I'm new to this board, so forgive me if this is a topic that's already been discussed in detail on another thread(s). If it has, I would appreciate someone directing me that way, as I would be interested in reading through the discussion.
To make a long story short, I was raised in a very conservative evangelical atmosphere, where the Bible was taken as the "word of God" in quite the literal sense. To question the supremacy and inerrancy of scripture was written off as liberal theology and deemed heretical.
Over the last few years, I've become bothered by a number of things about the Bible. My overarching struggle is that to force the Bible into the inerrancy box makes me feel like I have to ignore a bunch of material, or at best come up with what feel like weak attempts to explain away discrepancies and inaccuracies. I'll throw out a few things that I have come to find rather difficult to reconcile:
1. I know this is a huge one for many, but I just can't seem to get past the character of God as expressed in a number of OT accounts, particular in the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the slaying of entire people groups. I can't fit this God and the God of the gospels into the same mold. Sure the Canaanites were wicked based on Jewish values, but so were the vast majority of primitive tribal cultures. If we wouldn't condone genocide now because of a culture's evil practices, why was it ok then?
2. I moved on from a literal interpretation of creation a long time ago. I believe the world as we currently know it took billions of years to form and that we humans are the most recent iteration in many millions of years worth of slow adaptation that we call evolution. I believe that to claim otherwise is to ignore all the physical evidence that covers our planet, making God out to be some kind of trickster that planted fake evidence. As it relates to biblical interpretation, my struggle is that I still don't know what parts of scripture to take as history, as opposed to a national narrative Israel was creating with stories that were never intended to be taken as literal events (along the lines of the George Washington cherry tree story).
3. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible that doesn't really agree with itself. For two thousand years scholars have dedicated their lives to understanding and interpreting scripture, only to end up with vastly different opinions on what it says and means. One example is salvation (free will vs. predestination): theologians all over the world who know the Bible inside and out fall on polar ends of this spectrum. If scripture was the final, inerrant, perfect, verbally-inspired word of God, why is it not more clear?
4. Even in the conservative literalist environment I grew up in, we still picked and chose what to follow and what not to follow, though I didn't really see it until much later. Women were allowed to speak in church and not wear head coverings because those passages had to be put in the context of their Jewish origins. What about homosexuality? Male "headship"? How do we decide which scriptures are applicable to modern society and which ones aren't?
5. When was it decided that these books were inerrant in the first place? I know OT scriptures are described as God-breathed in the NT, but does that really mean inerrant? What about the gospels and letters that make up the NT? When was it decided that these writings must be perfect and verbally inspired?
Anyway, these are few things off the top of my head. I'm just looking for a little discussion on this. Hope to hear constructive perspectives from both sides. Again, apologies if this is a topic that's already been discussed as nauseum.
To make a long story short, I was raised in a very conservative evangelical atmosphere, where the Bible was taken as the "word of God" in quite the literal sense. To question the supremacy and inerrancy of scripture was written off as liberal theology and deemed heretical.
Over the last few years, I've become bothered by a number of things about the Bible. My overarching struggle is that to force the Bible into the inerrancy box makes me feel like I have to ignore a bunch of material, or at best come up with what feel like weak attempts to explain away discrepancies and inaccuracies. I'll throw out a few things that I have come to find rather difficult to reconcile:
1. I know this is a huge one for many, but I just can't seem to get past the character of God as expressed in a number of OT accounts, particular in the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the slaying of entire people groups. I can't fit this God and the God of the gospels into the same mold. Sure the Canaanites were wicked based on Jewish values, but so were the vast majority of primitive tribal cultures. If we wouldn't condone genocide now because of a culture's evil practices, why was it ok then?
2. I moved on from a literal interpretation of creation a long time ago. I believe the world as we currently know it took billions of years to form and that we humans are the most recent iteration in many millions of years worth of slow adaptation that we call evolution. I believe that to claim otherwise is to ignore all the physical evidence that covers our planet, making God out to be some kind of trickster that planted fake evidence. As it relates to biblical interpretation, my struggle is that I still don't know what parts of scripture to take as history, as opposed to a national narrative Israel was creating with stories that were never intended to be taken as literal events (along the lines of the George Washington cherry tree story).
3. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible that doesn't really agree with itself. For two thousand years scholars have dedicated their lives to understanding and interpreting scripture, only to end up with vastly different opinions on what it says and means. One example is salvation (free will vs. predestination): theologians all over the world who know the Bible inside and out fall on polar ends of this spectrum. If scripture was the final, inerrant, perfect, verbally-inspired word of God, why is it not more clear?
4. Even in the conservative literalist environment I grew up in, we still picked and chose what to follow and what not to follow, though I didn't really see it until much later. Women were allowed to speak in church and not wear head coverings because those passages had to be put in the context of their Jewish origins. What about homosexuality? Male "headship"? How do we decide which scriptures are applicable to modern society and which ones aren't?
5. When was it decided that these books were inerrant in the first place? I know OT scriptures are described as God-breathed in the NT, but does that really mean inerrant? What about the gospels and letters that make up the NT? When was it decided that these writings must be perfect and verbally inspired?
Anyway, these are few things off the top of my head. I'm just looking for a little discussion on this. Hope to hear constructive perspectives from both sides. Again, apologies if this is a topic that's already been discussed as nauseum.
