Does Inerrancy Require Literalism? - Guest Speaker Ryan Bouton

Rollins Chapel, 2/6

Guest Speaker Ryan Bouton, Christian Impact Team Leader

Text: Luke 24:13-32

Does Inerrancy Require Literalism?

All Christians hold the Scriptures as authoritative and truthful.  However, there is some disagreement as to the nature of that authority and the extent of the truth we find in the Scriptures.  I was asked to speak as an Evangelical Protestant to the issues of authority, inerrancy, and literalism with respect to the Scriptures, and the question before us today is "Does Inerrancy Require Literalism?"  I do not intend to establish or defend the doctrine of inerrancy, which can be defined as the teaching that the writings of the prophets and apostles that we have before us in the Bible are without error in their original manuscripts.  I would be happy to do so at another time.  My aim today is more modest: The answer to our question could be given simply and quickly, but it is most useful as an entry point into how my tradition interacts with the Scriptures.

What is the nature of the authority that Scripture describes itself as having?  In our passage today we see how Jesus employed the Scriptures with two of his followers.  It is instructive for us to see that, having observed what was seemingly the end of Jesus' ministry, his disciples are confounded by what they had experienced.  In fact, they are confounded while they interact with Jesus himself.  Many other people had also seen and interacted with Jesus over the course of his life, but nearly all of them drew the wrong conclusions about who he was and what he was about.  What they needed was a prophetic interpretation, a word from the Lord himself to give them a proper understanding of what happened.  In other words, not only do texts require interpretation, but so do events, and we are dealing with texts that interpret events for us so that we might see them with God's perspective. 

On Miracles - Richard R. Crocker

Miracles
Richard R. Crocker
College Chaplain
Rollins Chapel
January 30, 2011
Exodus 8:16-19

Like many ancient texts, the Bible is full of miracle stories. From the creation story, to the plagues in Egypt, to the miraculous healings wrought by Elijah, to the miracle stories about Jesus (the virgin birth, the healings, walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead, and, not least his own resurrection) the Bible is full of miracles. How are we, who live in the age when almost all phenomena are subject to the explanation of natural law, to regard such stories? For those of us who believe that he Bible contains the word of God, it can be difficult. Are we simply to accept the stories literally, as many would have us do? Or do we take another approach?

Any informed study of other ancient texts makes one aware that almost all of them contain miracle stories. Whether we are talking about accounts of the life of the Buddha, Confucius, Greek and Roman Gods, even great conquerors, stories of superhuman, or supernatural, occurrences are common.

But there is the rub. “Supernatural” is a modern term, not an ancient one. With few exceptions, it is only in the sixteenth century that the notion of natural laws emerges – laws governing the movement of objects, including, ultimately, the planets and stars. As natural law developed, there were more explanations for events. And many came to be believe that scientific inquiry and the natural laws discovered thereby could account for almost everything. Miracle stories have come to be regarded as stories of events that contradict natural law; they are therefore things that cannot and could not happen.

Obviously, the word “miracle” did not originally mean an event that contradicts natural law, since there was no concept of natural law. Originally, and still, a miracle is something that causes wonder, something that astounds us. Miracles are important because they stop us in our tracks and cause us to wonder. Maybe they have a natural explanation, and maybe they don’t, but they certainly leave us with an abiding sense of wonder. And given this definition of miracle, it is not surprising that our most valued, sacred stories should contain many moments of astonishment – many astounding moments, many marvels, many miracles.

How is the Bible the Word of God? - Kurt Nelson

 Rollins Chapel, Sunday, January 23, 2011                                                                   

"How is the Bible the Word of God?"

Genesis 1: 1-5, John 1: 1-3

It’s a frequent occurrence in many Christian churches,

including my own

that at the close of a scripture reading,

the reader will say,

“The word of the Lord”

or

“The word of God for the people of God.”

And if you’re at all like me,

you might have wondered what exactly they are referring to.

Is the Word of God

 this disposable sheet with scripture and liturgy and announcements on it?

Or is it the whole book –

sometimes a giant ornate thing which sits ominously by the altar,

or sometimes a smaller, neater prop,

flapping energetically in the preacher’s hand?

Is it just the portion we heard aloud?

And, if so, what if the reader didn’t do a very good job,

stumbling over strange biblical names,

or far off places?

“The Word of God”

is a phrase often invoked,

but rarely explored, it would seem.

At least in the circles in which I spend much of my time.

