In 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about his strong opposition to German Nazis and, as a result, his opposition to the German Christian Church that had capitulated to them (or in some cases eagerly gone along with them):

I find myself in radical opposition to all my friends; I became increasingly isolated with my views of things, even though I was and remain personally close to these people. All this has frightened me and shaken my confidence so that I began to fear that dogmatism might be leading me astray—since there seemed no particular reason why my own view in these matters should be any better, any more right, than the views of many really capable pastors whom I sincerely respect.[1. from Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition, 2010), 197.]

He wrote that in a letter to Karl Barth––usually considered the greatest theologian of the past few centuries. Barth was one of the people who disagreed with Bonhoeffer’s stance, or at least found it too extreme.

Almost all of us would look back in history and say that Bonhoeffer was right. His beliefs led him to properly oppose the Nazis while many other “really capable [and respectable] pastors” were swept up by the current of the day, failing to see the injustice and heresy the German Church was permitting and promoting.

Bonhoeffer stood alone. In this, he wasn’t far different from Martin Luther before him. Nearly every voice around them told them to stand down, yet their consciences and beliefs wouldn’t allow it.

But for every Bonhoeffer and Luther, there are thousands of people whose dogmatism has truly led them astray. The voices around them are telling them to stand down––and those voices are right.

The idealist’s dilemma: how does one know if (s)he is another Bonhoeffer or Luther or one of the thousands who truly should stand down? The odds tell each idealistic, would-be reformer that (s)he is likely the latter. Stand down.

But if everyone listened to that advice, we would have no Bonhoeffers and no Luthers. That creates a dilemma for us all.

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I sometimes tell a story about the things God did in my life during a youth mission trip in 2006.

I use times and numbers––”We got to the airport at 7:10… There were 18 youth and 9 adults.” I use those numbers because they give important definition to the story, and because they’re the details of the story, as best I remember. But I’m honestly not certain about them. There may have been 19 youth and 10 adults, and we may have gotten to the airport at 7:15. I don’t remember anymore.

You can listen to my story in two ways. You can appreciate it for what it is––a true narrative account about some important things I experienced. Or you can hone in on all the details and start digging through historical records to see if what I said is true. And if you discover that there were 2 more adults there than I said, you can toss the whole story out as a falsification.

This illustrates the first problem with biblical inerrancy.

You may have heard people say that the original documents are free from mistakes. The “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” says, “inerrant signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake.” For the inerrantists, any factual error––geographical, historical, scientific––makes the whole thing null and void.

First of all, I just don’t think that’s true, as my story above illustrates.

More importantly, I think it leads us down all sorts of rabbit trails. Rather than focusing on the main point of the scriptural account, we end up trying to reconcile the 24,000 who died in Numbers 25:9 with the 23,000 listed for the same event in 1 Corinthians 10:8.

What would happen if I told my story about the great things God did in my life through that 2006 youth mission trip, and the person listening instantly set out to examine the accuracy of each detail? It would be rather upsetting to me. They gave their primary interest to details that were only intended to be support, and they missed the real point of the story.

A focus on inerrancy misses the point of Scripture. It gets us hung up on the minor details, which––I think––may occasionally include some factual errors. Factual errors that may go all the way back to the original writing.

The second problem

Let’s assume those factual errors don’t go back to the originals. That’s the line we hear frequently. “The original manuscripts were inerrant. They were corrupted somewhere in transmission.” And inerrantists take that as some sort of comfort.

It should be the exact opposite. It should be sheer horror to them.

If you claim that the originals were inerrant, but they have since been distorted, then what are you left with?!? Nothing but a distorted, untrustworthy current set of manuscripts. How do you decide just how distorted they have become, if all you can say is that the originals were right, but we no longer have them?

For those who find it so important that the Bible be without error, what could undermine their faith more than the knowledge that a flawless Bible is no longer available to them? And now what’s true and what’s not is just a guessing game. Perhaps an educated guessing game, but let’s face it: if we knew what the originals said, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.

The third problem

Because the genre of my 2006 mission trip story is literal-historical, it’s still important that this was an historical event, not just a fable.

In other words, if you went back and found out that no such trip ever took place, it would damage my credibility.

To their credit, the authors of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy say that they pay attention to genre. This is why they don’t take the parables to be actual historical accounts––they were told as parables, not historical accounts.

Sadly, the same authors don’t seem to really mean it. Here’s what they say about the creation and flood accounts:

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

The problem: Scripture’s teachings on creation and the flood aren’t written as literal history! They’re written as epic accounts that comment on the nature of God, humanity, and all of creation.

Why do those who hold to biblical inerrancy insist that these early epics are literal history, while they have no problem acknowledging that Jesus’ parables weren’t historical accounts?

