Literal Truth, Inerrant God

Spirituality Column #250
August 23, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Literal Truth, Inerrant God
By Bob Walters

A popular online news organization recently posted a feature story about why it’s a mistake to read the Bible literally, and folly to think the Bible is inerrant.

Written by a Christian professor, the article cited predictable scholarship and supporting evidence. The Bible itself claims to be “inspired and useful” (2 Timothy 3:16), but not inerrant. Revelation (the Bible’s final book) in parts is impenetrable. Even the brilliant St. Augustine had to allegorize (or, “say it was something else”) the story of Jonah and the whale. The four Gospels don’t agree about what happened on which days of Holy Week when Jesus was betrayed, tried, crucified and resurrected.

Lots and lots of stuff in the Bible doesn’t seem to add up.

Well, it’s a good day for the Devil when he can sow doubt about the Bible, and by extension, about God. The double-entrendre headline, “4 reasons not to read the Bible … literally,” may be harmless, or could imply: The Bible is wrong, so if the Bible is the story of God, then God must be wrong. Hallelujah, we can ignore the Bible and God!

Misinterpreted or not, the headline harkens rehashing.

You see, a Christian faith conversation centered on literalism and inerrancy of the Bible will quickly go out-of-round for the simple reason that the conversation isn’t truly centered. The Bible is something dramatically more important than “literal” and “inerrant.” It is truth, which almost always involves more than simple calculation.

If the issue is, “The Bible doesn’t add up,” then let’s go to math class. Let’s add up a list of numbers, terms and factors; we’ll get a defensibly inerrant answer. But, if the “list” is actually a quadratic equation and calculated with the wrong method, say, addition, we’ll not only get the wrong answer but entirely miss the point of the exercise because we have mistaken its central purpose, which is not addition.

Secularist logicians and sadly more than a few Christians miss the “answer” of the Bible because they refuse or confuse the Bible’s central purpose – revealing God’s truth. Scripture’s message isn’t simple addition, it’s a cosmically complex equation of faith, hope, love, truth, creation, relationship, separation, loss, betrayal, death, redemption, eternal life and perfection. It’s the ultimate story problem.

And what’s the story? Jesus Christ is the literal truth about an inerrant God, and we – each of us personally – is a loved and important part of the equation.

That is the true center of the Bible.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was horrible at high school math but scored higher in math than verbal on the SAT. Go figure.