My own relationship with the bible has never been simple.

A bit like a strained sibling relationship.

Always there,

always meaningful,

but not always easy, or joyful.

A relationship of tension,

but productive tension in the end, I think.

And it is thus that I ponder how the Bible is the Word of God,

I ponder the complicates ways,

that this amazing and troubling scripture,

has been a constant partner for argument,

and has dramatically shaped my vision,

and my relationship,

with the God of Love.

As I pondered  especially the Word of God these weeks,

I will admit with some chagrin,

that I became fixated on a memory of the 2008 republican presidential primary.

More specifically,

the so-called Youtube debate,

where questions came not from journalists,

but from common people,

through the magic of the internet.

About 2/3rds of the way through

a young, intense man from Dallas Texas,

named "calciumboy" came on the screen

and said,

"The answer to this question will tell me everything I need to know."

And holding up his bible to his webcam, he says,

"Do you believe every word of this book?"

It was a hostile question.

What is Scripture? - Kurt Nelson

Rollins Chapel, Sunday 1/9/11.

Luke 4:9-12

What is Scripture?

One day during my freshman year of college,

I stopped by my mailbox between lunch and an early afternoon class,

and discovered that I had an unexpected package awaiting me.

It was from an old family friend,

who seemed to have had a surplus of packing tape,

because I couldn’t make a dent in that package, let alone open it.

So I wandered to a nearby lounge,

in search of scissors.

And there I saw Chris.

Chris was somewhere between a friend and an acquaintance.

And I asked him if he had scissors or, really, anything sharp.

He rooted around in his bag earnestly,

pulled out his bible,

and said, “Sharper than a two-edged sword.”

Chris was the kind of guy whose bible

was in an immaculate zippered carrying case.

Something which marked him as a person of piety,

and placed him at the center of an important Christian subculture on our campus,

intentionally distinct from all the casual Lutherans and Catholics.

I replied, “I’m not sure that will be useful right now.”

And he quickly retorted, “It’s useful in all sorts of situations.”

It was not,

needless to say,

what I needed at the time.

But Chris, misguided as he may have been,

knew at the very least,

knew there was something important about the Bible.

Though he seemed more than a little confused as to why and how that was.

Which makes him, I think,

a lot like a lot of us.

Peter Gomes, Harvard University’s Chaplain,

compares our relationship with the Bible,

to that special kind of relationship,

wherein we know someone,

we’ve spoken with them,

often perhaps,

exchanged friendly greetings,

frequent pleasantries,

and perhaps even more in depth experiences,

but we don’t know their name.

And it’s too far gone,

too hard,

too embarrassing to ask the basic question, “who are you?”

Despite the fact that the bible remains on bestseller lists,

informs our grammar, our politics, and even our education in strange and unexpected ways,

we seem to know less and less about it.

And it’s becoming harder,

rather than easier,

to ask some basic questions,

Like ours today, “what is scripture?”

It’s a question of course,

that assumes that scripture matters.

And perhaps you’re here because you have an inkling that it does indeed,

but aren’t entirely sure why.

Those of you who were around last term,

know we focused on “Big Questions.”

Which worked quite well, I think,

in spite of the early hour.

So for those who liked our Big Questions,

don’t fear,

for we haven’t ventured far.

And I think we’ll address,

 we’ll wonder together about many more Big Questions,

through a new lens.

Because questions about scripture,

are, I think, big questions indeed.

And we must start, of course,

with the basics,

What is scripture?

It is not,  for the record,

useful in opening tightly wrapped packages.

And it’s not, despite appearances,

best thought of as a book.

But rather as a library,

fully of historical narratives, letters, gospels, hymns,

myth, poetry, theological treatise,

collected over the course of thousands of years.

And it’s a collection that asks much of us.

What is scripture? - Richard R. Crocker

What is Scripture?
Richard R. Crocker
Rollins Chapel, Dartmouth College
January 9, 2011
2 Timothy 3:14-17

What is scripture? Scripture is a name we give to the writings that we deem uniquely valuable, uniquely important in helping us to find meaning and purpose in our lives. Holy Scripture refers to those writings deemed so valuable by a community that they are considered, by that community, to be the word of God.

That’s the bird’s eye view. Now let’s look at the more human level.
When I was ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church USA, I had to answer certain questions and take certain vows. Among those questions was the following: ”Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?” I said yes. I still do.

So how do these scriptures, these writings, become God’s word to me, or to anyone?