Do the efforts to prove the historicity of the creation accounts amount to the same thing as setting out to prove the historicity of the prodigal son? I think so. They’re unhappy and unnecessary adventures. More importantly, though, they miss the real point. What if we spent all of our time trying to prove that the prodigal son really existed and missed the larger point conveyed in that parable? What a shame that would be!

[See “What if I don’t believe the Bible?” for more.]

A different way to regard Scripture

Let me propose something that has surely been proposed before. (If you know, please let me know who has proposed it. I’d love to see more.) Just as Christ came as the Word of God incarnate––100% God, 100% man––might we understand the inspiration and transmission of Scripture as 100% of God and 100% of man?

I believe Jesus came as the perfect Son of God. Sinless and blameless. A perfect representation of God in the flesh. I also believe he had real human will, thoughts, temptations. And I believe he dealt with some of the same weaknesses of being human that we all deal with. I bet Jesus occasionally stubbed his toe.

The person who accepts Christ as fully God but not fully man probably couldn’t accept a Christ who stubs his toe. It would seem undignified, somehow less than perfect. But the great wonder of the incarnation is that the One who is eternal and almighty came into our time and took on human weakness!

I believe the same regarding Scripture. I believe its inspiration and transmission are somehow 100% of God, 100% of man. In that, I believe it’s a perfect representation of God, without fault. And yet, I believe it was written by humans. I don’t think they wrote it in some trance-like state that was really just a straight bypass from God to paper. I believe the writing and transmission of Scripture really involved humans. And because of that, I believe it’s possible––in fact, demonstrated––that an occasional geographical or historical error may have occurred. The equivalents of stubbed toes, or of simple human forgetfulness, as my story at top illustrates.

In all, I think we can hold the Bible in the highest of esteem––as something both 100% inspired by God and protected by God in its transmission to us today (might we go so far as to even include its translation??)––and yet something with lots of human fingerprints on it, which will inevitably result in some stubbed toes along the way. But none that affect Scripture’s perfect representation of God and the faith he calls us to.

There’s an easy theological term for this, too: Biblical infallibility.

Want more? Join my email update list.

Next week: The beginning of a Lent series on the capital vices––Lust is a thief

A few years ago, I heard and loved this new rendition of an old Isaac Watts hymn, “Absent from flesh! O blissful thought.” I could listen to that tune over and over. And I can’t help but be swept up by the band’s soulful performance.

Sadly, I’ll never be able to sing the song in worship. It contains some terrible theology. More specifically, the song reflects the type of theology that has pillaged so much of the Western Church, leaving only a shell of the Christian faith in some places, and guiding us dangerously close to heresy in others.

The whole hymn looks forward to that blissful day when we will be “absent from flesh.” We could take this to be celebrating freedom from “the lustful desires of the flesh”––a theme we see several times in Scripture––and while the song certainly celebrates that freedom, it goes beyond it. It celebrates a final, disembodied, blissful existence.

That’s quite a contrast to Job’s proclamation, “And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”[1. Job 19:26]

You may think I’m quibbling. To the contrary, I think this affects nearly everything about our faith.

The Body of Christ

The great miracle of Christianity is that the Son of God came to earth and took on real flesh, lived a real, human existence, died a real, human death, and then was raised in the flesh. Forty days later, he was taken up into heaven, still in the flesh.

How odd that a faith so rooted in the miracle of Christ’s body would be at risk of denying the body’s importance.

In his brilliant book on Christian funerals, Tom Long says it a bit more bluntly: “The earliest Christians could never have anticipated how thoroughly we contemporary Christians would be willing to trade our incarnational birthright for a bowl of warmed-over Neoplatonic porridge.”[1. Thomas G. Long (2009-10-02). Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (p. 30). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition]

Our understanding of the body of Christ goes further––to something even more amazing to me. Those who are in Christ are now the body of Christ.

This means that Christians are connected in an organic way. We’re not just some voluntary organization of people with mutual interests––a Kiwanis Club or fraternity of sorts. “In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”[1. Rom 12:5]

When the apostle Paul tells the Corinthians to flee from sexual immorality, he doesn’t base it on a simple, “God said not to…” Instead, he says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!”[1. 1 Cor 6:15] Why flee from sexual immorality? Because our bodies are part of the body of Christ!

And when we take communion, it’s not just an act of commemoration, but actual participation in the body of Christ: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?”[1. 1 Cor 10:16]

Casualties of bodiless theology

Sex

There may be no bit of Protestant theology more impoverished than our understanding of sex and sexuality.

Some groups divorce our sexuality from our spirituality. What happens in the bedroom is personal, and so long as it doesn’t affect someone’s belief in God or service in the world, why should anyone care? I’ve seen a number of people try to argue that what the Bible has to say about sex isn’t really about sex, it’s about idolatry.

Do you see that move? Bodily things aren’t really at issue, just the spiritual meaning behind them…  Read through the book of 1 Corinthians, and you’ll see Paul trying to change the minds of a group who obviously thought something similar to this.

