The Bible’s Message
Is Incredibly Consistent with a Striking Running Theme
In
2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I
found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.
I
have so far explored themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before
looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have written about many
more. I find everything about Jesus utterly convincing).
For
the next three posts I am going to look at the Bible and why I think it is
inspired like no other book.
Firstly,
I am struck by its extraordinary unity and coherence.
As
you read those words, I admit that they may not generate that much of a “wow”
factor but when you think about it, they really should.
Think
of it this way. Imagine you were asked to select and assemble into one volume
66 assorted pieces of literature, covering a 1,500 year timespan, authored by
legislators, historians, poets, farmers, royalty, manual workers, political
commentators, songwriters, tax administrators and family doctors, written in
three different languages and from the cultures of three different empires on
three different continents. However hard you tried, it would be no surprise if
the result was a ragbag assortment of miscellaneous and often contradictory
texts.
Now
consider the Bible. It is a collection of 66 quite different writings, some
quite long, some very short, in over a dozen distinct genres* written over one
and a half millennia, by about 35-40 different authors (most of whom didn’t
know each other or consult together), from all the social backgrounds listed
above and more besides, and immersed in cultures as disparate as the Egyptian
(Africa), Babylonian (Asia) and Roman (Europe) empires. Not one of those
authors knew they were writing for the same anthology.
The
result though is decidedly not the weird jumble of unconnected ideas you might
reasonably expect from such widely diverse sources. In fact, though hundreds of
themes are explored in the Bible from a bewildering array of viewpoints, it
speaks with one voice. I think that is humanly inexplicable.
For
example, from Genesis to Revelation there is absolute agreement on the nature
of God; his wisdom, his power, his truth, his love, his holiness, his justice,
his patience, his authority, and his consistent righteous hostility to sin that
is called his wrath. Throughout the 66 books a completely uniform picture of
God emerges.
Furthermore,
from beginning to end, there is also absolute agreement on the condition of
humankind. Our species is consistently presented as lovingly created, superior
in moral responsibility to all other animals, yet, - unlike them - inevitably
sinful and flawed, always dependent on God's grace to initiate and maintain any
relationship with God.
And
throughout Old and New Testament the reader is constantly reminded that there
will be a Day of Final Reckoning when God will judge the world in perfect
fairness. There is no hint of reincarnation, only resurrection in a restored
creation.
That's just three examples. There are many more.
But the Bible does much more than just not disagree with itself (if you’ll excuse the awkward English). The Bible has, in addition, a profound coherence with a distinct sweeping narrative and clear central plot.
The
overarching story in the Bible has been neatly summed up as the tale of three
trees.
Firstly,
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3 is the explanation
(however literally or figuratively you read it) of how things got to be so
messed up on our beautiful planet. In theological terms, it’s about how sin
entered the world.
Secondly,
the cross on which Jesus was crucified, taking upon himself the penalty for
sin, is referred to twice in the Acts of the Apostles literally as a tree (Acts
5.30 and Acts
10.39). This is the explanation of how God stepped in to repair everything.
And
thirdly, the Bible ends in Revelation 22 with a vision of a restored creation,
centred round an evergreen, permanently fruitful, Tree of Life, whose leaves
are for the healing of the nations.
Basically,
the Bible is the story of a beautiful and perfect world that is ruined, then
rescued and finally restored. That basic narrative is the golden thread that
runs through every book in the Bible. Every subplot, however self-contained and
interesting in its own right, contributes to and finds its deepest significance
in that central theme.
It
would take far too long to illustrate how this is so all the way through the
Bible. But here are just a few examples.
-
Right from the start in the story of The Fall, there is the promise that a
male figure, the offspring of a woman, would come to crush the head of the
serpent (Genesis
3:15). One day, the wrong of the Garden of Eden would be righted. Then
right at the end of the story, in the book of Revelation, Jesus, born of Mary,
finally subdues and conquers “that old serpent, the devil” before sending him
to his everlasting punishment.