Occasionally it happens that a person picks up a copy of the Bible, and, without any background or context at all, begins reading it and finds it to be the life-transforming word of God. This happens very rarely, but it does happen. I suppose the same thing happens for some people reading the Koran or the Book of Mormon or the Bhagavad Gita. But for most of us it is different. It happens in the way that Paul describes in his second letter to Timothy. Let me elaborate.

I wonder if there is anyone is this congregation who is familiar with the term “memory verse”? As I thought. Well, for anyone raised in the Protestant churches of the South, as I was, the term is very familiar, I went to Sunday School every Sunday from before I can remember. Every Sunday, we were encouraged – or required – to learn a memory verse, a verse from the Bible. They were usually very simple, becoming a little longer as we grew older. Such verses were as follows:

“Love one another”.
“Be ye kind, one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.”
“Children, obey your parents.”
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

You get the idea. I learned the bible piece meal, in verses, over many years. One of the verses that I learned in late boyhood, as a member of the Royal Ambassadors, was this one from Second Timothy: “All scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.”

So, I was told, the Bible itself claims to be the inspired word of God, See, it says so right here! That settles it.

That position, however, came to seem obviously flawed to me, being a smart-alecky kind of kid. When Paul wrote those words to Timothy, I asked, did he know he was writing the Bible? When he said all scripture, did he know that he was writing scripture? How did those 66 books in the Bible (and we were taught to name them all) come to be selected anyway? How did God make sure that just those 66 were selected, and no others? And when Paul wrote “all scripture”, didn’t he mean just the Hebrew scriptures? After all, the only Christian scriptures then available were his other letters! The gospels had not even been written. (As I said, I was a smart-alecky kid.)

So how did these writings, these verses, these Scriptures ]become the word of God to me? Exactly as Paul said to Timothy. “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Continue in what you have learned and believed from childhood, knowing from whom you have learned it …. You see, what I was learning at Sunday School from infancy on was not just verses. It was love. I was becoming part of a community. My Sunday School teachers taught me more than words. They taught me kindness and faith. Indeed, they embodied it.

I came to respect the Bible because I was taught to do so by others who loved me and who found it to be sacred,, That is the way most of us learn everything. We are taught by others, and the lessons are especially powerful if they are taught to us through love and reinforced in a community. And so it was that I became a part of the Christian church, which is rooted in the scriptures of the old and new testaments, and they became, through the Holy Spirit, the word of God to me.

Only such an upbringing has made me able to believe. Simply reading the bible as another text, as I was taught to do in college, and, to some degree in seminary, reveals many difficulties – not the least of which is the picture of an apparently unloving God that prevails in certain parts of the scripture. There are obstacles to belief, obstacles that prevent these scriptures from becoming the word of God, for some people. But for me, I was taught that the Bible was a story – of creation, of sin, of God’s call to his people Israel, of their obedience and disobedience, of destruction for sin, and of the promise of forgiveness sealed in the blood of his crucified Son. And although that story has many rough spots, so does my life. I am a part of that story. I have come to find my meaning in it, my solace in it during sorrow and trial, my joy in it during times of blessing. Though it can never be accepted without interpretation, and though the texts sometimes appear puzzling or contradictory, I still find, as millions of others have, this text, these stories, to be my story, and the texts useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

There are lots of problems that come with this tradition; it isn’t all easy. And we will consider some of these problems during this term. As a student who in college studied literature, and who still loves literature, I have read many other stories, some of which became important to me. But my life is shaped by the words of scripture, and by the community which passed on those words, and talked about them, and tried – with many failures – to live by them. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

What About the End of the World? - Richard R. Crocker

What about the end of the world?
Richard R. Crocker
November 30, 2010
Mark 13:24-31

What about the end of the world? Is it something we think about? Is it something we should think about?

I seem to spend a lot of time telling students, that it’s not the end of the world. To a student in my writing 5 class who gets a B on her first paper and is absolutely distraught, I say “It’s not the end of the world.” After a student breaks up with a romantic partner, I say “It’s not the end of the world.” When someone has been found “responsible” for a violation of college policy and is suspended from the college for four terms, I say “it’s not the end of the world.” I know, in all of these cases, that it may seem as if the world they have known has suddenly and irrevocably collapsed, but it hasn’t. All of them will live and incorporate this experience into their growth and will have new opportunities for life and love.