Other groups make sexuality about rules they find in the Bible. Ask them to elaborate a deeper theology of sexuality, and they’ll struggle to quote anything beyond proof-text Bible verses and trite sayings.

Where our theology has become absent from flesh, it’s causing an anemic theology of sexuality. Those who especially are losing out include singles, people struggling with fertility problems, and people of homosexual orientation. Though I’m not fully convinced by all their conclusions, the Roman Catholic Church has done a far better job of keeping flesh on our theology of sexuality (Pope John Paul II’s seminal work was titled A Theology of the Body). For more, see my post “Sexuality and Webbed Theology.”

Church

What happens when we stop seeing the Church as a living organism––the very body of Christ? The natural next step is to see it as a voluntary organization of like-minded people.

We stop acting as a body of people who are together because we’ve been brought together under the great headship of Christ. We stop seeing corporate worship as a mystical act, one in which we join God’s people on earth and all the company of heaven to praise his name.

Instead, we behave much like the rest of the world. We ask what “product” we’re offering to “attract” people. We look for how we, as individuals, are being “fed.”

We create an atmosphere where vocal Christian leaders like Donald Miller can say, “So, do I attend church? Not often, to be honest. Like I said, it’s not how I learn.” In the same post, Miller said that he doesn’t really connect to God by singing songs, either. For Miller, “attending church” is about learning something from a sermon and connecting emotionally through song. If a worship service isn’t meeting someone’s personal needs for learning and emotional connection, what’s the point?

Even more worrisome, Miller wrote a follow-up post where he said, “[M]ost of the influential Christian leaders I know (who are not pastors) do not attend church.”

My word of advice: if any of the Christian leaders you’re following “do not attend church,” I think you should stop paying attention to them as Christian leaders. They may be thoughtful, smart, sincere people, but their understanding of worship and the church is bordering on heretical. Listen to them as you would secular leaders––take the wheat; leave the chaff.[1. To be clear, I agree with Donald Miller that the church extends beyond any particular worship gathering. But Miller is treating as optional (and opting out) something that the Church has treated as essential in almost all places and times throughout history. When I see a “Christian” leader doing that, I run away.]

Do you see why I’ve been writing things like “No more teaching pastors!” and “Secret option C in the worship wars“? Many current practices in the church are teaching people like Donald Miller to think about church and worship in this hyper-individual, consumerist fashion. Only a church absent from flesh could have such an anemic understanding of the Church.

Eucharist

Did you know that treating Holy Communion as only a commemoration, or as optional in the life of the church, is a relatively new invention? Almost every great theologian and Bible scholar throughout history has agreed that at Communion, we come into the real presence of Christ in a unique way.

For 3/4 of the church’s history, the Eucharist was the climax of a worship service. Contrary to some people’s belief, reformers like Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, weren’t the ones responsible for displacing it. They sought to strengthen our view of the Word and reframe, but not weaken, our view of the Table.

Those reformers would be troubled to see many of our practices today––treating Communion as optional or taking it infrequently. They would be aghast at the common notion that lunch with friends after worship is a sufficient substitute for the Eucharistic celebration.

So our Eucharistic theology and practice has also been made absent from flesh in many quarters. Rather than encountering the real presence of Christ at the Table, we encounter ordinary bread and juice (or Goldfish Crackers and Sprite) in a commemoration where the actual elements are barely significant.

By trivializing the physical nature of things, we’ve lost the spiritual significance of them, as well. A Eucharist without Christ’s real presence loses its mystical quality. It puts a glass ceiling between heaven and earth and puts all significance in our remembering minds.

Christian Fiction

The Left Behind series is allegedly making another run at the big-screen. This time with Nicolas Cage. Oh my!

That series was the latest in a line of Christian pop culture that promotes this sort of bodiless theology. The end and goal of Christian life is to “fly away” in some sort of rapture experience. I’ll not belabor this point, but you need to know that this line of belief about the future is less than 200 years old.

Yes, for the first 1800 years of Christianity, just about no one taught about a pre-tribulation rapture. This is all part of a larger system known as “dispensationalism” that was invented around the same time.

Does this theology require an absent-from-flesh theology? Not necessarily. But it has produced most of our current notions about floating up to heaven for a disembodied eternity––a far cry from the biblical picture of resurrected and embodied life in a new heaven and a new earth.

Someone frequently called a forerunner of dispensationalist theology: Isaac Watts, the writer of that catchy hymn, “Absent from flesh! O blissful thought!” Perhaps the creative writing talents of people with this bodiless theology are the cause of its prevalence today.

These are just some starting thoughts. I haven’t even talked about funerals, disability, money, the environment, abortion, healing, or violence (to name a few more). What else would you say about a theology of the body and the things it affects?

Next week: “The Bible as 100% of God, 100% of man; or, Why I’m not a full inerrantist”

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