HOLY SCRIPTURE - A CATEGORY ERROR
July 15th 2001
The next issue, Number 62, will appear on August 15th 2001.
Christians claim that the Bible is different from all other literature in its being the infallible and binding word of God written for our necessary guidance by writers inspired by God Himself.
Christians differ as to the precise interpretation of this but the general claim is made by all of them. Privately, many Christians are unhappy with this claim but they presumably have in mind that the Reformation did not generate a Reformed Church but a plethora of splinter churches; the Mother Church remains larger than any of the splinters and remains essentially unchanged in its general self assessment and strategy. From this historic experience it might be inferred that a 'Reformed Bible' is a chimera; there would be a thousand incompatible versions and nothing but strife would come of them.
There are many books and articles exposing the fallibility of the Bible with regard to .... inconsistencies, logical invalidity, factual errors and significant factual omissions, the manifestly evil being presented as good and, very often triviality and impenetrability. Some of the better parts of the Bible are not even original but derived, it would seem, from earlier sources.
The Bible carries, in its defects and virtues alike, the unmistakable footprints of unaided human authorship and, that being so, it would seem that the the claim articulated in the first paragraph is unsound.
The thrust of this article is precisely that the claim must be rejected on general grounds - i.e. on grounds that do not refer to any particular part of the text. It is, of course, self-evident that, on the atheist assumption, the question of divine inspiration simply does not arise. The case made in this article is that the Christian claim that the Bible is divinely inspired is probably unsound on theist grounds.
Clearly a book, or collection of books, cannot be addressed, by God, directly to the whole adult human race for the simple reason that (as God undoubtedly would know) great numbers of people are not articulately literate (illiterate or semi-literate). A book is of no direct use to most human beings. It follows that the contents of the book can reach the great mass of the people only by way of the literate minority. This minority consists of fallible people who, practically, have to select which parts of the book they pass on to the majority of humankind. Would God be sure that His Message would not be distorted by fallible human selectors? Would God suspend human fallibility in these selectors; would He inspire them to select with sincerity and integrity? He would have so to inspire them to make the 'Word of God' project work.
Moreover, the literate minority of trasnsmitters of scripture are vulnerable to disinformation. Human languages are many and diverse so the literate minority can only transmit, to the masses of their peoples, translations of the supposed original Word of God and, as the authors of the New English Bible write, "there are the problems of what to translate and how to translate it." These problems are not susceptible to completely satisfactory solution - as any serious Biblical scholar will acknowledge. The authenticity of original sources can never be established beyond doubt - we cannot know that vital parts have not been lost or destroyed or tampered with. Translation is not mere decoding but is also an art needing great, often idiosyncratic judgment by its practitioners. Would God have made the original sources indestructible; would He have made the translators infallible? To ask these questions is to open up doubts in a big way.
Any decision by God to transmit ultimate truths to us via the written word would demand of Him a remarkable chain of miracles; indestructible originals, totally faithful translations and impeccably sound selectors. Could God not, more simply, endow us with instinctive knowledge of some basic things and a sufficient capacity to acquire what other knowledge we need by way of observation and inference therefrom. God or no god .... we do actually have "instinctive knowledge of some basic things and a sufficient capacity to acquire what other knowledge we need by way of observation and inference therefrom."
The Christians' characterisation of the bible as Holy Scripture seems to depend upon their god doing things in a very complicated way when there is a far simpler way for Him to have proceeded. Supposing that He has given us senses and brains ..... it seems reasonable to suppose that He would expect us to use them rather than to take on trust a book that is evidently not always trustworthy.
The Bible is a valuable resource inherited from the ancients. Why burden it, and, ourselves, with the superstition that it is the infallible word of a supposed god?
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