“Jesus loves me, this is Know. For the bible tells me so”
The bible has two properties: its contingency and its indicative authority
God is truth. And we as mortal beings are to seek out that truth. This is humanity’s curse in that truth is hidden from us and it is almost our spiritual duty to quest for life’s truth. Jesus revealed himself to us as a living man and now as the living word. Simply acknowledging Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life” does not mean that one has found truth – one has to seek him out.
Before the Fall, there was no such thing as the written word since the voice of God was in the garden – there was direct communication between God and man. This shows that there was no need for any written word to act as the ‘go-between’ for both God and man; simply put: it was just God and man and nothing else. However, the time of paradise is long gone and nowadays, a common belief in Christianity is that God speaks to his people through the written word and that his people can find him in the scriptures. There is no doubt about this. However, many forget that Jesus is and has always been the living word, while the bible - the written word, is a mere record of the Word; a reflection of God whose essence it merely points to but does not contain. To equate the living word and the written word would be a grave theological and epistemological mistake.
Now the question I pose here is: why should God and even man be confined to the pages of a book and the stories it contains; for surely that is what the bible literally is. One can undoubtedly find God not only in the bible but also in everything else – nature, the kindness of a stranger, encouraging words from a friend; and even through apriori thinking alone. This is God’s natural advantage over the enemy in that he grants us knowledge of himself through any possible medium if we would but open our eyes. Unfortunately, it is the flaw of Christians to think that the sole and guaranteed way to know God is through the bible alone. It is such that God, in his infinite wisdom chose the bible as the main medium in which he could make himself known. Why he did so we do not know. But an all-powerful God has an infinite number of possible mediums in which to speak to us, and so why should everything else be an exception? And so this brings about the contingency of the bible, in that it is not absolutely necessary in the natural order of things. It just so happens that God chose the bible to be the ‘bible’ and not a different entity.
Furthermore, the bible doesn’t give one a privileged access to God since all men have access to him ever since the finished work at the cross. Christians have a psychological tendency to elevate the bible above its practical function to a somewhat demi-god status when its sole function is to simply point us to God. The scriptures (as with everything else) are mere representations of the true reality of things and are not the reality itself. One can even postulate that the term “holy scriptures” commits a spiritual fallacy: the scriptures themselves are not holy; it is the truth behind them that is holy. This can be analogous to the next point regarding the bible’s authority.
The message behind the bible is the law of God. But the law is nothing if there is no one to enforce it. In the case of Christianity, God is the judge of all things, and quite literally, his Word is law. The highest and unquestionable authority is God himself, and it is not stated that God is the Word, and not the bible? Therefore, one can postulate that with God theoretically out of the picture, the bible and all its doctrines have no credence or authority. It is only the truths that they point to that give them this credence. The bible on its own has no more authority then a common man under the law, and is therefore not the law but something that represents the justice and authority of God. Thus, those who use the bible as a shield against ethical attacks and as a source of spiritual confirmation without acknowledging the authority behind are committing an act of folly; simply professing statements such as “because the bible said so” is a terrible attempt to lend a statement credence by appealing to an authority that isn’t even in the bible. And so when following the law of the bible from whatever motive seems almost absurd as living a life according to any work of literature. Furthermore, claiming that the bible was divinely inspired still does not change anything; the hand of God could have transcribed divine law in many possible ways but without altering its very essence. The bible is then like a gavel, which when used by the common man has no effect in the courtroom, but when used by the judge, has the power to bring about life or death.
God did not give us the bible; he gave us the Word, that is Jesus. The bible merely indicates truth that is shrouded in its syntactical, allegorical statements. And without God to give these statements meaning and authority, it should be treated with just as much regard (or disregard) as any other work of literature. Thus, remove the bible from the altar and the candles that flank it and place it back among the other books on the dusty shelf.
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