointed out the obvious conclusion that it can’t be accurately accredited to Enoch, and I agree. I’ve got just as much reason to believe that huge swaths of Daniel were written centuries after the Babylonian exile, and that Moses didn’t write the end of Deuteronomy that depicts his burial (or most of the first 5 books of the Bible for that matter, if he even existed). Going down the list of books of the Bible there are, to me, just as valid reasons to doubt the claimed authority of vast swaths of it.
Circling back to the ramifications of the conclusions from my earlier essay: Finally, I recognize that Christ didn’t first reveal how he as God created SA, ECT, and DF, but that instead he learned those concepts from a long tradition of old texts. These were texts that even the canon couldn’t swallow as being from God, even though they swallowed the genocidal stuff. Recognizing this further demonstrates to me that the assumption of authority so slavishly painted across the “scripture” as God’s revealed truth is misplaced. Particularly as it pertains to SA, ECT and DF.
But the impact of the conclusions of my earlier essay on the assumed authority of scripture isn’t happening alone. No, this is another large stone I’m only recently familiar with and can now place in a large burial mound of issues with its authority. To briefly acknowledge a few other stones in the mound, I’ll mention:
The “factuality” of the genesis creation myth has been lost to me. And with it so much of the Bible is now demonstrably inconsistent with the reality God created.
The inconsistence of the loving God reflected in Christ also having commanded his chosen people to commit geocide.
I keep running into passages where the NT writers explicitly say they are living in the last days, which makes sense since Christ told them they were.2 And yet here we are, nearly as far removed in time from Christ as he was from Abraham, or Abraham was from Adam. At least according to the authority of the Bible.
Anything revealed by the divine to the biblical authors has been subjected to the fidelity losses inherent to the 2,000-3,000 years between them and me.
Basically, the failure of “Apologetics.”
Even assuming the divine nature of Jesus, he didn’t write the Bible. I don’t accept those who did write those scriptures have any more authority on God’s will for my life than my bigoted 8th grade Bible teacher Mr. Burke, the theologically “liberal” Pete Enns from “The Bible for Normal People,” Mohamed Ali, or the Dali Lama.
The amazing thing is I think God is bigger than my doubt. His will for my life is important enough and big enough that it will come to be regardless of how accurate I am about the “authority” of scripture. Judging by the reactions I’ve seen when others voice such doubts I expect if my thoughts get read widely, some who disagree will not have faith strong enough to survive my voicing my doubt without attacking me for it.
I still examine scripture with a hunger for wisdom and understanding about my relationship with God. I still listen to the interpretations others have that can explain nuances I may have missed. Accepting the incompleteness of its authority has actually enhanced my ability to find new, likely more faithful understandings of the wisdom it contains.
I wish faith, hope, love, peace, and happiness to all.