Biblical authority

Ok, so a few of us have been talking about Old Testment interpretation and part 2. A little while ago though, Tim O was talking about the Authority of the Bible and I thought it would be interesting to talk about how we understand the Bible, because I think we will have quite a number of different perspectives.

This is something that I'm not totally sure about. I do believe some key things about the Bible: It has challenged, comforted and inspired me in my life. I get pretty much all my values from it. I want to follow Jesus and his teaching, and I think that the best place to find Jesus' teaching is in the Bible. But further than that I'm not sure, you know infalliability and all that.

I don't think that the Bible is inerrant. In matters of science and history or whatever, even the 'original' documents might have errors. But that is not to say that it isn't an extremely reliable source- probably he most reliable for the periods and places that it talks about. I do believe that on matters of faith and practice it is fully trustworthy. (But of course we have to engage in careful interpretatoion to find out what that is). I think that this is called the infallibist view- that the Bible isn't a text book, so the facts aren't the most important thing.

This is also to do with how I believe God likes to work in the world. As He is a relational God (trinity etc), he likes to work through partnership and stuff. So he chooses to use falliable humans to get His plans done, coz it gives Him a kick, or brings Him more glory or whatever. He takes a risk though when He does it, with choosing Israel, when using Paul, or me or Billy Graham. Each time God takes a risk by using us rather than doing it Himself. And I think that He did that with the Bible. He took a risk by partnering with people who could get things wrong.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit lost here. As Tim O said in his recent post, I believe that some of the Bible's authority lies in the fact that it is kind of a family document. A history of our roots. Of a bunch of people who had crazy experiences of God, or went through mad things with God or wrote to God with pretty words. But its also a history of the development human race as well. Our routes- roots and routes! So Adam and Eve were some sort of primitive human beings who didn't know much about God, but knew Him. Then Abram gets a promise, Moses some commands, etc. So some of the authority of the Bible comes from it historcal value. But I think that its more than that.

Most evangelical Christians aren't big fans of what Karl Barth says about scriptural authority, but I think its got quite a lot of merit. He believes that scripture is a human product, and that it gains it's authority only if God gives it, which He has.

right, now an explanation for the horribly disjointed rant. I wrote this pretty good long post, then the bloomin maintainance people take the whole site offline. So I lose my original post, and have to wait an hour to find out that its been lost. So I write another one, in a mood, at 3'o'clock in the morning. Happy days! And I've got to work tomorrow. Bugger. So all I can hope is that this is a starting point for some more eloquent and structured discussion, and that I get a good sleep tonight!

I think in fact that the best thing I can do is give you a link to something I've just found by NT Wright (who Tim O was talking about a bit) about the authority of scripture. I'm going to print it off and read it, so I thought I might as well give you the link here