I believe the Bible because I believe in the Church.
I grew up in the Church.
The Church introduced Jesus to me.
The Church introduced the Scriptures to me. The Church has provided me tools and a
worldview to interpret the Scriptures and respond to Jesus.
Right now I am in a seminary class studying the gospel accounts
and Acts. Of course, the first couple
weeks we discussed the origins Scripture.
Interestingly enough, it dovetailed well with a conversation on the
relationship between the Church and Scripture I had recently had with some good
friends. I thought perhaps I would
discuss my views to some of the issues that came up in our discussion and see
what my blog readers think.
Perhaps I should first define my definition of Church.
In my writing, I use Church (with
a capital ‘C’) to refer to the fellowship of baptized Christ followers (both
living and dead) throughout time and geography who intentionally gather[ed]
together in local congregations for fellowship and ministry. I guess some may instinctively understand the
Church as necessarily being some
rigidly defined organizational structure (read denomination), but this is not
my belief. I use church (with a lowercase ‘c’) to refer to the fellowship of living
baptized Christ followers as a local body in a particular geography.
Within the Evangelical circles I often run, I find the
tendency to view the Scriptures as originating from outside the Church. I think perhaps this offers us Protestants a
bit of pride that we don’t have to thank the traditions of our Orthodox and
Roman Catholic brothers for canonizing and preserving our Scriptures. We can instead look to our hero Martin Luther
as rediscovering an inherent truth of a canon.
Without getting into a discussion on the Protestant Reformation that I
am unable (and currently unwilling) to engage fully, I submit that as
Evangelical Christians, we should both affirm and thank our ancient Catholic and
Orthodox brothers for their canonization and preservation as well as Luther for
his call to re-engage with Scripture.
Through looking again at the process that Scripture was
written and canonized, I am reminded just how much God relied on human
intellect and discernment. The text didn't
come through some supernatural and audible dictation, but rather through
careful study, consultation, reflection, and prayer. Luke, in the opening verses of His gospel
account, speaks of this careful process.
As these gospel accounts and letters were shared among the churches,
some became generally accepted as authoritative and some were not. By the time the Third Council of Carthage was
held in 397 A.D. (more universally formalizing what books are included in the
canon), the list had been generally accepted for quite some time by early
Church leaders and members.
I’m reminded that we interact with the Holy Spirit in much the
same way these biblical authors compiled and canonized Scripture. I am very skeptical of ideas and statements that
come through some ‘liver quiver’ moment that have not been tested through the
careful process of study, consultation, reflection, and prayer. In this same way I think my confidence in
Scripture would be greatly diminished if it was born out of this type of ‘liver
quiver’ without being carefully tested.
I am very confident the scrutiny the early Church gave the
Scriptures did well to test their accuracy, validity, and usefulness for
edifying the Church and ultimately testifying to the true “Word” Jesus Christ. I think it is an important distinction to
note that it was those early Christians, bonding together as the Church—the
Body of Christ—that wrote and scrutinized our texts. We are not forced to rely on one person’s
subjective ‘liver quiver’ as the foundation of our revelation of who God is. I believe godly and wise decisions were made
through the quite human processes of prayer, consultation, and reflection. Likewise, I am confident the Holy Spirit
continues to bless the Church with the gift of spiritual discernment for how we are to
interpret Scripture as we study, consult, reflect, and pray.