-
The Old Testament Law with its laborious system of blood sacrifices in the Old
Testament expressed the seriousness of sin and the penalty of eternal death it
deserved. Its repetitive nature showed our powerlessness to decisively deal
with the world's most incurable problem – the human heart. But, more than that,
the massive cost in the life of livestock also prefigures the perfect and
permanent atonement that Jesus would make for the sins of the world when the
blood of his innocent life was shed on the cross.
-
The Old Testament Prophets repeatedly called for a response of righteous
living and from the people of their generation - and they were rejected time
and time again. This depressing reading consistently matches the observation in
the New Testament that absolutely no one is justified (declared ‘not guilty’)
because absolutely everyone falls short of God’s standard.
-
The Old Testament Writings all yearn for someone who will satisfy the hungers
of the human soul. Every bewildering circle in the Old Testament is
magnificently squared in the New Testament in the person of Jesus.
This
coherent, central narrative running through the Scriptures helps to resolve
some of the biggest puzzles in the Bible.
For example, reading through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, many people in our day are shocked by the primitive nature of the legislation (in fact, it was revolutionary and strikingly humane compared with other legal codes from that time). But what use does a Christian have for it in the 21st Century Western world?
Consider
the many offences which carried the death penalty in the Law of Moses. Isn’t
this all we need to know to declare the Bible irrelevant to the issues of our
age? For the record, the death penalty under the Law of Moses was prescribed in
cases of cursing God, sacrificing to false gods, serious violations of the
Sabbath, false prophecy, divination and the dabbling in various occult
arts, human sacrifice, premeditated murder, kidnap, striking or cursing
parents, persistent and incorrigible rebelliousness, rape, adultery, homosexual
acts, incest, bestiality and premarital sex.
Why
do we not feel obliged to apply capital punishment to such (or indeed any)
offenses in so called Christian countries? Because of Jesus who, in his own
words, came not to abolish but fulfil the Law.
What
does that mean? Two things. First, that the death penalty is permanently valid
because, however much our standards vary from age to age, all those sins listed
above constitute a serious offence against a holy God and always will.
But second, because Jesus died for the sin of the whole world, he
has already paid the death penalty for all sin. He has totally satisfied
all the righteous requirements of the Law – including its draconian sanctions.
When
Scripture interprets Scripture in this way all the pieces of the sometimes
perplexing puzzle fall into place and the glorious picture emerges.
Then
take the resurrection as another example. As I explained in Reason
14, the resurrection stands out as stunning evidence of the truthfulness of
Christianity. But, more than that, it fits perfectly and surprisingly into the
logic of the big theme of the Bible. As J. John
and Chris Walley write:
“The
resurrection of Jesus… is like one of those twists in a novel or film that
takes you by surprise until you think about it, and then you realize that it
actually makes sense and it fits with the plot. So the Old Testament teaches
that death is the inevitable consequence of human beings having sinned against
God. The interesting implication of this (which no one appears to have explored
before the resurrection) is that if someone who had never sinned actually did
die, death would have no hold over them.”
My
conclusion to all this is that a book with so many diverse authors, writing
over such a long period of time, could surely only display such unity and
coherence if their work was commissioned and collated by one divine editor.
So
that’s the fifteenth reason I am a Christian. I believe the Bible is God’s
inspired word; a trustworthy revelation about life, the universe and
everything.
You might have thought that, with such a humanly inexplicable unity, the Bible
would have the respect (if not the admiration) of those who are not believers.
But no book has been as hated, as burned and as banned throughout history as
this one has. That it has remained, despite all the odds, easily the world’s
bestselling and most fervently sought-after book is what I’ll write about in
two weeks’ time.
* The
genres I have in mind are legislation (e.g. Leviticus), historical narrative
(e.g. 1 Kings), short story (e.g. Ruth), tragic poetry (e.g. Job), song lyrics
(e.g. Psalms), tweets (e.g. Proverbs), romantic drama (Song of Solomon),
prophecy (e.g. Isaiah), dirge poetry (e.g. Lamentations), news supplement (e.g.
Mark), open letter (e.g. Ephesians), private correspondence (e.g.
Philemon) and apocalyptic (e.g. Revelation).
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