But then, in other pastoral and personal situations, it gets harder. When someone has committed a crime and is sentenced to prison, it seems like the end of the world. When a person receives a medical diagnosis for a serious illness, it seems like the end of the world. When a child hears from her parents that they are divorcing, it can seem like the end of the world.

But then, it can be even harder. When you sit with a family whose child has died, it really seems like the end of the world. When you are in a car accident and, through your negligence, have killed another person, it sure seems like the end of the world. These are events form which there is no recovery. Sure, life continues, but the world has, in a sense, ended.

We can say as a people that our collective world sometimes ends. The world for my parents’ generation ended, apparently, on Dec 7, 1941. For this generation of Americans, things changed irrevocably on Sept 11, 2001. Life goes on; the world did not literally end, but something of infinite value was lost.

In Advent, we think about the coming of Christ, the return of Christ, the end of the world. Mark chapter 13 is called the little apocalypse, in which we commonly understand Jesus to be talking about the end of the world. Is he talking metaphorically or literally? Does it matter?

Yes. We know that this world will literally end, eventually, in fire or ice. It can go on for many generations, if we conserve it and act wisely. It could end in a much shorter time if we act stupidly.

But I think the metaphorical interpretation of the end is just as sobering. Our life in this world will end, both literally, when we die, and metaphorically, when we feel as if we have died.

In the season of Advent, we are encouraged to think about the end of the world. It is important. The teaching of Christ leads us to believe in judgment: who we truly are, apart from all our pretention, will stand revealed. It also leads us to believe in a mercy and love that transcend our finitude. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” And those words are the words of eternal life. Amen.

What about the end of the world? - Kurt Nelson

Kurt Nelson

Mark 13: 28-37

Rollins Chapel, 12.01.10

"What about the end of the world?"

Richard and I each wrote a brief reflection on the end of the world.

His will come soon.

We’ve entered, for the next four weeks,

the season of advent.

And at least for those of us who care to think about such things,

it’s a liturgical season which calls us to wait,

to watch,

to keep awake.

But in real life,

it’s a season too full of too many important things to spend much time waiting

and watching.

We have finals, of course.

And year-end paper work.

We have plans to make,

gifts to buy,

economies to bolster.

Many of us will travel,

see family,

and, I hope, get some much-deserved rest.

Besides, we know this Christmas story by heart.

So what do we have to keep awake for?

A baby is born.

He turns out to be a great guy,

and a great ethical teacher, and spiritual leader.

And, for some reason,

he wanted us to give gifts to each other,

and cut down evergreen trees,

and put colorful lights on them,

and stand around in the cold sipping hot chocolate,

listening to the Glee Club sing about reindeer and snowmen.

But advent points us not only to Christmas,

and all the weird stuff that now surrounds us,

but also points to the end.

Because though it may be embarrassing,

or confusing,

we simply can’t ignore the fact,

that a significant portion of Jesus’ message,

was about the coming Kingdom of God,

about the end of the world.

He reminded anyone who cared to listen,

and probably more than a few who didn’t,

that we are living toward something.

Something big and important, and world-changing.

And so each advent season,

we are encourage to ponder,

how we are still in a state of waiting.

To ponder the simple,

and perhaps terrifying notion,

that the world will not always be the way it is.

And that we know not the day nor the hour.

Indeed, even Jesus himself seemed a bit confused,

suggesting the world would end before the passing of a generation.

He may have been misunderstood,

or mistranslated,

but there it is.

Important, and confusing.

A time of, "Already, but not yet."

Now most often,

I think,

this notion of the end of the world,

is used to frighten.

There's a whole sub-genre of Christian literature and film,

depicting in terrifying detail those who are left behind,

when the judgment comes.

Seeking to effect, it would seem, some kind of conversion.

But we are smart around here.

We know, I hope,

that we are not ready.

And that nothing we can do,

no prayer we can pray,

or tithe we can tithe will make us ready,

save for grace.

The point is not fear,

the point is to live.

And to live as if we're living toward something.

Because whether it's our own lives,

or indeed the end of the world itself.

It will not always be this way.

And rather than fear,

I suspect that's meant to leave us with purpose and clarity.

Life and the world aren’t endless.

And so our call isn’t to make plans,

for the right connections, for the lucrative job,

and the big house, car, and mortgage,

so that one day we might retire happy.

Rather, I think,

we’re meant to do what we believe is good, and right and important.

Guided always by love of God and love of neighbor.

Living toward an end,

which I hope, and pray, and have faith,

will be far more full of grace and love and mercy,

than of fear, and despair.